Ciji Ware (55 page)

A jagged bolt of lightning lit the night sky, closely followed by a long clap of thunder. As he had feared, the heavens opened up once more and for a second time, driving rain lashed his face.

“Whoa
…
steady there, boy,” he crooned. “I can see a light from the house,” he announced, far more for his own benefit than for that of his horse. “Steady there, now.”

A youthful slave, barefooted and soaked to the skin, scampered around the plantation house and met him at the foot of the broad stairs that led to the front veranda. The lad reached up and relieved the visitor of his reins while he dismounted and dutifully led the horse to the stables as Simon ascended the steps to the front door.

“Good evenin’, sir,” the butler mumbled. “Miz Daphne and Miz Suki are in the parlor.”

Simon divested himself of his drenched cape and strode through the darkened foyer where few candles were lit in welcome. Behind the wide-planked door of the front room, voices could be heard, shrill and complaining.

“Mama said she won’t come down to dinner, and that’s the end of it, Daphne! You’ll just have to cope on your own.”

“You go right back upstairs and tell her she’ll go without supper then. And, for pity’s sake, Suki, wash your hands and face and tidy your hair. You aren’t fit to dine with pigs.”

Startled by this acrimonious exchange, Simon hesitated to knock.

“You can’t order me ’round like some slave, Miss High-and-Mighty,” Suki declared petulantly. “You go up and tell Mama yourself, and stop calling me names, or I’ll tell Simon what everyone in Natchez is calling
you
ever since that Yankee friend of Johnny Gibbs arrived and—”

“How
dare
you—”

Simon rapped sharply on the parlor door and silence descended immediately. He slowly turned the knob, suspecting that his entry had prevented the two sisters from coming to physical blows.

The young women flanked a gilded harp that stood to the left of a cherry wood pianoforte. Suki’s disheveled appearance matched Daphne’s description. The twenty-three-year-old spinster’s hair was in disarray and she looked as if she’d slept in her indigo gown. Daphne, on the other hand, was neatly attired in gray silk, signaling that she had declared herself to be in the final stages of mourning. Simon’s heart swelled at the sight of her delicate beauty, her mass of golden hair held atop her head by a cunning collection of tiny tortoiseshell combs. Could he dare to think she was happy that he had come to press his cause?

“Good evening,” he said, looking warily from Suki to her older sister. He stepped into the sitting room and bowed slightly. “’Tis a great pleasure to see you both and good to come out of such inclement weather. ’Tis a monsoon out there.”

It was insufferably hot in the room, the windows being kept shut against the rain. Both young women looked flushed and out of sorts in their high-necked, long-sleeved gowns and tight corsets. Suki glared at Daphne and then made a perfunctory curtsy in Simon’s direction. She whirled to face her sister again.

“I will tell Mama that you request her presence at dinner,” she said icily. “As for myself, I’m feeling poorly this evening and have told Mammy to bring a tray to my room.” She nodded at Simon. “Please excuse me,” she murmured, and flounced out, closing the door none too quietly.

Daphne pursed her lips, but said nothing about Suki’s rude departure. Her shoulders heaved a little shrug before she declared with forced politeness, “May I pour you some spirits? You could die of thirst before anyone ’round here will see to your pleasure.”

“No, thank you, but you’re kind to offer,” Simon replied with a warmth he hoped would put Daphne at ease. Her hands fidgeted in her lap and she had a distracted air. “I’d be mighty pleased, though, to accept a glass of wine with dinner, if you’d join me.” He was happy to find himself alone with her and hoped to use this rare opportunity to advance his suit. His father was an old and weary man, and Simon was convinced that the elder Hopkins would eventually come to accept his son’s choice.

Unfortunately, the ensuing conversation never proceeded beyond small talk. His hostess steered Simon’s every effort at intimacy back to the topic of the dreadfully oppressive weather, and then launched into a lengthy description of the various ailments such inclemency had occasioned in the slave population at Devon Oaks.

A few minutes later, the butler reappeared and announced that dinner was served. Daphne led the way to the foyer, casting an annoyed grimace in the direction of the curved staircase. From over their heads, Simon thought he heard a woman moan, followed by a series of loud, steady thumps.

“I fear you will have poor company tonight,” Daphne said, ignoring the alarming sounds as they marched across the threshold and into the dining room. She swiftly took a seat at the far end of an elegant mahogany table. “Apparently, my mother
and
my sister are indisposed—as usual.”

Simon indicated to a servant standing silently against the wall that he would prefer to be seated to Daphne’s right hand, rather than at the opposite end of the long table where his place had been set. The crystal, silver, and chinaware were moved. Taking her seat, Daphne immediately shifted her chair a few inches to the left, as if she desired to put as much distance between them as the end of the dining table allowed.

Thus far, Simon judged, the evening was not going well. He concentrated his attention on the sight of her caramel-colored curls, burnished by candlelight glowing from a set of sconces on the wall.

“And young Keating?” Simon asked of the purported raison d’être for his visit to Devon Oaks. Obviously, relations among the women in the household had seriously deteriorated during Simon’s long sojourn in Edinburgh. The atmosphere inside the grand house seemed every bit as gloomy and dank as the wretched weather outside.

“Well, you know twelve-year-old boys,” Daphne said sourly. “They’re young savages. I told Mammy to give him his supper at six with the servants.”

Simon felt a momentary flash of irritation that the natural boisterousness of the poor lad had caused his banishment in this house where women dictated daily decorum.

Their conversation throughout the soup course remained stilted and filled with awkward pauses, rescued from utter silence at times only by the movement of servants in and out of the shadowed chamber. Throughout dinner Simon did his utmost to gently draw out his hostess on the subject of her recent bereavement, wondering if this latest tragedy had indeed dealt a fatal blow to her beleaguered spirits, as his father had asserted during Simon’s homecoming soiree.

“Another purpose for my calling, Daphne—besides speaking of young Keating’s future—is to express my sorrow for the sad fate that befell Judge Stimpson,” he said quietly. “It must have been a bitter blow for so recent a bride.”

Daphne’s expression, across the candlelit table, was unfathomable. “I would have to say, Simon,” she declared at length, “that the marriage itself was more bitter than was the judge’s taking leave of it.”

Simon was frankly flabbergasted by the tartness of her reply. “Why, Daphne,” he said, “pray, what do you mean?”

“What I mean,” she said with an astringent smile, “would certainly not be polite to voice to mixed company.”

There was something strange and remote about her behavior, something far different from the young, vulnerable girl he had held in his arms when she caught sight of her father floating in Whitaker Creek. She had become guarded and unapproachable. He wondered what other terrible blows had befallen her since that fateful night at the Concord ball to render her so unlike the angelic girl he remembered.

She glanced at the servant awaiting her directions. “We shall have coffee in the parlor.” She returned her attention to her guest, and asked brightly, “Shall I play for you? And then you must tell me your father’s plans for reining in young Keating. Boarding school, I should hope.”

Somehow, the evening had not followed the track Simon had hoped. Gloom engulfed him as he followed his hostess once again into the front sitting room. Daphne immediately took her seat at the harp and played a standard, rather mundane rendition of “Greensleeves” without the slightest nuance of feeling. Then she rose from her music stool and swiftly poured them each a cup of coffee from the porcelain pot the servant had left on a silver tray—as if the sooner they got this polite ritual over with, the better. Simon caught her glancing at the brass-faced clock on the mantel. Surely, he wasn’t such a great, yawning bore that she wished only for him to leave? He fingered the velvet box containing a marquis-cut diamond ring that he had purchased in London en route home to Natchez. His father would bellow with outrage if he knew what his son had been planning this evening, but he didn’t care.

Thanks to the wine they had consumed at dinner and the continuing heat, Daphne’s cheeks were more flushed than usual, and she appeared nervous for reasons he could only surmise. She had been married and widowed, and thus Simon assumed that she would not feel awkward to be dining with an unmarried man. Why would an old family friend put her so out of sorts? he wondered.

Suddenly, she commenced chattering intensely about Aaron Clayton, the newcomer in their midst, and heaped praise on what she characterized as the forward-thinking law firm of Clayton and Gibbs.

“The partners appear to be doing very well, even though they’ve just opened their practice, and Aaron says by next spring, they might be quite the most sought after attorneys in all of Natchez. Personally, I think you would do well to consider Clayton and Gibbs as your legal representatives before they have more clients than they can handle.”

“You call him Aaron?” Simon said, arching an eyebrow. “I had no idea you had become such… intimate acquaintances… in so short a time, especially in view of the tragic and recent loss of your late husband.”

He knew he sounded priggish, but there was something about the mere mention of Aaron Clayton that made his hackles rise. For her part, Daphne actually had the grace to blush to the roots of her blond ringlets. Her flushed face turned positively scarlet.

“Oh, don’t be a scold, Simon,” she said peevishly. “I am, of course, still in mourning, but I think it only proper to extend the traditional hospitality of Devon Oaks.”

“Aaron Clayton has called here this week?” he demanded. “A perfect stranger visiting a household of women?”

Daphne raised her chin a notch, and replied stiffly, “And, pray, why not? Suki and I entertained both gentlemen yesterday afternoon. I would have thought your travels abroad would have made you less parochial, Simon. Aaron Clayton is a fine, upstanding, Harvard-trained attorney who—”

“Who would like nothing better than to become the master of Devon Oaks, I wager.” Simon wondered, suddenly, if the insinuating Mr. Clayton was due to pay a late call on the grieving Mrs. Stimpson after her supper guest departed for home this rainy evening.

Simon set his coffee cup on the table with more force than he had intended. He had difficulty stomaching Daphne’s dewy-eyed enthusiasm for a man he would not honor with the title gentleman. Simon considered Aaron Clayton a damnable poacher of the first order.

“You are behaving like a very silly woman,” Simon admonished crossly.

“And will you join your father in opposing yet another of my suitors?” Daphne jumped to her feet.

“I will oppose anything that my father and I deem would not be in your best interest,” he said, his temples throbbing with frustration.

Daphne began to pace in front of her harp, her distress and agitation obvious. She halted abruptly and whirled to face him.

“I will not abide your interference, do you hear me, Simon Hopkins?”

“Our
interference
, as you so unwisely term it,” Simon replied, “will only become necessary if you do something so foolish as to continue to accept the attentions of a man of Clayton’s stripe. Your previous suitor—since you have raised the unfortunate subject yourself—nearly
…
nearly ruined you, Daphne, not to mention the physical peril he put you in the night of the ball at Concord. You showed then, as I fear you are doing now, that you are not fit to guide your own destiny. My father and I have done everything humanly possible to—”

“Leave here at once!”

Simon stared, dumbfounded, at the woman who had inhabited his daydreams and unguarded fantasies since he was fifteen years old. There she stood, hands clenched by her sides, glaring at him with loathing.

“You cannot mean that,” he protested. “I have nothing but your well-being at heart, dearest Daphne! I am not my father, though heaven knows he’s given the greatest attention to the welfare of the Whitaker household ever since—”

“Do not
dare
to speak of that!” Daphne shouted. Simon was shocked into silence while she continued her tirade. “You and your father have cruelly forbidden the words ‘Charles Whitaker’ to be uttered in my presence all these years past, so you will
not
bring his name to your lips in this household, do you hear me?”

“Please, Daphne. You are displaying precisely the sort of behavior that warrants my father’s intervention as your guardian and requires him to—”

Before he could finish his sentence, his hostess snatched the blue-and-white porcelain coffeepot off the tray and hurled it straight at him. With quick reflexes, Simon stepped to one side as the chinaware crashed into the baseboard at the far side of the room. Daphne’s breathing had grown ragged, and her lovely features were inflamed with rage.