Calhoun Chronicles Bundle (71 page)

P
rofessor Michael Rowan’s face turned red with exertion as he held up his end of the steamer trunk. “What do you keep in here, Calhoun?” he grumbled. “Do you draft legislation on stone tablets?”

At the other end of the trunk, Jamie backed into his room, holding steady as Rowan half lowered and half dropped the trunk. Supporting it with his chest, Jamie set the thing end up and corner-walked it against the wall.

“Just the usual whatnot,” he said in response to his landlord’s question. “I was told to expect a long legislative session this fall, so I came prepared.” Unlatching the trunk at the top and side, he swung open the two halves. Immediately, a stack of books toppled onto his feet. “I had to pack my things in a hurry.”

“You’re a Southern gentleman, a Calhoun,” Rowan pointed out. Extracting a ripe apple from the pocket of his trousers, he took an enormous bite and spoke around the food. “Aren’t you supposed to have servants for this sort of thing?”

Jamie didn’t like the edge of censure in the professor’s voice. “Oh, of course,” he said. “But today I beat my darkies so hard they couldn’t work.”

Rowan finished chewing and sent him a sheepish grin. “I suppose you must get tired of being regarded as a lazy, overprivileged planter’s son with nothing better to do than sit on the porch drinking mint juleps and getting rich.”

“My friend, if I were a lazy, overprivileged planter’s son, why would I have come to the capital to room with a cranky, judgmental Northerner who wears his waistcoat inside out and thinks a Southern drawl signifies a lesser life-form?”

Rowan blinked, then glanced down at his waistcoat. Setting aside the apple core, he retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from atop his head and inspected the seams. He switched the waistcoat, then dug into the pocket, pulling out a gold watch on a chain. “I’ve been looking all over for this,” he exclaimed with a short laugh. “Good God, can it really be after three o’clock? I haven’t even had lunch yet.”

Jamie didn’t bother to remind him about the apple.

Rowan put away the watch. “I do apologize, Calhoun.”

“Accepted.”

“Good. I really am a tolerant man,” Rowan said. “And I’ve a few foibles of my own.”

Jamie thought of the cluttered house, the unidentifiable inventions covering every floor and table, the kitchen pantry and icebox stuffed with experiments, the lavatory lined with beakers and glass tubing. He’d even discovered a plump white mouse living in a maze on the mantelpiece.

“I noticed,” he said.

“There’s the door,” Rowan said as the brass knocker banged. “I’ll just see who it is.” As he left, a laundry chit fell on the floor.

The chit was dated two years earlier. Jamie deposited it, along with the apple core, in the dustbin and wiped his hands on a towel. His own foibles included an insistence on neatness and order, but he would have to confine that preference to his own quarters and simply shut his eyes to the rest.

Hearing voices in the parlor below, he went to the foyer and looked down over the rail to see who the caller was. For a moment, he stood unnoticed, watching from the doorway. Abigail Cabot had come to call.

She wore the same plain brown frock she’d had on this morning, but her demeanor had been quite transformed. She’d been amusing, almost playful as she and her sister introduced him to Rowan, and when the letter arrived from Lieutenant Butler, she’d shone like the sun at high noon. Now she was a dark little bird, her gaze darting furtively as she murmured something to the professor. Jamie wondered what was amiss.

“Hello, Miss Abigail,” he said, putting on his best smile and walking down the stairs to greet her. “I was just getting settled.”

She glanced at him, her striking eyes full of woe. But she spoke cordially enough. “That’s good, Mr. Calhoun. I hope you’ll be very comfortable here.”

“Come help me unpack.”

“I’ll do no such—”

“Of course you will.” Ignoring propriety, he took her hand and drew her up the stairs to his chamber. She resisted, stumbling a little on the stair, but he simply slowed his pace and pulled her along. “Rowan was helping,” he explained, “but I have no confidence in his organizational skills.”

A wry smile touched her lips. “It didn’t take you long to notice that.” She stooped and picked up an armload of books, carrying them to the shelves that lined one wall. As she put them away, ordering them by topic and author, her movements became slow and thoughtful. “Plato’s
Republic,
” she said. “I haven’t seen a copy of that in years.”

“Most people I know have never seen it at all,” Jamie said.

“
The Manual of Epictetus, Measure for Measure,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Rousseau, Francis Bacon’s
Novum Organum…
” She shelved more books, rattling off the titles with a growing incredulity that Jamie found faintly insulting.

“Why do you seem so surprised?” he asked. “Is it so astonishing that a man from the Chesapeake low country can read?”

“Not that he can, but that he actually does,” she stated. “Please forgive my bluntness, but the fact is, the legislators I’ve met from plantation society have never troubled themselves to study the issues in much depth.”

“No?”

“They’re more interested in pushing legislation that enables them to carry on as though the South had never even lost the war.”

Jamie’s purpose for joining Congress couldn’t be more different, but he would have to be cautious about revealing it. “Tell me, does everyone in the capital share your view? Does your father?”

She resumed her work with increasing agitation. “If you must know, my father and I share little in the way of political views. I imagine you’re going to go after his support for the Chesapeake railroad corridor, aren’t you?”

He felt a cold dart of suspicion. “Why would you suppose that?”

“My father’s been a senator all my life. I’ve learned a thing or two about politics. The congressmen from the South are after improved and expanded railroads to create even more prosperity. And how convenient for the government to have to pay for it rather than the rail companies, the landowners and those who use the service.”

“Miss Cabot, I didn’t come here for my convenience.” Jamie went about his business, organizing papers and correspondence on the desk in the corner. Going into politics was a bad idea, he decided, but it was too late for regrets. Getting himself elected had been absurdly easy. He was a Calhoun, through no fault of his own, and there had been a Calhoun in Congress ever since the Constitution had been ratified. However, if his fellow legislators regarded him as the knowing Miss Cabot did, he would have a harder time than he anticipated.

“Then why did you come here?” she asked.

To atone, he thought. To fix something that can’t be fixed. Redemption was too much to hope for. He looked at Miss Cabot, who waited for an answer.

“To represent my district,” he said.

She brayed with laughter. “If your district is made up of wealthy white male landowners, I’ll believe that. Oh, the Koran,” she said, losing interest in the conversation as she paused to admire the morocco binding of the large tome. “Some of the most gifted astronomers in history come from Muslim people. And what’s this one?”

Jamie said nothing, but calmly watched her flip open the large, illustrated book. Her jaw dropped, and her cheeks bloomed with color. Just for a moment, true fascination flashed in her eyes, then she slammed the book shut and thrust it onto the shelf.

“That’s the
Kama Sutra
of Vatsayayana,” Jamie said, delighted by her reaction. “A Hindu text on the art of love from the third century.” He pulled the book from the shelf and flipped through the pages. What would it be like, he wondered, to show Abigail Cabot the delights depicted in the intricate woodcut illustrations? To press apart her thighs and stroke her, to watch those midnight eyes grow soft and misty with ecstasy?

Grinning at the fantasy, he replaced the book and selected another. “I also have
The Perfumed Garden,
a manual of Arab erotology. Would you like to borrow it, Miss Cabot?”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re no scholar if you would dismiss a classic text—”

“I said you were disgusting, not the text.”

“Tell me,” he said, “are you always this charming to your neighbors?”

“I am charming to no one at all.” She shoved the volume into the shelf and resumed her work. “But I expect you’ve already noticed that about me.” She dropped a heavy book, letting out a yelp as it landed on her right foot.

Jamie hastened to pick it up. “Are you all right? Is your foot—”

“I’m fine.” She spoke with such venom that he paused to look at her. Color stained her cheeks, but she ducked her head.

Possessed by the urge to touch her, Jamie smoothed his hand down her arm. She was sturdy and wiry, yet oddly vulnerable as she lifted her face to his. “You shouldn’t be so familiar with me. It’s not proper.”

“I rarely concern myself with being proper.” Her lips, he noticed, were lovely when not pursed in disapproval.

She must have sensed the turn of his thoughts, for she stepped back, showing great interest in the book. “This is in the original Greek,” she observed in an obvious effort to deflect his attention from her.

“Is that what all those funny symbols mean?” Jamie feigned a baffled expression. “And here I thought it was an algebra text.”

The color in her face intensified. “I’ve been unforgivably disagreeable, haven’t I?”

“Disagreeable. But not unforgivably.”

“I deserve your scorn.”

“You deserve a spanking.” He laughed at the shock on her face. “And I would delight in administering the punishment,” he added. “However, you’re doing such a good job organizing my books that I’ll give you a reprieve. Carry on. And try if you can to refrain from making any further remarks about my poor benighted intellect.”

A yellowed card slipped from between the pages of Xenophon’s
On Horsemanship
and drifted to the tabletop. She picked it up and studied it. “A photograph,” she said. “Is it yours?”

He took it from her, feeling an immediate twist in his gut—a reluctance to open a private part of his life to this woman. “Actually, yes.”

“Who is it?” Leaning toward him, she studied the small image of amber shadows and pale light. The portrait showed a striking light-skinned Negro man of middle years, small of stature, his patrician African features composed into a calm expression. He wore the silk jacket and cap of a professional jockey, and between his slender hands, he held a winner’s cup.

“The best Thoroughbred jockey in the country. That picture was made at Saratoga Springs.” Filled with bittersweet pride, he propped the photograph on the shelf at eye level, then turned to her. “His name is—was—Noah Calhoun. He was my half brother.”

To her credit, she did not dive for her smelling salts, but regarded him with a clarity of understanding he found both surprising and gratifying. “I see. What happened to him, Mr. Calhoun?”

He wondered how much to tell her. That he had practically been raised by Noah, seventeen years his senior? That Noah had been more of a father to him than his own? That Noah was the reason Jamie had gone into public service?

Jamie and Noah had gone to the Middle East on an adventure, to see the world and acquire horses for Albion’s breeding program. Oh, how he wished he could turn back time, leave Noah safe with his wife, Patsy, at their farm on King’s Creek. But Jamie had insisted he come. What had happened to Noah on that ill-fated journey would haunt Jamie for the rest of his life.

“He died overseas,” he said, deciding not to elaborate. He didn’t want to share that painful episode, least of all with this strange little woman whose probing eyes seemed to see too much of him already.

“I’m terribly sorry. You must miss him.”

“I do.” To change the subject, he said, “On to more agreeable matters. What did your lieutenant have to say?”

Her face fell, and he realized the matter wasn’t agreeable at all. “He wishes to take up a correspondence.”

“But isn’t that what you—”

“With my sister.” She aligned the books on the shelf with obsessive precision. “As I told you last night, this comes as no surprise to me. But it’s troubling….”

“What is troubling about it?”

“She asked me to write the reply for her. My sister isn’t fond of writing.”

Ah. He saw the whole picture now. He understood why she was upset and distracted, maybe even faintly resentful of her sister. “I’d wager you excel at it.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time I wrote something in her stead.”

“You could always refuse to do it.”

“Yes, but—” She bit her lip.

“So why don’t you refuse?”

“I don’t want the lieutenant to get his feelings hurt. He’s a decent, sincere man.”

Jamie resisted the urge to snap at her, to tell her to quit idolizing a dolt who valued beauty over substance. He studied her for a few moments, wondering at the passion that shone in her midnight eyes, and summoned patience. No need to alienate a potential ally. “I suppose there’s nothing wrong with taking care of your sister’s correspondence. Just make sure you understand the risks.”