My Name is Resolute (49 page)

I watched him tug the chest through the door and wiggle it into place in its corner by the loom, so snug as if it had always been meant for that spot. I could not help clapping my hands happily. Such warmth spread through me, I wanted to hug and kiss him. I closed my eyes, thinking, do not lie to me, oh, my heart. Bear no false witness of my feelings, for I fear that I love this man.

He stared into my eyes, a mixture of emotions playing upon his face, and then said, “You went with me to the dance with no ill effects. But I have told you my wish that you marry me. I tell you now that I will wait for you to have me. Until the day you tell me to stop waiting, that you love another, I will wait.”

“You do not ask whether I love you.”

“If you grow to love me that would be excellent. For now, that you tolerate me would be enough. I know I love you with my very core. Everything I have and all that I am I would give to you. I will hold that love sacred until you tell me it is all lost. Until you say you love another. That day I will bury it. If I must wait until the waves stop coming from the sea, so be it.”

“You give very little quarter.”

“Love and war. No quarter given, none asked.”

“Cullah. Eadan. Is there any other thing in your past than that which your father told me?”

“Such as a wife and seven children?”

I laughed. “I was thinking since Jacob took the Stone of Scotland perhaps you’d stolen the crown jewels.
Is
there a wife?”

“No. Although I have, well, learned a few manly arts from a tart or two.”

“And would you be inclined to return to them, say, when I am sick on childbed?”

“What kind of rogue do you take me for, woman?”

“I want a man who is steadfast and chaste. Past tarts excused. Future tarts will be cause for great strife and a clout on the head. Before drawing and quartering.”

“Miss Talbot, you are a stern taskmaster.”

“I shall need a stick, then.”

“I will fetch you one.”

“I shall marry you, then.”

He gasped with a look on his face that made me see him as he might have been when but a child. “You will?”

“Despite my lack of arts and understanding, sir, I find that I love the very sight of you. The way your hair will not part straight. The way you laugh. I cannot but move my hand across my loom that it is not touching your cheek.”

Cullah sank to one knee, looking for all the world like a man in a painting before his lady. “When? Today?”

I laughed. “We must post banns. Let us choose a day together. Christmas is coming. That would be a better time.”

He smiled and his eyes filled with tears, saying, “I’ve kissed you before. Will you not kiss me now, my troth-ed wife? I do fear I shall die for want of it.”

I thrilled at his words. “If this be life or death, perhaps a single chaste kiss to keep you alive.” Our kiss was not chaste, nor was it singular. I fell into his arms as rapt as ever I could imagine love to be. While I concentrated on the soft warmth of his lips, my mind raced ahead to what marriage might bring. Passion filled me that seemed only assuaged by forcing my entire body against his, and I did it, his arms encouraging me, until I had to pull away, weak and shuddering.

His wide shoulders seemed like the very frame for which I had traveled all the steps of my life up to this moment, to lean upon, to depend upon. This man was no boy and no narrow-shouldered gentleman of the realm. Everything about him was strength and work, his hands callused as my pa’s had been, his eyes merry with the joy of hard work and the satisfaction of producing beautiful goods. The very smell of him was pleasing.

He whispered against my head, “We could make a public announcement at Lady Spencer’s winter ball.”

“What ball?” I asked.

“Mid-December. You are invited.”

“And are you?”

“I will be there. It would be right for your family to announce it. Since you have none, I will ask Lady Spencer to do your honors.”

“Cullah, that would be wonderful.”

I wore the lavender dress to the ball, and this time decked it with Patey’s string of pearls, putting the sapphire brooch at my décolletage, the ruby ring upon my finger. I topped it with the hat trimmed in the velvet ribbon, to which I had added embroidered edges. Cullah and Jacob both seemed to take a glance at me and turn their heads as if in shame or embarrassment. I asked, “Is something amiss?”

Jacob stopped the horses before the mansion. Cullah pursed his lips, asking, “Will you be ashamed to be seen with me?” He looked down at his secondhand boots, polished with beeswax so heavily that he smelled of honey.

I pulled up my skirt and stuck out my feet in their old leather shoes, cleaned, but not so much as a wisp of wax on them. “Are you shamed to be seen with me with these shoes? The slippers I had counted on split apart. I hoped you brought some of that wax to use on the way.”

He shook his head. Looked into the woods then down at his rough hands. Felt his chin, as if the beard betrayed him, too. “No one will see your feet. No one will take their eyes off your form and face. Dancing lessons are not enough. I see it now. I am but a carpenter, Miss Talbot. I shall wait for you outside with Pa.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling such a part of his heart already linked to mine, that pain seemed to come from him to me. “Our Lord was a carpenter. If you will not go, then I shall not go in. I shall wait with you. There could be no reason to go in without you, for I would dance with no other, and I will be seen by no other.”

Cullah lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my fingers in their fragile gloves. A bit of rough skin on his thumb caught in the lace glove and pulled a loop of fiber. He gave a sigh. “My hands are too rough to touch you at all.”

I said, “The gloves, my love, are to hide my own calluses. Say you will go in with me or we may as well stay here.”

Jacob whistled at the horses and said, “You will go in, son, or I’ll box your ears.”

“Well and aye,” Cullah said, “well and aye,” though he did not appear satisfied.

The Spencer home, fitted out for a ball, was grand beyond any that the most fanciful story could have drawn. All the ladies were decked in perfection, and I counted myself among them. The only thing missing for me were more stylish slippers, but still, I had a serviceable pair of shoes in which to dance, and my feet would feel none the worse on the morrow. The men tried to equal the ladies in their prim wigs and gilt shoe buckles. A few, I saw, wore no wigs, and so Cullah did not seem out of the ordinary.

The Roberts family was attending. Serenity and Wallace had returned from Virginia for a visit. Serenity’s midsection was well swollen with child, which at first seemed not amiss until I counted months, and remembered their marrying without much of the usual delay or planning. Depending upon when the babe came, I realized, it might have been made soon after his leaving me at the docks. Perhaps even before. Perhaps that would explain the level of distress the family had shown me? Others whom I met from Virginia that evening, men and women alike, had come quite bedazzled in lace. Wallace, of course, was dressed to his fullest flattery. As Serenity sat, swollen and pale, he danced, his carriage perfect as it had been before but now slowed and meticulous with the Virginia planter’s mien, so that he caught attention from men and women alike.

I tried to avoid their presence in order to have a pleasant time. Alas, that was not to be. During a lull in the dancing, Lady Spencer sent Portia Roberts to ask me to come to her side. When I did, Serenity and Wallace stood by her, along with another woman I did not know, a dark-haired woman with high cheekbones. She wore an exquisite gown of the same fine cut and craft as Lady Spencer’s yet without the ermine trim befitting a lady’s status. When she introduced me to the seamstress Johanna Parmenter, Mistress Parmenter bowed slightly lower than I had, and smiled most courteously.

As we began to talk, Cullah excused himself and said he had to speak with Lady Spencer. I knew of this, of course, for he wanted to ask her blessing on our betrothal. It seemed needless to me, but since she favored both of us—and that was her own choice when she could have easily banned me for the spurning by her son—I would be thankful indeed for her blessing.

Mistress Parmenter led me, taking my arm in hers, away from the Spencers to an alcove. “I asked to meet you for a purely selfish reason, Miss Talbot.”

I smiled, trying to place my emotions in reserve the way Lady Spencer did. “How may I please you, Mistress Parmenter?”

“I must know where you got the fabric you wear. France? It looks French. It must be. But you have paid a fortune for it and yet wear it so modestly. Perfectly elegant taste. Most women would add so much ruffle they hide the beauty of the fabric for which they have paid so dearly.”

“I would rather not say whence it came.”

“I must know. I swear I will keep your secret. Was it contraband? Oh,” she said, turning around me, as if inspecting a model. “Your lines are sleek and yet in style, and the ribbon, so subtle. But I apologize; it is not comely to observe so closely. It is only that I am allowed by Lady Spencer to come here to observe the fashions, so as to keep her in perfect currency of habit.”

“Oh. You are a
dressmaker
?”

“I am.”

“Then I will tell you the fabric for this gown came from my own hands and loom. I am a weaver.”

She frowned with a critical eye, leaning close to my bodice without any shame. “And who embroidered?”

“I did it myself.”

“Alone?”

“I have worked on this for many weeks. I am not by birth a craftswoman. I am permitted to wear this, even by sumptuary propriety.”

“I should say you are. But, la, you have been taught by a master.”

“I suppose. Some of what I was taught I have refined out of stubborn intention to create the finest cloth.”

“Do you have more? I will pay you twelve shillings a yard for this.”

“I have only some left, perhaps five yards. I would sell it for fifteen shillings. Each yard.”

“Done. When will you have more?”

“Do you want it exactly as this? I could create indigos and cream, or crimson, besides this purple.”

“The purple is divine, but I will take anything you create. Twenty yards of any color will do. Did you make your hoops and panniers, too? I thought as much.” Suddenly she leaned her head away from me, observing me again but with a strike of scorn on her face. “You are, then, a competitor.”

“I wist not, madam. I have no wish to fit ladies’ gowns and keep up with style. I would sell you my cloth, only spare me from having to sew tucks and whalebone for some lord’s spoiled daughter with bad taste and too much coin.”

Mistress Parmenter laughed and tapped her cheek lightly with her fan. “If you will promise to sell only to me, I will give eighteen shillings a yard. You may vary the design as you choose, as long as the amount of embroidery is about the same as this. Excellent work. I will not press you for speed, but if you will allow me to say that I purchased the cloth you wear from a specialist in France, so that I may show it and speak of it, I will have orders waiting within a week for everything you bring. We will both be well suited.”

“I prefer not to lie.”

She smiled and gave a low laugh through closed lips. “Then you will not. I will handle that for us both. If any asks you, simply say what you wish and shake your head at the boldness of a woman in business for herself. Let them think what they may.”

“I am sure I will have twenty in a month or less.”

“Excellent.” She threaded her arm through mine again and led me back to the dance floor where the dancers were in form for the final turn of a rondo. “Lady Spencer will direct you to my shop. There is no storefront or sign on a street. I work from my home, with fitting room and all. It allows a certain mystery which ladies who can afford my services find attractive. So, we shall work in mystery, too, in trust, with nothing written. I will trust you and you will trust me, and if at any time you do not feel so, you need only say and our contract will be dissolved.”

“Agreed,” I said. My heart swelled. I could never have hoped for such a contract, such a link. Such a price!

A candle near her guttered, flared, and went out. She moved her eyes slowly from it back to me and said, “Of course, I will say so, too. Are you able to keep a secret?”

“Like the night keeps the dark,” I said. I smiled at her and gave her my fullest attention, even though as I turned I saw Cullah approaching. His face lit with excitement as he raised a hand to wave at me, but I felt it was vital at that moment not to lose her eyes’ hold on my own. “Can you get me a better price on the silk embroidery hanks than I have been paying at the general mercantile? A merchant’s discount, perhaps?”

Johanna waved to someone across the room, while saying, “Of course.”

“With a penny’s profit or so for yourself.”

She turned to me again. “Of course,” she repeated, and this time laughed openly. “You are young to have such a mind. We shall enjoy doing business together, my dear Resolute.”

“I agree, Johanna. Now I must see what my beloved has to say to me, for he is trying hard to get my attention.”

Mistress Parmenter moved with the grace of a swan through the room and seated herself next to an elderly blind woman. I smiled at Cullah, for he was as animated as a child with a candy. “Is Lady Spencer to announce us to the crowd?”

“No, it’s not that. She said better to post banns in the usual way, for to announce us would not suit her son and his wife. She wishes us the most happiness, however. All that. But Resolute, no, Miss Talbot, oh, Miss Talbot, I must tell you. I have found him. I have him.”

“You found whom? Is Jacob here?”

“No. Please, ask me no more questions. I am struck dumb. He is here.” Cullah turned to someone behind him, a man tall enough that his hair showed above Cullah’s head, yet his face was unseen. His form was more slender than Cullah’s broad shoulders. The man was dressed in lavishly expensive and comely attire, yet with not the Williamsburg delicacy of Wallace. His clothes were a daring style from some faraway place: heavy blue brocade and cream color set off with a dashing maroon sash, under which he carried a short-sword. His face was bronzed, his eyes creased from too much sun, and he had a narrow, white scar from his hairline to just under his left eye. His visage carried an air of worldliness that set his features with age that seemed far beyond the youth in his dancing blue eyes.