For Her Love (4 page)

Despite her best intentions, she could not help but wonder whether Captain Courtney was what she thought him. Then she sighed heavily. If only
she
were what he thought her, but she was not.

*

An hour later, Grace sat in a straight-backed, upholstered chair in the keeping room of her home, pushing aside her embroidery frame and trying to untangle the knotted mass of threads that sat on her lap. Matu stood by watching. Iolanthe, seated in a matching chair, carefully pulled a strand from her own neatly organized skeins of thread while studiously ignoring the girl. The only hint that she was aware of Grace’s presence was her smug sneer when Grace sighed in frustration.

Many plantation owners lived in homes that were scarcely more than huts, so a house with several bedrooms and such a fine, large keeping room as this was a luxury. The chamber was dominated by a large dining table of polished mahogany surrounded by wooden chairs, but it also contained several upholstered chairs for sitting and a small table for tea.

Still, how Grace wished that they had a huge English manor house with several such rooms! Then she could entirely escape Iolanthe. Perfect Iolanthe, with her impeccably smooth hair and her flawless embroidery stitches and her carefully wound skeins of thread. A tendril of unruly curls tickled Grace’s cheek, and both her stitches and her cache of thread were hopelessly tangled. Of course, she thought with satisfaction, Iolanthe did have one terribly unattractive flaw.

With her rough, dark hands, Matu took up the threads and carefully began plucking them apart, and Grace looked up into her smiling face. The older woman shook her head, her eyebrows raised in such a manner as to clearly convey the message, “‘Tis your own fault these are such a mess.”

“Oh, Matu, ‘tis such a waste of time. ‘Tisn’t even sewing. I’m not
making
anything, just ornamenting it.”

“I should not think you would understand,” Iolanthe interrupted, and as she spoke, she was forced to reveal her rotting, brown teeth. “Needlework is an art form. Of course, you lack the refinement—the
breeding
—to appreciate it.”

Grace turned to her stepmother, the gleam of battle in her eyes. “It seems to me that all the fancy stitching in the world does nothing if the garment itself is inferior. Just as
breeding
means nothing if a person’s character is flawed. Great beauty may hide such decay.”

Before Iolanthe could retaliate, Edmund walked through the front door. Ordinarily, this would not have stopped her from making some nasty remark in return, but Edmund’s body was tense, and his green eyes seemed about to burn a hole through his daughter. His wife swallowed her retort, reaching instead for a bowl of sugared almonds sitting on the tea table and watching with avid interest.

“Is there a storm brewing?” she asked him. Her brown eyes were round and innocent, but there was a catty quality to the gleam in them.

Edmund hardly spared her a glance. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed upon his daughter. “All the man wanted was permission to call upon you. He wasn’t asking for your hand.”

Edmund’s glare turned Grace’s insides into jelly, but she kept her voice even and replied, “I thought that was the ultimate goal of calling upon a woman, the idea of asking for her hand.”

“Would that be so terrible?” he asked.

Grace looked up at her maid, but Matu only gestured to Edmund and nodded her agreement. Grace rose, knocking her frame and fabric to the floor, where she left them. “You both know very well how futile all this is. And I am especially disappointed in you, Matu.”

Iolanthe gave a dramatic sigh and set her own needlework carefully into her sewing basket. “Though it pains me greatly, Edmund, I must agree with Grace.” She chuckled as though at some vastly amusing joke she’d only just remembered. “She might well have some explaining to do upon the birth of her firstborn.”

“Leave, Iolanthe!” Edmund snapped.

“Do you think that forbidding me to speak of it will change the truth?” she asked. She picked up her basket and rose, moving to ascend the stairs at the rear of the keeping room. “I suppose I will finish this in my chamber,” she muttered, though no one cared.

“She’s poison, Grace,” Edmund said, watching his wife’s exit. “Do not listen to her.”

“Oh, I am well aware that she wants naught less than my abject despair. But she is right. Refusing to allow her to taunt me with it does not change the truth.”

Edmund shook his head, his face reddening slightly. “Look at how fair you are. Add to that a father with looks like this Courtney fellow, and I promise you Grace, no one would ever guess your child’s blood was tainted.”

Tainted
. Grace sucked in her breath.

He continued, unaware of the insult. “Seven-eighths white. Your grandchildren fifteen-sixteenths. Who would ever wonder? Damn it, Grace! You owe me!”

It always came down to this. Grace folded her arms and leveled her eyes upon her father’s. “And what will you do if I fail to repay your generosity, your
kindness
in acknowledging me as your daughter?”

“I know what you are trying to do. You are trying to get me to say that I would sell you. You are trying to make it seem as if I don’t love you, that all I want you for is grandchildren. If that were the case, my dear, rest assured that you would be married by now or else sold into service.” His voice lightened, became gentler. “I want you to be happy Grace. That Courtney fellow, you heard him. He’s no more liking for slavery than you. And Matu likes him, do you not Matu?”

Matu had long since abandoned Grace’s embroidery floss. She took Grace’s hand and nodded.

“You suddenly think I should marry?” Grace asked.

Matu shook her head. Then, with her hand flat out, she tipped it from one side to the other, then pointed to her head.

“You think I should consider it,” Grace translated, and Matu nodded.

Edmund snorted. “God forbid she should listen to me. I’m only her father. Talk some sense into her, would you Matu?”

“She cannot talk, Father,” Grace said, condemnation in every word.

He was unaffected. “Oh, aye, she can, louder than any of the rest of us at times. I’ve work to do. You two need a bit of time alone, I think.”

He stalked out the front door, and Grace turned to her maid. “We have always been in complete accord on this, Matu. ‘Tis dangerous for me to marry, both for me and any children I might bear. Would you have me bring more slaves into the world?”

Matu shook her head. With one hand, she held the opposite wrist tightly, like a manacle, then released it, opening both hands and moving them apart, emphasizing the release.

“Freedom?” Grace asked.

Matu moved her hand up and down, like a boat on the waves. She mimed mopping a floor and hoisting with a rope. Then she repeated the gesture that, for her, meant “freedom.”

“The Negroes on his boat? The free ones?” Grace clarified, and Matu nodded. “It is a very great step to go from not owning slaves to marrying one.”

Matu growled and gave Grace’s head a light smack. She pointed to Grace, then pointed to her own head, shaking it emphatically, before repeating the manacle gesture, this time without releasing her wrist.

“I—I know that I’m not a slave, but…”

Matu smacked Grace’s head again, pointed to her own and shook it.

“I do not know?”

The manacle gesture again.

“I do not know slavery?”

Matu crossed her arms and lifted her chin. Every tense muscle in her body shouted, “So there!” Seeming to feel that her point had been made, Matu marched out the back door and across the rear yard toward the kitchens, leaving behind a very bewildered Grace with her tangled wad of colored threads and her poorly executed needlework.

Giles rose from the sturdy oak table filled with supper dishes and began clearing his place. After a month at sea, it was good to eat a home-cooked meal at the Cooper family’s house just outside of Boston. Funny, he hadn’t really thought that he’d missed the warmth of hearth and home. After all, he hadn’t had a home in any real sense since he was a lad and had gone to sea. But after Geoff and Faith had wed, and even more so after he had been named the godfather of their child, he had come to appreciate every moment he spent among real families. He felt fortunate indeed to have come to know Faith’s parents and to be welcomed into their house whenever he was in New England.

“Nay, nay,” Naomi Cooper chided, shaking her white-capped head. “You are our guest.” She pulled the plate from Giles’s hand and gestured with it for him to sit.

Jonathan Cooper, seated next to Giles, chuckled. “She wants you to keep talking. Surely there is some tiny detail about our grandson that you have left out.”

“I am just as anxious to hear about Faith and Geoff,” Naomi protested.

The Coopers’ sons, fourteen-year-old Isaiah and nine-year-old David, took over the table clearing and dish washing, squabbling briefly over who would do what. The adults moved from the dining section of the keeping room to the sitting section. A cheery fire burned in the huge fireplace, and the trio found seats on the plain but well-built furniture surrounding it.

“I’ve told you all I can think of,” Giles avowed. “Faith and young Jonathan are well. The business is flourishing, so Geoff is having no trouble providing for them.”

“Aye,” Jonathan agreed, “a second ship. ‘Tis a good sign, a prosperous business.”

Giles smiled. Faith’s father was a Puritan, through and through.

True to form, Jonathan asked for the fifth time that night, “So you really think ‘tis the Quaker faith she’s settled on?”

“Faith seems to feel that it fits her,” Giles assured him.

Jonathan shook his head full of long, graying hair. “Quaker. Think you that we gave the girl too much leeway in her youth, Naomi? Mayhap we should have just chosen a husband for her all along.”

Naomi threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperation. “Let it go, Jonathan. You said yourself, her husband’s prosperity is a sign of God’s grace. And now, they’ve been blessed with a son. Mayhap we could travel back to Jamaica with Giles?”

“No need,” Giles assured them.

“He’s right, Naomi, they’ll be here in a few months time. We can wait.”

Naomi sniffed. “You cannot blame me for wanting to see my grandson.”

“You’ve two others,” Jonathan reminded her, speaking of their eldest son’s boys.

“Aye, well, they’re Noah’s, and I see them daily. I long to see Faith’s boy, that’s all.”

Giles cleared his throat and brought their attention back to him. “Might I ask you two something about Faith, before she met Geoff?”

They looked at him, their eyebrows raised. Obviously, his request struck them as improper somehow. Lord, how did Geoff ever navigate his relationship with his Puritan in-laws? Still, he knew that the Coopers had done a fine job raising their daughter, and perhaps they had some insight.

“‘Tis not so much about her, personally, as it is about daughters in general, and courtship, and well, what makes one suitor more favorable than another,” he explained.

Naomi breathed a sigh of relief, and Jonathan nodded knowingly. “You’ve finally found a likely maid then?” he asked.

“Perhaps you two would prefer to discuss this alone,” Naomi suggested.

“Nay!” Giles protested. “I’d like a woman’s views, as well. I think it may be a bit complicated.”

“More complicated than Geoff and Faith?” Jonathan asked.

“I do not know,” Giles began. He explained to the Coopers about his strange visit, and how the Welbourne girl had seemed to like him, and yet had sent him on his way, although reluctantly. He also mentioned that Edmund had seemed unwilling to let the matter rest and had chased after him insisting that Giles stay a night or longer when he returned.

Jonathan shrugged lightly. “It seems to me that her father already sees you as an acceptable match. I think there’s very little complicating this.”

“That is only half the battle,” Naomi said. “You said that the girl dismissed you.”

“Aye. That is, she seemed to. Her demeanor was most confusing. Mayhap she only meant not to be too forward. “

Naomi shook her head. “‘Twould not have been too forward to offer further hospitality, especially not when her father had made his approval clear and you had expressed some interest of your own. Tell me, Giles, what is it makes you think that you and this girl would suit?”

“Well, she’s…” He found himself hard-pressed to put his feelings into words. She was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, but even he knew that that was no basis for a marriage. Nay, ‘twas more than that.

Giles leaned toward Naomi. “Mistress Cooper, the ocean is a lonely place. ‘Tis a fine thing to have a ship of one’s own, but I’ve not even my best friend across the corridor anymore. I am not a man so in love with the sea that I am fulfilled by sailing alone. Of late, I find myself restless.”

“And so you seek a wife. ‘Tis natural enough,” Naomi replied. “But why this one?”

“She is no simple farmer’s daughter, that much was clear. She has a sharp mind and a quick wit. And she is unhappy where she is. Something there is hardening her, haunting her, I think. She has no love of slavery and yet is surrounded by it. I cannot explain it except to say that you would know it, too, could you but see her face.”

Jonathan interrupted. “Have you not thought that it may have nothing to do with her home? Mayhap she is merely prone to melancholy. There’s naught you can do for her then.”

“Nay,” Giles said, “she is passionate, cynical, but only at moments sad.”

Naomi shot her husband a look of concern before looking back at Giles. “All this in one brief conversation? Forgive me, Captain, I am sure that you are well intentioned here, but you have no real knowledge of her.”

Giles nodded. “I have said just that to myself time and time again in the last few weeks, and yet I cannot seem to shake free of thinking about her. Something’s deeply troubling there. Consider this, she called her mother ‘Mistress Welbourne’ and mentioned that the woman will not take meals with her family.”