The Mistress of Tall Acre (50 page)

He took her in his arms and held her. “I’ve appealed. To the legislature.”

For a moment the weight of it overwhelmed her. Weeks, months, loomed before her, each a mountain she had no strength to cross. “How long then?”

His hand dropped to the lace of her bodice and traveled to her waist. “You answer me, Sophie. How long?”

She placed her hand over his, the miracle of new life upending her all over again. “Late winter by my reckoning.”

The tension left his face and tenderness took its place. “That’s why you’ve been ill.”

She gave him a small, sad half smile. “’Tis worth every trip to the chamber pot or bushes.”

“The thought of you here, away from me at such a time . . .” He left off, the sheen in his eyes saying more than words ever could.

Her good humor returned. “You’ve little to worry about with Mistress Murdo clucking over me and the men standing guard.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Mistress Murdo likely suspects, though I’ve told no one but Lily Cate.”

“You’re a far better tonic than Dr. Craik. No doubt that piece of news pulled her through.”

“That and prayer.”

“Aye, prayer.”

She linked arms with him, walking along the gravelly riverbank, its soothing rush like music. “You should know that Anne came here with word of my father.”

He went still.

“She saw him in Bath. He and Curtis want me to join them in Scotland. I only mention it in case Anne speaks of such.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. If this isn’t resolved in the legislature, I will appeal to a higher court. I want you home at Tall Acre, and I won’t rest till that’s done.”

She listened, uncertainty sweeping over her. His was the conviction that had won a war, but she’d begun to doubt this would become a personal victory.

“I don’t want you burdened by any of this.” Misery framed his face. “If anything happens to you, our baby . . .”

“No matter what has happened or will happen, I will never begrudge knowing you, loving you—and Lily Cate.”

“You deserve far better. Far more.” The regret in his words turned her inside out. “I’ll always begrudge our beginnings, Sophie.”

“I shan’t, ever. ‘They lived happily ever after’ is the stuff of fairy tales, Seamus. At least in this life.”

He raised a hand, tracing the flushed curve of her cheek. “Keep praying. Hoping. Truth will prevail.”

38

S
eamus was in court again. A month from the day he had appealed. The event had been well publicized, stealing every headline in Virginia, and now the courtroom was once again crammed and breathless in July. Anne sat in her usual place, color high and brandishing a fan, a maid beside her. Throughout the proceedings, the Fitzhughs had been conspicuously absent. Seamus thought it as a door opened at the back of the room and they made an unexpected entrance.

The judge took up his gavel and brought the room to silence with one decisive pound to the podium. “The Virginia court is hereby in session to resolve the case of General Seamus Ogilvy of Tall Acre and Anne Howard Ogilvy lately of England.”

Perspiring beneath his wool uniform, Seamus forced calm. His fellow soldiers sat behind him, so many it seemed his whole regiment was assembled. He could feel their tension much as he had on the field, in the hours and minutes before a decisive conflict was at hand. Now his own dread went as deep as it had then, when he’d wondered which of his men he would lose and which would stay standing after the storm of battle. If he too would survive.

His attorneys, especially dour this morning, were prepared to cite Sophie’s pregnancy if their appeal was denied. Seamus balked against making such a personal matter public, but there was little to be done about it. He already felt exposed to the utmost, though Anne seemed not to care. She fluttered her fan and chatted with the woman beside her as if this were of no more consequence than a horse auction.

Seamus fixed his eyes on the judge, whose attention was pinned on the doorway at the rear of the room. Turning his head, Seamus saw a slave woman enter the courtroom, her head bound with a bright kerchief, her homespun dress neat if plain. A slow awareness dawned.

Myrtilla? All the way from Tall Acre?

She looked neither to the right nor the left as she walked the narrow aisle to the front of the courtroom. A hum of murmuring began. She clutched a book to her chest so tightly it seemed no one could pry it loose from her bony, work-worn fingers.

A bailiff intervened, trying to deter her, but she continued unswervingly toward the judge’s bench, her bearing confident yet respectful. The presiding judge leaned forward to hear something she said, and then he gestured toward Seamus’s and Anne’s legal counsel.

“The proceedings are momentarily adjourned.”

With that, the judge led the counsel and Myrtilla out of the courtroom as the hum of the crowd grew louder.

A quarter of an hour passed, and Seamus felt he would melt from the heat. Giving a tug to his stock in a bid for air, he watched the door that Myrtilla, the judge, and the counsel had retreated behind. Beside him, Cosima whispered something, but he barely heard her.

God, help us. The truth, please.

Try as he might, he couldn’t fathom what had brought Myrtilla to Richmond when she’d never been more than five miles from Tall Acre her entire life. But as a freedwoman, she now had liberties she hadn’t before and no longer needed a signed pass from him.

He squared his shoulders as a bailiff called his name and then Anne’s. A private meeting? Anne cast him a pensive look and moved into the antechamber ahead of him. He followed, curiosity overriding dread. A near-smothering longing for Sophie settled over him, though he was glad she was far removed from the courtroom drama. Lily Cate intruded next, her parting words to him haunting.

Papa, won’t you bring Mama and the baby home soon?

As the door closed behind him, he found himself facing Myrtilla across a battered table. Stark white light from a window illuminated a leather-bound book at the table’s center. The book she’d clutched to her chest?

With their legal counsel looking on and the judge still presiding from a corner chair, Seamus and Anne took their seats, though Myrtilla remained standing. Anne was regarding her former servant with a telling wariness, defiance in the jut of her chin.

“General Ogilvy, is this woman known to you?” The judge gestured to Myrtilla in an unnecessary formality.

Though Seamus wanted to cut to the chase and reach for the mysterious book, he steeled himself and answered, “She is a freedwoman, once a slave at Tall Acre and now in my employ as a spinner.”

The judge nodded. “Since she is at liberty, she can speak for herself in the presence of these witnesses.”

Myrtilla swallowed and met Seamus’s eyes. “If my word as a black woman ain’t good enough, General, I thought maybe I could help you some other way.” She reached for the book and held it out to him. “This was in Mistress Ogil—” Her eyes flared at the slip. “This was in Mistress Anne’s desk, in her old room at Tall Acre, on the second floor.”

Seamus took the book and opened it. Recognition stirred. His own heavy, sprawling hand was on the flyleaf.
To my beloved, Anne, wife of my heart.
“I gave her this on our wedding day but have since forgotten. ’Tis a diary, a journal.”

Nodding, Myrtilla continued at the judge’s prompting, voice steady if low. “I used to watch Mistress Anne write in this book while you was away fightin’ in the war. I wanted to know what it said, but I couldn’t figure out the words till now. I always believed it might help you if I could.”

Seamus waited, on edge.

“Now that I can read—”

“How dare you!” Anne lunged for the little book.

She had but touched it when a bailiff intervened and the judge barked a sharp rebuke.

“You shall be seated, Mistress Howard, and refrain from speaking until I deem otherwise.” The judge turned back to Seamus. “Is the writing in this book that of your first wife, General Ogilvy?”

Seamus paged through the contents, noting entries and dates in Anne’s unmistakable hand. Details that left him feeling winded and half sick, secrets long suspected but better left unspoken, unwritten. Buried. “Aye.”

He shut the book. His legal counsel was studying him, pensive and stone still, as he returned the book to the table.

“I do not expect you to read it. I would advise otherwise,” the judge said. “But it contains evidence that is the deciding factor in this case.”

He stood, and Seamus’s legal counsel stood with him. To their left, Anne’s attorneys were strangely silent. Anne herself had turned ashen.

Seamus felt wonder take hold. Could it finally be over? Swept behind them for good? If so, he owed the freedwoman before him an immense debt of gratitude. But the shine in Myrtilla’s eyes told him that turning the case in his favor was payment aplenty.

“This entire matter has dragged on long enough. I, for one, am glad to see it end.” The judge held open the door to resume the proceedings. “Shall we, General?”

Overcome, unable to murmur even an aye, Seamus followed him into the stifling courtroom. He looked up, eye drawn to the back where a lone figure stood against one paneled wall. Riggs? He had obviously brought Myrtilla here. And Myrtilla, ever faithful, had saved the day.

The true mistress of Tall Acre could come home.

Was she imagining it or did the day feel different? Walking down Three Chimneys’ long drive without reason or explanation, when the slant of the sun made her feel she was melting from the heat and should be indoors, Sophie took in Tall Acre. She longed to see signs of Seamus back from Richmond. Longed to see Lily Cate at play like it was an ordinary summer’s day and their whole world didn’t hinge on a Richmond courtroom.

She caught her breath as the baby moved beneath her airy muslin shortgown. She was growing used to that flutter, more a tickle, soon to be an outright kick. The delight never dimmed. She ached to decorate Tall Acre’s nursery right down to the pincushion Glynnis had just sent her, charmingly embroidered with “Welcome Little Stranger.”

But much had to be settled. And there was no promise she would ever set foot in Tall Acre again. Fear welled within her, but she kept it at bay by remembering the words she’d awakened to at dawn.

Joy cometh in the morning.

It was that hope, that belief, that propelled her now. She walked on, intent on a dusty cloud in the distance.

Seamus had said he would send word of the outcome. But this rider, going at full gallop,
was
Seamus, not some post rider.

Glad she wasn’t heavy with child, she began to run toward him, unmindful of the dust she herself was kicking up or the trickle of sweat beneath her loosened stays.

The distance denied her any hint of his expression. But his speed suggested pleasure. Hope. Glad news.

He dismounted by Tall Acre’s gate. She was nearly there, out of breath, but so full of expectation at his return she never slowed. When he started toward her, he was . . . smiling. She’d not seen him merry in so long she had begun to think he never would be again.

They collided, nothing gentle about it, but there was a deep tenderness in his embrace. “Come home, Sophie.”