Shadowbrook (19 page)

“Mostly squirrels and birds, and once we took to the rivers, fish.” Monsieur Hale might have been reading her mind, but he was simply responding to a question from his mother. “And rabbits. Plenty of those. But no potherbs or saladings and no biscuits or johnnycakes. That’s what you miss most in the wilderness.” He helped himself to another couple of biscuits as he spoke.

“Then perhaps”—Lorene Devrey Hale had a beautiful speaking voice, low and clear and like the rustle of silk—“given the quality of the fine potherbs here at Shadowbrook, and our excellent wheat, you will not again stay so long away in the wilderness.” She wasn’t looking at Quent when she spoke. She was studying her firstborn. John did not return her glance, but stayed concentrated on eating, ripping apart a pigeon with his hands and his teeth.

Nicole watched him as well. He ate with anger, as he seemed to do most things. Her companions of the journey were both easier in their skin than was this John Hale, and he did not make her feel easy in hers.

Yesterday Madame Hale had appeared while they were all still in the place they called the Frolic Ground. She had been very white, with two spots of high color on her cheeks, but she had created order out of chaos. Clearly she knew it was a miracle that both her children were not dead. Her eyes kept flicking from one son to the other. Lingering longest on the younger, Nicole thought.

Madame’s instructions had been quickly obeyed. Two of the slaves made a carrying seat of their clasped hands and gently lifted Ephraim Hale as if he weighed nothing and took him away. Nicole had never seen a black-skinned person until she and Papa landed in Virginia. Once there she had seen many. Every one, she discovered, was owned by a white person. The mistress of the boardinghouse where Nicole and her papa stayed explained: “Says in the Bible that’s how it’s to be, child. Noah cursed his son Ham. And Ham went to Africa and turned into a darky, and he and his descendants have always to be slaves. That’s the will of God Almighty, child. It’s right and proper that black heathens work for good Christian white folks. Long as they do what they’re told and don’t make any trouble, they’re taken care of.”

Oui,
as the big black man with the bald head had been taken care of. Nicole watched two of the slave women help him walk away from the scene of the whipping.

Madame Hale, too, had watched them go, then she turned to the crowd. “Now
you must all return to your work. This affair is over and done with.” She turned to her younger son. “And you, Quentin, your business, at least for the moment, is to tell me who this is.” That’s when she’d looked directly at Nicole for the first time.

And that’s when Quentin Hale realized she was there. “I thought I told you to wait where I left you.”

“I chose to follow you.”

“So I see.” He didn’t say more because his mother was waiting. “May I present Mademoiselle Nicole Crane. She was traveling with Cormac when he found me. We couldn’t leave her in the woods, so we brought her along. Mademoiselle, this is my mother.”

“Enchantée, madame.”
Nicole had known what she looked like, but she pretended she was in Papa’s drawing room being presented to a general or diplomat. She dropped a deep and graceful curtsy.

Lorene’s eyes had narrowed; she nodded and murmured some politeness in response to the greeting. Nicole wished she knew what the other woman was thinking, and the meaning of the quick but studied glance she directed at her youngest son. But all she said was, “You look like a savage, Quentin, and you smell worse. Where is Cormac?”

“He had someone to see in Albany. He’ll be along.”

“Very well. Go and make yourself presentable. I will take charge of our guest. Come along, my dear,” and she’d reached out her hand. Nicole had had no choice but to put hers in the older woman’s, acutely conscious that she had been without any creme or lotion for months and her skin felt like tree bark.

Lorene made no mention of the girl’s roughened hands. She took Nicole to one of Shadowbrook’s large bedrooms and had a slave called Runsabout—“Her real name is Ruth, but when Quentin was little he called her Runsabout, because Kitchen Hannah was always sending her on errands”—bring a large copper tub and buckets of hot water. “You’ll be wanting a bath, mademoiselle. And some clothes. I will have someone bring you some dresses of mine if you would not mind borrowing them.”

“I would be honored, madame. You are so very kind.” Nicole wondered what Quent’s mother would say if she knew of the many times Nicole had bathed naked in forest streams, with Quent and Cormac keeping guard. Whenever she looked their backs were to her, but she’d never been entirely sure they hadn’t peeked.

“It is my pleasure,” the older woman had assured her. “And I’ll send a seamstress to make some quick adjustments.” Quentin’s mother was at least a head taller than Nicole. “Such a dainty one you are, mademoiselle. My son looks like a giant beside you.”

“Your son is a giant, madame.”

Madame Hale had simply smiled and said that in light of everything that had happened, she had decided to cancel the midafternoon dinner for that day.

When Runsabout arrived with the clothes, she also brought a basket filled with various unguents. “All made right here on the Patent for mistress they be. It’s Sally Robin what makes most of ’em. That’s cause they got honey in ’em and Sally Robin, she got the gift, she does. Them bees just love to have her come and take their honey. She sings to ’em while she does it and they don’t think nothin’ ’bout stingin’ nobody. But this here Hungary water”—Runsabout picked out a small flagon from the bottom of the basket—“this be coming upriver all the way from New York City.” Runsabout spoke the name of the town as if it were on the other side of the earth. “Smells as sweet as ever it can smell, missy. You just bound to like Hungary water.” Nicole did not tell her that her own mother had favored the scent.

After her bath and the fittings, Madame Hale sent food to Nicole’s room—a slice of cold pork pie and some of the flat, yellowish johnnycakes made of the Indian meal of which all in America seemed so fond, and a mug of ale. Apparentiy the others in the house ate alone as well. Once, Nicole stepped out into the hallway and peered down the stairs, but she heard nothing except the quiet background hum of the household servants going about their work. Eventually she went to bed, marveling that after so much time sleeping outdoors, she found it a bit difficult to get comfortable in the soft feather bed.

Since ’45, when she was nine years old, Nicole had feared her dreams. In the wilderness, with the two men close beside her, she did not once wake screaming and shaking as she had so often before, perhaps because there were other, more immediate fears. The first night she slept under Shadowbrook’s roof she dreamed a different sort of dream.

She was five years old and Maman had prepared a feast to be eaten outside under the trees, sitting on the grass, with no servants or proper cutlery. Nicole remembered wearing a white dress with a long blue sash, and when she ran after the butterflies, trying to catch them in her pudgy, little-girl hands, the tails of the sash sailed out behind her in the breeze, and Papa laughed and called her his bluebird. But when she turned back to her parents, breathless with the futile chase and full of laughter, they did not at once notice her because they were kissing, lips pressed together, hands clasped. “Maman! Papa! Look at me!” And they did, and opened their arms to her. She ran to them and tumbled into their embrace, but she felt nonetheless a pang of intense jealousy, because she knew that for a few moments they had been more interested in each other than in her. Perhaps, Nicole thought when she woke, the memory was wakened by the scent of the Hungary water.

Today, her second at Shadowbrook and three days since she’d actually been on
the land of the Patent, was the first time she had seen the family gathered together in a normal way. All except the elder Monsieur Hale, who was too ill to leave his bed.

Nicole slowly chewed on a carrot, savoring the sweetness. How extraordinary to see Quentin Hale—the woodsman who danced to Indian drums—wearing breeches and a fine white linen shirt with ruffles in the front and full sleeves. He could be any gentleman in Paris or London. But what did she expect? That he would appear at his mother’s table wearing buckskins? He seemed a bit stiff, and in truth, so was she. She had not sat at a meal like this in a setting such as this since she and Papa left England. No, before that. Since 1750, when Maman had died.

The older brother, John, was looking at her. There was anger in his eyes. He finished stripping the flesh from a pigeon and tossed the tiny bones over his shoulder toward the fireplace. It was too hot for a fire. The bones lay on the bare hearth waiting to be cleared away later by the servants. John reached across her for a piece of the venison pie. He did not, Nicole realized, make a serious attempt to keep his arm from brushing by her breasts. Her cheeks flushed. He thought she was a whore. Why not? Consider the way he’d first seen her, half naked and browned by the sun, her hair braided like a savage’s.

Madame Hale had given her pins along with everything else a lady needed. Today she was wearing a dress of pale lavender silk trimmed with white lace, with proper petticoats and a corset. Runsabout had helped her dress. “There now,” she’d said, giving the laces a final tug and tying them firmly, “now you got a waist so tiny Mister Quent could maybe put his big hands around it.” Nicole knew it was a sin of pride, but she was glad of her tiny waist. Only now, at the dinner table, she wished the corset weren’t quite so tight. It was nearly impossible to eat enough to satisfy her hunger.

The table overflowed with food, savories and sweetmeats all served together in the local fashion. Maman liked the service to be a few things at a time in the French manner, but she would have approved the pretty serving dishes, some glazed dark yellow and some a creamy blue. The table, too. It was long and made of golden oak polished to a high shine. Three pewter chandeliers hung above it, each containing a dozen or more candles, but none were lighted. It was midafternoon and the sun was still high, streaming in the windows that looked toward the long, broad path that led to the river. The white walls of the large square room were marked by waist-high moldings picked out in gold leaf, and just below the ceiling was a plaster and gilt frieze of fruits and flowers. She couldn’t help noticing that everything could do with a fresh coat of paint, but it was still one of the prettiest rooms she’d seen in America.

Kitchen Hannah appeared carrying an enormous platter of ears of corn, the
outer leaves folded back up to protect the kernels from the heat of the fire. “First of the season these be,” she announced. “Growed ’em myself, I did. Out behind the necessary, in that little patch what catches the sun nearly the whole day long.” The cobs were no longer than Nicole’s hand, the kernels a yellow so pale it was almost white. The platter passed her way and Nicole took an ear quickly, with just the tips of her fingers, because it was still almost too hot to hold, and laid it on the side of her plate.

Quentin Hale did not seem to mind the heat of the toasted corn. He bit into it eagerly, watching her all the while. He had been watching her since they sat down. In this fine house, in his fine clothes, with his mother and his brother and all the anger that buzzed just below the surface dancing in the air beside the tiny dust motes illuminated by the high-summer sun, he seemed again a stranger. It was impossible to imagine that this was the same man she had seen dance half naked among the savages, then disappear into the woods to rut with one of the squaws as if they were both animals without shame.

The thought made her breath come hard and Nicole busied herself with the ear of corn.

“You have not spoken of Cormac.” Lorene Hale addressed herself to her younger son. “Someone to see in Albany, you said. Should he not have come by now?”

“I’m sure ’he’ll come as soon as he can. He and Mademoiselle Crane are on their way north.”

Lorene looked down at her plate, as if he’d said something that displeased her.

“Crane is not a French name.” John’s eyes were fixed not on Nicole’s face, but on her breasts, pushed high above the lace trim of the bodice of her dress. He made no effort to conceal his gaze.

“I had a French mother and an English father.” Nicole pretended to ignore his insolence.

“And you’re on your way … north.” He made it sound as if she had announced that she was on her way to hell.

“
Oui, monsieur.
To Québec.”

“I see. And just what is it that you have to do in Québec?”

Quent answered before she could. “That’s not any of your—”

“Non, non,”
Nicole said softly, then quickly to John Hale, “I have family business to see to in Québec, monsieur.”

“Take care, mademoiselle, lest someone take you for a French spy.” John spoke as if he were making a joke, but there was no laughter in his eyes.

After the meal Nicole and Quent sat on a wooden seat that had been built round a massive chestnut tree midway between the river and the house, enjoying the cooling of dusk and the faint breeze. “A French spy,” Quent said, “why didn’t that occur to me?”

“Because you know it is ridiculous.”

“Yes. So does my damn fool brother. He only said it to make you angry. I think he imagines it to be a form of courtship.”

She did not want to talk about John Hale, much less be courted by him. “When do you think Monsieur Shea will be here?”

Quentin had been wondering the same thing. It seemed unlikely that whatever business Genevieve Lydius and the Miami brave Mikamayalo had with Corm would take this long. But he wasn’t yet worried enough to go back down to Albany and look for him. Corm could take care of himself. Besides, he was in no hurry for Corm to see Nicole the way she looked now. He wanted to keep the pleasure of that transformation for himself, at least for a time. “I don’t know when he’ll be here. When he can.”

Damn! Couldn’t he at least try not to show his feelings every time she made it clear she preferred Cormac? Sweet Jesus, what that dress did for the color of her eyes, not to mention her breasts. The dark curls pinned up like that were elegant, but he liked her better when her hair was loose down her back. Or plaited like a squaw’s. Seeing her like this, looking the lady she really was, that made him feel … he wasn’t sure what. Different. She was different at Shadowbrook and so was he.