The Mistress of Tall Acre (44 page)

Seamus entered Tall Acre’s foyer, gaze on the open Palladian room door. He heard Sophie’s voice, clear and lilting yet strained. She was speaking with someone whose tone and inflections stirred some vague, uncomfortable recollection. Not bothering to change his boots or greatcoat, he walked their way.

In seconds he stood on the threshold. Overcome. Ambushed. Recognition rushed in like smoke clearing. His eyes made the connection, but his reason . . . nay. Like a barrage of musket fire, Anne’s appearance sent him reeling.

His gaze swung to Sophie, who’d begun a slow retreat. She looked dazed, like she might faint. His chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe. The room lost its focus, spun wildly, and resettled, but his heart stayed at a gallop. “Sophie, wait.”

Her hand grasped the doorknob of his adjoining study door. There was a plea in her eyes—a hundred questions—begging him to make things right.

He returned his attention to Anne. His voice was so choked he nearly couldn’t speak. “What have you done with my daughter?”

The flash of fury in Anne’s face told him he’d get no easy answers. He looked again at Sophie. She’d pressed her back against the door to his study as if it was the only thing holding her up.

Anne waved a hand, her cloying cologne sparking tattered memories. “I was explaining to Miss Menzies—”

“Miss?”
He spat out the word, stepping into the room. “’Tis Mistress Ogilvy, my wife.”

“Your wife?” Her voice hardened. “More your mistress, Seamus. I am your wife—”

“Nay.” His voice came grieved and broken. “You are nothing more to me than a ghost of the past, and I’ve a gravestone to prove it.”

A crimson stain spread over Anne’s finely wrought features. “Be that as it may, I was explaining how I fled for my life—”

“Then you’ve been spouting a good many lies and excuses.”

“Those threats were real, every one of them. Ask any of the plantations surrounding us or Tall Acre’s slaves—”

“You were the only one who ran while they remained.” His curt indictment only fueled her ire. “Nothing you say can explain your absence—or your reappearance.”

“How dare you!” Taking a step closer, she raised a gloved fist, returning the memory of all her fits and whims he’d buried at the back of his conscience. “’Twas you—”

He clasped her wrist, imprisoning it. “Where is my daughter?”

“Safe and sound where she rightfully belongs.” She wrenched away from him with renewed rage. “I am her mother—”

“You, who abandoned her to begin with.”

“Who abandoned whom, Seamus? ’Twas
you
who left me with a baby and a miserable plantation to fight a war!”

“You knew my politics when you wed me.”

“That’s past.” Like quicksilver, Anne softened her stance and placed a hand on Seamus’s chest, dismissing his words with a turn of her head. “We can look to the future now—”

“Where is she?” he repeated.

“I’m not here about Lily Cate.” Her breath released in a pent-up rush. “I’ve come about us.”

“Us . . .
nay
.” The word held an unwarranted intimacy. He looked toward Sophie, but she turned away, going into his study and shutting the door. Their hard-won happiness was beginning to fail like a faulty redoubt along enemy lines. He turned toward Anne unwillingly. “Why in heaven’s name did you come back? If you went to England and had a life there, why?”

“Because I came to my senses in Bath, Seamus.” She blinked, eyes wet. From regret? Or the injury she felt he’d done her? “Surely you can forgive me that.”

Seamus focused on Sophie’s portrait and set his jaw, the pressure so taut it ached. He’d do well to remember what he’d often told his men.

Never let your emotions overrule your reason.

He spoke slowly. “I may forgive you, but I’ll not stand by and let you destroy the life I’ve built here and now.”

“Then I’ll go to the courts.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I want my husband and daughter back—”

“You’ve already thrown that away, declaring yourself dead and fleeing to England.”

“So what will you do, Seamus? Divorce me? Our union is still legal as I’m very much alive.” She moved away, backtracking to retrieve her hat and making a wide circle around him. “I’m staying with old friends, the Alexanders, a few miles from here.”

He yanked his gaze back to her. “The Alexanders who are now accomplices in your kidnapping scheme.”

“Be that as it may, our daughter is well but is proving rather inconsolable as she is so attached to your mistress.”

He left the barb unchallenged, wanting to be free of her.

Only he wasn’t free. And he might never be.

33

H
e expected an ugly confrontation. More fight. Anne was a formidable opponent, after all. But he saw no sign of her carriage or her manservant as he rode up the drive to the Alexander estate soon after she fled Tall Acre. British to the bone, Artemus Alexander and family only paid lip service to the American cause. His ivy-coated home was the perfect refuge for Anne. Artemus was, he remembered dully, a cousin of Fitzhugh.

Dismounting, he fixed his eyes on the carved pineapple finial adorning the mansard roof, an ironically hospitable symbol. Before he’d set one foot in its direction, the front door swung open and Lily Cate ran out as if her heels were on fire.

“Papa!”

Never was a word more sweetly spoken. He caught her up, choked and overcome at the sight and feel of her. He’d thought she was lost to him. Gone forever. But here she was, as warm and wiggly as a puppy, burrowing deeper into his arms before covering his bristled jaw with a flurry of kisses.

“Papa, I knew you would come. They told me you wouldn’t but I knew better.”

He wondered at the
they
she spoke of. The Alexanders . . . Anne. For a long moment he didn’t speak, so torn with emotion his eyes smarted and he couldn’t focus. “I’ve come to take you home. Soph—your mother—is wanting to see you straightaway.” He pulled back from her, eyeing her disheveled dress and lank hair. “They didn’t mistreat you?”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “They fed me a little—and locked me in a room.”

Behind him, two of his grooms waited silently on their mounts, pistols drawn, their attention riveted to the house as if expecting a fresh outburst of opposition. But all was quiet. Eerily quiet. Seamus had the distinct impression they were being watched from myriad windows, but the Alexanders didn’t dare intervene.

“To Tall Acre,” he told the grooms, setting Lily Cate atop his own saddle before swinging up behind her. “I’ll deal with the Alexanders in time.”

’Twas candlelight. The supper smells were thickening, the clatter of cutlery and dishes oddly comforting, penetrating Sophie’s pain. Her mind felt broken, replaying the afternoon’s events endlessly. Despite everything, Lily Cate slept in her arms, having grown noticeably taller in the weeks she’d been gone.

The hours following Anne’s leaving were a frantic blur. All Sophie knew was that Seamus had gone to an estate a few miles east, where close friends of Anne had been sheltering her and Lily Cate. Seamus spared Sophie the details of just what had occurred when he’d arrived there, leaving her to sort through her scattered thoughts and emotions while he sent word to Williamsburg to call off the search.

Now, every few minutes Sophie pressed a kiss to Lily Cate’s brow as if to convince herself she’d truly come home. As the night’s shadows lengthened, Lily Cate stirred and yawned, looking about as if unsure just where she was. Then, finally, “Mama, who was that strange lady who kept me? She looks like Aunt Charlotte.”

Sophie was at a loss for words. Should she say it was her mother, the woman Lily Cate had no memory of? Had Anne not identified herself as such?

Lily Cate filled the uneasy silence. “She is very unhappy with Papa.”

“Yes, sometimes grown-ups quarrel. Your father is upset that she took you away from us.”

“The bearded man took me away, the one who used to come here and watch me.” She sat up and hugged her doll closer. “But I’m home now. I’m ready to start school and play with Jenny and ride my pony.”

“Oh aye,” Sophie replied absently. She rested her cheek against Lily Cate’s hair, wishing matters would end so happily for herself and Seamus.

With supper over, Sophie tucked Lily Cate in once prayers were said. After a joyful reunion, Lily Cate begged Jenny to stay close and sleep in the trundle bed. Myrtilla, ever devoted, had positioned herself outside Lily Cate’s bedchamber to stand watch all night. At Seamus’s bidding? In the light of a single candle she knitted, her ebony face unusually serene.

Sophie went below, going through the motions of undressing without Florie. She couldn’t risk the maid’s questioning. She had no answers and felt so at odds—elated that Lily Cate was finally home, anguished over Anne. Tugging at her front-lacing stays, she pulled them free, standing in her shift before the candlelit mirror. That old, insidious dissatisfaction swept in with the evening shadows. In light of Anne’s sheer physical beauty, she felt lacking. Second best.

Listening to the old house settle, she wondered if Seamus would come. What he might say. Panicked prayers, a cup of chamomile tea, did nothing to ease her. All normalcy had fled. Benumbed, she could only climb into bed alone, a new awkwardness overtaking her.

At midnight the door opened. She stayed quiet as Seamus’s tall shadow moved in the moonlight shining through shutters she’d forgotten to close. The feather mattress sagged beneath his bulk when he finally undressed and came to bed. The silence was rife with tension.

“Sophie.”

Tears close, she couldn’t answer. He had become so gentle with her. So tender. Would that end? Was it wrong to be here, in this intimate moment, wanting what only a husband could give?

He lay down beside her, the quaver in his voice matching the one in her spirit. “I want you to know I didn’t suspect any of this with Anne. I never once doubted she was dead. I would not have wed you had I any inkling—”

“I believe you.” She turned away from him, the wall a poor refuge when all she wanted was his arms. “But what are we to do?”

“We will hope. Pray. There shall be no barriers between us.” The strength in his voice, honed from years on the battlefield, brought little comfort. He placed a careful hand on her bare arm. His reassuring touch was like fire, like salt to her rawness. “You are my wife, Sophie, heart and soul and body. There is no one else.”

He lay back, releasing her. But his words went deep, echoing into the sleepless night. Enduring, heartfelt words she’d long dreamed of, but ones that held no promises nonetheless.