Never Call It Love (45 page)

More
than a week passed before they were able to leave New Canterbury. Elizabeth
certainly never wanted to come back to the place, and Colin seemed equally
willing to leave it forever, something that Elizabeth could well understand. No
matter how much Colin had disapproved of Patrick at times, he had loved him
too, loved him enough to forsake his comfortable life in Ireland and share his
brother's exile.

Consequently,
they needed to make arrangements for the disposal of Colin's hundred acres and
of the hundred
that Elizabeth, as Patrick's widow, now owned. None of the settlers were able
to buy them out. But Jim Wentworth had heard from a cousin back in Providence
who wanted to bring his family to western Pennsylvania. The cousin would be
more than happy to buy a weatherproof house plus two hundred acres of land,
much of it already under cultivation. Elizabeth and Colin gave Wentworth the
deeds to their property, plus a statement authorizing him to act as agent for
its sale.

As
for the wagon and team of horses, they eventually would be driven to a
settlement twenty miles to the north, and there become property of the
Thompsons' young son and his wife. In the meantime, the wagon would carry the
elder Thompsons as well as Colin and Elizabeth and Caroline to Philadelphia.
The knuckles of Mr. Thompson's hands had become increasingly swollen of late.
The interval between spring planting and fall harvest seemed a good time to
learn if a Philadelphia doctor could help him.

With
such matters settled, it remained only for Elizabeth to pack the few things she
wanted to take with her. They included clothing for herself and her child, and
a few precious articles—her grandmother's gold pillbox and ivory fan, her
mother's miniature framed in seed pearls—that she had managed to keep with her
through the wanderings of the past years.

At
last the wagon lumbered eastward across a landscape washed by summer at full
tide. Leaves of oaks and maples and beeches that mingled with the pines were
dark green now. American birds whose names Elizabeth had come to
know—goldfinches and pine siskins and noisy bluejays—flitted through the trees.
Although she tried to hide the fact from Colin and the Thompsons and most of
all from her little girl, the beauty through which they moved only intensified
her grief.

They
spent the fourth night at a settlement. There Elizabeth
found a
poignant reminder of Patrick in the form of a Philadelphia newspaper some
voyageur
had left with the settlers two days earlier. It told how the English
Parliament had adopted an Act of Irish Settlement, by terms of which strictures
against Catholics were removed, and confiscated lands would be restored to
exiles willing to take a new oath of allegiance. Would her stiff-necked husband
have been willing to take the oath? Perhaps. If he had lived, perhaps they
would have been on their way to Stanford Hall by now.

Two
nights later, after they had made camp at the roadside, Colin and Elizabeth
moved away through the trees to get water from a noisy little stream. There in
the fern-smelling coolness, Colin filled three buckets and set them on the
grassy bank. Then he turned to face her. "Elizabeth, I hope it is not too
soon to ask you this. Have you any long-range plans?"

Although
the sun had not set, evening shadows were thick here among the trees. She
looked at his face, earnest and troubled there in that dim light. "Not
really. But I will have some money. The Thompsons have already paid me for the
horse and wagon. And later on there will be money from the house and land.
Perhaps I can buy an interest in some sort of small shop, a confectioner's,
say."

"On
the other hand," he said quietly, "you could marry me, and we could
go the West Indies together. Oh, not back to St.-Denis. I don't think either of
us would want that. But there are other islands where I could earn a living for
the three of us. I'll have enough money to invest in a distillery."

She
said, a bit dazedly, "Colin, I..."

"Don't
tell me that this comes as any great surprise to you. You must have known that
I have been... fond of you from the very first."

"Yes,
I've known." And his quiet sympathy had
sustained her, too, at times when
Patrick's behavior had been particularly outrageous. "But right
now..."

"I
realize it was much, much too soon for me to say this. But I couldn't stand the
thought of your worrying about what is to happen to you and Caroline. I wanted
you to know that you can turn to me."

"Oh,
Colin! Dear Colin!" She stretched out her hands, and he grasped them.
"I do thank you. But as you say, it is far too soon."

His
hands still held hers firmly. She sensed his desire to pull her close to him,
and the restraint that kept him from doing so. "Just remember that I'll
always be here," he said, and released her hands.

He
picked up two of the buckets. As she lifted the third one, she realized that it
was only a matter of time before she became Colin's wife. True, she did not
love him, but then, after Patrick, she had little hope of loving any man. As
for Colin, "fond" of her as he might be, she was sure that he had
never felt for her a shadow of what he had felt for Catherine Ryan.

Nevertheless,
it could be a sound marriage. Reliable and gentle, Colin would be a good
husband to her and a good father to Caroline. And she would be a good wife to
Colin, quiet and competent and affectionate. And if, in his arms, she often
found herself tormented by memories of the lover she had lost... well, pray God
that she could hide it from Colin.

As
they climbed through the growing dark toward the roadside campfire flickering
through the trees, another thought struck her. She asked apprehensively,
"Have you any idea of returning to Ireland? Perhaps, now that Parliament
has passed that new act, you could have your lands back."

"I
don't trust the Settlement Act. What's to keep the English from changing their
minds? No, I will never go back to Ireland."

She
felt relief. Married to Colin, she would not want to live anyplace where she
had lived with Patrick. Better, far better, some West Indian island she had
never seen before.

Early
in the afternoon, more than two weeks later, Elizabeth again stood at the
window of a Philadelphia inn. It was not the inn where she and Patrick had
stayed more than two years before, but a newly built one, only a few yards from
Independence Hall. It was far from being the only new structure. Obviously
Philadelphia was prospering. The sound of hammers was everywhere. Fine
carriages whirled along the wide streets, and women in what Elizabeth knew must
be the latest fashions from Paris looked into shop windows filled with French
china, Brussels lace, and Hepplewhite furniture.

She
looked down at her own gown, the same brown merino she had worn when she and
Patrick had landed in Philadelphia two years before. Her gown should have been
black, of course. But she did not want to use any of her small store of money
to buy mourning garments. Besides, now that the Thompsons had gone back to New
Canterbury, no one here knew that her husband had been dead for only about two
months.

Since
their arrival in Philadelphia, Colin had made no further mention of marriage.
From the look in his dark eyes, and the tone of his voice when he spoke to her,
she knew it was not that he had changed his mind. He just
wanted her to
have time to grow accustomed to the idea. She also knew, from a bit of
conversation she had overheard in the inn parlor between Colin and another man,
that already he was interviewing Philadelphia sugar importers about the
possibility of buying a cane plantation or distillery in the West Indies.

A
gong sounded somewhere on the floor below. In a few minutes, one-o'clock dinner
would be served. She crossed the sitting room to the bedroom, where Caroline
sat on a footstool cradling the rag doll that had been Mrs. Thompson's parting
gift to her. "Come, darling." With her daughter's hand in hers, she
went out into the hall, passed the door of the single room almost opposite,
which Colin occupied, and descended the stairs. After leaving Caroline in the
small room where younger children, served by two harassed-looking maids, ate
their meals, she went into the main dining room and took her place at the long
table. A glance across it and toward the right showed her that Colin was
absent. But there were several diners she had not seen before, including a big
man with graying blond hair who sat directly opposite her.

As
soon as she sat down, her right-hand neighbor, a Mrs. Yarborough, began to talk
of a letter she had received that morning from her daughter in Boston. Mrs.
Yarborough had five daughters, all of them great letter-writers. She also had
fourteen grandchildren, some of whom had reached letter-writing age. Mrs.
Yarborough appeared to have no doubt that line-by-line accounts of these
missives, several of which seemed to arrive each day, would enthrall any
listener. At first Elizabeth had felt oppressed by that flow of talk, which
ceased only long enough for Mrs. Yarborough to chew and swallow an occasional
bit of food. But after a week, Elizabeth had learned how to give the appearance
of listening, smiling and nodding now and then, while continuing with her own
thoughts.

"Excuse
me, Mrs. Stanford."

With
a start, Elizabeth realized that it was another voice, that of the big man
across the table from her. She gave him an inquiring look.

"Excuse
me," he said again. "When you said good afternoon to that lady at
your right, I could tell you were English, and not long in this country,
either. Then, just now I heard the other lady call you Mrs. Stanford, and I got
to wondering if you were any relation to this Englishman named Stanford I met
in Maryland. I mean, he talked like an Englishman, even though he said he was
from Ireland."

Dimly
Elizabeth was aware that Mrs. Yarborough, intrigued into silence, was staring
at her. She said, past the quickened pulse in her throat, "What was his
name?"

"I
told you. Stanford. Oh, I see. You mean his first name. It was Patrick."

"When...
when did you see him?"

"Day
before yesterday. He's the new overseer at a horse farm down there. That's how we
met. I'm a horse dealer. In fact, when I ride back to Maryland tomorrow, I'll
be leading two mares for this Patrick Stanford's employer."

The
disappointment she felt was like a physical blow. "For a moment I
thought... But it could not have been my husband you met. He... he was drowned
more than two months ago." How much she had hoped that this stranger had
known Patrick, however briefly, and could give her some bit of information,
however small, about what his life had been after that night he disappeared
from New Canterbury.

"I'm
sorry for your loss, ma'am." Elizabeth nodded an acknowledgment. "I
guess the name Stanford really isn't uncommon," he went on, "and
certainly Patrick isn't. But I thought there might be some connection,
especially since he mentioned Philadelphia. He said he started out from
here two years
ago to take up land in western Pennsylvania."

Her
heart was beating suffocatingly hard. "What does he look like?"

"Tall,
thin, dark-haired." The man laughed. "In fact, if he hadn't talked
like somebody just over from the other side, I'd have said he had Indian
blood."

After
a moment she was able to push back her chair and get to her feet. "Mr....
I'm sorry. I don't know your name."

"Haverhill,
ma'am. Samuel Haverhill."

"I'm
going into the parlor now, Mr. Haverhill. Would you please join me in there as
soon as you've finished?"

He
said, curious gaze fixed on her face. "I'm finished now, ma'am," and
dropped his napkin beside his plate.

In
the otherwise deserted parlor, as she turned to Samuel Haverhill, she caught a
glimpse of her reflection in a small mirror on the wall. Her face was white,
even her lips, and her gray eyes were enormous. She said, "I think you
talked to my husband the day before yesterday."

"But,
Mrs. Stanford!" He looked both pitying and embarrassed. "You just
told me that your husband drowned...."

"I
thought he had. There was this note from a William Carney... But now I'm sure
the note was delivered to me by mistake. As you said, Patrick Stanford is not a
really uncommon name. It must have been some other man who... who..."

She
broke off. After a moment, Samuel Haverhill said, "For your sake, ma'am, I
hope it was a mistake, and that you're right this time."

No
one could hope it as she did. What would become of her if Patrick actually was
dead, if there was no reason for this joy flooding through her? To suffer that
first raw grief just once had been terrible enough. To suffer it twice would be
more than she could bear.

She
said, "I am going to my room now, and write a message to my husband. Will
you deliver it to him?"

"Of
course. Tell me where your rooms are, and I'll come up in about half an hour
and get your note."

***

Around
four that afternoon she sat in a straight chair near the door of her room. Long
since she had given up trying to read, or even embroider. Now she just sat
there with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her ears straining for the
sound of Colin's uneven step in the hall.