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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

The Randolph Legacy (27 page)

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“Ethan, does thee understand my meaning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come now, we are both grown men. Thy intentions toward her are honorable, of course?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“And thy presence here, thy plain clothes, thy attendance at First and Fifth Day Meetings, they proclaim thy interest in our way of life. Could thee embrace our ways, Ethan Randolph?”
It was none of this man’s business, Ethan thought angrily, what he could or couldn’t do. He shoved dirt in the hole.
“Do not distress thyself over thy conflicted heart. There is time. Judith has told us of thy difficulties with accepting thy family’s decadence now that our ways have touched thy life.”
Decadence? Had Judith called his family decadent?
“She needs time as well, Ethan. Does thee understand?”
“Time?”
“I do not mean to offend, but at what age did thy mother marry?”
“My mother? She was fourteen.”
“Fourteen. Yes. Common in Southern planter families. We do not follow such customs here, where we seek helpmeets, not …”
Ethan’s gaze met his. “Not what?”
The man’s open mouth closed. Missing teeth. In the back. Some of the holders’ teeth were like that on board the
Standard
. Food deficiencies. Past hardship. His would be that way, if it weren’t for the limes, for Fayette’s care. Who was this man?
“What is it you call my mother, sir?” he demanded now.
“I do not seek to judge thy family. Only to explain mine. Understand that.”
What Ethan did not understand was this sudden jerk in the conversation. What did his mother’s early marriage have to do with him? He was not a child. Neither was Judith.
“Thee is so young, so ardent, impatient. And not yet convinced. We do not take converts lightly, Ethan Randolph. Convinced Quaker are the strongest of us all. I am one of them. Brought to Meeting by my wife, the mother of Ruth and Hugh, when my own heart was blackened.”
“Blackened?”
“As black as the countenance of thy father’s bondsmen. But my dear wife, she was a woman of Light, like Judith. She helped me find another way. Thou must study well, with us, in our family, to be as strong as I am.”
Ethan wished to be nothing like this man towering his farmer’s strength over him. “I follow my Light. I have my own. Judith says I do.”
Prescott Lyman’s brow descended with impatience. “Thee will need it in the years ahead.” he proclaimed. “Thee must protect her!”
Ethan’s eyes met those of the Quaker’s. Fierce eyes.
“I will protect her,” he said quietly.
“Forgive me.” The older man rubbed at his temples. Strong fingers, that left strange purple blotches there. “She has become very dear to me. Thee is not the man I would have chosen for her. But I will accept her choice, if thee becomes one of us.”
They finished filling in the hole together, and pounded down the small mound of dirt. Then Prescott Lyman took Ethan’s shoulder. It was not something he did often, touch anyone, Ethan surmised. “I invite thee into my household, Ethan Randolph, as my own treasured son.”
Ethan stared at his host. He had a father. An imperfect one, one he’d often wished were not his relation at all, but Ethan wanted no part of this man. “That’s very generous of you,” he finally said, resorting to Fayette’s insistence on politeness.
“It may appear so. But it’s selfish. Judith takes such delight in thee. I wish to see that delight every day, secure under my own roof. What better way to achieve it than to bestow three instead of two children as my marriage gifts!”
“Children, marriage?”
“Come, come! Thee must know of our plans! Of her father already secure in his own home on my property? I understand Judith, Ethan. I know what kind of marriage to make with her. I respect and will abide by her disinterest in the life of the body. But she was born to be a mother. And what her celibate nature has not provided, I can. I will give her three children, two of whom will give her more infants to fill her arms, in due time, will they not?”
“What?”
“Thee may begin thy courting tomorrow. And may ask my daughter to marry on the day she turns sixteen—less than two years away. Do not look so defeated. It is not such a long time! In the meantime live here, learn our ways, become convinced. Wean thyself of that unhappy life that has scarred thy unfortunate youth.”
Prescott Lyman smiled. He was not used to smiling, Ethan thought. It looked strange.
“There,” Prescott exhorted anew. “We have buried all the evil between us, have we not? As thy past life will be buried through thy diligence, thy hard work among us. There will be perfection in this house, however corrupt the outside world rages around us. See it! See it with me, son!”
The high moon made a halo of light appear around Prescott Lyman’s wiry gray strands of hair. Ethan couldn’t find his voice, in any language.
The farmer’s unnatural smile finally faded. “I have been riding on the happiness of my own Light, I fear. Thee needs not give me thy thoughts on this now, of course. Think on it. Rest well with thy doting little brother tucked under thy protective arm.”
Ethan threw himself into solitary fence-mending as if his life depended
on keeping cranky geese penned. At noon dinner he took his place at the long table with the hired men. Judith felt his head one of the times she glided by the table with her pitcher. A mother’s gesture. He wanted to tell her what he thought of her mother’s gestures, but bolted from the table to avoid the temptation. Stares at his back. He didn’t care. He was tired of being polite.
When he met Hugh after the boy’s schooling, he felt the day’s tensions finally easing. Hugh stared up at his horse.
“Thee has never brought Lark before, Ethan.”
“Special service to the wounded.”
Hugh’s fingers hovered at his scabbed chin. “It made for a good story today—the rat, thy knife, that throw.”
“I’m happy to amuse your friends,” Ethan said dryly, offering a hand to haul the boy onto the saddle. He slipped up easily, like Betsy. When did boys and girls begin to change, separate? Ethan wondered. And why?
“Where are we going?” Hugh asked.
“Courting.”
“Courting? Courting who?”
“Grayneck.”
“But she’s up at the house.”
“We’ll be bringing her a present.”
“Oh.” He eyed the bucket swinging from the saddle. “We’re going fishing!”
“You’re a bright-minded boy, Hugh.”
“Thee has hooks?”
“Don’t need them.”
“Chubs and suckers take the hook, Ethan.”
“Grayneck has more delicate tastes, I think.”
“For what?”
“Minnows.”
“Minnows? They’re so small. How are we going to catch minnows?”
“With handkerchiefs.”
Ethan loved the look of incredulity that rendered the boy speechless. Short journey completed, Hugh tied his strapped books to the saddle. He ran ahead of Ethan to the mossy banks of the creek.
Ethan dismounted, watching Hugh’s flying run. He’d run like that, as a boy.
Stop it,
he told the self-pity threatening to join the host of ugly thoughts plaguing his mind today. He could still follow energetic boys to fishing holes, walk screaming babies quiet.
“Over here!” Hugh called, wading into the water. “They’re scooping out their nests!”
Ethan showed Hugh how to lay their handkerchiefs on the bottom, weighting the edges with little stones. The minnows formed a school over them. Ethan quickly gathered one catch up in his handkerchief net and emptied it into the bucket.
“How did thee learn that?” the boy asked as the bucket’s water swarmed with silvery wisps.
“From Aubrey. We used to court the house cats. So that they would protect baby cradles from invasion by field mice and snakes.”
“At Windover? But where were the mothers?”
“Serving in the big house. Or the fields. Aubrey’s mama Martha had charge of all the babies, there at the cookhouse. But sometimes she was called away, too. The babies needed the cats on guard. We kept them feasting on minnows, so they’d take pride in their work. It will be the same with Grayneck. She’ll protect us, if we can win her up to our quarters with these.”
They secured the bucket and mounted Lark.
“Martha—she’s the one who gave Judith the book of instructions on how to make good things to eat?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s wife to Aaron, who made thy boots. And mother of Elwood, who tends crops and Aubrey who died, and the smithy who made thy knife …” He thought a moment, “Micah.”
“And Phoebe, a born schoolmistress, and Tempest, who dances like
the storm she was named for, and Milly, who already makes bell fritters as good as her mama’s.”
“Elwood, Aubrey, Micah. Phoebe, Tempest, Milly,” he recited.
“Very good, Hugh. You’re getting to know my family.”
“Thy family? But they are Negro slaves.”
“True enough.”
“And thee, their master?”
“No. Only the son of their master. I was far away when I was supposed to be learning about masters and slaves, so I remain ignorant. But I think I would have been a very poor student even so.”
“Friends are taught that no one is a slave.”
“We share that conviction, Hugh.”
“Will thee become a Friend, Ethan? So that we can be brothers?”
The reins suddenly felt heavy in Ethan’s hands. He was Judith’s lover in Virginia. Must he become her son here in Pennsylvania? Would she ask that of him? Could he honor the request? He must. Didn’t Fayette charge him to love her in the form she chose?
He eased the boy down from the saddle. “We should scout up Grayneck now,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Hugh looked up at him with guileless eyes. “Thy friends at Windover—thee does not make them sound like Negro people at all.”
“What should Negro people sound like?”
“I’m not sure. But they wouldn’t be able to teach a white person about cooking or fishing with handkerchiefs.”
“Why not?”
“They wallow in ignorance and despair, Father says. It was a terrible sin to bring them here, and we must work to send them all back to Africa.”
“Back to Africa?”
“Yes. Father belongs to a society that would buy them a country in Africa and send them back to it.”
“But they’re Americans!” Ethan spoke his astonishment. “We might as well send ourselves back to England and Scotland and Ireland and France and Germany and—”
Judith stood in the back doorway and called their names. Her voice scrambled all but sweet, tormented thoughts from Ethan’s mind. He handed the bucket to Hugh.
“Ask her if she can spare some custard cups. I’ll rub down Lark, then fetch the cat.”
“Stay, Ethan. Look, our Judith waits for us. Perhaps she needs kissing again.”
Ethan pulled the horse in the opposite direction.
But there was no escaping her once he entered the kitchen with Grayneck under his arm. Her floury fingers were on Hugh’s shoulders. Baking day, Ethan remembered. Three of the neighbor women were around the hearth, too, besides Ruth, whom he wished to see even less than Judith. The Quaker women were instructing them both, he realized now, in housewifery. Wisps of Judith’s hair curled at her temples.
“Ethan,” she greeted him softly, “a scarf might prove—”
More mothering. He frowned. “I’m inside now.”
One of her hands left Hugh’s shoulder and rested at her hip. His gruffness was annoying her. Good. “Perhaps thee would explain thy need for these custard cups?”
Ethan snatched them from her hands. “To catch the cat,” he began, putting a cup at her feet as he released Grayneck. Brown calfskin slippers, floured too. How had she managed to flour her slippers? The tip of one skimmed the other. Like a kiss.
“Who’ll chase the rats,” he continued as Hugh poured a portion of their minnows into the cup. Ethan climbed several stairway steps, setting down the second cup midway. “Who roam in the loft,” He set down the last cup beside the loft’s bed. “Where Hugh sleeps,” he finished his variation of a verse he’d learned as a child. Being Quakers, they hadn’t heard the verse, and so thought him more clever than he was. The women hid smiles behind their hands. Except for Ruth, whose smile was open, admiring, infatuated. Why had he not seen
that
before?
Grayneck, full now, ignored their last offering and climbed into Ethan’s arms instead, licking at his fish-scented fingers. The women giggled softly, there, around the curve of the stairway. How beautiful women were, Ethan thought. How had he lived without them so long?
Judith left their company. She knelt beside his bags, drawing out one of his shirts. She swirled it in a graceful oval on the floor. Then she eased Grayneck from Ethan’s arms and nested her in the fine cotton folds. Her hand reached to Ethan’s shoulder. “Come down. Taste some pie,” she urged. She used him for balance as she stood. A simple gesture, welcomed because it acknowledged his new strength. But something else went through her fingertips as she touched him. A scent.
Hugh followed the women down the stairs. Ethan stayed there on the floor, listening to their fading footsteps, their sprightly tones. He shook his head, swearing softly in his second language. Lemons, he finally realized—the source of his arousal. Judith wore her shipboard scent there in her fingers. She smelled of lemons.
 
 
J
udith cleared the stray hair from her forehead with the back of her hand as Ethan appeared, a streak of brown and forest green before the side Dutch door slammed.
“What humor has gotten hold of that man today?” she wondered aloud. A scarf hung from a peg by the door. She took it up, looked back at the women. “He doesn’t understand the cold we get here still,” she said, “once the sun goes down.”
They shook their heads in sympathy, as if his visit was a burden on her. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything except seizing this chance to be alone with him.
How could he move so fast, this man who couldn’t run, who was not using the stick as he’d promised his mother? She passed the herb garden and the henhouse, following his trodden grass path. There. He stood by a willow. Judith called his name.
His back stiffened before he entered the sweeping curtain of the willow’s spring shoots. He stayed very still there. What was this game? She ducked into his confine and held out the scarf. He turned before it could touch his back.
“Ethan, thee must—”
“
Zut alors,
woman! I am not cold!”
She believed him. He looked fevered. But she resisted the urge to touch his forehead, his eyes were so fierce.
A breeze stirred the willow branches so three tendrils blew softly across her cheek. Delicate, exquisite, she thought, closing her eyes. It gave her the tranquility she needed to speak her heart.
“Ethan, what disturbs thee today?”
His fine brows slanted, he swallowed. Judith waited.
“The lemons,” he said, finally.
“Lemons?”
“No, not the lemons, of course not the lemons. It’s you. And the lemons. With the lemons. By way of the lemons.” He growled, sighed, looked away.
She’d followed Martha’s recipe for the lemon custard pie. To please him. To give him a taste of his home. Was that so terrible, trying to please this independent Virginian with laughing eyes and winning ways who was daily slipping out of her hands, away from her ministering gestures that he had accepted so freely aboard ship and in Virginia?
“Judith,” he tried again. “I have failed.”
“Failed? How?”
“I cannot do this.”
“What?”
Judith felt a dread circle her heart. He was about to tell her of changed circumstances, his family’s discouragement, their differences. He was about to break her heart. Why did he look as if his own heart was breaking? She must lead him.
Thy life’s purpose, Judith. Lead
.
She smiled. “Come now. Is it so terrible, what thou must tell me? I climbed your tree last night, Captain of the Mizzenmast,” she reminded him.
“I frightened you, up there. I’m sorry.”
“Done.” She bowed her head. Were they about to be undone? She strangled the scarf between her hands. “Tell me. Please,” she whispered, “tell me now. I am not as strong as I look.”
He took a long breath. “I am not like you. I am not a Quaker. I don’t talk to God.”
“Don’t talk to God, Ethan. Talk to me.”
“I cannot return your love in any form you desire. I have failed him. I have failed Fayette, because I cannot …
je regrette, mais
—”
“Ethan!” she shouted. “In English!”
“I cannot be your child, Judith.”
She tilted her head. “What?”
“What?” he echoed. “Was that not English?”
“What does thee mean, impossible man!”
“Last night, Prescott Lyman gave me permission to court Ruth.”
“You … desire Ruth?”
“No! But if you marry him, I will then become your son, he says, through the marriage, and so be in his family. But I have a mother already, Judith. I have too many mothers!”
“Too many …”
“My desire is to be your husband!”
“My. Oh, my.”
“Don’t start with your ‘mys’ like Sally!” he railed. “I tried to follow her advice—no touch, no word, no kisses. Follow, follow, honor my hosts. Find out what it means, marriage to me, in your religion. But I can’t even get to being seen as your suitor.
Sacre-bleu,
Judith, how much can a man endure?”
She laughed out her astonishment. He closed in. Furious, she realized, as he snatched the scarf from her hands. He roped her close with it before stopping her mouth with his own. It was an assault, it was rude. She didn’t care. She drank his deep, probing kiss, wishing she’d peeled the lemons days before, if he liked the scent so well.
BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
7.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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