Ciji Ware (61 page)

“The woman’s a hopeless breeder, Simon. I shall never get a male heir to inherit what I’ve slaved for these last eight years!”

“Keating has always been the designated heir,” Simon declared in astonishment. “Why should you have assumed that—even if you and Daphne had sons—they would inherit the Whitaker estate?”

“Who would’ve wagered that Keating would last a year when I first met Daphne?” Aaron snapped. “He was sickly and—”

“Jesu, man!” Simon exploded. “Has your lawyer’s heart calculated all the odds down to the last nail?”

“And why not?” Aaron retorted. “I was willing to work like a damnable slave to put the estate on sounder footing, and I succeeded—until this damnable depression sacked our efforts—without a tittle of help from Keating Whitaker!”

“My father and I helped you, you might remember,” Simon interjected. “Keating was but a boy. And we’ll ride out this hardship, same as always.”

However, Aaron Clayton wasn’t listening.

“Wars and credit crises—and
madwomen.
Nothing went my way. Nothing!” Maddy heard the sound of glasses clinking and liquid being poured. “You should thank your lucky stars you picked Rachel Gibbs as your bride, sir. I am trapped with a
lunatic
!”

“Aaron,
you
are the person sounding like the lunatic,” Simon Hopkins responded sharply. “Your wife is weeping because she has just suffered another unbearable loss. Her brother Keating is barely twenty-four years old. Get ahold of yourself, my man! Have you no compassion at all?”

“When I was Keating’s age, I’d earned a law degree and was already making a decent living. And how does the boy spend most of
his
time? Carving up dead bodies!” he bellowed in disgust.

“Keating’s finally found his calling and is studying to be a doctor, for God’s sake, Aaron. You said you were pleased when I secured him a place to train in Edinburgh. The institute there offers the best medical education in the world.”

“Well, let him come home then, and see if that training can cure his sister and mother,” Aaron challenged truculently. “There are plenty of dead bodies produced around here for him to use his scalpel on.”

“Stop it,” the usually mild-mannered Simon Hopkins growled. “Don’t you
dare
speak like that of the women in this household!”

The next thing Maddy heard from her listening post on the upstairs landing was the sound of a heavy object smashing against a wall.

“I’m
done
with all this,” Aaron Clayton roared. “I hereby declare that you and your father are back in charge of this ship of fools, and welcome to it! You’ve always mooned over my wife, Simon, haven’t you?” he asked, his voice full of loathing. “You’re certainly welcome to see if
you
can get her with a son that will live and persuade those damnable bankers not to foreclose! I’m going to Europe to inform Keating,
in
person
, that this nightmare is now all his—and I’m not coming back!”

***

Daphne Clayton lay in bed barely conscious of the sound of her husband’s shouts. Her only thoughts were for the infant already in its small coffin.

Mammy
lied
to
Aaron. The baby hadn’t even drawn a breath. Not one.

Dry-eyed now, Daphne turned her head on the pillow and stared out the window. She thought about her own mother, the mad, bad Susannah who now howled and bit infrequent visitors to her prison under the eaves of Devon House. Was she becoming like her? Or maybe she was more like her dead sister, Madeline? Like the long-deceased Maddy, she’d often thought of putting rocks in her pockets and throwing herself into Whitaker Creek, just to end the humiliation and misery of being judged worthless because of her failure to bear a son. She regretted having named her daughter Madeline. Her well-intentioned act of contrition had probably doomed the child to suffer the family’s accursed melancholia.

Dark, morbid thoughts washed over Daphne like a river churning up mud. She was like her mother, all right… and the man she had wed was frighteningly like her father, although Charles Whitaker at least had been kind in his sober moments. But he was dead, too.

Daphne rolled over and burrowed into her feather pillow. It was all so hopeless. So many deaths. So many angry words and slammed doors. She barely took notice that her eight-year-old had begun to play an etude on the harp downstairs. What did it matter? Aaron gave his sole surviving daughter nary a glance. Daphne had ceased to care even about
that
anymore. She couldn’t summon the energy to fret about the little girl struggling to play an instrument that they had both once thought so beautiful.

***

The butler at Devon Oaks admitted Simon and Rachel into the house and stood at the bottom of the stairs as the callers mounted the treads to the second floor. Simon knocked softly on the door just off the landing and waited for a response. Nothing. He knocked harder.

“Daphne? ’Tis me. Simon. Rachel is with me. May we come in?”

Again, no response.

Rachel whispered, “Let me try.”

Simon’s wife of eleven years and the mother of his three fine sons gently rapped on the door’s wide, cypress planking.

“Daphne darling, Simon and I have wonderful news.” She cracked the door an inch. “We think you’ll be so pleased…”

It had always been thus, Simon reflected, watching the greatest life partner a man could have push the door open another inch. Rachel Gibbs was a bastion of kindness and endless good sense. She was witty and intelligent, and eagerly embraced interests that also fascinated him—the natural world and all its wonders. Together they had observed and catalogued the plants and animals in the surrounding areas, and read books on botany, and painted what they’d collected during the times they weren’t supervising two plantations and three boisterous little boys.

Indeed, Rachel had turned out to be the most perfect of helpmates, and the woman Simon loved with all his heart and soul. For this, he silently acknowledged that he owed eternal gratitude to his gruff but kindly father, whose judgment saw far beyond Daphne’s golden curls and modest musical talent.

Whenever he thought of his father’s recent passing, Simon’s throat tightened and his eyes misted over. Yes, he owed his father much, and he missed his wise counsel and hardy companionship. Especially now, when so many decisions had to be made.

Rachel stood on tiptoe and whispered into Simon’s ear. “I think we can go in. Look… Daphne’s awake and appears quite tranquil.”

Simon and Rachel advanced a step into Daphne’s boudoir. It was always a shock for them to see her like this. She was attired only in a dressing gown, her golden curls an unkempt tangle about her once lovely shoulders. Although still in her thirties, the titular mistress of Devon Oaks plantation looked aged and haggard, sitting in her chair for days on end, staring blankly out the window at the wooded countryside that bordered Whitaker Creek.

Rachel knelt beside Daphne’s chair, and said softly, “Your brother Keating’s coming home. We’ve had word that he may arrive as soon as this week. He’ll be so glad to see you, dear.”

Simon studied the poor woman for some sort of reaction, but there was none.

“He’s a physician now,” Simon said, kneeling on the other side of Daphne’s chair and lightly patting her hand. He always had the sense that she might bolt like a mistreated filly. “He was at the top of his class in Edinburgh, and will be able to help you regain your… spirits,” he finished carefully.

Both Simon and Rachel were startled when Daphne’s eyes suddenly lost their vacant stare, and she asked quietly, “And Aaron? Will my husband return to Devon Oaks?”

Simon and Rachel exchanged glances.

“Aaron’s decided to remain abroad for a while longer,” Simon revealed reluctantly, fearing some sort of hysterical reaction on Daphne’s part. “He seeks fairer, better brokers in London for our cotton crops.”

“Aaron, no doubt, has found a mistress in that city, and enjoys the percentage he makes from your labors here,” Daphne said, in even tones, of the husband who had abandoned her. “I am relieved he stays away.”

Rachel gazed at her husband and lifted an eyebrow. Perhaps Daphne was finally able to accept the unhappy situation and proceed with her own life. It was a hopeful sign, Simon thought with an enormous sense of relief. It was, indeed, a hopeful sign.

***

In truth, Daphne’s outlook improved vastly upon Keating’s return to Natchez in the summer of 1820. The young man had blossomed under the mentorship of the Scottish physicians with whom he’d trained. He had acquired notions about health and the treatment of disease that Simon thought were rather unorthodox, but whatever his methods, Daphne began to dress each and every day, and descended from her bedchamber more and more often.

Simon and Rachel were greatly excited by the appearance in Natchez of a wonderful painter of birds, an émigré Frenchman who had Anglicized his name to John James Audubon.

“Keating, my man, the chap’s work is absolutely astonishing,” Simon declared over brandy in the dining room at Hopkins Hall. “We’re hosting a small party next week to display his work and perhaps gain him a commission or two.” Simon refilled Keating’s snifter and resumed his seat. “He intends to paint every single feathered creature in North America. Meanwhile, he’ll do a fine portrait of you, should you wish to help advance his project. What do you say? Will you join us?”

“Are ladies welcome?” Keating asked.

“Have you found a new friend since returning to Natchez?” Simon teased his young neighbor with a sly smile. He felt comfortable in his new role as Dutch uncle to his late father’s former ward.

“I wouldn’t find it amiss if you should invite Abigail Langhorn.”

“Rachel’s cousin?” Simon exclaimed. “Why, that’s capital! Of course she’ll be invited. Nothing would please my matchmaking wife more.” He sipped his brandy, and asked, “And Daphne? Do you think she’s up to attending a soiree?”

Keating nodded enthusiastically. “I think ’twould be just the thing. She’s playing her harp again.”

Simon shook his head in wonder. “Really, Keating, you’ve worked miracles in the time you’ve been home. What’s your secret? Rachel and I did our best while you and that blighter Clayton were away, but we could affect nothing…”

“She needed time to heal from all those tragic confinements,” Keating said with a hard edge, “and she needed to be treated kindly within the bosom of her own family.”

“Amen,” Simon said, relieved that Aaron Clayton, as he’d threatened, apparently had taken permanent leave of Adams County.

Keating broke into a mischievous grin. “Perhaps my prescription of soothing, warm baths, and encouraging Daphne to help little Maddy with her harp lessons are tonics for her wounded heart,” the fledgling physician declared with a note of pride. “I had cook prepare lots of vegetables and fewer heavy foods, and urged Daphne to take regular exercise and to consume a single, small glass of claret each day. This regimen has worked its magic.”

Simon raised his glass in a toast. “Well, here’s to fresh vegetables and to the brilliant Dr. Keating Whitaker. Long may he practice his newfangled treatments in the great state of Mississippi,” he added, referring to the new status of statehood that the United States Congress had recently conferred upon the former territory.

Daphne’s progress, however, was halted in a fashion that neither the young doctor, nor Simon and Rachel Hopkins could ever have foretold. Not long afterward, the families along Whitaker Creek were astonished by the sudden, unannounced reappearance of Daphne’s errant husband after nearly five years abroad. Simon, especially, had his suspicions regarding the reason Aaron Clayton had returned to Natchez.

“She’s
my
wife and I will do what
I
think best,” Aaron declared with enough pomposity to make Simon want nothing more than to call the wretch out. However, Hopkins knew all too well the wily ways of Aaron Clayton, counselor-at-law. As they began to debate Daphne’s future, he could see that Aaron had researched the matter thoroughly and had conceived a plan. If the greedy scoundrel wished to commit his wife to a mental hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, far away from family and friends—as her husband, with all rights over her person—he had a perfect legal right to do it.

“But Daphne’s made remarkable progress in the last few years,” Simon protested. “Surely, if you don’t take Rachel’s and my word for it, you will have a care for the opinion of her own brother Keating, a trained physician.”

“A quack, you mean,” Aaron said belligerently. “He claimed his treatments had effected a cure, yet I wasn’t home a week when she nearly scratched my eyes out!” Indeed, a parallel line of narrow welts still ran along his cheek.

Simon could hardly bear to look at the man, for he could easily guess what had prompted such an extreme reaction by poor Daphne.

“Another baby might kill your wife, Aaron,” Simon said in a low voice. “Can’t you slake your needs in the whorehouses in Under-the-Hill? You don’t love Daphne, but at least show her some respect. You abandoned her when you left for Europe. Surely you didn’t expect her to fall into your arms upon your return?”