Chapter Twenty-Three
London
Rafe finished today’s work, his tallies of wages for his men in the docks and his letter of instructions to his factory clerk in the East End.
He watched his wife leave the room. She came to sit with him each day as he worked on his books.
She had offered often to do them for him, but he relished his own abilities to calculate.
He had been so occupied elsewhere that he had not given his business the attention it deserved.
His wife was skilled, no doubt about it.
And soon, after he caught himself up to the present, and if he purchased a new ship bound for Baltimore and Alexandria in the United States, he would need her expert assistance.
She had proclaimed she would help him run the exports and imports, but also advise on products to be traded.
She was acquainting herself with her own shipping company inherited from her grandfather and working in those middle American ports.
Like she, he would need to hire administrators in those two cities, and her understanding of Americans’ education would be helpful to hire experts.
Yet…
He smiled to himself. She might not feel up to working very soon. He knew why, too. She had but to say the words to confirm that she was his in yet one more way they were bound in dedication and love.
He closed his ledger and stood. Overcome, at once, he paused and considered what he had felt, what he knew in his heart was true.
She was his, in word and deed, as no one else ever would be.
She was his fortune, his prize, his gift.
She had fought to have him, too. She’d not refused or rejected him.
She had only and always proclaimed what she knew was right and just: she loved him.
He loved her. There was no reason on God’s good earth why they should not and could not live together in peace and love.
He might have rescued the lady who was now his wife, but in many ways, she had saved him. She was his beginning and his salvation. She was his joy, and he would not forget that, but honor her all the days of his life.
*
She went to sit on the iron bench in their back garden.
The day was bright and calm, odd for March in England, she had learned.
But she sat by herself for a long while as Rafe finished his letter to his factory clerk.
He had told her earlier about the feats of Dáire O’Neill and his men, who had captured two more of Vaillancourt’s spies.
These two had lived in Brighton. Carlisle and Halsey’s men had gotten another man from Deal last week.
One of Rafe’s men had recently chased a suspect from Dover north to Yarmouth.
There he had brought the man down. They had also taken into custody a young woman who claimed that her contact, none other than Faucon, had sent her to London to impersonate Zeph to her bankers.
Rafe’s man who caught her claimed she did look like Zephora, but her red hair was more strawberry than fire, and her English filled with French accents.
Her capture meant that Zeph and Rafe were free of the worry of that woman trying to impersonate her once more.
All totaled, that meant they had ten more French to catch. But many of them seemed to have disappeared. The hope was they had all returned to France. As a result, all in their circle of friends felt safer and more secure these days.
Watching the birds fly about and sing to welcome spring, she smiled at the passage of time that had brought her now to such happiness, and to a future she would make as joyous for the man she loved as for those men, women, and children who worked the land that gave her wealth.
She hoped to return to them, in a way, the honor they had done for her, through no desire of their own.
She had brought her father’s letter with her to read today.
Her view of him and their relationship had changed in the last year.
What she had suffered and survived had made her more accepting of others.
How people reacted to the slings and arrows of daily life showed her the various ways in which others viewed their past and made way for their future.
She thought herself more tolerant. She planned to be more forgiving.
She took the letter, opened it, and sat, rereading it a few times.
Her father and she had often discussed her own displeasure with the practice of slavery.
Certainly now, since she had suffered the depravity of her attack in prison, she knew personally only a small portion of the despair a person would feel at such theft of their integrity.
She wished even more fervently for her father’s black men and women to be free. To that, her father wrote:
Free them. Free them all.
You have the desire. I did, but feared the end of my livelihood.
As for our mutual past, I regret deeply the rift between you and me.
I liked you, and in my own way, I loved you. I thought you intelligent and funny. I did not tell you, dared not show it. You were a female, and a man did not show such preference to a woman who might upstage him. Even though she be his flesh and blood.
I bid you farewell. Enjoy what I have saved for you. Do with it as your heart demands.
Mine demands you have the means to make yourself happy, though I daresay you can do that without a penny.
With fondness and my own love,
Your father
Thomas Lee Butler of Tidewater, Virginia, United States
*
At length, she heard her husband’s footsteps. He came to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. She knew he could see the open letter of her father.
She took his hand, opened it, and kissed his palm.
He dropped one to the crown of her head. “Shall we sail to Virginia soon? Learn how to free your black men and women?”
“I want them to have their papers soon, their freedom, and for those who wish to go, I will establish a school in Washington with a dormitory.
They will learn to read and write, to do math too.
And for those who are too fearful to leave, I will still make them free.
But I will pay them a yearly wage. We will not tell it everywhere.
Only to them. Hopefully it will be told about so infrequently that many question it and think it a myth.
Otherwise, I know from the past that many will swoop in to destroy the land, their homes, and their livelihoods.
Some will not stop at that but try to take their lives as well.
“But if, even when free, they wish to stay and grow crops, they can. The goods can still be sold anywhere in the world. But the profits become those held in the name of the estate and them collectively. To create that, I need a good lawyer here. And another honorable one there, preferably in the District of Columbia. Lawyers there, my father always said, are more”—she lifted a shoulder—“educated. I want that. No prejudice. No one who will steal profits from the account, thinking they can take funds from a group of Negroes who happen to be free.”
“That,” Rafe said, “is a very good plan. I am proud of you, my darling. So answer me. Do we go to Virginia soon?”
She tilted her head and smiled at him. “Not for a while.”
“We could go next week, next month, or—”
“Next year? I doubt it. Perhaps in five years or ten.”
The trees rustled and swayed, revealing the refracted sunlight in his brilliant emerald eyes. His gaze grew stern, as it always did when some matter of her happiness or her health came up. “Tell me why, madam.”
“I think you and I want to stay in London, or at least remain here for quite a few years.”
He lifted her chin and grinned at her.
“You know why, you darling man.” Of course he did. She had not been far from his arms since the day they wed. He knew every sigh, every whim, every hope, every beat of her heart.
“Do I?” He tormented her with a grin. “Tell me why, Lady Durham.”
“Because, sir, we are having a baby. In September or October, I predict. And I will want another and another. I will not leave my children. Not for money. Not for anything. I love you, my husband. I will stay here, happily, forever and ever. Or until all of them are grown and demand to part with us for a year or two.”
The tears in his eyes gathered as he brought her to him. She kissed them away.
And she knew that was what they had done for each other for more than a year. Now, forevermore, they would kiss each other’s sorrows away and live for each glorious tomorrow.
The Challenges to War and Peace continue…