‘IS REGINA seeing to your every need?’ Harding asked his wife. As he stood at the end of her bed, the whip he was holding kept tapping impatiently against one of his riding boots.
Back home and propped in her own four-poster bed at Forest Hall, a patchwork quilt tucked high round her twisted face, Kitty Harding was still unable to speak. But she managed to nod her head.
‘I have ordered Doctor Mason to attend you regularly until you are cured.’
She nodded again, her eyes wide with gratitude. He turned abruptly away and, as if unable to remain a moment longer, strode from the room. Regina waited for a few minutes, glancing round to see that everything was in order and going over to straighten the coverlet on the bed. But when Mistress Kitty’s hand reached out seeking hers she drew away.
‘I’ll send Jenny up to keep you company. I’m going out for a walk but I’ll come back and read to you.’
She left the silent, stuffy room, clean now but still cluttered and claustrophobic, and descended the stairs. Collecting her cloak on the way she left the house and went round to the kitchen building. The kitchen was also much cleaner than it had been in the past. Wooden tables and shelves had been scrubbed, pans and kettles gleamed, joints of meat hung in neat rows from the ceiling beams.
‘Jenny,’ Regina called sharply. ‘Go upstairs and sit with Mistress Harding until I return.’
The wind was blowing hard and she had to put up her hood and hug her cloak around herself. But she was glad to escape from the house so that she could think in peace. In the bedroom that she shared with Mistress Kitty she was constantly aware of the older woman’s eyes upon her. It was an even worse distraction than her prattling voice had been. She had not been able to gather enough nerve to take over another bedroom for herself but she had ordered a large closet in Mistress Kitty’s room to be cleared and a bed put in there. So at least she was not forced to sleep with the woman any more.
As she walked along, head bent against the wind and cloak tugging and flapping, she mulled over her recent visit to Williamsburg. The attack in the ballroom crept about at the back of her mind like a spider but, shrinking away from it, she tried to concentrate on Williamsburg’s spacious houses and gardens sweet-smelling with flowers and rustling with trees. The shops, too, had been places of attraction with their stocks of coloured silk petticoats, aprons and hoods, dress caps, stomachers and knots, French flowers for trimming, silk gloves and mitts, leather and brown thread, fine Irish muslins for ladies’ gowns and many other articles.
One day she and Gav would visit Williamsburg from their own plantation and they would wander around these shops making purchases. Already she had begun compiling lists of things they would need for their house as well as for their persons. The personal articles would be mostly for Gav because she had many gowns and other possessions that Mistress Kitty had given her.
She had made inquiries about the price of land, too, but it was not so much that expense that worried her. Slaves would have to be bought to work their plantation. Tobacco growing needed a great many workers if it were going to be a paying proposition of the kind she envisaged. She wondered if it might be better to make do with Gav’s fifty acres at first and have enough slaves to work it. Then, after Gav and she had sold a couple of crops, and could afford it, they could buy more land. Such thoughts and dreams obsessed most of her waking hours. She was more truly in the house and on the plantation that one day she and Gav would own than she was in the house and plantation owned by Robert Harding.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Harding’s voice slashed unexpectedly through her thoughts. He reined his horse to a halt near her. She could smell it and feel the steam from it and feel the little earth tremors as it pawed the ground.
‘Walking and taking the air. I left Jenny with Mistress Kitty.’
‘It’s pouring with rain,’ he said.
She hadn’t noticed the rain, so deep and safe had she been in her dreams. Now, looking up at Harding, she became aware of icy water whipping her cheeks and blurring her vision. She said:
‘I suppose I’d better turn back.’
‘You can ride with me.’ Suddenly, leaning down, he hoisted her up to sit side saddle in front of him.
His arms enclosed her on either side as they held the reins and she felt the jerk of his body hard against hers as he kicked the horse’s flank to urge it on. She sat as still as the movement of the horse permitted, her stillness coming from deep inside. It was as if she were spiritually paralysed or waiting like a cornered hypnotised animal. Eventually Harding said:
‘You’re a strange female. What age are you?’
‘Sixteen, nearly seventeen.’
‘My wife had hopes of marrying you off.’
‘I’ve no wish to be married.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like men.’
He gave a short burst of laughter.
‘That could soon be cured by the right man.’
‘No.’
‘You’ll have to marry sometime.’
‘No.’
‘It may not always be possible for you to live here.’
‘I’ll live somewhere else.’
‘Now that you’re such a beauty, no wife would trust you in her house.’
‘Your wife did.’
‘My wife is a fool.’
Regina would have liked to say, ‘She was a fool to have married you,’ but she hadn’t the nerve. Instead she lowered her head and muttered,
‘I have my plans.’
‘Yes, I don’t doubt that. I’ve often wondered what schemes you were hatching during your long silences.’
Keeping her head lowered and her gaze averted she made no reply. His nearness and the way they swayed together in tune with the animal beneath them tortured and confused her. His arms, like two iron bars imprisoning her against the heat of his body, made her feel safe, yet at the same time in terrifying danger. Never before had she been so glad to see Forest Hall.
He lifted her down and no sooner had her feet touched the ground that she hurried away into the house. Running up the stairs she did not look back to see if Harding had followed her indoors, but she heard another of his abrupt humourless laughs before she burst into the bedroom. After ordering the servant to leave, she shut the door. Leaning against it taking deep breaths, she felt too distressed to care about Mistress Kitty’s large eyes riveted upon her.
She couldn’t understand what was happening to her. She seemed to be breaking up into two people. One part of herself hated all men, was sickened and revolted by them; another part was causing her fear and confusion by unexpectedly different reactions to Harding. There were times when one part of herself actually admired him, admired his hardness, his abrupt dogmatic manner, even his craggy face and hefty muscular body.
Now more acute and frightening feelings were taking possession of her. Trembling against the door, she struggled to quell them. The tingling excitement of Harding’s body rubbing against hers as they swayed together on the horse. The easy strength of his arms as he lifted her down. The closeness of him. The heat.
Stumbling away from the door she tore off her cloak and flung it aside. Then she dabbed at her face with the cool water in the jug on the washstand. Feeling calmer she sat down in front of the dressing-table and with slow determined strokes brushed her hair and arranged the long thick curl that hung over the front of one shoulder.
All the time, Mistress Kitty’s eyes watched her through the looking-glass. As last she rose and went out of the room to call down to Jenny that she would have her meal with Mistress Kitty instead of in the dining-room. Then, picking up a book, she went over to sit by the bed, but not too close so that Mistress Kitty could not reach her to touch her. She read without interest or feeling in her voice. The spiders were multiplying in her mind but she was ignoring them. She was thinking of the bedroom she would have in her own house. She was thinking of how she would go downstairs and have her meals with Gav and of how they would be happy and safe together.
Her voice was still droning on when the door opened and Harding towered in the doorway.
‘You’ll come downstairs and have your meals in the dining-room as usual, mistress.’
‘I want to stay with Mistress Kitty.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told.’ With that he swung the door shut.
She sat with head bowed staring at the book yet unable to continue reading it. Eventually she said,
‘I hate that brute. I wish I had never come here.’ It was as if they were two magnets and their hatred was drawing them together. The thought terrified her. ‘I hate him. I wish I was back at the store with Gav. But it won’t be long now until his indenture is finished. Then we’ll have our own place and I won’t need to care about anyone.’
Gav often thought of the time he would be free but he did not think of it in the same way as Regina. He was happy working in the store. Since Regina had gone he worked mostly downstairs and he enjoyed meeting and talking with the folk who came in to do business. He had plenty of help too in the shape of Tom, another, younger indentured servant and also Booster and Coolidge, Negro slaves purchased by Mr Speckles on behalf of Master Ramsay. There was Mamma Sophy too, who cooked for Mr Speckles and himself. Mr Speckles enjoyed a good dram but unfortunately did not have the constitution to contain it. Often the morning after having had a few too many, he was unable to lift himself from his bed. There he would moan and groan and feebly writhe about, hair straggling across a sickly green face, skeleton fingers plucking at the blankets.
Mamma Sophy would cluck her tongue and shake her black head and say,
‘Liquor goin’ be the death o’ that pore man.’
And she would puff up and down the stairs with tempting delicacies to try and put some strength back into the invalid. But many’s the time she complained about how inconvenient the layout of the store building was.
‘What they make this stair outside fo’? And why’s the eatin’ room not downstairs? And what’s this kitchen hut stuck on the back o’ the store fo’?’
But as she scolded herself most of the time, nobody paid much heed to her.
More and more Mr Speckles depended on Gav to run the place. Gav didn’t mind in the least. He thrived on the extra responsibility. The longer he worked in the store, the more he realised that that was what he wanted to do. One day he would be a store manager, just as Master Ramsay had predicted he would. Regina was wrong about Ramsay. Back in Glasgow she had spoken of him with hate and prophesied that he meant to ruin Gav’s life by sending him to Virginia and that he meant to sell him to the plantations as a slave.
Regina was wrong about a lot of things. She thought they were both looking forward to living on some lonely piece of land deep in the forest when his indenture was finished. But he viewed the prospect with nothing but horror. It wasn’t the task of clearing the land and building a log cabin that worried him. He wasn’t afraid of hard work. He’d grown into a strong, hefty lad and could fell a tree and saw wood with the best of them. No, it was the loneliness he had no stomach for. Regina was different from him. She liked to be on her own. She seemed to shrink away from people all the time. Whereas he was always reaching out to them. Often he thought of giving up the idea of having land and just continuing to work at the store after his indenture was finished. But it worried him to disappoint Regina.
‘You can’t think of her all the time,’ Abigail Hershy, the blacksmith’s daughter, told him. Abigail was the same age as him. She had fair hair tied in a knot on top of her head with a few wispy tendrils escaping around her face.
‘Yes, I can,’ he protested. ‘She’s my sister. We’ve only got each other.’
Abigail fixed him with one of her earnest unblinking stares.
‘People get married, you know.’
Gav had never thought of that. He thought of it now. Then he shook his head.
‘Not Regina. She hates men.’
‘Lots of girls say that. They don’t really mean it. She’s bound to get married. All girls do.’
Gav didn’t look convinced but he didn’t say anything and eventually Abigail said,
‘You’ll get married too.’
He had never thought of that either. He stared at Abigail and was surprised to see her face become crimson. It was quite an interesting face really. Serious brown eyes contrasted with a cute little turned-up nose and dimpled chin. He liked Abigail and they had become firm friends. He liked her father too and sometimes helped him in the forge.
‘I suppose I will,’ he said at last, ‘but any land I take and any house I build will be here in the settlement.’
‘A man needs a wife,’ said Abigail, who had an honest and practical nature, despite her weakness for blushing.
‘That’s true,’ Gav agreed. ‘Especially in a country like this.’
‘And plenty of sons to help with the work. My poor father was unlucky. He only had me.’
‘Now you’re being silly,’ Gav said. ‘How could anyone be unlucky who had you?’
Her blush deepened but she looked pleased. He was pleased too. No, more than pleased. Happiness warmed up inside him and soothed through his veins. He felt ten feet tall.
He smiled at her and, after a minute of gazing earnestly, searchingly into his eyes, she smiled too.