The Randolph Legacy (44 page)

Read The Randolph Legacy Online

Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
13.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“By your new daughter, Mr. Prichard. Your wife, it was she did her best by us.”
The man pulled his hat off slowly, held it between hands that could snap her husband’s bones. “It’s late. The women at her sister’s, Doctor—they’ ll let me in now, you think, to visit the child?”
“I’m sure they will, sir.”
“I’d best go there, then. Thank you.” He shook Ethan’s hand, moved on to Dr. Foster’s, then bowed in Judith’s direction. “Very sorry for the disturbance, missus. We’ll leave you to your rest now.”
“God keep you and your family, Mr. Prichard,” Judith said.
The crowd followed the grieving father down the street, leaving only the constable and his two deputies.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Warren?” Dr. Foster asked as Judith felt herself being shifted back into Ethan’s care. “The night grows cold, and Mrs. Blair is without her shawl.”
“As the complaint was brought by William Prichard, no, sir. We’ll take our leave of you this night.”
Judith felt the men close in on either side of her as they watched the authorities turn the corner. They stood together in hushed silence, Judith warmed by her sentinels, in no need of a shawl.
“Well,” Jordan Foster finally breathed out.
“I remembered, this time,” Ethan said softly. “Condolences first. Yes?”
To Judith’s astonishment, the doctor smiled at his assistant. “Will you forgive an old man’s envy? His grasping for family?” he whispered.
She reached out her hand from the haven of her husband’s arms. “There is no need to grasp, Jordan,” she assured him. “We are here.”
“And you are not old,” Ethan sniffed. “I will not give my mother away to an old man.”
Ethan placed his smallest finger in the baby’s palm. The grip was
immediate. “How fine and strong you’ve become, Miss Prichard,” he complimented, eliciting a gurgle from his patient and a pull at his coat from her sister.
“I squeeze better than Katie, Dr. Blair!”
Ethan turned from his examination. “Indeed? Then I must have a care to loan you a stronger finger, Sophie.” He stopped beside the child as Judith reswaddled her baby sister and returned her to the woman sitting with Mother Ballard at the fireside.
The children’s aunt did not hover so close as she did in the early days of the tiny child’s life. None of the grieving household was wary now. All treated Ethan and Judith like family members.
Mother Ballard approached Judith as she opened her book to write their observations. She watched Judith’s sweeping hand. “Bold lettering the Quakers teach,” she said.
Judith felt her face flush with color as she realized her writing had changed under the influence of Ethan’s own notations. His exuberance
over his new profession came through his fingers, his bold strokes, the graceful arcs of his
y
’s and
s
’s. She was supposed to be the more grounded. But how could she not take flight with him as this miracle child thrived?
“Its flourishes are acquired,” Judith admitted quietly.
“Interesting.”
Mother Ballard had teased her since first the occasional “thee” and “thou” flew off her tongue.
Sophie Prichard stared intently at Ethan’s hands.
“Why, Dr. Blair, one finger’s crooked! Did Katie do that?”
He smiled. “No.”
The midwife glanced down. “The bone was broken, once. The one beside it, too. Crushed, I’d say. Wouldn’t you, troublefinder?”
Judith heard Ethan’s fingers breaking again under the Quaker farmer’s thick-heeled boots. Did the midwife see the slight twitch now, beside his right eye? Ethan touched the little girl’s bright hair. “You are very observant, Sophie. Perhaps Mother Ballard will apprentice you once she gives up on teaching me.”
“Will I be able to make babies who look like ugly little monkeys turn into Katies, too, then?”
“It is your aunt’s care, your cousin’s generosity in sharing his mother with Katie, and your family’s love, that have done that.”
“And you, scooping our Katie up after Mama died, keeping her warm until she could lie with Aunt Addy.” Sophie frowned. “Don’t you know the story?”
“I play only a small role in it. But we are kindred spirits, your sister and I. I, too, was born early and had a brave sister to help me thrive.”
“I rock the cradle every afternoon!” Sophia exclaimed.
Ethan nodded solemnly. “Cradle rocking, did you hear, Judith? Are you writing it in our learning book?”
“Even as it’s said, husband.”
“I don’t remember anything unless Judith writes it down,” he confided to the child.
Judith stole a look at Mother Ballard. Had her curiosity about his finger been distracted by her approval of his modesty? The midwife stood over her shoulder, nodding, as Judith corked her bottle of chestnut ink and sanded her last notation. She’d never commented on what either of them wrote. People said the midwife could neither read nor write herself. Perhaps that’s why she’d had taken them on, Judith realized, though she’d at first thought it only a small part of their bargain. Was this the first time her years of experience were being set down in writing?
She didn’t care why the midwife had agreed to apprentice them, Judith loved this new part of their lives. Throughout the winter they followed Mother Ballard on her morning visits to the waiting women and new mothers and children. She only wished Dr. Foster was not so disturbed by it.
As they stood together outside, ready to go their separate ways for the remaining hours of the day, Ethan glanced up at the sky. “I’m late again,” he said. “I hope Jordan hasn’t left without me.”
Judith handed him the pouch of red clover petals. “He’ll wait when he finds we’re low on Mr. Chase’s remedy. I’ll be home soon. Mother Ballard and I have only a few more man-shy patients to visit.”
“That is good news.” He touched her cheek, there in the doorway. “You’ll remember to drink your horehound tea?”
“Mother Ballard starts brewing if I so much as smile crooked.”
“I’ve told her that’s all the warning you’ll ever give.”
“Traitor!”
He closed the door and held her close. She felt his shuddering sigh. Judith ran her finger over the line of worry at his brow. “Ethan, Ethan, my small sickness is a sign of the child planting firm, Mother Ballard says.”
“But Jordan thinks—”
“We are both well acquainted with Dr. Foster’s opinions, which go to great reaches to contradict our midwife’s.”
Ethan smiled. “They do, don’t they?”
“Now, rescue him from the clutches of Mrs. Willard.”
“Mrs. Willard
and
a late start? Perhaps I should allow him to continue on his own. Shall I take Two Hearts riding by the falls upriver today?”
“No, Ethan, you must not!”
“I am speaking in jest … . Judith?” He summoned her out of the vision of him falling, his call silenced by the sound of the rushing water. “Judith, what is it?”
She looked down, saw her hands gripping his sleeve. “You live with a woman without humor, Ethan Blair,” she whispered.
“No.” He grinned. “Merely another one who wishes me away from water. My seafaring days are done, then, wife?”
She bowed her head. “Be off,” she whispered.
He leaned down and kissed her, there on the doorstep and in plain sight. She opened her mouth, welcoming his tongue’s tender probe, though the kiss probably now added fuel of confusion to those Richmond citizens who still believed he was bedding every neglected wife,
widow, and chambermaid who sighed down on him from their windows.
 
 
J
udith returned to find him on a step halfway up the stairs to their rooms, in the afternoon square of sunshine from the landing window. Seeing him sent a bold rush of excitement through her, as it ignited the memory of them loving each other there, on another afternoon. She wondered if their baby started then, a gift of the sun and the love this man bore her. But now he looked dejected and mournful. A letter bearing Anne Randolph’s seal dangled from his long fingers.
Judith placed her basket down silently and climbed to his side.
“What is it, love?” she asked.
“My father is dying, Judith. They want me to come home.”
She felt an icy grip around her heart. “Who asks this of you?”
“My mother. My sister writes, too, see? She thinks her Christmas visit started this confinement.”
“Poor Sally! How?”
“She is not so good a dissembler as Mother. He became convinced that she and her children were too cheerful, that they’d seen me. He demanded to know my whereabouts, badgering her so mercilessly she fled the room. He followed in a rush, tripped on one of Charlotte’s blocks, and cracked his skull.”
“Oh, Ethan.”
“Now he raves—cursing, howling. Terrorizing them all. Demanding I be hauled in for my share of his final damnation, no doubt.”
Judith fought her panic at the thought of Ethan returning downriver to Windover. She saw his brothers again shoving her away, telling her he was now theirs, in this family that eats its young. No. Anne and Sally, Martha and Aaron and their mighty sons, would not allow it, would they? Women and bondsmen.
Be sensible, Judith,
she admonished herself. What power had they against his brothers?
“But, Ethan, after all your mother and Sally went through to keep you safe under your new name, they could not be asking this. Your brothers—”
“They have given her their word, my mother says, not to do me any harm. The letter is written in her hand. I know it as well as my own.”
She kissed his temple. “We’ll go, then.”
“‘We’? But our patients—”
“—will have to endure without us for a little while.”
 
 
O
nce they’d told him, Judith watched the now familiar sight of Jordan Foster storming around his assistant. “I cannot go with you!” he said again. “Not with three surgeries scheduled, and Mrs. Martin recovering from the—”
“We understand. We don’t ask it of you.”
“Do you understand how powerful your brothers are? Do you understand the risk? Ethan, think! What do you owe the man?”
“It is not a request I’d grant, had it not come through my mother. I can refuse her nothing. That you understand, sir—yes?”
The doctor shook his head. “I wonder if the first Ethan Blair was as stubborn as you are,” he muttered.
Judith watched her young husband cock his head in bemused curiosity. “Do you think I am my Revolution uncle returned to earth, then?”
“Do not catch me in your heathen beliefs!”
“Spoken like a true Bostonian, sir.”
“Thank you,” the physician said in his icy tone.
“You’re welcome”—returned with Ethan’s habitual affability, and, as always, before Jordan’s frown of displeasure had moved a fraction. Judith wondered if two such divergent men had ever loved each other as deeply as her husband and their benefactor.
 
 
T
he next morning’s mist gathered around her as the three of them stood on the dock together. Judith could keep the cry from her clear voice as they bade the doctor good-bye. But she could not stem her tears’ flow. How fine they looked together, and as similar as Mrs. Willard’s father and son.
Though the physician had known Ethan less time than she herself had, Judith couldn’t imagine any father doing more for them than this man had done over the last tumultuous two years. And this was the most difficult gift—letting Ethan go. The price was heavy on both men. Did Anne Randolph realize how much she was asking?
Ethan faced himself into the stiff breeze, which forced him to squint as he shook the doctor’s hand. “You’ll ride Lark and Morgan and Two Hearts?”
“Daily.”
“And no name-calling in your arguments with Mother Ballard?”
“On my honor. Ethan, don’t forget your life here.”
“It is my only life. I am not so foolish as I look. Without you, Judith would still see me as a spoiled third son. I was him once.”
“Never,” Judith whispered. “You were never him.”
“How would either of you know?” he accused. “Even my mother would assure you I was. Jordan, I know I am a long way from finished. I would oftentimes turn Fayette toward despair, as I now do to you. A snail, but a determined one. I will be a good doctor. I will be a good father to the child Judith so graciously bears. But that father must now be a good son to his mother and sister who depend on him.”
Jordan Foster turned away from his student and stared down the river. “Write.”
“Of course. Every day.”
They were summoned aboard. Ethan took Judith’s arm and turned toward the sloop.
“Call,” Jordan Foster whispered.
He turned back. “Call, sir?”
“If you need me. Call. I will hear you.”
Ethan smiled. “You have before, have you not, you Bostonian conjurer?”
“You must not tease him so,” Judith reprimanded lightly as they settled on board the schooner. Her young husband’s beautiful eyes were sad, distracted.
“Judith,” he called softly as the salt sea breeze traveled up from the Atlantic.
“Yes, love?”
“Our bed, there at Dr. Foster’s house. It is a Boston bed, is it not? Called a sleigh bed? Is that how Northern sleighs are curved, then?”
“They are, yes.”
“And snow. It is lacy, wondrous, like our time in Richmond? Little miracles, when viewed closely? White spiderwebs, no two the same? Do they disappear against the heat of a finger? Is this what pieces of snow are, Judith?”
“Flakes. Snowflakes. Yes. That’s exactly what they are.”
“I have sometimes dreamed of flakes at the window, and of looking out over great heaps of snow and horses and laughing bells in our sleigh bed, then.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. But how can that be? I have never seen these things.”
Judith faced the wind, squinted, but there was no fooling him with his own tricks. He handed her a folded handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket.
“Mon dieu,”
he cursed softly. “Figure it with me, Judith. Do not cry. This is not a crying sort of puzzlement, is it?”

Other books

Mended by Clayborne, By Kimberly M.
Only Between Us by Ferrera, Mila
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol
All In by Aleah Barley
Days of High Adventure by Kay, Elliott
Paranoia (The Night Walkers) by J. R. Johansson