Chapter 19 #2
The buildings all framed the central house, which, along with the backdrop of trees and river, lent to its grandeur.
The coachman had told them that his name was Alaric.
‘This is a tobacco plantation, Mr Alaric. I understand a lot of work goes on here, so where are the tobacco curing houses?’ Unwilling to appear ignorant, she had read up a little before leaving England.
‘Out of sight, your ladyship. All industrious matters are kept well out of sight and, anyway, the smell would be too much to bear.’
As the luggage headed their way, a line of servants scampered from around the side of the house, the sunlight dappling their dark skins, their faces in stark contrast to their crisp white aprons. Perhaps they had been waiting for the luggage to be unloaded before making their appearance.
Leaving the humidity on the outside, they entered the cool interior of Glen Dirk.
A circular carpet covered the central area of the reception hall, polished parquet flooring showing around its edge.
Lochranza looked up to see she was standing beneath a cupola that capped the roof, probably the one on which Raleigh was perched, eyeing the state he had named in honour of his queen.
Doors to the dining room, library, study, breakfast room, plus another six doors opening onto other rooms, encircled the reception hall.
Immediately ahead of her, a wide staircase with gleaming banisters swept up to the next floor.
The bedrooms, she assumed, and thrilled at the thought of the one she would share with her betrothed once they were married.
* * *
Within the first few days of being there, Lochranza made a point of finding out everything she could about the Glen Dirk household and the plantation surrounding it. She assumed Ethan would appreciate her doing that.
She found out there were a hundred slaves working in the tobacco fields.
Eight others worked in the house, most of whom were women.
The exception was Jove, the butler, a man who walked with a limp with the aid of a crooked stick and wore a yellow silk waistcoat resplendent with embroidered birds and leaves.
His head was as shiny as a conker, his jaw oddly greyish and square.
In the evening before dinner, she heard the tapping of his cane and noticed he never raised his voice to any of the women he commanded. Perhaps the cane was more than a support for his disabled leg.
Clarence, who had decided to stay a few days until Moira settled in, informed her that Jove’s leg was due to his continual attempt to escape when he was younger.
‘I heard it from the coachman,’ he said to them.
‘When old Jove was younger, he kept running away, so they hamstrung him,’ he told them.
‘He was living somewhere else then and working in the fields. Once they did that to him he weren’t no good for that, only for being a house slave. That was when Mr Ethan bought him.’
Lochranza’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Mr Ethan?’
‘Apparently your man don’t like all that lord and lady stuff in this country. Says it don’t suit – that’s what Alaric told me.’
Moira was frowning. ‘What does hamstrung mean?’
Lochranza enlightened her. ‘It means that they sliced across the back of his knee so he couldn’t ever run again.’
Conversation ceased immediately. The two women both considered how painful that had been and how terrible for one human being to do that to another.
‘Not that Mr Ethan had anything to do with it,’ Clarence reminded them. ‘Like I just said, it was a previous owner. Then, on top of making ’im a cripple, he sold him on.’ He paused as he reflected on the information he’d passed on to them. ‘Nasty business this slavery.’
‘Yes,’ said Lochranza, thankful that Ethan was not responsible for such a terrible thing, but sickened by it all the same. ‘I think it is.’
It turned out that the girl who was to be her personal maid was Jove’s daughter, Helen.
‘I was named after Helen of Troy,’ the girl explained to her.
Jove possessed an unapproachable demeanour. Despite being hamstrung, he had the manner of a man in charge of his own life and his own destiny.
Jove had two daughters, Helen and Venus. Helen was about eighteen years old and Venus about a year younger. No mention was made of him having a wife, though in time Alaric told Clarence and he passed on the news that Jove had had two wives but was now a widower.
‘I think one got sold on and the other died. But I don’t know for sure.’
Helen seemed happy enough, but Venus, definitely the most beautiful of the two, looked of a sulky disposition.
Lochranza asked Helen why this was.
‘Oh. She’s just at a difficult time,’ she said dismissively whilst laying out clean linen on the bed.
Helen had a long face with high cheekbones. Her mouth was generous and her eyes wide set and slightly upturned at the end; not so much catlike as permanently looking surprised.
Venus, on the other hand, was well named. She had the most luminous eyes, the same high cheekbones as her sister, but a face in perfect symmetry and without the added length. A pretty girl.
Helen maintained a reluctance to answer. Short of giving her a good shaking, Lochranza decided to be firm of voice, if nothing else.
‘Your sister seems sullen. Is she terribly unhappy?’
Helen looked down at what she was doing, her coppery brown fingers smoothing the clean linen, not because it needed smoothing, but a diversion, something to do while she thought things through. ‘Venus, well, she want to leave here. She don’t want to work for the master any more. She want to go.’
The obvious thing to ask next was why she wanted to leave, but Lochranza found herself hesitating.
She’d heard stories about the masters of plantations forcing themselves on the female slaves they owned.
What if Ethan had forced himself on this girl and that was the reason she wanted to leave?
Could she marry Ethan if that was the case?
‘Has the master behaved inappropriately towards your sister?’
She waited with bated breath for the answer.
Helen dropped her eyes and shook her head. ‘Lester Rainwater. They wants to get married, but the master won’t let them. Said it wouldn’t work.’
‘Why doesn’t he think it will work?’
If Helen could have hung her head lower, she would have. As it was, her swan-like neck was bent as much as it would go, her eyes hooded and fixed on the carpet.
‘He said it was a mongrel mix, Venus being African and Lester’s mother being Spanish and his father a Cherokee Indian.’
Her heart went out to the girl and decided to challenge Ethan about it – when he got home.
Once she was alone in her pre-nuptial bedroom, Lochranza sat in front of her dressing table, touching her hair as she considered her options and the few attributes she remembered about this man.
Ethan had an arrogance about him that suited his looks. It was as though he were challenging people to look beyond the handsome face or even daring them to call him out – pistols or swords at dawn! Even fists. She wouldn’t put bare-knuckle fighting beyond his capabilities.
His arrogance was also part of his charm, but what right did he have to keep a young woman from her lover?
The answer was painfully obvious but unpalatable.
The girl was a slave and a pretty one at that.
Had Ethan wanted her for himself? It would not be that unusual; she knew many ladies in polite society whose husbands sought their physical pleasures outside of the matrimonial bed.
Details were only whispered and always in private.
Once they’d produced the required heirs to their husband’s estates, the women mostly turned a blind eye to their husband’s infidelities.
Better he finds satisfaction elsewhere than they bear a child every year, plus the not insignificant chance of death in childbirth.
Could she – would she – too come to that conclusion?
She stared into the mirror, examining the colour of her own eyes, her cheekbones and the flaming veil of hair that glowed like sunset.
The face of Lady Lochranza Kildare, betrothed of Lord Ethan MacKinnon, an attractive man, an adventurer, a man who led a double life.
It was the latter that had first attracted her.
She hadn’t thought of the amount of time they were likely to be apart and what her fiancé might get up to if in time she was constrained by the duties of motherhood.
‘What have I done?’
Burying her face in her hands, she fought the despair rising inside. It wasn’t like her to be despairing. Wasn’t she quite an adventuress herself? Yes! She was.
‘Something can always be done about something.’
Somebody used to say that to her, though she couldn’t remember who.
Coming out from behind her hands, she faced her reflection.
She would have the matter out with Ethan the moment he came home. Slave or not, the girl deserved to be happy. And anyway, he had plenty more slaves – both men and women.