The Valentine Legacy (31 page)

“Another ship, Mama?”

“Certainly. We can't very well go overland. We'll get to be on board a ship again, just fancy that.”

Anthony hadn't said another word. All of them wanted a bit of a rest, but not a long one. That treasure was there waiting for them, they all knew it.

Jessie, her stomach settled down, went with the Duchess
into the parlor, as she'd told the Duchess it was called here in the Colonies.

“Now, Jessie, before you and I begin to make plans, I imagine that you will want to visit your parents and your sisters.”

Not really,
Jessie thought, flinching from the idea of Glenda staring at James's crotch. Surely she wouldn't do that now that he was married, would she?

“I have missed my father.”

“Thomas suggested that you write a note to your parents and tell them that you and James will be visiting them for luncheon. Do you feel well enough to do that?”

“It comes and goes,” Jessie said. “I feel marvelous right now, but in five minutes, I could be tossing up Badger's wonderful bread and Old Bess's strawberry jam I ate for breakfast.”

The Duchess eyed her closely. “Your clothes are hanging on you, too. You want to be the mistress of Marathon, Jessie, the independent, married relative, when you see them. You don't ever want them to think of you as their daughter again, thus someone they can bully and order around. Let's speak to Maggie. Among the three of us, we can dress you up properly.”

“Unfortunately it won't matter,” Jessie said, staring down at her shoes. “My mother and James's mother grew up together.”

“Oh dear.”

“At least my mother will be pleasant to you, Duchess.”

 

It was two o'clock that afternoon when James and Jessie rode in his old carriage to the Warfield Farm. All the trees and flowers were still in late-summer bloom. The air was rich with warmth and the scent of the land. “It's good to be home,” James said as he lightly flicked Bellini's reins.

“James, is Glenda going to stare at your crotch again?”

He started, jerking on Bellini's reins, and laughed when the horse snorted. “I hope not, but with Glenda I've learned over the years never to try to outguess her. If she does, well, just ignore it. Are you certain you're ready for this, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart. It sounded wonderful coming from James Wyndham to her, Jessie Warfield, the girl he'd considered an obnoxious brat for six years. Maybe he still did.

“Are you going to keep visiting Connie Maxwell?”

He didn't look at her, rather just kept looking through Bellini's ears. “I will see her, naturally, to tell her of my marriage.”

“Oh.”

“What does that mean? You think I'd still make love to her? Well, say something. Damn you, Jessie, we're married. I happen to believe in marriage vows. I won't betray you. You will never betray me either, because I won't allow it.”

“All right,” she said, feeling tears well in her eyes. She didn't understand herself. One minute she wanted to laugh, the next she was sobbing like a broken woman. It was unnerving. Maggie had just patted her hand and told her it was the babe making her behave in such an unpredictable manner. But Maggie didn't have any children. How did she know?

“Good. Now, here we are. Are you ready for this?”

She'd poked her chin a good three inches in the air. He lightly punched her chin, grinning. “You look beautiful. I like your gown. Is it one of the Duchess's?”

“Yes. Maggie took a few tucks here and there. She also washed my hair. It doesn't look too bad, does it, James?”

He hated that ridiculous doubt in her voice. “The streamers are even saluting.” She didn't look bad for a woman who was clutching Badger's bread in one hand. He watched her take a bite then push the rest of it down into her pocket. He tossed Bellini's reins to one of the stable lads, leaned
over to kiss his wife's mouth, and said quietly, “You are my wife. You are now independent of your family. Do you understand? Once we get all this family business over with, once we get furnishings ordered for the house, once everyone is ready to face a ship again, then we'll go to Ocracoke and get Mr. Tom out of your mind and out of our lives.”

“Yes. The Duchess said the same thing, both about Mr. Tom and about my parents. She told me not to forget I was now a married lady and free of them or she'd write a ditty about me I wouldn't like.”

“Good for her. Let's go.” He lifted her down from the carriage, brought her close to him, and said, “Oslow grinned like a fool when I told him we were married. Your father will do the same.”

Portia Warfield pushed past Polly, the black girl in her floppy mop cap who answered the door. “Well,” she said, eyeing her daughter. In truth she could think of nothing more to say because her wayward daughter didn't look at all as she had when she left Baltimore nearly four months before. She looked elegant. It was disconcerting. It was infuriating.

“I know all about this illicit marriage of yours, Jessie Warfield. James, your mother visited me this morning and told me of this outrage. However, the reason for her outrage is quite different from mine. You don't look right, Jessie. You don't look how you're supposed to look, the way you've looked since you were a child. It doesn't suit you, all this silly finery, your hair all done up like a loose fem-ale's. You will change everything immediately. You will become yourself again. I order you to do as I say.”

“I can't, Mama,” Jessie said, squeezing closer to James.

“May we come in, ma'am? Jessie would like to sit down. The voyage was long, and she's still tired.”

“You might as well. Poor Glenda is prostrate, has been for weeks and weeks. Now today she discovers that you
stole away the man she was going to marry, Jessie. She is a shadow of her former self. She is miserable, the poor pet. She barely ate her breakfast.”

“I thought Mrs. Wyndham came here to tell you of our marriage,” Jessie said, confused. “Surely she didn't come before breakfast?”

“Don't be smart, miss. Your poor sister didn't sleep well last night. She probably had a premonition of what treachery was to come. She didn't have her breakfast, indeed her lunch as well, until after noon, and that is when James's mother came. You might as well sit down. I will have your poor father fetched from the stables.”

“Is something wrong with Papa?” Jessie asked, thoroughly alarmed.

“Don't be a fool.” Mrs. Warfield swept from the parlor. James turned to Jessie and grinned. “She puts on as fine a performance as does my precious mother. Don't heed her, Jessie.”

Jessie ran her tongue over her lips. “I'll try,” she said. “But she just keeps battering at you. It's hard to get away from it.”

“Here, eat a bit of Badger's bread.”

She did and was still chewing slowly when her father strode into the room, shouting with pleasure when he saw the two of them. “Ah, my boy, you married my little girl. A fine day it is for me. Jessie, goodness, girl, whatever have you done to yourself? You look like a princess, that's it, a princess, with that yellow gown and your hair all shiny and stylish. Just look at those cute little curls.

“And here's your mother again. Well, we can't have everything perfect, can we? My dear, can you have some tea fetched? Perhaps some cakes as well?” He waited until his wife had left the parlor, then hugged his daughter and shook hands with his new son-in-law. He held both their hands as he said, “You've pleased me more than I can say.
I don't know if either of you realizes it yet, but you really are well suited for each other.”

“I surely hope so, Papa, since James has gotten me pregnant.”

“What? You're with child? Now? But you've only been married a matter of short months, just a summertime of months, not more than three months and you're already pregnant? Oh goodness, I'm going to be a grandfather?”

“Papa, I'm going to be ill.”

It was nearly an hour later when Jessie was once again seated next to her husband in her mother's parlor, her hair brushed, her gown straightened. She was still too pale even after she'd pinched her cheeks, but her stomach had settled. James had fed her weak tea and Badger's bread until she was lying all relaxed on her old bed.

“When is my grandson going to be born?” her father asked immediately, rubbing his hands together, looking more excited, his wife thought, as she stared at him, than he had when she'd been pregnant with their first. Damn him. Silly old man. So pleased he was when he knew that James should have married sweet Glenda, not her hoyden sister.

“Next April we think,” James said.

Her mother stared at her with new eyes. Jessie, pregnant. It boggled the mind. For a very long time she'd been without anything to say. Now, she found her tongue, remembered her grievances, and said, “I doubt it will be a grandson, Oliver. If she's this ill, it's probably a girl. Another one in the family. It seems to be all the Warfields can breed.”

James said easily as he took Jessie's limp hand, “I would be delighted to have half a dozen girls, ma'am, all of them with splendid red hair and Jessie's beautiful green eyes.”

“She never before had splendid hair,” Mrs. Warfield said. “It's her grandmother's hair. Jessie was cursed with it just as her grandmother was also cursed, but at least her
grandmother kept it hidden beneath all sorts of frightful caps and bonnets so no one would gape at her.”

At that moment, Glenda tottered into the room. She looked as pale as Jessie, her eyes red from weeping, her gown wrinkled. James rose and smiled at her. Her eyes fell immediately to his crotch.

J
AMES
'
S SMILE DIDN
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slip, something he considered quite an accomplishment. “Hello, Glenda. You're looking lovely as usual. I'm now your brother-in-law. And you are my new sister.”

Glenda looked from James to Jessie, groaned, and said through tight lips, her voice quavering with pain, “I'm betrayed. I'm ground into the dirt. It's all your fault, Jessie, and yours too, James, for not paying heed to the one woman—me—who would have given you grace, beauty, and wit. Now look at what you've got and she will just breed more of what she is.”

“What do you mean, Glenda, that I'll breed just more of what I am? Surely that doesn't make sense.”

“You stole James from me, you miserable traitor! You were ugly, a pathetic girl who looked like a boy, and I never worried about you for an instant except to laugh at you because you looked and acted so stupidly. But just look at you. You've changed. You've become different, and it isn't right. I hate you, Jessie. You will breed just more of what you were, not what you've become. You'll change back, James will see that and hate you as much as I do.”

No one had a thing to say to that. Glenda tottered out of the room. She stopped just outside the doorway, whirled around, her face mottled, and shouted in raw fury, “I'll kill you for this, Jessie! You ruined yourself and forced James
to marry you. You even seduced him. Well, it won't last. You'll see. You'll bore him by the end of next week, if not by the end of today. You interest a man? It doesn't matter that you look different. You'll never interest any man. Ha! You don't know how to. Ha, again.”

Oliver Warfield cleared his throat. “My dear,” he said to his wife, “I ask that you speak to our daughter. Her behavior is tedious, if the truth be told. James never gave her a moment's encouragement.”

“He didn't give any encouragement to Jessie, either, but she's pregnant.”

“That's different,” Oliver said comfortably as he rose. “Come, Jessie, let's go to the stable. The horses have missed you. You too, James.”

“Oh yes, Papa, I'd like that very much. James?”

While Jessie greeted all the stable lads and patted all the horses and gave them carrots and sugar, Oliver Warfield pulled James into his office. He sat down behind his battered desk, pulled a bottle of port from one of the drawers, and poured two glasses. “Here you are, son. Ah, that sounds nice. Here's to your marriage to my best daughter.”

“I'll drink to that,” James said, and clicked his glass to his father-in-law's. The two men drank slowly without speaking.

Oliver leaned back in the rickety old chair that was the most comfortable one he'd ever sat in, and said, “ Remember when Jessie ate an entire watermelon to keep you from having a piece?”

“Good Lord, that must have been at least five years ago. I don't think she'd even look at a watermelon now. There must be a point somewhere in this, Oliver.”

“Only that you will make her content, James. Why won't she eat watermelon now? I have no idea, James.”

James smiled into his port at the suddenly stern father's voice. “I will try. There are a lot of changes coming. Do
you know that the English Wyndhams, their two sons, and their four servants traveled here with me?”

Oliver Warfield looked horrified. “They're all staying at Marathon? They're all in that house?”

“Unfortunately so. The Duchess—she's the Countess of Chase, you know—she assures me that I'm not to worry, that all of them understand perfectly and indeed applaud how I spent my money.”

“I thought you did too much, but that's neither here nor there. Those slaves now live better than many citizens.”

James felt the familiar curl of anger in his gut, but he held his tongue. He sipped more of his port and waited.

“Speaking of money, James, we need to speak about Jessie's dowry.”

James shifted in his chair. In his new role as husband to Jessie Warfield, he was frankly uncomfortable with Oliver, the man whose horses he'd tried to beat for years at the races, talking about giving money to him.

“You want more port?”

“I think I'd better have some,” James said, and held out his glass.

An hour later James and Jessie finally left the Warfield Farm to return to Marathon. Jessie was talking like her old self, as chirpy as a magpie and excited about her father's horses. “Rialto will take on Tinpin with no trouble in the race on Saturday. Oh goodness, whom am I to cheer for? This is a problem I hadn't considered.”

James cleared his throat. “You're feeling well?”

“Marvelous. What will I do, James? And there's Friar Tuck and Miss Louise. I trained her myself. She's nearly three now and ready to race. She—”

“Jessie, when your father dies, you and I will own the Warfield Farm.”

She stared at him. “He's giving us everything? But he didn't tell me that.”

“No, not everything. He told me he's been very lucky the past few years. I suppose I didn't want to know how he recouped his fortunes. There is a dowry for Glenda, a sizable one, he said, since he's not all that certain she can catch a husband without one.”

“But Glenda's very pretty. She's not at all like me, she—”

“Are you fishing for a compliment, Jessie?”

She gave him a long, thoughtful look. “I know what I am, James.”

“Good. I want my wife to know that what she is first, is mine.”

Jessie wasn't sure that she knew that at all, but she preferred James's line of thinking. “What about the house? What about Mother?”

“She is to live in the house until she dies. Then the house belongs to us as well. Which is a problem. Our properties don't join, so we can't just pull down fences and combine them.”

“We'll figure out something,” Jessie said. “Don't worry, James.”

He knew that look in her eye—all sparkling energy and intelligence—and was pleased. Now if only their babe would stop sending her to her knees in front of the chamber pot.

She said now as she frowned down at her gloved hands, “Will we have money to work on Marathon?”

“Yes. A lot.”

She gave him a fat smile. “Good,” she said, and tucked her arm through his. “Papa asked me what I wanted, and I told him that the Duchess and I were going to fix up the inside of the house and we needed money to do it right. Odd that he didn't tell me about giving us the farm as well.”

“That's properly a man's subject of discussion, Jessie. Your father was right not to mention that to you before he'd
discussed it with me. I'm surprised that he even asked you about the money.”

“He told me that I'd earned all of it, since I'd been his best jockey for the past six years. I told him he was right. He kissed me then and hugged me. I love my father very much, James. I don't ever want him to die. At least for a very long time.”

“How can you be so nice and your mother so tedious?”

She laughed and laughed.

There was no particular pandemonium at Marathon when they returned, which was a relief. There was, however, James's mother, resplendent in purple silk, and she was seated in the parlor with the earl.
The Duchess must have escaped,
Jessie thought as she squared her shoulders and walked into the parlor beside James.

“My son,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, encouraging him to walk across the room to kiss her outstretched hand before she'd held it out for long enough to get a cramp.

“Mother.” He kissed her veined hand. “I'm surprised you're here. I was coming to see you. Don't you remember? I told you I would visit you today.”

“I couldn't wait. It's been too long since I've seen you. I told Ursula that she could wait, that I would come to dine with you this evening. She and Gifford can see you tomorrow.”

Wonderful, just wonderful,
Jessie thought, wondering if she would make it through an evening with her mother-in-law without having to leave the room to retch.

When the Duchess came into the parlor, looking like the regal countess she was, slender and elegant and beautifully gowned in a pale yellow jonquil day dress, Wilhelmina Wyndham swelled with indignation. “You're still here? I had prayed you would decamp. I don't mind that your lovely husband is here, for his only fault is that he had no choice but to marry you. He is an excellent man still despite the
fact that you and he took everything that should have belonged to me. But you here as well? I won't have it. I wish you would die in your sleep.”

Jessie gasped. “What did you say, ma'am?”

“Oh, I just said that I wished the Duchess won't ever sigh or weep. Life is so uncertain, you know.”

“Exactly so, ma'am,” the Duchess said, and gave her quite a beautiful, serene smile. “Badger wished me to tell you he prayed the food he prepared would give you bile.”

“How dare he! He said what?”

“Why, ma'am, Badger said it was his pleasure to serve you food that would make you smile.”

“You haven't changed,” Wilhelmina said, lips tight, her powerful bosom heaving beneath the deep purple silk. “You shouldn't ape your betters, young lady. It doesn't matter that you're a countess. You don't deserve to be. You're a fortune-hunting adventuress. Everyone knows it, even your poor husband, but he still married you seven years ago.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Marcus said. “Well put, ma'am. However, since I am married to the wench, since I can't very well boot her into a well, I suppose I must defend her to the best of my meager ability. Thus, ma'am, I would be pleased were you to drop yourself off a cliff.”

“Oh no, surely, no! What did you say, my lord?”

“Me? Oh, I just said I would be pleased if you were to drop yourself off a cliff.”

Mrs. Wyndham stared at him in consternation. There was complete silence in the parlor, with everyone staring at Marcus, who looked as bland as Old Bess's tapioca pudding. “You didn't pretend,” she said finally. “That's not how it's done. You must pretend and find suitably matching words to cloak your meaning in banality.”

“How inept of me,” Marcus said, and twitched a small piece of lint off his sleeve.

“Yes,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, leaning toward the
earl, “you could have said, for example, that you would be pleased if I were to take a good whiff of this excellent tea.”

Marcus frowned. “No, that's not quite right yet, ma'am. Ah, I will have to think about it. When I decide, I will tell you and you can give me a critique.”

“I would be delighted to,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, and patted the earl's arm. “Such a lovely material this is,” she said, her voice all coy and flirting. “Such a lovely color, that deep blue.”

The Duchess rolled her eyes. Could her wretch of a husband get away with any sin?

James, much enjoying himself, remained silent—at least he had planned to until his dear mother turned her guns on Jessie. She said now, “I am at a loss to determine why your beautiful husband doesn't leave you. You're not fit to live.”

“What, ma'am?” Jessie felt her eyes begin to cross. The earl laughed deeply. “Well done, ma'am. Finish it.”

“Certainly, my dear boy. Why, Jessie, I only told the Duchess that she had such wit to give.”

James finally cleared his throat, drawing all attention. “Mother, let me give your thoughts another direction, perhaps a more pleasant one. You are going to be a grandmother come next April.”

Jessie felt the force of her mother-in-law's shock, then her fury radiating now toward her. “So,” Wilhelmina Wyndham said, pointing her finger at Jessie, “you did seduce my poor son. When he got to England you told him and he had to marry you. I wouldn't have minded if he had wed Glenda because she's an ignorant twit and I can control her quite well, both her and her ridiculously inept mother, who was my best friend when we were girls. How Portia birthed an oddity like you I will never know. It must be her husband's fault. Oliver has always been too sporting by half. Poor Portia writhes with the knowledge that you took poor
Glenda's husband, but she doesn't have the skill to do anything about it save moan and whine.”

“What would you do, ma'am?” Marcus asked, giving her a look that would vanquish any woman's defenses.

“Why, I would see that she's made so miserable that she traveled to Italy and lived the rest of her miserable life in a fishing village.”

“But, ma'am,” Jessie said, rising now, wringing her hands, wondering if she would vomit on her mother-in-law's shoes, “I don't speak any Italian.”

“That, miss, is none of my fault. Speak to your mother. She gave you no suitable education. My James speaks fluent French. He even reads their outlandish literature.”

Before murder could be committed or laughter break through, James rose and held out his hand. “Mother, I believe you should be on your way now. You will come to us for dinner another evening. Bid your farewells to Marcus.”