At Gray’s insistence, he came to collect the Banning women at seven o’clock for the party at Red Rock. Keturah had wanted to decline the invitation, but Selah insisted they go. “Will it not further prove to them that they cannot cow you,” she said, “if you enter that drawing room in your fine bronze gown, with your head held high?”
“And with hands that resemble our field hands’?” Ket said, wiggling her palms at her sister.
“We shall wear gloves,” Selah had said, “and then we shall face Angus Shubert together.”
The thought of it made Ket’s stomach turn. But she had to find a way to separate Shubert’s brutality from the memory of her husband’s. Edward was not here. He could no longer reach her. Touch her. And next time Angus tried, she’d be certain her small Scottish dagger was in hand.
In fact, she’d insisted both her sisters wear theirs too. “If that man dares to come near any of us, I want you to have your knife ready. And if he dares to manhandle you, you have my permission to stab him!”
“Oh, Ket!” Selah had said, eyes round. “He wouldn’t dare such a thing, would he?”
“Not at his master’s party,” Verity soothed, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulder. “But Ket’s right. If he tries, he shall not find a Banning girl without a sharp little surprise for him. I’m putting mine in my sleeve!”
Gray arrived, resembling what she remembered of him in England, given his clean coat, white shirt, fancy cravat, and breeches above new stockings and freshly shined buckled shoes. He also wore a powdered wig, which she hadn’t seen on him since they’d embarked upon the Restoration. Aboard ship and working in the fields, it wasn’t practical. But after several social gatherings, Keturah knew that society here still preferred their gentlemen in wigs. Given her fight for respect and her quiet partnership with Gray, she was glad to see he intended to try to fit in with the others. Perhaps if he could gain a foothold, it would assist them both were future troubles to arise.
Yet, as he helped Selah into the double-seated wagon, then Verity, Ket knew it was to her that his eyes strayed, again and again. She hadn’t worn this gown since that very first dinner aboard the ship when he had so obviously wished to rise to her defense with Mr. Burr. And now here he was again, rising to her aid. Insisting he escort them to the party, a party where Angus Shubert might appear. Shepherding them, she told herself. Yet the way he looked at her was not purely as a shepherd, she mused. His blue eyes lingered on her bare shoulders, the pearls at her neck . . . and the warmth of his gaze sent shivers down her back. She accepted his gloved hand, glad for the task and distraction of lifting her skirt and climbing in beside Verity.
Primus helped tuck the end of her skirt in beside her feet, then joined Philip on the bench seat in front of them. It was not as fancy as the old carriage they’d found on Tabletop, but it would do, Ket thought. There was something especially apropos about it, something representative of them here, straddling two worlds. All dressed up in their finery and yet utilizing Gray’s very sensible wagon. She knew that others would be arriving in fine carriages, imported from England and America, and she shoved away a twinge of embarrassment. What falderal was that?
As if reading her mind, Selah said, “What do you suppose our compatriots say of us, traveling in such a fashion? I wish Father’s carriage did not have a broken wheel.”
“They shall think us sensible and stalwart,” Verity said firmly, “because they are English too.”
“Well, some are,” Keturah said. “Some are Danes or Scotsmen.”
“Scotsmen,” Selah mused, giving her sister a playful nudge. “Hmm.”
“All I know,” Gray said from the front seat, “is that I thank God every day for a certain Scotsman getting us safely to this island.”
“Do you believe he will truly return?” Verity asked tentatively. “Some say that men such as him have a girl in every port.”
“But not every girl is Verity Banning,” Ket said. “Do you wish for him to return, Ver?” As much as she did not like the idea of a sailor courting her sister, if it was what Verity wanted . . .
“I . . . know not. Leave it be now. All of you.”
Keturah’s heart began to pound as they came down the lane of Red Rock Plantation. Ver reached out and covered her hands with hers, holding her as if willing her to remain strong. Selah cuddled closer to her. Ket fought to concentrate on all the blessings in her life rather than her old fears. She whispered a prayer of thanksgiving for her sisters, enough people to work their plantations, her three fields now nearly planted, and the Lord’s protection so far. It helped to see Lord and Lady Reynolds waiting to greet them as they pulled up before the grand house—with no Mr. Shubert in sight.
Ket had not decided how she might approach Lord Reynolds about Mr. Shubert’s attack on Matthew, nor his manhandling of her. She would have to pick her time carefully, but first the man needed to know she was a woman of consequence. She must gain his respect. So she summoned her finest manners, wrought at Hartwick Manor and honed at Clymore Castle, to greet both Lord and Lady Reynolds, then introduce them to Gray and her sisters.
The Reynoldses were polite, but Keturah could sense their cold assessment. She caught a meaningful glance from lady to lord as Selah’s silk gloves slipped down to her wrists and they saw her tanned skin. But she ignored it, all with the hope of forging a friendship with these people who would have once known her father.
Her father. Was that part of their suspicious reception of the Bannings? Because he had taken up with Mitilda and fathered a child? By now Keturah had learned that he was one of many who had dalliances with a slave. A number of plantations had a fair number of mixed offspring. Not that it made it right. Yet why were she and her sisters to bear the stain of her father’s sin if they did not hold other planters’ feet to the fire?
Stop it, Ket. Assuming another’s thoughts was something her mother always took her to task over. She accepted Gray’s proffered arm and busied herself with trying to name every person she’d previously met in the room before they were directly encountered. It was with some relief that she saw nearly every gentleman wore a wig, and none of those without had the blond hair of Mr. Shubert. It was silly, really, fearing that he would be present. It wasn’t the place for an overseer to be at his master’s soiree.
Gray, picking up on her agitation, pulled her hand higher on his arm and covered it with his own. He seemed to forget it was there—his warm hand on her icy fingers—and she knew she would be wise to shift her grip to subtly remind him. But she couldn’t help it. She liked the feel of his hand on hers—the quiet reassurance, the steady pulse. How the intimacy of it sent delicious shivers up her arm to her shoulder and neck.
Ket noticed several ladies giving him lingering glances, undoubtedly taken with his visage, as she herself had always been. There was something about him that was so frightfully handsome that she felt somewhat like the ostrich beside the peacock. And yet there was nothing about Gray—particularly in these last months—that spoke of a peacock’s ways. Not like he’d been as a younger man . . . no, there was something changed about him now. More settled. More directed.
Not that he’d become an ostrich like her. Perhaps more like a solid . . . turkey, with a grand array of tail feathers. That was it, she thought with a giggle. A handsome turkey.
He eyed her and smiled too. “What amuses you?”
“Oh!” she said, coloring at being caught in her reverie. “I fear I cannot share,” she said, giving into another giggle.
“Well,” he said, laughing under his breath. “I welcome it, regardless of what it might be. Because you, Ket,” he whispered, leaning closer, “are quite captivating. Especially when you smile.”
It was her turn to blush, not from embarrassment but from pleasure. He seemed true in his speech, not giving in to flirtation. No, what was in his eyes was genuine.
He thinks me captivating, she thought, trying to pretend as if her heart had not begun to race wildly. But surely he was simply trying to reinforce her confidence, here where she felt ill at ease. That was it, she decided. He was merely continuing to be a good friend to her, encouraging her every which way he might.
Jeffrey Weland appeared before them, escorting his sister, Esmerelda. “Lady Tomlinson,” he said, bowing before her. “I am glad to see you again. You have been frightfully absent of late from our gatherings.”
She considered him. His tone held a measure of both chastisement and hurt. “I fear I have been most taxed of late, Mr. Weland, with the running of my estate. Have you been introduced to my friend and partner, Mr. Gray Covington?”
The two men greeted each other, and by their paltry exchange, she quickly saw that they had met before—and both thought the other somehow lacking. Or was it a measure of competition she sensed between them?
Her scalp tingled. She chastised herself for feeling some pleasure over it. You need not men to be vying for you, Ket. You need no man!
And yet her eyes moved to Gray as he turned to speak to Esmerelda Weland. The thoughtful question he asked her, the teasing quirk of his lips. Clearly the girl was flirting, but he seamlessly drew Selah into conversation with her and smoothly turned back to Ket and Jeffrey Weland, as if she were his first priority.
“I hear tell you purchased a fair number of new slaves,” Jeffrey said. “How are you finding it, keeping them all fed? ’Tis a challenge for most new planters.” There was something smug in the way he said it. Did he assume she would fail in her endeavor?
“Actually, Mr. Covington and I are sharing our field hands,” she said. “So together we have found our way through. That said—to assist with our needs—I am considering planting an acre of corn, each stalk with a fish and squash seed too. I’ve heard tell that is how the Indians of the Americas do it. Considering the cost of corn and grain, I have a difficult time believing it would not pay off well, in time.”
Jeffrey scoffed at this, but Gray turned toward her. “Why, Ket, that’s brilliant!” Clearly he had learned of the method too—a stalk of corn, surrounded by a squash vine, and the whole mound fertilized with a big, fat fish.
“Don’t you agree?” she asked, flashing him a grin. “What might it cost us? Seed corn, squash seed . . . we have plenty of fish on-island.”
“Cost you?” Jeffrey guffawed. “It would cost you the bounty that acre of land would produce in sugar! Perhaps you don’t have a head for numbers.”
Ket stiffened. “I do have a head for numbers.”
“And far more,” Gray put in approvingly. “I believe that Teller’s Landing shall do as Tabletop does and try this method of planting food crops. Surely it cannot hurt. Now if you will excuse us, Mr. Weland,” he said smoothly, taking her arm again with some gentle sense of claim, a claim to which Keturah found she did not wish to object, “it appears Lady Reynolds would like for us to take our seats now.”
The guests were led to long tables that extended from the dining room through the Reynolds’ front parlor, covered in white linen and lined with fifty finely crafted chairs. Ket shared a glance with Verity and Selah, having not seen such a finely set table since they had left Rivenshire. There was silver cutlery beside china plates, crystal goblets, candles and flower arrangements placed between every four settings. The room was filled with the heavenly fragrance of orange blossoms and hyacinth, magnolia and jasmine, all carried on a heady scent of beeswax.
Beeswax candles, Keturah thought, instantly transported by a different scent that was purely home. The far more common oily tallow candle was what most Nevisian homes used—certainly at Tabletop where every penny was counted. But as they were seated and the wine began to flow and platter after platter of food was served, she could see that pennies were not counted in this house, only social cachet.
Do they know how their overseer is undermining them? Or is Shubert just what they want? she wondered, glancing over to where Lord and Lady Reynolds were seated. Was he a carefully selected part of their orchestra, directed by them? Left to guard how things were done on Nevis and make certain it remained the same in their absence? Or were they blissfully unaware of his brutish ways? Was it more his cause than theirs to keep things as they had always been on-island?
Conversation came faster as the evening wore on, laughter more boisterous. Through it all, Ket became more and more aware of Gray, observing it all as he was, as if cataloguing it for future reference. He made polite conversation with the lady at his right—an older widow who giggled like a schoolgirl whenever he made a clever comment—and engaged Mr. and Mrs. Malone, a planter and his wife from the southern part of the island, with conversation about their crops. They had dared to plant a portion of indigo this year, rather than all sugar, as the majority of planters favored. Even with declining profits, sugar was still the best bet, and yet fortunately demand for indigo was high with a blight rampant in India causing a shortage, which gave Malone hopes of a fine return.
Gray grew animated with such talk as they moved on to the island’s history with cotton, ginger, and tobacco, none of which had ever been particularly successful, at least as compared with the Carolinas and elsewhere. There were some who had tried wheat, given the expense of importing it from America. But again, acre for acre, sugar ruled. Ket thought this reassuring, especially as she remembered her work-roughened hands hidden beneath her gloves. After all their work planting, she prayed it would pay, and pay well. But she knew they had months now to wait and see.
They were halfway through their dessert—something called a “Lemon Cloud”—when the first gusts of wind began blowing through the open dining room. Most of the candles were snuffed out, immediately plunging the room into relative darkness. The guests seemed to collectively hold their breath, hoping as one that it was an anomaly, a memory of some distant storm finally making its way to shore. But another gust blew through then that extinguished the remaining candles. Servants rushed in with lamps, covered by glass, but everyone was on their feet at once. Keturah felt their alarm, but why? What was it? Surely storms were common on Nevis. It rained practically every night as they slept.
But women were calling to servants to fetch wraps and their husbands’ coats. Everyone seemed to be in motion at once, hurriedly exchanging their farewells. Keturah blinked, surprised that the Reynolds did not seem offended by their guests’ hasty preparations to abandon what had been one of the most elaborate dinner parties of her life. Yet men were laughing and talking about the “storm of sixty-four,” others grumbling that it “best not be a hurricane.”
A hurricane? Memories of her father’s journal, his reports of all but half the house destroyed, sent a chill down her spine. Oh no. Not now, Lord. Not ever. Please . . .
Gray ushered her out to the front of the manor, where servants had already lined up carriages and wagons and horses, clearly noting the storm before the guests inside recognized one was brewing. The first carriage was quickly loaded and moving, flicking whips over horses’ backs, urging them to pick up their pace. Some of the guests were staying over, Ket realized, perhaps too far from home—like the Malones—to safely return without the light of the moon to guide them.
Their own wagon was in the middle of the pack, and the first heavy drops of rain had begun to fall when the girls climbed in with Ket. Philip threw a canvas tarp across their shoulders, and the sisters pulled it over their heads, vainly hoping to save their best dresses from the downpour to come. Gray turned as the wagon lurched forward and handed his powdered wig to her. “Here,” he said with a grin, “keep that under wraps too, would you?”
“Yes,” she said, placing the perfect white mound of curls on her lap while sneaking a look at his slicked-back dark waves. As dashing as he appeared in his wig, she preferred him this way—the way she saw him in the field or lounging on her front porch after a long day. It was more Gray, somehow. More of her Gray, rather than some version of the quintessential British gentleman she’d seen this night. She wanted to see more of who Gray was now, not more of who her countrymen wanted him to be or what she remembered. It made her feel closer to him.
She caught herself with the embarrassing thought and was glad for the cover of the canvas and darkness and rain that might have betrayed her blush. She needed to stop her silly infatuation, once and for all, because where could it possibly lead? Her arrangement with Gray—their steadfast friendship, their partnership as neighboring planters—why, it was as ideal and chaste as she could hope for. To consider anything else was to invite trouble.
Still . . . she reluctantly admitted to herself that she had been disappointed the party had come to such an abrupt end before the promised dancing had begun. Because she had wondered what it would be like to dance with Gray.
Not as a new debutante, anxiously awaiting her old friend to look her way. Not as another’s bride, anxious her husband would see. But here. After all they had been through together, from the moment they had embarked upon the Restoration to becoming neighbors and fellow planters on Nevis. She’d like to experience Gray bowing, taking her hand, leading her to the dance floor and then into his arms . . . What would it have been like to have him look down at her in all her finery for once, rather than in her sweat-soaked day dress?
Memory of him calling her captivating warmed her cheeks.
Stop, Keturah. Stop. He was a friend, nothing more. He could not be anything more. Even if he did have different intentions, it wasn’t seemly, proper to be imagining such things.
Still, her thoughts strayed to Gray’s finances. Was he even in a position to offer for a wife? She thought not. He’d poured his all into Teller’s Landing. His past. His future.
Such idle imaginings! she reprimanded herself. Haven’t you declared that you shall be no one’s wife ever again? Haven’t you sworn that no man shall ever lord over you?
The rain was pounding down now, but she peeked out to see Philip say something to Gray, and Gray laugh heartily. Primus lifted a rod with a covered lantern high and far ahead of them, doing his best to give Philip light for the road. They had slowed down to a lazy walk, fearing a hole in the road that might cost them a wheel.
Rivulets of water formed along the road, which soon created gullies. Another gust of wind came through—so mighty that it ripped the girls’ tarp from their hands. Selah screamed, and Keturah groaned as it went sailing into the dark sheets of rain, knowing her beautiful bronze dress would be ruined in moments.
But she could not help herself. She laughed and looked up to the sky, feeling the rain drench her face and hair and shoulders. There was something exhilarating about it all, wild, as if beckoning her. Despite the wind and water, it was still warm.
Her sisters continued to try to vainly cover themselves with their hands—a patently hopeless endeavor—and Gray gallantly shrugged out of his soaked coat and offered it to them. He looked at Keturah, and even though his face was in too-deep a shadow to make out, she could feel his warm gaze on her. Again, she could not help it—she grinned as she remembered him admiring her smile and wanting to encourage that admiration further.
Perhaps I am going mad, she thought.
But she didn’t feel like she was going mad. She felt curious, more hopeful, more alive than ever. And as long as this was merely a tropical storm and not a hurricane, she believed all would be well enough come morn.
That was her thought, right before lightning cracked, thunder rolled, and then a most terrible, foreign, mucky sound filled her ears.
“What is that?” she cried, glancing up the mountain. As lightning flashed again, a horrible sight filled her vision. The trees and rocks were . . . moving.
“Mudslide!” Gray called. “Hold on!”