Defiant Impostor

by Miriam Minger

  She gasped, her eyes darting back to the two women. She looked incredulously from one concerned face to the other. “Yer angels, ain’t ye? I’ve died and gone straight t’ ‘eaven!”

  “Good gracious, no, child,” the older woman said with a small laugh, glancing up at her quietly chuckling companion. “I’ve garnered some praise for my charitable works in Gloucestershire, but I’ve never yet been called an angel.”

  “Well, if yer not angels, then ye must be…” Susanna’s eyes widened fearfully as she drew the bedding up under her chin, her sense of wonder supplanted by dread.

  Oh, no. Who could have thought the devil’s lair would be so lovely? She should never have picked those bloody pockets!

  The sumptuously dressed woman’s voice held a faint touch of amusement. “My dear girl, whatever you may be thinking, you’re quite earthbound, I can assure you. You’re very much alive and, as the physician informed me, in amazingly good health, despite those bruises and strap marks upon your back …” She cleared her throat delicately, her expression sobering. “Mary, fetch the tea and broth, and some sweet biscuits. I think Susanna Guthrie is ready for some nourishment now.”

  “Aye, my lady.”

  “How do y’ know me name?” blurted Susanna, her apprehension all but forgotten in her amazement.

  “Mind your manners, child,” Mary interjected kindly yet with a firm, no-nonsense tone, “and address Lady Melicent Redmayne, the Dowager Baroness of Fairford, as either ‘my lady’ or ‘your ladyship’ from now on.” Then she gave a wink. “I’m Mary Sayers, Lady Redmayne’s waiting-maid. You may call me by my Christian name.” With that, Mary bustled from the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  “One of the witnesses at the unfortunate accident this evening, a young woman who said she was married to the proprietor of a gin shop, told me your name,” Lady Redmayne explained, “and that you lived with your father in their cellar. “

  “Aye, that would ‘ave been Nellie Brice,” Susanna said, adding as an afterthought, “yer ladyship.”

  “Yes. Well …” Lady Redmayne paused, drawing her lips together, as if she was uncertain how best to proceed. “Susanna,” she began after a long moment, “you narrowly escaped being run down by my private coach this evening. My grandniece and I were on our way home from the opera when …” Again she stopped, reaching for Susanna’s hand. “My dear child, I don’t know how else to tell you this other than straight out. Your father was killed tonight. He fell beneath the wheels and was trampled before the coachman could bring the carriage to a halt.”

  Thoroughly stunned, Susanna felt her face grow warm, but she said nothing.

  “The local constable was summoned, and between his small knowledge of your family and the information Mrs. Brice willingly offered, I soon gathered that you had led a most wretched life. Of course I would not hear of it when the constable suggested that, as an orphan, you should be sent to a workhouse. I feel responsible for what happened—it was my coach, after all—but in your case, I do believe that divine providence intervened and saved you from a cruel and brutal man.”

  Aye, Daniel Guthrie had been a cruel man indeed, Susanna thought, feeling no grief at this startling news of his death. Instead, euphoria mixed with relief was rising from some deep place inside her. It was probably a terrible sin for her to feel this way about her father, but she had the most unseemly urge to fling back the covers and jump up and down upon the bed.

  He couldn’t hurt her anymore! Never again would he kick her awake and shove her out the door to beg before the sun had risen. Never again would he try to sell her for some man’s pleasure!

  Misreading Susanna’s silence for shock, Lady Redmayne gently squeezed her hand and gave a reserved smile, which appeared to be something she was not accustomed to doing very often. “My child, I can think of only one way to make amends for your loss of home and hearth. I offer you a place within my household. I fully expect that, with proper training, you will make an excellent waiting-maid to my eleven-year-old grandniece, Camille. She’s a good, gentle girl who also wants very much to help you. As we’re leaving London tomorrow, I can’t give you much time to think it over—”

  “I’d be ‘appy t’ live in yer ‘ousehold, milady,” Susanna exclaimed in a breathless rush, astonished by her good fortune. A waiting-maid! In this fine lady’s home! And she had believed she’d be lucky if she found work as a scullery maid, scrubbing dirty pots and pans. “I learn fast, I do, y’ll see. Y’ won’t regret yer kindness t’ me, I promise.” Then a sudden shadow, black and menacing, fell over her heart, and fear thickened like a lump in her throat. “Yer ladyship, there was another man at the accident. ‘E—’e must ‘ave been the one who shoved me out o’ the way o’ the coach.”

  Lady Redmayne shook her meticulously coiffured head. “When I was helped from the carriage, I saw a man standing over you, but he disappeared into the fog when shouts went up for the constable. Why, child? Was he a friend of yours? Perhaps you would rather we find him—”

  “No!” Susanna bit her lip at Lady Redmayne’s astonished expression, and she quickly sought to explain her rude outburst. “Forgive me fer raisin’ me voice, yer ladyship. What I meant t’ say was, well, ‘e was no friend o’ mine, no matter that ‘e saved me life. ‘E was cut from a worse cloth than me father, if y’ know wot I mean. That’s why I was runnin’ away. Me father ‘ad sold me t’ ‘im. That man wanted me to—to—”

  “I can well imagine,” Lady Redmayne interrupted gently, her eyes full of pity which nonetheless quickly faded. She squared her delicately boned shoulders, her spine ramrod-straight as her tone grew brusque but not unkind. “So we’re decided, then. You will remain with us. As for this night’s unfortunate incident and its unsavory cast of players, we’ll put it all behind us, shall we?”

  Susanna nodded vigorously, grateful tears in her eyes. God willing, she prayed, she had seen the last of Keefer Dunn and his filthy, lusting kind.

  “Is she going to be all right, Aunt Melicent?”

  As Lady Redmayne turned in her chair, her silk skirt rustling stiffly, Susanna’s blurred gaze flew across the room to where a young girl with honey-gold curls peeked shyly at her from behind the door.

  “Yes, Camille. Susanna is going to be just fine.” The baroness beckoned to the girl with a wave of her jeweled hand. “Come closer, my dear. There’s no reason to be so bashful.”

  To Susanna, the girl walking gracefully toward the bed looked like a delicate china doll in her pastel-pink silk dress, slippers, and matching lace-trimmed cap. And to her amazement as Camille drew closer, Susanna found herself staring into a pair of deep green eyes that were remarkably like her own.

  “Camille, meet Susanna Guthrie. When she’s ready, Susanna shall be your new personal maid.”

  Camille rested her small white hands on the plush wine-colored velvet back of her great-aunt’s chair. “Hello.”

  ” ‘Tis pleased I am t’ meet ye, miss.”

  “Camille has been living with me since she was three years old. Her father, James Cary, sent her here to England for her education, and rightly so.” Lady Redmayne sniffed in disgust. “He lives in the uncivilized wilds of Tidewater Virginia. Vile, barbarous, unhealthy place. “

  “The American colony?” Susanna asked, her curiosity piqued. She had often overheard sailors and merchants telling fascinating stories about America. Stories about red-skinned people who wore feathers and beads in their hair and adorned their bodies with paint. Fearless fur trappers who disappeared into the wilderness only to return months later with hundreds of glistening pelts. And tale after tale about the amazing richness of the land, and all it had to offer England.

  Camille nodded solemnly, then, still half-hiding behind the chair, she pointed to Susanna’s puffy, bruised forehead. “Does it hurt very much?”

  Susanna shrugged. “Only a little.” In truth, it scarcely seemed to hurt at all anymore.

  Camille looked relieved, and offered a timid smile.

&nbs
p; Susanna smiled back, convinced she was, indeed, in the company of angels.

  Chapter 1

  Aboard the brig Charming Nancy

  Summer 1743

  “I don’t want t’ ‘ear another word from ye about dyin’, Camille, not another bloody word! I know yer feelin’ poorly, but y’ve already come through the worst o’ the fever. I’d swear on me father’s black ‘eart that y’ll be enjoyin’ some fresh air and sunshine on the deck by week’s end. Now give yer Susanna Guthrie a smile, or I’ll joost take m’self straight back t’ Bristol!”

  “And how will you do that?” Camille Cary asked, forcing a smile as she swallowed painfully. She inclined her head upon the sweat-damp pillow and watched Susanna soak a linen cloth in a basin of cool water. “Swim?”

  “Aye, either that or I’ll catch a ride on a dolphin, I will! Or a spoutin’ whale. Joost watch me!”

  Susanna was rewarded with a soft laugh, the first she’d heard from Camille in several days, but it quickly became a hacking cough. She set the basin upon the gently swaying planked floor and moved to the head of the narrow bed, where she lifted and supported her young mistress’s quaking shoulders and back until the spasm passed. Then she helped Camille to lie down, tucking the blanket around her too-thin frame.

  “Better?” Susanna asked, feeling guilty that she had inadvertently brought on another coughing spell. She had only wanted to lighten the mood in this stuffy, dank-smelling cabin. Anything to get Camille’s mind off her illness!

  Camille nodded weakly, a ghost of a smile upon her pale, cracked lips. “Dearest Susanna. You’ve always known how to make me laugh. I can never keep a straight face when you talk like you did when we first found you in London. I would have thought after all these years, and Aunt Melicent’s constant insistence that you speak proper English, that you’d have forgotten how.”

  Susanna shrugged lightly as she wrung out the cloth and pulled her chair nearer the bed. “I guess some things you just never forget.”

  Camille’s feverish eyes met Susanna’s as the damp cloth covered her forehead. “Speaking of forgetting, you never said how Captain Keyes is feeling today. Is he better?”

  Susanna concentrated upon wringing out another cloth. “Oh, yes, doing quite well,” she lied, sparing Camille again from the true horror that gripped the Charming Nancy.

  Five weeks out of Bristol a terrible pestilence had struck the huge vessel, and within a fortnight it had become a floating death ship. There weren’t enough provisions to turn back to England, and even if that had been possible, they were already closer to the colonies. Flushed with the fever and barely able to stand, Captain Samuel Keyes had ordered his men to sail with all haste to Yorktown, Virginia.

  Now the grizzled captain was dead, buried at sea just that morning along with three more crew members and a half dozen passengers, two children among them. Susanna had watched silently on the top deck as the shrouded mummylike figures had plummeted into the choppy gray sea with scarcely a prayer to guide them into the hereafter, the ship’s parson having died late last week.

  She couldn’t blame what remained of the frightened crew for not performing some semblance of a burial service. They simply wished to rid the ship as quickly as possible of any diseased corpses.

  So she had mumbled a prayer, for the dead who were finally free of their earthly suffering; for her dear Camille, that she would grow well again and healthy; and for herself, that she might be spared the killing fever. Then she had returned to their cabin with the day’s ration of thin barley soup and stale bread, wishing Camille hadn’t been so generous in sharing with the ship’s cook the extra food supplies Lady Redmayne had insisted they bring with them for the long voyage.

  That was just like Camille. Generous and caring to a fault, yet so shy she had hardly left the cabin until she heard that a little boy down the passageway had taken sick.

  Offering what medicines she possessed and all of her gentle comfort, Camille had sat up with the distraught parents through the night, only returning to the cabin at dawn with the sad news that the child had died. The next day, she had been struck with the fever, and she hadn’t risen from her bed since. That had been almost ten days ago. Susanna didn’t have the heart to tell her that the boy’s parents had also sickened and died during that time, an ominous misfortune upon which she didn’t wish to dwell. Oh, why, why wasn’t Camille getting any better?

  “Susanna.”

  She lifted her head at the sound of the beloved voice that had grown so feeble, only a whisper of its former melodic strength, and she immediately felt her cheeks begin to burn. Camille was staring at her so intently she could swear her closest friend could see right into her soul.

  “Captain Keyes is dead, isn’t he?”

  Susanna knew any further attempt to lie would be futile. She nodded, wondering what she had done to give herself away.

  Sighing, Camille glanced at the wall. “It’s just as well.”

  Susanna was shocked. “It’s not like you to say such things, Camille Cary. The captain was a longtime friend of your family. He knew both your parents and your grandfather. Why, he braved late-winter seas to bring you the news about your father.”

  “I know, I know, and I can only hope that heaven will forgive me for saying it,” Camille murmured. She clutched Susanna’s arm with a hand so pale that the thin blue veins stood out in sharp relief against her white skin. “We must talk, Susanna. I’ve been thinking about something since last night. Something important. I couldn’t sleep because of it. But you mustn’t tease me as you did a few moments ago when I tried to tell you. This is serious.”

  “All right, no more teasing,” Susanna agreed, sensing she had failed to divert Camille’s attention from her suffering. “Now, what’s so important that it’s robbing you of precious sleep?”

  Camille’s gaze grew almost pleading. “I know you won’t want to hear this, Susanna, but you must listen to me. If something happens to me, if—if I die, I want you to go to Virginia in my place as Camille Cary and accept my inheritance. I want you to accept Briarwood, my father’s tobacco plantation, as your own.”

  Susanna stared at her incredulously, so stunned she didn’t know what to say. Finally, gathering together her frayed emotions, she said with quiet vehemence, “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let it! In a few days you’ll be feeling better, then everything will go on just as before. When we reach Virginia, you’ll find a husband, just as your father wanted you to, and you’ll settle down happily at Briarwood and raise lots of children, just as you always wanted to—”

  “Perhaps,” Camille interrupted softly, squeezing Susanna’s arm. Tears welled in her eyes and tumbled down hollow, wasted cheeks. “But if I don’t get better, promise me that you will do as I ask. You’ve been like a true sister to me, Susanna Guthrie, and a truer friend. My only friend. I want to know that you’re well provided for. You’ve already been dealt more than your share of unhappiness. I don’t want to worry that you might find yourself in as terrible a situation as you knew in London. You deserve so much more.”

  Deeply touched, Susanna opened her mouth to protest, but she was silenced by a weak flutter of her mistress’s hand.

  “No, listen to me, Susanna. There’s another reason and, I admit, it’s a selfish one. If you refuse, Aunt Melicent will inherit Briarwood, and she has sworn never to set foot in the colonies. She’ll sell the plantation without ever having seen it, and then everything my father and grandfather worked so hard to build out of the wilderness will be lost. I can’t allow that to happen! Briarwood meant so much to them. It means so much to me. Cary sweat and blood are in that soil, my family’s hopes and dreams.”

  Camille drew a ragged breath. “Aunt Melicent never had a good thing to say about Virginia. No, not even once. You heard her protests when I received Papa’s letter just after Christmas, saying it was time I wed and summoning me home by autumn. Then Captain Keyes brought word in April about Papa’s death, and I decided to accept his kind of
fer of escort and leave England even sooner than she had expected …”

  Camille grew silent, grieving for a father she had rarely seen but whom she had loved dearly.

  Aye, Susanna thought, Lady Redmayne had never minced words about Virginia, calling it a cursed and barbarous place peopled by savage Indians, traitors to the Crown, and the dregs of England’s society. Yet Susanna had never understood the baroness’s intense dislike for a place she had never visited until Camille had told her the full story.

  Lady Redmayne had never forgiven her adventurous brother, Camille’s grandfather, for selling their family estate in England so he might start a new life in America. Then when Camille’s mother, Constance, and two older brothers had died of a strange malady known only to the colonies, the baroness’s low opinion of Virginia had been forever sealed.

  Susanna shook her head, becoming angry with herself. None of this mattered. Camille was going to get better, and that was that!

  “Even if something did happen to you, which it won’t,” Susanna objected with characteristic stubbornness, clasping Camille’s chilled hands tightly, as if she could will some of her own strength and warmth into them, “such a farfetched plan would never work.”

  “It will,” Camille insisted. “I wouldn’t have suggested it to you if I had any doubts. We’re almost the same age and we look so much alike, Susanna—you know that, though you’re by far the prettier one.”

  “Camille …”

  “Shhh, you know it’s true. And the last time anyone saw me in Virginia, I was only three years old. Papa’s last visit” —her voice caught and she composed herself before continuing— “his last visit to England was two years ago. If he has described me to anyone since then, he could have been describing you as well.”

  “My temperament falls quite short of your sweet and gentle nature,” Susanna said with wry self-deprecation. “In that respect, we’re no more alike than night and day. Someone would surely guess that I was an impostor.”