The Mistress of Tall Acre (34 page)

“Then we’ll continue to pray our way through.” Her calm was enviable. “Entrust her to the One who loves her most.”

“I’m hardly doing that,” he admitted. “Not properly.”

She spread her hands entreatingly. “Since when do prayers have to be proper? The Lord hears our prayers, Seamus, fitly spoken or not.” She studied him a long, dissecting moment. “What else is troubling you? Something beyond Lily Cate, I think.”

“I simply want to move forward, cut ties with the past, including Anne’s relatives. I want my daughter to be my daughter, not farmed out to kin I question. I want you to be my wife, with no thought of the woman who came before you.”

Or no thought of the man who came before me.

She looked suddenly troubled. He felt a nagging remorse for such plain speaking. He wanted to make the whole unsavory matter go away, but there was no fixing this. “We’ll tell Lily Cate about Williamsburg once Cosima leaves. I don’t want anything spoiling her visit.”

“Does your sister know about the trouble in Williamsburg?”

“Nay.” Knowing Cosima, she’d ride right up to Fitzhugh’s chambers and argue him into changing the court order. “’Tis probably better left unsaid. My sister is a bit of a firebrand.”

“I’d already gathered that.” She fingered her veil as it blew in the wind, finally lifting it so he could better see her. “She is delightfully different. Lily Cate adores her. She’s brought her parrot along, by the way.”

He rolled his eyes. Cosima’s eccentricities had long aggravated and amused him. No telling what was in store this visit. They’d not have a moment’s peace—a moment alone—for some time. Emboldened by the thought, he began, “About the other night . . .”

She looked up at him, her clear gaze sending an undeniable melting through his belly.

“’Twas a rude question I asked you. I know better, and I apologize.”

“I owe you an answer.”

“You owe me nothing, Sophie.”

A hawk swooped low, its raucous cry making her startle. He swallowed, nervous as a schoolboy, his next words broken by a sharp hallooing from the east. Turning, he saw his sister coming their way atop his prized thoroughbred, the horse barely broken, and astride to boot.

The visit had begun.

“Look, Papa! I can play the drums that Aunt Cosima brought me!” Lily Cate was beaming at him from across the small parlor, devilry in her expression. She began a rat-a-tat that rivaled the Continental Army’s finest drummer boy. For a moment Seamus was cast back to long marches and transmitting orders by fife and drum on war-torn battlefields.

Glancing at his sister, who sat beside him, he asked mockingly, “What instrument
didn’t
you bring my daughter?”

“I only brought the very noisy ones,” Cosima replied with an impish smile that rivaled Lily Cate’s.

His gaze returned to the tin trumpet and a child’s fiddle strewn atop the rug, waiting to be played. Sophie was sitting near Lily Cate, admiring a whistle on a long silver chain. Seamus hoped she wouldn’t blow it. “I’d rather you have hauled down a harp from Philadelphia. Fiddles and trumpets are male instruments, remember.”

“Posh! Times are changing, Seamus. You, an officer of the Revolution, should know that better than anyone. Besides, you mustn’t mind my spoiling her. I haven’t seen her for years, not with the Fitzhughs denying me a wartime visit. She’s my only niece, after all. Though I do hope you’re going to rectify that in time.”

“In time,” he replied noncommittally, eyes on Sophie.

“You’ve done well with your new bride, Seamus. I never cared for Anne, God rest her. But Sophie . . .” She smiled as a maid brought round a tea tray. “Sophie has heart.”

His throat tightened. He’d never thought to hear Cosima praise her so soon. He’d always admired this new wife of his, but now, when she was near at hand, when he could study her in small, unguarded moments, his admiration—and his frustration—grew. Sophie had a curious effect on him, sitting there like a tray of treacle he couldn’t have.

“Simply put, I adore her.”

“Mayhap by the end of the visit, you’ll find something not to your liking,” he said, their familiar banter of old taking hold.

“Hush,” she shot back, busying herself with sugar and cream. “Truly, Seamus. She’s lovely. She’s also candid and engaging and remarkably well read. She’s even—”

“She’s in love with someone else.”

“Oh?” Her greenish gaze swiveled back to him. “Then why did you wed her? Or perhaps the better question is, why did she wed you?”

“The man she cared for didn’t care for her.” The words came hard, but there was no skirting the truth. “She was about to lose her home and had few options.”

The drums quieted as Lily Cate switched to the fiddle, but the hammering in Seamus’s chest stayed steadfast. Perhaps Sophie would have been better off in Edinburgh. If he’d not intervened, she would be on her way there now, not tied up in matters of his own making.

Cosima pulled him back to the present. “She’s absolutely devoted to Lily Cate.”

“That’s why I married her,” he admitted.

“So this isn’t a love match.”

He hesitated. “One day, mayhap.”

Cosima sipped her tea, her prolonged pause preparing him for her next volley. “Is that why you’re keeping separate chambers?”

Heat snuck up his neck. His voice was low and flat beneath the squeak of the fiddle. “I cannot wed and bed a woman without knowing she has some feeling for me besides reluctance—or duty.”

“Well, removing Anne’s portrait from the Palladian room might help. She is no longer the mistress of Tall Acre, mind you. Sophie Menzies Ogilvy is.” There was chiding in her tone, but she was treading carefully. She knew not to push him. “Start there, Seamus.”

“Your point is well taken,” he said as if discussing battlefield strategy with his fellow officers. “But in my defense, that room is rarely used, and I’ve forgotten all about the painting.”

“Perhaps Anne’s Williamsburg relations would like to have it, or Lily Cate when she’s older. At least put it in the attic till then.”

The drums were thundering again, and Sophie gave a tentative try to the whistle. Cosima laughed as Sophie winced and switched to the trumpet instead. For a moment she seemed as winsome and childlike as Lily Cate, tugging at Seamus in fresh ways.

“How is Philip?” he asked, changing course.

“Never better. We celebrated our tenth anniversary recently, you know. He regrets business kept him in Philadelphia but hopes to join you for some foxhunting in the fall.”

“He’s welcome at Tall Acre anytime, as are you.” He pulled himself to his feet, the weight of the pistol hidden in his waistcoat an unwelcome reminder of the bearded stranger and strange light. He’d searched Early Hall himself after Lily Cate’s revelation and stirred up nothing but dust and unwanted memories. His daughter had an active imagination. The moon could easily reflect off glass and mimic a light. “Time for my nightly rounds. I leave for Richmond on business at daybreak.”

“Sleep well, little brother,” Cosima said, laughing again as Lily Cate began blowing the whistle
and
beating the drums.

Seamus swam upward through a swell of fog and pain. His left leg was almost useless and would bear his weight for only a moment at a time. His right hand needed to be amputated, the surgeon said. The dark blue of his uniform was torn and streaked with blood and grime. He wore no shirt, for it had long since gone for bandages. His boots were unspeakable.

Through the haze and heat of his battlefield dreams, all the fighting and falling back,
she
stayed uppermost, rising above deafening musket fire and the never-ending stench of smoke and powder.

He jerked awake, clammy despite the chill. For a few disorienting seconds the room spun and then settled into cold, unfamiliar reality. Grant’s Tavern. Early morning. Late March. The war won. But his chest felt empty, as if carved out by a cannonball.

He was missing . . . Sophie.

He shut his eyes, still at war within. If he didn’t love her, why did he miss her? Why this nagging need to make things right between them, move toward more of her, more of them? Why did his blood rise at the mere thought there might be something between them?

All his tattered memories of Anne rose up and made him want to retreat. Yet some small, stubborn hope challenged him to wade through the hurts of the past lest he repeat them, taking hold of what was before him. Sophie. Second chances. Not distance and coldness and regret.

He dared a tentative, heartfelt prayer. For forgiveness. Direction. Wisdom.

What now, Lord?

Turning over, pulse drumming in his chest, he hardly expected an answer.

You need to court her.

He went completely still. The thought was not his own. He hadn’t the courage to court her. But aye, he needed to court her. Woo her. Make her his. But how? A strange task to woo a woman after the wedding, but there’d been no time before.

He lay on his back, staring the idea in the face like he was preparing for battle, as if determined to drive any other man from the farthest reaches of her mind. With the Lord’s help, he would court her. Only with the Lord’s help was he capable of courting a woman as a woman ought to be courted . . . loving Sophie as she ought to be loved.

He wanted to be an attentive, tender husband. Wanted to savor more moments like the one that had passed between them by the hearth’s fire when he’d playfully called her his bride. Something had happened in that too fleeting instant that left him changed.

Had she felt it too?

The dancing master finally arrived, a score of Roan County children in his wake. Cosima was in her element supervising, a task Sophie gladly relinquished. With her energy and enthusiasm, Cosima turned the ballroom into a fete, leaving Sophie to her stillroom and her rounds. Seamus was still in Richmond. She wasn’t sure when he’d be back.

Going into his study, she returned a quill and pen knife to his desk, breathing in the fragrance of pipe smoke and leather. The lengthy list he’d made atop the cluttered mahogany top couldn’t be ignored. She studied the page, noting his writing varied in intensity and clarity, finally fading to a weary scrawl.

Graft 40 cherries and plums. Sow flax in west pasture. Ready Three Chimneys’ fields for planting. Finish rail fence along Roan Creek and put chariot horses there. Prepare lambing pens. Hire millwright. Rid coach house of Anne’s riding chair . . .

The last sentence shook her. His wording was strong. If he knew the significance of that riding chair . . . She prayed he never would. Overwhelmed by all that needed to be done, she felt a bit shamefaced. Why had she not realized he was having such trouble writing? His maimed hand would only accommodate so much. He needed a secretary to help manage everything. Or a willing wife. She’d forgotten her promise to help him when she returned from Annapolis . . .

Her gaze landed on an ill-concealed paper. To Seamus, Riggs had written in a tight, exacting hand, “As for Molly Kennedy, a more lazy, deceitful, and impudent hussy is not to be found in the United States than she.”

The new indenture. There was always drama among the staff. Seamus had threatened to send Molly back to Ireland till Sophie had intervened, moving her from the dairy to the spinning house, where another wheel had been added and the women were making striped fabric instead of drab homespun. But Sophie didn’t know if the arrangement would last.