The Randolph Legacy (46 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“Bloody little tyrant! Who do you think you are?”
When he moved, Winthrop caught his right wrist in an iron grip and brought it up behind his back, making him gasp. But not cry out. He would never cry out, because that’s what his brother wanted, more than anything.
“I am now in charge of my father’s care,” Ethan said evenly.
Winthrop laughed. “Self-appointed!”
“Appointed by my mother and sister, and called for by Father.”
“You don’t have to tell me that much! Stinking old man can’t even be dignified in death! Yelling for you. Threatening. Making me promise to Mother that I will not lock you away where you belong!”
The grip on his wrist twisted. His coatsleeve ripped.
“Get your hands off me,” Ethan said between his teeth.
Laughter. “Still the emperor, aren’t you? All demands, no pleading.”
Ethan raised his left elbow between them, dug it deep into his brother’s gut. Surprised, Winthrop backed away. Ethan had not been ambidextrous before Fayette. He used his new freedom to cut his fist upward into his brother’s jaw, slamming the mouth shut with a bone-jarring swiftness. Winthrop howled in fury before knocking him to the floor.
A shower of sparks burst through Ethan’s head. His mouth hurt. He swallowed blood. But Winthrop did not look so well, either. Ethan gathered what comfort he could in that, before the insufferable Clara flew into the room to curse him and pull her husband away.
Aaron leaned over Ethan. Micah helped him stand. “Elwood,” Ethan turned to Aaron’s youngest son, “would you kindly ask your mother to bring Judith some of her corn pudding?”
“Pudding?” He looked up at his father, who nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Lukewarm,” Ethan decided, finally.
“Straight off.”
“And if Martha would brook no protest and feed her? Before Judith’s head leaves the pillow? That way she won’t be sick, I think.”
“Done, sir.”
“Thank you.”
 
 
E
than was glad his father had slept through the clamor downstairs. And it was easy enough to hide his damaged lip in the dim room as he urged his mother and sister to their needed rest on the sofa. But it was not long past daylight before the old man woke them bellowing, “Where’s Ethan?”
Ethan raised his head from his Molière, a bad translation, which had him scribbling in the margins. “Here, sir.”
“Not a dream? You, driving that bleeding fool out, letting in the air—life?”
“Not a dream.”
The old man scowled, like his old self “How long are you home?”
“Until you are well. Or dead.”
“Disrespectful child! Were that Frenchman alive, I’d thrash him soundly! Are you married yet, rogue?”
“I am, sir.”
The old man’s eyes lit with interest. “To the sling-hipped Quaker-woman, with the mischief about her eyes?”
Ethan sighed. “Judith. Her name is Judith.”
“Your brothers, they said you hunted her down like some wild Indian, there, among the Quakers. They say you killed her father, when he refused your suit.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Then why were those accursed lawyers I hired to set you free so expensive?”
“I—”
“Never mind! Water under the bridge! Has your wife done her duty? Is she breeding yet?”
Ethan glanced up at his weary-eyed mother, whose look urged patience. “She is, yes.”
“What? She is? She has told you this?”
“Yes.”
“There, splendid! And not a trick of your brothers’ silly wives to gain a trinket or two from me. Quakers don’t lie! I told you she was a good choice, Ethan.”
Ethan smiled at his ancient, impossible father and the florid color coming back to his cheeks. “She is that, yes,” he agreed.
“She’ll bring forth a great, lusty Randolph male from those hips.”
Ethan growled, shifting.
“What in hell has happened?” his father demanded suddenly.
“Happened?”
“That cut by your mouth! Is your sister planting her deadly children’s blocks under you now?”
Ethan cast a quick look as Sally bit her bottom lip in distress. He suppressed the urge to wring the old man’s neck. “No, sir. I … fell.”
“Fell—
fell
? You, the dancer? You did no such thing! Good God. Not a day returned to us. Which one of them went after you this time?”
His mother touched her husband’s shoulder. “He’s not saying.”
“I
am
saying,” Ethan insisted, “that I fell.”
Winthrop entered the room, hobbling on his wife’s arm. Anne Randolph’s hand went to her face in astonishment, while her recovering husband nearly choked on his laughter at the sight of his eldest son’s bruised and swollen face, his favored side.
“Looks to me like your brute elder brother ‘fell’ harder than you did, Ethan Blair!” his father proclaimed.
“She was sore peeved with Jordan Foster when he brought back
that Scottish wife and lit out for Indian Territory, you know. Never in front of me, of course, but I heard her flinging glass and crockery over her room like the spoiled little girl I first married.”
Ethan began to wonder if his father’s head injury had affected his memory. “My mother, breaking crockery? Why?”
“Because of her plan for you, of course! To do what you’ve finally done on your own—study medicine under that Boston scholar. When her hope of it was finally dashed—when he went west to spoil all that expensive learning on heathen Indians—that was when I finally got you out from under her sphere, tried to make a trader of you.”
Ethan remembered his mother taking to her rooms, the lifelessness of her eyes in the days before he went away to serve on board the
Ida Lee.
It was not his leaving Windover that caused his mother’s distress, then? It couldn’t have been, if she was going to apprentice him to the doctor in that time long ago.
“I almost succeeded, didn’t I?” his father interrupted his confused thoughts.
“Succeeded?”
“Head out of your cloud, son. Succeeded in making a seafaring merchant of you, of course! Damned bad business, the British boarding of the
Ida Lee,
the wreck. But you survived it all and … whatever went on in Pennsylvania besides. You’re home now.”
“No. No, I’m not, Father. My home’s upriver.”
“Of course, of course. Commendable, you taking on a second profession, a healthy wife. Planting a family while you wait for your inheritance. I approve! Much better than wasting my fortune at the gaming tables and whorehouses. Just the profession, in fact, when you’ve got a father riddled with age and greedy brothers trying to hasten his end with bloodsucking surgeons. Ah, then, come in, Mrs. Randolph!”
Judith stood panting by the door, wondering if Ethan’s mother were behind her, until she realized Winthrop Randolph was addressing her.
She stepped into the room, the threshold of which she couldn’t cross in her fear the night before.
“I beg your pardon, sir. Learning Ethan was hurt, I ran—”
“Now, that you should not do,
madame!
There’s much underfoot. Your husband is well enough. Stand up, Ethan. Take my stick. Banish the concern remaining in your lady’s eyes!”
When Ethan reached for the griffin-headed cane, Judith saw the chaffed bruise around his wrist. These people were savages, she decided. Bullying, insufferable, full of pride. She had had enough of them. She wanted to go home. The suffering look in her husband’s eyes stopped her. Did he think she included him in her seething indignation? She turned her attention to his cut mouth.
“I have my medicinals.”
“It requires nothing. I fell, Judith.”
One of his artful truths. “I have my sewing kit as well. If you will allow me your coat?”
“Yes, sit with us—hands busy!” his father commanded. “Such a resourceful woman you are. You must be a great asset to my son in his practice. I have been most fortunate in your timely presence.”
Judith had almost forgotten that the elder Winthrop Randolph could be gracious. And she hadn’t even inquired about his health. She should apologize for not joining Ethan in attending him the night before. But the residue of anger, along with her recent propensity for bursting into tears, would not allow it. Or was it pride? How she missed her own father at times like this.
Judith busied herself at her needle and thread and torn sleeve as the two men talked of Windover’s family, black and white, and harvest and politics and the merchant marine fleet out of Norfolk. It was as if her husband had no other life than this one he was born into. Ethan was not her confused, battered seaman here anymore, she had to remind herself. He had a place in this family. A history. Did he have a future with them?
“You wear a ring,
madame,”
brought her to attention.
“To honor my husband.”
“Still no vanity? Still a Quakeress, then?”
“No. No longer,” she whispered.
“Speak up!”
Ethan covered her hand with his. She raised her head. “I am no longer considered a Friend, sir.”
“Why not?”
“My marriage.”
“Damned fools, to let go such as you! No matter. You’re a Randolph
now. Deserving of more rings, and some finery, I think. For a celebration.”
“Father,” Ethan interceded, “we have no desire for—”
“I haven’t a care in the world for your desires, rascal! And it seems to me,” he continued, scanning Judith’s form, “you are already getting those fulfilled in ample measure!”
 
 
H
e pulled her harder up the hill. “Stop,” she urged.
“Too fast for you, Judith?”
“For you. Your leg. Ethan, Jordan would be so angry—”
“Then we should give thanks he’s not here to scold. It’s just ahead, the place we can escape them.”
The tiny brick structure in the woods was so overrun with greenery that Judith could not separate it from the landscape until her flushed young husband opened a vine-shrouded door.
Far from the ruin she expected inside, the plastered walls were whitewashed—simple, clean, maintained. “Sit, sit,” he said grimacing, impatient, like his father. No. Pained politeness. Waiting for her to sit before he could rest his own overworked leg, that’s all. He wasn’t like his father, his brothers. She took her place on a chair with a tapestried cover. He collapsed in its twin.
“Here.” She patted her lap. He slouched but allowed her to lift his muddied right boot to her knees.
“What is this place?” she asked, beginning her massage.
“The start of Windover. Built by the first Randolph to marry a Blair, in sixteen twenty-two. Would that my family had remained so simple in our needs.”
Judith closed her eyes. At first she thought she was becoming ill. Then she nodded, giving the vision leave to come, and welcome. She saw the faces of women. Giving birth, nursing their sick, dying. They all resembled Ethan’s mother, and so him. They all pointed westward, toward the setting sun. When Ethan’s hand took hers, they faded. He remained respectfully silent, so she sought out more, there behind her eyelids. She saw a small boy, surrounded by black children. He wore a smock identical to theirs. His dark hair was tied back in a queue, so she could see his round, angelic face, his intense eyes. The children listened as he read from a book half his size, as he made letters in the dirt. An older boy seemed to see her. That boy raised his head from the circle, and nodded, smiling.
“Ethan?” Judith called. “Aubrey had eyes like Martha’s.”
“Yes.”
“And a tiny scar,” she touched her cheek, “here.”
“From a fishhook.”
“You taught him to read. And other slave children, when you were smaller than Betsy. You taught them here.”
He shrugged. “All with an interest in it. I was just playing at being Sally. It helped me remember my own teaching.”
“It was dangerous, you were breaking the law!”
He frowned like Fayette. “Since when have you been concerned about the laws men make, tree climber?”
“You knew? What we were doing, that night in Pennsylvania?”
“Eventually.”
“Why didn’t you ever—?”
“And lose my ability to surprise you? You’ll throw me over when that day comes, Judith Mercer.” His dark eyes sobered. “You must allow me to work on these matters my way, at Windover,” he admonished. “Nothing would give my brothers more pleasure than to have my abolitionist wife tarred and feathered here in the Tidewater.”
“I’m not going to—”
“No?” He fixed her with a pointed stare.
She looked away. “I follow my Light. I’m obliged to do that.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No,
madame,
I am trying to stay clear of you. Look. My hand is scorched from your communion with my ancestors.”
She touched it. Warm. “Ethan,” she said in wonder. “You saw the women?”
“Briefly. Your Light is blinding.”
She sniffed her indignation. “And what of yours, causing you to swim the depths of the ocean with your dolphin kinsmen?”
“That was the Atlantic shelf—hardly the open sea. My ocean days are behind me, thanks to my ties to certain wicked women.”
Judith laughed as she looked around the well-kept room. “I believe this place is still used for your purpose. Who teaches now?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t trust me with that information before I left for Pennsylvania. Phoebe, I expect. She is so quick-witted, and a wonder with—”
“You’re a wonder, Ethan Blair. How can my heart expand further, to hold this new vision, this new depth of love for you?”
He kissed her behind her ear. “Oh, you’re expanding, sweet wife,” he teased slyly, “but not for me.”
She brought his hand to her bodice. “For you,” she assured him, coloring at her own brazenness. Since that afternoon of his fall she knew that her breasts pleased him, and now he took delight in her pregnancy’s changes causing their enhancement.
“Why, Judith,” he proclaimed, even while he unlaced her, “this place is a hallowed hall of learning.”
“Let us teach each other, then.”
He kissed her bared shoulder. “Mrs. Blair,” he admonished, “without even a bed?”
“Since when have we required a bed?”
He laughed, taking her down on the cool dirt floor of his schoolroom.
 
 
T
hat night Judith dreamed of sitting on the tapestry chair, prepared to thank Ethan’s ancestor women for their vision. They came, pointing again, west. A broad-banked, flowing body of water awaited.
She sat up. Ethan took hold at her disappearing waist.
“What do you need, love?” he asked, his voice still drenched in sleep.
“Water. Yes. The Ohio River,” she answered.
He rubbed his stubble beard. “Aw, Judith,” he sighed, “would a drink from the well suffice tonight?”
She laughed, burrowing down in the featherbed, resting his head beneath her still-racing heart. “We must leave, husband,” she announced. “West. Your mother’s people urge it.”
 
 
“T
he frontier? Are you mad?” his father bellowed.
“It is merely a borning contemplation. But consider: You have said yourself that my years abroad have made me unfit to be a Tidewater planter.”
“Twisted! You’ve twisted my words, you … Frenchman!”
“There! Exactly so. It was once French-held, this land along the Mississippi, the Ohio. My second language will aid us there, yes?”
“It is not your country.”
“Father, the Louisiana Purchase expanded the United States to number—”
“Virginia
is your country!”
Ethan frowned, regretting he’d even introduced the subject. “In the years I had no memory, I dreamed of a flag. The American flag, Father. Its field had many stars.”
“Dreams fueled by that French revolutionary. Do you wish to end up like him? A man with no country, no family, no—”
“He had family. He had me.”
“Little good you did him!”
Ethan saw his friend’s broken body again, felt a twitch beside his eye. “Perhaps. But we had each other,” he maintained quietly.
“As you have me, and your brothers, and—Oh, I see. It is they you would flee? Because you think you are powerless against them? Ethan, you are not powerless. You have my protection, son, so long as you—”
Ethan swallowed bitter retorts and willed his voice calm. He would make the old man understand. “Not flee. I do not wish to flee. Father, Judith and I, we move
toward.”
Winthrop Randolph’s eyebrow cocked. “Nonsense, utter nonsense! To anger and distract me from your real purpose. What is it you came here for? What do you want?”
“‘Want,’ sir?”
“Yes, yes, I know a ploy when I hear one. Rather late this time, I’ll admit, as your eyes are still a child’s and it’s difficult to decipher your cunning.”
“Cunning?”
“You returned home at whose behest? Your mother’s?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“To get into my good graces before I died. And now I have not died. Because of your skill. You stay, visit. Tantalize me with the new generation in your wife’s belly. Then you talk about emigration, which will mean the end of our family. Cunning devil, you want it all, don’t you? You want Windover.”
“No, sir.”
“Look at me, Ethan Blair. What is it you want?”

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