Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  ‘With a long-trained skirt,’ mused her mother. ‘And a Cul-de-Paris at the rear.’

  Virginia looked impressed but Carolina gave her mother a doubtful look. She had seen them, of course, but she was not sure she liked bustles!

  ‘It’s the latest thing,’ Letitia assured her. (Carolina sometimes thought that French dressmakers must send her mother letters describing what they were planning for future fashion dolls, so accurate were her assessments of the trends of style.) ‘The sleeves should be slashed to reveal a satin lining. White satin, I think, with edgings of silver. And I have some very good mechlin to edge the sleeves.’

  ‘But won’t the lace of my chemise cuffs do?’ protested Carolina, for practically everyone let their lace-trimmed chemise cuffs spill from the elbows of their gowns.

  ‘No, that’s going out,’ said her mother. ‘And I have just the petticoat for you at home - I have not worn it. It is of white silk crisscrossed with a lattice of silver thread.’

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful, Carol,’ cried Virginia. ‘Wait till you see it - it has a train too!’

  ‘And a circlet of holly, I think - silver gilt - for your hair. After all, this is a country wedding and we do not have to be so fashionable.’ Letitia looked complacent.

  Carolina almost choked with amusement. Even here in the Colonies, across the seas from Paris and London, her mother seemed to have an unerring instinct for the latest thing. Besides which, she had natural style. The shopkeeper regarded her with respect.

  And so it was all accomplished, and after a week spent in Williamsburg during which Rye and Carolina had very little chance to be alone together - indeed there had been a round of teas and morning calls and sleigh rides and dinners at several private houses, besides their usual meals at the Raleigh - the roads were moderately clear again, though muddy, and they returned by coach to Level Green. They arrived laden down with laces and garters and ribands and fabrics, full of plans not only for the wedding but for the upcoming ball at Fairfield.

  They found Fielding grouchy, annoyed by their long absence, and the children fretful and bickering. Even the servants seemed not to be speaking to each other.

  ‘A typical homecoming at Level Green,’ Virginia said ironically when Carolina remarked how things seemed to have gone downhill in their absence. ‘Father insists he doesn’t need Mother but things always fall apart when she’s gone.’

  Carolina laughed. ‘I seem to remember that at Farview, when we were children, things seemed to fall apart when they were both at home!’

  ‘Will there be time to get this elaborate gown made up for you?’ wondered Rye as he accompanied Carolina up the wide staircase with its handsomely carved balustrade.

  ‘Mother says so. And anyway, the governor’s not back yet.’

  ‘But when he does come back,’ muttered Rye, ‘I’ll be eager to get us gone.’

  Carolina shrugged. Who knew to what lengths her remarkable mother would go? Indeed she might change her mind and insist that the entire gown be embroidered by hand - and the wedding postponed until it was ready! She leaned over the banisters to call down to Virginia in the lower hall and did not notice Rye’s sudden frown.

  To her own surprise, now that they were back at Level Green, Carolina found that she was enjoying being home with her betrothed, having much made of her - with fittings, dozens of decisions, and all the trappings of a great wedding being underway. Rye might be marking time, chafing at the delays, but she felt he was quite safe here on the banks of the York. The governor would soon return and they would be married with great fanfare, and then they could journey to Essex and a new life!

  Meantime there was the world she knew - the plantation world of Colonial Virginia - and there was not only the wedding to be held at some unspecified date but there was the ball at Fairfield coming up right away!

  She had a marvellous time getting ready for the ball. ‘Virgie, we will make you a femme fatale!' she cried, pirouetting across the floor of Virginia’s green and white bedroom. ‘We will both powder our hair! It will look ravishing!'

  ‘Yours doesn’t need powdering, it’s almost white now - well, not white exactly, it has that shimmering silver-blonde sheen. Powder would only hurt your looks,’ said Virginia sensibly. ‘And as for me, my strawberry-blonde hair is my best feature! Why should I change it?’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Carolina promptly, glad that Virginia was at last taking an interest in her appearance. ‘We’ll pomade it, we’ll brush it, we’ll give it more sheen, we’ll pile it up, we’ll curl it with an iron, we’ll - ’

  ‘We’ll wear it out,’ sighed Virginia. ‘Couldn’t we just sweep it up and let it fall down in a couple of curls?’

  ‘Yes, that might be dramatic,’ agreed Carolina instantly, eager to go along with any suggestion of her sister’s. ‘And we must do something about your gown. Did you know that all your gowns are too high-necked? They don’t show your bosom at all and your skin is very fair.’

  ‘That’s because I’ve kept it covered up,’ muttered Virginia.

  ‘Just so! And if we drop the neckline of your best bronze velvet lower - quite a bit lower - the effect will be devastating!’

  ‘I’ll catch cold,’ objected Virginia. ‘Ballrooms are notoriously draughty.’

  ‘They’re notoriously hot! Ladies often faint in the crush!’

  ‘But there’s the trip going there on the barge - ’

  ‘Nonsense, you’ll arrive bundled up in a cloak. Indeed you won’t be wearing your ball gown on the river at all, but a travelling dress. For Mother says we’re to arrive early and stay the night!’

  Virginia gave her younger sister an uneasy look. ‘I don’t think, Carol, that you're going to make me into a bird of plumage that easily,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Nonsense, of course we will!’ said Carolina, laughing. And promptly set about it.

  Rye helped.

  ‘Ah, I see I am to squire the two most beautiful young ladies in the Tidewater!’ he said when Carolina and Virginia came downstairs to join the senior Lightfoots on their way to the Fairfield ball. He was gazing in open admiration at the picture the two girls made in their ostrich feather hats and handsome dresses. Carolina had decided that riding clothes would look quite dashing for their arrival at Fairfield and she was wearing a sky-blue and silver riding habit, and a broad-brimmed hat with a sky-blue plume. Virginia was even more elegant in amber velvet trimmed in gold braid and wearing a hat that sported a gold buckle and orange plumes.

  The weather had moderated but Virginia still shivered when they went down to the landing. ‘I’m going to abandon this hat and put on a hood and cloak,’ she said, turning and running back to the house.

  ‘I doubt I will ever make Virginia into a butterfly.’ Carolina sighed, watching her sister scurry over the lawn with her skirts lifted over her smart little boots.

  ‘Do you need to?’ asked Rye gently. ‘Perhaps she needs to find someone who appreciates her as she is, someone who doesn’t seek a butterfly, doesn’t really want one.’

  Carolina gave him a jaded look. ‘All men want butterflies,’ she said firmly. Hearing that, her mother hid a smile. ‘Anyway,’ she added confidently, ‘wait till you see Virginia’s ball gown. It’s a marvel!’

  Virginia returned, hooded and cloaked, and their barge was river borne towards Fairfield. After waving goodbye to Della and Flo, who had been promised they could come along ‘next time’, Carolina turned all her attention to Rye. Excitedly she pointed out landmarks along the way, and Rye bent over her, careless that her dancing blue ostrich feather plumes were tickling his chin, just to smell the lemony fragrance of her hair. He had seen many a riverbank and many a handsome home that bordered one, but never a sight that pleased him so much as Carolina, waving her gloved hand at this house or that great oak or the meadow yonder. He thought of how it would be for them in Essex, when all this secrecy was far behind them and they could stride forth proudly as man and wife, and thinking of it softened his hard fe
atures.

  Suddenly Carolina tilted back her head and looked up at Rye, laughter brimming in her eyes. ‘Are you really going to do it?’ she asked under her breath.

  Rye didn’t have to ask her what she meant. He had told her this afternoon that he meant to bribe one of the Burwell servants into finding some other place to sleep for the night, and they would both slip away and tryst there in the room vacated by the servant.

  ‘Only if one of them can be corrupted,’ he murmured.

  Carolina’s laughter bubbled and she leaned closer to him, feeling already that the evening would be full of joy.

  Another barge pulled up beside them as they neared Fairfield. It was painted red and crowded with people, including a tall chestnut-haired girl in a green cloak who stood up and waved madly.

  ‘Why, ’tis Sally Montrose!’ Carolina was on her feet, waving to her old friend.

  Rye reached out to steady her and they arrived at Fairfield’s landing waving and calling out to each other - and embraced enthusiastically upon the wharf.

  Sally Montrose had indeed changed, Carolina thought, even as she introduced Rye to the various Montroses -there were no less than eight of them piling out of the red-painted barge, eager to exchange pleasantries with the Lightfoot clan. The old madcap Sally was gone, and in her place was a cynical young woman whom Carolina felt she hardly knew - even though she had embraced Carolina with all her old fervour. Sally’s green cloak sat on her shoulders jauntily and blew open to reveal a tangerine wool gown that brought out the best in her figure. There were brave tangerine and yellow feathers blowing on her hat. She carried her head higher than ever but wore her mouth in a straight line, and when she laughed, it was a sharp staccato sound with no mirth in it.

  Virginia were right, Carolina realized. Sally had been hurt. Deeply. And she still bore the scars. She decided to ask Sally about it as soon as they were alone.

  Meanwhile, separated by the swirling crowd from Sally Montrose, Carolina was trudging across the wintry lawn beside Rye - the weather had moderated, and the snow was gone except in patches - along with other guests streaming towards a house that was considered architecturally unique. The two wings of the main house extended back at right angles - and one of those wings, she knew, contained a ballroom. She was eager to see it for it had not yet been completed when she had left the Tidewater. She remembered her mother talking about the new house being built by their neighbours and how the basement, with its brick arches supporting the ceiling, was to have a vault in the centre. It seemed less a Colonial planter’s home than a bit of old England, she thought critically, viewing it. Somehow the steep roofs and relatively small windows made it seem all the more massive. And the handsome chimneys were like those at Bacon’s Castle - reminding everyone that Lewis Burnell's wife Abigail, who had died in 1672, had been not only the rebellious Nathaniel Bacon’s niece, but his heiress as well.

  ‘I’ve been dying to see this house,’ she told Rye breathlessly. ‘Everyone says it’s wonderful!'

  He smiled down fondly upon her head, and resisted an urge to kiss that excited face beneath the hat with the bouncing blue plumes.

  Once inside, they found that the ladies were to be given rooms to rest in before the ball started.

  ‘Although I’ve certainly no need to nap!’ declared Carolina, whose feet were already dancing as she tripped up the stairs. ‘Have you, Sally?’ She turned to Sally Montrose, who had joined her again.

  ‘I don’t care if I never sleep again,’ said Sally in that new harder voice that Carolina couldn’t get accustomed to.

  Virginia went over and threw herself down on the bed in exhaustion once they reached the bedroom assigned to them, and since the rest of the ladies had chosen to stay downstairs for a time, Carolina found the chance to draw Sally aside to a window that looked out over the silvery expanse of the York.

  ‘Virgie told me about Brent - marrying someone else,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Oh, Sally, I’m so sorry!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Sally crisply. ‘I’m glad I found him out. Imagine his caring more about what was posted in the parish church than he did for me!’ She gave a hard little laugh.

  ‘But - but there are penalties, I’m sure, and they could well have been invoked if you had married your sister’s husband, Sally.’

  Sally defiantly shrugged a tangerine-clad shoulder. ‘I’d have run away with him,’ she said flatly. ‘I’d have gone anywhere. I told him that. I told him I didn’t care if we got married somewhere else under some other names and never came home - or if we never got married at all, just so long as we were together. But Brent was worried’ - her lip curled - ‘about what people might think! Imagine! You spend all your life loving a man and you find out he cares more about what people might think than he does about you!’

  Carolina could well imagine it. Brent had always been by far the most conventional of all Sally’s beaux. Indeed she had always thought Brent had married Sally’s older sister - who had strongly resembled Sally - because Sally’s devil-may-care view of life had unnerved him. While attracted, like so many others, by Sally’s verve and charm, he had preferred to bestow his name on a more predictable woman, a woman who could be counted on never to cause the slightest ripple of gossip in the community.

  ‘And the worst of it was that all the time my sister was alive, Brent kept telling me how he wished he had married me instead of my sister. He harped on what a big mistake he’d made because we “belonged” together. He said he should have married me because my “wild ways” suited him so well!’ Her lip twisted bitterly. ‘And he kept right on saying that until he had the chance to marry me - and then he backed off. So that’s what men are, Carolina! Don’t trust any of them.’

  Carolina looked at her friend, appalled. ‘You mean’ - she faltered - ‘Brent actually - ’

  ‘He actually told me after he’d married my sister what a mistake he’d made and how he regretted it and how much he wanted to marry me.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Of course I did! I suppose I believed it because I wanted to, but I should have known he was only luring me to bed! Oh, I slept with him, yes. I wouldn’t admit that to anybody else but I did. I knew it was unfair to my sister but I told myself she’d taken him away from me in the first place. Anyway, I was so crazy in love with him I didn’t care.’ Her tortured gaze met Carolina’s. ‘In fact, we’d been together that very night - the night she went into labour and . . . and died. I’ll go to hell for that, won’t I?’ Sally’s smile was twisted. ‘I’m sure that shocks you but - oh, Carolina, all I’d ever cared about was Brent. I never wanted anyone else! And he cared for me too - at least at first. I know he did.’ Her voice went wistful. ‘But then after the funeral his mother got at him and told him it would be a mortal sin to marry me - not to mention being against the law! Oh, God, Carolina!’ Her voice was suddenly grief-stricken and her gamine face seemed to break up before Carolina’s worried gaze. ‘I would have gone away with him - he’d only have had to say the word and I’d have gone with him like a shot! But no, he must have the “approval of the community” - I think that was the way he put it. And then when he decided to get married again he said that we shouldn’t see each other anymore, at least not for a while. Honestly, that was the way he broke it to me! He looked so hangdog - oh, Carolina, I can’t tell you how that made me feel. Like a - a common prostitute!’

  ‘Oh, Sally!’ Carolina flung her arms around her friend. ‘All men aren’t like that! Forget Brent, find someone else. You always were the most popular girl on the James!’

  But Sally Montrose stiffened and flung away from her. ‘Oh, yes, they are all like that,’ she said on a vicious note. ‘All of them - and don’t you forget it, Carolina, or it will happen to you too. Maybe not quite like it happened to me, maybe Rye won’t find someone else right away, but he’ll find someone, you can count on it! They all do!’

  Carolina gave her friend a helpless look. She wanted so desperately to comfort Sally, but
there seemed to be no way. Headstrong Sally, blinded by grief, was headed for hell in her own way, and it seemed that nobody could stop her.

  ‘And do you know I find I like luring men on, making them fall in love with me - and then casting them aside!’ Sally’s green eyes had a menacing gleam. Her whole stance as she stood there by the window was arrogant and predatory. ‘I enjoy making them suffer!’

  ‘But it was Brent who hurt you,’ protested Carolina. ‘How can it help to make someone else pay for what Brent has done?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sally said with a short laugh, ‘but I’m going to find out!’ She glared out of the window at the silver river.

  ‘Will Brent be here tonight, do you think?’

  ‘Undoubtedly - and with his bride, that little pinchfaced Agnes!’ Again that short hard laugh. ‘And he will see me romancing half the gentlemen present - I’ll make sure of that!’

  ‘Sally, you’ve got to get over him,’ urged Carolina. ‘Don’t let him do this to you!’

  ‘Oh, he hasn’t “done” anything to me,’ said Sally. ‘It’s what he didn’t do that counts! But he has shown me one thing - what men really are! I can’t wait to break someone’s heart!’

  ‘You’ll end up breaking your own,’ sighed Carolina.

  ‘No chance of that! That’s already been done.’ Sally whirled on Carolina. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like to die of jealousy? To imagine him night after night in someone else’s arms, to know that he’s making love to her, holding her - ’ Her voice broke. ‘Oh, God, the days are bad enough but the nights! They’re terrible . .’

  Carolina’s heart ached for her. She patted Sally’s arm awkwardly, not knowing what to say to ease her pain.

  Sally jerked away from that commiserating touch. Carolina’s obvious sympathy had wounded her pride. ‘Suppose it were Rye?’ she shot at Carolina. ‘Suppose it were Rye, Carolina? Oh, he loves you now - or says he does, you can never trust men - but suppose he stopped loving you?’