Like Chaff in the Wind (16 page)

“Eye candy,” she murmured and pinched his buttock hard enough to make him hiss.

*

The bored official duly registered the signed deed conferring the ownership of Matthew Graham on Alexandra Graham, prepared a copy of the deed, signed it, and with a malicious smile handed it to Alex, not to Matthew.

“Six years remaining, ma’am.”

“No, my husband is a free man as of this minute.”

The official snickered as he shook his head. “Not while he remains in Virginia. Here he’s registered as an indentured.” He tilted his head. “You can of course free him, but that requires the Governor’s signature.” For a moment the veil of boredom lifted from his eyes and he peered at Matthew.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Matthew said icily.

“Ah well, they all say that,” the official snorted.

“In this case it’s the truth,” Alex said. The official hitched his shoulders, indicating that he didn’t care, one way or the other, and turned his attention to the next person in line.

“We’ll leave as soon as we can,” Alex said, not liking the mask of anger on Matthew’s face. “After all, we have to hurry home to Mark.” She thought of something, and dug into her petticoat pocket, extracting a folded and refolded piece of paper.

“It’s from Simon.”

At first he just held the letter, turning it over several times before he unfolded it, long fingers smoothing out the creases. She knew the letter by heart, but she stood on tiptoe beside Matthew to read it once again, her heart heavy with homesickness.

It was a letter pungent with their old life. It told of summer days at Hillview, of their son running wild across the water meadows. It described the long days of harvest, how the hayloft filled with sweet new hay, and the pantries with preserves.

Simon wrote of Mark, of how Joan had given him a kitten of his own. He described a happy little boy, eyes the same light hazel of his sire, hair that fell in unruly curls. …
but Joan says she dare not cut them, for she lives in fear of her eyes should Alex come back and find her beloved lamb shorn
…

“Too right,” Alex muttered. She heard Matthew inhale and knew he was reading the long post scriptum. …
It may interest you to know that we have had fancy visitors here at Hillview. Master Luke Graham no less, coming to assert his rights of guardianship over both estate and heir. Let it suffice to say he rode away most disgruntled, protesting that it wasn’t right that he, the uncle, should have no say in the raising of Hillview’s heir.

“We can still acquire passage on one of the first boats back, and maybe we can be at Hillview for the harvest.”

“Mayhap.” Matthew folded the letter together and tucked it inside his shirt, offered Alex his arm, and set off towards the boarding house.

Chapter 22

“What’s the matter with him?” Alex asked Mrs Gordon next morning, holding Matthew’s unresponsive hand. Mrs Gordon shook her head and sat back, gnawing at her lip.

“He’s wasted,” she said, drawing a finger down Matthew’s shirtfront. “These last few days have mayhap taken too much out of him.” She raised an eyebrow at Alex and smiled.

“Not my doing, I hope.” She just couldn’t help herself. She had to, and so did he, and she hadn’t even considered that maybe he was too weak. “So what should I do?”

Mrs Gordon shrugged. “He needs food and sleep, lass. The rest will take care of itself, aye?” Alex wasn’t quite as convinced, describing the last few nights of disrupted sleep, with Matthew flailing beside her.

“That he has to sort on his own.” Mrs Gordon cupped Matthew’s cheek, bending to place a soft kiss on his brow.

Alex sat beside Matthew all morning, her attention focused on the spare shirt she was making for him. He needed an extra pair of breeches as well, and everyday stockings. That made her smile, and she bent over to rifle through her work basket, producing a pair of very nice stockings, the first she’d ever finished to Mrs Gordon’s exacting standards.

“What are those?” Matthew asked from the bed. He studied the grey stockings hanging from her hand.

“I made them for you,” she said, coming to sit by him. “They took me ages and ages, because Mrs Gordon is quite the pain in the arse at times, so she kept on tearing them up.”

He laughed. “Pain in the arse, aye? I haven’t heard anyone say that for well over a year.” He blinked, wiped at his eyes.

“What is it?” Alex stroked his bare skull, his cheek. Compared to when she first saw him, he was looking far better, the grey tinge to his skin replaced by a somewhat more normal tone, but still his eyes looked sunken in his face, and even if he’d washed himself as well as he could, there were streaks of encrusted dirt here and there.

“I thought…” He cleared his throat. “I sometimes thought…”

“…that I wouldn’t come,” she finished for him.

He nodded, eyes a golden green.

“And I…” She lifted his hand to her face and kissed his palm. “…I thought I might be too late. But I came, and you were still alive.”

“Aye, but I am that glad you didn’t leave it much longer.” He tightened his hold on her hand, and she widened her fingers to braid them tight round his. It made her relax, to feel their fingers intertwined like that.

“Do you recall how I told you, when we first met, that the light in me had grown so much dimmer whilst in gaol?”

Alex nodded that she did.

“It near went out this time, some days it guttered on the brink of extinction.”

“I know,” she breathed. “I dreamt of you, saw you lying in a small room surrounded by other men, and I knew you were crying inside. And I so wanted you to know that I was on my way, and that I would never, ever give up.”

“My wife,” he whispered, “my Alexandra Ruth.” A long bony finger came up to touch her cheek, follow the shape of her brows, his thick dark lashes lowered over eyes that glistened wetly.

Alex coughed a couple of times to rid her windpipe of the congested tears stuck halfway down.

“Right, you need to rest and I have to get back to my sewing. And then, in some hours I’ll bring you something strengthening to eat, with lots and lots of eggs in it, and after that I think Mr Graham is going to have a bath - a long, very hot bath with his wife in attendance.”

Matthew’s long mouth curved into a smile. “I don’t need the eggs,” he murmured, already drifting off.

“Oh yes, you do,” she said, patting him fondly over his crotch. “You need dozens and dozens. You have a wanton wife to take care of.”

He opened one eye and nailed it into her. “I can handle that.”

“I have no doubts whatsoever, but we’ll go with the eggs, just in case.”

“Just in case,” he agreed and fell abruptly asleep, his hand gripping her skirts.

*

No wonder he had insisted on keeping his shirt on, hiding his naked body from view. So thin, his bones standing in clear outline against his skin. Long ropes of muscle and tendons, but so wasted, so shrunk from the man she’d last seen naked back at Hillview.

“What kind of an animal did this to you?” Her fingers traced welts across his back and down his sides, deep grooves from where the pulling straps had dug themselves into his skin.

Matthew twisted, trying to see his back. “Is it that bad?”

“Bad!” She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head between his shoulder blades. “My beautiful man,” she said, rubbing her cheek hard against him.

“Not so beautiful now.”

“Oh yes,” she replied. “Very, very beautiful. Get in,” she said, indicating the hip bath. She picked up soap and a linen towel, and scrubbed all of him until he was a glowing pink. He looked at the scummy water with astonishment.

“It’s as dirty as on Friday!”

“Men! You don’t really know how to wash.” She towelled him dry and re-bandaged his foot before pointing him back to bed.

“Not to sleep,” he said, making a grab for her. She squealed when he pressed himself close to her.

“Of course to sleep, you’re a very weak man. I have to be careful so that I don’t wear you out.”

“Wear me out?” He’d eaten a huge helping of eggs with cheese and bread, followed by a slice of pie drenched in creamy heavy custard. “I’ll show you, aye?”

*

“We must go and see the Governor,” Alex told Matthew some weeks later, looking him up and down. His hair was still unbecomingly short, and even if he ate like a horse there was a lingering gauntness to him. “Or maybe we wait, you know, until you’re a bit more recovered.”

Matthew just nodded and went back to studying the papers he was holding in his hands.

“What’s that?” She leaned over his shoulder. “Oh. It’s not particularly good, I can’t get his hair right…” She extended her finger to trace the soft cheeks of her baby boy.

Alex sighed; more than a year since she’d last seen Mark, and by the time they got back he’d have lived more months without her than with her. Sometimes she had horrible nightmares in which she knelt to hug him and he just cried, his arms stretched out to Joan. All the more horrible because that was probably what would happen; he’d hide behind Joan or Simon and stare at these his reappeared parents in confusion.

“Will he love us, do you think?” she asked Matthew. He tucked back the papers where he’d found them, in the battered book of sonnets she’d lugged all across the world.

“We love him. I’m sure that will be enough.” He stood, moved over to the small window that faced, ironically, towards the east. “I’ll never forgive Luke for this, for taking me away from my son, forcing you to leave him to go after me.” He kicked at Alex’s workbasket, sending it skidding over the floor. “He has destroyed my life, he’s taken and stolen so much from me, and I should have put a stop to him. This time I will. Somehow I will.”

“How? Will you kill him and then be dragged off to hang? Because let me tell you something, Mr Graham, I haven’t spent a year chasing you across the globe to see you end up spinning at the end of a rope.”

“I’ll find another way.” He drove his fist through the wicker of the chair and gazed down at the resulting bloodied knuckles. “I will be revenged on him.”

Alex put a hand on his back and waited until he turned to face her. “I want my Matthew, not a man bent on vengeance. I don’t want our son to grow up surrounded by the corroding hatred of this family feud.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “Will you have me forgive him?”

“No, but maybe forget him.”

Matthew laughed sarcastically. “And are you fool enough to think he will let me forget?”

Alex bowed her head. He was right, Luke would never stop, not until his brother was destroyed.

He nodded in silent agreement, grabbed his coat and left the room.

Alex went over to the small window to watch him stride away. Healing rapidly on the outside, but on the inside… At times, she suspected he forced himself to play the part of reunited husband, when all he really wanted to do was wallow in anger and hate – alone.

There were barriers between them, whole months of terrible experiences that he didn’t seem capable of sharing with her beyond the short factual description he had given her that first morning, and the few attempts she had made to have him speak to her about it, had been violently rebuffed.

Give him time, she admonished herself, leave him be for now. To her surprise, she found she was crying and rubbed at her eyes. He was safe, alive and whole, and the rest of him would knit itself back into place with time – of course it would.

*

“Graham!”

To his intense humiliation, Matthew halted, a kneejerk reaction to a voice he’d obeyed for almost a year. Jones sauntered over to him, took his time looking him up and down.

“Well, well, quite the gentleman.”

“A gentleman? I think not. But a free man, aye that I am. But then I always was.”

“Free?” Jones snickered. “Not as I hear it. You’re owned by your wife now.” His light eyes glinted, the small mouth opened as if to say something but then closed.

“Get out of my way,” Matthew said. “Go, before I do you bodily harm.”

“Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Graham. An indentured to raise his hand to a free man? No Graham, that would be very unwise. It might lead to you being hanged.” The piercing eyes swam very close to Matthew’s. “But please try, give me the pleasure of beating you to a bloody pulp.” Jones straightened up, standing a scant inch or so taller than Matthew’s six feet and two.

“One day…” Matthew began.

Jones snickered. “One day? I think not. One day soon you’ll be dead, Graham, and I’ll receive a nice fat purse in compensation.”

He shouldn’t have said that.

“Who? Who’ll pay you to see me dead?”

When Jones didn’t reply, Matthew’s fingers closed like a pincer around a fold of skin along Jones’ neck, twisting until the overseer was kneeling in the dust, gasping with pain.

“My wife taught me this, it hurts, doesn’t it?” Matthew twisted some more. “So who?”

“Your brother,” Jones gargled. “Fairfax had a letter some weeks back.” He squealed when Matthew’s fingers sank even deeper into his neck. Matthew released him, and Jones sat down heavily in the dirt. Someone laughed, and to Matthew’s consternation he saw that they’d collected a small but avid audience.

“You’ll pay,” Jones assured Matthew, hands rubbing at his reddened neck.

“So will you, and I have a bigger debt to collect than you do.” With that Matthew walked off.

For some minutes, Matthew was buoyed by his confrontation with Jones, energy buzzing through his system. He strode through the little settlement, shaking his head yet again at the idiocy of situating a town here, in this swamp infested corner of the earth. Barely a half mile from the town centre the original forest encroached, ground squelching wetly underneath. It was only April and already the heat at midday was uncomfortable, and he could only imagine how it would be to live here in summer, the sun steaming dampness off the ground.

He made his way down to the harbour, as yet empty of any larger ships. A breeze danced across the water and he undid his coat, sitting down on a crude bench to stare in the direction of the east. Over the waters lay his home and there his son was waiting.

Sometimes it struck him that they didn’t know: Mark might be dead, carried away by illness or drowned in the millpond. Like his grandfather before him, Matthew grimaced, recalling the day when his father, Malcolm Graham, had been pulled dead from the water. Not an accident, he mused, no, someone had pushed his unsuspecting father to fall into the cold winter waters of the pond. Margaret or Luke, it had to be one or the other. Luke, of course it was Luke, and Matthew sat with black anger simmering inside of him, wondering how on earth a man as warped as Luke could be his brother. Mayhap he was a changeling.

He was deep in thought when a hand clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to find a familiar face smiling down at him.

“James! You’re still alive!”

James laughed and sat down beside him. “You mustn’t sound so surprised.”

Matthew studied him. Much thinner, arms and legs like brittle twigs, but yet with something of a paunch. He took in the tired face, the sunken eyes and the yellowed skin.

“You’ve got jaundice.”

James shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. But as I can’t do a day’s work without toppling over, I’m sent here to town to earn my living best I can.”

“They set you free?”

James smiled crookedly. “Nay. They but threw me out. Why waste good food on a dying man?”

“How do you live?” Matthew asked with concern.

“I do this and that. I can read and write, so I’ve been doing a bit of scribing. And I sleep where I can find some cover.” He patted at the small bundle on his back. “A blanket.”

Matthew got to his feet and took his friend by his arm. “You’ll come with me. We’ll find you board.”

“We?” James smiled, “so she came then?”

“Aye,” Matthew said with pride. “She did.”

“I saw you earlier,” James said as they walked side by side in the direction of the boarding house. He shook his head at Matthew. “Best be careful lad, Jones is not a man you want as your enemy.”

“Not my choice.”

“Still; best no go about unarmed – not after today. He won’t forgive the humiliation of being forced to his knees.”

*

Whatever doubts Alex had about clasping this ragged sorry spectacle of a man to her bosom, she didn’t show them, curtseying in deference to his age. Mrs Gordon took one look at James and called for a bath, promising the man that unless he scrubbed himself clean enough for her satisfaction, she’d do it herself – with lye.

“I haven’t washed in a year,” he protested.

“Aye, I can see that. And smell it.” Mrs Gordon handed him a clean shirt and two worn linen towels before leading him off in the direction of the kitchen.

“Where will he sleep?” Alex asked, “I don’t think Mrs Gordon will want him in her room.” And she definitely didn’t want him in theirs.

Matthew laughed and assured her it was all taken care of, James would sleep in the stables.