Ransome's Quest (14 page)

When God said vengeance was His, the Bible should have gone on to warn about dire consequences for anyone who decided to take his own revenge. For this was surely Salvador’s punishment for thinking he could take the task out of God’s hands. He prayed Shaw’s punishment was even worse.

J
ulia’s back ached from sitting on the narrow wooden bench for so long, but her heart soared at the sounds of the voices raised in song around her. Here, in Tierra Dulce’s chapel, there was little formality and no inhibition when it came to exclaiming joy and praise and pain and vulnerability.

And hearing Jeremiah preach again…The only thing that would have made this day more perfect would have been for William to be experiencing it with her.

Absent was the prayer book and its prescribed readings and canticles murmured by the congregation in a disinterested monotone. Instead, everyone joined in singing hymns that carried Julia back to her childhood with their familiar lyrics and tunes, made even more meaningful by the beautiful harmonies and the cadences not unlike the waves washing against her beach.

What came after the service, however, was what Julia had been looking forward to for days. The men quickly set up boards and carpentry braces and set the benches from the church along the long table lining the wide, hard-packed dirt avenue that ran between the neat, well-kept white houses.

Out of each house came dish after dish of food. When Julia tried to help, everyone waved her off, including Jerusha, who insisted she take a seat and allow everyone else to do their work.

“I do not want to be treated like a guest. I want to be part of the family again.”

“Let them treat you special this one day, Miss Julia. It’s their way of showing you how happy they are you’re home and that Master…Mr. Winchester is gone.” Jerusha leaned over and put a dish of rice and peas in the middle of the table. The aroma of coconut milk coming from it made Julia ache to taste it. “Mr. Winchester thought such a gathering like this was disrespectful on the Lord’s day. This is the first time since you left that we’ve gathered for dinner after church.”

“He would have stopped us from gathering for church if he could have.” Jeremiah hefted a large platter of roasted goat meat onto the table. “I believe he feared if he let us get together and start talking amongst ourselves, we would be talking ’bout him and speculating ’bout what he might be up to.”

Julia’s heart wept for her people. She had done this to them by hiring Winchester.

“Now, don’t you go feeling bad, missus.” Jeremiah patted her shoulder. “Your mama had just passed on. You had to make the best of a bad predicament.”

“But I did not have to return to England. I should have stayed and seen to my duty here.”

“No, you needed to spend that time with your father.” The words came out in an almost wistful tone from the man who had been the proxy for her father most of her life.

“And you needed to retrieve that husband of yours.” Jerusha winked at her.

“Winchester didn’t do any permanent damage. He may have stolen a vasty sum, but this year’s crop is the best we’ve ever had. And sugar prices keep on rising, especially now we can trade with France and Spain again.”

“No talk of cane or trading on Sunday.” Jerusha admonished her husband with a severe look that set both him and Julia to laughing. “This is a day for celebrating our family coming back together.” Joining in their laughter, she put her arm around Julia’s shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze.

The past twelvemonth faded into distant memory over the next few hours as Julia lost herself in becoming reacquainted with those who lived and worked at Tierra Dulce, holding new babies, and receiving dirty, sticky hugs and kisses from older children who remembered her, even after so long a separation.

Thunderclouds rolling in brought an end to the afternoon’s merriment. Once again, no one would let Julia help with any of the work, and she finally obeyed Jerusha and returned to the main house just as the rain started.

The quiet oppressed her after weeks aboard
Alexandra
and the chaos of the last few days. She wandered from empty room to empty room, wondering how she had endured the stillness of the house and the long, empty days of inactivity she’d known in England.

England—yes, that was just what she needed. She returned to the study, sat at the desk William had been so good to make room for in their cabin aboard
Alexandra,
and pulled out a stack of stationery. First, she wrote a long letter to her dear friend Susan Yates, explaining everything that had happened since they bade each other farewell in Portsmouth two months ago. Then, a letter to her father.

Nightfall extinguished what little light remained in the rain-obscured sky, and she had to light another lamp to increase the brightness in the room. Fighting fatigue, she wrote a letter to Lady Dalrymple, apologizing to her for any inconvenience or worry Charlotte’s departure had caused.

She should not have stayed up so late writing, but she could post these from town tomorrow. She carried all three letters and one of the lamps with her to her room and tucked her correspondence into the satchel holding the account book and papers she wished to review with her banker.

Dark, disconnected images disturbed her sleep, and when she turned out from bed as the sun rose, she almost felt poorly enough to put the trip into town off one more day.

But that would be pure sloth.

She drank her coffee—a good, strong, dark coffee from a neighboring plantation—while her maid arranged her hair. The dark blue damask dress conveyed the level of seriousness Julia desired.

In the kitchen Jeremiah rose to greet her. Julia joined him at the table in the middle of the large room, separated from the house by a breezeway. And this morning’s breeze promised a hot day full of sunshine.

“Roads are muddy but clear.” Jeremiah pushed the platter of sausages toward her. Cook set a plate containing two fried eggs, sausages, and ackee and saltfish down in front of her.

Julia smiled at the combination of the English eggs and sausage and the traditional Jamaican dish—dried fish soaked in water and then cooked with ackee fruit, onions, peppers, and tomatoes.

A young man Julia wasn’t certain she’d met yet entered the kitchen and swiped his hat from his head. “Ma’am, the carriage stands ready for you at the front of the big house.”

“Thank you,” Julia said, smiling her thanks at the boy no older than Charlotte, who blushed under his deep complexion and backed out of the room. She turned to Jeremiah. “New groom?”

“Stable hand.” He speared another sausage. “He is the Martinezes’s boy.”

“Not the quiet one who always hid around corners watching everyone?”

“The very same. Are you going to finish that?” The overseer pointed at Julia’s ackee and saltfish with his knife.

Julia parried it away with her fork. “Yes, I intend to eat every bite.”

Once her stomach was sated, Julia exited the front door to find the carriage driver waiting for her, a smile splitting his dark face.

“’Tis good to have you home, Miss Julia.”

“Thank you, Levi.” She queried the man about his family, having known all of them for as long as she could remember. After getting a report on each child and grandchild, she turned to the two younger men standing beyond Levi. “Ruben, it is good to see you again.”

The footman, the middle of Levi’s three sons, bowed his head. “Ma’am.”

“And…Asher?” Julia marveled at the changes a year had made in the maturity of Levi’s youngest son. Asher held a musket and had two pistols tucked under his belt. “Thank you for looking after my safety.”

“Yes, mum.”

“Very good, then. Jeremiah,” she turned to the overseer, “I believe we can get underway.”

“I’ll see to things here.” Jeremiah stepped out of the way as Ruben came forward to assist Julia into the carriage. “I have everyone on the lookout for Winchester.”

Julia settled onto her seat and adjusted the brim of her hat to shade her eyes from the sun. “What will you do if he comes back?”

“Hold him in the smokehouse until you return and we can figure out what to do.” Though his expression remained deadly serious, Jeremiah’s voice held a lilt of amusement. “As I said, I’ll take care of things here. No need for you to fret. You have enough to worry about regarding the task you’re undertaking now.”

“Thank you. I should return by midday tomorrow, and by then we will know how much damage Mr. Winchester has done to Tierra Dulce.”

Levi climbed up onto the driver’s seat, and his two sons clambered up onto their perch in the rear. Jeremiah backed up a few paces and raised his hand in a farewell salute. Julia returned the wave and then pulled out the novel she’d brought to pass the time on the long drive into town.

Less than half an hour after leaving Tierra Dulce, Julia resolved to request a meeting with the parish magistrate to discuss the condition of the road with him. With many miles yet to go, she was already tired of being bounced and jostled. But not even that could keep her fatigue at bay. After staring at the same page without taking in any of the words printed upon it for too long, she finally gave up, closed the book, and shut her eyes.

She dozed intermittently, coming back to wakefulness at the worst of the holes and ruts in the road. Two hours into the trip, she considered telling Levi to turn the carriage around and take her back home. She should have waited until tomorrow, until she was better rested and in a better frame of mind, for the meeting that awaited her on the end of this trip. But they had come this far. She would just have to inure herself to further discomfort and displeasure and console herself with the anticipation of returning to Tierra Dulce tomorrow.

The explosive blast of a gun sounded from somewhere nearby, followed only seconds later by the screaming shrill of the left-side carriage horse. It reared, throwing the barouche off balance and tossing Julia from her seat onto the floor. Behind her, Ruben and Asher shouted as the conveyance tipped toward the right. She hoped they had time to jump free.

Grasping for something, anything, to give her anchorage, an image of William’s face—the way he had looked at her at their wedding—filled her mind.

Men’s voices. Gunshots. The shrill cries of the injured horse. Falling.

Sharp pain exploded in Julia’s side when the open-top carriage tipped over, and she landed half on the door and half on the ground. Her chest refused to expand and fill with air. Blackness crept in around the edges of her vision, but she struggled against it. Men in dirty, ragged clothes darted here and there, in and out of her narrowing field of vision. More yells from Levi and Ruben and Asher. No not Ruben. The brigands dragged Levi and Asher around the horses and forced them to kneel, pressing pistols to their heads. Another man worked to free the uninjured horse from its now-moaning partner and the twisted harnesses.

Julia took short, shallow breaths hoping the pain in her side would ease once she got herself upright again, but before she had a chance to try sitting up on her own, rough hands grabbed her and yanked her up. A cry of agony burst from her throat before she could stop it. Her knees buckled and would not support her weight. Throbbing pain wrapped around her chest like the anchor rope around the capstan.

Another gunshot and the horse’s moaning stopped. Julia prayed the men—highwaymen, pirates, whoever they were—would not use the same means to ease her pain.

She found her footing and gained her balance, and so long as she did not move either arm or take deep breaths, the pain subsided to a throbbing ache.

Blood trickled from Levi’s nose, and Asher’s left eye was almost swollen shut. Where was Ruben?

“Have you got her?”

Julia gasped at the familiarity of the voice coming from behind her—and immediately regretted it when fire bolted through her chest. The hand squeezing her upper arm yanked her around.

Julia clamped her teeth together to keep from betraying her continued pain.

Henry Winchester—dressed in breeches, tall black boots, and an open-necked white shirt—stood before her, feet braced wide apart, fists on his hips.

“It’s her, Master Winchester.”

Julia whipped her head around to discover that her captor was none other than Ruben. “How could you do this?”

Ruben’s strong jaw worked back and forth, and he would not look at her. “Because I am no more than a slave at the plantation. Master Winchester showed me that. He showed me how I could make my fortune and not have to work for the likes of you and yours.”

“Slave? Boy, you know nothing about what it’s like to be a slave,” Levi yelled. A grunt followed this outburst.

Ruben winced at the word
boy.
But he would not look at his father either. “I’m not going to be like you, Pa, toiling my life away for somebody else. I’m going to be my own man.”

“What should we do with these two?”

Winchester looked past Julia and Ruben. “We only need one of them to return to the plantation and spread the news. The boy can go faster. Kill the old man.”

“No—” Julia lost her balance when Ruben released her arm and the support he offered her.

“That was never part of the arrangement.” The nineteen-year-old grabbed the front of Winchester’s shirt as if to shake him.