A Woman so Bold (9 page)

“Tell us about yourself, Mr. Cavendish,” said Lily easily, sensing my distraction. Mr. Cavendish’s answer gave me time to step up to the buffet and resume my duties as hostess.

“Well . . . I was born durin’ the war. My father was a gentleman. He had an old name, a bit of land, and not much else. He was killed at the Battle of Olustee. What fortune he left my mother was inherited by my elder brother, Gabriel.”

“You did not wish to pursue the church, as a good second son should?” I asked, pouring tea.

“Hardly. I’ve done one thing and another. I had a
small
inheritance.”

“Tell us something about yourself that most people wouldn’t know at first glance,” said Lily. I looked at her from the corner of my eye. She was flirting, but not to spite me. Interacting with men came easier to her than it ever had to me.

“Ah! Let’s see. When it came time for my brother to take his European tour at twenty-one, he came down with an illness. Nothing fatal, but serious enough he could not go. His passage was booked, so I coerced our mother into letting me go in his place, although I was only nineteen. I introduced myself as Gabriel Cavendish, eldest son of the late Braxton, to everyone I met.” The hint of a smile played about his lips. “It cast an appropriate anonymity over the whole affair.”

“What sort of goings on were there that required anonymity?” I ventured, feigning innocence.

“Well . . .” he paused, reddening.

“It’s grown terribly warm in here,” said Lily. “I’ll go and make the lemonade.”

I handed her the glass pitcher, my eyes on our guest.

Mr. Cavendish cleared his throat, glancing at Edith. She had yet to look up from her book.

“Never mind,” I said, smiling. “Your tales of Parisian houses are safe here. The very phrase ‘European tour’ has an air of mystery, doesn’t it?”

“It does. Now, Miss Andrews, tell me something about
yourself
that most people wouldn’t know.”

I laughed at his eagerness to change the subject. “There is nothing to me.”

“So you’ve always been here, lived here? Grew here, like a hearty flower in a desolate swamp?”

“Hmmm. I taught school once, for about six months.” I handed him a cake plate piled with finger sandwiches and molasses teacakes.

He eyed it eagerly. “Thank you. Where did you teach?”

“I taught at Clarabelle School in town.”

“How did you like teaching?”

“I detested it. It was too far to drive each day, so I boarded with a minister and his wife and sent my earnings home. It was very tedious, and my students were badly behaved.”

“Were you forced to use the rod?”

“I caned a great many, but I’m afraid my small stature was not in my favor.”

“I imagine your great tenacity was.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling.

He bowed.

“I think the first time I called here, it was mentioned you had a tutor.”

“A governess, Miss Northrop. She was Ida’s governess, to be exact.”

“Ida Monday. I met her at the ball.”

“Yes. She’s not easy to forget, even after the first meeting.”

“And you learned from Ida’s governess?”

“A few days a week when I could be spared, as a child. Then Colleen sent me to live there for three years in my teens so I could benefit from their society. Ida was meant to benefit from my . . . practicality.”

“So they both could catch a husband, more like,” said Lily as she returned with the lemonade. “You see it worked so well, as they are both still unmarried.”

William laughed. “Your favorite subject, what was it?”

“I’m fond of reading and music.”

“Your father told me so, when I was here before. Did the governess teach you that, too? You see, men know so little of women’s education. I went to boarding school myself.”

“She taught me a bit, but my father taught me more. He lives for music and farming. The first time he noticed I could carry a tune as a little girl he began teaching me to sing. It’s one of few things Daddy and myself agree on. My voice isn’t fine, but I can hit the proper notes.”

“Landra is modest,” said Lily. “Everyone admires her singing voice.”

We spoke of more light-hearted subjects then: the weather, favorite songs, and church. When it came time for Will to leave, I walked out with him as I had on our first meeting.

“You country girls are so easy to be with,” he said. “When you first accompanied me to my horse and held my stirrup, I thought you were being forward, but I see now it’s just your way.”

“Must you mention that?” I said, embarrassed. “It was habit, you see. I always hold my father’s stirrup. Now you must be thinking, ‘How terribly back water these folks are.’”

“I think nothing of the kind. I’ve done my share of physical work. And you can’t know what yours and Lily’s company means to me way out here.”

“If you enjoy it so much, perhaps you’d like to join us for Sunday dinner tomorrow? Colleen wanted me to ask.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, and I knew he was thinking of his promise not to come without an invitation. “Would you like it if I came to dinner?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t mind it,” I replied.

Perhaps it seems we were flirting with one another awfully quickly, but all young people had back then for getting to know one another was words. Nothing else was permitted, at least not openly. It was true, besides, that I didn’t mind the idea of his company. Far from it.

Several days after Mr. Cavendish’s visit, Colleen insisted I take a basket over to him. She said he must get lonely up at the Macready place, remote as it was. I argued with her.

“You don’t understand. You
never
will,” I contended. “It isn’t proper for me to visit a gentleman alone.”

“Take Lily with you.”

“Lily is sixteen! She’s hardly a chaperone!”

“Oh, Landra. It isn’t 1860, after all. Girls up north visit privately with gentlemen, and no one considers them fast. It’s acceptable for young people to socialize with one another. Invite him to dinner while you’re there.”

The fastest way to the old Macready place was to skip the dirt road and go the back way, through our pecan grove, the copse of long leaf pines, and through Mr. Buckley’s cornfield, climbing a couple of fences in the process. Lily and I were unsure of the propriety of such an action, but as Daddy had the horse and buggy, we were left with little choice.

We walked for some time in companionable silence, both lost in the relief of freedom from our chores. I swung the basket of baked goods by its handle in calloused indifference to its contents, and Lily skipped ahead, sampling the early blackberries.

At length she came frisking back to me, lithe and graceful as a young deer, her dark curls flying free of the Gibson tuck she had smoothed them into that morning. She had made two wreaths of yellow black-eyed Susans, and she placed one atop my auburn waves and the other on her own head.

“You look happy,” she said, smiling. “Are you pleased to be visiting him?”

“I’m pleased to be out on a day such as this.”

She put her arm about my waist. “So am I. But tell me true, Lan, do you like him?”

I bit my bottom lip, stifling a smile, and tried to push her away, but she grasped at my sleeve. “Your dimples are leaping like gazelles!”

“Gazelles? Have you been reading Song of Solomon again?” I held out my hand for one of her berries, and she dropped one into my palm. “Does it matter if I do like him? He’s handsome and single, and he has a house.”

“But it
does
matter.”

I placed the blackberry in my mouth, careful not to let it touch my lips and stain them purple. Its tart sweetness burst on my tongue.

“Very well, I like him. I have since the first day he came here, and even more since Ida’s ball, but if you tell him I’ll skin you alive.”

She laughed. “I knew it!”

“More importantly, does he like me?”

“He flirted with you almost shamefully last time he called. If he doesn’t, he’s a terrible cad.”

“What do you think of him?”

She popped another berry into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “He is too calm, too gentle, for me. But whatever I may think of him, he’s handsome. He has the face of an Adonis,” she said, whispering the last word for emphasis, “and you can be his Aphrodite.”

“Lily! I never should have told you that tale!” I scolded, but I laughed, and so did she. For the picture we made, two young women with flowers in their hair and mouths stained with berries, on a fine bright day full of bloom, the Grecian reference was far more apt than the Biblical.

I had forgotten what a sight the Macready house was, even from a distance. It was a house of many windows and gables, with a peaked gray roof, and a wrap-around porch with a smaller balcony supported by four columns in front. The columns, once covered in peeling paint, were new and bare, which meant Mr. Cavendish had replaced them in his work on restoring the old place. The flower gardens in front were still scraggly and over grown, but an ancient magnolia gave the front walk a stately elegance as we surmounted the front steps and knocked on the door.

We knocked several times, waiting for a few minutes in between, but received no answer.

“Perhaps we ought to leave the basket and go?” queried Lily.

“I didn’t walk all this way not to see him,” I said, making my way down the steps again. She followed me, and we rounded the corner of the house. After checking the derelict dovecote, with its gate swinging crazily on one hinge, we found William working in a vegetable garden next to one of the fallen down outbuildings, hoeing with his shirt off.

He wore a pair of brown, patched britches, and his suspenders were off his shoulders, hanging down around his thighs. He was sweating, and the sun gleamed on his bare chest and broad back. The muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out with every swing. He was a strongly built man by nature, and physical work in the months since he first came to Willowbend had hardened him.

“You’re quite welcome,” Lily whispered. I poked her arm, and she squealed, alerting Will to our presence. He raised his hand to us, giving me a glimpse of the hair under his arm; it was ruddy and golden, a bit darker than the hair on his head. I stood as if frozen.

“Say something,” Lily whispered.

“G-good day!” I managed, my throat feeling as it did in those dreams where one must scream for help yet is stricken mute.

Will leaned his hoe against a tree, removed a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his face with it. His shirt was hanging from a low branch, and he took it up but did not put it back on. Just then, I remembered the flower wreath, and scratched it hastily off my head. Lily left hers, but she reached out and smoothed my hair where I had mussed it.

“Good morning!” he said, approaching us. “I’m sorry for my dishabille.”

“Not at all,” said Lily.

Resisting the urge to poke her again, I said, “We’re sorry to interrupt your work. Our stepmother sent us with a basket for you. She thinks you don’t know how to cook for yourself judging by how heartily you eat.”

Will laughed. “It’s not that. It’s only that the cooking there is so good.”

“Oh dear, I’ve left it on the front porch,” I said, my cheeks reddening.

“Please, come inside, both of you. Just give me a moment to wash, and I’ll show you around.”

We waited in the parlor as Will bathed and dressed. It was obvious he had not done as much to improve the inside of the house as the outside. The rug was passing clean but old, worn by many generations of feet. There was dust, but not such an abundance as to have been left by decades of neglect, and I surmised that he had at least cleaned since moving in.

Will returned from his bath sans sweat, with his hair combed. He had changed into a gingham shirt, with khaki trousers and a tweed waistcoat. After offering us coffee, which we declined, he gave us a tour of the house and grounds. The house itself was rambling, filled with echoing rooms haunted by shapeless furniture covered in white drapery. In addition to the parlor, there was a library, a large dining room, a billiard room, and a spacious attic. It was a house for entertaining large parties and balls, a house for leisure, a house that demanded servants for its upkeep; in short, a house from a time that had passed on, but I was enchanted by it.

There were many outbuildings on the property. Some were sturdy even after more than a decade of disuse, while others were falling down. Will had erected a small lean-to and a corncrib since his arrival. He took us through what had been the garden and showed us the land he meant for his tobacco crop. The land directly behind the house, butting up nearly to the outbuildings and the vegetable garden, was all farmland; every foot of available space had once been used to grow cotton.

The field was freshly plowed, and way out in the middle stood a lone oak tree that was so large it had been left to grow when the ground was cleared many years before.

“Can you imagine it surrounded by swaying white cotton?” I asked. “It must have been beautiful.”

“Would you like to walk there?”

“May I? That is, if Lily wishes to come.” I turned to Lily, but she was examining the inscription on a stone statue of St. Francis of Assisi.

“I’ll stay behind,” she murmured, “and walk among the dead roses. It’s hot. You two go ahead.”

Will offered me his arm, and we walked beside one another in the fresh dirt, each in our own row, until we reached the live oak. It was an ancient tree; its branches spread wide and long and low, and its great trunk was more than forty paces around. Its distance was far enough that the manse looked only a few inches high from where we stood, and Lily was invisible as she made her way among the roses.

“It must be three or four hundred years old,” said Will.

“More, perhaps.” I stared up into the gnarled limbs and slipped off my shoes, letting the dirt sink between my toes, cool from the tree’s shade.