Patricia Potter (2 page)

He shook off the melancholy feeling, trying, instead, to restore the usual pleasure he received when entering this cabin, a quiet but profound pleasure that had only recently returned to his life. He had once thought any enjoyment, any contentment, had been completely whipped and worked out of him on the Australian road gang to which he had been condemned. He had once been certain he would die without tasting freedom again.

Even after his miraculous escape, he had wondered if he would ever feel anything but hatred and bitterness. But slowly, very slowly, some measure of peace, if not happiness, had slipped into his life. His covert activities with the Underground Railroad for the past three years gave him a release from the terrible tension that had maintained its grip months after he’d arrived back in America. At times he even felt a renewed zest for life. But he was always cautious. One mistake, and he could well be back in prison—or dead. The latter, he knew now, was preferable to the former. He could never suffer captivity again. Never.

A knock came sharply on the door. Cam! Only Cam would knock in quite that impatient way and with the suppressed rage that was so much a part of the former slave.

“Come in,” Quinn called out as he loosened the frilly cravat at his throat and threw it down on the chair in disgust.

A large black figure filled the doorway. Cam was huge, three inches taller than Quinn, who towered over most men.

“The special cargo’s been stored,” Cam reported.

“What kind of shape was it in?”

“Not the best, Capt’n.”

“The passengers all boarded?”

“There’s still a few coming.”

“Anyone look suspicious?”

“Two of them. I seen them before, and they
are
looking.”

“I’ll just have to distract them with a little game of cards.”

“Yes suh.” Cam smiled slightly. It had taken him a year to smile after being purchased by Quinn Devereux. It was not until he received his manumission papers that he really believed he could trust Quinn’s word. Now he would willingly die for his former owner. Captain Devereux, quite simply, had given him back his soul.

“Any other interestin’ passengers?” Quinn asked with an air of indifference.

Cam regarded Captain Devereux with curiosity. The man wore a cynical facade, but Cam knew it hid a deep commitment to justice and a heart that bled only too freely for others. It had taken him a long time to discover that, and sometimes even he doubted when he caught the whip of Captain Devereux’s savagely caustic tongue. He often thought he would never really understand the man. He wondered if anyone would.

Cam smiled suddenly. “A woman…pretty. But she giggles a lot.”

Quinn arched an eyebrow over one of his deep blue eyes. “How far is she going?”

“Vicksburg.”

“Any company?”

“An elderly lady and a maid.”

“Is the maid pretty?”

This time Cam looked askance.

“The maid,” Quinn said, pressing him. “There must be some reason that party caught your notice. You don’t usually help me look for the ladies.”

Cam’s smile broadened. “I don’t usually have to. However, recently…”

Quinn’s crooked grin was quicksilver. Fast to come, faster to go. “What about her mistress? I’m sure you’ve discovered her name by now.”

“A Miss Seaton. Miss Meredith Seaton.”

“Meredith Seaton.” There was surprise in Quinn’s voice.

“Do you know her?”

For a moment, Quinn’s eyes softened as he remembered a June day nearly sixteen years before. Or was it more? His life before Australia seemed centuries, rather than years, away. He remembered being twenty-one and ready to embark on the Grand Tour, but first he had stopped with his father to visit the Seaton plantation. Meredith Seaton had been a charming child: a little shy but still as bright as a new silver coin. He had built her a swing, and she had been embarrassingly grateful, as if no one had ever been kind to her before. Since he had returned to America, he had heard his brother speak of her, and she apparently had changed greatly from the enchanting child he remembered.

“I met her once…years ago,” Quinn said. “My brother controls a trust in her name. He doesn’t think much of her. An empty-headed flirt, he said, who runs through money like it was water.” He grinned. “Just like me. He doesn’t approve of either of us. He nearly agrees with you though. Says she could be pretty if she ever learned how to dress.”

There was a touch of pain in his lighthearted words, and he’d stopped smiling. Quinn was aware of how much his younger brother disapproved of his life. Although Brett said little, Quinn knew he was considered a gambler, womanizer and profligate, and no credit to a father who had risked a fortune for him.

His lips twisted into a wry grimace. That was the hardest part of this charade: his brother’s disappointment. He tried to shrug off his sadness. “I think I would like to meet this…female counterpart. Why don’t you invite the lady and her chaperon to my table tonight, Cam?”

“I’ll see it’s done.”

“Along with your two suspicious men.”

Cam nodded, not even puzzling over the strange combination of dinner guests. Captain Devereux always had a reason for what he did. Even if it wasn’t immediately evident.

“You can take care of everything below?”

“Yes, Capt’n.” It was said with indulgent patience, and Quinn sighed at the hint of impertinence.

“I should have left you on the block in New Orleans.”

“Yes suh, Capt’n, suh,” Cam replied, thinking that particular day had been the luckiest in a life filled with unlucky ones.

Their eyes met, remembering the scene, and then their faces again became impassive as they had both learned to do so very well. Cam turned without another word, limping slightly as he walked out, and closed the door behind him.

Meredith watched as the new maid carefully unpacked her clothing. The girl constantly looked back at her mistress for approval and Meredith nodded reassuringly.

But Meredith couldn’t rid herself of her own haunting depression.

It had been another wasted trip as far as Lissa was concerned. Her whereabouts continued to elude Meredith’s best efforts. But she had found Daphne, and Daphne probably needed her as much as Lissa.

Her new maid was like a frightened rabbit. She had been at the slave jail, awaiting auction. Meredith, after her private detective told her a young mulatto girl was there, had visited the jail looking for Lissa, using the excuse that she’d needed a new maid.

Meredith had been searching for her half sister for the last three years, ever since she had enough freedom to do so. But she kept running against stone walls. No one knew of a Lissa, a light-skinned Negro slave.

Meredith had mourned her childhood friend since the day Lissa was sold, and vowed to find her and somehow free her. As she had helped free others. As she planned to help free more.

But the mulatto in New Orleans turned out to be Daphne, not Lissa. Meredith had taken one look at the girl’s terrified face and purchased her. She hadn’t wanted to ask about the girl’s past. Daphne’s face told her more than she wanted to know.

Her companion had not approved, but then she approved of very little. But Meredith was twenty-four, and had her own funds, and “just loved visiting.” The best her brother could do was send his wife’s aunt with her, and hope his sister would not disgrace him and the family.

Robert’s most fervent wish, Meredith knew, was to see her married. Preferably to another plantation owner, preferably to Gilbert MacIntosh whose plantation adjoined their own.

To escape, Meredith simply went visiting frequently, claiming she was looking over likely husbands. It was as good a reason as any, and one Robert accepted easily enough in his eagerness to rid himself of her and her giggles and often odd behavior. And her painting. Her “damned monstrosities,” as Meredith had once heard him say to his wife. They were a terrible embarrassment, especially the way she pushed them off on friends and even acquaintances.

Robert had, Meredith knew, attributed her eccentricities to the fall she had had as a child. She’d been unconscious for two days and when she awoke she had never been the same. She had turned reclusive and silent, a quiet shadow who sat for hours with books and had little to say to anyone. Meredith had then been sent to a convent school in New Orleans where she had stayed for ten years. She had come home only twice during that time: for a disastrous visit over the Christmas holidays, and for her father’s funeral.

When she returned home at the age of eighteen, there were still secrets in the dark brown eyes, but to her family she was gayer, even fanciful. She giggled and chattered aimlessly, and if the smile never quite reached her eyes no one seemed to notice. And if she disappeared at times, no one noticed because no one really cared.

When Meredith was twenty-one, she became an heiress in her own right. She discovered then that her grandfather, long dead, had established a trust in her name at the time of her birth. But her funds were administered by the Devereux Bank in New Orleans. She was able to draw on it in reasonable amounts, but it was structured to keep the bulk of the money from any fortune hunter. Large withdrawals had to be approved by the president of the bank. Presently that man was Brett Devereux.

Although no one said so, Meredith suspected she had never been told of the trust until there was no avoiding it so she would marry their neighbor. Money of her own might have given her ideas. And it had. That money had armed Meredith with another weapon she needed. Guile was the first, and she had honed that to a fine art. Even she herself sometimes had difficulty knowing who she really was.

She traveled frequently, agreeing to a chaperon only to quiet suspicions, and the good Lord knew that her companion was as dense and unsuspecting as a hen headed for the dinner table. No one had ever connected Meredith with the spate of slaves that ran away soon after she left her hosts. Nor had they associated her occasional shopping trips to Cincinnati with the Underground Railroad. No one would ever suspect the giddy-headed Miss Seaton drugged her aunt and slipped out to meet Levi Coffin, one of the most active abolitionists in the North, or Underground Railroad contacts in New Orleans.

And Meredith could be very giddy-headed when she tried, and frightfully silly. She often declared that she didn’t marry because there were just “too many handsome men around, and they all just kept her little ol’ head aswimmin’.”

She sometimes tired of the role, hating the constant playacting and hiding her own intelligence, but so many lives depended on it. Including her own.

“Miss Meredith.”

Daphne’s soft tentative voice startled her. “Miss Meredith,” the girl repeated, “which dress you like to wear tonight?”

Which dress?
Meredith wished she cared. They were all ugly. Purposely ugly. Purposely misleading.

“Which dress you like?” Daphne said again with a patience born of a lifetime of servitude.

None,
Meredith wanted to scream.
Dear God, I would like to be alone for a while.

But then her aunt would worry. Meredith was usually eager to be the center of attention. Swallowing her distaste, she pointed to an overly fussy blue velvet with too much lace and too many bows.

She turned her back so Daphne could unhook her day dress when a knock came at her door.

“Yes?” she said.

A deep voice came from the other side. “Message from the capt’n, ma’am.”

Meredith opened the door, not waiting for Daphne to do it. She stared at the huge man outside who held a note gingerly.

“Miz Seaton?”

“Yes.”

“Wi’ the capt’n’s compliments, miz. He ask me to wait fo’ an answer.”

Meredith opened the note and read it carefully. She and her aunt were cordially invited to dine with Captain Quinlan Devereux tonight at eight o’clock.

She felt her spirits drop. It was the last thing she wanted. After three weeks of smiling brightly, of making silly observations and nonsensical chatter, she had hoped for a few days of relief. She looked at the note again. “Devereux.”

Quinlan Devereux!
Her heart started thumping. She had fallen madly in love with him when she was eight, and he had been her knight in shining armor in dreams ever since. She had met him just before “the day,” the day her life had fallen apart. She could still see him. Tall, ever so tall, with laughing blue eyes and midnight-black hair that curled at the back of his neck. He asked teasingly what she wanted most in the world, and she had answered a swing. He had laughed, saying that was a most modest wish and one he could easily fulfill. And he had. A magnificent swing in the woods. He had pushed her, almost up to the clouds, his hands sure and firm. He had been the first man to pay generous attention to her, and she had held that brief time like a precious jewel in her memory.

Later, she had heard he had disappeared in Europe. And when he returned after ten years, everyone talked of Quinlan Devereux—the dissolute older brother of Brett Devereux. It was said he had, in some unknown way, disgraced his family. It was also said his father had disinherited him, and that he was a gambler and, worse, a coward. He had, several times, refused to race his riverboat,
Lucky Lady,
on the Mississippi, asserting only fools risked their lives on such ventures, although every other riverboat owner took pride in the races. It was also said he cheated at cards, although no one could ever prove it.