28
George Washington danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down.
General Nathanael Greene
In the span of a few hours, they walked to the waterfront where a shallop awaited instead of a carriage. Their hosts lived on the other side of the James, a mile or more downriver. Stepping into the waiting boat with six oars, an awning, and both coxswain and bargeman in livery, Lark felt she’d fallen into a fairy tale.
Seated across from Mistress Flowerdew and beside Magnus, she arranged her embroidered skirts. The airy lavender lustring was a perfect pairing for the sultry Virginia eve. Thanks to the help of a housemaid, her hair was powdered, her stays breathlessly tight, her throat circled with a genteel velvet ribbon and cameo.
Mistress Flowerdew looked triumphant. “You’ll be something of a célèbre tonight,” she said to Magnus, “you and Miss MacDougall.”
“Surely yer neighbors are acquainted with the Scots who make up so much of Virginia’s economy.”
“The Scots merchants, you mean. A far cry from a landed, titled laird like yourself. You remain one of the gentry, no matter what King George may say.”
Magnus chuckled and reached up to adjust his stock. “Kilt-less and castle-less yet still welcome.”
“Yes, indeed. I daresay you’ll find none of the middling sort present tonight. Only the top tier of Virginia society, including the new French dancing master from Williamsburg.”
Lights lit up Mount Brilliant like a beacon. The slope of lawn leading to the dock was illuminated by several servants holding lanterns who accompanied them up the hill to the mansion. Virginians had a penchant for brick, this house bearing countless diamond-glass windowpanes and soaring columns.
They passed from porch to foyer and through an arched doorway to a ballroom of creamy woodwork and English wallpaper, elegant and airy but for the crush of guests. Music spilled from a raised dais at one end of the long room. Supper smells, seafood foremost, rode the humid air.
Lark pressed a lavender-lined handkerchief to her upper lip. So many candles, the lights calling out the flash of jewels and sheen of colorful dresses. Their hosts greeted them warmly as a minuet signaled the ball’s beginning. She curtsied and Magnus bowed again and again as other couples greeted them in turn.
Taking her arm, Magnus led Lark out to join the gathering dancers, those of the highest rank going first. Though she preferred the country dances, the minuet was measured and artful, and Magnus had always been a splendid partner. Though his father might have been against their marriage, he’d had few qualms about her being educated alongside his son, and that had included an itinerant dancing master. Her lovely gown gave her extra confidence amid the whispering behind fans. They were creating quite a stir.
“The laird and his lady,” someone said.
Being Scottish, they did everything a wee bit differently, and that included dancing. But the attention was approving, even admiring, and she felt the delight of it to her toes.
Soon she was singled out by other gentlemen of all ages and stations, though all had one thing in common—a love of dancing. She forgot the fierce heat. The odd mingling of accents. Her humble station. Larkin’s well-being. Even Magnus’s impending departure.
Suppertime found them full of Virginia’s remarkable fare—and syllabub, a frothy concoction that Virginians seemed as fond of as dancing. One cup left her light-headed so she declined more. Magnus claimed her for one reel, then a jig. Throat parched, she wanted to drink from the garden fountain.
How they snuck away from the crowded ballroom after hours of dancing was no small feat. The gentle pressure of his hand on her lace sleeve led to a night dazzling with stars and the perfume of late-blooming roses beyond the ballroom’s French doors. Sitting down on a wrought-iron bench near the fountain’s splash, Magnus at her side, she watched the melee of swirling dancers in a way she hadn’t been able to inside.
“These Virginians dance till dawn,” he mused.
“They seem not to mind the close quarters.”
“Their stamina is staggering.” He ran a finger around his stock as if wanting to untie it altogether. “Mayhap they have Scots blood.”
She smiled and shut her eyes as the breeze strengthened, stirring both her hair and her gown’s hem. Oh, to slow time or wind it backwards. What she would give to hold on to the few precious moments left to them before parting.
“Ye promise to pen me a letter?”
Her eyes opened. So he was thinking of the morrow too. Her voice lifted above the music. “Long ago I used to write to ye, after ye’d gone to Edinburgh.”
His buckled shoe kicked at a pebble in the grass. “I still have yer letters. All nine or so.”
Oh? “Yet ye wrote but once.”
“I owe ye a belated apology.” He angled his head toward her, arms crossed. “Yer letters were so prettily written yet so full of Kerrera, each felt like a thorn to me.”
“Ye missed the island.”
“Aye.” He hesitated. “And ye.”
She fingered the borrowed cameo at her throat, her heart so full her mind was empty.
He continued, “I have them now, in my trunk. Tied with blue silk ribbon, yer favorite color.”
Regret pummeled her. She’d saved his very first letter to her in the family Bible at the croft. As for the second, she’d fed his few penned lines to the croft fire as if doing so could ease her angst. It hadn’t. “If ye’ve kept them, ye dinna need me to pen another.”
He took her teasing with a flash of a smile. “I would have the penned musings of Lark the woman, not Lark the girl.”
“Lark the tattie bogle, ye mean.” She smoothed a crease in her lustring.
“Yer no scarecrow, Lark. Not in that gown. Whatever tolbooth and the Bonaventure stole, it wasna yer womanliness.”
The night turned warmer. She looked to her lap as his thoughtful words seared her memory and took a bold breath. “Write to me first. Then I’ll have something to remember ye by, come what may.”
She nodded. “Before ye go, I want to give ye a kit of Jesuit’s bark and some things to take for fever and the like.”
“Yer prayers are more effective.”
“Ye’ll have both. And a letter in time.”
Just how long was the distance from Virginia to the sugar islands?
As if reading her mind, he said, “A month’s sailing to Jamaica.”
She bit her lip. “So very far.”
“Closer than Kerrera. From what I’ve been told, ’tis a different world. Hectares of sugarcane, mills for refining it. Coffee, indigo, rice. Slaves and indentures. I ken little else.”
It sounded harsh. As different from Virginia as Virginia was from Scotland.
Inside the ballroom, a reel gave way to an allemande but she felt in no mood to dance. Weary to the bone she was.
Lark looked up. The moon foretold midnight. Morning came too soon.
Before she could stifle a yawn, a fast-moving Mistress Flowerdew rushed down the mansion steps into the garden, skirts a-swirl. “There you are! ’Tis after midnight and the shallop awaits.”
Bypassing the house, they took a path through the garden down to the river, where the lantern-lit vessel waited to return them to Royal Hundred. Their night of enchantment was over.
How long had he been standing there?
Lark paused in her morning’s work, taking a moment to rock a fretful Larkin in the chair near an open window, when a dark silhouette at the door caught her eye.
Hat in hand, Magnus regarded her as if unwilling to intrude. The memories they’d made the last few nights would carry her through the coming days. These were a gift.
He cleared his throat. “Goodbye for noo. See ye efter.”
The simple Scots farewell had come at last. Even Larkin quieted. Twisting on her lap, he sat up and reached out plump arms toward the deeply grounded voice.
Her heart tore in two.
Tossing his hat and knapsack aside, Magnus strode in and caught up Larkin in a bearish embrace. He buried his face in the lad’s downy shoulder, his coal-black hair a startling contrast to Larkin’s stark red.
Lark stood awkwardly, biting her lip till her tears retreated, and passed into the stillroom where the medicine kit she’d made him waited. Her heart, so bruised since leaving Kerrera, broke anew. So fragile she felt. Life was fragile. Only God knew if she’d see him again.
Chin firming, she took Larkin back while Magnus untied his knapsack and put her bundle inside. When he looked over at her in thanks, his blue eyes glistened like the sea about Kerrera on a clear day. Her forced composure shattered anew. Tears wet her face, the ache in her throat building toward a cry. Sob she would not. She’d not leave him with anything less than a gladsome goodbye, be it a tad tearstained. He deserved a better parting.
“Slàinte, Magnus.” She lay a hand on his sleeve, her other arm full of Larkin.
He put his arms around them both. His Gaelic came soft. “Is thu mannsachd.”
Thou art my most beloved.
He set Larkin down so that his arms were for her alone. She closed her eyes. She’d come home. All her years-long yearnings were quelled in that instant.
She stayed standing while her senses were reeling, immersed in sandalwood and clean linen and the marvel of his mouth meeting hers. Their first kiss. Kisses. Till she was breathless and astir and all thought of anything but the two of them had taken wing.
And then he was gone, her last look at him a tear-washed blur.
That evening, she found the locket. The MacLeish heirloom. It lay on the stillroom table, previously unseen, busy as she’d been with the bees. It was heart-shaped. Transparent. Yellow-gold and crowned with tiny diamonds. His mother had worn it and then his sister.
She picked it up gently, having only viewed it at arm’s length before. Inside was a lock of dark hair. Magnus’s own? She melted like candle wax.
Afraid she’d somehow mar the heirloom by wearing it as she worked, she kept it close by pocketing it. Even its slight weight brought her joy.
Of all the things he’d left behind in Scotland, the locket had not been one of them. ’Twas a tie to Kerrera. His family. The past.
And now her.