A Woman so Bold (5 page)

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he replied. He ascended the first two steps of the porch and extended his hand.

I hesitated.
A young lady does not take a gentleman’s hand indiscriminately
, I thought, a favorite proverb of Colleen’s, yet Colleen had abandoned me, and here we were. There was no common acquaintance present to introduce us. At last, I met him on the middle step and shook his hand.

“The pleasure is mine,” I replied, bowing.

“Lahn-dra,” he enunciated. “That’s mighty pretty. Don’t think I’ve encountered that one before.”

My mind flitted away for a second. His words reminded me of something.
Miss Montgomery. Has a nice ring to it. You got a first name?
Who had said those words? My father. My father had said them when he met my mother. My mouth went dry, but I managed to rejoin,
“I-I wouldn’t think so. I’m named after my grandfather, Landry. My mother wanted to name me Cassandra, from the Greek myth, but my father wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Cassandra. Wasn’t she a seer?”

“Yes.”

I smiled, pleased that he understood.

“Too pagan for him?”

“Precisely.”

“And what have
you
seen, near namesake of Cassandra?”

“A great many things. Come in for a drink, and I’ll tell you some of them.” I blushed, astounded by my own daring.

It was his turn to smile.

When he was seated in the parlor, I flew to the kitchen with Ezra in my wake. Lily was setting out sandwiches and molasses cookies on a tray.

“Do I look all right?” I asked.

She ignored me. “Ma—Colleen said to make a tea tray for company.”

“Lily, it’s a gentleman!”

Lily wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward to smooth away the tendrils of hair that had fallen out of my bun. “Is he handsome?”

“He has fair hair and a fine smile.”

“Goodness, you haven’t wasted any time taking that in!” she laughed. “Has he any manners?”

“Yes, and he seems educated.”

“Education doesn’t mean wealth, not anymore. Is he married?”

“Lily! You have a beau!”

“So you’ve claimed him already, have you? There, you look tidy.”

“Don’t be silly, I’ve just met him. You get the tray. I’ll make some tea.”

Sometime later, we were all seated in the parlor drinking iced tea. Lily’s egg salad sandwiches were excellent, and Mr. Cavendish tucked them away with zest. I took the opportunity to study him more carefully. He was naturally fair-skinned (but for his sunburned face and neck), his hair and beard were a light shade of blond, and his eyes were a clear blue. As I observed him, he rolled his sleeves to the elbow, for in spite of the drawn shades, the heat in the parlor was smothering. Saddle muscles were visible in his thighs, like my father and most of the men I knew. He was trim with a muscled torso, his shoulders broad, and his arms strong. He had shapely, beautiful hands. I imagined them closing around my wrists and sliding up my arms then inhaled sharply and shook myself out of my reverie, feeling as if my thoughts were written on my face.

Colleen had donned the outfit she wore for church and social calls, a dove-gray skirt and cream silk blouse with a high lace collar and long sleeves. It was snug around her growing middle, and she was sweating profusely. She sat fanning herself with vehemence.

“Cavendish,” she mused. “That sounds . . . Scottish?”

Mr. Cavendish struggled to swallow the morsel of sandwich in his mouth and said, “Yes, I’m a Scotsman. My grandparents came over as children.”

“Well, my husband’s children are Scots-Irish!” Colleen said this as if it were a revelation. I looked up to see him giving me a gentle smile. There was a mole above his mouth, and his lips were full. He had a nose that was nearly Grecian but rather broad at the base, and his jaw was square, tapering into a narrow chin.
Almost pretty, rather than handsome,
I thought, but it was an odd sentiment for a man who exuded such virility, and I dismissed it. Conventionally handsome he was not, but there was something in his looks that made me think of Norse gods. I smiled back.

“Oh yes!” Colleen repeated. “Scots-Irish.”

I winced, tortured. In spite of her Irish name, Colleen’s people were German and English, and she could never seem to get it into her head that nearly everyone who had settled in Florida was Scots-Irish, excepting the Africans and native Seminoles.

“Solomon’s mother is a stolid Irishwoman,” she crowed, “and I promise you, Landra has her temper, a mile wide and florid as her hair.”

I blushed to my scalp at this.
Now everything about me is red: temper, hair, face.

“I have
auburn
hair,” I corrected her, “and
everyone
here is Scots-Irish, Leen, come down from the Carolinas. Scotsman or not, Mr. Cavendish, you sound like a Southern man, born and bred.”

“I consider myself to be,” he replied.

“Where do you hail from?”

“Alabama, by way of South Carolina.”

“How did you come by the old Macready place?” asked Lily. I shot her a look of deep appreciation for helping to change the subject.

“Old Mr. Macready was my great uncle. He had no sons, and all his daughters are long since married, so the estate passed to me, some way or another. Well, fact is it went to my brother Gabriel, but he runs an insurance firm in Charleston and had no desire to fool with it, so he sold it to me.”

“Entailment,” I said. “In the event that the heir has no sons, the estate passes to the nearest male relation, such as a cousin or nephew.”

“That’s right.” He pointed to me. “You know a thing or two!”

“Or three or four,” said Lily defensively.

“Landra is accomplished,” said Colleen. “She had a governess.”

He gave me a look signifying doubt over whether a country waif with flyaway hair could possibly be accomplished. “Got some learnin’, have you?”

“Enough to tell you there is a
g
on the end of the word learning.”

“I knew that too, even if I do forget to pronounce it.” He shifted his gaze to Colleen. “What happened to her?”

“To whom? Oh, the governess! Well, she wasn’t Landra’s governess, really.”

I sighed, feeling the need to elaborate so we could move on. “She was my playmate, Ida Monday’s, governess, Miss Northrop. Mama and Ida’s mother were friends, you see. Mama had taught Eric to read and write and cipher, but she wanted us to have a real education. She promised to pay a bushel of peas, a sack of pecans, twelve dozen eggs, and a pail of new milk annually, for me and my brother Eric to sit in on Clyde and Ida’s lessons a few times a week.

“After she passed away, Daddy didn’t see the point anymore, but when he married Colleen, she changed his mind.”

The way Colleen maneuvered the advent of our education, one which had gone sadly awry after Mama died, is something I could never forget. Just as I shall never forget the first time she visited our home after her betrothal to my father. The two went nearly hand in hand. Before that day, she had been a secret to us, a dreaded enigma, inspiring, nonetheless, curiosity. When Daddy went to court her, I would try to picture her in my mind. He had told me she was young and pretty, with fair hair. I hoped this meant that if he married her she would be a kind stepmother, not like the ones in fairytales who made their stepchildren into slaves or turned them out of the house.

Lenore dusted the sideboard and all the furniture in the parlor that day and made me take a bath and bathe Lily as well. My hair was combed as smooth as it would allow, plaited, and tied with twine, and Eric’s mop of curls was tamed with pomade. Granny cooked chicken and rice, collard greens, and cornbread for dinner, and I made the dessert, a bread pudding. When we heard the sound of the carriage in the drive, Lily and I ran to the screen door to peer at our visitor, but Eric remained by the hearth in the kitchen, whittling a piece of kindling. He remembered Mama too well to take even miniscule pleasure in curiosity over her successor.

I was shocked when I saw Daddy helping Colleen down from the wagon. She was little more than a child, thin and pale-blond, with cornflower blue eyes too large in her round, naïve face. She took my hand and spoke kindly to me, but I hated her on sight. I could see the tentative way she took in her surroundings, the plain tin roof and whitewashed exterior of the house, the swept yard where chickens scratched around Mama’s gardenias, and the simple hardwood floors. She must think herself too fine for us, to blink so uncertainly at our home. In that instant, I set my will to driving her away.

“Lily and I never wear shoes before November,” I told her, noticing that her eyes had come to rest on our bare feet. We had, in fact, been instructed to don our shoes for company but had forgotten in our curiosity to see the woman Daddy was courting.

As we sat in the parlor before supper, I stared at her with a look of purposeful stupidity on my face, although I had been taught all my years that a polite child keeps their eyes on the ground until they are spoken to. At last, Lenore pinched me and made me lower my gaze.

“Landra, your father informs me you have a fine singing voice,” said Colleen, once the adults had covered the polite topics of conversation. She gestured to the worn Steinway in the corner and said, “I thought you might favor me with an offering.”

“I don’t sing
so
good,” I replied.

“Tosh!” said Daddy, his brows lowering. “Like a nightingale don’t! Sing Aura Lee for her.”

I hesitated, then went to the piano and began to play. I made certain to hit a few wrong notes and sang the song from beginning to end in a quavering falsetto, slightly off key, that was so unlike my own voice it was all I could do not to giggle with delight at my naughtiness. Nonetheless, Colleen clapped at my performance.

“I’m sure with practice she shall be a great soloist,” she said. Daddy scoffed but did not acknowledge what I had done.

“You girls look so pretty,” she said, attempting to engage me again.

“Yes,” I replied. “Lenore made us take a bath. First time Lily’s hair has been combed this month.”

Colleen’s mouth opened at this, but she made no reply. I sank down onto the ottoman and took up the sampler I was working on, pleased with myself.

At supper, I noticed that Colleen picked at her greens.

“Don’t you like collards?” I ventured. “They’re Granny’s recipe. She’s famous for ‘em.”

“Oh,” she hesitated. “I’m sure they’re lovely. It’s just that I’d never eaten collards before I came to the South, and they’re something of an acquired taste. I find them rather pungent.”

“Hmph!” This came from Granny. I looked over to see her chewing her bottom lip, a sign that she had taken offense.

“What does pungent, mean?” I asked, although I had a fairly accurate idea.

“Oh it means strongly scented or flavored.”

“You mean to say they smell bad?”

“Landra!” Daddy was glowering at me from beneath his brows. “If the lady doesn’t like a dish, she doesn’t have to eat it.”

After that, I restricted myself to throwing acre peas at Eric until one hit Colleen and we were sent to bed. When Lily was asleep, I crept down the hallway to the parlor door and eavesdropped. Granny had gone home, and it was just Daddy and Colleen sitting in the dark.

“Your children are charming, but they need mothering,” she was saying.

Daddy grunted his approval of this statement. “Ma’s done what she could with ‘em, and they got a nanny.”

“I don’t believe Landra thinks much of me. The looks she gave! Eric was taciturn as well.”

“Landra will give you the run around if you let her. That performance she gave at the piano was for your benefit entirely. Never heard her sing that a way a day in her life. ‘Don’t wear shoes till November. First time Lily’s hair’s been combed’ my foot.” He scoffed, and the fire sizzled as he spat into it.

“I’m sure it is difficult for a girl her age to be without a mother.”

Rather than feel warmed by Colleen’s sympathy, I seethed with anger. She knew nothing of my life. She could not come here and try to replace my mother and take over everything. I tried to send my spirit out and cast her from the house, but the evil powers of darkness Granny was always hinting lurked beneath my surface when I was naughty seemed lacking that day.

Neither did they aid me in the future. Within the month, Colleen had married Daddy in a small ceremony at the Methodist church. They were gone for a week on their honeymoon in White Springs, and she returned to supplant me as mistress of the house. I had hoped the fact that she was a “Yankee”—a word that to me represented everything strange and unknown—meant she would have little knowledge of farm life and could be made a fool of.

I was wrong. It was true she had small knowledge of soap making or gardening or cane grinding, less of shoveling manure or milking a cow, but she had the ability to cook and sew and run an orderly house. Still, I intended to thwart her at every turn. The first morning, I rose before sunrise to do my chores and begin breakfast before she was out of bed. I had not been idle in the year since Mama’s death; Granny had taught me nearly everything she knew in the kitchen, and Lenore did not believe in idle hands. Colleen had spoken the evening before of making us a hasty pudding and buckwheat pancakes, but I threw the sour-smelling yeast batter she had prepared out the back door.

By the time she entered the kitchen, I had the table set and laden with food and coffee brewing in the percolator. There was a tureen of grits swimming in butter; a plate of leftover ham, sliced and fried; sunny-side-up eggs; and a basket of biscuits. The biscuits were burnt, and a couple of the yolks had broken, but I was proud of my work nonetheless.

“Good morning, Colleen,” I said
.
“Coffee?”