The Prize (5 page)

Virginia grinned.
Then she spread her arms wide and laughed loudly, spinning around and around,
until her feet hurt and her ankle twisted and she was so dizzy she had to drop
to the ground. Lying there, she laughed again. She was home!

She quickly got up,
adjusted her bundle and began running down the dirt road. The five miles passed
endlessly, but every gentle field, every spring-green hill, every gushing
stream only made her hurry even more. She was breathless and hot when she first
spied the beautifully engraved wood sign hanging between two stately brick
pillars: SWEET BRIAR. A long dirt drive wound from the entrance up a hill all
the way to the house, and surrounding it were the red curing barns, the
whitewashed slave quarters and the fields and fields of rich brown sandy earth.

Her heart hammered
like a drum. Virginia dropped her bundle and lifted her skirts and ran up the
dirt drive. "Tillie!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Tillie! Tillie! Tillie! It's me, I'm home, Tillie!"

Frank, Tillie's
husband, was hitching up a wagon not far from the front of the house and he saw
her first. His mouth dropped open and he gaped. "Miz Virginia? Is that
you?"

Behind him, his
little twin boys were wide-eyed. Then, from the corner of her eye, Virginia saw
the front door of the house open as Tillie stepped onto the veranda. But it was
too late, she was already in Frank's arms. "Have you lost your wits?"
she cried, hugging him so hard he choked. "Of course it's me! Who else
would it be!" She stepped back, laughing up at the big young man.

"God Almighty,
that fine an' fancy school sure ain't made you a lady," Frank said,
grinning, his teeth stunningly white against his dark skin.

"You do mean
'thank God,' don't you?" Virginia teased. "Rufus, Ray, get over here
and give me hugs, or don't you remember your mistress?"

The boys, both just
shy of seven, rushed forward, grabbing her around her thighs. Virginia finally
felt the tears rising in her eyes as she tried to bend down and hug them both.

Then she felt Tillie
behind her, and slowly, she turned.

Tillie smiled, tears
staining her coffee-and-cream complexion. She was as tall as Virginia was
short, as voluptuous as she was thin, and very beautiful. "I knew you'd
come home," she whispered.

Virginia moved into
her arms. The two young women clung.

When she could
control her tears, she stepped back, smiling. "My feet hurt like
hell," she said. "And I'm starving to death! How did the burning go?
Did we find rot? And what do the seedlings look like?" She grinned as she
wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

But Tillie didn't
smile back. Her golden eyes were frighteningly solemn.

"Tillie?"
Virginia asked, not liking the look she was receiving. Dread began.
"Please tell me everything is all right." For something seemed
terribly wrong and she was so scared to learn what it was.

She'd had enough of
misfortune. She couldn't stand one more stroke of bad luck.

Tillie gripped her
arms. "They're selling the plantation— and everything and everyone on
it."

Virginia didn't
understand. "What did you just say?"

"Your daddy's in
debt. Beg pardon—Master Hughes
was
in debt—and now your uncle has an
agent here and he's

started selling off
everything...the land, the house, the slaves, the horses, he's selling it
all."

Virginia cried out. A
huge pain stabbed through her chest, so vast that she reeled. Tillie caught her
around the waist.

"What's wrong
with me! Here you are, skinnier than ever, as hungry as a winter wolf, and I'm
telling you our troubles! C'mon, Virginia, you need some hot food and a hot
bath and then we can talk. You can tell me all about what it's like to be a
fine lady!"

Virginia couldn't
respond. This had to be a nightmare, an awful dream—it couldn't be reality.
Sweet Briar could not be up for sale.

But it was.

She was wearing her
mother's Sunday best. Virginia smiled bravely at Frank, who had driven her into
Norfolk, smoothing down her blue skirts, adjusting the bodice of her fitted
blue pelisse and then her matching bonnet. Her mother's clothes were loose
upon her small frame, but Tillie and two other slaves had been sewing madly all
night to make everything fit perfectly. Now Frank tried to smile back and
failed. Virginia knew why—he was heartsick, afraid his wife and children would
be sold off to some distant owner and that he'd never see them again.

But that wasn't going
to happen. Virginia intended to move heaven and earth—and more specifically,
her father's good friend Charles King, the president of the First Bank of
Virginia—in order to prevent Sweet Briar from being sold. She swallowed hard,
her entire body covered with perspiration. The stakes were so damned high. She
was so deathly afraid. But Charles King had been a good family friend and now
he'd see her not as a child but a capable lady. Surely, surely, he'd loan her
the funds necessary to pay off her father's debts and save Sweet Briar.

                               45

Virginia closed her
eyes tightly against the glaring sun, her smile faltering. God, she hated her
uncle, the Earl of Eastleigh, a man she'd never met. He hadn't even discussed
the state of the plantation with her! Yet it belonged to her!

Or it would, if it
hadn't been sold off by the time she turned twenty-one.

Now the three years
between the present and her majority loomed as an eternity.

"Miz
Virginia," Frank suddenly said, restraining her from entering the imposing
facade of the brick-and-limestone bank.

Virginia paused, her
stomach churning with fear and dread. She managed a small smile. "I may be
long—but I hope not."

"It's not
that," he said roughly. He was very tall, perhaps five inches over six
feet, and dangerously handsome. Tillie had fallen in love with him at first
sight, almost five years ago, not that anyone would have known it, with the way
she'd snubbed him and put on airs. Apparently it had been mutual—not six months
later he'd asked Randall Hughes for permission to marry her, and that
permission had been instantly given. "I'm afraid, Miz Virginia, afraid of
what will happen to Tillie and my boys if you don't get this loan today."

Virginia had been
acutely aware of her responsibility to save Sweet Briar and her people, but now
it crashed over her with stunning force. Fifty-two slaves were depending on
her, many of them children. Tillie, her best friend, was depending on her, and
so was Frank. "I will get this loan, Frank. You have nothing to worry
about." She must have sounded forceful and confident, because his eyes
widened instantly and he doffed his hat to her.

Virginia gave him
another reassuring smile, silently begged God for a little help and entered the
bank.

Inside, it was
blessedly cool, oddly reverent and as quiet

as a church. Two
customers were at the teller's queue and one clerk was at a front desk. At a
desk in the back sat Charles King. He looked up then and saw her, his eyes
widening in surprise.

This was it, she
thought, lifting her chin to an impossible height. Her smile felt odd and
brittle, fixed, as she marched forward through the lobby and the spacious back
area of the bank.

King stood, a fat man
neatly and well dressed, his old-fashioned wig powdered and tied back.
"Virginia! My dear, for one awful moment, I thought you were your mother,
God rest her beloved soul!"

Her father had told
her many times that she looked just like her mother, but Virginia hadn't ever
believed it because Mama was so beautiful, although they shared the same nearly
black hair and the same oddly violet eyes. She held out her hand as Charles
took it firmly, clearly pleased to see her. "An illusion of light, I
suppose," she said, impressed with her own grace and bearing. But she had
to convince Charles that she was a fine and capable lady now.

"Yes, I suppose.
I thought you were at school in Richmond. Do come in—have you come to see
me?" he asked, leading her back to his desk and the high chairs facing it.

"Yes, frankly, I
have," Virginia said, gripping her mother's elegant black velvet reticule
tightly.

Charles smiled,
offering her a chair and some tea. Virginia declined. "So how have you
found the big city, Virginia?" he asked, taking his seat behind his desk.
His gaze held hers, with some concern. Virginia knew he was finally noticing
how peaked she was, due to the terrible strain of her grief and now her worry
over the state of her father's finances.

Virginia shrugged.
"I suppose it is fine enough. But you know I adore Sweet Briar—there is no
place I would rather be."

For one moment
Charles stared and then he was grim. "I know you are a clever young lady,
so may I assume you realize your uncle is selling the plantation?"

She wanted to lean
forward and shout that the earl had no right. She didn't move—she didn't even dare
to breathe—not until her temper had passed. But even then she said, "He
has no right."

"I am afraid he
has every right. After all, he is your guardian."

Virginia sat
impossibly stiff and straight. "Mr. King, I have come here to secure a
loan, so that I may pay off my father's debts and save Sweet Briar from sale
and even possible dissolution."

He blinked.

She smiled bleakly at
him." I have helped Father manage the plantation since I was a child. No
one knows how to plant and harvest, ship and sell tobacco better than 1.1
assure you, sir, that I would repay your loan in full, with any necessary
interest, as soon as was possible. I—"

"Virginia,"
Charles King began, too kindly.

Panic began. She
leapt to her feet. "I may be a woman and I may be eighteen but I do know
how to run Sweet Briar! No one except my father knows how better than I do! I
swear to you, sir, I would repay every penny! How much do I need to pay off
Father's debts?" she cried desperately.

Charles regarded her
with pity. "My dear child, his debts amount to a staggering twenty-two
thousand dollars."

The shock was so
great that her heart stopped and her knees gave way and somehow, she was
sitting down.
"No."

"I have spoken
with your uncle's agent at great length. His name is Roger Blount and I do
believe he is on his way back to Britain in the next few days after seeing to
your affairs here. Sweet Briar is not a lucrative plantation, Virginia,"
he continued gently. "Your father had loss after loss, year after

year. Even if I were
foolish enough to lend a young and untried girl such a sum of money, there is
simply no way you could ever repay me—not from the plantation. I am sorry.
Selling Sweet Briar is the only intelligent and viable option."

She stood, sick in
her heart, in her soul. "No. I can't let it be sold.
It's mine."

He also stood.
"I know how upsetting this is for you. Virginia, I'm not sure why you are
not in school, but that is where you should be—although if you wish, I could
try to arrange a match for you, a good one, and speak with your uncle about it.
That would certainly solve your problems—"

"Unless you
think to marry me to a very wealthy man, then that solves nothing,"
Virginia cried. "I cannot allow Sweet Briar to be sold! Why won't you help
me? I would pay you back, somehow, one day! I have never broken my word, sir!
Why can't you see that this is all I have left in the entire world?"

He stared. "You
have a glorious future, my dear. I promise you that."

She closed her eyes
and trembled violently. Then she looked him in the eye. "Please lend me
the funds. If you loved my father, my mother, at all, then please, help me
now."

"I'm sorry. I
cannot. I simply cannot lend an impossible sum to a young girl who will never
in an entire lifetime pay the bank back."

She could not give
up. "Then lend me the funds personally," she cried.

He blinked.
"Virginia, I do not have that kind of wealth. I
am
sorry."

She was in disbelief.
He started to say something about a fresh start, and she turned and ran wildly
through the bank and outside. There she collapsed against a hitching post,
panting

hard, shaking wildly,
tears of panic and desperation trying to rise. This could not be happening, she
thought. There had to be away!

"Miz Virginia?
Are you all right?" Frank had her by the elbow. His tone was concerned and
anxious.

She met his black
eyes but did not respond—because an idea had struck her so forcefully that she
could not respond.

Her uncle was an
earl.

Earls were
wealthy. . She would borrow the money from him.

"Miz
Virginia?" Frank was asking again, this time with a slight pressure on her
elbow.

Virginia pulled free
of his grasp and stared blindly across the busy street. She did not see a
single wagon, carriage or pedestrian.