by Henke, Shirl
At last my prayers for Alastair are answered. He has found a woman who can return his love! She is half Muskogee, but has been educated by her white father. Robert is furious because of her Indian blood, but I feel only jòy and a profound sense of relief in his happiness. Perhaps the news I have for my husband will hearten him. If only tis true. I think I am with child. I will wait a few more weeks to be certain. This babe must mend the breach between us caused by Vivian's vile accusations.
If only Anne had told Robert of her condition then instead of waiting. As Madelyne read further, the tragic end of the tale unfolded:
Alastair was so joyous that he had to share the news with me. Charity is with child. When I told him that I, too, was in that wonderful condition, he embraced me. Twas but a brotherly hug this time, but Robert did not see it as such. He had been drinking and only heard my last few words to Alastair as he took me in his arms. ”I, too, will have a child in April!” For once I thank God Robert was drunk, else he might have been able to kill his brother before Alastair could disarm him. As it was, Robert had to be knocked unconscious before he would desist. Alastair begged me to come stay with Charity at their plantation upriver until Robert came to his senses, but I refused. Whatever will come of this bitter misunderstanding, I must remain to face it.
And face it she did, bravely, foolishly. Recalling all the hostile suspicious confrontations between her and Quintin, Madelyne could well envision how cruelly Robert had treated Anne. He had coldly informed her that he would claim his brother's bastard rather than face the disgrace of admitting the child was not his. He had even told her that he would pray it be stillborn, except that then he would have to visit her treacherous bed once more to get an heir for Blackthorne Hill.
The entries after that agonizing outpouring grew more brief, less frequent, as Anne's confinement advanced. Robert watched with malicious glee as she suffered through a difficult pregnancy; he fell filthy drunk on the night Quintin was born.
The last entry in the diary was dated November 10, 1753. Anne's neat, delicate penmanship was now cribbed and spidery, written with an unsteady hand:
I am going to die. For myself I do not fear. Only for my beloved Quintin, whom I must leave behind. I have written to Alastair and Charity, beseeching them to care for Robert's son and raise him with their own Devon, but I fear Mistress Ogilve has not posted my letters. I am isolated in this big house, afraid for my innocent babe, and afraid for Robert, who suffers the pangs of the damned. Perhaps in time he and Quintin can heal each other. As for me, death beckons and it is welcome.
The light outside was fading now. Madelyne closed the diary and clutched it to her breast as great racking sobs welled up from deep inside her. Anne was just as much an innocent victim as was she. All Anne's prayers for Robert and his son to heal each other had been in vain. Instead, Quintin had grown up twisted by his father's hatred. “And now the cycle repeats itself.” Madelyne did not know if she cried more for Anne and the sad little boy she was forced to leave behind, or for herself and the bitter man that boy had become.
“Mistress Madelyne? You up there? It be gettin' dark 'n the young mastah he cryin' fer his dinnah.”
Using her petticoats to wipe the tears from her face, Madelyne stood up. “I’ll be right there, Delphine. Is Master Robert's fever still down?”
“‘Pears to be, but he be mighty weak. Say, you been cryin'? I declare, you been workin' too hard.” The older woman observed Madelyne's chalky face and red-rimmed eyes, then put her arm around her young charge's shoulders. “Come. I fix yo dinnah while you see to dat pretty little one.”
Madelyne felt too drained to protest as she climbed down from the attic and walked to the nursery, still clutching Anne's diary in her arms.
Robert sat propped up by pillows on his big bed, watching the candle on the table flicker low. After days of fever, his mind was clear once more, although that nagging pain in his chest was worse. He refused to drink the wine sitting at his bedside, knowing it was laced with medicine to make him sleep. He preferred the pain and a clear head, for however brief a span he might keep it. Noble said the pain came from his heart. He scoffed at the notion. “Anne destroyed my heart twenty-eight years ago. It don't exist,” he had told the doctor.
And now, thanks to his feverish ravings, Anne's shameful betrayal was being bandied about by all the servants. He was certain of it. He cursed the weakness of his failing flesh. All too soon it would be over. Let Madelyne worry about Blackthorne Hill now. She would hold it for her son. At least on that matter, he felt at peace. The heir had been born before he died.
A light rapping broke his melancholy reverie. Madelyne stood in the doorway, holding something in her hands. He squinted in the dim light to see what it was, then noticed the peculiar set to her features. Something was odd here.
“You come with more of Noble's poison to force down my throat?”
“No. Although what I've brought will be poison—of a sort.” She drew nearer and took the guttering candle from its holder, then used it to light a branched candlestick on the Chippendale side table across the room. When she set it on the candlestand beside his bed, he could see what she had brought with her.
His face blanched, then mottled with fury. “You've been snooping in her things! And now you have the gall—”
“And now I have the gall to offer you proof that your wife was innocent of all the crimes your bitter, twisted mind conjured up.”
He sat bolt upright, raising his hand to slap the diary from her grasp. “Get out of here! Leave me in peace!”
“Peace? You've never known peace since you first suspected your wife and your brother were lovers. If you wish to die a coward's death, in willful ignorance, so be it. But the truth is here. Quintin is your son.”
“No! I saw them! I heard her tell him she was going to have his child.”
“You heard her say, I, too, will have a child in April.’ Alastair had just told her that Charity was going to have his baby. That was the reason he'd come to Blackthorne Hill. In your drunken fit of jealous fury, you misunderstood. After all these years, do you have the courage to face the truth? To face what you've done to your own son?”
She held out the diary. “The entries begin on your voyage from England and run almost to the day of her death.”
Robert clutched the covers in balled fists, refusing to touch the leather volume. He had not seen it since he had shared a cabin with Anne on their shipboard honeymoon.
“Are you afraid, Robert?” she asked softly, still holding the diary out to him.
“I know her writing. If this is some chicanery of yours, some scheme—”
“It's no scheme. If you know her hand, then you'll know that what she wrote over those years was no lie, no scheme.”
Robert felt his whole body begin to tremble as his eyes met Madelyne's. Her expression was implacable yet sad...so very sad. He took the book from her and opened it to one of the early entries from 1750. Reading Anne's declaration of love for her “Robbie,” he felt the air sear his lungs. “You had no right!”
“I've earned the right by loving your son—all too well, just as she loved you.”
Against his will, Robert was drawn into the past, his eyes following the flowing script of Anne's delicate handwriting as she recounted their early months at Blackthorne Hill. How happy he had been then! But all too soon, everything changed.
Madelyne sat quietly and watched as he read, turning the pages swiftly as he came to the series of events prior to Quintin's birth. For the first time in the years she had lived with Robert Blackthorne, she could see his naked, defenseless emotions revealed—the agony beneath the bitterness, the sorrow beneath the cruelty. His face froze when he came to Anne's recounting of the night he accused her of carrying Alastair's bastard.
“She didn't tell me about her condition until I'd seen her with my brother...and misread it all.”
Madelyne heard the crack in his voice, but his eyes were dry, his face now a granite mask
. “What effort it must cost you to maintain the facade, Robert. To hide your pain.”
Then his expression crumbled. “Oh, Anne, my Annie. All the wasted years. If I hadn't been such a fool, she might have lived. I never really believed she died of the fever. She just couldn't endure me...and my hatred. She gave up. I destroyed the only person I ever really loved.”
“You destroyed far more than your own life and that of your wife, Robert. What of Quintin? What of your son?” My husband.
He clutched the book tightly and stared unseeing at the far wall. “He never cried, you know. Always just like me—he hid his pain, no matter how much I abused him with words or blows. Once...once I locked him in the wine cellar for three days. He'd run away to those damned savages again. I thought it was Alastair's blood calling to him, but it wasn't, was it? He only wanted to escape from me. He's a survivor, hard and strong as they come.. just like me...”
“Then God help you both,” Madelyne said quietly. She stood up and took the diary from his nerveless fingers. He made no move to stop her, did not even seem to know she was present anymore. Snuffing out all but one candle, she left the bitter old man alone to ruminate about the tragedies of the past. She must deal with those of the present.
As she walked down the dark hallway, Madelyne failed to see Mistress Ogilve's black-clad figure hiding in an alcove while she passed by.
Madelyne labored over the letter to Quintin, repeatedly throwing away draft after draft. How did one tell a man that the whole fabric of his identity had been rent asunder? He was not Anne's bastard—but worse yet, perhaps, he was the cruel and obsessive Robert's son. Finally, exhausted, she placed the letter aside and prepared for bed.
Although she knew Amy took excellent care of James and Gulliver guarded him, Madelyne felt compelled to look in on the babe one final time before retiring. Finding him fast asleep, she placed a kiss on his silky cheek and tiptoed from the nursery, too spent to sit and rock him as she usually did each night. Oddly, even the dog was sleeping so soundly he did not rouse when she entered the room.
Smiling tiredly, she closed the door and headed toward her bedroom, but froze in the doorway when she saw Mistress Ogilve standing in front of her escritoire. The housekeeper was busily gathering up the diary and all the papers lying around it.
Madelyne stepped into the room, furiously angry. “What are you doing here without my leave, riffling through my belongings?”
The big woman turned and faced Madelyne with a look of such malevolence on her face that it could have frozen the Savannah River in July. “I'm taking this diary and all your other papers that mention it. They'll make good fuel for a fire.” Agnes set the diary on the mantel and picked up a poker from the hearth. She advanced on Madelyne slowly, menacingly.
“Get out.” Madelyne struggled not to panic or let her voice break. “Have you lost your senses? If you try to harm me, Gulliver will tear your throat out.”
The housekeeper smiled malevolently. “The dog ate a bowl of porridge laced with Robert's laudanum.” She advanced on Madelyne again.
Madelyne gasped in horror. “You can't just kill me. Everyone would know—”
“No one will know anything, if you're dead. But you'd dismiss me if I allowed you to continue reading my account ledgers—or if that old fool Robert remembered to tell you twas me who sent him to the garden the night his brother came to meet his wife. A nice bit of timing, that.” She smirked.
As she scanned the room for a weapon, Madelyne desperately stalled. “You wanted to discredit Anne—just as you've tried to undermine me. You're stealing from Blackthorne Hill.”
“I've run Blackthorne Hill's household for over thirty years. I've given my life for this place and what thanks have I for it? A few miserly pounds' wages. I've only taken what I'm owed and I'll not lose my position. Never! If Master Quintin believes he's Robert's son, then he'll believe that James is his son. He'll believe in you and he'll let you turn me out destitute. I cannot permit that.” She was within a few feet of Madelyne now, raising the poker.
Madelyne screamed, but the older woman just paused to laugh. “The only one you'll awaken is your son. I've also put Robert's laudanum in the upstairs servants' bedtime wine. No one will hear when you fall down the stairs and crush your skull on the newel post.”
This time when she raised the poker and swung, Madelyne was ready. Dodging nimbly to the left, she pulled up her night shift and raced barefooted through the bedroom door. Mistress Ogilve was suprisingly quick, grabbing a handful of her hair. Instinctively Madelyne threw herself to the right as the poker arced past her head, striking the door with a sickening thud.
Wrenching herself free of the cruel hold, Madelyne scrambled from her knees and raced down the hall. If only I can reach the front stairs, I can hide below and find someone she didn't drug to help me!
In spite of her weight and the heavy clothes she wore, the housekeeper again caught up with Madelyne at the top of the stairs and seized her arm in an iron grip. Madelyne grabbed the banister railing and tried to pull herself free of her tormentor, but she was no match for the much larger woman.
The housekeeper drew back the poker, but before the killing blow could be delivered, the echo of a single shot rang out. Mistress Ogilve dropped the poker, which clattered down the wide, curving staircase. Her heavy body careened after it, landing at the bottom in a crumpled heap.
Madelyne pulled herself up, still clutching the railing in a white-knuckled death grip. Quickly averting her eyes from the wreckage of what had been the housekeeper, she looked down the hall. Robert Blackthorne stood with a pistol in his hand, a look of dazed disbelief on his face. Even in the dim light flickering from one wall sconce, Madelyne could see that he was chalk-white and trembling. She ran toward him, but before she reached him, he collapsed.
She knelt and cradled his head in her lap, rubbing his forehead and cheeks to revive him. He clutched his chest with one hand and made a choking sound. A death rattle. “Don't try to speak, Robert. I must fetch help from downstairs to get you back in bed.”
His hold on her arm tightened as he gasped. “Too late ...too late for that. Only tell Quintin...tell my son I've been a fool. He can learn something from that at least...” His voice trailed off and his grip on her arm slackened.
Madelyne carefully laid his head on the cool hall floor and placed his hands on his chest, then rose and ran toward the sound of James's furious crying. Her son and Robert had been the only ones to hear her struggle with the deranged housekeeper. Gulliver lay very still beside the crib, breathing erratically. She picked up the baby and ran downstairs for help.
By morning's light, it seemed almost impossible to believe the preceding night's events. Robert was laid out for burial by Toby and Delphine. Madelyne told no one the details of Mistress Ogilve's death. She was quickly buried that morning in the servants' plot behind the family graveyard.
By noon, a very groggy Gulliver sat in Delphine's kitchen, being fed warm milk. When he polished off the bowl and bestowed a slurping kiss on Madelyne, she hugged him and laughed joyously. “Oh, Gulliver, if she'd killed you...”
“Praise be to da Almighty, dat debil woman is gone fer good.” Delphine said, rolling her eyes heavenward.
“And so is Robert,” Madelyne said sadly. “He saved my life, and for that I shall always be grateful. I must send word to Andrew to arrange his funeral.”
Few people would mourn Robert Blackthorne. He had been a bitter and unyielding man ever since he brought home a woman he adored but could never learn to trust. Andrew notified friends and family in the surrounding parishes who might wish to attend the funeral, scheduled for the following day.
Devon was still posted with the rangers in the city. Knowing Barbara would arrive at Blackthorne Hill that evening, Madelyne decided to send word to Dev as well. She knew Andrew would not do so. If not for Barbara, there would be no reason for Devon Blackthorne to pay his respects to his Uncle Robert. But perhaps, if she could bring them together agai
n...
Chapter Twenty-two
As the priest said prayers, six burly slaves lowered the mortal remains of Robert Blackthorne into the damp Georgia earth. Chilly October rain sprinkled the assembly, a fittingly unpleasant omen for the close of the bitter old man's blighted life.
Andrew stood beside Madelyne, his hand solicitously at her elbow. All in all, a sterling turnout, he mused with bitter irony. Old Robert was finally gone, but Quintin was still alive and now, damn him, he had produced an heir for Blackthorne Hill. Andrew vowed that Quintin would not live to claim Blackthorne Hill or his lovely wife. Both the plantation and the widow would be his. He smiled to himself, thinking it was time to summon outside help.
As he calculated his future, his eyes swept the assembly, pausing for a moment on his brother, dressed in his ranger's uniform. Madelyne's friendship with Devon would end, as would her association with that spiteful English chit, Lady Barbara.
Monty had been useful,but his sister was a disquieting influence on Madelyne, one he meant to stop as soon as he had wed the heiress of Blackthorne Hill.
Barbara felt Andrew's dark gaze touch her and repressed a shiver in the cool October wind. She returned his stare and he looked away. He knows I despise him. Her eyes scanned the crowd, hungrily searching for Devon. Flanked by Monty and Weymouth, she could scarcely see a flash of his green uniform and golden head as he stood across from her, near the rear of the gathered mourners. Perhaps after everyone returned to the house for the meal, she could seek him out. But no, Devon would not stay. He would simply pay his respects to Madelyne after the interment and then ride off.
Ride off. A plan quickly formed in her mind,and she tugged on Monty's sleeve. I’ve torn my skirt's hem,” she whispered, gathering the elaborate folds of gray silk into a bunched mass so he could not detect her prevarication. I’m going to slip off to the house and find a maid to sew it before anyone sees me looking so bedraggled. You and the viscount can keep anyone from noting my absence. I'll join you at the house.”