Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

The Randolph Legacy (33 page)

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy

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“In good time.” The woman complimented the son who’d fetched his father. “Mr. Curtis,” she summoned the man, “put on your robes of office. Roger, accompany our Mr. Randolph on his shopping rounds while the wee girls and I complete his bride’s finery.”

She wiggled the third finger of her left hand to remind Ethan of the wedding ring she’d encouraged him to purchase before she pushed him toward her son. Ethan glanced back at Judith. Her beaming smile made him finally realize they’d come to the right place.

“H
e scarcely wants you out of his sight, as if you’d disappear!”

Judith looked down at her hands and thought about how close she’d come to doing just that. An involuntary shudder shook her frame.

“You don’t desire to disappear on him, do you?”

“Oh, no!”

“Good. We like your man. He’s very handsome, isn’t he, girls?”

Her daughters agreed with vigorous nods and giggles.

“Do you think so?” Judith asked, realizing she was indulging herself in vanity. But if she couldn’t do it this day, when could she? “I mean, I’ve always seen him so, but others, when he was sick, and what with his lameness …”

“Lameness? What lameness, dear?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

“Of course his boots help.”

“Now, what woman with any eye for beauty would be looking at the boots of that fine-formed man?”

Judith felt a flush ride up her neck and burst at her cheeks. The tips of her fingers pulsed with longing to touch her fine-formed man.

“Not that physical beauty is the basis for lasting attachment, of course,” Mrs. Curtis continued as she scrubbed the last vestiges of their wild ride from Judith’s indigo skirt. “And it’s his attachment to you touches my heart, and makes him all the more comely, if I might be allowed to say so. But you’re both as nervous and fretful as wrens over a nest! Shall I put on a pot of tea as we—”

Judith felt a sudden wave of nausea. “No tea,” she whispered.

“Why, my dear, you’ve gone quite pale. When have you last eaten?”

Judith pulled Ethan’s damp handkerchief from her pocket. She held it over her mouth, retching. Nothing came of it but an overwhelming dizziness.

W
hen she opened her eyes again, her feet were raised on the sofa. One of the cherub children was fanning her face. Mrs. Curtis dabbed her forehead. What had happened? Had she fainted?

“Better?” the matron whispered.

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, don’t raise your head, but see if you can get a little of this plain porridge down. Will you try?”

The woman held a tiny, steaming baby’s spoon to Judith’s lips. She didn’t even need to open her mouth very wide to pull in the warm, smooth oats.

“There, your color’s returning. Your poor hovering man might get an ‘I will’ out of you yet today!”

“Is Ethan returned?”

“Not yet. But the girls have finished your garland, and my husband’s as clean as can be expected, so we’ve done our part here.”

“You’ve been very kind.”

The woman touched Judith’s forehead. “How many months gone are you, little wren?”

“Gone?”

Judith followed the woman’s glance at her middle and felt a fresh flush at her cheeks. “I’m not … gone. I mean, it’s not possible. Ethan and I—we haven’t you see …”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. It’s common, with hasty marriages. And with you being ill—I’m sorry. I should have known. He told me it’s your people against the marriage. The girl’s family usually isn’t, if she’s in that way, and the father’s as willing as he seems.”

Judith felt the tears sting her eyes. “I have no family. But my father loved Ethan like a son. Once he died, my people couldn’t accept. One of them made me tired all the time, with laudanum in my tea, so I was confused, and couldn’t go to Ethan myself. I’m still sick from it, and a burden. When he needed me, when they held him prisoner, I couldn’t go, until it was almost too late!”

“What happened?”

“He came for me. After they’d beaten him. He braved them all to hold out his hand and come for me.” The woman and her children’s rapt faces almost overwhelmed her again. She leaned back in the pillows.

“That’s the best story!” the oldest girl intoned quietly.

Her next younger sister skipped in from her station at the parlor window. “Put on your garland, miss,” she called out. “They come. And your man has the prettiest sea green cape over his arm! And oh, Mama, look, he’s leading Mr. DuBois’s white mare Two Hearts!”

“I suspect Two Hearts is this lady’s mare now, Katie.”

T
he ceremony with its swearing was almost too strange for Judith to bear at first. But when she watched Ethan repeat the words after the justice, in his unique, French-accented Virginia cadence, she lost herself in him, in the sound, ignoring sense. Even the scar Ethan had received at the time of his fall off Cavalier looked like another benevolent track of mud on her distracted, nervous, beautiful bridegroom’s face as he pledged his troth.

When the justice asked for the ring, his son held out three silver bands in his palm. Ethan looked at her apologetically. “This will help seal everything, this and the paper,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to wear it, Judith.”

She nodded, trusting him. Ethan tried one, then another ring on her finger. Both slipped on too easily. The third was a perfect fit, Judith thought, though she’d never worn a ring before.

Then it was her turn. The sounds came, first in syllables, then words, then phrases. It was not so bad, with the gentle justice’s patience, with Ethan’s eyes steady on her face.

Then, silence. Familiar, rich silence.

“You may kiss her if you’d like, son.”

Ethan blinked, looking to Judith as if he’d just been yanked from the ocean’s depths. “May I?” he asked her politely.

Judith glanced over the room’s occupants. Hope filled Mrs. Curtis’s and her female children’s eyes. It overruled the single son’s sour-faced vote. She nodded her permission for their first public kiss.

Ethan leaned down, touched her lips with his, pressed further. Her lips parted and she tasted warm wine and felt a gentle, teasing pull of promise. It left her tingling long after the little girls showered them with creamy yellow narcissus blossoms. Their kiss was still causing her hand to shake as she entered her name in its place on the marriage certificate.

Once the ink was sanded, Ethan folded the document carefully and placed it in her hands.

“Deep in your pocket, Judith. For any who would try to pull us apart, in the world men have made, not the one we will make together.
Mon dieu,”
he whispered, suddenly, as he glanced out the parlor window.

“Ethan? What—?”

He grabbed her hand. “Are all fees paid?” he asked, running past the smiling justice as he poured wine.

“Yes, but won’t you and your wife—”

“We cannot, we regret …
Allons-y
… Judith?” he begged as his English gave way, but his feet did not.

She yanked her new hooded cape from the chair beside the scullery door. “Thank you, for all your kindnesses, good-bye!” was all she could manage before her new husband swept her onto the white mare.

She didn’t care if it was her disappointed suitor or her bridegroom’s greedy older brothers behind them. Judith Mercer wanted only to emerge on the other side of her past with Ethan.

Ethan Blair

Judith watched Ethan shed his coat, vest, and even his beloved
boots as he sprinted across the sandy dunes. Without boots he was hobbled, but seemed blissfully unaware of it until he fell. Even then he waved off her assistance and coursed on.

When he entered the Atlantic’s pounding surf, he stood still at last. So still that the waves buried his feet in their shifting sands, evening him out again on his mismatched legs.

Judith gathered his clothing and boots as she walked. She set them on an outgrowth of rock, warm from the late-afternoon sun. Then she removed her own slippers, ruined again though he’d patched them twice for her. She kilted up her frayed indigo skirts and stepped into the foamy surf. Just as she didn’t think he’d noticed her presence beside him, he turned. His beautiful eyes were shadowed dark with exhaustion, reminding her of Washington on that first night on board the
Standard.
He took up her hand, pressed it to his face.
Yes,
she thought. Even his several days’ growth of beard was like Washington’s.

“The sea’s at our backs now, Judith,” he said, above the waves. “I spoke with the lighthouse keepers. We can rest awhile here, in a shelter all our own. Would that please you?”

She nodded, blinking back tears, before pulling him down to her mouth and tasting her husband there in his home, the sea.

They had been three days and nights on back roads and trails, avoiding her persistent former suitor and his five-man tracking party. They’d never stopped for more than a few hours to rest the horses, to scan Barton Gibson’s maps and blue-chalked post rider’s routes, to sleep lightly, propped up against each other.

They’d bought their provisions—eggs, bread, a little cheese—from free black farmers as they traveled. The families knew from their eyes that they were running. Judith spoke for them, as her husband feared his accent would turn them away from a slaveowner’s son. None turned them away, as poor as they themselves were.

Was it truly over? How had he found this place? Found? It was as if
he’d been driven to it. The tide was coming in. Ethan lifted her above the spray. Their kisses deepened as his hand rode down her hip, flaring its long, strong fingers, massaging. Judith’s memories of their harrowing journey began to fade with the power of their passion. His beard scraped her face. He was everywhere, eliciting first tiny, then deeper gasps. Judith felt the wetness between her legs. Not from the waves, they were not that high. She thought he might take her down there in the surf. Could she hold her breath as long as he?

“Mr. Blair!” They heard the cry from the shore. “The key!”

Ethan eased Judith back to her feet with a stream of indiscernible French, and took her hand. But by the time they’d reached the lighthouse keeper, who was standing beside the rock that held Ethan’s boots, stockings, and coat, her ardent young husband was smiling affably.

“This is Judith, Del. My wife—Mrs. Blair,” he amended.

“I figured as much, sir,” the man said with a laugh as he touched his cap. He was about fifty, and his face was lined in what appeared to be a perpetual squint. “Seems my own missus was right. ‘Go and rescue that poor bride from his sea madness, Del,’ says she. ‘And tell himself he’d best treat her better than these worn-down horses while I’m his landlady!’ So there it is, message delivered, along with the cabin’s key and here—my Ida’s six-egg pound cake to keep you both from starvation’s door until morning.”

Del put the wrapped cake into Judith’s arms and handed the key to Ethan. “Storm’s coming. A nor’easter,” the lighthouse keeper informed them. “As I could see you were busy observing for yourselves just now,” he added, a grin widening his weather-beaten squint. “There’s plenty of firewood. It might last the length of your hideaway from those doting relatives who wouldn’t leave you in peace!”

Judith watched the lightkeeper trudge across the sand toward the tower house as her husband leaned against the rock and pulled on his boots.

“Doting relatives? Ethan, what did you tell them?” she demanded.

“The truth,” he said. She frowned. “In a more lighthearted vein, perhaps. I
am
a Blair, Judith,” he insisted, standing, “and I asked my mother if I might use the name.”

She nodded. “We’re Blairs, then, of course.”

He buttoned Jordan Foster’s vest over his shirt. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Marriage needs consummation,” he explained with a studiously indifferent shrug.

Judith tried to affect a pout. “Cake first,” she challenged.

His eyes went playfully menacing. “No cake.”

“Ethan—” she warned, backing away from him. “I’m very hungry.”

“So am I.”

She giggled, covering her mouth like the silly, lighthearted girl she was, for the first time in her life.

“Do you suppose our landlady can see us from there?” he asked, tracking her steps.

Judith’s eyes shifted quickly up the hill to the lighthouse and pier, then back. “It’s possible.”

“Good.” He caught the cake in the web of his coat and slung her over his shoulder. Judith clung to their bag of foraged possessions, laughing as he brought them over the last of the dunes, then into the piney woods.

His playful voice changed when he stopped. “Judith, look,” he summoned in an awestruck whisper, as he returned her to her feet.

She turned, still laughing. Before them stood a weathered cabin among a grove of gnarled cedars. Through the roar of the pounding surf in the distance, Judith felt a profound peace about the place.

Ethan mounted the wide porch steps. He put the key in the door’s padlock and opened it. Inside was well-chinked and cozy. The large single room was a home.

Judith spun around, running delighted hands over a red woven tablecloth, blue-fringed shawl, two whale-oil lamps, and the featherbed on a bolster frame. All under the peaked, open rafter roof. After their hunted days, each new discovery felt like a luxurious miracle.

She wondered if she was being frivolous, until she realized her castaway husband was doing the same. Ethan opened chests containing pillows, quilts, candles, food staples, and crockery ware. His fingers traced everything as if it would disappear. “Del said they use this cabin when their children’s families visit, as well as an emergency shelter when the need arises. But I didn’t expect—”

“Oh, Ethan, it’s beautiful here.”

“Yes.”

“You know this place, these people, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been here before.”

“No.” He turned away from her. His eyes focused on a child’s spotted gray rocking horse by the fireplace. His fingers skimmed its black mane as he glanced up at her. He opened his mouth twice, but seemed to think better of speaking. “A storm is coming; we’d best settle ourselves in,” he finally declared.

As he brought a bucket to the rain barrel outside, Judith set out
basins and pitchers on the two nightstands. She removed her battered wedding wreath from the bag and draped it over a chairback, then put logs and kindling in the hearth.

Ethan returned. Together they worked the tinder to flame.

“Good fire.” He complimented her shyly. Judith moved close. He continued to stare into the flames. “Before we, that is to say …”

“Become consummated?” she offered.

“Yes. Exactly, just so. We must talk about—” His eyes darted in her direction at last. “Why, Judith, what has happened to you?” he asked, tracing the slight rash along her jaw.

She felt herself coloring. “You … happened,” she explained. “Remember? In the waves?”

His hand went to his prickly beard.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That was thoughtless, I beg your pardon.”

“I don’t mind, my darling.”

“I’ll shave. Yes. Now. I’m sorry,” he said again, backing away.

Judith set the kettle on the hearth. Soon its water warmed both basins. He lit the lamp and placed it close by their two washstands. Judith slipped out of her indigo gown, placed it on the chair beside the bed, and wrapped the blue shawl across her shoulders. She pressed a damp linen towel to her face and peeked above it.

Ethan’s opened shirt looked as it did when he was on the treetop in Pennsylvania. How Judith envied his ease of manner, even as her heart was pounding at the intimacy of washing herself beside him. He steadied the blade of his fine knife with his thumb and drew it over the offending whiskers, hidden under soap foam. Long strokes, smooth, graceful. He shaved much differently than her father had. Her breasts began a pleasant tingle.

“Don’t you require a mirror?” she heard herself asking.

“Fayette taught me to do without. Though sometimes he liked to play the barber himself.”

“I shaved prisoners at Dartmoor, the ones who had injuries to their hands. They were so grateful over such a small kindness,” she remembered.

“Ange venérable,” he
whispered.

“What does that mean?”

“Angel. I call you angel. This offends you?”

“No.”

He kissed her cheek. Soap bubbles clung. The tingling intensified. He seemed to know what was happening, there inside her, and retreated to his basin.

When he’d finished, he turned to her. She had barely rinsed her face,
and felt a trickle of water easing down her neck. His eyes followed its route until it disappeared. Judith ached for his touch.

“I’ll bank the fire.” He slid past her, engaging in the task.

Was this purposeful, what he was doing? Teasing her, like a child, but with a man’s skill. Then mysterious, unaccountable shyness. As she knelt on the hearth rug, he finally looked into her eyes.

“Judith,” he began, “there is a subject I’ve tried to push from my mind. But here, now, I find I cannot.”

His eyes skimmed the spotted horse. Dread encircled Judith’s heart.

“Children,” she whispered.

“Yes. Prescott Lyman, when we buried the rat, he called you a born mother, Judith. That was the only thing that ever bothered me. He could give you Ruth and Hugh, and we, the two of us, might never have a child, because—” She watched him fight the constriction in his throat. “Because—”

“Of me,” they finished together.

Their expressions of amazement must have looked mirrored, Judith thought later.

“You?” Ethan asked.

“Yes, of course, you think I’m too old!”

He looked baffled.

“Don’t you?” she demanded.

“No! Why would I think that?”

“Because I am three-and-thirty and have never—Ethan, because of the years between us!”

“They are nothing! Sally is older than you are. And my mother, when she gave me life, was older. Silly woman. I fear my own inability, not yours!”

“But, Ethan,” she glanced down between his muscled thighs and fought her blush, “you are hardly—”

“It’s not from want of desire. Judith, neither of my brothers has children. My father blames their wives, but I don’t believe it is they who are responsible. No matter how disagreeable Hester and Clara are, they wish their estate secure as much as their husbands do. I think it is Winthrop and Clayton who are … unable.”

“Why do you think this?”

“My brothers pride themselves on following my father into his biblical world of wives and concubines and issue. But Judith, they have none, not a hint of an heir from any of their legitimate or conquested breeding in their slave quarters. I think it must be them. Does my speaking of these things offend you?” he asked suddenly.

“No.”

“Good. That’s good. Well, I am their brother, so that same inability might be bred in me. It would hardly be fair to you not to know my doubts, would it?”

“Ethan—” Judith fought back a smile. “—you are also brother to Sally, who has issue.”

“But Sally’s a woman.”

“What arrogance! Is she less related to you because of her sex?”

“No.”

“She is closer to your age than your brothers are. Perhaps something has afflicted them, made them unable. Nothing has harmed her. Nor you, perhaps, as her brother born after her.”

“That sounds … sensible.”

“Oh? Is that not why you chose an ancient wife, Ethan Blair? Her wizened good sense?”

Judith rejoiced as the buoyant noise sounded off the hearthstone. She’d gotten a small laugh out of him. It made her feel bold, powerful. That and his own annoyed, Fayette-influenced words.
Silly woman,
she told herself in that voice. The years between them were nothing to him! Why should they bother her, then?

“Oh, Ethan, we love each other. Let’s leave the rest to God.”

“God.” He said the word as if recalling a distant, unpleasant relative.

Judith smiled. “Yes, God, heathen. And even God cannot help us unless we go about the business of consummating this marriage!”

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy

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