Angel's Flight (23 page)

“I never wished to bring shame upon my family. And I am content to be under your guidance, uncle,” she said “But you will please excuse me. My head aches. A fall taken from horseback a few days ago.”

“A fall?” Concern succeeded Jacob’s desire to control. Quickly pushing back his chair, he came straight to her side. A broad paw awkwardly came to pat her shoulder.

“My dear, you should’ve said. All this can wait. Go to your room, child. I’ll send Harriet and she can get whatever you need. But mind,” he cautioned as she crossed the room, “not a word about this marriage to anyone.”

As tired and upset as she was, there was comfort in ascending the stairs and entering her clean, quiet room. There were all her things: the flower quilt she’d sewn during her happy time with ‘Bram, the Shakespeare she loved, her mother’s picture and a Dutch music box.

Several treasured, worn cornhusk dolls that had come with her from Schoharie Creek leaned against the pillow. Everything was dusted, tidily waiting for her return. How many times had she despaired of ever seeing any of this again?

The leaves of the big maple outside sent in a ripple of light and shadow. For a long moment she simply stood still, tears of joy forming in her eyes.

Then, all too soon, the gnawing fear returned. It would be unbearable to go on walking the earth without him, dreaming of his caress, and longing for the warm strength of his body!

Sitting down upon her clean Dutch bed, Angelica picked up the nearest cornhusk doll, hugged it, and started to cry.

Chapter Eighteen

For a few days, Angelica did little. At first, it was easy because she was exhausted. Her body, her mind and heart were bruised after so many blows.

She prayed for Jack’s safety every night. She also prayed to dream of him. Waiting for sleep, she was haunted by memories of his lovemaking, of heavenly ecstasies, and earthly wet thighs—but images of him rarely appeared.

If he did come into a dream, it was to defend her. Over and over, he slew M’Bain, defeated Davy Bell or foiled George Armistead, but as soon as his mission was accomplished, the dreamscape would change, and she would lose him. It seemed as if she spent entire nights searching for him.

On the first day home, with the help of Harriet, she bathed and washed her hair, brushing it dry at the sunny window. Because she noticed Harriet looking at her ring, she once again attempted to remove it.

This time, with a little soap and a little twisting, it came off. She did not want to put it away in the jewelry box, so instead she hung the ring on a chain and wore it beneath her clothes. Here, she could feel the continual touch of it between her breasts.

When Angelica set to housework again, it was with a kind of frenzy. She cleaned and rearranged the display of china on the mantel; she polished the silver plate and every candlestick.

One day she got into a bag of scraps that had been accumulating. As she sorted through the small collection of bits and pieces of fabrics in her bag, she found herself remembering.

Here she found a scrap from a dress worn long ago to a wonderful summer lawn party, a pale Egyptian cotton, so fine and soft, the gossamer wing of an errant angel. This tiny triangle was too small to contain even a small portion of the indigo flowers that had been embroidered in bouquets across the skirt.

A pity, she thought, saddened by the memory. Ah, was I ever that innocent?

But another piece caught her eye, and she smiled, seduced again by memory. It was fairly large, overall broader than the span of both
her hands, and she remembered the long cloak of which it had been the lining.

The cloak had belonged to her mother. It was a wonderful bottle green wool, woven in a herringbone pattern. The lining, the small surviving piece of which she now held in her hands, had been a softer wool, lighter in texture and weight, in a brilliant antique gold.

How she had loved the flash of that lining when her mother walked!

Truly, she said to herself with a smile, there is no greater bond than love. And, truly, love conquers all!

Was there enough to create the next row of her quilt? In a flash, Angelica was measuring, and then, speedily, cutting.

There has to be enough!
S
s
he thought, biting her lip as she carefully snipped. There just has to be!

When Mrs. De Keys came up to see why she wasn’t giving them a hand in the kitchen with pickling, she found Angelica crawling on the floor, surrounded by scraps. She was pinning these, apparently at random, onto a sheet of muslin.

“What on earth are you doing, dear?” Mrs. de Keys asked.

“It’s a quilt top I started in the city,” Angelica explained. “Minerva Bradford gave me the bluebird center. I am laying it out because I’m not working a regular pattern.”

“Not measuring? Not working a pattern?”

“Well, I’ll pin them down onto this backing sheet.”

“But those aren’t going to come up to anything. And, goodness, dear! All those shapes! All those mad colors!” Mrs. de Keys shook her head.

“Never mind,” Angelica replied tartly. “It won’t be going on your
bed.”

“But, dear,” Mrs. de Keys began, a little surprised at the sharpness of the retort. “It’s going to be extra difficult that way. It’ll end looking like one of those mishmash make-do things in some squatter’s cabin.”

“I’m a better quilter than that,” Angelica declared. She shifted her gaze back to what she’d begun and away from Mrs. de Keys, who seemed so determined not to understand.

It was strange to the women of the house to see Miss Angelica pinning and unpinning, snipping shapes that ranged from plain squares and rectangles to rough crescents and triangles. Sometimes, they’d discover her sitting, simply staring at the quilt, and not doing anything at all.

quite right,” but somehow it seemed terribly important to finally resolve this puzzle of color and line. When she started work on her quilt, it was difficult to stop, even when it frustrated her, even though she knew many of her sewing circle friends would judge the piece ugly.

The only woman in the house who seemed to approve of her peculiar quilt was Black Harriet. Although not known for fine sewing, Harriet proved to have a good eye for color and exactly the hard scrabble approach this project required.

One evening, as they were both arranging and rearranging scraps for the next rows and complaining that nothing satisfied, Angelica exclaimed, “Sometimes I wonder why I started this. Maybe I should send for a half yard of blue swanskin from Kingston,” she suggested to her companion. “That—” She pointed to a glaring trouble spot. “—would solve that.”

“Why, Miss Angelica,” Harriet replied with a sly smile, “Dat would be cheatin’.”

“Cheating?”

“Well, ain’t this quilt about how you got to make somethin’ nice out of what you bin handed?” Harriet replied.

Angelica, who had been staring at the quilting frame on which her muslin backing was now stretched, met the woman’s wise brown eyes. She began to chew a fingernail—something she hadn’t done since she was small.

Harriet, she thought, sees straight to the heart of the matter, to exactly why the quilt is so interesting—and so frustrating. And why should she not? Harriet’s whole life is probably like this.

“You’re right,” she said with sudden decision. “Let’s empty out the scrap bag again. We’ll see a way to make what we’ve got here do the job.”

Angelica also assumed her old tasks in house and garden. Mrs. de Keys was glad to have her at home again. The kitchen garden was erupting with both vegetables and weeds.

One day Angelica took on a heavy chore. With hair tightly wound up beneath a cap and wearing an old homespun dress and apron, she scrubbed the porch which ran all the way around the house. Then, climbing up and down on a stool, she washed the first-floor windows. It was a long hard job, one no gentlewoman except a Dutch gentlewoman would ever dream of tackling, even with a helper.

They had started early, but the sun was high by the time she and Harriet got to the last stoop. Sloshing the rag along the bottom steps, Angelica felt truly tired. Her hands had roughened in the strong
vinegar-and-water solution and her nails were full of dirt.

“I guess we’ve about got it done.” Angelica turned to Harriet who was kneeling beside her on the bottom step. “Just slop the water, then go straight in, Harriet, and get out of the heat.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll finish up, miss, wi’ the buckets and all.” Harriet’s head inside the red kerchief bobbed as her strong brown fingers wrung the dregs from a rag.

Angelica was doing the same when a broad shadow fell over her. “Good day to you, cousin.” The greeting was informal, a friendly baritone she recognized at once.

“Cousin TenBroeck.” Angelica acknowledged him from her knees, shading her eyes against the sun as she turned to face him.

“G’day, Master Arent.” Already on her feet, Harriet bobbed a curtsy.

“Hello, Harriet,” said Arent not taking his eyes off Angelica.

Harriet lowered her head to hide her face. Then, bucket in hand, she began a slow saunter to the pump in the yard. Angelica could tell it was hard for her to leave behind this conversation, one Harriet and everyone else on the place longed to hear.

“Don’t tell me Papa has set you to this?” Arent asked, reaching down to help Angelica up.

His full face was flushed from the heat and the hand he offered was not only far cleaner than hers, but wide and thick, the back covered with a thatch of yellow. Cousin Arent was a younger edition of his father—a square, burly man with bushy, blonde brows and striking blue eyes.

He must have been overseeing the haying nearby for he was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, a plain white shirt and a pair of dusty breeches.

“You don’t want to touch me, Arent,” she said, wiping a grimy hand on her apron. “At least, until I wash.”

“I have no objection, dear cousin, to touching you under any circumstances,” he said, eyes teasing. His own big hand sought and engulfed hers, and drew her easily to her feet.

“Now, cousin...” she began.

“Come,” he interrupted firmly. “We’ll go by the kitchen and see if there’s buttermilk. I guess Papa’s told you I’ve been away at the Rhinebeck farm. I just got home last night and thought I’d drop by to welcome you home. What’s Papa thinking to have you scrubbing in this heat?” he asked again as they walked around the house.

“It was my idea,” Angelica said. “Since the last girl-of-all-work
ran off, Mrs. de Keys and Harriet just have plain too much to do.”

They approached the summer kitchen, a detached building behind the main house. Although Angelica hadn’t wanted to take his arm at first, she was happy she had. She felt dizzy from the heat and the long time on her knees.

“Why didn’t you ride?”

“Easier to sneak up on you,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I didn’t want you to run upstairs and barricade yourself in your room.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

From the pump in the yard, he worked up some water. Angelica gratefully washed off her arms and hands. As the water splashed about, some motley half-grown chickens who’d been pecking at the soft ground decamped, making a soft complaint as they moved away.

Arent led her through the open door into the summer kitchen. Although the tall windows were open and the building shaded by a tree, this room was hot as out–of doors and full of pungent fumes.

“Why, here’s young Mr. TenBroeck!” a red-faced Mrs. de Keys exclaimed, her voice betraying how happy she was to see Arent and happier still to see him escorting Angelica. She and old, squat Daisy were filling a pickling liquid with some tender, early treasures from the garden.

“Hallo, Mama de Keys. Hard at work, I see. Hello, Daisy. It never stops, does it?”

He received a kiss on the cheek from Mrs. de Keys and one from Daisy, who had been his nursemaid in her younger days.

“Is there any buttermilk, ladies?”

“Yes, sir,” said Daisy, “In de spring house wi’ de soft cheese.”

She grabbed two mugs and made as if to go after it, but Angelica relieved her of the cups and said, “We can get our own.” Together, she and Arent went across the barnyard to a small stone structure wedged into the side of a slope.

Inside was a chilly refuge from the heat. Giving Angelica the mugs to hold, Arent pulled a rope, drawing a covered pail from within the stone cistern.

When the top was removed, there was a pitcher and a stack of balls of cottage cheese the size of a man’s fist. Carefully taking out the pitcher so the stacked cheese would not fall, he poured two mugs of buttermilk. After replacing the pitcher, they closed the top and lowered the pail so it was again immersed in the cold water.

“Come along, cousin, and bring your drink,” Arent said. “We’ll go into the parlor and chat.”

The heavy springhouse door secured behind them, they crossed the sunny yard and the newly scrubbed porch.

“This petticoat is far too nasty to bring into the parlor.”

“Sit in the window seat then, cousin good-wife,” Arent said with a boyish grin. Resting a broad hand on her waist, he guided her into the house.

In the winter kitchen, they surprised two small black girls, their hair neatly plaited and braided, who were chasing each other and giggling. When Arent unexpectedly appeared, they rushed to the table and got back to their chore of stringing and cutting a big pile of green beans.

“I want to see that all done when I come back.” Arent’s reproof was mild, though he did shake a thick finger at them as he and Angelica walked through the room.

The parlor was cool and dim as the windows had been closed after breakfast and the curtains drawn. Angelica went to the window embrasure and took a seat, pushing the curtains away so she would not touch them with her dirty skirts. Although she tried not to move these too much, heat spilled out.

Arent grabbed a ladderback chair with one big hand and whirled it close. After settling himself, he said, “I’m truly glad to see you again, cousin. It was far too long we had no idea of where you were. I confess I feared the worst.”

“I believe it,” Angelica replied.

For a few minutes they drank buttermilk in silence. Angelica was grateful for his tactful beginning. Still, she knew this interview would not be an easy one.

“You seem tolerably well, cousin. I heard you took a bad fall on the way home.”

Angelica nodded.

“You shouldn’t be working like that in this heat, you know,” he repeated. He seemed, suddenly, anxious.

Angelica sighed. “Well, I’ve had a sort of rage for housewifery since I got back.”