Baffled and angry at what seemed to them a comedown in their way of life, the hot-blooded young Lightfoots had turned upon each other with scathing scorn. Fielding frequently dashed from the house and spurred away in fury while an enraged Letitia ripped to shreds a favorite ballgown or smashed the crockery. There had even been one wild fray Williamsburg would never forget. It had taken place over dinner at the Raleigh Tavern. Letitia had taken offense at something Fielding said. Trembling with fury, she had risen to her feet in the crowded room and onlookers had reported that her dark blue eyes had glittered as brightly as the brilliants on the bodice of her deep blue velvet gown.
“Damn you, Field!” she had choked—and with the words had hurled her wineglass at her husband. He had dodged. The ruby port had splattered his white shirt but the glass had missed him and crashed upon the hearth. With a curse, Fielding had gained his feet. He had lunged across the table and dragged his Letty away through the crowd by her long thick hair as she clawed at his sleeve in an effort to free herself. People had rushed outside to observe him throw his young wife summarily into his carriage and sit on her to hold her down while she beat her fists and screamed. They drove away amid laughter and light applause toward the boat that would carry them home to “Bedlam.”
That they had had two more children after such an event was, to Williamsburg, a marvel. But someone with a near view might have understood. They loved each other in their fashion, did the young Lightfoots, but their love had sharp edges and their anger made them wield it like a sword. She could not forgive him for bringing her to this barren coast, where she seldom saw anyone; he could not forgive her for having so alienated his father with her sharp tongue that his younger brother had inherited all the property when the old man died while he, the elder and once favored, had been cut off with a shilling. And then there was the big underlying quarrel, the wound that would never quite heal, to which they never alluded. . . .
They would rage at each other and then not speak for days, perhaps weeks, conversing only through the servants or one of their daughters. And then their anger would erupt again over some small thing and Fielding would do something desperate: He had once seized Letitia and held her suspended over the well, howling that he would drop her in it and be rid of her once and for all! But at the last moment, hanging upside down with her long hair streaming downward toward that glint of water far below, Letitia—who was fighting her voluminous skirts so that the servants would not see her silk-stockinged legs—had been overcome with sudden mirth at how ridiculous they must look, snarling above the well while the servants ran about bleating in fright. Glaring down into her unafraid laughing face, Fielding had begun laughing too. He had set her back upon her feet and they had both leaned against the low curving brick wall that surrounded the well, rocked by gales of laughter. Still overcome with mirth, they had tottered arm in arm toward the house and halfway there the amazed servants, who were trying to comfort the crying children, had seen Fielding sweep Letitia up and carry her triumphantly indoors. He carried her all the way up to the bedroom they shared so seldom—for he preferred to spend his nights on the long sofa before the living room hearth rather than having his wife ostentatiously turn her back on him in their big square bed. And that night had been like the early days of their marriage, full of laughter and sighs, of silken caresses and moaned responses, a night of passion and yearning that reminded them of all that once had been.
A night that had resulted in Delaware being born nine months later.
It was the same with little Florida. Only that time had been in a boat. Fielding and Letitia had been returning from a funeral in Yorktown in weather so calm the bay seemed like glass. They had quarreled heatedly all the way over, simmered during the funeral service, almost choked on the wine offered afterward, and now on the way home, hostilities had commenced anew. In sudden rage that their light skiff should be becalmed due to lack of wind, thus trapping him with this maddening and beautiful woman, Fielding had snatched up his wife and dropped her over the side. In fury she had floated there, held up by her big black taffeta skirts, screaming at him. Grinding his teeth, Fielding had tossed her a line and after he had pulled her aboard, drenched, she had struck him such a blow as had caused him to trip and fall backward overboard.
“Throw me a line, dammit!” he had yowled, for his boots were fast filling with water and he was in imminent danger of drowning.
His wife tossed him the same line that had brought her to safety and pulled him in. When he came over the side, tearing out the seams of his satin coatsleeves as he did so, she collapsed in wild laughter, gasping so that she could hardly breathe. Her husband, trying to work his way out of a tight wet coat, gazed at her in astonishment.
“Oh, Field!” she had gasped, holding her side and shaking with mirth. “How we must look to that sloop over there!” And he had followed her gaze across the placid blue water to a green rowboat that had been approaching whilst they quarreled and in which two buckskinned men sat, watching round-eyed the doings in the boat.
The humor of the situation now struck Fielding and he began to laugh too, the rich deep chuckling laugh that had so endeared him to her in their courting days. And suddenly he had seized her with an amorous light in his eyes and before the gaze of the fascinated watchers they had disappeared into the bottom of the boat, from which a flailing foot and a trim silk-stockinged ankle had signalled the storm that had come upon them.
And that incident had brought on little Florida nine months later.
They were a scandal, were the Lightfoots. And the doings of handsome Field and his beautiful unmanageable Letty were duly reported on and guffawed over at the Raleigh Tavern and across all the aristocratic boards of the Tidewater. “What’s doing over at Bedlam?” was a common greeting and it was always met by gales of laughter for the elegant young Lightfoots never did anything small, or anything halfway. They were like a pair of showy peafowl fluffing out their ruffled feathers. The Tidewater would have missed them had they departed.
None of this was clear to Letitia Lightfoot as she stood there frowning, surveying the windswept lawn. But she was guiltily aware that during these latter years she had so concentrated on her never ending war with her husband that she had given her daughters, growing up in this atmosphere of turmoil, very little thought.
And now Penny had run away.
It was, she supposed wearily, on her own head. For having married Fielding—a man with whom she would never get along. And he was so intolerably jealous of Sandy! Why couldn’t he understand that Sandy was her past and he was her present and her future?
For a moment her shoulders drooped and she felt very sorry for herself. Then with characteristic energy she lifted her head, straightened her back, and went out to give orders to the servants. There was a storm to be lived through—and on this low-lying coast that could be tricky. And a rebellious daughter to be dealt with if Fielding could get there in time.
In short, a lot to do.
Letitia Lightfoot, completely oblivious to the fact that her daughters needed her, that they were young and frightened of the storm and felt abandoned, turned her mind to her household help and—as always—to what she would say to Fielding when he returned. Penny’s misalliance was all his fault! He should have known better than to hire such a handsome clerk as young Emmett—even temporarily!
Oh, she would have a word with him, all right!
The day wore on, the wind increased in volume and the sky darkened. Fielding did not come home and evening found his daughters Carolina and Virginia hungry and restive in their nightclothes—and annoyed that the two younger children could sleep placidly in their trundle bed with all the noise and the house fairly swaying as the storm worsened.
“Do you think it will be as bad as the Great Storm?” Virginia rolled her eyes toward Carolina.
Uneasily, Carolina listened to the moaning of the wind. The Great Storm was long gone but not forgotten. It had nearly knocked the house down and they had spent m
onths at Aunt Pet’s in Williamsburg while it was being repaired. That was when Emmett, newly hired as a clerk at the apothecary’s shop after his brief stay as clerk at Farview, had got so thick with Penny. As the oldest, Penny had been sent frequently to the apothecary shop to pick up various nostrums demanded by Aunt Pet, and one thing had led to another.
So in a way the Great Storm could be credited with Penny’s elopement.
The Great Storm could be credited with something else. It had brought Ramona Valdez into their lives. Ramona was the sole survivor of the wreck of a Spanish galleon that had been driven into the Chesapeake during the worst of the storm, and she had ended up, more dead than alive, among the wreckage washed ashore near Farview. The Lightfoots had promptly taken Ramona in and she had lived with them until she could be returned, via the Spanish ambassador in London, to her native land. As a result of her long sojourn with them, all the girls had picked up a smattering of Spanish and Carolina, to whom languages came easily, had become quite fluent. Ramona and Carolina had become good friends and Carolina missed the Spanish girl. She had heard from Ramona only once and that letter had been a heartbroken one. “A marriage has been arranged for me to the new Governor of Havana,” Ramona had written through an English scribe. “I am told he is handsome—and twice my age. I suppose I will never see any of you again.” Reading the letter, Carolina had ached for her friend.
So the Great Storm which had swept Ramona onto their shores had brought change to them all. Carolina wondered what changes this storm would bring in its wake.
Another gust of wind shook the house and rattled the windows.
“Oh-h, listen to it!” shuddered Virginia, and both girls jumped as a flying branch, borne on the arms of the wind, struck the house a heavy blow.
Their alarm was in no way lessened when their mother appeared in the doorway wearing a surprisingly genial expression—Letitia was always at her best in time of trouble.
“You may dress and come down and have a bite of supper,” she told her astonished daughters graciously. “I will get the younger children dressed. Hurry down and eat what is on the table.” By way of explanation, she added, “I do not like the sound of the wind. It is rocking the house and I think the roof may go—I never trusted the repairs your father had made after the Great Storm—so I would prefer to have you both on the first floor. And once downstairs you are not to return to the south wing. These timbers are old and it may go too.”
Virginia came to her feet and began to dress with shaking fingers. This very room was in the south wing! But Carolina sprang up with eyes as bright as her mother’s. “Can I help?” she demanded, absorbed by the drama of a situation which might see them homeless by morning.
“By doing as you’re told,” said her mother dryly and turned with that quick light step that was so like Carolina’s, to wake and dress her youngest.
Some of the glow went out of Carolina’s silver eyes. Her mother was brave and she was beautiful, and as a young girl she had undoubtedly swept all before her. But it was very hard to love her.
Hardly had the girls eaten the hasty repast of corn-meal mush, leftover stew, and spiced crab apples set before them on the long dining table than they were whisked away to the kitchen where they saw with astonishment that the fire in the big brick fireplace had been put out and all of the iron implements that normally reposed there had been removed and the whole swept clean. The servants, scared by the din outside from wind and pounding rain, were still looking resentful over the fire being put out, for fires in colonial houses were rarely extinguished, but kept going winter and summer because it was such an arduous task to get one started again.
“Girls, get into the fireplace,” instructed their mother brusquely.
Four pairs of young eyes turned on her reproachfully.
“I mean it.” She spoke calmly. “This fireplace is the strongest place in the house. It will form a bulwark against the wind that may be coming. In case the house is swept away, you will have a chance here.”
At the suggestion that the house might be swept away, Virginia blanched and all four girls quickly scrambled into the fireplace, so large that it easily accommodated them all. They crouched together, fastidiously trying to edge away from the darkly burnt brick sides.
“Now fetch me the table from the dining room and we will shove both it and the kitchen table against the fireplace and everyone else will crouch under that—it will provide protection against falling beams.”
The frightened servants obeyed and soon the two heavy tables were pressed against the now cold bricks of the fireplace. The heavy cook groaned with effort as she crawled under to join the more nimble maids.
“I wonder where Penny is,” whispered Virginia.
And Carolina thought, Perhaps Penny and Emmett never made it to the Marriage Trees. Perhaps a tree crashed down and pinned them as they rode under.
“Safe, I hope,” she said quickly and turned to comfort little Flo, who had squeaked with fright as something heavy—probably a tree limb—crashed and grated against the roof.
That night was a test of everybody’s nerves. The rain beat against the house like gravel. The wind screamed defiance in the chimney and under the eaves. And beyond and over the incessant screech and patter was the menacing roar of an angry ocean, lashed to fury by the storm.
Twice shutters came loose and Letitia and two of the servants crawled out from under the tables to secure them. Her daughters sat crouched together fighting the cinders and soot that filtered through the closed damper, sifting down upon their hair and smudging their faces and clothes. Just as everybody resumed their places after the second shutter closing, a terrible roar shook the house, culminating in the agonized sound of straining timbers being ripped apart.
“That will be the roof of the south wing,” said Letitia calmly and Carolina, being clutched by a terrified Virginia with fingers that bit into her skin, could not but admire her mother’s cool courage. The bedroom Carolina shared with Virginia and the smaller children was in the south wing and she imagined the rain pouring through the tom off roof and descending in buckets onto the big feather bed in which she and Virginia would even now have been huddling, had her mother not perceived the danger and ordered them downstairs. The sound of the storm was now so loud that it interfered with coherent thought. Devils seemed to be chasing each other through the murk and rain of the wind-driven night sky, demons of sound and force and fury that made her feel isolated and small and insignificant. Great forces were out there battling for supremacy—the sea pounding against the land, the wind sending its missiles, the rain battering everything. She realized her clothes and Virginia’s, upstairs in the big press, would be ruined—if indeed they were not blown away to disappear mysteriously into Chesapeake Bay! She had a slight pang that she had not thought to bring along her favorite hair ribands, but she felt that moment of regret in a detached, impersonal way. The storm had made her feel she was a disembodied thing floating halfway between heaven and hell.
The storm’s fury mounted. Unidentified objects were blown with crashing force against the house, one hammer blow after another. The very foundations seemed to tremble and shake. But in the midst of the battering, as she comforted the younger children who crowded against her, shivering and crying, while on her other side she could feel Virginia cringe and jump with each new assault, she envisioned those others out in the storm. Her father and the men from the plantation were doggedly fighting their way up the peninsula, while Penny and Emmett were probably lost somewhere, blinded by the wind and rain—or perhaps already among the Marriage Trees with great tree limbs crashing to earth about them as they sought for a preacher who was bound to be tucked away behind his shutters on such a wild night.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a wild scream from Virginia and a new burst of tears from the younger children as an even more horrendous sound seemed to come from the direction of the south wing. It was followed by a mighty earthshaking crash that left even Carolina’s stout hea
rt shaken.
“That was the south wing’s walls collapsing,” shouted her mother, her voice barely reaching Carolina above the tearing wind. “We’re all right, girls, the house will hold.” And then as a series of minor crashes followed, she added with a reassurance that nobody else felt, “I think the worst is over.”
It was. Hours later, stiff with fatigue, they all crawled out to assess the damage. The roof of the south wing had indeed blown off and the entire wing had collapsed, leaving a sodden rubble of splintered timbers and broken furniture and ruined bedding. A corner of the roof of the main house had also blown away, allowing rain to pour in over the cupboard just below.
In the wild dawn, with its scudding gray clouds and frothing sea, Letitia instantly took command. New clotheslines were to be rigged, all the bedding and clothing hung out to dry.
She straightened up suddenly and for a moment a startled expression played over her beautiful face. “That’s your father,” she muttered. “He can’t be home yet!” She fled toward the door to the muddy driveway where Fielding Lightfoot, riding ahead of his men on a lathered horse, was just coming out of the saddle in a bound. He met his wife just emerging from the house with her rich honey hair bursting free from its pins and making a golden halo around her head.
“What has happened?” she cried, as the girls watched from the doorway. “Why are you back so soon, Field?”
Fielding Lightfoot breathed a deep sigh of relief at sight of her. Amid that howling storm last night he had thought the house might be swept away—and Letty and the girls with it. All the way down the peninsula he had been harried by the thought that he might never see his wife again. Now he drank in the sight of her. “I turned back when I saw how bad the storm was.”
“You turned back?” There was anguish in her voice. Once started on such a mission, Letitia would have ridden on to hell. “But what of our daughter? Where is she?”
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