The Seeker (9 page)

“Oh, Mellie. Well, I suppose you’re right. I should honor your mother’s promise.” He dipped the pen into the ink and wrote the words on the paper. He handed it to her.

She read his writing. “This is legally binding?”

“It is. You are now a slaveholder.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed as she stared at the paper. “Thank you, Father.” She reached over to kiss his cheek before she carefully folded the paper and slipped it down into her pocket.

After that, she could hardly refuse to obey his request to heed Selena’s summons to the parlor. She had Mellie’s promised freedom in her pocket.

8

Adam Wade mixed the paint on his palette as quickly as possible. Time was wasting while he stood in the senator’s parlor painting the senator’s wife as scores of better subjects were going undrawn. He would have even preferred sketching the lines of the senator’s florid face. Sam would probably welcome that, along with a few of the senator’s words stating his seemingly sincere belief that his state could remain a neutral buffer zone if the confrontation between the states escalated. And the senator would be happy to have the notoriety of being in
Harper’s Weekly
. The man had ambitions. Beyond senator in the Kentucky Senate.

Governor, the new Mrs. Vance claimed, which perhaps explained why she was the new Mrs. Vance. Adam doubted love had much to do with it, even if she did liberally sprinkle her conversations with the senator with words of devotion. Plus the senator was old money or at least had inherited such from his first wife. The wife whose portrait had been removed, leaving behind a darker square of forest green striped wallpaper over the mantelpiece behind Adam. Across the parlor the new wife sat by the window in a shaft of afternoon light.

Adam hadn’t warmed to her. Something he generally did when he was painting someone. Perhaps his reluctance to do the portrait was the cause, or perhaps it had more to do with the way the woman ordered him about like one of her husband’s servants as he stood behind the easel and wielded his brush. Twice he’d had to wipe away his brushstrokes depicting her eyes because of the hard glint he kept letting the paint on the canvas reveal. He wished he was back at the Shaker village painting the old sister whose suspicious glower had wiped away every trace of feminine beauty from her face. At least there he could be honest with his brush.

Selena Vance hadn’t seen her painted eyes. He knew better than to let a subject see a portrait in progress. Especially someone like the woman in front of him. She seemed—if that could be possible—even wearier of the whole process than he was. She came to each sitting wearing a cream-colored dress with an edging of delicate lace around the plunging neckline. Her skin was very white, almost too white, but it contrasted nicely with the pink of her cheeks, which she kept pinching to give them color whenever she thought he wasn’t watching.

He could have told her he could paint in the color without her resorting to the painful pinches, but he didn’t. Her dark hair was piled high on her head in an elaborate style that had to take an hour to pin and arrange. So he supposed it was no wonder the woman was tired of sitting still even before she came to the parlor to perch on the Victorian chair and, with a bare word of greeting, demanded he begin.

Paint her pretty and get it over with, he told himself every ten minutes. It didn’t matter that the more he looked at her, the less attractive she seemed to him in spite of her perfectly aligned features. He had an imagination. While he had never used that imagination to intentionally change the looks of one of his subjects, that didn’t mean he couldn’t this time. For his mental sanity he needed to think of Selena Vance as beautiful and portray that on the canvas. He needed to be free to get back to drawing subjects that mattered. The nation was boiling and he was stuck inside a parlor painting lace on the bodice of a dress.

The finer points of the lace might be missing in the portrait, for he planned to be gone from the senator’s house by the end of the week. If the senator wasn’t pleased with the finished portrait, he had plenty of resources to contract another artist who might be as captivated by the new Mrs. Vance’s beauty as the senator was.

Of course Adam would miss Aunt Tish’s cooking. Plus he had entertained a few hopes of coming across the senator’s daughter alone in the garden again. While a repeat of their earlier encounter wouldn’t be unwelcome, it was not likely the way she had avoided him since. The only time he’d seen her was at the dinner table, where she seemed a pale shadow of the girl in the garden who had met his eyes so brazenly in the moonlight and spoken so honestly. She let no honest words brighten the dinner conversation as she kept her eyes on her plate and only perked up if the senator began talking politics.

From memory, he had sketched the senator’s daughter gazing off her veranda into the darkness. He thought Sam might print it with a caption saying something like, “With war on the horizon, a Southern belle ponders her future.” Sam was a genius with captions.

Adam wasn’t worried about the senator’s daughter not wanting her picture in the newspaper. Truth be known, she might not even recognize herself, since the illustration would lack color to show her red hair. But he hoped to find a time to show her the drawing before he left Grayson so she’d know in case the newspaper eventually found its way into her hands. It was like a gift he could give her to perhaps make up for taking advantage of her at a vulnerable moment. Although he was hardly averse to catching her in another such moment or too much of a gentleman to seize the advantage if it did happen again.

So he was surprised when the daughter appeared at the parlor door in the middle of the afternoon’s sitting. By command, it turned out. Selena had been browbeating the butler, an old black gentleman named Gibson who seemed totally overwhelmed by the new Mrs. Vance’s stream of orders. There was little doubt he was going to forget most of them before he got out of the room.

Adam had tried to help by telling Selena how important it was that she sit quietly for him to capture the best image on the canvas.

She glared Adam’s way for a brief moment. “I sat quietly yesterday. Today you will have to find a way to work around my words. This is all taking much too long. I’ve had my portrait done before without the need for so many sittings.”

If only she had called on that artist again, Adam thought as he had to stay his brush from turning the jeweled combs in her elaborate hairstyle into horns. He sent Gibson a sympathetic look, but the butler kept his eyes on the floor. Adam’s fingers itched to capture his dejection. The old fellow had probably been accustomed to opening the door to guests and ushering them into the receiving parlor, to making sure the stair spindles and furniture were properly dusted, and to seeing that fires blazed in Grayson’s hearths if the weather turned cool.

While that might have satisfied the senator’s daughter, he had a new mistress in residence now, one who was changing things too rapidly for Gibson to take in. Each new word from the woman in the chair by the window seemed to bend his shoulders a little more, as if she were loading bricks into a sack on his old back while he mumbled, “Yes’m.”

When the senator’s daughter came in the room, the old man’s face brightened. Something his new mistress noted with evident displeasure.

“This is useless.” Selena heaved an elaborate sigh of disgust. “You’re dismissed, Gibson. Send that other girl in here. The one who does my hair. She at least seems to have a memory.”

“Mellie,” Charlotte told Gibson as he looked at her. “Tell Mellie Mrs. Vance wants her.” Her voice was soft and kind with none of the sharp edges in Selena’s commands.

“Yes, miss. Right away, miss.” The old fellow started out of the room, but stopped to ask, “Do you want her to bring tea?”

“Just . . . get . . . her.” Selena spoke the words one at a time with force.

“Yes’m.”

Adam was surprised at how fast the old man got out of the room. He wished he could follow on his heels, and he thought the senator’s daughter would have been right behind them if she could have done as she wanted. But then she seemed to find some courage as she looked directly at Selena and said, “Gibson has been with the family for many years.”

“Perhaps too many years.” Selena didn’t bother to hide her annoyance whether with Gibson or the senator’s daughter or life in general.

Without thought Adam painted in the frown lines between her eyes and then had to smooth them away with his brush. Paint her pretty and quickly, he reminded himself. Neither woman was paying the least bit of attention to him.

“He’s a great favorite of many of Father’s political friends,” the younger woman said.

Selena mashed her mouth together in a thin line. “Politics can’t rule everything.”

“Elections are won by a thousand little things.”

“More like a few thousand votes. But I didn’t call you in here to discuss political maneuvering. I get an overabundance of that from your father, you can be sure.”

“Father is committed to serving his state as best he can. A difficult charge now with all the divisions.”

Selena’s eyes narrowed on Charlotte. Adam was pleased to see the girl didn’t wilt under her glare. “Are you attempting in your clumsy way to take me to task?”

“Oh no. I do beg your pardon if such seemed the case.” She sounded sincere as she turned to bring Adam into the conversation. “I certainly wouldn’t want Mr. Wade to think there was any kind of ill feeling between us. Forgive me, Mr. Wade, if my words appeared uncharitable.”

Adam twisted his mouth a little to the side to keep from smiling. “Don’t mind me. I’m just the portrait painter.”

“How is it coming? May I look?” Charlotte took a step toward his easel.

“No.” Selena stopped her in her tracks. “Our dear Mr. Wade claims he can’t allow anyone to see the portrait until it is finished. Not even me.”

Adam let the smile leak out to his face as he made a few brushstrokes. “You know how artists can be. Temperamental about their work.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said and stepped back. “But I’ve heard you are very good with portrait sketches.”

“Sketches of whom?” Selena’s eyes were sharp on Adam.

“I’ve seen his work in
Harper’s Weekly
.” Charlotte didn’t really answer the woman’s question as she turned back to her. “I’ve been going through some of our old newspapers, and every illustration Mr. Wade has done is quite remarkable. I’m surprised Father was able to convince him to take time out from such work to do your portrait.”

“Charles had little to do with it. I am a friend of Mr. Wade’s sister.”

“How fortunate for you,” Charlotte said.

She acted as if Adam hadn’t already told her the same thing in the garden. Perhaps she had wiped that encounter out of her mind. Perhaps he should do the same. He pretended to turn his full attention back to the canvas in front of him.

Charlotte continued to stand in the middle of the floor instead of settling in one of the chairs which she surely had a right to do even if the senator’s wife didn’t ask her to sit. After a brief and uncomfortable silence, Charlotte said, “My father said you wished to speak to me.”

“Yes, so I did.” Selena’s voice sounded almost as superior as it had moments ago when she was speaking to the old butler. “The servants have been packing up your mother’s things. Something that should have been done years ago.”

“I suppose you’re right, but there never seemed any urgency.” Charlotte’s voice held a whisper of sadness. “Until now. Do you want me to go through the things?”

“No need,” Selena said with a wave of her hand. “We’ve already disposed of them.”

“Disposed of them?” The color drained from Charlotte’s face. “Without consulting me?”

“Really, Charlotte, those dusty old clothes would have done nothing but make you sneeze. I had them sent to a charitable group.” Selena swept her eyes up and down Charlotte from her shoulders to her toes. “You certainly could never tighten your stays enough to fit into any of those garments. Your mother must have been stylishly slender.”

“Please, Selena, this hardly seems proper conversation in mixed company.” Red bloomed in Charlotte’s face as she glanced sideways at Adam.

Selena laughed at her innocence. “Never you fear about Mr. Wade. I’m sure he’s quite familiar with the workings of corsets.”

Adam looked up from his paints and searched for a way to ease Charlotte’s humiliation. Humiliation Selena was relishing. It was becoming obvious that she was as ready to pack up the senator’s daughter and ship her off as she had been the first Mrs. Vance’s dresses. He pushed out a little laugh. “You’ve got me there, Selena. My first paying job was drawing corsets for a catalogue advertisement.” He mixed some colors on his palette and told himself to forget about painting her pretty. Just finish the job. He hadn’t promised satisfaction to her. Or to Phoebe. He cleaned his brush. “Perhaps I should leave so you can continue your talk in private.”

“That won’t be necessary, Adam. Charlotte and I are almost through here.” Selena pointed to a small wooden box on the table beside her. “Your father says that was your mother’s jewelry, and he insisted you would want it even if there is little of worth in the box. Nothing but a few old tarnished pieces.”

“Mother preferred books and flowers to jewelry,” Charlotte said as she swooped up the box.

“So Charles has told me. And that’s another thing.” Selena looked out the window. “The garden needs major renovation. Everything has been sadly neglected here for too long.”

“Grayson has its own unique charm,” Charlotte said.

“But all charms can be enhanced. Isn’t that so, Adam?”

“In a perfect world perhaps,” Adam said.

“There are no perfect worlds. Or are there, Charlotte?” Selena turned her sharp eyes back to Charlotte, who halted her backward edging toward the door but stayed silent as she stiffened her posture and waited for the woman to go on. “Your young Mr. Gilbey seems to disagree with me there. The night of the party he was telling me all about this Shaker village nearby where he seems to feel a perfect life might await him. Have you heard any more from him on the status of your planned wedding? Will it be a Shaker wedding?”