Carolina Gold (11 page)

Before the war, her clothes press had bulged with dresses for every occasion—morning dresses, riding costumes, costumes for walking about and paying social calls upon her neighbors, and elaborately adorned and pleated evening dresses for the theater, all of them sewn from yards and yards of the finest silks and satins. No more. Since returning to Fairhaven she’d worn her black crepe mourning dress to church and to town. Here at home she wore dresses in dark blue, gray, or brown over serviceable undergarments that allowed her to move freely about the fields.

Not that she had much choice. Years of the Federal blockade had reduced everyone’s wardrobe to tattered homespun.

The pink gown, created at a fancy store in Paris and carefully hidden in a friend’s house in Charleston for the duration of the war, had been the delight of Charlotte’s twentieth birthday, a bright spot of luxury amidst the deprivation. Now it seemed unfamiliar, a silk penitentiary requiring more layers of undergarments than she ever wore these days. She draped it across her bed and returned to the trunk for her crinoline and heavy petticoats. Had she ever actually looked forward to wearing such torturous garments?

Perhaps years of hardship had turned her into someone more untamed, less feminine than she ought to be. Less concerned with her appearance. During her later years at Madame Giraud’s, she’d had her share of Charleston beaux. She was not unattractive. Her skin had been smooth and fashionably pale, her dark hair thick and glossy, her figure trim. But when she looked into the mirror now, she took little note of her complexion or her small waist or
her expressive eyes. What she saw was a young woman unafraid to tackle a hard task. A woman who made choices and saw them through. In her own eyes, intelligence and determination were her most attractive assets.

In the yard below someone shouted, and she went to the window. Jeremiah Finch and his crew, which included Lambert and Moses, two of Papa’s men, headed up the path to the rice field. The morning was still new, but judging from the workers’ muddy dungarees, they had already checked on her second field downriver. She spotted Trim and Thomas, Papa’s favorite carpenter who had repaired the trunks in her main field. Thomas seemed much older since the end of the war. His hair was now a snow-white cap cut close to his scalp, and his steps behind the heavy wagon were labored and slow. He was really too old for the backbreaking task of field work, but apparently he had signed on with Mr. Finch.

Jeremiah Finch shouted again. Thomas flinched and fell hard against the slow-moving wagon. Charlotte clattered down the stairs and into the yard, her unbound hair flying behind her. “Mr. Finch.”

The wagon halted. The foreman broke off his tirade and frowned at her. “What do you want?”

“Is it necessary to shout at this man? He’s—”

“Lazy and insolent, like the rest of this bunch.” Finch spat a stream of tobacco into the dirt. Lambert and Moses, hats pulled low over their faces, regarded him and Charlotte with wary eyes.

“He most certainly is not lazy. My father thought highly of his industry—and his competence. I won’t have him mistreated.”

Thomas turned his rheumy gaze on her. “It’s all right, young miss. You best go on back yonder to the house and stay outta the way.”

“For once you’re making sense, Thomas.” Finch took out
a stained handkerchief to wipe his face, and Charlotte caught a glimpse of a thin book of poems tucked into his breast pocket. This hard, uncouth man was a reader of poetry?

“I told you from the beginning not to interfere,” Finch said to her. “Either you want your fields cultivated, or you don’t. It don’t matter to me one way or the other. But if you expect me to see to them, then you hold up your end of the bargain and stay clear of me and my men.”

“You’re forgetting something, Mr. Finch. These men are now free to decide whether or not to work for you. If they all quit, you lose your chance to provide for your family.”

“And they lose the chance to provide for theirs.” He grasped her arm and propelled her across the yard. “Don’t tell me you’re sidin’ with them.”

“I’m merely asking you to be kinder to a man of Thomas’s years. Now let go of me.”

“Now you listen,” Finch said, his voice low. “You’re a lady, and you think these men oughta be treated with respect. I understand that.”

“So did my father.” Charlotte wrenched her arm free and jammed her fists into her pockets. She glared at Jeremiah Finch. “If he were alive he’d—”

“But he ain’t alive, and that’s the rub.” The overseer’s voice softened. “Y’ask me, rice farming ain’t a fit occupation for womenfolk. But as you are bound and determined to try it, you need me more’n I need you. So don’t get on my bad side, or
I’ll
walk away and leave it all to you.”

Anger and a fierce disgust for him burned in her bones. But Finch was right. Without his men to hoe the tender plants and fill and drain the fields, to say nothing of attending to the harvesting and threshing, she had no hope of succeeding.

Finch raised his chin toward the men in the waiting wagon.
“Since emancipation, they think they’ve got the upper hand, and the Yankees make it worse, feedin’ ’em all kinds of lies. If you ain’t firm with ’em, they’ll take advantage. So you’d best just leave me free to take care of things the way I see fit.”

Finch called to the young Negro man driving the wagon, and the men hurried up the path and out of sight. Still fuming, Charlotte watched them disappear before turning sharply on her heel and heading back inside.

In the kitchen, she put the kettle on to boil and set her heavy iron on the stove to heat, determined to put the unpleasant exchange behind her. This morning she had washed her hair and polished her best pair of shoes. She hadn’t much experience with an iron, but her dress was wrinkled from long years in the trunk, and there was no one else to see to it.

Lettice’s birthday party this evening promised to be quite an affair. Last Monday Charlotte had driven her wagon into Georgetown to pick up supplies and send a new article to the
New York Enterprise
. Coming out of the postal office, she’d met Josie Clifton and her aunt, Mrs. Thornhill, who was president of the Ladies’ Society. Standing on the boardwalk outside the postal office, Mrs. Thornhill had enumerated Lettice’s guest list on her fingers: the Cliftons, the Frosts, the Allstons, the Bankses. Herself, of course. And Nicholas Betancourt.

The teakettle shrieked. Charlotte measured tea leaves into the pot and poured the water in. Had Mr. Betancourt untangled his legal problems by now? She had scarcely seen him since she’d begun teaching his daughters. Yesterday the girls had walked from Willowood, appearing at her gate promptly at ten. On Tuesday it had rained, and Mr. Betancourt had delivered them in his smart little rig. But he’d offered her only the briefest of waves before disappearing into the mist, leaving her oddly disappointed.

She checked to see that her iron was hot, finished her tea, and
spread the dress on the table. She touched the iron to the hem. Instantly the delicate fabric curled and browned in a puff of smoke.

“Drat, drat, and drat!” She set the iron aside and inspected the damage, a triangular spot as wide as her palm. She couldn’t attend a fancy dinner party in a burned dress or one of her worn old work dresses. Her other fancy dress, a blue satin with out-of-fashion pagoda sleeves, had a badly torn hem, a rip in one sleeve, and needed a good airing. There wasn’t time to make it presentable even if she had the skills to do so. And appearing in her mourning clothes would defeat the entire purpose of the evening. Disappointing as it might be, there was nothing to do but send word to Lettice that she couldn’t attend the party after all.

She glanced at the clock. Trim and Thomas and the rest of Mr. Finch’s crew would soon stop work for their midday meal. Perhaps Trim could take Cinnamon and deliver a note to Alder Hill. Mr. Finch wouldn’t like it, but he worked for her, after all. He would simply have to manage without Trim for a couple of hours.

Leaving her ruined dress on the table, she went to the library to scribble a hasty note to Lettice, then gathered her hat and looked around for her keys. Before the war, keeping the house under lock and key would not have been necessary. But just last week, according to Lettice, Mrs. Banks had returned from Charleston to find her former servants, Dab and Chloe, making off with the parlor rug and her best china.

“Ma’m’selle?”

Charlotte looked up to see Marie-Claire, her dark hair in a terrible tangle, cradling a gray cat in her arms. She opened the kitchen door. Girl and cat came inside.

“What are you doing here today?” Charlotte bent to stroke the cat, but it drew its ears back and hissed.

“I found her beside the road. She’s not mean. She’s scared because she’s lost.”

“Does your father know where you are?”

“Yes, ma’m’selle. He sent you a note. Here, hold Mathilde.”

“You’ve named her?” Charlotte had to seize the animal by the scruff of the neck to keep her from squirming away.

“Yes, and I’m keeping her no matter what anyone says.” Marie-Claire produced a crisp white envelope from her pocket and handed it to Charlotte. “Papa says I am to wait for your reply.”

Charlotte returned the cat to the child and it calmed down. She picked up her dress and they returned to the main house. She opened the envelope and scanned the brief note.

“I know what it says,” Marie-Claire declared. “He wants to take you to that fancy party tonight.” She nuzzled the cat, who snuggled against her chest.

“How did you guess?”

“He talks about you all the time, when he thinks Anne-Louise and I aren’t listening. Just yesterday he told Tamar that you are a woman of substance.”

“Did he?” Charlotte’s cheeks warmed at the secondhand praise. To hide her feelings, she returned to the library for pen and paper. Marie-Claire and the cat followed.

“What does that mean, exactly—a woman of substance?” Marie-Claire asked. “I asked Tamar, but she told me it’s none of my business. But it is my business if my papa wants to get me a new mother, is it not?”

“A new mother? Heavens. I doubt that’s what he has in mind.”

“But I’ll wager you will go with him to Mrs. Hadley’s birthday party.”

“Ladies do not wager, Marie-Claire.”

“Tamar does. She and Trim and Simon pitch pennies every afternoon when Papa is away.”

“Nevertheless. Do you want to grow up to be like Tamar? Or like your mother?”

The girl’s features darkened. “I want to be as pretty as
Maman
, but nicer.”

“Your mother was lovely. I saw her portrait when I visited your house.”

“Yes, but she didn’t like us. She liked only Papa.”

Charlotte hid her surprise. What kind of mother would leave her child with such an impression? Who could resist that sweet face and those wide blue eyes? True, Marie-Claire could be difficult, but she was also smart and hardworking. “I’m sure that isn’t—”

“Holy cats.” Marie-Claire seemed to have just noticed the garment draped across Charlotte’s arm. “What happened to your dress?”

“I burned it with the iron, so I won’t be going to the party after all. I have nothing to wear.”

“You could sew a ruffle on the bottom. Then nobody would know.”

Charlotte thought of her ruffled petticoat lying on the bed upstairs. “Maybe. But a cotton ruffle on a silk dress might look strange. Besides I’m not very clever with a needle and thread. In the old days, my seamstress would have taken care of it.”

“You could sew a matching ruffle onto the neckline, and then it wouldn’t look so strange.” Marie-Claire pointed. “There’s some lace missing anyway. Did you know that?”

“I noticed. I was planning to wear my mother’s cameo to cover it up.”

“A ruffle would look much better.”

Charlotte studied the girl. “You may be right. How do you know so much about ladies’ fashion?”

“
Maman
loved fashion. She spent hours with her magazines and with Madame du Pont. She was
Maman
’s dressmaker. Very famous. Sometimes
Maman
would let me stay in her room and watch her fittings. If I promised not to talk.”

The girl dropped her gaze and stroked the cat, who had fallen asleep, both front paws draped over Marie-Claire’s arm. “
Maman
said my voice gave her a headache.”

“Well, I think you have a very pretty voice. And I won’t be a bit surprised if you grow up to be as famous a dressmaker as Madame du Pont.”

Marie-Claire shook her head. “I want to be a rice planter, like you and Papa.”

Charlotte looked past the girl’s shoulder to the shaded avenue and the path leading to her rice fields. Unless conditions improved dramatically, Marie-Claire would need a different occupation. But why spoil a young girl’s dream?

Eight

C
andlelight trembled on the peach-colored walls, illuminating the faces of the party guests seated around the Hadleys’ dining table. Mismatched dishes, chipped glassware, and a soup tureen missing one handle were arranged with military precision on a pressed white tablecloth. A crystal vase of pale pink roses gave off a faint fragrance that mixed with the spring air coming through the open windows. Despite her misgivings about her hastily repaired frock, Charlotte was glad she had come. The Allstons had not come after all, but the Frosts and the Bankses, who were among her family’s oldest friends, had greeted her warmly, reminding her of how much she missed the alliances that had been such a part of her old life.