“Get out,” Keturah muttered, shaking her head. Suddenly all she felt was fury, insensible fury. How could she? How could Mitilda have done it? Taken up with a white man? Compromised his reputation? And now she stood here before them as if she was the very lady of this house? “Go!” she cried, her voice cracking. “Go!”
“Ket,” Verity said, grabbing her sister’s wrist and turning Ket toward her. It seemed Ver hadn’t put two and two together, even though she’d been startled by an uneasy recognition.
“Keturah!” Selah whispered, equally confused.
But Mitilda and her boy were already moving past the gloating Mr. Shubert, his wide mouth twisting into a sneer. “You can come keep house for me now, Mitilda,” he called to her. It was as if he enjoyed seeing the woman being brought down a notch. As if this set an old wrong finally right.
Keturah stared at Mitilda’s trim back and her swishing skirts, and at her young son, who glanced over his shoulder at them as though wondering what was happening, before she felt the first pang of regret. What was his name?
But it was too late for Ket to call them back. Even if she tried, what would she say? She had no idea.
Climb this tree, Ket, one limb at a time.
“I’m certain you must be on your way, Mr. Shubert,” she said curtly, dismissing him before turning to the others. “Cuffee and Edwin, please go to the slaves’ cabins and report back to me what you find. How many still live and what their immediate needs are. Absalom, see to our two new arrivals. Bring them into the house and to the kitchen. Get them all the fresh water they can drink and see if there might be a bit of bread. Primus, take the keys and survey the outbuildings. I assume one is a storehouse. I expect a report on what you find too. Verity and Selah, come with me.” She forced a smile, trying to encourage her shaken sisters. “Let’s go see what our new home is like at last!”
She hurried up the stairs, anxious to put more distance between herself and the neighbor’s overseer. “Good day, Mr. Shubert,” she briskly said, once they had reached the top of the creaky stairs.
“At your service, Lady Tomlinson,” he said with a nod, a bit of a smile still tugging at his lips. He’d found what he came for—some sort of comeuppance for Mitilda and surely a story to share with others. He was only a few years older than she, but Keturah felt that he knew this world as if he’d lived here decades longer. Perhaps he had. Would the Banning women spend the rest of their days providing stories for the local gossips everywhere they went?
Most likely, she thought with a heavy sigh. She entered the house and waited at the door until her sisters were inside, then shut out the rest. She leaned her head against the door, feeling the relief of being just their own trio for a moment.
“Ket,” Verity began, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Was that child . . . was he . . . ?”
“He is our brother,” Keturah whispered, nose still against the mahogany door. It held that unique tropical wood scent she had come to know aboard the Restoration.
Selah gasped. “What did she just say?”
“She said he’s our brother,” Verity answered stiffly.
“Our . . . brother?” Selah squeaked. “How is that possible?”
All sorts of unladylike thoughts came to Keturah’s mind, but she kept silent, waiting for Selah to fully understand. Father. No, Father. How could you?
“Oh,” Selah breathed. “I see. But . . . no. How could it be? How could he have done that to Mother?”
“Mother never knew,” Ket said. She turned around, her back to the door but her hand on its iron latch, as if holding on to something helped her remain standing. Her knees felt wobbly beneath her skirts. “Just as Father was intent on our never knowing. He never thought we would come here. He never believed we would meet them ourselves. Many tried to warn us,” she added, reaching out one hand to Verity, the other to Selah. “They told us this place would shock us to our very bones, make us quake in our shoes. They said it was no place for a lady, and if this afternoon is any indication, I would say they had ample cause.”
Ket took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But we are here, sisters. We have made it through weeks of being at sea and a threatening storm. We saved two slaves from a harsh master. We have only just endured meeting two people of . . . relations unlike we ever could have anticipated. And yet somehow we managed it,” she said, squeezing their hands. “Shall we not take those steps as victories and move forward from here?”
Verity nodded slowly, and then Selah did the same, each squeezing her hand in return. Clinging to one another, they walked through the wide parlor with its large windows overlooking the steep incline of a hill and the sea far below. It was a far more marvelous view than Ket had ever imagined, with the deep green of the jungle meeting the remains of the light, bits of swaying green cane—latent stalks post-harvest—stretching all the way down to the turquoise water.
The shutters had been left open, allowing the breeze to flow in and through the room. The girls forced themselves to turn from the captivating view and take in the peeling wallpaper, a faded leaf print, and the once-impressive mahogany crown molding and millwork, stained and splintered after years of exposure to the island’s humidity. The wooden floors were buckling in places, and the Turkish rugs were either rotting or nearly worn through. But it was all clean, Keturah surmised. Impeccably clean.
Shoving thoughts of Mitilda aside, Ket pushed through the swinging wooden door to the kitchen just as Absalom and the two new slaves disappeared out the back door. The kitchen was equipped with a cast-iron stove in the corner and wide marble counters. There were kettles and pans of all sizes, as well as barrels labeled FLOUR, SUGAR, and, atop the counter, a much smaller one labeled SALT. A quick peek in each told her they were empty—even the one marked SUGAR—and she sighed with disappointment. She glanced back at the stove, and her mouth began watering at the thought of bread baking or bacon frying. Silently, she prayed that the men would find some food in the storehouse, something to supplement what they had purchased in town so they might make it through until tomorrow.
Tomorrow they might find new troubles. Her only task was to find her way through today’s.
They moved on to a passageway that led to her father’s office—I shall need to return here and read everything I can find, Keturah thought—then on to a bedroom that the boy had clearly been inhabiting beside the stairs. There were toy soldiers on the floor arranged in neat lines and a leather ball in the corner. It was only then that Ket realized she’d sent the woman and child running, not even giving them time to collect their things. Where had they gone? The aforementioned cottage? She’d have to find the strength to reach out to the woman and invite her back to gather her meager belongings.
But not yet. Not yet.
Tentatively, they climbed the squeaky stairs. At the top, they found six rooms, the four in the middle small and sparse, and those on each end of grand size. “This should be yours,” Verity said to Ket. “My, look at the view from here,” she went on, moving closer to one of the windows.
But Keturah was shaking her head. Because as much as this had been her father’s room, it was also the one he’d most likely shared with her. Mitilda. Bile rose in her throat. “No,” she said. “Come. Let us find other quarters.”
Once her sisters were out in the hallway again, she firmly shut the door to his room, as if she could shut out the very thought of her father’s mistress. They each decided to take one of the smaller rooms that ushered in the leeward breezes from broad windows. Given the heat of high summer, Keturah knew it would be particularly vital to have the breeze.
“We’ll get our things settled inside and soon it will feel utterly cozy,” she said, thinking of their feather beds, pillows, and linens. Such finery in the midst of such a dilapidated mess! She shook her head wearily. It mattered not. She decided she could sleep just about anywhere right now, once she had a little food in her stomach. The only other items in each room were a small table, a washbasin and pitcher. There was no artwork or paper on the plaster walls. At the ceiling, there was evidence of a roof leak, the dark streaks of mold creeping their way down the plaster like a serpentine monster.
They found a larger room at the end of the hall with a receiving closet to one side. This too was empty, showing no trace of her father’s mistress, and Keturah followed her sisters inside.
“Oh, Ket, then this should be yours,” Verity said, turning in delight. “With a bit of work it shall be a quite proper room and receiving room.”
“Look at all this shellwork!” Selah said, walking to one window as Keturah went to another. Each of the three windows in the room had hundreds upon hundreds of seashells in neat and tidy rows inlaid in the plaster. She’d known her father had dabbled with shell art years ago, making mirror frames for their mother and jewelry boxes for the girls after he’d visited the West Indies. As she toured it, she could not help but wonder, had he created this for Mother? Hoping that someday his wife might come here to join him?
Her mother had never displayed his mirrors. Instead, she had them moved to the attic as soon as he set sail again, considering the mirrors passé in style. But her father loved the mirrors, and Ket had spent hours in the attic, wondering over them. It was as if he had been trying to bring the Indies to her mother if she wouldn’t come to see its wonders herself.
Ket had once overheard the two of them talking, on the eve of one of his departures. Ket hovered in the shadows, and the thought of her shameless spying embarrassed her even now. She recalled how she’d so wished for her father not to leave again. Even after being sent to bed, she clamored for any spare moment with him she could obtain, even if it had to be gained in secrecy. Or so she consoled herself as she stood hidden in the shadows.
“Come with me, dearest,” he’d begged her mother. “We can leave the girls in the care of their governess. Simply come. See what draws me to the island, my love. Come to know what pulls me there.”
“Oh, Mr. Banning,” her mother had said—Mother had never called Father by his first name—“you know as well as I that a mother’s place is with her children. Would you remove me from my proper place?”
“For a chance to walk with you by the sea, your pretty little toes covered in sand? To see how your golden hair curls in the heat of the tropics? To glimpse more of your beautiful skin, bared beneath the sun’s rays?” He lifted her hand to his lips, and her mother ducked her head and covered her mouth with her other hand as if scandalized by the suggestion. He’d pulled her closer. “Come, dearest. I have need of you. The months there . . . they stretch on endlessly. A man . . . well, a man needs his wife by his side.”
Ket’s mother had pulled her hand from his. “Return to us, Mr. Banning,” she insisted. “If you have need of your wife, then you may always find her here at Hartwick Manor, might you not?”
A flash of disappointment had frozen his face a moment, and then it sagged. He nodded. “I suppose you are right, dearest. This is the best place for you, as well as for the girls. But I confess I shall sorely miss you.”
Ket turned away, the memory so vivid in her mind that it felt as though she were twelve years old again and witnessing the exchange for the first time.
Father had missed Mother so much that he’d taken a mistress, Keturah thought darkly.
How could he be so weak? How could he betray Mother so? And . . . Had Mitilda been the only one? Were there others before her?
Keturah’s own husband, Edward, had certainly felt it his right to lie with any of the chambermaids. Had her father been the same way?
“Ket,” Verity said, and judging by her tone, she’d been waiting on Ket again. How often had her sisters found her lost in reverie—both good and bad—of late?
Ket turned from the seashell-lined window.
“Will you take this room as your own?” Ver asked, a hundred other questions behind her concerned gaze.
“I shall,” Ket said. “And we shall make one of the smaller rooms a shared closet for you both. After all,” she said, lifting her chin and forcing a grin. “We are now proper ladies of the Indies. It’s time we bring what we wish of England here to Nevis.”