The Randolph Legacy (54 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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He nodded.
“Do you still love me? Do you forgive us, Ethan Blair?”
He frowned, shaking his head at her need to ask this question. “Mama,” he whispered, sounding like a hoarse, disapproving ram.
She laughed. A girl’s high, musical laughter, through the shining tears. He grinned. If Jordan Foster ever so much as attempted to extinguish that girl, he’d best be standing by, Ethan decided.
Ethan stood beside the door of the cookhouse at the appointed
time. Aaron stepped out in his best clothes, and shook his hand. “Thank you for coming, young master.”
“I’m not your master, Aaron.”
The big man looked contrite. “Have patience with us, sir.” He shifted his mighty, tree-trunk legs. “I asked you to come so’s we could talk ‘bout that time, back. To release you, before you listen to the will-readin’. You ain’t got to keep that promise made to me and mine.”
“Why?”
“You done made it to a brother, sir. Swore it out real fine on our common blood, remember?”
“I remember.”
“And now we come to find out there’s no blood between us. We ain’t related at all.”
Ethan smiled. “Aaron, that is the only thing I regret about the circumstances of my birth. I should have liked very much to call you brother.”
“Truly, sir? Friends do.”
“Might we continue, then?”
“You asking my permission, young Ethan?”
“Of course.”
“Them’s fine French manners you got, my Martha says.”
“Martha doesn’t think less of my mother, does she, Aaron?”
“I think my Martha, she always knew, down in the heart of her. Think most of us did, child. You was just too different. A Blair, for sure of course, as kindhearted, as good with your healing hands as your mama and Miss Sally. So we never minded you much around, even when you almost tripped us up in our … well, less-than-strictly-legal pursuits.”
Ethan grinned. “Is that as close as I’m going to get to finding out how many of the Tidewater runaways found passage through Windover?”
“I expect, sir, yes. Now, old master, he took such little notice of you we all thought we could see you safe, keep you tucked away, too. Until no babies come from your brothers’ marriages. Until you got sent off to sea till you could have your own try at the babies. You and your lady and the one that’s to come, you made old master die happy, and feeling himself brave, Ethan. You needs to think on that, when you feel lonesome for him.”
Ethan pondered his friend’s words. Was it possible he would ever feel lonesome for the man he’d been ashamed to have for a father? Who would have most likely put him out on the road, along with his unfaithful wife, had he known who his youngest son really was? Of course it was. The would-haves had not happened, and this intemperate, arrogant man had done the best he could with Windover, with him. And in
the end Winthrop Randolph had sought to protect Judith as fiercely as he had.
“I’ll bring you the news after the will is read,” Ethan said. “And your family will not be separated or sold off while I have breath, brother.”
The oldest son of Winthrop Randolph again shook the hand of the youngest son of Anne Blair, and each returned to his life’s separate station.
 
 
E
than had none of his Quaker-like stillness today, Judith thought, as she took her place beside him in the accounts room. He was as uncomfortable around his family as when she’d first brought him to Windover without memory. He’d told her then that these were not his people. He knew it instinctively, this man who told the most artfully concocted truths, but never lied. She only wished Jordan had told him the revelation in her presence, so she could have delighted in the moment Ethan found out that this man he loved so dearly was his own father.
He shifted again. “I don’t belong here. Couldn’t we take a walk outside until it’s over?” he asked, tugging at her sleeve.
“Unhand your lady and sit still, pest,” Jordan commanded.
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “You of all people should know I have no business here. I gave up all claim I had, remember? For Winthrop’s loan.”
“My memory is perfectly sound. Yours is deficient. You repaid your brother in full, with the usurious interest agreed upon.”
“I did?”
“By way of a small portion of our dulcimer woman’s estate, which she foolishly left to her miserable husband. Now sit still.”
“That’s why Winthrop and Clayton look so worried?”
The doctor smiled. “Exactly.”
Judith stifled a giggle behind her hand.
“Jordan, I cannot take anything from this man’s estate,” her husband insisted. “I still have my honor.”
“Honor! I’d like to see Fayette just long enough to knock him into the middle of next week, do you know that? What about your promise to Aaron and his family? Has that promise got about it no honor?”
Ethan grinned. “You sounded exactly like Fayette just then, Jordan.”
“That comes from listening too long to you mangling English. Hush now, you great magpie. I think I liked you better without a voice. Honor your mother’s choice, the old man’s delight in you, and your promise to his eldest son. Ponder them all and keep still.”
“Damned Boston preacher,” Ethan muttered.
“Enough,” Judith whispered, finally quieting them both.
 
 
A
fter a prelude of what seemed like a thousand admonitions about his youngest son’s past sins and neglectful behavior, and explanations that his brothers had been given their own lands and plantations while he was alive, his mother’s guardianship and Windover was left to Ethan Blair Randolph.
Jordan abandoned him without a word or a look. Ethan sat, stunned, his left hand warmed between Judith’s arm and her side as his right was pumped with congratulations by the solicitors. His mother finally drew them away with an offer of rum punch. Ethan released Judith onto Sally’s arm. His brothers approached.
“Give it to him,” Winthrop demanded of Clayton.
Clayton laid an oversized ledger across Ethan’s knees.
“The actual, undoctored books of the estate since the sinking of the
Ida Lee,
little brother. We kept them from our poor aging father’s knowledge while you plowed the salt seas and had your landed adventures.”
Ethan stared at his brothers. “You are both wealthy men. You could have prevented this. You could have spared our mother her worry, her selling off her dowry to keep the servants clothed and well.”
“Yes,” Winthrop agreed. “But that course of action would have given us no leverage if ever you returned, if ever our foolish father did what he has done. As it is now, the debts you so cleverly suspected, the ones that Clayton tried to warn your ambitious Quakeress about? You have just inherited them, too. By the time you sell off goods, your people, and half the acres, if you are very lucky, you will be left with this grand house and no one to run it, no one to till the lime-enriched soil of your magnificent new corn- and wheat-fields.”
They hovered above him as Ethan’s hands turned the pages on years of red ink, unpaid expenses. This was so familiar, being bested by his brothers, of them being one step ahead of him no matter how diligently his parents tried to look out for his interests. It would go on forever, if he stayed here. He raised his head.
“Let’s trade,” he said quietly.
“What?” They quickly called servants to bring forth chairs. Ethan didn’t like his brothers so close. He wanted Jordan to advise him, he wanted his gentle wife’s approval. Nonsense. He wanted the courage to withstand the lightning bolt the old man was sure to hurl at him now.
“Now,” Clayton asked. “Trade what, Ethan?”
Ethan willed his rough, still-healing voice calm, respectful. “Windover. What you’ve wanted so much that you’ve hidden these debts. And thereby made your father’s last years free of that complication. It was good of you to do this, in the years I was away, and I thank you. Well, now, I will trade the entire estate, with its debts.”
Both brothers leaned forward. “For—?” Clayton asked.
“Its people.”
“Its people?”
“And Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. Phoebe needs Paris. He’s her husband.”
“What in hell good is Paris?” Winthrop stormed. “You’ve got the breeder, you damned idiot!”
The name stung. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
Use it. Use their low opinion of him, for what really matters,
he told his bruised heart.
Clayton hushed his brother with a fan of his fingers. “Ethan, our father hasn’t sold a slave of Windover in years.”
“I know that.”
“Is that your intention? To drive them to Natchez, to New Orleans, to market? To acquire cash for your start in life?”
“In a different state? A territory? The Southern Frontier?” Winthrop continued, obviously liking his brother’s conjectures more by the moment.
His eyes were telling them too much, Ethan decided. He had so little experience at working his mother’s veils. He closed them. “That is not your concern.”
“Mother will not stand for it.”
“Leave our mother to me,” Ethan informed them coolly. “This is your only opportunity. Before I consult with wiser minds than mine, what is your answer?”
“If … if you give us your word that Mother will be provided for, that her needs—”
“Our mother’s needs will be met,” he ground out between his teeth. “Your answer?”
Winthrop held out his hand. “Done.”
Ethan shook it.
Clayton lifted the account book from his knees, and called the solicitors from their punch.
 
 
W
hen all the signatures were supplied, Ethan sprang from the room that had haunted him enough to re-create it in miniature without memory.
Judith was waiting in the great hall. He pulled her under the curving staircase. “You should be outside now, in the cool of the day,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “So should you, you’re as pale as—”
“Judith, can you travel before the month is out? Can you climb over mountains, west? To your Ohio River Valley?”
“Yes.”
He kissed her soundly. She gasped, then returned it, carefully shifting her expansion between them. The child inside her kicked against his hand.
“Was that a yes too, do you think?” he asked.
She nodded, tears tracking her cheeks. He flung a handkerchief at her. “Stop that! Where’s Jordan?”
“In the garden with your mother. But, Ethan,” she resisted the pull of his hand, “I don’t think we should …”
He released her. “I will, then.”
“Will what? Ethan Blair, come back here!” she yelled, as he flung the tearoom’s doors wide and stepped out into the garden.
He found them under a leafy pear tree, in each other’s arms. He flung back the doctor with a twist at his shoulder. His mother’s lips were swollen with kisses.
“Propose,” he demanded.
“Ethan, I—”
“Now!”
“At least allow me to take her hand, son.”
“No hand. Propose!”
“Mrs. Randolph, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Within a fortnight,” his apprentice stipulated further.
“Ethan! This lady’s mourning—”
“My mother has spent too much of her life in mourning. And my wife must travel with us while it is still safe for her.”
“Travel?” his mother whispered.
“Yes. I have traded Windover and its mountain of debt for the slaves, Mother.”
“You have?”
“Yes. And I will be writing the papers to free them once we reach the Virginia border.”
“I see.”
Her veils. Closing her down, one after the other. No, not veils, this time. Tears. She was crying. Damnation, Ethan thought, was she so attached to Windover?
“No more debt?” she whispered.
He took her hand. “No, Mother.”
“No more selling off my dowry?”
He winced, shook his head, wondering for how long she had been doing that. She smiled, touched his cheek. “I so wanted just a few things. To pass on to Sally’s children. And yours, beautiful boy.”
“You’ll have them,
madame,”
he promised.
“Oh, Ethan,” she said. “What about Phoebe’s Paris?”
“She’s got him as sure as you’ve got Jordan and me, homeless as we are at present. You may stay here with Winthrop or Clayton if you choose, but you must give up Windover if you marry this man. We’re going west.”
Her eyes widened. “We are?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “How splendid.”
He grinned. “You’ll do it, then? Make me legitimate before my own child is born?”
Jordan stiffened. “I don’t wish her to marry me to make
you
—”
“Hush, Jordan,” Anne Randolph reprimanded. She smiled sweetly at her son. “I think it’s the least we can do, Ethan. You’ve been very patient with us.” She kissed his cheek. “Now, run along, dear—there’s poor Judith, out of breath from chasing you. Kindly enlighten her further, as Jordan will enlighten me.”

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