The Mistress of Tall Acre (33 page)

“You sound as if we’re playing parlor games, Seamus.”

“Why not?”

“Well . . .” She glanced at the clock. “’Tis late. You need your rest. Sleep is obviously more appealing than sitting here questioning me.”

“According to whom?” When she hesitated, he said with more conviction than he felt, “Ask me anything.”

Surprise lit her eyes. “Anything? A question for a question?” At his nod, she folded her hands in her lap, thoughtful. “Why do I see a scar there below your jawline?”

His hand rose to meet it. “You’d best ask my sister, Cosima. Suffice it to say she threw a rock at me when we were small. When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

She let out a chuckle. “Your turn.”

He studied her, memory catching fire. “Your brother never called you
Sophie.
When he talked about you he used a nickname, but I cannot recall it.” For a moment he regretted mentioning it, but she gave him a pensive smile.

“When we were wee, Curtis could never pronounce
Sophie
, so he took to calling me
Posie
instead. ’Tis something I miss.” Breaking their gaze, her eyes roamed the shadows. “Why have you never made any changes here at Tall Acre?”

“The staff told you that, I suppose.” Suddenly he was all too aware of the portraits above the mantel, and his parents’ contentment with Tall Acre and each other. “This has always seemed more my father’s home than mine. I still don’t feel it belongs to me.” He might as well admit the rest. “Anne never liked it here, so no alterations were ever made.”

“’Tis a beautiful place, even more so than Three Chimneys.” A new intensity shone in her eyes. “I don’t understand why anyone would spurn it.”

His gaze traveled to the fire. “Do you remember Anne?”

She paused. “I only remember coming here soon after you wed and then when Lily Cate was born. Perhaps Anne and I might have been friends had I come more often.”

“I wonder.” Doubt clouded his voice. “The two of you . . .” He left it unsaid, sorry the moment had turned melancholy. Sometimes Anne’s unhappy spirit seemed to linger. He prayed Sophie’s presence would drive the bitter memories out.

Her silky voice pulled him back from the brink. “Why is your horse called Vulcan?”

The soreness inside him ebbed. “Vulcan is the god of fire. My stallion was so named because he was less skittish than any other mount under fire, even cannon fire.” His gaze rested on her throat. “Where did you get that cameo you’re wearing?”

Her hand went to the beloved jewelry. “’Twas my grandmother’s and is made of Scottish agates. I’ve always liked the color pink.”

Did she? He made a mental note of it.

She was looking at him again, at his mangled hand half hidden in his coat sleeve, a bad habit he’d gotten into on account of Lily Cate. Her face showed a telling empathy. “How did you come by your injury?”

Their questions were becoming more personal, the hour late, but neither he nor she showed any inclination to stop. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time behind enemy lines. Some Hessians ambushed me—” The wound was aching again, driving home that very dangerous moment. “They tried to—um, dispatch me, but one simply ruined my hand.” He couldn’t tell her all the rest. His blinding fury. The boy soldier who’d died. The moment his prayers stopped.

She looked to her lap as if giving him privacy—or mayhap his injury repulsed her too. He said, “Does it bother you, being wed to a maimed man?”

The protest in her eyes quelled all doubt. “Nay, Seamus. ’Tis the man beneath that matters most. Do you question that?”

With a shrug of his shoulders, he fixed his gaze on the fire. Another far riskier query pulled at his conscience. Unasked, it was burning a hole inside him. “Why did you agree to marry me, Sophie?” He held still, giving her room to answer or not as all the obvious reasons resounded in his head.

Because I was about to lose Three Chimneys. Because Curtis isn’t coming back. Because I am
estranged from my father and had nowhere else to go . . .

“Because I love Lily Cate and I want you both to be happy.” She spoke without reservation. “I want to be a part of that, have a family.”

He warmed to the truth of it. There was no doubt she loved his daughter. But he’d had no inkling his happiness mattered to her. Emboldened, he met her eyes, fighting a sudden breathlessness. “What I really want to know is if you’re still in love with the man you told me about.”

She looked away, but not before he saw alarm flood her eyes. “’Tis my turn, Seamus, not yours, remember.”

“Sophie, I—”

“What does it matter, truly?”

The tables were turned. He fisted his good hand.

Because the thought of another man, another man’s memory, is driving me mad.

She stood in a swish of skirts and excused herself, moving toward the hall and her bedchamber. The door between them closed with a forbidding click.

A sick regret gripped him. He’d gone too far. Tried to scale too high a wall and burned a bridge instead. He knew better than to try to gain some ground between them. He’d violated his own personal vow to keep his distance, and this was his punishment.

Theirs was a marriage in name only. Nothing more. ’Twas folly to wish otherwise.

25

S
o who do you think will arrive first?” Sophie broached the question the next morning over breakfast. “Your aunt Cosima or the dancing master?”

“Aunt Cosima!” Lily Cate said with relish, finishing her porridge.

“You may be right. We just received word she’s on her way.”

Lily Cate licked a smidgen of jam off her thumb. “Is a new governess coming too?”

“Your father has decided on a Scottish tutor like he had as a boy. But I’ll teach you till he comes.”

“Did Papa show you the schoolhouse?”

Sophie searched her memory and came up short. “Why don’t you take me there after breakfast?”

In minutes they stood on the threshold of the sole dependency Sophie hadn’t seen. Nearly obscured by the garden’s boxwood hedge, the schoolhouse went largely unnoticed. Inside, the knotty pine floors and streaked windows bespoke age and disuse. Little more than a playroom with a few desks and a small hearth, it boasted several south-facing windows. Sophie was charmed outright.

“Perhaps we’ll have school right here once I see if the chimney’s in working order. Do you think Jenny would like to learn to read and write like you?”

“Oh aye!” Lily Cate mimicked. “I can teach Jenny her letters like you taught me!”

Sophie laughed, Lily Cate’s joy contagious. Together they took stock of the peeling walls, chipped wainscoting, and scuffed floor. “I’ll see about having it painted, inside and out. For now we’ll hold lessons in the small parlor till everything is ready.”

She was fairly confident of Seamus’s support of her endeavor. Since Anne hadn’t taken the initiative to do much at Tall Acre, she suspected he welcomed change, however small. Or might he be in a less than gracious mood given their midnight stalemate?

As she thought it, a roll of thunder resounded, making Lily Cate cover her ears. Lately one spring storm ran into the next. Taking her hand, Sophie led her down a shell walk into the heart of the garden beneath a fickle play of sun and clouds, the scent of rain clinging to the air.

“My favorites, the daylilies and old roses, will return soon,” Sophie told her, pointing out various plantings.

Crocuses and early violets peeked from newly weeded beds while blooming cherry and pear trees branched over low brick walls, creating a lacy canopy overhead. But Lily Cate was intent on something else entirely.

“Are you looking for something?” Sophie asked her.

She expelled a little breath. “I no longer see that bearded man on the lawn. Not since Papa chased him away. Now I see a light.”

“A light?”

“Sometimes I wake up in the night and see a light shining at that house across the river.” Sophie followed Lily Cate’s pointing finger. Like an enticing toy just beyond a child’s reach, Early Hall was fixed squarely in their vision on its crest of sloping, overgrown lawn. “The light is bright like a star, but it’s always gone by morning.”

Sophie felt a chill. “Do you see it often?”

Lily Cate looked up at her, so much of Seamus in her face. “Sometimes it’s shining. Sometimes not.”

Sophie squeezed her hand. “Next time you see the light, I want you to wake me or your father so we can see it too.”

Though she tried to bury the entire matter as she made her rounds that morning, Lily Cate’s revelation threaded through Sophie’s thoughts, needling as a thorn.

Some vagabond might be trespassing, seeking shelter beneath Early Hall’s sagging roof. Even a runaway slave might take temporary refuge. So many roamed about the countryside, displaced by the war. The trespasser at Tall Acre might be nothing more than that.

But she would need to tell Seamus just in case.

Seamus noticed his field hands before he noticed her. They stood at attention as Sophie rode into view, coming at a half gallop across the pasture. There was no denying she was a fine figure on a horse. She sat on her mount confidently, the new sidesaddle he’d ordered from Biddle in Philadelphia beneath her. There was a sense of purpose, an aliveness in her stride that made him proud. And then apprehension rode in.

She rarely came looking for him. He feared it involved Lily Cate. While he went about estate business, Sophie usually stayed close to the house, managing things as best she could. Sometimes a day or more would pass and he wouldn’t see her. If he rose early and came in late, he missed her altogether. But he couldn’t dodge the guilt he felt doing so. Or his quiet delight at first sight of her today.

She’d timed her visit well. Now almost noon, the hands would be after their dinner, leaving the two of them alone. At the sound of the bell clanging across the pasture, they dispersed, bent on Tall Acre.

He was suddenly conscious that he looked like a field hand, stripped of his coat, shirtsleeves rolled up. He’d been demonstrating how he wanted the sunken ditches built, those quaintly named ha-has that hemmed in the livestock without impairing the view. Raising a sleeve, he swiped at his brow and spied his queue ribbon near his boot. He snatched it up and soon had his hair hastily tied, at least.

Perhaps now was the time to move past the unsettling question he’d put to her recently and apologize. In the privacy of the small parlor, he’d simply wanted to know if the man she loved still had a hold on her heart. But given her reaction, he’d been wrong to ask.

She flashed him a disarming smile, no hint of tension about her, and slid to the ground in one graceful motion beneath the growl of thunder and a sprinkle of rain.

“You’ve not come to tell me my sister is here, have you?”

“Indeed,” she replied, seeming a bit remote beneath her riding hat and veil. “Cosima has just stormed Tall Acre.”

He rubbed his jaw and cast a look at the house. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Lily Cate and I served tea and showed her to her room. She’ll join us later for supper, provided it isn’t mutton and includes cherry bounce.”

He chuckled. Coming nearer, he wanted to brush aside the veil of her riding hat to better see her face. “Is that all you’ve come to tell me? No more bearded trespassers or strange lights?”

Her smile dimmed. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a letter. “Just this. From Williamsburg.”

He took it grudgingly. “’Tis the second post from the Fitzhughs. They’ve obtained a court order that Lily Cate is to visit them.”

“Oh?” Concern creased her face. “When? How long?”

“Soon. For a week.”

“Perhaps if you go along with it this once, the strain will ease.”

He didn’t share her optimism, but he wouldn’t naysay it either. “Mayhap.”

“There’s no way to stop her going?”

“Not unless I want to defy the Virginia court.”

“Perhaps her visit will be a bridge. Mend matters with Anne’s kin.”

“Then why do I feel such dread at her going?” He tucked the post away, giving vent to his unease. “’Twas the same before certain battles, that sure sense we were about to lose something huge and unalterable. We always did. I never felt that way before a fight we won. Call it uncanny, but I never erred. Not once.”