“I wasn’t suggesting that you do.” Smiling indulgently, he patted his wife’s hand. “Just let her alone so she can eat.”
Catherine Redmond sat back dramatically. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? She’s not eating, and she looks tired. And she says she is not with child. However, I do not see what else it could all mean, unless she is sick with something awful.”
“Does she look like she’s ill, my love?” Isaac Redmond asked, reaching out to his right for Victoria’s hand, though he had his attention on his wife to his left.
Pleasantly surprised, Victoria eagerly took his hand in hers and squeezed affectionately, feeling the warmth and strength in his grip. This was the first overture he’d made to her of this nature since she’d been here. Perhaps he’d forgiven her for the scandal with … she hated even to think the dastardly man’s name … Mr. Loyal Atherton. Loyal, indeed.
“Daddy’s right, Mama,” Victoria said quickly, pulling her thoughts away from that man. “Do I look so awful as all that?”
Just as her mother softened and shook her head no and appeared to be relenting, Jeff said: “Perhaps Sister has swamp fever.”
As she barely suppressed a gasp, Victoria’s grip reflexively tightened in her father’s hand and she snapped her attention to her brother, who sat across from her and on their mother’s left. Jefferson regarded her with a challenging glint in his light-colored eyes.
Their mother turned to him and said: “Now, Jefferson, don’t you go scaring your sister with talk like that. How could she even get the swamp fever? She’d have to have ventured out into that awful water to be exposed to something like that. And I hardly think, at her age and now that she’s a duchess, that she’d—”
A sudden frown, perhaps of dawning suspicion, crossed Catherine Redmond’s face. She turned to Victoria, whose heart was pounding dully in her chest. “Victoria, have you gone out into that swamp?”
Victoria slid her hand out of her father’s, hopefully before he had discerned her suddenly moist palm. She lowered her hand to her lap and, under cover of the table, surreptitiously wiped it with her napkin. “Oh, Mama, please, Jefferson is teasing you. I’m not ill, but I will admit to being very tired from the trip here. You know yourself how exhausting it is. And this weather…” She prettily fanned herself with a hand. “Why, it’s unseasonably warm and humid. I find it has quite taken its toll on my strength.”
Though she smiled reassuringly at her mother, Victoria could also see her brother’s gaze on her. How dare he raise a suspicion in their mother? Why, he had more to lose than she did, should she choose to open her mouth about his nighttime wanderings—and with a gun, too.
“Be that as it may…” Catherine allowed her voice to trail off as she spread jam on a buttermilk biscuit. Done with that task, she roved her gaze over her daughter’s face. “I still think you look a bit peaked, so I believe I will send for Dr. Hollis. I want him to take a look at you.”
If Dr. Hollis examined her, he’d know soon enough his patient’s real condition. Victoria sat straight up in her high-backed hardwood chair. “No, Mama, I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine—”
“Now, see? The very fact that you do not want to see Dr. Hollis tells me I ought to send for him.”
“She said she doesn’t want a doctor, Catherine. For God’s sake, leave it be.” All heads turned Isaac Redmond’s way. Grateful though Victoria was for his intervention, she couldn’t fathom her father being so short with her mother. He rarely was—and her mother’s face showed her hurt. “I apologize, my love, for speaking so abruptly. You must forgive me.” He riffled through the business papers by his plate. “I blame these. Something is not adding up, and I can’t figure exactly what it is.”
Catherine Redmond, for once, forgot her petty hurt and put her hand on her husband’s. “Oh, Isaac, is it very serious?”
Though he smiled and patted Catherine’s hand, Victoria could see the lines of worry bracketing his mouth. Just seeing her father upset had apprehension seizing her stomach. “Nothing to worry yourself with.” He looked down the table to Jefferson. “After breakfast, son, I’d like for you to go over these accounts with me, if you would.”
“Accounts? Of course.” To Victoria’s eye, Jefferson looked the way he had when they were children and he’d got caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. A sinking feeling assailed her. Surely, no matter what else Jeff was mixed up in, he hadn’t involved their father’s business interests? “Is the, uh, problem something I’m familiar with?”
“Yes, actually. It’s the investments you control.” Her father shook his head. “Looks to me like too many things have been shuffled around. I can’t find the end of the trail and that concerns me.”
“Then, it does me, too, Daddy.” Though Jeff sounded sincere, Victoria wondered if he really was.
Catherine Redmond preened like a satisfied hen as she gripped her son’s arm and hugged him. “Why, Jefferson Redmond, just listen to you. All grown-up and a captain of industry. A most honorable man.”
Victoria caught the fleeting look of pain that crossed her brother’s features. Whereas only a moment ago, and like last night, she had been suspicious of him and angry with him, now her heart went out to him. She hated her suspicions. All she knew was he was her brother, and he was hurting and hiding something. But how much of the hurt had he caused himself? And how many people had been hurt, and worse, because of his actions or lack of action?
Victoria suffered a moment of anguish, realizing that Jeff could be next. Or she could be. Hers was not an idle worry. When she’d got back to her room last night, a folded-over, unsigned note of warning had been on her pillow. She’d nearly screamed when she’d seen it, but she’d drawn the only conclusion she could: Whoever had raised old Neville’s hackles last night had also sneaked onto River’s End land to spy on her and then deliver that note to let her know she was being watched. It had told her to stay out of the swamp if she didn’t want Jubal and Miss Cicely dead. It had also warned her again not to tell anyone why she was here and went on to say if she did, that person would be killed, too—and so would she.
Her mother’s sudden laugh pulled Victoria out of her thoughts. Catherine had drawn back in her chair to proudly scrutinize her son. But as her gaze swept over his features, her smile bled away and her voice radiated concern. “Why, Jefferson Caldwell Redmond, just look at you. You look downright haggard. I was so focused on Victoria that I almost missed those dark circles under your eyes and how pale you are. I fear you may have the same thing wrong with you that your sister has.”
Though his comment was directed to their mother, Jefferson locked gazes with Victoria. “I don’t think we have anything wrong between us, do we, Sister?”
Victoria met his level gaze. “No. We’re fine.”
Their little exchange was evidently not lost on their mother. She looked from her one child to her other. “Did you two have a fuss? Now, don’t tell me you did. I do not like it when my children have differences.”
Exasperated, Victoria could only stare at her mother. She loved her very much, but the woman was as relentless as an encroaching ivy vine and as keen-eyed as an eagle when it came to her two surviving children. She’d lost three babies to illnesses before their first birthdays. And those heart-wrenching losses, Victoria knew, caused her mother to be ever fearful of her and Jeff’s health and happiness. Victoria knew she’d be no different with her own child.
“We’re grown up now, Mother,” Jeff said. “We don’t have squabbles or differences like we did when we were children.” Again, he sought Victoria’s gaze before continuing. “We deal now with each other as the adults we are and take responsibility for our actions.”
“He’s right,” Victoria said, her gaze again locked with his. “We are very responsible. And just the same as always with each other.”
But they weren’t. How well she and Jeff both knew it, even if their mother didn’t. Her children had grown up and grown apart. And now those differences
could tear her family apart.
“All right, if the two of you say nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong.”
Victoria watched her mother nibbling on the biscuit she’d buttered a few moments ago. Her finely arched eyebrows raised, Catherine Redmond stared her daughter’s way. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that all you’re doing is pushing that wonderful food around and not eating it. Now, it’s enough that you won’t even tell me why you’re back home so soon after … well, everything. And, of course, I am thrilled to have you here. But now you’re going to hurt Annabelle’s feelings, if she thinks you no longer like her cooking.”
Victoria purposely stuck to the most innocuous of her mother’s complaints. “I like Annabelle’s cooking just fine. I always have.”
Smiling, her perfect eyebrows raised, Catherine Redmond leaned over a fraction toward her daughter. “Then eat more of it, baby. You need to keep your strength up.”
Bemused impatience suddenly pushed to the fore of Victoria’s emotions. “Mama, you always say that, about keeping my strength up. I have no idea for what, though. After all, I’m not likely to go outside and single-handedly—or even with three grown men helping me—cut down and chop into kindling one of the oaks that line the drive up to River’s End, now am I?”
The very picture of injured motherhood, Catherine Redmond raised her chin and again put a hand to her chest, over her heart. “Well, what a fine speech that was for a mother to hear from her ungrateful child.”
In the face of her father’s and brother’s mutinous rumblings and glares her way, and in the interest of peace, which they would not have if Catherine Redmond felt injured and took to her bed, Victoria stopped pushing her scrambled eggs and sausages around on her plate and forked up a big bite, which she popped into her mouth and dutifully chewed and swallowed, thankful only that she wasn’t plagued with morning sickness. “See? I eat plenty, Mother.”
Catherine Redmond pursed her lips. “You do not eat plenty. A good stiff wind could carry you along to Charleston and right to your aunt Bessie’s door, perish the thought. The Lord knows that woman could put a crimp in a body’s appetite.” With that, Victoria’s mother returned her biscuit to her plate and turned her attention to her husband, putting her hand over his to get his attention. “Isaac, don’t you think she looks thin, dear?”
He’d gone back to his paperwork, but looked up, obviously confused, when his wife spoke to him. “Who’s thin? Bessie? The last time I saw my sister she was pleasingly plump enough—”
“For heaven’s sake, Isaac. You never listen to me. Not Bessie. Victoria. Your daughter.” Catherine Redmond sat back with much pomp and circumstance and rustling of her skirts as she settled her hands in her lap. “I think it’s time you step in, Isaac, and do something before Victoria just withers away.”
Filled with dismay, Victoria watched her father look from his wife to Jefferson, then to Victoria herself, and back to his wife. “What exactly would you have me do, Catherine? Send her to her room? Lock her in a shed and force-feed her through a knothole?”
Looking vexed, Catherine Redmond retorted: “Now you’re just being silly.”
“For pity’s sake, my love, Victoria is a grown woman and knows when she’s hungry.”
“Grown, certainly. But thinner every day. She’s been here a week or more and hasn’t taken three good bites yet. Talk to her.”
Mouthing some epithet no doubt unsuitable to mixed company, Victoria’s father turned to her and commanded: “Victoria, if you love your dear old father, you will eat. And you will do it right now. And while you’re at it, stop looking tired. You’re worrying your mother.” He again settled his gaze on his wife, who exhaled a tsk of exasperation. “There, my dear. I spoke to her. Now, let’s hear no more about it, shall we?”
Apparently satisfied with his performance, he again retreated to his paperwork and his coffee. And his wife’s opinion of this was: “You are no help, Isaac Wallace Redmond. No help at all.”
Biting back a grin, Victoria silently applauded her father’s speech. But the truth was, nothing would have suited her more than to go to her room and get back in bed. She could barely keep her eyes open, she was so tired. And, as their mother had commented, Jefferson didn’t look any better than she did, maybe worse. Though he’d obviously shaved and changed clothes, Victoria wondered if he’d come back inside in time to get to bed at all. Maybe his meeting with whoever had been out there—
Just then, a noisy clattering of rapid steps all but tumbling down the stairs from the second floor disrupted her thoughts. Victoria and her family, first exchanging “What in the world?” looks among themselves, then turned in the direction of the commotion.
“I never heard such a noise in all my life.” This was Isaac Redmond, who tossed his linen napkin on the table and scooted his chair back. “I’d better go see who that is raising the devil out there.”
But he never got the chance because at that instant, a stringy-blond-haired girl of about fifteen years, whom Victoria recognized as the new maid her mother had hired, burst into the breakfast room and stood in the doorway, looking lost in her uniform and agog with excitement.
“Tillie! I declare, child, what a dramatic entrance.”
The skinny girl sought Catherine Redmond’s attention. “I’m sorry about coming in here like this, Miz Redmond, when you all are dining,” she blurted. “And I do remember as how it’s Mr. Virgil’s butlering duty to tell y’all things, but I couldn’t find him and I thought you should know what I’ve just seen.”
Expecting her to proceed, nobody said anything.
Apparently and belatedly struck uncertain of herself, the maid offered a tentative smile and gestured vaguely toward the grand gallery foyer behind her. “I could go look for Mr. Virgil and tell him what-all I seen and then let him tell you, if’n you like.”
Wide-eyed with bemusement, Victoria couldn’t wait to see what happened next between her mother and this girl, who was the latest beneficiary of her mother’s charity. All Victoria knew about Tillie was what she’d been told by her mother. The girl was the eldest daughter of some poor sharecropper family a few miles away and just needed a kind hand up in the world in order to better herself. How this could be achieved by cleaning up after rich people eluded Victoria, but she’d wisely kept that observation to herself.
“That’s all right, Tillie,” Mrs. Redmond was saying. Her patient tone of voice warred with her tight smile. “You’re here now, so tell us what you saw.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The girl’s evident excitement propelled her farther into the room. “I was up there on the second floor and a-carryin’ out my cleaning duties when I happened to look out a window. And that’s when I seen a fancy carriage just plumb full of right fine-looking gentlemen comin’ up the drive. And behind them is a big wagon carrying a piled-up heap of traveling trunks just like the sort her ladyship here had with her when she came home from England.”
“Oh, my. England,” Catherine Redmond said, covering her mouth with her fingers and staring wide-eyed at her daughter.
“Yes, ma’am. England. Then that uppity—I mean that nice lady’s maid, Rosanna, well, she come and looked out the window, too, and she up and said it was the very devil himself come to fetch his own.”
Victoria’s smile and amusement had died a slow death, the longer the girl had spoken. And now, with the maid at the end of her speech, Victoria’s heart was nearly stopped altogether. Her grip tightened reflexively around her fork. This entourage, she knew, could only be that of one person.
“Carriages and traveling trunks, you say?” This was Victoria’s father who’d turned around in his chair, an arm over its back, to stare at Tillie.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Tillie carried on. “When I seen them all a-comin’ up the drive—”
“You mean you saw them coming.” Catherine Redmond had recovered enough to gently but firmly correct the maid.
“Ain’t that what I said, ma’am? ’Cause I did—I seen ’em mysel
f a-comin’ right smartly up that big old long drive. They’s still a ways off yet. But I hurried down the stairs to tell you I think you got you some mighty important company headed your way right directly. Maybe it’s some more real-live royalty. Wouldn’t that be grand?”
Intense silence followed her pronouncement. To Victoria, the air in the room seemed to thicken as though molasses had been poured over everything. She didn’t need a mirror to tell her that her face was a fine and fancy red about now.
“Thank you, Tillie,” the lady of the house said. “Please find and alert Virgil that we have company coming. And close the doors behind you, if you will.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied, as always executing an awkward and abbreviated curtsy Victoria’s way before doing as she’d been told.
As soon as the doors closed, Victoria’s father, mother, and brother turned, with an accompanying rustle of their clothing across the chair seats, to stare at her.
“Victoria?” her mother questioned, her voice sounding tinny and far away. “Do you know who this could be, by any chance?”
Suddenly too warm, despite the cool breeze coming in through the open windows, Victoria spoke without thinking. “Blast it all! Fredericks must have told. He wasn’t supposed to learn I was gone.”
“Who is Fredericks and why didn’t you want him to know you were gone?”
Victoria stared at her mother as if she’d never seen her before. Then she realized what she’d given away. It was too late now to make up something. After all, the man would soon be standing in front of them. “My husband, Mama. I didn’t want him to know I was gone. Fredericks is his butler.”
Her mother’s mouth gaped open. “Oh, dear sweet Lord, Victoria, your husband didn’t know you were gone? What has happened?”
“Nothing, Mama. Nothing has happened.” Not yet.
“Victoria, I think it’s high time you told the truth about your visit home.” This was her father, no longer sounding like her indulgent champion.
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