Chapter Nineteen

“But who the devil is this mysterious investor?”

The governor of the Carolinas, Mr. Joseph Blake, scowled over his dozen guests from where he sat at the head of his dining table. Adriana glanced around as if seeking an answer herself, blinking her eyes in feigned ignorance.

“No one knows,” said one of the landowners at the other end of the table. “And Elsworth, despicable character that he is, won’t say a word.”

“Elsworth is still your factor, isn’t he, Edmund?” The governor lifted a glass of pirated Bordeaux to his lips. “You’ve asked him about this devilish silent partner, then?”

“I have, and he has kept his lips as puckered as a—” the landowner caught himself before he scandalized the ladies. “Whoever this new investor is, he’s becoming as rich as Midas with Elsworth’s help. He’s as sharp as you, my dear governor, in his investments.”

“Too sharp for his own good,” Mr. Blake added. “He’d best watch himself or I might use that new court of Vice Admiralty for its intended purpose.”

“Come, governor.” Nicholas Trott, seated at Adriana’s left, leaned back in his seat. “Would you jail a man for cutting into your business with the Catawba? It was his business first. And there is plenty of opportunity for this sly ghost, and for all of us, here in the Carolinas.”

“There’s plenty of opportunity, indeed!” Blake protested. “Why, then, must he trade with the same tribe I’ve been wooing for a year?”

“You are not the only wooer, Governor. You have simply been, until now, the richest and most powerful one.”

Adriana frowned, wondering why the governor always seated her next to this tactless attorney general.

“Well,” the governor sputtered, “I suspect Elsworth has been funding pirates, undoubtedly with this nameless investor’s money.”

“Pirates or privateers?” Nicholas asked.

“What difference is there?” Blake retorted. “Name me a privateer who hasn’t at one time or another been a pirate. I can call into question at least one of Elsworth’s investments, and then I’ll have him and the pirate hanging off White Point—”

“Governor Blake,” she heard herself saying, knowing the governor was powerful enough to accuse Elsworth of anything whether it was true or not. “Are you truly talking about hanging good businessmen?” She leaned forward so her breasts surged above the décolletage of her new emerald-green silk. “Then wherever would the women of Charles Town get such necessities as these?” She patted her mouth with a napkin made of Dutch linen and then raised her Spanish goblet filled with French wine.

The governor grinned, his wine-dazzled gaze slipping over the expanse of her shoulders. “I would not want to inconvenience the ladies, that is true, dear mademoiselle. I’ll have to find another way to thwart this man.”

“Ah, look,” said the governor’s wife suddenly, shooting Adriana a dark look. “The next course is served.”

The house slaves brought in the next course. She tasted the venison, drowned in molasses, and then quietly put down her fork. Reaching for her wine, she strained to hear the conversations around her. From the provincial nobility in the Carolinas, she learned what ships were in port, what ships were expected, and how the sporadic Indian wars affected trade in the backcountry beyond the settlement. She had no fear that these men would guess that she was the investor Blake hated so much.

She sat among them like a French spy among English generals.

“Something amuses you, mademoiselle?”

She found Nicholas Trott’s close-set gaze focused on her in that greedy way. It was so predictable it made her sigh.

“I was just thinking,” she said, pondering what information she could tease out of him, “about how angry the governor becomes in the face of competition.”

“Name me a governor who hasn’t used his power to line his own pockets,” he mused. “Still, I’d like to meet this investor who challenges him so well. None of the rest of us dared for fear of the repercussions.”

“Then it would be wise to guard your tongue around him. The man you just challenged is the most powerful man in the Carolinas.”

“Governors come and go in this settlement.” He shrugged. “Blake will leave soon enough and another will take his place. But certainly we can think of a more interesting subject than politics.” His gaze slipped to the lace of her chemise peeping from the edge of her bodice.

She said, pointedly, “Politics intrigues me.”

“A strange interest, for a woman.”

“In politics lies power, does it not?”

“Not always.” His brows raised. “Often it lies in money, or influence. And such things shouldn’t muddle your mind.”

“Like this wine?”

She took a small sip of wine and wondered if men ever tired of these silly verbal games. Then she caught a snatch of conversation from the governor’s end of the table and tilted her head to hear better.

“…I wanted to meet him this afternoon but he had other business to attend to. He claims that the war with the French is over.”

“Governor, every year comes word that the war is over.”

“Yes, but he said he heard it announced, and that, sooner rather than later, we’ll get an official notice…”

Adriana started as she felt warm breath by her ear.

“You’re a cruel, heartless woman, Adriana,” Trott whispered, leaning close. “I’d been told that blood runs hotter south of the English Channel, but with all your strange chatter, now I’m not so sure.”

“Mr. Trott.” She spoke in irritation, having lost the thread of the governor’s conversation. “I didn’t think you liked the French.”

“Who could resist a Frenchwoman with eyes like a mulatto and skin the color of burnished gold?”

“As attorney general,” she said, “I was sure you’d resist quite well. After all, many French natives like myself have such a difficult time winning in your courts.”

It was an unwise comment, but sometimes even in the disguise of a fine young lady the street urchin came out.

“Trott,” came a voice from across the table, “are you bothering the charming Mademoiselle Joubert?”

The voice belonged to a prominent rice planter whose name Adriana had forgotten. His open, blue-eyed gaze rested with unabashed admiration on her face.

“She has no need for your defense, William,” Trott said. “At times her lips have the venom of a water moccasin.”

“Well, if Trott says anything amiss, Miss,” the planter offered, “just let me know.”

She smiled sweetly at her protector in a way she’d practiced in a mirror, and watched the color rise on his face. She wondered if the attention she received at these dinner parties was due exclusively to the dearth of women in Charles Town or whether all men were susceptible to a pair of white shoulders.

Truly, it was a wonder that women didn’t rule the world.

Finally, the governor’s wife stood up and announced that they would all retire to the nearby sitting room. Adriana breathed a sigh of relief, and not just because she’d be free of Nicholas Trott’s brooding attentions. The day’s heat had become oppressive despite the efforts of the slaves waving cane fans in an attempt to whirl a breeze in the closed room. At least in the sitting room the windows were thrown open to the Cooper River.

Adriana and the three other women sat in the carved mahogany chairs near the unlit fireplace. She refused a glass of strong brandy in favor of keeping a clear head. One of the plantation wives, a nervous woman with wispy brown hair, pulled her small silver flute out of its case and began to play a melody.

Adriana remembered her Breton horn, which lay wrapped in cloth with Chou-Chou’s harness buried in a drawer in her bedroom. She had not touched the horn since Chou-Chou had died. She wondered what these genteel guests would say if she brought it in and played a pirate jig. It certainly would be more entertaining than this reedy flute.

She waited patiently for the music to end so the men could go back to discussing business and she could continue to gather information.

She heard a rustling outside the sitting room. The front door opened and closed and she heard the murmuring of male voices as a new guest arrived. She could just see him through the open doors, an unfamiliar figure standing with his back to her. He wore a blue satin waistcoat embroidered in gold. His hair was his own, pulled back and knotted at the nape of his neck. She knew instantly that he was a seaman, a merchant captain most likely, considering his dress. He stood with his feet braced apart as if to balance the rocking of the deck. There was an angle to his neck that suggested he was used to staring long distances and measuring his position by the stars.

A pang shot through her—a pang of forgotten memory, a sudden longing for the prickly feel of ropes against the arches of her feet, the tingle of sea spray on her skin, the lift of a salt-breeze in her hair.

Then the man turned around.

Adriana’s heart stopped.