“It’s hard to believe,” murmured Roxanne.
“He wasn’t running slaves to the United States then. He was buying them in small lots from the slave markets on the west coast of Africa and selling them in Cuba or South America, Brazil was still buying then.”
He stopped talking, his lip curling.
“And what happened?” demanded Roxanne.
“After he got rich, he got religion,” sighed Rhodes. “He turned his back on what he’d done and set out to criticize others. So because Gavin’s mother was a Marylander and her father an abolitionist, Gavin is a saint! And because my mother was a Virginian and her father was a slave owner, I’m a sinner! That’s an example of his thinking these days.”
Roxanne could see the injustice of that. She tried to lighten it by saying, “And are you? A sinner?”
“Aren’t we all? But I’m no worse than Gavin and, maybe,” he muttered, “not as bad.”
Certainly not as bad, she thought, remembering Mary Bridey. And then, regretfully, But still his brother. The thought was still with her when he ordered the hack to stop and wait for them while he took her strolling in the park. At a shady, romantic spot he bent to kiss her. When she responded too warmly to his kiss, his arm tightened about her, his tongue pressed past her parted lips, and she felt with shock one of his hands toying with her breast. The touch was electric. It shook her. Reeling with emotion, she pushed him away, said thickly, “No, Rhodes. No.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, his fingers tracing a fiery path down her spine. “You’re sure you want me to hold some other woman in my arms tonight?”
She stared at him, her eyes dark, taking that in. Another woman . . . when it could be her. Oh, no, she didn't want other arms to hold him, ever!
But ... he was a Coulter, Gavin’s brother, and look where that road had led for poor Mary Bridey! “Yes,” she choked. “Any arms you choose!”
“That’s plain enough,” he said, and took her home. When they alighted, he did not try to kiss her, and she knew that she had wounded him. He was very cool and correct with her for the next couple of weeks, and—to Clarissa’s delight—squired his impetuous auburn-haired cousin everywhere.
Roxanne decided that Rhodes was just trying to make her jealous—and she was jealous, abominably so. A few days later, she ran across him in the hall and he paused to talk. “I see you so seldom . . she said, looking up at him through her dark lashes.
“I don’t want a woman with a price tag, Roxanne. Especially if that price tag is marriage,” he replied crisply, and tipped his hat to her and left.
She could hear him on the walk whistling the old sailors’ ditty, “The Maid of Amsterdam.” She knew the words because Rhodes often sang it, and now she flushed to hear the taunting notes:
“I’ll go no more a roving with you, fair maid, Since roving’s been my ru-i-n!”
Chapter 11
December had come, wintry and unusually cold for generally mild Baltimore. The great clipper Clarissa had long since sailed, but Rhodes had not sailed with her. He lingered in Baltimore, and Roxanne hoped that he had stayed because of her.
Gavin was moody. She knew from dinner table conversations that he was trying to negotiate a loan for the shipping line. His father’s health being poor lately, this duty fell to Gavin. Rhodes took no part in it, insisting that he was thinking of taking the Virginia Lass out on a voyage. He had begun provisioning her, but there was no talk as yet of a cargo. Roxanne wished she could sail away with him.
At the handsome Mt. Vernon Place house, plans were under way for Christmas, but which members of the family would be home for the holidays was still in doubt. For Gavin planned a trip to Boston to get financing if their Baltimore sources failed them, and restless Rhodes might sail at any time. If the men left, Clarissa announced, she herself would accept an invitation to spend the holidays on the Eastern Shore; and Joab Coulter, whose step was less steady these days and who looked unusually pale, did not raise his voice to say she could not go. Roxanne wondered if the old man would have to spend Christmas alone, cut off from all the members of his family.
When she mentioned this to Mrs. Hollister, the housekeeper only smiled brightly. “But we'll be here,” she chirped in a happy-sounding voice. A remark that made no sense to Roxanne.
Clarissa had put on a little weight during the fall, and now, as she tried on the new gowns she had had made to wear to the balls of the yuletide season, she was irritable. Her irritation took the form of storming at Roxanne. Clarissa insisted Roxanne lace her steel-boned corset tight enough to keep her waist its usual size and then complained bitterly that Roxanne was hurting her. Ignoring Clarissa’s endless scolding, pulling harder, Roxanne laced Clarissa’s corset tight enough to trim her waist to the desired size. By dint of a long shoehorn she forced Clarissa’s feet into fashionable roundtoed high-buttoned shoes a size too small. And powdered her arms and delicately tugged the skintight mousquetaires onto Clarissa’s protesting arms. Sometimes she felt that dressing and undressing Clarissa was probably more exhausting than spending a whole evening at a ball.
Early in December, Roxanne had begun buying gifts, for she felt obliged to give Christmas gifts to all the staff, and her earnings were meager. And now that the weather was so cold she found it necessary to invest ten dollars in a warm blue wool winter suit, which had a fashionable bell-shaped skirt and just a suggestion of a train. A lovely new blouse to go with the suit cost another precious three dollars. She had hoped to buy herself a novel or two for Christmas, but realized she would not have enough money once her gifts were purchased.
For Mrs. Hollister she bought a pompadour comb for twenty-nine cents. For Greaves, a tall detachable linen collar, which cost a quarter. For Ella, whose hand had never healed properly and whose work Roxanne and Tillie tried surreptitiously to do, she bought a box of candles, knowing they would be welcome at her home—Ella took everything she could home to her big impoverished family. For Lizzie and Tillie, Roxanne bought a box of fancy toilet soap—fifteen cents each. Desperate—for she still had Mary Bridey’s gift to buy and her money was fast running out—she bought a peck of bright red apples for thirty cents and shined them on a linen napkin; these apples she could distribute to the stableboys and grooms and assorted part-time help who might be there during the holidays.
Shortly before Christmas, Roxanne made the cold journey through biting wind-whipped streets to visit Mary Bridey, and found the Irish girl busily stitching a layette. Roxanne had brought along her gifts of a soft woolen blanket she had found in a downtown department store for thirty-five cents, and a dress length of pretty green calico which she had coveted herself and considered a great bargain at six cents a yard.
Mary Bridey exclaimed joyfully over her gifts, saying her room was cold and what a difference a warm blanket would make! And what a lovely dress she could make from the calico! She added guiltily she’d been so busy making the baby’s clothes that she did not have Roxanne’s gift ready yet.
“That’s no matter,” smiled Roxanne. “But I stopped by with these because Clarissa’s planning such a round of gaiety that she’ll probably keep me busy every day until all hours right through New Year’s, so I might not see you till after the baby’s born.”
But Mary Bridey looked so sad and disappointed that Roxanne promised to come to see her the Sunday before Christmas, and when she did—in a driving snow that frosted her hat and lashes—she thought Mary Bridey was looking very pale.
“Have you seen the doctor?” asked Roxanne uneasily, brushing off snow.
“No. I’m to have a midwife,” explained Mary Bridey, helping her.
“You don’t look too well,” murmured Roxanne. “Perhaps you should see a doctor. . . .”
“No, I’ve just not been sleeping well lately. Worrying, I guess.” Mary Bridey tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.
Roxanne thought she had reason to worry, about her future and the future of her unborn child.
“You’re not
to worry,” she said stoutly. “I’ll help you.” And Mary Bridey’s eyes brimmed with tears.
For Roxanne’s coming, Mary Bridey had set the green painted table with her festive best, and cooked a chicken. Roxanne protested at this effort, but Mary Bridey, again serene, pooh-poohed her protests. And indeed some of the color came back to her thin cheeks as she told Roxanne that Mrs. Kaunas, the woman downstairs, was learning English so they could converse. The Lithuanian word for Christmas meant “log evening,” when the huge Christmas log was burned, Mrs. Kaunas had explained, adding that the tree downstairs would be trimmed Lithuanian fashion with straw bird cages.
As Roxanne drank tea out of the cheap unmatched cups, she determined that as soon as she could, she would buy Mary Bridey a proper china tea set, using the girl’s birthday as an excuse to give it to her. She ate only a wing of the tasty chicken Mary Bridey had prepared for them; chicken, she knew, cost seven cents a pound and she suspected that Mary Bridey had scrimped for this occasion.
Roxanne insisted on washing the dishes and stayed until dusk. Then she made her way home over the icy streets, leaning against the biting wind, and told herself bitterly that no man was worth what Mary Bridey was going through.
On the street outside the Coulter house she passed Rhodes, just coming out the front door, and her sapphire eyes softened. He looked so big and hearty and sure-footed as he ran jauntily down the icy steps, smiling at her as he passed. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps there were exceptions. . . .
Well before Christmas, Denby Barrington was emboldened to leave a gift for Roxanne at the house: a pair of gloves, the new slip-ons, of creamy kid. Roxanne wondered if she should accept them; she decided not to do so would hurt Denby’s feelings.
So she dropped by the shop to thank him, and together they went strolling down the wintry streets through a lightly falling snow that covered dirt and slush and turned Baltimore into a white wonderland where children pulled their sleds and tossed snowballs from mittened hands. The snow piled up on Denby’s hat and frosted Roxanne’s lashes and shawl—for she hadn’t yet been able to afford a winter coat.
As they walked, Denby entertained her with the story of Lafayette’s visit to Baltimore in 1825. In his honor, the debutantes of Baltimore had worn long gloves with his likeness painted on the back. Lafayette had steadfastly refused to kiss his own painted image, to the dismay of the young ladies in the receiving line, whose gloved hands had gone unkissed.
Denby looked as if he would like to kiss Roxanne as he said this. He bent close to her in the shelter of an icicled doorway, but a careening delivery wagon, skidding on the icy street, threw a splatter of slush their way and they jumped nimbly out of its path. The moment was lost.
At the Coulter house, feverish preparations were in progress for a gala Christmas season. A large wreath of holly was hung on the door. Rhodes had provided mistletoe on the chandelier in the front hall, and there were branches of evergreen everywhere—drooping over the mantels, the pictures, the clocks; there was even a long rope of laurel looped over the banister to the second floor.
Their tree, which was placed before one of the tall windows of the second-floor drawing room, was a large, pleasant-smelling cedar. The staff decorated it with apples and cranberries and popcorn strings and painted pine cones, and topped it with a gilt paper angel. Clarissa frowned at this country-style trim and added her own more sophisticated decorations: expensive oranges, tiny, elegant silver trays and baskets of sweetmeats, candy eggs and gilt gingerbread, and some fancy little cakes she had Roxanne select at the baker’s and then suspend by colored ribbons from the branches. Roxanne being the most adept at tying fancy bows, this duty fell to her alone, and she spent hours climbing up and down a stepladder, attaching these goodies to the tree under Clarissa’s watchful eye.
In the kitchen a major effort was going on: not only a huge turkey to be stuffed and roasted, but all sorts of puddings and hot breads, and mince pies. The candies had all been made earlier, and the fruitcakes, having been made last January, were now considered sufficiently aged and were being taken out of the tin containers in which they had reposed all year wrapped in linen napkins, to be sliced paper thin and served with wine.
Mousy little Ella’s hand had never healed properly, and just before Christmas she hurt it again, this time on the apple peeler. Roxanne, exhausted from pouring Clarissa into and dragging her out of her clothes, knew that meant she must help serve Christmas dinner.
On Christmas Eve the staff—already exhausted by the extensive preparations—exchanged their little gifts at the kitchen table, after they finished their pudding. Roxanne was touched at their gifts to her, for they were all the sort of thing a young girl would wish to have—dainty soap, hair combs, hairpins, a linen handkerchief. She smiled her thanks at them all.
But she was surprised when Rhodes—from whom she had expected no gift—stopped her in the deserted hall to give her a small package. “Not so blue as your eyes,” he murmured, and when she unwrapped the gift box he had given her, she found an ornamental hat pin of pale blue enamel set in gold and studded with seed pearls.
She looked up at him, confused, to find him studying her with a strange expression in his green eyes.
“Blue is for purity, isn’t it?” he asked, smiling.
“No,” she said. “That’s white.”
“Oh?” His voice was caressing. “Important difference. . .”
As she stammered her thanks, he added, “I have something else for your hat—to wear only when I’m around.” From behind him he brought out a sprig of mistletoe and gravely affixed it in her pomadour. She waited, her senses tingling as, slowly, he drew her toward him, smiling down into her eyes. Her own eyes were large and bright as he clasped her to him, and his gentle kiss was long and lingering. And upsettingly thrilling.
She drew away, shaken.
“Remember you’re saving yourself for marriage,” he observed coolly and turned away. “Merry Christmas,” he flung over his shoulder. “I’m off to visit the flesh-pots in the town.”
With a pounding heart she watched him go, and jumped as she stuck her finger on the beautiful hat pin.
It looked lovely when she tried it on her hat before the cracked mirror in her room. And made her feel quite fashionable and wealthy. But the wealthy feeling was as nothing compared to the tremulous joy she had felt in Rhodes’s arms.
With a frown, she took off the hat and stared into her own eyes in the mirror. They looked scared. Rhodes and she were fencing, and he was playing a waiting game. Now she asked herself, could she hold out?
Christmas Day dawned early for the staff. They were up long before sunrise, dusting, polishing, scraping, peeling, kneading. The kitchen was a beehive of activity from which they all came and went, for Clarissa had generously offered Roxanne’s services to Mrs. Hollister.
The servants all gossiped about the gifts the Coulters had given each other. Roxanne was gratified to learn that while Gavin had sent Clarissa a Venetian hair net made of gold thread and mother-of-pearl from Boston, Rhodes had given Clarissa a hat pin of moonstone with a twist of gold. Privately she did not consider it nearly as attractive as the one he had given her, and was delighted. The absent Gavin had ignored the staff, Rhodes gave them all small gifts, and Clarissa gave Mrs. Hollister a fan and Roxanne a small lace collar. Joab Coulter gave his family checks in varying amounts and the staff small amounts of cash in sealed envelopes. Roxanne was very gratified to receive this small Christmas bonus, for it meant she could soon buy Mary Bridey the tea set she had in mind.
Clarissa spent a lot of time opening—and exclaiming over—gifts from her friends: an assortment of silver combs and Paris powder and scented notepaper and handsomely framed photos and fancy bottles of cologne. Roxanne hovered in the background, to take away the wrappings. But there was one large bouquet of hothouse roses, which arrived when the family were all gathered round their tree, that caused Clarissa to flash Rhodes a look of triumph. The roses were from an admirer an
d designed to make Rhodes jealous, Roxanne guessed. If so, they were lost on Rhodes, who was deep in serious conversation with his father. Clarissa frowned and thrust the roses at Roxanne with a curt command to put them in water.
Although Gavin remained in Boston, both Clarissa and Rhodes ate Christmas dinner at home with Joab. Mrs. Hollister complimented Roxanne on the table setting and peeked in, smiling, to watch the family enjoy their groaning board. The dinner began with Chesapeake Bay oysters and a rich soup, followed by black bass and broiled salmon. Then Greaves staggered in with the thirty-five-pound turkey on its huge silver platter, and Joab himself carved the bird with much ceremony. Roxanne had assisted in the preparation of the oyster stuffing, and its hot spicy aroma reminded her she’d been too busy to eat all day. There were candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows, tasty asparagus, quince preserves, pickles, aspic of lobster, a huge variety of hot rolls—and dessert was a flaming plum pudding in a footed silver bowl also triumphantly carried in by Greaves, while Roxanne trailed behind him carrying a baroque silver pitcher filled with thick hot wine sauce.
Roxanne, shuttling back and forth to the dining room, noticed that Clarissa only picked at her food and watched Rhodes pensively. Joab never ate much. Only Rhodes did justice to the dinner.
Afterward the staff enjoyed the same dinner, except for the wine, for it was a tradition at the Coulters’ that on Christmas Day the servants should eat as well as their masters. Roxanne learned from Mrs. Hollister that this was an innovation of the Virginia Lady, Rhodes’s mother.
On Christmas evening, having got Clarissa dressed and muffled in satin and furs for her latest ball, Roxanne slipped away, carrying a basket laden with all sorts of goodies from their Christmas dinner carefully wrapped in a linen napkin. Mary Bridey might not have their company, but she would certainly enjoy some of their dinner!
These Golden Pleasures Page 14