Leslie LaFoy (29 page)

Her ability to analyze situations exceeded the capabilities of most of the men he knew. If only the discourse in the House of Burgesses were as interesting and informed as the one she'd brought into his study.

“Do the British understand that we have no real desire to be fully independent of the King's rule?” he asked, knowing that only Claire could give him an accurate answer.
“Do they know that all we want is the preservation of the liberties we've enjoyed since the first Englishman set foot on this shore?”

“In all honesty, Devon,” she replied gently, “they see the colonists as lacking sufficient courage to truly break the bonds that tie you to the mother country. They believe that when pushed to the edge of the precipice, you'll choose to submit rather than jump to your certain deaths.”

“I wish I could say that I knew them to be wrong. But for every stalwart heart, there are ten faint ones.”

Francis softly cleared his throat. “Where do you stand on the issue of colonial resistance, Lady Claire?”

“Freedom is a very precious thing. To my mind, it's more valuable than gold and jewels and all the money in the world. But is it more precious than life itself? That's a difficult choice.”

“You haven't answered the question, Claire,” Devon pressed, for some inexplicable reason desperately wanting to hear her say that she'd don her breeches and pick up arms for the cause of liberty. “Where do you stand?”

“I haven't yet decided.”

The admission hurt in a way he couldn't quite fathom. His spirits sank, wrapped in an overwhelming feeling of being adrift and utterly alone.

Richard Henry ceased his frantic pacing and from across the room asked, “What concerns are you still pondering, Lady Claire?”

Her chin came up a notch and she took a breath and moistened her lips before replying, “I have many of them, sir. On the one hand, I agree that the colonists are being denied the basic rights of Englishmen and have cause for protest on all fronts—economic and political and philosophical. Your repeated protests and reasoned, earnest pleas for equality and fairness have fallen on deaf ears. I understand how you've become frustrated
and desperate enough to resort to more violent acts of protest.”

“Understanding doesn't necessarily mean that you approve.”

“Cause and consequence go hand in hand, sir. As you escalate your resistance to the rule of the Crown, the Crown becomes more determined to bring you to heel. The plight of Boston serves as a prime example of that. If Boston doesn't capitulate—”

“And she won't,” Richard Henry assured her.

Claire shrugged slightly. “If Boston won't compromise, the Crown won't either and there'll be no chance of avoiding bloodshed. Men will die. Fathers, husbands, sons, brothers. And women will grieve for them. An entire generation—American and English alike—will always bear the scars of loss on their hearts. And for what?”

“Liberty,” Richard Henry answered, his dark eyes afire.

“The right of free men to govern themselves,” Francis offered calmly.

Devon snorted. “Pride.”

“Yes, Devon,” she countered, meeting his gaze somberly. “When it comes down to it, it's pride. And I have to ask myself why it is that women and slaves and indentured servants are expected to meekly surrender their pride and accept a status that free white men of wealth consider so intolerable as to be worth resisting to the cost of their very lives. That, Richard Henry,” she added, turning back to him, “is the central issue which prevents me from declaring support for your cause. You profess a passionate devotion to liberty, but you intend for that liberty to be enjoyed only by men like yourself— wealthy and white.”

Devon held his breath, watching Richard Henry fairly vibrate with anger. Dear God, what had he been thinking in encouraging Claire to freely speak her mind?
How could he have forgotten her unconventional views on the doctrine of natural rights? Richard Henry was renowned as a passionate, capable, no-quarter debater. Claire had stirred a hornet's nest.

“I will remind you, Lady Claire,” Richard Henry said icily, “that we cannot give to others what we don't possess.”

“With all due respect, sir,” she shot back, her tone coolly belying the spark of anger in her eyes, “liberty is not yours to grant. It is the birthright of every man and every woman. To place yourself in the position of allowing or denying freedom to any human being, you're claiming for yourself the very right you refuse to let the King have over you. How can I, as a woman, support your resistance of despotism? In the end, would I not simply be trading one despot for another?”

“I will remind you,” Richard Henry retorted, squaring his shoulders and stiffening his back, “that not all men are tyrants, Lady Claire.”

“By the same token,” Devon observed quietly, “not all men are benevolent. I can see the soundness of your logic, Claire. It pains me, but I can see it.”

“Thank you,” she replied, her smile small but conveying her appreciation for his alliance. “I'll continue to examine the colonial cause with an open mind and some sympathy. But I must be honest and say to you that I'm unlikely to stand with you unless I have good reason to believe that the liberty for which we would all fight is liberty which we will all enjoy.”

Before Devon or the others could muster a reply of any sort, she graciously swept the three of them with her gaze, smiled prettily, and bobbed a curtsy as she said, “And I will now leave you gentlemen to your brandy and conversation. Dinner will be served in a few minutes, sirs.”

Devon watched her go, a smile slowly spreading
across his face. Damned if she hadn't stood up to Richard Henry Lee and held her own. She hadn't needed him to step into the fray in support of her beliefs and ideas. But she'd appreciated him for doing it, which was warming in the strangest, most intoxicating way. Or, he reminded himself, looking down, it could be nothing more than an effect of the brandy.

“Rivard,” Francis said, “that is a most unusual woman.”

“She does know her own mind.”

“And she obviously has no qualms about voicing it,” Francis observed, chuckling softly. “She sounds very much like Tom Jefferson. Although her voice is better for public speaking than his will ever be. You do have your hands full, don't you?”

Devon's smile broadened. “I'll admit that life has been considerably more interesting since she arrived at Rosewind.”

“She's right, you know,” Richard Henry declared, moving to the desk to retrieve his brandy snifter. “There will be war. It won't come tomorrow. Perhaps not even this year or the next. But there will come a day when the Crown will demand that we choose between our principles and peace. You both know the hearts of our countrymen as well as I do. You know that we'll choose to pick up our weapons and fight for principle.”

“No, I don't, Richard,” Devon admitted, his good mood evaporating. “For the last twenty years we've endured policies and laws that have been directly contrary to our best interests in every respect. We've paid the taxes to support an army among us, an army that's supposed to protect us from native attacks but doesn't venture outside the safe and secure comforts of our cities. We've surrendered the taxes to pay the wages of colonial administrators who care nothing for the quality of our lives and everything for that of the King and his ministers.
For the sake of the privilege of being an oft-abused part of the British Empire, we've allowed the erosion of our freedoms and rights in every facet of our lives.

“And what have we done about it?” Devon went on. Not allowing the other man time to respond, he answered his own question. “We've stomped our feet, shaken our fists, railed at the injustice of it all, then written polite letters to the King and his ministers asking them to please give some consideration to being a bit nicer to us. Tell me why we'd suddenly find our backbones and stand up like men.”

“It won't be sudden, Devon,” Richard Henry assured him. “It will happen in increments. Slow, decidedly painful increments. But with the passage of the Boston Port Bill, the die has been cast. Boston will not back down. We won't let her. The Crown will press harder and we'll press back. We've endured these last twenty years to learn our lesson well. What we willingly give, the King demands tenfold. We have reached the point of having nothing more to give, the point of having nothing to lose and everything to gain. War will come, Devon.”

From beside him, Francis asked, “What will you do, Devon, if your wife can't bring herself to stand at your side when war comes?”

“I don't know,” he answered, his mind wrestling with the decision of just how much to tell the Lees about his relationship with Claire. Part of him knew that the testimony of any Lee in annulment proceedings would tip the scales in his favor. To that end, he ought to tell them the entire truth of how he and Claire had come to be married and their determination to go their separate ways at their first opportunity. And yet he didn't want to. Every fiber of his being said the matter was a private one, no one's business but Claire's and his own.

“Do you think that she would return to England
and petition the Crown for a divorce?” he vaguely heard Francis ask.

“Which she would likely get,” Richard Henry pronounced. “Being the wife of an avowed rebel would gain her great sympathy from the bench. I imagine that it would be difficult to see her leave, though. She's a most beautiful and intelligent lady.”

“She is. And it would,” Devon admitted absently, his mind reeling through a myriad of stunning possibilities he'd never even imagined before that moment.

S
HE'D NEVER HOSTESSED
a dinner party before, but Claire thought it was going fairly well. If the Lee brothers had noticed that the butler and the doorman were the same person, they were polite enough to refrain from mentioning it. They were equally decorous—or blind—about the upstairs maid who was serving them their dinner. Meg was doing a beautiful job of it, and every forkful of Hannah's food had been exclaimed over by their guests.

Devon sat at the opposite end of the table, his mother on his right, Elsbeth on his left. The Lee bothers had been seated at Claire's end, with Francis Lightfoot sitting across from Elsbeth and Richard Henry opposite Mother Rivard. All in all, the seating seemed to allow for easy conversation. Or it would have if anyone but Elsbeth could have gotten a word in edgewise.

“Everyone was there, of course,” Elsbeth was saying. “Mr. Custis, God rest his soul, was such a wonderful dancer. We made a marvelous pairing in the quadrille. Despite what everyone says, I do believe he was every bit the equal of Mr. Washington in any Virginia ballroom. Which of course explains why Mrs. Custis, after the death of her dear, dear husband, was so quickly attracted to Mr. Washington. A man who both enjoys and excels at
dancing is such a rare creature, don't you agree, Francis Lightfoot?”

Francis Lightfoot Lee, every inch the Tidewater gentleman, smiled, nodded, and murmured something indistinguishable but undoubtedly polite.

Elsbeth smiled and fluttered her lashes, and in the precious lull of silence, Richard Henry Lee turned to Devon and abruptly changed the course of the dinner conversation. “I understand that you're not planting tobacco this year, Devon. That you're experimenting with farming instead.”

“I'm planting a variety of crops,” he replied, “trying to see which might be best suited to our climate and our market opportunities.”

“Devon?” Elsbeth gasped, her hand pressed to the base of her throat. “You're a
farmer?”

“There's no shame in farming, Mistress Whittington,” Francis quickly assured her. “The last time I was at Mount Vernon, Colonel Washington and I spent a great deal of time discussing the coming necessity of crop diversification. Devon is simply ahead of the rest of us in venturing along the new trail.”

“And I, for one,” Richard Henry added, “am most anxious to hear the results of your experiments. As I'm sure others are. You'd best be prepared to give a full accounting when the House next comes into session. Everyone will expect it.”

Devon shrugged and reached for his wineglass. “I doubt that I'll have much to say. I'm still planting the fields. It'll be late this fall before I know the true worth of the endeavor. Claire believes that it'll be quite profitable, though.” He lifted his glass toward her, adding, “I hope that I don't disappoint her.”

She heard sincerity in his voice, saw the soft light of admiration and respect shining in his eyes. To know that her opinion mattered to him was somehow settling. “I
have complete faith in you, Devon. Disappointing me isn't possible.”

At the edge of her vision she saw Elsbeth frown. “I thought Lady Claire was planning to return to England in August.”

“The possibility has been discussed,” Devon admitted with a reassuring smile at the startled Lee brothers. “But circumstances frequently require adaptations. Do they not, Claire?”

“Yes, they do,” she answered, wondering what had caused the drastic change in his manner. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought he was genuinely trying to court her affections. “The challenge is to see the advantages in the new situation and accept the change with grace and dignity.”

“I would imagine,” Elsbeth offered caustically, “that you usually find that exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to do.”

Francis and Richard visibly squirmed, then quickly tried to cover their reaction by focusing their attention on their plates. Devon, his dark eyes flashing, slammed down his wineglass. As he did, his mother looked at Claire and silently begged her to do something to avert the impending scene.

Without time to think, Claire hastily quipped, “Not everyone is gifted with an imagination, Elsbeth.” She offered what she hoped passed as a sympathetic smile. “Please don't let your lack bother you. It's nothing to be ashamed of.”

Elsbeth drew herself up regally and glared at her, her face mottling with suppressed anger.

Devon smiled and lifted his wineglass yet again, saying, “A toast, gentlemen.” He waited until the Lees had raised their glasses before continuing, “To Claire and the beauty and spirit she's brought to our life here at Rosewind.”