The Valentine Legacy (30 page)

It didn't even seem odd to Jessie to vomit in front of everyone, she was so used to it. Being in close quarters on a barkentine for more than six weeks lessened one's privacy, and she'd been sicker than a person deserved that last week of the voyage. James wiped her face with a nice cold, wet cloth. Badger handed her a glass of water.

James helped her to her feet and hugged her tight. Then he laughed. “I'll never forget how you were certain you were dying, lying there on that coiled rope on deck, moaning and looking pathetic. You look nearly well again. Even your streamers are beginning to perk up once more. Ah, here's Thomas to help us all arrange ourselves.”

“Men should be shot,” Jessie said.

Spears immediately stepped forward and extended his hand to the tall black man. “I am Mr. Spears. You are Mr. Thomas?”

“Well, Mr. Spears,” Thomas said slowly, wondering if the earth had suddenly turned faulty, “I suppose I'm Mr. Thackery.” Then he smiled—a wide, quite nice smile, showing lots of even white teeth. Maggie winked at him.

At ten o'clock that night, all the servants and the families
had been fed and given beds. But there weren't enough bed-chambers. For the first time since he'd bought Marathon, James was truly aware at how derelict his house was. There were patches of mold on the wallpaper, dark corners with mouse holes in them, poorly furnished rooms, and all he could do was apologize, which he did in each room they entered. Finally, the Duchess had said, “Enough, James. Candlethorpe gave me little challenge. Between us, Jessie and I will make Marathon the most impressive house in the area.”

He believed her until he glanced at his wife, who looked ready to drop where she stood. She was staring owl-eyed at him. “James, will I sleep with you in your bedchamber? The bed's big enough, isn't it?”

“There's no place else for you. Let's get you to bed. Yes, it will hold the two of us.”

“I guess I might as well, since you've already done your worst to me.”

She'd never before seen James's bedchamber, and she found it to be as dismal as the rest of the house. The wallpaper was old and peeling near the windows where the damp had gotten in and was painted a mangy brown color. There was only a big bed with a scarred maple headboard and an armoire just as ancient as the bed, its doors as scarred as the headboard. There was one stingy braided rug of varying shades of brown in the middle of the floor. But she was too tired to care. She stood passively while James unfastened the buttons on her gown. When she was standing in front of him only in her shift and stockings, he said, “Let me get you a nightgown.” Then he paused, his eyes dilating. “No, perhaps you'd best learn to sleep naked with me again. You won't always be feeling like a green peach that someone's bitten into. Spears says not more than a couple of more weeks, hopefully.” He didn't add that Caroline Nightingale, an excellent friend of the English Wyndhams, had been ill
for nearly five months with her second child. No, Jessie didn't need to know that.

“I always wear a nightgown, James. I thought you enjoyed jerking them over my head and tossing them across the bedchamber.”

“Very well, just for tonight. All right? In America, I seem to lose all these little modesty rules.” He rifled through her clothes in the open valise on the floor, tossed her a clean nightgown, stripped himself, and climbed into bed. “Hurry, Jessie. I'm cold and I need you to warm me up.”

Actually it was quite warm, being the beginning of September. Thank God it hadn't rained during their trip from the Pratt Street docks to Marathon. A long hot trip, but it hadn't rained.

“The children are sleeping with Marcus and the Duchess. Damnation, I just didn't remember how very old and ratty everything was.”

“It's all right,” Jessie said as she climbed into bed beside him. “Just wait until they see the stables and your workers' houses. Then they'll understand where you spent all your money.”

“Are you really tired, Jessie?”

She was snuggled against his side, her palm over his heart. “No, not really tired.” Actually she was so exhausted she wanted to close her eyes and never open them again during this current week. No sooner were the words out of her mouth, no sooner had he assimilated them and begun to turn to face her, already harder than he'd imagined possible in such a short time, than he felt her kissing his shoulder. “No,” she whispered, licking his warm flesh, “I'm not tired at all.”

“Our first time in America,” he said some time later when he could speak again. He kissed her again and again until he knew she was falling asleep. “That was quite nice.
I wonder if Marcus heard you yelling. If he did, I'll hear about it tomorrow. Sleep well, Jessie.”

She slept well until three o'clock, then she awoke screaming, her arms flailing. This time, Jessie woke up first, sweating, her streamers sticking to her cheeks, heaving so hard she thought her heart would burst. “Oh, God, it was Mr. Tom again, James. Why won't it stop? I remember all about him now. Why won't he just bloody stop?”

 

“Oh dear, I think I'm going to be sick.”

It was as black as the bottom of a witch's cauldron in the bedchamber, the downstairs clock just striking three o'clock. James rolled off the side of the bed, hit the floor running, and got the chamber pot to her in the nick of time. He held her, then gave her water to drink and wiped her face.

“I don't know why you're still dreaming about it, Jessie,” he said at last when he held her in his arms again. “Just try to relax. Breathe slowly, that's good. Go to sleep. That's right, just go to sleep.”

Damnation, every time he gave her pleasure, this wretched dream came to her. Even now that she'd remembered the truth behind it, she still had troubled sleep. He wanted to leave for Ocracoke tomorrow, but he knew they couldn't. Everyone was exhausted. The last thing anyone wanted to do was climb aboard another ship. He stroked her face with his fingers. He wound a streamer around his thumb, then lightly ran his fingertips over her face, her ears, stroking her curly hair back from her forehead. “It will be all right, Jessie. It's got to be.”

“James, I think I'll go to the kitchen. Surely there must be something to take away this wretched nausea.”

“No, you don't know the house yet. I'll go.”

James went downstairs and out the back entrance. He walked across the bricked walkway to the kitchen. He knew
Badger had already settled in. Surely he'd prepared something. He never forgot anything.

He was surprised to see candlelight showing from beneath the kitchen door. Could Old Bess be preparing something at this hour? He opened it slowly, listening.

“Does everyone agree that this is the course to follow?”

It was Spears speaking, naturally. What course?

“The old besom will turn on Jessie as soon as she realizes her dear James married her,” Sampson said. “Of course, then she won't be able to fire all her cannon at the poor Duchess.”

“It sounds likely,” Badger said. “Would you like more tea, Maggie?”

“Thank you, Mr. Badger. You've put some soothing herb in it, haven't you?”

“I have, Maggie. It will make you sleep. It will make all of us sleep. The good Lord knows we'll need it to deal with all the myriad problems that seem to abound here.” He yawned discreetly behind his hand.

“Just fancy,” Maggie said as she sipped her tea, “we're in the Colonies.”

“Yes,” Spears said, “and it's three o'clock in the morning and all of us were prowling around and are now in the kitchen trying to address all the damnable problems.”

“What have you all decided?” James asked, coming into the large room.

“James,” Spears said comfortably, rising from his chair at the head of the large table, “you should be with Jessie.”

“I was, but she's ill and I've come here to find her something to settle her stomach.”

“I made some more unyeasted bread,” Badger said, and rose to cut it and wrap it in a napkin.

“What have you all decided?” James asked again, eyeing each of them in turn.

Spears, looking as elegant as ever in a brocade dressing
gown of dark blue velvet, said, “Do sit down, James. We discovered that none of us could sleep, except for Mr. Sampson, who is fortunate enough to sleep standing in a corner if he must. We decided to come out here and have a bit of tea and conversation. It's good that we did. We've come to a decision about Your Mother.”

“Do you plan to strangle her and drop her into the Patapsco River? What about the poor fish?”

“That's a satisfying thought,” Maggie said. “Too bad about the fish.” She looked glorious in a peach confection that would look more natural worn by a rich man's mistress. Her red hair was loose. She looked delicious and knew she looked delicious. “How can it be that you're so nice, James, and she's such a terror?”

“It's a mystery,” James said, seated himself, and accepted a cup of tea from Badger.

“I will speak for Mr. Sampson. Your mother, James, will make Jessie's life miserable,” Maggie said. “We will protect her. Whenever your mother visits, all of us will take turns being with her so that the old bi—, er, the old lady doesn't whack her off at the knees.”

James looked around the table at the three servants who weren't really servants and knew they cared as much about Jessie now as they did about the Duchess, Marcus, and him. He was profoundly grateful. He said, “The house is not what any of you are used to. I'm sorry that your accommodations are so inferior, but I ran out of money once I had dwellings for my servants built and the stables and paddocks redone.”

“Where did the servants live before if not in houses?” Badger asked.

“They were slaves,” James said. “They're all black and they were slaves. They were nothing but property. They were abused. Husbands and wives were separated. Children were taken from their parents. I hate slavery. As soon as I
bought the property, I freed all of them and began paying them wages. They lived in huts that the filthiest rodents avoided. I had to build them decent housing. I had to.”

“Quite right,” Spears said. “Don't you agree, Maggie?”

“I think James is a man with a conscience. Just fancy, and he's half American and not all English.”

“Yes, fancy that,” Badger said.

“I'll let you decide which is my best half,” James said, laughed, and drank down his tea. He took the wrapped napkin from Badger, bid them all good night, then said over his shoulder, “There's not just my mother. There's also Jessie's mother. They never perform a duet. They always come at you from opposite directions. You'll be pleased to know that my mother also bullies Jessie's mother. They were girls together, evidently.” He smiled at their collective consternation and took himself back to his wife, who was huddled in the middle of his bed, breathing through her nose.

“Jessie told me,” Spears said after James had left, “that her father was bound to provide a dowry for her. That should be ample to bring the house up to snuff.”

“We have two mothers to worry about?” Maggie said, then sighed deeply, leaning her elbows on the kitchen table.

“It's all right, Maggie,” Spears said, “we'll figure everything out.”

“We always do,” Badger said. “Tomorrow I must find a recipe for conch chowder.”

 

The dreariness of James's red-brick Georgian house was very apparent the following morning when everyone was seated in the dining room with its old table and twelve chairs whose cushions had once been a vivid blue and were now a tattered blue-gray. The walls needed paint and new wallpaper, and the carpet on the floor was clean but so old it was splitting apart.

James was embarrassed, mumbling as he seated his wife
at the foot of the table, “I bought the property from Boomer Bankes. He'd been a widower for many years. He paid no attention to the house. I'm very sorry, Jessie, Duchess.”

“I daresay we'll all survive,” the Duchess said as she settled Charles in the middle of a blanket in the corner of the room, a sugar tit from Old Bess in his mouth. The moment she laid eyes on him, Old Bess adored Charles, cooing over him, telling him he was the sweetest little bite she'd ever seen and that his mama was the prettiest little sweetie she'd ever seen as well, not as pretty as the new mistress, but very fine nonetheless. “Loyalty,” the Duchess had remarked to her husband, “is an excellent thing.”

“The room's a nice size,” Jessie said. “The windows are large, the prospect pleasing.”

“Just fancy,” Thomas said from the doorway, “the house is filled again. We're all so pleased that you're the mistress now, Miss Jessie.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Oh dear, may I have a piece of that bread, please, Badger?”

“Of course, Jessie,” Badger said. “Mr. Thackery, would you please give the bread to Mrs. James?”

After breakfast, James took Marcus off to inspect the stables. Thankfully, Anthony, filled with more energy than the rest of them combined, went with them. During breakfast he'd exclaimed that he couldn't wait to leave to find Blackbeard's treasure. The Duchess had said in her calm way, “That's fine, Anthony. You can go with your father to search us out a ship.”