Along the corridor in another room a light still burned. Regina lay beside the sprawled sleeping figure of Harding as if hypnotised by the candle. Its flame added fuel to the fire of her conflicting emotions. She thought of the soldiers and the hatred and loathing of all men that had poisoned her life since she was a child. But now, other feelings were suspending her on a cloud of sensuous pleasure. She could not come down to earth and go to sleep. Long after the candle had gone out, her eyes remained staring at the darkness. She kept telling herself that all she wanted was the gossamer threads that bound her to Mistress Kitty to be finally broken. Then she would be mistress of Forest Hall. Then she would be safe. She would not need to care about Harding.
She hated him. She had always hated him. But, as she drifted in and out of sleep during the long, dark night, her fingers, cautious as feathers, would float out and touch him to make sure that he was still there.
30
IT WAS the Sleeping Time in Williamsburg, the lazy lull between the Public Times when the long Duke of Gloucester Street stretched empty and quiet. Dust sighed and settled down, only to stir with the occasional unhurried plod of a liveried servant going on an errand for his master or mistress. Sometimes an elegant sedan was carried along with a lady relaxing inside, leisurely fanning herself. Cattle wandered slowly over the market square chewing the cud and every now and again swishing at flies with their tails.
Francis Street had the same drowsy quality. Sleep dragged heavily at the hot air like snores. Life was suspended. Only the crimsons and purples and yellows of the flowers in the gardens bloomed with vibrant energy.
Inside her house in Francis Street, Annabella was dressing to receive some of her late husband’s congregation who had sent a note to say they would be calling. Nancy was helping her, or at least trying, in her own way, to be of help.
‘You can’t wear your cherry hoop,’ she repeated dourly, stubbornly.
Annabella snatched it from her.
‘Impudent wretch! Don’t you dare tell me what I can or cannot wear. If I say I shall wear my cherry hoop, I shall wear my cherry hoop.’
‘But what’ll they think? You’re supposed to be in mourning. You’re supposed to wear black.’
‘I do not suit black. It makes me feel prodigiously dejected and cast down. And I refuse to be cast down. I tell you I am wearing my cherry hoop, and my white embroidered petticoat.’
‘Well, for God’s sake, at least don’t let them see what you’ve done to this bedroom.’ Nancy helped Annabella into the garments in none too gentle a fashion.
‘What’s wrong with the bedroom? It looks wondrously cheerful and bright since I put up the new bed-drapes and curtains.’
‘That’s what’s wrong with it. Everything in Mistress Sharp’s bedroom was black after Mr Sharp died, black bed linen, black nightwear, black …’
‘Gracious heaven!’ Annabella interrupted with a shudder. ‘What an odious practice. I shall have none of it.’
Nancy rolled her eyes.
‘Just look at you! Well!’ she shrugged. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Admiring herself in the pier glass Annabella sent her wide hooped skirt swaying this way and that. Then she caressed the little bulges of breasts above the tightly laced stomacher with its pink satin bows.
‘I think I look very beautiful and elegant.’
‘It’s what they’ll think that’s worrying me.’
‘Pox on them. I don’t care a fig what they think.’
‘Can you not even have a bit of consideration for poor Mr Blackadder?’
‘I gave Mr Blackadder my consideration while he was alive and while it mattered. Nothing can affect that pile of bones in the churchyard except worms. There’s the door! Go and answer it at once. I’ll be down as soon as I choose a fan.’
‘At least carry a mourning fan.’
‘Will you go away and do as you’re told? I’ll do as I like.’
She decided against a mourning fan, as, for one thing, it would look incongruous against her bright gown, her merry blue eyes, and golden hair. For another, she did not believe in all the fuss and bother about black. What did it matter about the colour of one’s clothes except that they should enhance the person wearing them? What did it even matter about so-called mourning? Going about with a long face didn’t bring back the dead. She had done her best for Mr Blackadder. She had been a good wife. Now she was a wife no longer. And that was that. Certainly there were times when she missed him. There were times when in the privacy of her bedroom she wept. But she wasn’t the kind of person who could live in the past, and more and more it was Carter Cunningham who occupied her thoughts. She had not seen him since the last Public Time. Nor had she expected to. The planters had their plantation business to attend to and seldom had either the time or the inclination to make the long journey to Williamsburg during its sleeping time. But she had hoped for some indication that he had not forgotten her. A little gift, or a note delivered by one of his slaves would have been much appreciated.
But no note had come. She toyed with the idea of sending Nancy with a polite inquiry. But so far, pride had prevented her. In the first place, she had no coach and Nancy would have to make the journey on horseback. Then, in courtship, and surely if one was honest that was what their relationship must now be, in courtship the man should take the initiative. It wasn’t a case of conforming to custom in doing this. She enjoyed being paid pretty compliments, and flirted with, and pursued by an elegant gentleman like Mr Cunningham. But the customs of courting in Virginia were too ritualistic to suit her taste. In her view, they were hypocritical. Not only had a proposal to be made in an atmosphere of strict religious formality, but the lady had to be approached with fear and trembling as if she were some kind of saint. The gentleman had to prostrate himself before her, either literally or figuratively. She had to pretend to be surprised and distressed at the mere idea of marriage and only after much protestation could she agree to consider the gentleman’s proposition.
Annabella, it was true, had a coquettish turn of nature, but she had a flair for freedom too and could not abide anything that smacked of restriction, especially if it were religiously inspired.
Still wondering if she ought to send Nancy with some sort of communication to Mr Cunningham, she pattered downstairs and into the drawing-room.
Mistress Sharp and Mistress Blair waited with solemn faces and straight backs, their hoops smothering the chintz sofa. Mistress Sharp’s black bombazine gave her pinched face a waxy, corpse-like appearance. Mistress Blair’s deep purple silk accentuated the broken capillaries on her cheeks and nose. They rustled to their feet to greet Annabella with dignified expressions of sympathy that immediately collapsed with shock at the sight of her.
‘Mistress Sharp!’ Annabella dropped a curtsy. ‘Mistress Blair!’ She curtsied again. ‘How kind of you to come.’
‘We cannot stay,’ Mistress Sharp managed. ‘We have other calls to make.’
Mistress Blair’s purple cheeks quivered.
‘We only came out of respect for Mr Blackadder. A fine Christian gentleman.’
‘Indeed he was,’ Annabella cheerily agreed. ‘But surely you will stay for a dish of tea? My maid is preparing it. I was looking forward to a pleasant tête-à-tête.’
Mistress Sharp glared in mounting disapproval.
‘I would have thought that this was hardly an occasion for pleasure.’
‘Oh?’ Annabella’s brows lifted and she flicked open her fan. ‘And why not?’
‘Really!’ The ladies gasped at one another. Then Mistress Blair rounded on Annabella.
‘Your heart should be heavy with grief, mistress, not light with wicked frivolity.’
‘Gracious heavens! A dish of tea and a pleasant tête-à-tête is surely neither wicked nor frivolous? And with respect, Mistress Blair, you do not know what is in my heart.’
‘We know what is on your back, though,’ Mistress Sharp cut in. ‘And it’s not a mourning gown. It’s
a disgrace!’ And with that the two ladies swept from the room and the house.
Nancy came in and put the tea things down on the table.
‘I warned you.’
Annabella selected a sweetmeat and nibbled daintily at it.
‘Silly cows. What do I care about them?’
To be honest, though, she felt somewhat surprised and hurt. Later, when she invited other acquaintances to tea and they sent a servant with a note saying they could not come but offering no explanation, she felt even more so. Not that she showed her distress, even to Nancy.
Eventually she told the maid:
‘I have decided to send you with a note to Mr Cunningham. I am prodigiously bored and cannot wait until the Public Time to see him.’
Nancy was shocked.
‘You can’t make advances to him like that.’
‘Advances! Advances!’ Annabella flapped her hands. ‘All I’m doing is sending him a polite little note asking him how he is and telling him how I am.’
‘He’ll know perfectly well what you’re doing.’
Suddenly Annabella giggled.
‘It’s what I want to do that should intrigue him.’
‘You’re hopeless.’
‘Not at all. I am full of hope. I have always been an optimist. I refuse to be anything else.’
With much groaning and grumbling Nancy was eventually persuaded to set out on the journey to the Cunningham plantation. Unknown to Annabella, however, she stopped off for a night at Morgan West’s farm on the way. It was only with much reluctance, and irritation at Annabella, that she left the farm and spurred her horse on once again. But her resentment at having been forced to make such a tiresome expedition was fanned into fury at the rude way she was treated when she arrived at the Cunningham mansion.
She went boldly to the main door instead of the kitchen, having been instructed to hand the letter to the master and not some forgetful slave. The door was opened by a liveried Negro, but before she could say a word to him a lady with a pocked face and no rings on her fingers came harassing to the door complaining shrilly:
‘What is it now, Samuel?’
The slave stepped aside to reveal Nancy with the letter in her hand.
‘How dare you come to the front door of the house?’ The woman’s voice screeched high with anger. ‘The kitchen is the place for servants.’
‘I was told by Mistress Annabella to deliver this letter into Mr Cunningham’s hands and I didn’t expect to find him in the kitchen.’
‘Impudent hussy! Give that to me!’ Before Nancy could do anything the women had snatched the letter from her hand. ‘I’m the mistress of this house.’
‘But Mistress Annabella …’ Nancy protested.
‘Mistress Annabella! Oh, yes, I know all about her. Just you go right back this instant and tell her to leave Mr Cunningham alone.’
With that she banged the door shut in the maid’s face and hurried back upstairs to her cousin’s bedroom. Clusters of leeches were still sucking at his neck. His head rolled feebly about and his fingers wandered and twitched in futile efforts to free himself. All night, indeed for several nights now, she had struggled to nurse the delirious man. Not that she minded. She would nurse him for the rest of his life, attend to his every need, run his house, do anything he wanted if only he would ask for her hand in marriage. Despite the fact he had had amorous adventures with many women, she and Carter had remained friends and she often came from her papa’s plantation to visit him. She lived in the hope that one day he would realise what an excellent wife she would make for him and agree to her papa’s proposal that it would make a sensible match. She lived for and dreamed of the day when she and Carter would stop being friends and he would begin courting her. After all, he could at least be certain that she wasn’t after his money, like most of the penniless creatures he had become mixed up with in the past. Her papa was almost as wealthy as he was.
When she came on this visit, she had seen immediately that something was amiss. Her cousin was not his gay amusing self at all. It soon became obvious that he was ill and she persuaded him, not without some difficulty, to retire to bed. She was thrilled at the idea of being needed by him, and set to work with a will to look after everything. She dreamed happy dreams of him realising at last that he could not live without her, of him reaching out to her and calling her name.
But it was Annabella’s name he kept calling.
Angrily, tears of frustration spurting from her eyes, she tore up Annabella’s letter and tossed it into the bedroom fire.
Nancy felt like weeping as well. Tired after the journey, she had expected some decent hospitality; a refreshing meal in the Carter kitchen, perhaps a glass of ale or home-made wine with which to wash it down before turning her horse towards home, first of all to Morgan West’s farm and then to Annabella’s house in Williamsburg. She felt so annoyed and insulted by her experience at the Carter place that she made up her mind there and then that it was the last time anyone would be able to call her a maid. When she reached Morgan West’s farm she told him that she would accept his proposal of marriage. A date was settled and everything arranged. The only snag was the prick of guilt she felt at having to break this news to Annabella almost in the same breath as telling her that Carter Cunningham had another woman.
‘Pshaw!’ Annabella tossed her curls. ‘She could be anybody. A servant. A relation perhaps. There is a perfectly innocent explanation, I’m sure. Mr Cunningham is a gentleman.’
‘I told you what she said. And if you ask me he’s nothing but a gambler and a womaniser. That man has had more women chasing after him than any other in the whole of Virginia.’
‘How do you know? You are only a common serving maid.’
‘It’s common knowledge.’
‘Gossip, you mean. I tell you, Mr Cunningham is a gentleman. He will explain everything when he calls to see me at the Public Time, as he promised.’
Nancy rolled her eyes. Annabella seemed hell-bent on getting hurt and there was nothing she could do about it. Not that she felt over-worried. Annabella was a lot tougher than she looked.
Nancy married Morgan West quietly and without any fuss, as they had arranged. She did feel a pang of regret when it came to actually saying goodbye to Annabella. They’d been together a long time. But neither of them shed any tears at parting. Indeed, Annabella seemed almost indecently cheerful, pattering around, showering her with gifts, laughing, waving, wishing her every happiness. The last she saw of Annabella was the dainty figure, like one of the flowers in the garden, recklessly throwing kisses, her vivid skirts swaying, her hair shimmering like gold in the sun.
What she did not see was Annabella flying back into the house and tossing herself on to the sofa to weep with wild and heartbroken abandon. She quickly recovered, of course, and was soon looking forward eagerly to Carter Cunningham’s visit, and to all the other excitements of the Public Time.
But when the Public Time came the female society of Williamsburg rejected and froze her out with every means as its disposal. She received no invitations to any of the balls. Tea parties gathered and gossiped in houses all around her but she was never included. Dinner guests in all their rustling finery spilled from carriages and rainbowed into dining-rooms, but she was never among them.
Not that she sat at home and moped. In the first place, she was kept very busy with the running of the house since Nancy had left. She still had the young maid, Betsy, but it had been distressing to lose Nancy. She had been a lazy impertinent strumpet at times, and they had fought like wildcats, but they had been friends too, as close as mistress and maid could be.
But it was not seeing Carter Cunningham again that cut the deepest. She was not only hurt but humiliated by the fact that the Public Time came and went and he never called to see her. She had been so confident that once he found out she was not being invited to the social functions he would immediately appear and whisk her away in his carriage to the very next ball. If he had led her in, no one
would have dared to spurn her or turn her away. But he had not come and she had heard nothing from him.
‘Pox on him!’ she cried, and stamped her foot and agitated her fan. ‘Pox on the monstrous man. I care not a fig for the abominable scoundrel.’
But she did care. During each day she managed to retain her bright exterior and chatter gaily to Mungo or Betsy. Alone at night though, acutely sensitive to the creaking and clanking of carriages in Francis Street and the flare of passing lanterns in the room, she often lost the battle with tears. They trickled down and wet her embroidery or the book she was pretending to read. Until suddenly, she made her decision.
‘We are returning to Glasgow,’ she announced to Betsy. ‘I refuse to sit here and mope a moment longer. Glasgow is a prodigiously exciting and friendly city. I will have a wondrously good life there. I know I will!’
So she whisked into immediate preparations, and swept on to the very next ship setting sail for Scotland.
When a slave galloped into Williamsburg with a letter for her, he found a deserted house and, returning to the Cunningham plantation, he told his master that Mistress Annabella had gone.
31
REGINA laid down her fork, looked across the dining-room table at Harding and said:
‘I want to accompany you to the horse fair.’ He lit a pipe.
‘It’s time you improved your manners, mistress.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You talk like a spoiled child. It’s always “I want”.’
‘I say what I mean.’
He blew smoke into the air.
‘You mean you want a horse.’
She shrugged.
‘Mr Harding, may I,’ she said, ‘accompany you to the horse fair?’
He gave one of his harsh, abrupt laughs, then silence fell between them once more. Eventually he said,
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 58