I evict the tenant farmers and commute the tenure of the indentured servants and replace them with slaves. I refused and, because I failed to “see the future”, he felt he could no longer remain as overseer.’
‘He was also being paid far less than most of the overseers around these parts.’
‘It did make his decision to leave a little easier.’ Cassandra sat on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Belle View’s numerous windows and doors stood open, allowing the breeze coming off the James River to move through the rooms and the main hallway, but it did little to lessen the oppressive humidity.
‘What will you do without him?’ Mrs Sween tucked an escaping wisp of grey hair beneath her white cap. She was stout and shorter than Cassandra with a ruddy face like a farmer’s wife. She’d come to Virginia from Scotland as an indentured servant to Uncle Walter twenty years ago and had helped raise Cassandra after her parents’ deaths. Cassandra wished Mrs Sween had been with her in London. She would’ve seen through all of the Chathams’ lies and Cassandra’s ignorance.
What about Richard’s lies?
Cassandra studied the matronly woman standing before her, wondering if she knew the truth about Richard. She was desperate for someone to speak with about him, but if Mrs Sween was ignorant of the truth, then asking her meant inadvertently revealing what had happened on the Devil’s Rose.
She glanced at the burled-wood pistol box resting on the mantel across the room. Inside, the missing weapon marred the beauty of the presentation of the pewter against the red velvet. She twisted the gold band on her finger, her stomach tightening with worry. Every day she thought about his pistol, both anticipating and dreading its return.
She plunked the scrub brush in the bucket, sending a wave of soapy water cresting over the side. She refused to live in fear here as she had in London with Giles. She’d turn Richard in before she’d allow his bargain to threaten her or Dinah. ‘I’ll manage the farmers as best I can until I can engage a new overseer. Heaven only knows how I’ll pay one.’
‘Better find a way. A place like this is too much for one person to run alone.’
Cassandra stood and wiped her hands on her old plain cotton dress, one of many she’d left in trunks in the attic before her trip to England, thinking she’d return within the year. She’d never expected such a long and heartbreaking delay. ‘At present, I don’t have a choice but to do it myself. Besides, I enjoy the work. It takes my mind off so many things.’ Like Richard.
Learning he wasn’t dead had been like having fabric pulled off a dried wound. She’d cursed him for weeks after coming home, but in the still of the dark nights, with the cicadas singing their old familiar song, his resurrection had created another, more startling feeling in her heart—hope. He was still alive and perhaps, like her place in Williamsburg society and the grandeur of Belle View, the future they’d once imagined could be reclaimed. She had no idea how it might come about but, with the memory of his lips still vivid on hers, a small part of her believed in it and him, even if he no longer wanted her and she should want nothing to do with him. Emotion had led her to make a grave mistake with one man. It was a mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat, but surrounded by the humid aroma of dirt and trees, the smells of her childhood, it was hard not to believe in the old dreams again.
‘Don’t worry, my lady, all will be well. You’ll have this place soon set to rights and Belle View will be one of the finest plantations on the James River.’ Mrs Sween rested a wrinkled hand on Cassandra’s shoulder and Cassandra smiled gratefully at her. Mrs Sween’s presence eased the loneliness surrounding Cassandra like the netting covering the portraits of her parents to protect them from the beetles. It didn’t banish it completely. Only during the brief moment in Richard’s arms aboard his ship had the isolation swathing her seemed to lift. The feeling had been fleeting, like his comfort and his shallow love.
‘Shall I take the little one to have her lunch?’ Mrs Sween offered, brushing a lavender flower off her apron.
‘Yes, please.’ Cassandra picked up Dinah and kissed her on one soft and chubby cheek, then handed her to Mrs Sween, who carried her off, promising her fresh butter and bread.
The voices of men calling to one another caught Cassandra’s attention. She went to the window, passing the large dining table dominating the centre of the room. She paused to trail her fingers over the dull and dusty top of it. Of all the meals she remembered enjoying with her parents at this table, the last stood out as the most vivid. Her father had listened while she and her mother had made plans for the upcoming holiday balls and dinner parties marking the start of Cassandra’s first season. They’d laughed and revelled in talk of dresses and dance lessons, blissfully unaware that three weeks later a hurricane would level Belle View’s crops and force the creditors to call in her parents’ debts, ruining them. A month later, the fever that often followed hurricanes had risen from the carcase-filled fields and riverbeds to claim her parents and the bright future they’d all imagined for Cassandra.
With a heavy heart, Cassandra walked to the window overlooking the back lawn. Green grass covered the slope of the land to the dock where two farmers loaded sacks of grain into the shallop tied there, the single-masted boat bobbing with the current. When she was a child, she used to watch the small boats coming and going from her bedroom window, waving to the farmers from the Shenandoah Valley who brought their crops down the James to sell at market or ship to England. Her father would greet the incoming vessels, collecting gossip and passing on information from the latest session of the House of Burgesses. He was gone, but this small hub of activity remained, although it was, like her old life here, only a shadow of what it had once been. Over the years, many people had offered to buy Belle View, but Uncle Walter had advised her not to sell, saying it would be a safe haven for her if she ever needed it. He’d never had the chance to see how right he’d been.
But is he right about Richard?
Cassandra left the dining room and walked down Belle View’s long central hallway, barely sparing a glance for the dusty sitting room, office and library flanking either side of it. The paint on the walls of the main hall had once been a vibrant red, but it had dulled to a rusty colour. Like everything at Belle View it needed seeing to, but she couldn’t spend money on paint when there were labourers to be paid. She passed the wide front door and the tall clock standing beside it, her mother’s wedding gift from her parents. It chimed the half hour, the bells as clear today as they’d been when Cassandra was a child. They were the one thing age and the hurricane hadn’t appeared to touch in the old home. She climbed the staircase to the second floor, her hand brushing over the rough banister in need of a polish before striding down the upstairs hallway to her bedroom.
Once inside, she locked the door. Her large, four-poster bed filled most of the room. A turned wooden chair sat between the opposite window and the fireplace covered with an embroidered screen. Even without an overabundance of fine furnishings, this room was simple and comfortable in a way that none of the rooms in any of Giles’s houses had ever been.
It wasn’t comfort she sought at present, but something more disturbing.
She knelt in front of the fireplace and worked loose a brick near the bottom. The hiding place had once held her childish treasures, but today it concealed a darker secret. She pulled out the pouch of money, disappointed by how much lighter it was. The coins wouldn’t last much longer and, to her shame, she almost wished Richard would send the pistol if it meant another bag and the slight easing of her financial concerns.
No amount of money is worth the misery he’d bring if he returned. The misery he’d already visited on her by pretending to be dead and convincing Uncle Walter to support his lie. She set the money aside and tugged out a letter tied with a ribbon and encompassing a number of folded, weathered and water-stained parchments.
A few days after Cassandra’s arrival, Mrs Sween had given Cassandra Uncle Walter’s travelling desk. Inside, beneath the mundane accounts and letters from friends had been the items Richard had sent him. They’d been sealed between the pages of a letter to her from Uncle Walter, one that had proved