Bess flushed again, feeling a need for further fanning. Proper as she’d been raised, there were novels, after all! And lower-class market girls, who delighted in relating their amorous adventures. She was not entirely naive!
And Samuel had come home with his clothing snagged on the undergrowth. If Anne Moore had ridden out alone with no coachee as witness, she might have torn the gown on the thorns and such along the narrow trails, riding in or out. Or ripped away in passion by Uncle Harry!
I’ll wager she still has it, Bess thought, hitching her breath as she did so. If that gray silk gown with the blue ribbons was her apparel on their very first tryst, then a snip of cloth, a length of lace, or a hank of ribbon from it would be one of those silent signs Constable Swann had sneered about, an outwardly innocent token which had a covert, shameful meaning only to the “whores an’ rogues” who shared it.
Of course That gown had been hung far back in Anne Moore’s chif-forobe, too ripped or soiled for public view, too damning if her husband saw it again and asked about it. Yet, too sentimental to be discarded—until now. Bess started, withering herself with appraisal of her stupidity! Mrs Moore might be so upset about her innocent-seeming questions, she might be throwing it out, or tearing it into rags this very moment—whether she knew that her flowers, with the incriminating ribbons from that gown, had been found or not!
“Ahum,” someone said at her elbow.
“Oop!” Bess exclaimed with alarm. “Oh, Andrew!”
“Forgive me ifl gave you a start, Bess,” he apologized shyly.
“Not at all, good sir!” Bess assured him too brightly. “I was… I fear the occasion has given me a melancholy headache.”
If it works for Anne Moore, it’ll serve for my excuse, Bess told herself.
“I am so sorry, Bess. A cool cloth, perhaps?” he offered.
“I really would feel much better ifl could go home, Andrew.”
His face fell at that news.
“Father will wish to stay. Sam’l, too, if God is kind to me,” Bess said, attempting to cheer him. “Would it be an imposition ifl asked you to escort me home?”
“It would not be, certainly not!” Andrew beamed quickly. “You do me the greatest—”
“I will make my excuses to Aunt Georgina and Father. Do you the same with your uncle. I’ll meet you here on the porch?” Bess suggested, remembering to massage her brow and frown in her “suffering.”
Chapter 22
YOU SET a hot pace, Bess,” Andrew complained. “Surely that is bad for a headache. To stir the causative humors of the blood so …”
“Oh, the sooner I am home …” Bess puffed, waving vaguely. “My uncle set no time limit for my return, Bess,” Andrew said with a hopeful sound, fantasizing about heady visions of being totally alone and private with her, of daring to actually hold her hand with no one to see them, of aspiring to be allowed a modest kiss on Bess’s bared shoulder! His blood was up and stirring, of a certainty!
Bess had hiked them uphill to Third Street, the main thoroughfare, thence quickly along Third to the intersection of Market below the courthouse. She slowed her pace once they reached the southern corner, after crossing Market, and came to a stop in a welcome patch of shade.
“I’m sorry for rushing, Andrew,” she said, though she was too distracted to put much effort into making it sound heartfelt. Bess was too intent on the Moore house three houses down. “Let us stand and converse here for a moment where it’s cooler. I’m sure you must be… perspired.”
“I’ll get us something cool to drink?” Andrew suggested, pointing to a street monger’s cart which bore a barrel and a row of wooden mugs.
“Nothing for me,” Bess said, wrinkling her nose at the prospect of how dirty the mugs, or the contents of the barrel, must be. “Well, perhaps a tiny sip of yours. Whatever it is.” She laughed wryly.
“Here, fellow!” Andrew called as he approached the free-black monger. The coach was back in the carriage house in the back lot of the Moore property, Bess noted in his absence, thinking it a fine pretension to need a carriage for a two-block journey she had walked in less than a minute. The pair of horses were free of their harness, and the coachee, now with his livery-coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was filling a trough for them to drink from. The front of the house was shut and mute, though, the drapes drawn snug for cooling dimness against the early afternoon sun.
Urgently as she’d wished to get a vantage point to see if Anne Moore would dispose of the gown, Bess didn’t have a clue how she was going to pull it off, now that she was there. Young ladies did not loiter on the streets, even if they did have an escort. And if Mrs Moore spotted her, pacing on sentry-go in front of her house! Even worse, if she was discovered sneaking around the alley in the back, or pawing through their refuse bin …!
Idiot! she accused herself.
“’tis ginger-beer,” Andrew announced, returning to her side with a foaming piggin. “Fresh off the ship from Jamaica, still in the original barricoe, not decanted. Nothing spiritous. Quite good, actually.”
“Mmm,” Bess replied, giving him a brief glance.
“Ginger’s good for settling biliousness,” Andrew prated on. “If your headache was brought on by biliousness … well. Excuse me for my thoughtlessness. To speak of such … ahum … natural things with you, a young lady… !”
“I believe I will assay a sip, after all, Andrew,” Bess decided, turning to him, and rewarding him with a smile. “Perhaps the ginger will relieve whatever caused my headache. I did experience a certain bilious feeling after the hock I drank.”
“My pardons for suggesting it, then, Bess. Had I known hock did not agree with you …” Andrew muttered.
Bess took a taste, savoring the sprightly tingling of the bubbly brew, and the hot, sweet tang of the fruit-and-ginger concoction. But she could not help peering over the rim at Andrew Hewlett, wondering if he was going to apologize for his every unguarded utterance, scraping, bowing and wringing his hands should she throw him the least cross expression.
Lord help me, Bess thought, but Anne Moore might have the right ofit… even if she is an arrogant trull! Andrew’s pretty, a courtly gentleman, and all, but … surely there’s someone out therefor me who can be moreforthright and easy.
“Uh, y’all ‘scuze Autie, folks,” the teenaged beer monger asked hesitantly, “but …is y’all gwine be long wit’ ‘at piggin?”
“Give us time to drink it, boy!” Andrew snapped with an unconsciously superior sneer.
Bess frowned, creating that furrow ‘twixt her brows. “Don’t be cross-patch, Andrew,” she murmured, treating him to a cool glare; she said louder, and more sweetly, to the monger, “Pardon us for taking so long, but it’s so sprightly, ’tis hard to drink quickly. We don’t mean to restrict your trade.”
“Yassum, hit sho’ be, umhum!” The monger grinned back, doffing his shapeless straw hat to her.
“What trade?” Andrew whispered, after a peer up and down all the streets.
“Got me plenny mo’ piggins, ma’am, y’all take yuh time, ‘at’ll be fine,” the monger said on, bobbing like a quail. “I kin come back fo’ hit when y’all done, yassuh, sho’ kin! No ‘fense, massa. Autie don’ mean no disr’speck, sho’ I don’!” he added with another doffing of his hat, and a foolish titter that Bess suspected was as forced as the one she’d used on Anne Moore. Autie lifted the cart to trundle to safer ground, dreading the risk of rowing a white gentleman’s ire; but Jemmy Bowlegs came up, and stopped him in his tracks.
“Ho, Autie!” Jemmy shouted as he crossed the street. “What-all ya got thar this time, boy?”
“Got da fine gingah-beah, Mistah Jeemy, suh!” the monger cried happily back. “Ya want some? Ha’pence, da piggin.”
Bowlegs came from the courthouse hitching rails, dodging a mud puddle or two, a squawking goose, and some piles of fresh equine ordure. He looked almost respectable, these days, after Bess’s father had let him select new clothes. Jemmy Bowlegs now sporte
d a clean linen shirt, a rather natty pair of nut-brown moleskin breeches, tan cotton stockings, and, wonder of wonders, a crisp new black tricorne hat with silvered lace on the brims. He’d even aspired to black buckled shoes!
“Ginger-beah, that’s kiddy-swill, Autie,” Bowlegs scoffed. “Ya ain’t got no ale, like ya use’ta? Afternoon, Miz Livesey. Afternoon, Mistah Hewlett, suh.” He grinned, barely lifting his hat to doff.
“Jemmy Bowlegs, how do,” Bess said in reply.
“Bowlegs,” Andrew grunted, gruffly ill at ease. Walking Bess to her home was turning into a street raree.
“No ale?” Bowlegs asked, turning back to Autie the monger.
“Nossuh, Mistah Jeemy. Sher’ff an’ Const’ble, they say Pap an’ me ain’t got no li-cence t’sell no sperrts, ‘at’s fo’ tavern folk, an’ such. But dis heah gingah-beah be mighty good!”
“Stole hit, did’nya, Autie,” Bowlegs teased straight-faced, as he dug into his breeches pockets for a coin. “Well, gimme some.”
“Naw, Pap ha’dly evah steal no mo’, Jeemy. We give da chandluh four shillin’ fo’ dis bar’coe. ‘Ayr ya go, Mistah Jeemy, suh. Cold an’ tangly gingah-beah, yassuh!”
Bess could see thatjemmy Bowlegs had not been completely civilized by his new togs; his new tricorne sported hawk feathers bound in a red ribbon cockade on the left front, like a military officer’s dog-vane, loop and button. A white egret plume peaked over the left brim, too, and on the right side, drooping like an off-side queue … well, it looked like a rather plush raccoon’s tail. And, of course, he had kept his deerhide waistcoat with all its esoteric knots and headings, and his waist-sash and cut-down fighting knife.
With an astonished grin, Bess also realized thatjemmy must have actually taken a bath a few days previous; he no longer gave off the aroma of an outraged skunk!
“Yer brother keepin’ fair, Miz Livesey?” Jemmy inquired, after a deep draft of ginger-beer, and turning his head to “politely” let go a small belch. “I heard-tell ya put him out right-smart t’other day … cross th’ river.”
“Unfortunately, I did, Jemmy,” Bess snickered. “Not really my doing, but… And I’ve heard of nothing else, since. He’s in a terrible pet over it.”
“Aw, he’ll git over hit,” Bowlegs said with a shrug.
“Perhaps we should be getting on,” Andrew sulkily suggested.
“But I haven’t finished yet, Andrew,” Bess cooed, beaming up at him to let him back in her good graces; if he behaved. She took a small sip of her beer, her mind whirling with possibilities. She had entertained a vague thought that she might be able to employ Andrew in her plan, posting him as sentinel on the Moore house, which had been half the reason she’d asked him to walk her home. Now that he was so “tetchy,” though, and abrupt…
Bowlegs, though. His appearance was almost heaven-sent. The fellow could track game through a driving rainstorm, Samuel had assured her. He’d helped her father; surely he could help her in this, too!
And, she sighed to herself, who would suspect Jemmy Bowlegs if he loafed around this part of town, when he did nothing but loaf most of the time?
“Besides,” she added for Andrew’s benefit, “Jemmy Bowlegs and my brother are inseparable friends, Andrew. They go hunting, fishing, tracking, I don’t know what-all, together all the time. He’s one of Sam’l’s best friends.”
“Wayull, thankee Miz Livesey.” Bowlegs beamed, doffing his hat to her once more in gratitude. “Reckon I am, at that.” Damme, it is a raccoons tail! she noted.
“Andrew,” she said coyly, “would you excuse me just a moment, if I schemed with Mr Bowlegs?”
“Hey?” Andrew sputtered. “Scheme? With Bowlegs?”
“To find a way to make amends to Sam’l, Andrew,” she confided. “Who would know better than his best friend what would thaw him out? So he isn’t so sulky with me. Nor with you, I might add,” she added quickly.
“Oh, well, in that case …” Andrew frowned, groping at his neck-stock in growing frustration.
“Thank you, kind sir,” Bess told him. “Come here, Jemmy. Let’s plot!” she demanded, leading him several steps away down Market Street. “I need some help, Jemmy,” she whispered once they were apart from the others. “The same help you gave my father, the other day.”
“Yes’um?” Bowlegs asked, a trifle dubious.
“It’s about that bouquet of flowers you and Sam’l found,” Bess went on quickly. “I think I found out who sent it, and where the blue ribbon came from!”
“Oh, Law,” Jemmy said with a groan, his dusky face clouding up. “Miz Livesey, ya oughtn’t be a’messin’ wif such. Whoe’er it wuz that murdered Mistah Harry, they find out you been pokin’ inta their doin’s… they might jus’ be of a mind t’come after ya!”
“That’s why I need you, Jemmy,” she announced.
“So’z / kin git kilt, ‘stead of ya?” he snorted. “Huh! If hit were Eachan MacDougall done hit, ya already stirred th’ pot by goin’ over thar, an’ he’ll be on his guard fer shore. Ya want me t’go over th’ Brunswick an’ rile him up morefYa. couldn’t>«y me enough!”
“Not the MacDougalls, Jemmy!” Bess objected. “Unless there’s something you know about Biddy and her father that I don’t.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Jemmy said, scowling. “Nor nobody else, neither. Jus’ did get back f’um Masonborough, an’—”
“Sim Bates, then?” Bess hissed, her eyebrows high in query.
“Warn’t Bates, Miz Livesey, nor Mistah Ram-Sewer, neither,” he told her. “Bates’s black gal’s lucky t’have a single shift t’put on her back. An’ Sim wuz cookin’ at a pig roast, th’ night Mistah Harry died. Got drunker’n Davey’s Sow, fell in th’ fire, an’ come nigh to roastin’ hisself. So …just who you ‘spect hit be?”
“Mistress Anne Moore,” she imparted, barely above a whisper.
“Wawwgh!” Jemmy groaned, leaning back to savor that news. “At’d mean pore Mistah Osgoode… ? Wawwgh!” he reiterated, struck dumb with the implications.
“It mightbe,” Bess allowed carefully. “But the ribbons are off one of her gowns. Now here’s what I wish you could do for me, Jemmy …”
Matthew Livesey stumped toward home, barely fit company, though he tried to perk up talkative and cordial. The occasion, the medallion, Georgina Tresmayne’s pathetic need of his support, and her almost fervent, waif-like fondness toward him to plead for that support, had him all a-kilter. And the weight of the commemorative medallion in his coat pocket weighed him down as heavily as the weight of his heart.
“… coach in more often than is my wont, now Georgina, well…” Thomas Lakey sighed.
“Hmm?”
“Well, sir,” Lakey drawled soberly, plying his elegant walking stick stylishly as he paced alongside Livesey—a pace very close to the languid, gentlemanly gait he usually employed. “Her plantation is close by mine own, not a quarter-hour’s ride away from The Lodge. I had thought to coach or ride over to look in on her, now she needs all her old friends’ comfort. Still, except for faction business, I’ve had too few occasions to draw me to town of late. As I get older, there’s more pleasure, it seems, in rustic routine. Though I fear rusticity’s made me somethin’ of an Eremite.” Lakey sniggered at himself.
“So do my concerns, sir,” Matthew admitted charitably. “Why, I cannot recall the last time I had my boat out on the river. Business! A working plantation is even more an uncertain venture, I’m sure.”
“‘Deed ’tis, Livesey, ‘deed ’tis,” Lakey agreed with a chuckle. “Engrossin, absorbin’, but barely rewardin’, even when things at last go well, don’t ye know. Reminds me!” Mr Lakey enthused suddenly, all but snapping his fingers for being remiss. “I extended an invitation … rather, Andrew, my nephew, did to you an’ yours… few weeks back. To coach out an’ visit. Your lovely daughter, Bess, wished some cuttin’s of my gardens. Late in the season for azaleas, now, but roses … did she not mention it to you?”
“I believe she did,
sir.” Livesey nodded. “Though, with all the unsettled doings of late, I quite forgot. And I thankee for extending the invitation again.”
“Ride out after Divine Services, dine on the grounds …” Lakey mused happily. “The lad’s quite took with your girl, Livesey. All he talks about, I swear.”
“Young Hewlett has figured in her remarks as well, sir,” Matthew informed him, turning to see if the man was proposing a match. Hewlett was an orphaned cadet scion of the Hewletts, due to inherit The Lodge from Thomas Lakey someday. Well-educated, well-bred. It could be a profitable and reasonably suitable pairing.
“I trust she sounded somewhat fond, hey?” Lakey cajoled gaily.
“Early days, though,” Matthew replied cautiously.
“Oh, my, yes!” Lakey poo-pooed. “Cream-pot love, if love it is! Andrew barely eighteen. Your sweet Bess a year shy of that. Much too young for serious spoonin’, hmm?”
“Oh, of course,” Livesey mildly agreed. “Of a certainty.”
“Damme, Mr Livesey, I don’t know what gets into our youngsters in these times, swear I don’t,” Lakey went on most wryly. “Not out o’ their teens or barely come to their majority, an’ they’re courtin’ an’ weddin’. Now, in our day, young folk’d wait ‘til they’re established. Acred, educated … embarked in life, and securely settled.”
“Mmm, in the mid to late twenties, as it should be,” Livesey admitted with a sage nod. “As we and our parents always have.”
“Lord,” Samuel muttered with a bored sigh, rolling his eyes as he dawdled in their wake, half-stepping, almost hobbled by their gait.
“Get the wildness out of them, first,” Livesey added, turning to look over his shoulder and give his son a meaningful warning glare.
“Exactly so, Livesey,” Lakey chortled. “Exactly so! Still … for the nonce, cream-pot courtin’s a way for them t’discover manners, an’ which qualities most please their natures … for later on serious consideration. Unless you have any serious objections, sir… Andrew is a mannerly young fellow. Not allow him t’see your precious Bess to home, were he not, I assure you! And Bess is a most sensible, house-mannerly young lady … of considerable pleasin’ attainments?”
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 20