She sighed, for van Ryker was off up the Cooper seeing to the clearing of additional acreage that would be planted to tobacco, and he had been talking about planting rice as well. Downriver toward the coast, on the west bank of the Ashley, Albemarle Point had been renamed Charles Town in honor of the dissolute English king and last year a more defensible walled town had been laid out six miles away. New people were streaming in; the lonely days when she would see nobody but plantation personnel for weeks were fast drawing to a close. Well, at least she would have the plantation’s books in good order before van Ryker returned! It was a job she had taken on herself, for their excellent factor was away visiting his relatives in Scotland. The books had fallen sadly behind in his absence and Imogene meant to rectify that, for who knew when he would return, sea voyages being what they were!
Something soft and furry brushed her skirts and made them rustle. She glanced down to see that Nicodemas had joined her and was rubbing his thick black fur against her legs, looking up at her with big trusting green eyes, and kneading the turkey carpet with his white paws.
Imogene smiled down at the cat and bent to stroke his soft fur. Nicodemas arched his back and purred loudly. Longview was well supplied with cats of Nicodemas’s characteristics now, for several pussycats had jumped ship in the Cooper, preferring the lazy freedom of plantation life to the more austere diet and restricted quarters of life at sea—and Nicodemas had made the most of his opportunities. He had a handsome harem now and his great-great-grand-kittens, many as coal black and white-pawed as he, strolled through the rose gardens at Longview, slept under its hedges and beside its sundial, and caught mice in its big attics and rats in its capacious cellars. Imogene, who was fond of cats, loved them all, but the original Nicodemas, who had befriended her on shipboard when he had seemed for a while her only friend, would always be her favorite. He was growing old now, was Nicodemas, and he moved a little stiffly sometimes as he jumped down from his special velvet pillow on a low cedar stool beside the hearth, but he still carried himself with the same debonair swagger he had sported when she had met him aboard the ill-fated Goodspeed so long ago.
Dear Nicodemas, friend of a terrible shipwreck that had not crossed her mind for years. She thought of how he had looked that night, silhouetted against the jagged rocks of the Scillies, terrified, ears flattened, half drowned and clinging for dear life to the ropes that bound a little cask as she somehow propelled him through the wild water to the shore.
"We’ll find you a piece of cold chicken in the kitchen,” she promised the cat affectionately. “As soon as I’m finished with these books They won’t seem to balance—I think it’s all that ironstone ware we imported that somehow didn’t get marked down—oh, and perhaps that shipment of Sheffield plate as well!” she exclaimed, and forgot Nicodemas as she went back to poring over the books.
The cat seemed to understand. He curled up on the hem of her sapphire silk skirt and stretched luxuriously. Imogene went on with her work, her ringed hand moving swiftly over the parchment. She dipped her turkey quill pen into the India ink and looked up at the wild cry of a night bird.
Quill poised in air, she thought unbidden of Georgiana, the lovely child she had lost so long ago. Wistful and dreaming, she put the pen down upon the little writing desk’s polished rosewood surface, closed eyes that smarted suddenly, and wished with all her heart that it could all have been different.
But life was like that, Imogene told herself bitterly there in the Carolina moonlight. It tore you from the arms you loved and cast you on other shores. She got up and walked nervously about, the skirts of her ivory satin dressing gown swishing about legs as young and lovely as ever. How often she had told herself she must forget but—how could she forget what had been all her fault? If she had lived her life differently, little Georgiana would not have gone down aboard the Wilhelmina. She bent her head as if beneath blows—so often had she rained down recriminations upon herself.
“Georgiana, Georgiana,” she whispered. “I gave you life—and caused your death." She rested her face in her hands, feeling tears wet upon her cheeks. It was an old wound, Georgiana’s death, but it had struck her afresh. As if something stirred... out there beyond her vision.
And even as Imogene suffered in Carolina, the daughter she thought she had lost shuddered in Brett’s arms in that sloop upon the Hudson as she imagined her mother—that haunting face from the portrait at Windgate—floating in the dark water, drowned.
“They never found my mother’s body,” she whispered painfully to Brett. “One of the servants told me that. Verhulst van Rappard put up a memorial stone to her, but my mother—there was no body in the coffin beneath the stone. It was an empty coffin he buried.”
Again she had said “Verhulst van Rappard” and not “father.” Brett frowned down on her shining hair, and stroked its gleaming surface affectionately. Georgiana said “mother” easily enough, but the word “father” came hard to her lips. He wondered if she had something against her dead father. Grim man Verhulst might have been, but surely he had been within his rights to take exception to a wife who fled him with her lover! And if the story told was a true one, van Rappard had had no part in killing his young wife—although he had fired a shot into her lover’s chest.
Brett Danforth looked down on that fair head, cradled against his chest. His gaze was puzzled. Did Georgiana know something about these people that he did not know, for all her insistence that she did not? Had there been something in those papers, that packet the minister had thrust upon him in Bermuda, that had made her sheer off from her father's memory and take her mother’s side so passionately?
“Georgiana,” he sighed, toying with a lock of her fair hair. “Can you not accept the fact that I love you? Must you ever doubt me?”
“Oh, Brett, I don’t doubt you!” cried Georgiana. And at that moment she did not. Brett’s strong frame seemed the only anchor to her wildly careening emotions and she clung to him desperately.
Silently he swept her up and carried her to bed, silently made love to her. And it was indeed a night of sighs and splendor, for that nearness to death had made Georgiana see her world in a new light, had made her realize anew that life was fleeting, that Brett could be wrested from her, that anything could happen. She must seize and cherish this moment out of time, for there might never be another....
But for all its silent intensity, there was an unspoken commitment in the tempestuous joining that they shared that night and Brett Danforth held his lady close and kissed her tears away and promised himself grimly that in future she should have no cause to doubt him.
And so in the dawn they returned to Windgate with their sad burden.
Kray was duly notified, and he turned up on their doorstep, distraught and gaunt, looking as if he had not slept for a month. Georgiana met him in silence and in pity and led him to the room where the Michaelius woman lay, awaiting the building of her rude coffin.
“Kristin! Oh, my Kristin!” Kray gulped out the woman’s given name and went down on his knees beside her body, heaving with sobs.
There could be no doubt that he had been her lover. Georgiana would have withdrawn, leaving him alone with her, but that he turned a suddenly fierce countenance toward her—a countenance so forbidding that she took a step backward.
“Kristin killed no one!” he cried in a muffled voice. “ ’Twas I who killed Jan Michaelius, when I found him beating her! I thought he was like to kill her and I felled him with an ax—and I’m glad he’s dead, but poor Kristin, she feared the hangman’s noose for she’d seen her father hanged. Such a little neck....” He turned and his fingers gently touched her cold white flesh. “My Kristin... she said she’d drown herself if she thought they were going to take her in custody and now she’s done it. God help me, I never thought she would. I only killed her husband to save her life, for I was sure his next blow would be the last of her.” He collapsed upon her slight body, sobbing.
“Kray.” Georgiana’s voice trembled
as she spoke. “You have put your life in my hands by saying to me what you just said. But I am not your judge—nor yet your jailer. I have already forgotten your words. And—I think you have been punished enough. Say what you will to the authorities—I will not reveal what you have just spoken to me.”
She closed the door on his mumbled thanks and met Brett just coming up the hall.
“Is Kray there?” he asked. “I heard he was here.”
She nodded. “The schout brought him.”
“Is he in there too?”
“No. He’s strolling with cook in the woods behind the house.”
Brett quirked a quizzical eyebrow at his wife.
“She had told me he was an old beau of hers,” said Georgiana demurely. “So I gave her the afternoon off. I think she wanted to renew the acquaintance.”
“Then Kray is alone in there?”
“Yes.”
“I’d best see to him. He may try to escape and the schout will hold me responsible.”
Georgiana laid a detaining hand on her husband’s arm. “I wouldn’t disturb Kray right now, Brett. He’s not thinking of escape—he’s mourning her loss. He must have loved her very much.”
“It’s true, then,” he mused. “Kray was her lover.”
“I am sure of it, but whatever happened at that lonely bouwerie, let it rest. Two people are dead, enough blood has been shed.”
“Spoken like a woman,” said Brett impatiently. “It is my duty as patroon to bring justice here.”
“Then do not listen to the ravings of a man half mad with grief,” she cried, matching his impatience with her own. “Allow him to be alone with her—this last hour.”
“Very well, I will set a guard on the door.”
They left Kray alone with his lady all the afternoon. Alone in his misery, with the death of all his hopes and dreams. Finally, Brett became restive and muttered that he would go and see if the man was ill, since he had not come out. Uneasy herself, Georgiana followed him.
Brett dismissed the guard but when he opened the door, they both saw that Kray’s long gaunt figure was lying half across the fragile body of Kristin Michaelius. Brett strode across the room and quickly lifted him up by the shoulders, but it was too late. He could see the knife hilt-deep in Kray's chest.
Georgiana cried out and Kray’s lids fluttered open. His face was gray but his lips moved.
“ ’Twas none of it Kristin’s fault,” he mumbled. “She was only pretty and young and wed to the wrong man. I killed Jan Michaelius—I alone. But I’ll not hang for it.”
“No,” said Brett thoughtfully. “You’ll not hang for it, Kray. Of that you can be certain.” Even as he spoke, the tall man’s body went limp in his arms. Kray had spoken his last words and made his dying confession.
“You knew.” Brett accused, turning his gaze on Georgiana as he lowered Kray’s body gently to the floor. “You knew he did it.”
“Yes. He told me he killed Michaelius.” The words, She was only pretty and young and wed to the wrong man, rang in her ears. “And yet you did not tell me,” he murmured.
“Why should I? So you could save him for the hangman? Remember how near you were to killing Arthur that day he attacked me in Bermuda!”
"Aye. I was that,” he agreed, his eyes kindling. “And might have done it, had he shown more fight!”
“And they would have hanged you for it!”
“But Arthur,” he pointed out quite rationally, “was not your husband."
“No, but I was at that moment his bond servant—and the world would have called him justified in chastising me, for I had run away from him and caused him to miss his ship to Boston!”
Brett Danforth’s brooding gaze was on his excited young wife. She looked very beautiful standing there, challenging him. Confronted by that appealing young face, he had not the heart to point out that there was a vast difference in the world’s view between a husband and a bondmaster.
“So you wanted to give Kray his chance for an honorable end,” he said quietly.
“Yes!” Her staunch demeanor challenged him to say she had been wrong. “He loved Kristin and she was gone, and he had nothing but a noose to look forward to.”
“Perhaps you are right, Georgiana.” Brett sighed heavily but he looked on his bride with affection. “We will tell the schout that he confessed.”
Turquoise eyes looked soberly into gray.
“He loved her and it brought him to this,” said Georgiana softly. “I wonder how it started between them—perhaps with just a little thing, a word, a sigh. Their eyes met—and they fell in love.”
Brett rumpled her bright hair. “They were walking on dangerous ground, Georgiana.”
“And they slipped....”
Brett nodded. He could not know that his young wife was not thinking of Kray and his drowned beloved, but of herself and Nicolas van Rappard. There had been a moment there at the ten Haers’ ball when she herself had so nearly slipped....
Part Two
The Jealous Mistress
A moon of honey, a moon of gold,
A love so fragile and fair....
Yet many dark nights will still unfold....
Then will she find him there?
Windgate On The Hudson,
1673
Chapter 19
It was strange but this double suicide of the lovers had somehow brought Brett and Georgiana together in a closeness they had not known before. Their next days were idyllic, a golden time of strolls together in long-shadowed afternoons beneath the tall chestnut and walnut trees that guarded the bluff, a time of smiling wordless glances across their long gleaming board as they sat at dinner, a time of yearning heartfelt embraces on the soft feather mattress of Georgiana’s big square four-poster.
Perhaps the high point of that time was the excursion they took aboard the River Witch. Brett broached the idea at breakfast.
“There’s a beauty spot upriver I want to show you,” he told her. smiling across the table. “And make love to you there before the weather’s too cold for it outdoors!” he whispered roguishly as Wouter left the room.
Georgiana’s heart quickened for Brett had indeed been a masterful lover last night and it was exhilarating to think that he so yearned for a return engagement that he would forsake even Windgate’s pressing problems to do it!
“Will we be riding?” she asked, carefully sprinkling sugared cinnamon onto her pancakes from the big silver ooma. “Floss could use the exercise—every time I go near the stable she looks at me reproachfully, she thinks I’m neglecting her.”
He shook his massive head. “Let Floss trot around the pasture for her exercise today. You can ride her after we return. We’ll take the Witch. ’Tis faster—and safer.”
“What is this wonderful place we’re going to see?”
“ ’Tis only a glade,” he said carelessly. “But I would show it to you, Georgiana. I think you’ll appreciate it. We’ll leave as soon as you’ve finished.” He laid down his napkin, for Brett ate faster than she did. He rose and called to Wouter to have the schipper make ready the Witch.
“Will we be gone overnight?” she wondered. “Because cook—”
“Yes, but only the one night. Your household duties won’t suffer. And between them, Wouter and cook know well how to run this house.”
“Better than I do, I don’t doubt,” admitted Georgiana. “Still I must be about, if I’m to learn how to do it. Cook might leave us—Wouter too. And then where would we be?”
“In the market for experienced help,” he said sardonically.
She chose to ignore his raillery. “Since we’ll be picnicking out, I’ll take Linnet,” she decided. “She can fetch and carry while I attend to—other things.” She gave him a witching look.
Brett laughed. “I see you’re slipping into lazy Bermuda ways, Georgiana. Surely you don’t need a lady’s maid for a night spent in the brush?”
“No—well, it isn’t that I need her,” admitted Georgiana fr
ankly. “Linnet's moping about. She stands there wool-gathering, she drops things, she looks as if she’s lost her last friend, she laughs—and then suddenly bursts into tears for no reason. She’s been that way ever since we attended the ten Haers’ ball.”
“Maybe it was seeing the Michaelius woman drowned that upset her?”
“Perhaps.” said Georgiana hesitantly. In her heart she didn’t really think that was what was bothering Linnet.
“I hope nobody at the ball was unkind to her. I had let her dress up and she looked so pretty, she far outshone the other ladies' maids. They could have been envious.”
Brett gave his lady an indulgent look. She was kind to those about her, he thought affectionately—sometimes kinder than they deserved. “Of course you can take Linnet,” he said. “Although I draw the line at her going ashore with us. She went into hysterics when we found the Michaelius woman in the river—I’d hate to think what she’d do if we encountered a bear.”
Georgiana hated to think what she herself would do if they encountered a bear. “We aren’t likely to run across one, do you think?” she asked nervously.
“No, of course not. But Linnet’s sure to imagine bears every time she hears a raccoon or a rabbit scuffling in the bushes.”
“Yes, she does tend to exaggerate things,” agreed Georgiana with a laugh. But she was glad they would be taking Linnet with them. It would give the girl an outing and perhaps—who knew?—she might take a fancy to one of the rakish crew members, out there on the romantic river’s shining surface.
But one thing after another delayed them so that it was almost dusk before they set out.
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