The Randolph Legacy (22 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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The doctor eased him out of his coat as if he were a child falling asleep by the fire. Even his questions were leveling under the glassy surface of a becalmed sea.
“I feel better,” Ethan whispered, as the doctor drew up the green coverlet to his shoulder. “See? Your listening, your touch was enough to relieve the worst of the pain.”
“Along with the laudanum I put in your tea.”
Even the surge of anger didn’t reach the glassy surface. “Bloody hell,” Ethan managed a soft curse. “Not right.”
“I know what’s best.”
“You should have asked me.”
“It was only a few drops. You barely finished half a cup. Do you think it’s easy, watching you in pain?”
“Not respectful.”
He was furious, but so tired. He turned his face to the wall. The doctor’s silent footfalls left the room.
 
 
D
eeper in the night the beast came, red, writhing, after Judith. She screamed. Wild, unearthly. The knife. Where was it? He woke, gasping, his mouth dry. Damned laudanum.
He rose, pulled on his boots, walked to the room’s bookshelves. He leaned on one, running his fingers fondly over leather-spined histories of the Greek and Roman worlds. Outside, all was silent. The city had lost its busy voice. He must forgive Jordan Foster, Ethan thought. Slipping the laudanum into his tea was not a great transgression, in light of all the man had done on his behalf.
The doctor had been more patient than Ethan believed possible, and had talked of his Edinburgh schooling, and his work among the Indians, and in the war. He had even endured his father’s constant reminders that his start in life had been funded by Randolph money. Fayette had taught him to be a more generous friend. Had Jordan Foster become his friend, then? Is that why he fretted so over his feelings? Ethan’s thoughts scattered at the sound of screaming. He raised his head, startled. Judith. No. Not Judith’s screams. A baby’s.
His sister’s town house was so compact he didn’t have to walk far to a small sitting room that faced the street. Sally paced before the windows.
When he called her from the doorway, she started, still unused to seeing him on his feet.
“I’d hoped she’d not wake you.”
“It’s Midwatch. I was awake. What’s wrong with Charlotte?”
“I know it sounds like she’s in a ring of the Inferno, but she’s cutting a tooth, that’s all.”
“Cutting?”
“A new one is breaking through.”
“I see. Might I hold her?”
“Yes. I’ll fetch some more clove oil from the kitchen for her gums.”
Charlotte fisted her hands and screamed as he watched the flying train of his sister’s gown.
“Little Gull, Little Gull,” he called as he lifted her over his shoulder, “this will not do. Your poor mother looks so tired!”
The baby answered with what sounded like an eruption. Then came an abrupt silence that rang in his ears. Ethan walked to a banister-backed chair and placed his youngest niece in his lap. To his astonishment, her mood seemed transformed. She cooed and took his finger into her mouth. Ethan felt her swollen gums, and rubbed.
Soon his sister stood breathless in the doorway. “What French sorcery is this?” she demanded.
He smiled. “She likes the taste of a new-flavored finger maybe, and perhaps—Ow!
Sacre-bleu!”
Sally laughed. “She does have three other teeth, brother!” she warned, taking the baby into her arms before settling into the sea green sofa. Charlotte nuzzled fitfully at her mother’s loosely laced nightgown. Sally satisfied the baby on her breast in seconds.
Ethan watched in wonder. “Doesn’t she bite you, Sally?”
“Your little gull cannot bite and suck at the same time,” she explained, “for which I thank the heavens! But she didn’t want any part of me before you took her. Oh, Ethan, there is the answer, on your shirt.”
He looked at the white stain and grinned. “She belched.”
“She did more than that!”
He shrugged. “I have smelled worse. Fayette used to douse me in clove oil to make me presentable for visits with Judith on the
Standard.
May I?” he asked, pointing to the corked bottle she’d set on a nearby table.
Sally laughed. “Be my guest.”
He rubbed his shoulder with the oil. The sour odor was replaced with a scent that filled his being with a longing that even the beauty of his sister and her child could not dispel.
“You’ve been cheerful about duties no unmarried man endures,” Sally said softly.
“In training to leave that miserable state, maybe.”
“Oh?” Ethan loved the interest that broke through even his sister’s fatigue. “And I imagine you’ve devoured the writings of William Penn and George Fox you asked me to send to Windover.”
Ethan brought the chair closer to his sister and leaned as far forward as it would allow. “Sally, none of the Quaker writings you sent speaks toward courtship rituals.”
His sister’s light brows lifted in surprise. “I shouldn’t think so, being religious tracts.”
“But does not passion have the ability to transform both lovers to a higher plane?”
“Is that Monsieur Fayette’s teaching?”
He shrugged. “Sally? I need guidance.”
She touched his face. “Perhaps you should talk to Barton.”
“I have talked with your husband. All afternoon. About the best routes west and north and east to the sea. And he gave me maps, and the wonderful leather coat he used when he was my age and a post rider. He’s a most excellent man, Sally.”
His sister shook her head. “He has also been a wonderful husband. A kind and considerate lover.”
“I know. You both glow with your happiness. I desire that for Judith and me. But I am not entirely—what did Judith call it?—an innocent.”
“Why, Ethan … while a prisoner?”
“I was not a prisoner. I was a ghost, in Fayette’s shadow. That’s how I survived. And when I was of age, he purchased for me the favors of a woman.”
“You mean, a—?”
“Yes.”
Sally stared into his soul. “She broke your heart,” she whispered. “Oh, Ethan, this woman broke your heart.”
The French could have used his sister’s services as a spy, Ethan thought ruefully. “She made too much of me, perhaps. But Clarisse showed me things, things she said would please women I loved.”
“And?”
“Should I have not, Sally? Should I have not kissed Judith, or touched her in those places?”
“Have you and Judith … ?”
“No, no. But how can she long for something she’s never experienced? Fayette said I had to steal a piece of her soul at every parting, so she would not forget me.”
Sally smiled. “Some give adornments, a ring.”
He frowned. “Sally. Judith does not wear rings.”
“Did she receive these affections? Did she return them?”
“Oh, yes. And she is very strong. But a little frightened of her own strength, I think.”
“My.”
“‘My’? Your what?”
“I’m a little astonished.”
“Sally, I love this woman more than my life. Help me to win her. How will it be when I go to Pennsylvania? I touch the ink of her letters and taste her mouth again. How will it be when I see her?”
“I think you are not the only thief of souls.”
“She has mine, of course. How could it be otherwise?”
“How, indeed.” His sister remained quiet for a full minute. Ethan was patient. It was always wise to be patient with women, Fayette had instructed him. Finally, Sally smiled. “Follow Judith’s lead in Pennsylvania, among the Quakers, not Monsieur Fayette’s. It will require some restraint, I think, from both of you.”
“Yes. Yes, of course, you’re right.”
“Unclench your teeth, brother dear.”
He laughed. Quietly, to keep from waking her sleeping child.
“As for her father and community,” his sister continued, “you must be a good guest among them, Ethan, watching for ways to show them you are a worthy suitor.”
“But will none of that matter if I am not a Quaker?”
“Since your conversion is not likely, it’s your only chance.”
“What?” he teased. “You don’t see me as a Child of the Light?”
“I see you as incapable of untruthfulness, brother. Even in the pursuit of your heart’s desire. Evasion,” she said, yawning, “now that’s another matter. You are also a crafty Frenchman.”
Sally was falling asleep there, on the sofa, with her child in her arms. “I’m sorry, darling boy,” she murmured. “Such a long day.”
Ethan went to the chest in the hallway and drew out a soft coverlet. He placed it over his sister and her child, then banked the room’s fire. Small things. But he had never done such things.
I could care for a woman and child, couldn’t I, Sally?
His sister smiled in her sleep.
 
 
“T
hat’s not my trunk,” Ethan protested.
“Oh, there were a few more shirts that wouldn’t fit in the smaller one,” his mother explained.
“The smaller one was bigger than I desired,
madame
,” he told her sternly. How could a woman who was so light not understand his need to remain unencumbered, movable?
“If you have room in your saddlebags for those maps, and that dreadful coat of Barton’s, you can have the coachman carry this trunk.”
Ethan wondered if he would ever get beyond the city limits of Richmond. The good-byes at Sally’s house had been bad enough. They’d gone on so long that he, his mother, and Jordan Foster had barely reached the overland coach’s origination point on time. He had already had a devil of a time convincing the driver that it had been arranged that Lark would ride in the coach’s wake for the entire journey, in order to give Ethan his own transportation to Prescott Lyman’s farm.
Ethan would have preferred a ship. But his mother had refused any mention of his going out on the open sea, even the coastal waterway. Now this trunk business.
“There is some yardage I couldn’t resist when Sally took me shopping yesterday, too, darling,” his mother confessed with a nervous smile. “Cambric. Isn’t it a pretty shade of rose? Please tender it to Judith for me? It will make such a lovely, a lovely …”
When he saw her tears, Ethan forgot his anger and folded his mother in his arms.
“In the North,” she sobbed out, “people are not so friendly, so hospitable as in this country. They care only for business, for money, in the North. They will cut your throat!”
“Why, Mother,” he said, looking over her shoulder, “you slander our esteemed Bostonian friend.”
“It’s he who told me these things!”
Dr. Foster held up his hands defensively. “Not about throat-cutting,” he protested, “not a thing about throat-cutting!”
“Ethan, I understand why you don’t wish to take our coach and six,” Anne Randolph continued. “But if you would only take a servant—”
“We’ve discussed this many times. How would it be, coming to court at a hearty Quaker farm household, unable to take care of myself without a servant?”
“It would be expected.”
“It would be pitiful, Mother.”
She nodded, slowly pulling out of his arms. “Pitiful,” she affirmed, smiling, though her tears continued to flow. “Forgive me. I was determined not to do this.”
“I’ll write to you. Every day.”
“I know, my darling.”
She straightened his cravat with shaking fingers. “Boys are supposed to squander their mother’s love,” she whispered, “not to return it tenfold.”
“Squandering the only woman’s love that is free? That would be very foolish, no?”
She laughed. “Poor Judith! She will be helpless.”
Anne Randolph finally released him and leaned into the doctor’s hold at her waist. Anchored.
Don’t float away, Mother. Stay with him
. How handsome a couple they made. His mother should marry the doctor someday, Ethan decided. Theirs would be a love match between old and trusted friends. It would not be based on property or ambition the way her childhood marriage to his father had been. The habitual sadness in Jordan Foster’s eyes would disappear. His mother would never cower again. She would gain more substance, and so not drift away.
He couldn’t wait to tell Judith his discovery. Jordan Foster and his mother loved each other, he was sure of it. Ethan took a step toward the waiting coach.
“Use your walking stick,” Anne Randolph called. “After dusk. Don’t forget.”
Ethan sighed, and turned to the doctor. “Well?” he challenged. “Speak up. My mother’s stealing your admonitions now.”
“Win your heart’s desire,” Jordan Foster said quietly.

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