Chapter 17
Susanna hurried with a grimly silent Adam past a densely wooded bend in the road, the Grymes’s waiting carriage and the bewildered coachman vanishing from view.
She scarcely noticed the prickly brambles snagging her silk gown, or the birds overhead twittering nervously at their sudden appearance.
Nor did she feel the warmth of the early-afternoon sun, which was intense despite the dappled shade and light breeze.
All she knew was that her careful deception had suddenly been revealed and she was going to pay.
She had no idea what was to become of her.
Would Adam turn her over to the county constable in Williamsburg, as he had threatened in the coach?
What would they do to her when they determined her crime?
Lock her in the pillory where she would be pelted with sticks, stones, and rotten eggs?
Whip her at the post until her back was striped and bleeding? Hang her?
“This is far enough,” Adam said, his harsh voice causing her to flinch as he caught her arm and abruptly stopped her.
“The coachman can’t hear us this far away.
” His expression was deadly serious, although his arresting brown eyes were filled with torment.
“Camille died aboard the Charming Nancy, didn’t she, Susanna? ”
How strange it was not to be addressed as Camille, she thought, remaining dazedly mute.
Yet it was almost a relief to be herself again.
She had always known deep in her heart that her masquerade had only a slim chance of succeeding, that someone might discover she was an impostor.
She had done her best to fulfill her promise to Camille… but then again, had she?
How had she given herself away? Everything had been going so perfectly up until this morning, when she had sensed that something was bothering him. Had he known her real identity even before he heard about her and Dominick?
“Dammit, Susanna, answer me! Did Camille die from the fever or did you murder her to suit your own selfish ends?”
“What?” she exclaimed. Fierce indignation swept her at this preposterous charge.
“How…how dare you ask me such a thing! Camille Cary and I were friends, the best of friends!” Realizing she had just admitted to him that she was an impostor, she clamped her mouth shut.
Yet, astonishingly, she didn’t regret the revelation.
She hadn’t felt so much like her true self since she’d arrived in Virginia.
“Friends have killed friends, and scheming servants their hapless employers for much less than what you had to gain,” he countered. “The richest tobacco plantation on the York—”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the constable?” she demanded, finding it exhilarating that she could finally vent her feelings after weeks of keeping them to herself. Considering the bleakness of her situation, what did it matter? She had nothing left to lose…
Except, perhaps, her life.
“I might if you don’t start talking, Susanna,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Now answer my question.”
“Of course I didn’t murder her,” she replied, her resentment tempered not so much by his threat as by her recollections of those last terrible days aboard the Charming Nancy. “Camille died from the fever. She was sick for over two weeks…and then she was gone.”
“How was the death recorded?”
“I gave them my name, Susanna Jane Guthrie. It’s what Camille wanted me to do.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“A few days before she died, she asked me to take her place in Virginia if anything happened to her. She must have known how sick she was…” Susanna sighed heavily, remembering their painful conversation as vividly as if it had taken place only yesterday.
“She wanted me to become Camille Cary, to inherit Briarwood for her. She insisted we looked so much alike her plan couldn’t fail.
I tried to tell her that it wouldn’t work, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She made me swear.”
Adam snorted in derision, his expression incredulous. “You expect me to believe that? Why would anyone give such a vast inheritance to someone who wasn’t even a family member? You’re nothing but a common waiting-maid, for God’s sakes!”
So that’s all she was now in his eyes, Susanna thought, his callous words cutting deeply. It was obvious his professed love had vanished the instant he realized she was not Camille Cary. Oh, if only her own overwhelming feelings for him would fade so quickly!
No, it was just as well this way, she amended vehemently, berating herself for ever having believed he might care and shoving away any thoughts of love. Bastard! It was about time they started looking at each other from the same level…hired man to lady’s maid.
“I told you Camille and I were friends, almost like sisters,” she insisted, her outrage mounting anew. “Camille truly cared about me, cared about what would happen to me if she didn’t make it to Virginia—”
“How touching,” Adam broke in sarcastically, trying to forget what Polly had told him about the woman she thought had been Camille weeping so miserably at the burial.
“But I don’t believe you. When you realized that Camille wasn’t going to recover, you saw an opportunity that you couldn’t resist and you took it!
The chance for a lady’s maid to become a real lady. ”
“That’s not true! It wasn’t like that at all!”
“It must have been! No one would give away so much wealth to a servant—”
“Camille would, and she did! She was the most gentle, the most kind and generous person I’ve ever known.
She never thought about herself. That’s why she got struck down with the fever.
One of the rare times she left our cabin, she tried to help a little boy who had taken sick, but then she caught it herself.
The boy died, his parents…and then Camille. ”
As Adam briefly pondered Susanna’s impassioned words, he had to admit that, however farfetched her story sounded, everything he had heard from James Cary about Camille’s sweet and giving nature indicated that she very well might have done such a thing. Then another thought struck him.
“What of Lady Redmayne? She’s the rightful heir, the only one remaining. Surely Camille realized that Briarwood would go to her aunt if she died—”
“Of course she did!” Susanna interrupted him, her brilliant eyes flashing emerald fire.
“That’s the other reason why she wanted me to have her inheritance, probably the most important one.
Camille thought she was being selfish, but she wasn’t.
She came up with such a plan out of love for her father, knowing how hard and long he and her grandfather had worked to build Briarwood out of Virginia’s wilderness and how much they had loved the land.
She knew that her aunt hated the colonies and would never come here to live.
If Lady Redmayne ever inherited Briarwood, the plantation would be sold outright! ”
That much was probably true, Adam grudgingly granted her, having heard from James Cary of the deep resentment harbored against the planter and his late father by Lady Redmayne.
James had told him that the stubborn baroness had refused his every invitation to visit Briarwood, saying she would rather die than ever set foot in such a vile, uncivilized place.
“I was Camille’s only hope to save everything her family had worked and struggled for,” Susanna continued, her chin raised defiantly, “but now Lady Redmayne’s going to find out the truth, and where will that leave you and your own schemes, Mr. Adam Thornton?
You won’t have Briarwood, that’s for sure—not that I would have let you have it, even if you hadn’t discovered who I was.
Either way, you’d find yourself soothing your grasping ambition with some lesser planter’s daughter, like Celeste Grymes! ”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, stunned by her vehemence.
“Surely you can imagine! You’re an intelligent man to have come so far!
Did you really think that I, as Camille Cary, could have ever married you, a hired man, a paid worker, a former indentured servant?
Perhaps, as a high and mighty crop master, you might be good enough to wed some other planters’ daughters, but not one who owned the richest plantation on the York! ”
Adam felt as if he had just been slammed hard in the chest, the tide of their heated exchange suddenly turned against him. “I had James Cary’s permission, his wholehearted approval of the match—”
“So you say. But how do I know you didn’t seize upon Mr. Cary’s death to better your own station in life?
A hired man becomes one of the Tidewater’s wealthiest planters.
What a coup! How do I know that everything you told me wasn’t a lie?
You have no proof that he gave you his blessing, Adam, as I have no proof that Camille wanted me to have Briarwood.
Now, where does that bloody well leave us? ”
She was right, Adam thought grimly as a charged silence rose between them, broken by the distant restless neighing from the Grymes’s matched bays. He had no proof.
Yet had she really believed that everything he had said to her was a lie?
Even that he loved her? No, that couldn’t be true!
He would have sworn that she cared about him…
he had seen a softness in her eyes whenever she looked at him.
He had felt it in the way she returned his kisses, melted in his embrace, called his name at the height of her passion
What the hell does it matter now? he railed at himself, attempting to repress his powerful feelings. He had obviously been wrong about her.