Now Face to Face (39 page)

“Yes, I’ve been told.” Klaus felt an impulse to bolt, to leave Beth Perry talking in the middle of a sentence.

“She told me he was like a child to her. I can’t imagine a slave as—Captain Von Rothbach, what is it?”

“It grows dark, and I have a long ride back home.”

“Don’t ride home. Come and stay the night with us. Lady Devane will be there.”

“No, it is impossible for me to spend the night.”

The thought of seeing her before he was ready made him abrupt.

“You’re coming tomorrow?” Her fine eyes—she had her father’s eyes—lingered on him.

“Tomorrow?”

“Christmas Day. Everyone is invited. Your uncle will be there. Father has hired a juggler.”

“Yes, I’ll be there.”

“Good.”

P
ERRY’S HOUSE
was filled with people. In every room, tables were piled high with food: maid-of-honor cakes dripping with icing, turkeys, hams, bits of dried fruit made sticky with rum and sugar. The tables were lit by large silver candelabra, molded in a heavy pattern of leaves and flowers. They had belonged to Beth’s mother. Barbara had brought her silver trays and candlesticks from First Curle. Brown bottles of wine and rum were everywhere, the wine a clear Madeira Colonel Bolling brought. There was Colonel Perry’s peach brandy, made from the peaches in his orchard. There were platters of trout and roasted chicken, pewter bowls of pecans and walnuts.

Barbara had spent days walking through her woods to find vines with some green left on them, to pick pine branches and cones. Last night she and Beth and Thérèse had made vine-and-ivy wreaths, which hung now on the walls. This morning, early, she had scattered the pine sprigs and cones among the trays, and the smell of pine woods mingled with that of the food. She wore a pine sprig in her hair, the green needles vivid against the red-gold, against the heavy black velvet gown she wore, the lace on it as white as new snow. There was not enough room for everyone who had come, so she sat on a window ledge watching the juggler.

“I’ve something to tell you.” It was Valentine Bolling. All day she had managed to ignore him.

Barbara unfurled her fan with a snap, began to fan herself rapidly. “I am watching the juggler.”

“I’ll be bringing barrels of pork and hogsheads of tobacco into the rolling house.”

She turned her head abruptly, the pine needles a slight green caress against her cheek, to look him in the eyes.

“It is custom to greet each person this day with compliments of the season, or with ‘Christ be with you.’ Compliments of the season, Colonel Bolling. You most certainly will not.”

“It’s the law. You cannot stop me. You have to accept hogsheads if I pay the fee. He who has a rolling house at the river has to store any hogsheads brought him.”

“You cannot tell me there is no other rolling house to which you can take them.”

“There is no other rolling house close.”

Barbara snapped shut her fan. “Tell me the law again.”

“He who has a rolling house at the river must store the hogsheads of his neighbors in it.”

“Hogsheads. Of tobacco. Not barrels of pork. Bring your hogsheads, but nothing else. And you’d best put the fee into my hand that day, or something may happen.”

He glared at her, unrepentant and challenging. “What might happen?”

“They might fall in the river. I would be so sorry, of course, but there they would be.”

Once a day, she or Thérèse walked to the rolling house to count the hogsheads accumulating inside the long shed. Sometimes planters stopped by to tell her they’d left hogsheads. Sometimes they simply left them. Everyone was preparing for spring, for the first tobacco ship. Bolling had kept an indentured servant to live in the storehouse throughout the winter and early spring to keep an account of the hogsheads brought by neighbors, as well as to sell items from the storehouse.

Bolling had provided prizing, the packing of tobacco leaves into a hogshead. He bought raw tobacco from his neighbors, as did Colonel Perry. It was in Barbara’s mind that she must bring someone to live in the storehouse, to sell its goods, to keep accounts, and—why not?—to prize, as Bolling had done. All the things necessary—the ropes, the pulleys, the heavy stones used to weigh down and press the tobacco leaves tightly into the hogsheads—were there. Why should she not, like her neighbors, buy tobacco?

“Where is Captain Von Rothbach?” she asked him.

“He’ll be here.” Bolling looked Barbara up and down. “He will escort his lady.”

Barbara held the fan up so that only her eyes showed. “I promise not to flirt too dreadfully.”

She promised nothing. She was wild to see Klaus, and angry. She’d learned today that he’d been to see the Randolphs, the Farrars, the Eppeses. But not to see her. He ought to have called, if only to condole with her on the loss of Hyacinthe, which he would know about. Someone would have told him. Pride stirred up that part of her that knew how to be both ruthless and cold, the tease, the flirt, deadly, said Harry. Beware what you do.

Those of us given the gifts of charm and beauty, Bab, said her grandmother in her mind, shaking a finger at a fourteen-year-old girl who didn’t yet know she possessed them, nor what they meant, those of us given them use them kindly, discreetly, with honesty, for otherwise the hurt to others is too great. And one day the hurt will turn around and bite.

“Strumpet,” said Bolling.

Barbara cocked her head to one side, moved the fan, smiled dazzlingly. “Yes.”

He snorted and walked away.

Late in the afternoon, Klaus walked into the parlor, the dark-haired woman of Williamsburg with him. Barbara felt pride and anger flare out like a peacock’s tail. I could take you easily, she thought. Look into their eyes, Richelieu had said. He was her first lover other than Roger, and he had coached her in the art of seduction. Once they trust you, hurt them. They struggle then to escape, but can’t. The hurt paralyzes them, makes you the puppetmaster, them the puppet.

Among her admirers had been an earl, the son of a duke, and a duke, as well as handsome young men in King James’s Jacobite court. Two men had fought a duel over her.

Why bother over a sloop captain? she thought. I’ll leave it be.

She watched as he went around the chamber greeting people. Finally he came over to her.

Well, she thought, what do you have to say for yourself?

“You’re as beautiful as ever.”

“Why have you not called on me? I expected you to do so.” She was direct, no flirting, no seductiveness.

He did not answer. She watched a blush come to his face, recede. There was that saying of her grandmother’s: Nothing changes and everything changes. Something had changed: He no longer desired her. Well.

He might at least have had the courtesy to come and tell her so; but the thought of Charles came into her mind, and how she had used him so as not to love Roger—and had loved Roger anyway. Playing Richelieu’s game, without the coldness, but playing, anyway. Leave it alone, she thought, her pride smarting. There was never love between us, only desire.

“I heard about your servant,” he was saying. “I offer my condolences.”

“I accept them.”

“I can bring you another slave. You have only to ask it. The slave markets of Cartagena are filled with young boys—”

“Compliments of the season, Captain.”

She went into another parlor, saw Margaret Cox’s grandsons. Anger was rolling through her, that Klaus thought Hyacinthe could be replaced like a lost dog. To these people, he was a dog. I am dangerous, she thought. I’d best watch myself awhile.

“Someone has hurt my feelings,” she said to the Coxes. James and Brazure and Bowler Cox were half in love with her. They came to call upon her only as a trio, as if it took all three of them to have the courage to visit her. “Let me sit with you awhile.”

As they stood, one of them tipped over his plate of food upon himself; another stammered out something incoherent; the third was unable to speak at all. She settled between them, at her ease, amused by their clumsiness—and touched, too. The girl in her said, This is real, this is genuine, this is good. Enjoy their innocence. Find yours, again.

After a time, Colonel Perry came into the room. Barbara saw him look from one to another, until finally he found her, and onto his face came a smile. She felt her angry heart grow more peaceful. Here, now, was true love, kind, steadfast, safe. There was Roger’s grace, Roger’s courtesy, matured to something so fine she did not know how to put words to it. Really, her grandmother must meet him.

“Brazure, Bowler, James, do you take care of her?” he said, walking over to them.

The three young men stood again, one of them knocking into another as they did so, making Barbara laugh.

“I have to show Lady Devane my seedbeds,” he said to the Cox lads. “Does your grandmother have her seedbeds covered? If not, go and tell her I think we’ll have snow today. Well,” he said to Barbara, as he walked her away, she leaning on his arm, “I have been a good host, talking with each and every one of my guests; I have been a good burgess, listening to complaints and frets; and now I intend to please myself by talking only with you. Have you enjoyed your day? Did you like the juggler? You’re still in black. For New Year’s, will you wear a gown of color, for my sake?”

Today Roger had been dead a year. Her period of mourning was over. Where is my wild grief for you, Roger, the grief I brought over with me? Has it simmered down to this wistfulness for what might have been but was not to be? Was not to be. The words no longer break my heart. Does the hurt for Hyacinthe overlie my feeling for you? Or do I hurt so much for him, as not to notice how I still hurt for you? Do I love you less, or is this what Grandmama means by time healing all? Am I healing? There is greater purpose to all than we know, Colonel Perry said. Believe that and life becomes, even in despair, a thing of adventure.

They were walking through the parlor. Klaus was still there, a crowd of women around him as he told fortunes, looking into palms. It’s a slave trick I learned in Jamaica, he had told Barbara. People find it amusing. He had opened her palm last fall before he sailed away. I see a man who finds you very beautiful, he’d said.

“Did you have Blackstone order the slaves to sprinkle cornstalk ash among the dirt in which you planted the seedlings? Did he cover the beds with hay and cornhusks?” Colonel Perry was asking.

They were outside, he stopping to tie her cloak under her chin as if she were a child, pulling the hood over her hair carefully, his face concentrated. Near the riverbank, a large tree had fallen over; he had planted ivy and vines that Major Custis gave him to grow up and around it, making it green, making it handsome, even in its death. He had had a seat carved into it, so that he might sit and watch the river. My mind becomes one with my God, he said, as I watch the flow of the river. I find peace.

“Someone hurt me today,” she heard herself saying. “Or perhaps, I hurt myself. Pride, you know; I am very prideful.”

He listened, saying nothing, brought her hands up, kissed her knuckles. Where, her grandmother would demand, where are you hurt? Come here, my Bab, and we will kiss it and make it well. There was nothing disrespectful in Colonel Perry’s kiss, only tenderness, which she felt like something warm all about her. I like you so, she thought. Did I like Klaus? I don’t know.

A Christmas tune from home went through her head: “Well-a-day, well-a-day, Christmas too soon goes away.” So had the hurt, somehow.

“Look”—she raised her face, and the purity of her profile was beautiful to see—“it’s begun to snow.”

“I must go and tell the others, so that they can make their way home.”

“May we sit just a moment? The snow feels like kisses on my face.”

I
N THE
house, Beth turned away from the window, from the sight of her father and Barbara sitting on the bench like lovers.

“You haven’t told my fortune,” she said to Klaus.

He looked down into her outstretched hand and said something about her marrying into King Carter’s family. His mind was on Barbara, on what he’d felt at seeing her again: mingled desire and guilt and regard. The mixed feelings were a tumult in him.

“I don’t like my fortune, Captain Von Rothbach. Give me another one.”

Surprised, Klaus met Beth’s eyes.

“Change it,” she said. “Only you can.”

He said nothing, uncertain of what was in her voice—or certain, but not quite able to believe, yet.

“Change it.”

“You will marry—”

“A foreigner, I think, and live happily ever after.”

She took her hand from his coolly, walked from one guest to the next, telling them that snow had begun. It was what her father should have done. Many of them would need to go home, so that they would not be stranded.

“Shall we go?”

Klaus looked down into the eyes of his Williamsburg widow, blinking, almost as if he did not understand what she said. In a way, he didn’t. His mind was still reeling from the stroke of fortune that had just opened up Beth Perry’s arms to him. His future had become, suddenly and without warning, a widow’s third against an heiress’s whole.