‘You really did think pirates had got me? Now, what an experience that would be. No, to tell truth, I came back by way of the family lot, and could not resist pausing to read the inscriptions. I thought it might make me bear with poor Abigail a little better.’
‘Ah. So you did get that scold!’ He sounded better by the minute. ‘And serve you right, say I, for a heartless nurse. Now, off with you and change, and if you take more than twenty minutes I shall go into a decline.’
‘Twenty! If I’m back inside the hour, it’s more than you deserve. Keep him in order, Anne, and if he shows signs of moping, make him help you wind your bobbins.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Anne’s voice told her that she was still not sure who she was. Of course, Anne had not been present when they were talking about Abigail earlier. Well, now for Alice. Closing the sickroom door behind her, she was aware of Aaron, actually hovering.
‘Ma’am?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Impatiently. ‘What is it?’
‘Just to say, I’m sorry about the lamps. It was the master’s orders.’
‘Of course.’ The hall was always well lit, and she could feel his anxious eyes studying her face. Unfair, and yet irresistible to go on keeping him in doubt. She swept past him, head high, riding boots clicking on the stairs.
In her room, lamps were lit and curtains drawn. Alice had been mending one of Josephine’s frilled petticoats, but jumped to her feet when Juliet appeared. ‘You’re back at last, ma’am. I was getting anxious.’ The tone was perfect — for Josephine.
‘So was the master.’ Irritably. ‘I got a proper scold from him for being so late. He wants me back there in twenty minutes! I told him an hour was more likely. But just the same, stop your gawking, girl, and unbutton me.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Directly.’ Alice’s hands were cold and shook a little, fumbling on the tiny buttons. Josephine would doubtless have exclaimed angrily. Juliet merely stood there, looking about the room, savouring the unexpected happiness of being back.
‘What will you wear, ma’am? I put out the blue and the cream.’
‘Wishy-washy,’ said Juliet briskly. ‘I feel like full dress tonight. Fetch me the golden taffeta from the end of the closet.’
‘Oh, ma’am.’ Suddenly Alice’s arms were round her. ‘It is you! I thought it was; I felt it was; I didn’t dare be sure.’ She was actually crying.
‘Yes.’ Juliet returned the girl’s embrace. ‘It’s I, Alice, but how did you know?’
‘Don’t you remember? The madam spilt madeira all down that taffety, over Christmas, in Savanny. She told me to throw it away, only then you got back, ma’am, and said all it needed was the breadth taking out, and we did it together, you and I.’
‘Good God, so we did. And I’d clean forgotten. Lord, Alice, it’s lucky for me I’ve got you all on my side.’
‘Yes,’ said Alice soberly. ‘I’m right down delighted to see you back, ma’am, but what I can’t figure is what’s going to become of us all in the end.’
‘No more can I, Alice.’
Chapter Eleven
Josephine sent her new address a week later, for what it was worth, which was not much. Writing from Legare Street, in Charleston she reported herself as dead bored with her hole-and-corner style of living, and off to Norfolk next day to make the trip down with her ship, the Liberty. ‘I trust all goes well with you and your invalid,’ she concluded. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am not to have the nursing of him. Ask me what you will, when it’s all over, I, and you shall have it.’
Juliet found herself actually laughing at the bitter irony of this. The only thing she wished for, was the one that Josephine neither wanted nor could give: Hyde himself. Alice was right to wonder what was to become of them all. For herself, Juliet could see nothing ahead but disaster. But in the meanwhile, she took her happiness as it came, in small bites, reading aloud to Hyde, laughing with him over the vagaries of the Misses Steele in Miss Austen’s Persuasion, and, now that the doctor had pronounced him well enough to get up a little while every day, sitting with him on the rocking chairs of the shady porch, playing two-handed whist, or being beaten at chess, or simply watching the swift spring blossoming round them, with birds busy everywhere among the magnolias ... Maddening not to be able to ask Hyde their names, but she could not be sure that Josephine had not done so the year before.
More and more, as he grew stronger, she hated the wall of deception that she could feel hard as glass between them. And yet, in her heart, she knew she should thank God for it. It had been mere panic, mere imagination, she realised now, that had driven her to that desperate summons of Josephine. Because of the way she herself felt, she had taken Hyde’s light-hearted remarks about their marriage far more seriously than he had meant them.
There had been nothing, since that day, to suggest that he felt towards her anything but the gratitude of patient to nurse, the friendliness enforced by companionship. When he was better, they would go their separate ways again, meeting from time to time at parties, other people’s or their own, until Josephine returned to banish her. Characteristically, Josephine had given no clue in her letter as to when this might be. But in the meanwhile her marriage of convenience was as safe as it had ever been. It was mere feminine illogic that made Juliet celebrate this discovery with a passionate outburst of tears. Luckily, this happened in her own room, where she had gone to fetch the last volume of Pride and Prejudice.
‘You should let the boys run your errands for you.’ Hyde rose to greet her when she rejoined him on the porch.
‘And have their dirty hands all over my things?’ How hard it was to remember her part these days. ‘As it was, I thought I’d lost it. I’ve been searching this age. It had got tucked away underneath Mr. McCall’s History of Georgia. Which I do not intend to read to you,’ she added.
‘No, I’m only surprised it should have found its way upstairs to your room. You must have mistaken it for Alonzo and Melissa.’
‘Something of the kind. One book’s very much like another to me,’ she yawned prettily. ‘But they serve to pass the time.’
‘And, admit it, Miss Austen better than most.’
‘Why, yes.’ She remembered how they had laughed together over Mr. Collins. ‘I confess I do find her surprisingly diverting. If you don’t get better soon, I shall be turning blue-stocking.’
‘But I am better. Even you, dragonish nurse that you are, must admit that. I am merely awaiting Judge James’s return from circuit for his permission to go back to Savannah. It would be hardly courteous to go without, though, frankly, if he delays much longer, I shall be gravely tempted, and so, I am sure, must you be. You will be quite out of touch with society if we linger here much longer.’
Her heart plummeted. It had been bound to come, but she had refused to admit to herself how soon the idyll must end. Once back in Savannah, Hyde would go about his business as before and she must play her exhausting part without the curious kind of support his presence provided. But he was looking a query. ‘Yes, indeed,’ she made her voice lively. ‘My friends are beginning quite to forget me. I’ve not had a caller these three days.’ And at least, she reminded herself, these callers, carefully announced by Aaron, were so many more names and faces learned. ‘I shall take Alice with me when we go,’ she said now. ‘That slut of a Kate can no more dress my hair than she can fly, while Alice is getting quite handy at it.’ She must find out from Alice, or from Aaron, whether the servants in the town house also knew her secret. Very likely they did, and, if so, so much the easier. But she could not help a small sigh as she looked down the great alley of live-oaks, shimmering green now, with new leaves shining among the dark grey old ones and the paler Spanish Moss. A light breeze from the sea stirred the hanging garlands of the moss so that the whole avenue seemed alive, like spring itself. Strange to be so sure she would never come back here.
‘My dear,’ Hyde’s rallying voice. ‘Can you be quite well? You’re never going to tell me you are sad to leave!
’
‘I am a trifle hipped,’ she confessed. ‘Well, think, how long is it now I have been acting the devoted nurse?’
‘And acting it, if I may say so, to the life. You’ve certainly earned some town gaiety, if ever anyone did. I’m only sorry to think that I have tired you to such a point with my long convalescence. You must let Anne take over your duties, and rest a little before we move back to Savannah. We don’t want the gossips saying I’ve had you shut up here, like Bluebeard, in my castle. It struck me when you came down, just now, that you do look a trifle fagged.’
‘Thank you for the compliment!’ She let herself break crossly into French. ‘If I am grown so plain, it is no wonder you are eager to get back to Savannah, and society.’ For a moment, their eyes met, then his slid past her to gaze down the long avenue.
‘Talking of society,’ he said. ‘I believe we are about to have guests this minute.’
‘Guests?’ Her eyes followed his. ‘It looks more like a deputation.’ And then suddenly, terrifyingly, she remembered something Satan had told her. ‘Hyde! Go indoors. Let me receive them? You’re not well enough yet for such a party,’ she hurried to explain.
He had risen lazily to his feet and was laughing down at her. ‘You’ve been talking to the servants,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised at you, Jo. I know my people think me so much their friend as to be everyone else’s enemy, but I promise you, they flatter themselves. Purchis of Winchelsea is still a name to be reckoned with. Particularly when half of Savannah is in his debt. They don’t want to find themselves dependent on that nephew of mine any more than you do, my dear. He’s a hard man, as you know, my nephew Giles. But, if it suits you, I think we will go in, and receive our guests, formally, in the drawing-room. It does, as you say, have the look of a deputation.’
It did indeed. Casting one anxious backward glance as she preceded him into the shady drawing-room, she counted at least half a dozen horsemen riding briskly down the long avenue under the shimmering green of the live-oaks. ‘Hyde, call me a fool, call me hysterical, call me anything you like, but tell Aaron to summon the men from the fields.’
‘My dear Josephine.’ His smile was quizzical. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we should send for the servants as protection against our friends?’ And then, with a sudden, disarming change of tone. ‘Idiot! Did you not see Sam run for the servants’ quarters the minute they came in sight? They’re going to get a very formal reception, something tells me. And you, my dear, have a smudge under your left eye.’
‘Good God! Now you tell me!’ She hurried to the huge glass to find the unmistakable trace of a tear across the exquisite maquillage she had learned to use as Josephine did. How could she have been so careless? She ought to hurry upstairs and repair the damage before their guests arrived, but nothing would induce her to leave Hyde alone to face them, servants or no servants. Working frenziedly with the corner of her cambric handkerchief, she was able, in the glass, to see servants hurrying out by the side entrance to take their places on each side of the front steps. They were not, of course, in livery, but she had long since got used to the casual garb worn by house servants in Georgia. And at least, thank God, they were there. Of course: she should have remembered. It was well on in the afternoon. Their tasks in the fields would have been finished long since. These were the ones who had not, mercifully, chosen to go fishing, or oyster hunting, or crab-catching along the shore.
‘May I join you, my dear?’ Hyde came to stand beside her at the big glass. ‘I would rather not look too much the invalid when our friends arrive.’ He worked swiftly to retie his cravat in the intricate fall she had admired once — how long ago it seemed.
‘A trône d’amour,’ she said admiringly. ‘And with a used cravat, too.’
‘No, no, my dear, must I always be putting you right? A waterfall. And have you, perhaps, noticed that Judge James is one of our party of visitors?’
So he, too, had been making use of the reflection in the glass. Maybe her fears had not been so nonsensical as he had tried to suggest. But now, recognising Mr. Scarbrough as well as Judge James, she knew that, mercifully, they were unfounded.
‘It’s a proper collection of the City Fathers,’ Hyde turned away from the glass to look out across the verandah. ‘Mr. Wayne the Mayor, Mr. Troup and Mr. Clark, Mr. McAlpin, Mr. Bolton, and, of course, your friend Mr. Jay, among others. You know them all, I think.’
She had picked up her fan and now fluttered it nervously. ‘I vow, I’m so bouleversée by such a press of company I’ll be lucky if I don’t mix them all up and greet Mr. Jay with enthusiasm as the Mayor, and Mr. Troup as Mr. Clark.’ These were the leaders, she knew, of the two opposing political parties.
‘Don’t do that, whatever you do! But here they come.’
The servants from the steps had run down to hold the horses. Aaron opened the drawing-room door wide, ‘Some gentlemen to see you, sir.’
In the general confusion and the equally general pleasure expressed at the sight of Hyde actually up and better, Juliet managed to get through the greetings without obvious mishap, though several of the men she had never seen before and others not since the opening of Mr. Jay’s theatre — how long ago that seemed. But anyway it was perfectly evident that all their thoughts were for Hyde. She thought she could have addressed Judge James as ‘Mr. Monroe’ and they would not even have noticed.
Oddly enough, this was the very name now on Mayor Wayne’s lips. ‘We’ve just heard,’ he was saying to Hyde. ‘The President is actually coming to Savannah: Mr. Monroe himself, and Mr. Calhoun the Secretary of War and General Gaines with him. It’s a great honour for the city. The first Presidential visit since Mr. Washington’s. Naturally, we wish to make it as successful an occasion as possible. We have been discussing plans for Mr. Monroe’s entertainment ever since we received the news. And, of course, the first question is, where is he to stay?’
Hyde smiled, and sipped the madeira that capable hands had poured for them all. ‘For me, there’s a question even before that one, which is, when is he coming?’
‘Soon. The eighth of May. It does not give us much time for planning. And, you will understand without our telling you, that one of the first things we need to know is whether you will be well enough to act as a member of the reception committee.’
‘Oh, that’s of course. I’ve just been waiting for a visit from my friend the Judge —’ A very friendly smile for Judge James — ‘before I returned to Savannah, and my business. I shall most certainly be in town, and honoured to serve on the reception committee, if you wish it.’
‘That’s of course too,’ said Mayor Wayne. ‘Savannah would be poorly represented without Purchis of Winchelsea. It’s good to hear — and see — that you are so much better, and we must hope that the Judge confirms it. But, in the meantime, we will consider that settled. Which brings us to the next question, of where the President is to stay.’
‘Yes indeed.’ Juliet was aware of an increase of tension in the room, and of Mr. Scarbrough leaning forward eagerly in his chair. ‘We must do our best to make the President of these United States as comfortable as possible. What had you been considering, gentlemen? Not, I imagine the City Hotel.’
‘No.’ This provoked a roar of delighted laughter. ‘We thought that we should let Mr. Monroe see some of Savannah’s best and newest architecture. Something of Mr. Jay’s, in fact.’
‘Oh, I see.’ A long silence drew out as Hyde looked round the room. ‘Which leaves the honour of entertaining him to rest between Mr. Bulloch, Mr. Bolton, Mr. Scarbrough and us.’ He smiled across the room at Juliet, who had settled herself in an inconspicuous corner of the masculine occasion and was sipping cherry bounce as if she loved it.
‘Precisely. The question is, which?’
‘Yes.’ Hyde looked from Scarbrough to Bulloch and Bolton. ‘Will you think me a monster of inhospitality, gentlemen, if I waive my claim. I have, after all, an invalid’s privilege, and though I know Mrs. Purchis to be capable of
anything, certainly of entertaining our President at short notice, the fact remains that she is tired out with a long bout of sick nursing. Surely, if I may voice a view, the obvious choice is Mr. Jay’s newest house, Mr. Scarbrough’s. If, that is, it is finished?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Scarbrough leaned forward eagerly. ‘We moved in after Christmas, you know. The only trouble is, Julia’s in New York. She’ll never get over missing such an occasion, but there it is. There’s no way of getting her back in time. So I thought,’ his smile went from Hyde to Juliet, ‘since our house is the newest; if we let Mr. Monroe use it as his own; and if Mrs. Purchis would be so very good as to act as his hostess ... That way, it seemed to me, if Mr. Bulloch and Mr. Bolton are agree able, everyone would be satisfied.’
‘It will be a great expense,’ Hyde said. ‘We should, I think, arrange, gentlemen, to help Mr. Scarbrough carry it. Aside from that, and if Mrs. Purchis and the others have no objections, it seems to me to be an admirable plan. After all, Mr. Scarbrough’s is the largest of Mr. Jay’s houses, and, by all reports, the most splendid. I very much look forward to seeing it and I think it only right that the rest of us should waive our claims, under the circumstances. As to the question of a hostess; your suggestion does us the greatest honour. My dear —’ He smiled across the room at Juliet.
She took a deep breath. Please God Josephine would be back in time. If not, they would probably never forgive each other. ‘If you approve,’ she said, ‘I shall be only too delighted.’
The tension went out of the room. It was settled. Mr. Bolton looked relieved, and Mr. Scarbrough delighted, only Hyde, Juliet noticed, looked anxious. Now that the men had risen and broken up into small hard-talking groups, she felt free to move over and join him, where he was talking to William Jay. ‘You’re sure you are strong enough?’
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