Frances crawled about my feet. She cooed and bumped into the sofa.
“Are you telling me we need more room?”
Mamaí wobbled down the stairs with a pile of blankets.
With one eye on Frances and the other on my mother, I bounced up and grabbed the lot. “You don’t need to be carrying such things.”
I put the blankets on the sofa. “The next place I lease will have a room for you to work downstairs. A nursery just for Frances. And something for Edward. He’s the man of the house, you know. Maybe he needs something that will not tax him, too.”
“Such big plans.” She patted my arm. “I’m strong. You need to stop fretting over Edward and me.”
How could I not? His wheezing was bad again. I almost wanted to consult the Hispaniola neighbors filling Mamaí with stories of healing by their gods or the Obeah doctors of the Caribs for some cure or potion to make him better.
But who could trust a ghost? The priest at my church would need to pray on my boy good.
Picking through my mother’s new creations, I studied the patterns she made, the delicate stitches, the weaving flower petals from mudcloth and cotton.
“You keep giving me such fine fabrics to work with, Dolly. I’ll keep creating.”
My gaze shifted to my table and the letter from Scotland. “I wish you could make a hundred of these a day. We’d be rich.”
“I thought we were rich already. You fretting about money?”
“No. Not at all.”
She came to me and lifted my chin. “Dolly, what is the matter? What has you fretting?”
I couldn’t put it to words, this churning inside. I had received my first letter from Cells, the first in two years just to me.
Frances gurgled and spit and rolled over yawning. I bent and gave her a tickle. She laughed big.
“Never mind me. Look at that, Mamaí. She can be a performer.”
I picked up Frances and hummed at my daughter.
Mamaí brushed my daughter’s wavy hair, her smooth olive skin. “Thomas is back. He’s asked about you.”
My fingers balled beneath Frances’s pinafore, the sleeveless tunic I fashioned from magazines Mr. King sent. “My sometime solicitor hasn’t stepped across my door. We live in the same place for now.”
“Maybe he wants to know you’re done mooning over a prince. It was all over Roseau that you’re Mrs. Prince, stepping out with him everywhere.”
“What?”
“The prince is young. He can’t quite hold his liquor or his tongue. Talked about his black Doll waiting for him in Dominica. Lizzy and Coxall says it’s all over the Caribbean.”
My gaze went to Cells’s letter. Could that be what it was about?
“That’s gossip.”
“Dolly, are you done with the prince? No man wants to intrude on another’s woman.”
Mamaí had concerns for the wrong man. Cells was the one who had power over me. He had my Catharina. I bent my head and kissed Frances’s spirals. “What consequence could Prince William have to a solicitor?”
“Plenty. Thomas owns boats, boats that transport goods over the seas. The prince could set his guns on him. They can take his goods. It happened to your pa during that long seven-year war.”
“Thomas is frightened for his business? Serves him right for leaving.”
“Dolly, he’s not afraid of no man, but it’s not worth the trouble if you want a prince and not a pauper.”
Frances yawned. It was time for her nap. “Thomas is no pauper. He does well.”
“He doesn’t know what you want.”
Thomas wasn’t the only one.
Charlotte came downstairs. “I’ll put my sister down.”
I handed my feisty Frances over to my good-natured Charlotte. My pretty, tall daughter had grown up fast in Roseau. “Where’s Kitty, girl?”
“Mama, she and Polk took bowls to the market. You and Grandma, go save the man from his ear being talked off.”
“Come on, Mamaí. To the Old Market. Then I’m going to get Mr. Bates to help us lease a bigger place.”
My mother smiled and I followed her out. “Go for the prince, Dolly. He hasn’t abandoned you or lied.”
I hadn’t thought of Thomas’s leaving as abandoning me. It was just what men in mercantilism did, like Pa.
My mind drifted to Cells’s unopened letter. Did it have news of Catharina? I remembered her every night in my prayers, every time I kissed Frances and Edward and Charlotte.
Maybe I was stuck in remembering.
We walked in silence until we reached Mamaí’s stand.
At her booth, the noon sun left me blinking. I knocked over her wooden sign. I stooped to get it, and my eyes focused on a pair of men’s boots.
Fine leather boots that had a jagged edge and a buckle.
European buckles.
“Morning, Miss Doll.”
“New boots, Mr. Thomas?”
My sometime wandering solicitor stood in front of Mamaí’s stand. “Yes. You like?”
My lips pressed tight. I slipped to the side, setting my ma’s sign in place and ignoring the handsome fool in his fine coat, his dark brown hair brushed to a shine. No foul powders.
“I’ll see you later, Mamaí.”
Then I marched forward. I stomped the cobbles and went in the opposite direction, away from the booth, away from Thomas.