More Than You Know (10 page)

Rand's nostrils were filled with the fragrance of her hair. He was close enough that strands of it touched his chin, There was lilac in her bath salts, he thought. He liked it.

"Tell me what other books you brought,” he said. He did not want to think about lilac right now, but he couldn't deny her this pleasure.

"Through the Looking Glass. Middlemarch. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Hugo's
Ninety-Three. The Count of Monte-Cristo."
She paused, thinking. “Those are the ones that stand out. Oh, and
The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins."

"You are going to keep Dr. Stuart very busy."

"I suppose,” she said, sighing. “Unless you'd permit Mr. Cutch to keep reading to me."

"Did Cutch suggest that?” Rand asked suspiciously.

"Oh, no. But I confess, I like his voice. He does the characters, even the female ones. And he has an ear for accents."

"A man of many talents, our Cutch.” Rand's smile was wry. “What am I to do with Dr. Stuart? Now that he's better, some effort should be made to see that he earns his keep."

"I'll think of something."

Rand didn't doubt it. “We'll see,” he said, promising nothing. “Dodd, take over.” He let his palms slide from Claire's shoulders to her upper arms. He noticed it was with some reluctance that Claire loosed herself from the wheel. “You've made a good run of it, Miss Bancroft. It's time to return to your cabin."

Claire took the elbow he offered and allowed herself to be led toward the main companionway. She was silent until they reached the door to her quarters. It seemed that Rand filled the small space even beyond the length and breadth of him. Some odd sense of self-preservation had Claire pressing herself against the door. She groped behind her for the handle and found Rand's fingers already there. “Thank you, Captain. I can see myself in."

"Of course.” He straightened but did not remove his hand. He noticed that neither did she. She was looking at a point just past his cheek. She might not have been blind at all, simply shy. Rand touched her chin with his free hand and saw her flinch. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I forgot to warn you.” He left his fingers where they were, though, and gently nudged her face toward his. “Have you really been kissed so very often, Claire?"

Her mouth was dry. It occurred to her that she could be insulted by the question. How he expected her to answer was not immediately clear. She had no idea how the truth would serve her.

Claire was saved from saying anything. A door farther down the companionway opened and Dr. Stuart stepped out. “Aaah, Miss Bancroft,” he said genially. “And Captain Hamilton. How kind you are to have seen after her when I was called away. I gave Mr. Cutch some peptic salts that should ease his stomach cramps. I think he'll have no complaints on the morrow."

Rand's hands remained in his coat pockets, just where he had placed them when he heard the first stirrings in the companionway. He searched the doctor's face for some sign that he had been caught out. There was nothing about Stuart's cheerful features that said everything was not as it should be. The doctor was not boyish in his looks, but he appeared younger than his twenty-nine years. His widely spaced eyes held a certain good humor and he smiled easily, with warmth more than amusement. Even when he had been doubled over the rail—and once, unfortunately, on the weather side of the ship—Macauley Stuart had been determinedly philosophical about the experience.

He was not an especially tall man, barely passing Claire in height, but he had a slender and wiry frame and carried himself well. He admitted to have taken up boxing when he was at Edinburgh, which Rand thought explained Stuart's particularly light tread. His hair was orange, not the penny copper of Rand's, but aggressively orange, like the fireball of the sun at daybreak. Every time Rand looked at it he thought of the old salty chant:
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.
It wasn't fair, Rand knew. He could just have easily recalled the rest:
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
But he didn't, and he made no apology for it.

"I'm about to go topside,” Rand told Stuart. “You may join me if you like."

"No, I'll stay here with Miss Bancroft,” he said. He looked at Claire. “If that suits you."

"He's talking to you, Miss Bancroft,” Rand said when Claire made no reply. “Not me."

"Oh.” She flushed, embarrassed at not having known.

A muscle worked faintly in Rand's jaw. He knew Stuart had not had Mrs. Webster's years of training with the blind, nor had he spent a great deal of time in Claire's company, but Rand thought his training as a physician should have made him less of an idiot. “You have to use her name, Doctor, if you wish her to know she's being addressed."

Stuart's fair, freckled complexion flamed with almost as much brilliance as his hair. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me."

Claire frowned. Rand had not needed to make so much of it. She would have explained it to the doctor, given the chance. “Don't give it another thought,” she said. “Please, and call me Claire. Miss Bancroft is such a mouthful when we'll be spending so much time in each other's company.” Opening the door to her cabin, Claire invited Dr. Stuart inside. She wondered if she imagined that the captain's receding footsteps were just a bit heavier than usual.

Cerberus
made Charleston harbor four days later. A skeleton crew was left with her while the rest of the men scattered to make the most of two weeks on solid ground.

Cutch rode ahead to Henley to announce the arrival while Rand rented a horse and buggy to carry him, his passengers, and a small fraction of their belongings out to the plantation. Rand took the driver's seat and kept the mare steady as Dr. Stuart assisted Claire. Claire was comfortably situated, but the doctor was barely seated when Rand snapped the reins.

"Are you all right?” Claire asked him. She heard his start of surprise and felt the awkwardness of his position beside her.

"Yes, yes. No harm,” he said warmly, pushing himself upright. “The captain's impatience is understandable. You and I will feel the same way on our return to London."

That might be true, she thought, but Dr. Stuart was unlikely to leave anyone so literally in the lurch. Claire kept this to herself. She had no wish to draw Rand's attention to her. There had been talk among the crew that Rand Hamilton was better left to himself. Anyone in his sights ran afoul of him sooner or later. His men, even the formidable Cutch, made a point of going about their duties silently.

"Tell me what you see, Macauley,” said Claire.

Ahead of them Rand did not listen. He had no wish to hear the city he loved being described by someone who had no connection to it. It would not be the same place through this stranger's eyes. The doctor would not tell Claire about the twisting lanes beneath them or that beautiful gardens lay beyond the aged walls they passed. He couldn't invoke the history of the stucco homes or find the right colors in nature to portray their pastel tones. He didn't know young women sometimes stepped out on the wrought-iron balconies to be wooed by their suitors. It was not only merchants who prospered and built mansions in the Battery, but almost every planter along the Cooper and Ashley rivers boasted an architectural wonder in the city proper. It was here in the relaxed social splendor that was Charleston in the summer months, that the owners of the rich rice and indigo fields could escape the oppressive heat for sea breezes and choose good health over the risk of malaria.

The landscape quieted as they left the city. The steady clopping of horses’ hooves faded and the mellow voices of passersby vanished. From time to time the wide, spreading crowns of towering white oaks shaded their passage. Sweetbay blossoms and spruce pine added their fragrance to the route while Carolina wrens added their chatter.
Tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea.

They passed plantation homes that had been restored to some semblance of their former splendor following the war. What the Yankees hadn't destroyed, carpetbaggers tried to swindle. Proud families, their ranks reduced by battle, used every means at their disposal to keep their land.

Rand Hamilton's own family was no exception. He needed no reminders of that as he turned the mare into the long drive leading to Henley. There, at the gates flanking the entrance, a new marker had been set into the bricks:
Concord.
Rand felt his heart being squeezed.

Claire sat forward in her seat when Macauley told her they were approaching the house. She tried to imagine how Rand saw his home after so long an absence. It could not merely be the symmetrical collection of red brick, white columns, and window shutters that the doctor described. What about sunshine reflecting on the glass? Did it wink at them? Warm the brick? Was smoke curling from either of the chimneys? Had anyone come out to the second-floor balcony to wave Rand in?

Rand slowed the buggy as Henley filled his vision. “The bricks came from England,” he said quietly. “Carried here as ships’ ballast. The story goes that it required seven separate vessels and five years before Henley had matched enough brick to suit him. He and his bride lived in a log cabin by the river while they cleared and worked the land and made plans for their home. The cabin's gone now. My grandfather cleared it out to expand the gardens at the front of the house. There wasn't much left to it by then. It was burned by Tory sympathizers during the Revolution."

Claire would have liked to hear other stories about the house, but Rand seemed suddenly more aware of his audience, almost as if he had been speaking solely to himself before, and stopped abruptly. She heard the whalebone whip whistle in the air as he snapped the mare's haunches. The buggy rolled ahead quickly now, and there was no further reflection.

It had been enough, Claire thought. She knew what the captain saw when he looked at Henley: history and heritage.

Jebediah Brown ran up to hold the mare steady as Rand jumped down from his seat. “Welcome home, seh,” he said, beaming. “It's a fierce pleasure havin’ you back."

"And it's good to be here, Jeb.” He glanced toward the steps, expecting to see someone come out of the house. “Where's Mother? Bria?"

Jeb's smile faded as he followed the direction of Rand's puzzled glance. “Miz Foster ain't feelin’ all that well today, I reckon. Miss Bria ... well, she took herself off to the river when Cutch said there'd be visitors beside yourself. You know she shy and don't like no fuss."

"And Orrin? Where can I expect to find him?"

Jeb merely pointed to the last window on the first floor, a window that opened on the master's study, then made a pantomime of knocking back drinks.

Rand merely nodded. “See to the horse, will you?” He turned and saw that Claire and the doctor had alighted from the buggy and were now standing awkwardly beside it. He wondered if Stuart had explained Jeb's gesturing to Claire. Did she realize the man who had laid claim to Henley was no better than a drunk?

"Welcome to Concord,” he said without inflection. This was not his home, he thought. This was not Henley. “Come, I'll show you to your rooms."

Addie Thomas met them at the door and ushered them inside. Her welcoming smile was less broad than Jebediah's but no less deeply felt. “Your mama wants to see you straightaway,” she told Rand. “No dallying. She's fretting because she's not here to greet you herself."

"Go on,” Claire encouraged him.

Rand hesitated. He was saved having to make an unpleasant choice by Cutch's appearance at the top of the stairs. He left Claire and Stuart in those capable hands and hurried to his mother's room.

Elizabeth Hamilton, now Foster, was comfortably propped at the center of her wide bed. Ruffled pillows bolstered her arms on either side and another supported the small of her back. She was a petite woman with dark coppery hair that was graying at the temples. Her complexion, fiercely protected from the sun for years by shaded verandahs and a hundred different parasols, was pale and creamy—except for the yellowing bruise laid flat across her cheek like wet parchment.

Her hand went to the bruise as soon as she saw Rand's eyes fall on it. She felt the coldness in his gaze all the way to her heart. “It's not what you think, dearest,” she said softly. “I fell on the stairs and caught my cheek on the banister. Here, give me a kiss and forget about it."

Rand sat on the edge of the bed and leaned toward his mother. He kissed the unmarked cheek she offered him and didn't resist the arms she put around his shoulders. He touched her back lightly, held her to him. She had always seemed so fragile. How was it, he wondered, that she had never broken? He didn't argue with her story about the banister but neither did he accept it. Helplessness made his nerves raw.

Elizabeth Foster held her son at arm's length and regarded him critically. “Your face is too thin and brown,” she said firmly. “And I don't think I like how Cutch is cutting your hair.” She squeezed the work-hardened muscles of his upper arms. “And ropey besides. You're like a strip of deer jerky, nothing but meat and little of that."

Rand laughed. “Sssh, Mother. You'll turn my head with those compliments.” His assessment of his mother, bruise aside, was that she was as lovely as ever. “Why are you still in bed?” he asked. “Surely it's not because of your ... accident. Have you become vain, Mother?"

"I've always been vain,” she said without apology. “I simply have so much less to protect these days. No, of course it isn't the bruise. I sprained my ankle in the fall. It's giving me more pain today then it did last week."

"Have you had Dr. Edwards examine it?"

She hesitated and glanced briefly away. “I didn't think there was reason to send Jeb for him."

Rand suspected the truth was a little different. Either his mother was honoring her husband's express wishes, or she had reason to fear reprisals if she summoned Edwards. “Then it's fortunate indeed that Dr. Stuart is one of our guests. I'll have him attend to you as soon as he's settled in."

"A guest attending me? I should say not."

Rand took his mother's delicate hands in his and squeezed them gently. “You have no say in it at all, Mother. Now, let me tell you about our other guest."