Borrowed Dreams (Scottish Dream Trilogy) (32 page)

Maitland started. “You had
requested—”

“Indeed,” the dowager cut in with
her usual abruptness. “I hated to think I had been wrong about Millicent.”

“You were not wrong about her,” Lyon replied tenderly. “And as much as I thought the idea of an arranged marriage
preposterous when you first suggested it, this is as good a chance as any to
commend you and to thank you for choosing her.”

Their last meeting had been the day
Lyon was leaving for Hertfordshire. He had been heavily sedated and, from what
little he remembered of their last words to each other, Lyon didn’t think he
had been very appreciative.

“It is because of Millicent and her
stubbornness that I have come this far and improved this much. She is a
fighter, Mother. The woman would not let me be.”

The sense of relief that passed
between the visitors was palpable. Lyon saw his mother lean back heavily
against the cushioned chair. A weight had obviously been lifted from her.

“So she is done with all that
nonsense about a divorce or an annulment.” 

Lyon felt a dark cloud form over
his own head. He leaned forward.

“What are you talking about?”

“The countess demanded a provision
to be included in the marriage agreement, m’lord,” Maitland stated quietly. “In
the event of your recovery, a divorce would be uncontested.”

“Why?”

“Because of her first marriage,”
the dowager put in, lowering her voice. “Because of the scandalous abuse she
received under the brutal hands of her first husband. Because of the shame she
still carries at the thought of facing society. Because of not being loved
enough even by her own family. Despite the rumors that circulated at the time,
they would do nothing to rescue her from that horrible situation.”

“I knew nothing of this.”

“Reason enough, I should think, for
any woman not to want to be exposed to the bonds of marriage ever again.”

The fingers of his hand fisted in
anger. The fact that Wentworth was a worthless human being had been obvious all
along. But Lyon had not guessed at his physical abuse of Millicent. Bits and pieces started to fit into place. He realized his mother was again speaking.

“I am certain you already realize
that your wife has great pride. It took a great deal of hard work and courage
to take charge of this estate. She has made it a home for herself and for the
people she cares about. Though financially strapped, she was happy here.
Absolutely content. It took a great deal of persuasion on my part to convince
her to marry again at all. But you should consider that what she asked for over
two months ago might not be what she wants now.” 

A seed of doubt had already taken
hold in Lyon’s mind.

“I almost did not recognize
Millicent when I laid eyes on her a few moments ago,” the dowager continued in
a reassuring tone. “She has changed as much as you have. She looks happy. She
glows with an inner beauty. In fact, she is much different than the woman I met
in London.” 

Millicent was happy when people
needed her. She had risen to the challenge of dealing with him because of the
needs that had crippled him. Recently, they had shared tremendous passion. But they had not spoken one word of the future.

To become whole but to pay the
price of losing her was an option that Lyon was not ready to accept. He cared
for her too much.

There was a knock on the door, and
two servants bringing trays of tea entered.

“I shall forgo the tea. I should
like to go up to rest before dinner.”

“We keep country hours here,
Mother. We dine at seven.”

“Very well.” The dowager pushed
herself to her feet. “This is your chance, Sir Richard, to bring Aytoun up to
snuff on all the news of Baronsford. I believe he is ready for it.”

Lyon watched his mother go and
wondered what else he could be told today that could top the distressing news
they had shared about Millicent’s bargain.

*****

Pushing herself off her knees,
Violet wiped her mouth with the back of one sleeve and leaned against the stone
wall of the house. The wind carried spattering of cold rain, and the young
woman raised her face, relishing the feel of it against her fevered skin.   

Tonight the taste of cheese had not
sat well in her stomach. Yesterday morning it had been the smell of turnips
that had sent her running. The day before, she couldn’t hold down even a cup of
weak tea.

Violet’s heart drummed hard in her
chest. For the past fortnight she had been sick to her stomach every day. She
had stopped denying it: She was pregnant.

The consequences of what this
meant, though, had continued to pound at her. Bearing a child out of wedlock.
She would lose her position. She would bring shame onto her family’s name.

“Are you coming tonight?”

Amina’s call as the woman stepped
out the back door forced Violet away from the wall. “I am. I was waiting for
you,” she lied.

They walked together toward one of
the recently repaired cottages just beyond the stables. Amina and Jonah lived
there, and nearly every night Amina and a number of the other former slave
women gathered there.
Violet had been welcome among these women ever
since the days just before the squire died. A bond had been formed when, out of
fear of Squire Wentworth, she had taken shelter with four of the black women in
their hut in the Grove.

Since that time one of them, having
being freed, had gone to London. The rest of them, though, despite their new
positions or living arrangements or marriage, continued to get together in the
room of one or the cottage of another nearly every night. For a couple of hours
they would gather to talk or sew, enjoying one another's company. Violet had an
open invitation to join them whenever she wished, and she often did. 

Tonight’s gathering was a great
relief to the young woman. She felt safe here. And after so many hours of
anguishing over her pregnancy, she had been desperate to step outside
herself—even for an hour or two. She had no one in whom she could confide this,
and that included Ned. She already knew what his reaction would be.

“…never had a husband, but she left
a child behind when they sold her to that Dr. Dombey.”

Violet focused on the conversation
that was going on around her.

“I had never heard anything about
that.” Amina lowered the sewing onto her lap.

“That was before your time, child,”
the oldest of the women commented. She had spent most of her life in the
islands, but her talent as a brewer had caused Wentworth to bring her to
Melbury Hall.
“I have heard our people say Ohenewaa was an Ashanti princess, stolen away from the land to the west of a sacred river in Africa. She had real
beauty as a child, and so she was taken up as a domestic servant. She never
worked in the field, like I did before I went to the kitchens. By the grace of the Almighty, she never took no beatings the way the rest of us did. ‘Twasn’t
till she came of age that the troubles started.” 

“Troubles?” Violet asked quietly.

“Aye. When she started showing
signs of being a woman. I don’t know how old she was. Maybe twelve or thirteen.
But the master was quick enough to notice it. I remember she still had some
growing left in her, the first time that she started swelling up with child.”
The old woman shook her head sadly. “But she lost it at birth. The master’s
wife wouldn’t allow any of us to go to her the night of her birthing. The
mistress would have been happy to see her die, too. I still remember her crying
out in pain and fear that night.”

“You said she left a child behind,”
Amina asked.

“Aye, that I did. This was all
before she learned how to end a pregnancy before it showed. I think it was the
year after or maybe the year after that she swelled up again. And this time a boy was born.”

“Could she keep him?”

“No chance of that. By then the master was tired of her. He kept the child in the house, though, and passed Ohenewaa
on to his bailiff and the men. But that woman was too strong for them. She ran
away. They brought her back and branded her. But she ran away again. They
brought her back and whipped her good that time. But she kept running.”

“She was lucky to survive it,”
Amina said sadly.

“That is what the rest of us were
thinking, too. But you know, what was so impressive about her was that every
time they brought her back, she became stronger. With every beating she became
more a part of the rest of us. She was still a young thing, but her name
started getting out. And we stopped thinking of her as the master’s girl.”

“I am surprised Dombey bought her.”

The old woman stabbed the needle
into the sewing on her lap. “He was brought from Port Royal to see to the
master’s wife. She was sick in bed with a fever, and that was when he
accidentally ran across Ohenewaa. She was sick too then, but she was ailing
from the latest lashing she got.”

“I remember Dombey when he was much
older,” Amina said. “He wasn’t too bad.”

“I don’t know,” the old woman
continued. “Maybe he did have more conscience than most of them. Whatever
‘twas, by the time the doctor left, the master’s wife died and Dombey managed
to buy Ohenewaa.”

“But that was only the start of her
making a name for herself,” another woman, who had been keeping silent, put in.
“Quite a few of us got sold off to other plantations right after that.” She
looked at the oldest woman in the group. “That’s when you and me went to the
kitchens in that other place. We only saw Ohenewaa from time to time after
that. Everywhere Dombey went, he took her, so we only saw her when the doctor
would be called up to the plantation.”

“She went everywhere, she did,” the
older woman said. “And being as smart as she was, she learned whatever she
could from old Dombey. But she didn’t only learn from him. When they was
traveling aboard a ship to or back from Africa, she’d spend the passage with
our people. As Dombey did as little as he needed to do with slaves, Ohenewaa
needed to be down there, below decks, seeing to the sick, comforting them that
felt their hearts being ripped out of them, and all the while learning what she
could of the land our people was stolen from.”

“’Twas amazing to be working at a
plantation and having new men or women come in who already knew Ohenewaa,” the
second woman said, going back to her sewing. “She became a common thread that
linked us all.”

The oldest woman smiled.
“Especially the women.”

“Aye, she knew how to deal with our
kinds of problems.”

“What happened to her son?” Amina
asked.

The older women shrugged. “I don’t
think she ever went back to find out. Maybe he lived to be a servant or groom
or something. Who can say?”

“And what plantation was that?”
Amina asked. “Who was Ohenewaa’s first master?”

“That was out at the Hyde
plantation, child. That was where everything started.”

She must have been crazy to think
this arrangement would work.

Millicent laid the book down and
rubbed her eyes. She had delayed going up the stairs to their bedroom as long
as she could. The dowager and Sir Richard, tired from their trip, had retired
soon after dinner. And as it had become part of their habit these past nights,
the valets had taken Lyon up to ready him for bed as well.

Millicent walked out of the library
and passed through the house. Slowly she started up the wide curved stairs. If
this had been any other day—if she had not been so affected by the change in Lyon—she would have been thrilled to rush up there. But for the first time since her
marriage to him, she felt out of her element. She did not belong. He was moving
too fast, and she was not sure she had the strength to follow.

The reason for these pangs of
insecurity was not just his looks. True, he was far more handsome than she had even
imagined. He looked like a god. But there was the matter of his confidence,
too. And power.

She could feel his masculinity
growing. Tonight he had exuded the raw animal potency of a man taking charge of
his life.

And that frightened her.

The arrival of the dowager and her
lawyer had awakened the man who must have been sleeping inside her husband.
When Millicent looked at him during dinner, as he debated the growing unrest in
the American colonies with Sir Richard, she had seen a gentleman of
intelligence and wit, a member of the fashionable elite, a nobleman beyond her
reach. Lyon Pennington, fourth Earl of Aytoun, was a man she barely had the
right to dream about. 

Violet had moved some of
Millicent’s clothes over to this room earlier, but she hoped that he would be
asleep by the time she reached the bedchamber. Pushing open the door and
peering in, Millicent found her hope had been in vain. At least a dozen candles
were burning, and Lyon appeared as awake as he had been at noon. He was propped
up with pillows on the bed. A book lay open on his lap.

“I was wondering if you would come
up, or if I needed to come down and bring you up myself.”

“I would like to have seen you
try.” She closed the bedroom door and leaned her back against it.

“Is that a challenge?”

The touch of a smile on his lips
played havoc with Millicent’s insides. She cast about for safe ground to step
on. “You and Sir Richard were locked in the library for some time this
afternoon. It must have felt good to be brought up to date with your business
affairs.” 

“Good and distressing. Are you
getting ready for bed?”

Millicent pushed away from the
door. She glanced at the screen divider and the nightdress that had been laid
out on a settee beside it. Tonight the room felt much smaller; the bed looked
far too narrow. Lyon closed the book and fixed his gaze on her.

“I never had the opportunity to
tell you how beautiful you looked tonight.”