by Diana Davis
Lord David stood when the ladies left. He was surprisingly sorry to see Cassandra go, just when he was beginning to enjoy sparring with her.
Hayes reseated himself at the table and gestured for Lord David to join him. “I don’t mean to keep you from your business,” Lord David said.
“Quite all right, my lord. I’m happy to entertain as long as you’d wish to stay. But I don’t intend to keep you from your own work.”
“I do need to be about finding a place to lodge.”
“Are you hoping for something temporary, or more permanent?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “I’m not entirely certain,” he admitted.
Hayes studied him a moment. Perhaps he shouldn’t have owned that. “I have a flat to let above my law office. It’s in the center of town, near the State House.”
“Oh.” He had not expected to receive an offer, but perhaps Providence was smiling upon him. “I appreciate that very much. Shall we talk terms?”
Hayes nodded with what seemed to be his usual equanimity. “Certainly, but first, may I ask what brought you to the colonies?”
“The very question I keep posing myself,” he murmured.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, apologies. I’m still trying to determine what exactly I shall do here.”
“I see,” Hayes said. “And what do you mean to do?”
Lord David straightened. This man went right to the heart of the matter, didn’t he? He watched Hayes for a moment longer. He didn’t know much about this man, but he had already been amply generous. “I mean to make something of myself.”
A slow grin suffused Hayes’s features. “That’s precisely why I came to the colonies. I thought such things came in battle.” His smile stilled and faded. “I’m glad you’re not laboring under the same misapprehension.”
Lord David gave him a small nod of thanks. He wasn’t sure he deserved the praise; had there been a war on, he might very well have attempted that route.
The image of the engraving from this morning emerged in his mind, the red blood and the red coats. War was not a good fit for him.
“Now, why does the son of a marquess need to make something of himself?”
Lord David allowed a little laugh, although he knew the question was sincere. “The third son.”
“Ah.”
Yes, they had the heir, the spare and the err, as he’d unfortunately heard his father quip regularly. Far from the only time he’d known his father’s scorn.
“So, business?” Hayes asked. “Law? Politics?”
“Not politics,” he said quickly. That had never been his strong suit, and he’d already had his fill of colonial politics — and seen how poorly he’d fared. “I’m afraid I’m not suited to the law either. Perhaps business.”
“Excellent,” Hayes said. “I have a few friends I could introduce you to, once you decide.”
“Thank you very much. This is really very kind of you.”
“Not at all. It’s simply that you . . . remind me of someone.”
Could he have known his father? People often said he favored him as a child, though Lord David failed to see the resemblance. “Where in England are you from?”
“Surrey.”
Probably not then. “Lovely county.”
“Yes, it was.” Hayes coughed in the way of a man covering emotion. “Look at that, you’ve made me go all sentimental.” He shook his head. “I’d offer you sherry, but my wife was raised a Quaker.”
“Understood,” Lord David said, though he didn’t understand the first thing about Quakers. As soon as he felt the slightest bit at ease in Philadelphia, he had to be reminded that he, too, was very far from home.
He cleared his throat. “What type of business do your friends deal in?”
Within half an hour, Helen and Cassandra were dressed in their own clothes again. Aunt Anne had retired to her room, leaving them to talk with their cousins, and they were finally at ease with them, though Cassandra still strove to put the right name with the right girl.
“How do you know Lord David?” Temperance asked.
“We were on the same ship for the crossing.” Helen’s answer was clipped. Clearly her opinion of Lord David was no better than Cassandra’s.
Constance — she was easy to remember — threw herself back onto the bed as if fainting. “Isn’t he handsome?”
Cassandra gave a begrudging nod.
“Do you think he’ll write to me?”
“Certainly not,” Helen said. “He must be ten years your senior, and we shall never see him again.”
“Come,” Verity said, “Let us show you the garden. It is the biggest in the whole city.”
Her older sisters all exchanged a glance that indicated that was hyperbole. But Cassandra realized she could suddenly breathe again. It had been months since she’d seen any quantity of greenery. The shrubbery in front of the Hayeses’ home was nothing compared to the estate at Heartcomb. Hopefully the back garden had a little space.
Helen was equally enthused. “Yes, please.”
Their cousins let Cassandra and Helen lead the way down the stairs. Cassandra reached the landing behind the door first — and ran directly into Lord David Beaufort, clearly on his way out.
This was a habit she had better break quickly, or it would likely break her. How did the man have such sharp elbows?
“I beg your pardon!” He straightened his coat.
“Oh, no, Your Mercifulness.” Cassandra offered her deepest curtsy yet. “It is I who must beg your forgiveness.”
When she straightened again, she saw the ire and the ice in his clear blue eyes — and for once, she felt no satisfaction.
“If you are a gentleman’s daughter,” he said in a low voice, “you ought to know how to treat your betters. Clearly your cousins know how to show better respect than you do.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught the curtsies her cousins offered: perfectly acceptable for polite company.
Finally, she understood why he was censuring her so. She had embarrassed Lord David. And he had done nothing to deserve it.
At least not since this morning. Or dinner.
Before she could muster an appropriate apology, however, the door flew open. Lord David was chivalrous enough to pull her out of the way with one hand — if a little roughly — and catch the swinging door with the other, closing it behind a diminutive maid.
“Ginny?” Uncle Josiah addressed the newcomer.
“Sorry, sir, I know I should have been here.”
“Are you quite well?” he asked.
She was awfully thin, but Cassandra suspected that might always be the case, as her jacket wasn’t falling off her shoulders.
“I am, sir,” Ginny said, “but my cousins.” She gulped. “It’s the smallpox.”
A collective gasp sounded. The smallpox? Here?
“Where do they live?” Uncle Josiah was more insistent than Cassandra had ever seen him. Though, to be fair, she had only met him this morning.
“Germantown.”
Aunt Anne turned to Cassandra and Helen. “Have you ladies had the smallpox?”
“We have.” Cassandra offered her forearm where the most prominent scars were.
“A relief, to be sure,” Uncle Josiah said.
“We’ll send the little girls to my sister’s,” Aunt Anne said, her gentle voice sure. “That should be far enough away.”
“You know how a miasma spreads.” Uncle Josiah and Aunt Anne consulted one another and seemed to come to a silent agreement. “We shall have to inoculate them.”
“You inoculate in the colonies?” Lord David spoke for the first time since Ginny’s arrival. He suddenly did not seem quite well either.
“Of course.” Amusement filled Uncle Josiah’s voice. “Did you think science hadn’t crossed the Atlantic?”
“Oh, no,” Lord David rushed to reassure him. The surprise still on his countenance, however, clearly told a different story.
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br /> “You’ve had the smallpox?” Aunt Anne asked Lord David. The dear woman was willing to ask after this perfect stranger?
“I?” Lord David gave a little, uncomfortable laugh. “I’ve not.”
Cassandra and Helen startled in unison. Even Uncle Josiah seemed to be gaping at him. “A man — a nobleman — of England who has never had the smallpox?” Uncle Josiah wondered. “Now there is a rare breed.”
“From a family excessively cautious of miasmas.” His smile was tight.
“Well, how fortunate for you.” Aunt Anne’s gentle tone was encouraging.
“Yes, until now, it seems.” Lord David scanned the room again, his gaze finally landing on first Cassandra, then Ginny, who scuttled away toward the kitchen. “Thank you again for dinner. Good day.” He bowed quickly from the neck.
Cassandra and her family returned the courtesy, and Lord David departed.
Temperance and Constance bustled over to the tall windows to watch his retreat. Cassandra shared a wry look with her sister. If their cousins knew Lord David as they did, they would be more eager to see him go than to watch him leave.
Of course, Cassandra had only just learned his name this afternoon.
He must have set off quickly because they didn’t watch for long before bounding back over to Cassandra. “I can’t believe you know him. Did you see his wig?” Temperance pointed out. “White as snow.”
Constance took her sister’s arm. “I wonder what color his hair is.”
“It’s dark,” Cassandra supplied. Why? She should have ignored their silly nattering or changed the subject.
Constance’s and Temperance’s attention snapped to her. “When did you see his hair?”
“When he lost another wig over the side of the boat, along with his dinner.”
“He dropped his plate and his wig off the ship? How sad.” Mercy frowned.
Cassandra and Helen silently conferred but decided to spare their youngest cousin the less pleasant meaning.
“Oh, how romantic.” Constance sighed, clasping both hands to her heart. “To fall in love at sea!”
“Sea travel was not romantic.” Cassandra tried to make her tone apologetic, but there was nothing “romantic” about spending weeks trapped in a tiny, stifling room, avoiding a certain rude nobleman, subsisting on sailors’ rations. She still felt queasy on dry land.
“Nor was Lord David,” Helen assured them. “He was quite . . . severe to us.”
“Oh.” Temperance’s countenance darkened as if she immediately changed her mind about him.
“Should I not have invited him?” Uncle Josiah asked. The concern on his kind face mirrored a look Cassandra had seen on her mother so many times, and her heart caught in her chest.
She would never see her mother’s grave again.
“It is your home, Uncle,” Helen answered for her. “We’re merely guests.”
“Guests? Why, no. You’re part of our family. I only wanted to thank him for helping me to find you this morning.”
What? Cassandra looked to Helen, who was equally shocked, and back to Uncle Josiah. “He helped you?”
“Yes, he showed me where they had taken you. The scoundrels.” His normally serene features tightened into a scowl.
This made no sense. The man who had been nothing but a snob, snubbing them for the last nine weeks, then refused to do the chivalrous, proper thing in rescuing them from being sold . . . was the same man who had helped to save them? When he had no reason to whatsoever?
“I’ve a good mind to bring up a suit. How many other innocents have they dragged to that slave market unawares?”
“Do you think Cousin Lowell paid our whole fare then?” Helen asked.
Uncle Josiah pondered it a long moment. “I don’t know Lowell, so I cannot say. It was still criminal.”
“All slavery is immoral,” Aunt Anne said. She condemned the practice with such equanimity she might have been offering tea rather than a controversial opinion.
“Of course, dear.” Uncle Josiah took her hand. “I have an item of business I must attend to. I’ll be home before supper.”
The girls ran to give their father a kiss and filed out. Cassandra wasn’t quite sure how to take leave of their new guardian, and Helen gave her an expression that felt equally lost.
“Goodbye, my dears.” Uncle Josiah nodded to them, squeezed Aunt Anne’s hand, and departed.
“Does he always work this much?”
“Josiah has become a sought-after lawyer in business affairs. His expertise is much valued throughout the New World.” Aunt Anne beckoned for them to follow, offering her elbows. “Come, see the garden.”
Cassandra and Helen accepted, and as they walked back through the house, Cassandra did not think about the fact that Lord David had helped them for some reason this morning. At least not very much.
What were they doing here? Her first night in the colonies, and Cassandra could not sleep. Every time she lay still, she felt as if she were back on the ship in those first days, rolling on the waves.
She might be ill, and not just with homesickness.
She rolled over to Helen, peacefully asleep in the moonlight. How very unfair. She had spent the same amount of time on a boat. Why should she be spared the same torment?
Was Lord David lying awake wherever he was, or was Cassandra the only one to suffer so?
Cassandra groaned and rolled back over. Her undulating stomach convinced her that this position wouldn’t help either.
It wasn’t merely the physical misery, either. She couldn’t help the feeling that she had made a terrible mistake today. In offending Lord David? In coming to the colonies? In leaving her home? She hadn’t had a choice in most of those, but that didn’t mean she’d done right.
She had spent so long focused on surviving the crossing that she had never considered what their life should become once they arrived. What on earth was she to do with herself? At Heartcomb, she had had a purpose, a function. She was supposed to help care for the tenants and the community. She’d spent time in charity for the poor, in tending the sick, in helping around their home.
When she awoke tomorrow, she could not be much assistance with any of those things. With seven other women about — not including the staff — there were surely already hands for every task that might need doing.
Did she have a place in this entire continent?
She certainly had no place on any other. Cousin Lowell had made that clear. Did she have a choice?
What became of a gentleman’s daughter when she was orphaned?
She pulled herself from the bed and fetched her wrapper off her trunk to put over her chemise. Her first night in an unfamiliar house, she didn’t quite know where she was going or how to get there in the dark. She simply knew she couldn’t stay here.
Did “here” mean this bed or this continent?
The dark stairs were treacherous, but a faint light glowed at the bottom. She crept along slowly, leaning against the wall, until she reached the landing.
The landing where she’d run into Lord David this afternoon.
She tried not to remember that embarrassing moment too long.
The warm glow proved to be coming from a low fire in the grate. Someone sat in a chair before the fire, but Cassandra couldn’t tell whom from the silhouette.
“Who’s there?” she called softly.
The person whirled around. Uncle Josiah. “Oh, child. Are you quite well?”
“Yes, Uncle. I can’t sleep, though.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I feel as though I’m —”
“Still on the boat,” Uncle Josiah finished for her. In the embers’ light, she could barely make out a soft kind of nostalgia in Uncle Josiah’s smile. “I understand.” He gestured for her to take a seat opposite him. “Come. Sit.”
Cassandra settled in the other wingback armchair facing the massive marble fireplace and let the fire’s warmth radiate into her. The nights were still cool in May in Philadelphia.
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bsp; She addressed Uncle Josiah. “You can’t sleep either?”
He sighed, staring into the embers. “No. The smallpox. We’ll have to have the girls inoculated quickly, of course, it’s only that — Anne is . . . I don’t know if she can nurse them this time.”
Cassandra tried to infer his meaning. Surely Aunt Anne couldn’t be with child at her age. “Is she unwell?”
“She tires so quickly now,” Uncle Josiah explained. “Tonight she was asleep practically before she lay down. I can’t imagine how she could stand being on her feet all day.” He offered a little chortle at his own pun.
“What will you do?”
“Think on it further.” He leaned forward and retrieved the poker to stir the coals.
Perhaps that was why Aunt Anne was always so gentle — she hadn’t the strength to do more.
And Uncle Josiah had still agreed to take in two more mouths to feed? “Thank you for taking us in,” Cassandra murmured. “I know it’s a hardship, too.”
“My sister’s girls? To be sure. Not a moment’s hesitation, for me or Anne.”
“Thank you.” She pulled her wrapper closer, and finally dared ask the question that had worn away at her mind since that afternoon. “Did Lord David really tell you where to find us?”
“Yes. Why?”
“He simply did not seem overly disposed toward us on the journey.”
“So you said. Well, he seems like someone who has a few things he’s still coming to understand.”
Cassandra looked to the fire. That was certainly a generous way of thinking of him. “I don’t suppose we’ll see him again.” Why did that thought not make her heart light?
“On the contrary. He’s let the flat above my office, so I’ll be seeing him, anyway.”
Cassandra vowed that if she ever knew she’d have to see Lord David again, she would make up for her ridiculous showing today.
Once again, that prospect wasn’t as unwelcome as she’d expected.
“It must be very difficult to feel . . . superfluous, even in one’s own family,” Uncle Josiah continued. Cassandra looked up at him, worried he might mean her, but he added, “For Lord David.”
“Yes.” Was that how he felt? She recalled the brittle smile, the pain as he’d mentioned his family. And then she’d gone and insulted him. Perhaps he had been right. That was hardly conduct becoming a gentleman’s daughter.