The Mistress of Tall Acre

  Furious, she’d flown to Richmond and charged him with bigamy. He almost smiled at the bitter irony. If he did have two wives, she was to blame, resurrecting herself from the dead.

  In the waning afternoon light, Seamus’s legal counsel wore a look of resignation and regret. “You understand that your case could take longer than expected, General Ogilvy.”

  Seamus’s gaze roamed the rich mahogany walls of Henley and Stokes’ paneled study on this, his third trip to Richmond. He feared over time the chamber would become as familiar as his own. “How long in your estimation?”

  “A year, perhaps . . . years.” Stokes rubbed his chin, his red-rimmed eyes indicating a lack of sleep. “The defendant, Anne Howard, has made it clear she is determined to turn this into an extended battle if you don’t give in to her demands from the outset.”

  Seamus set his jaw. “I will not relent.”

  “I’m afraid there is more than Mistress Howard at play.” Henley, the elder of the two attorneys, paused to take a pinch of snuff. “States such as ours are scrambling to establish new laws, making marital matters civil court proceedings rather than state proceedings, requiring action by the legislature. All of this takes time. Despite the war being won, many are staying true to English law and advocating no union can be dissolved, none more so than Virginia.” He met Seamus’s eyes. “Yours is a complicated case, General, and you may well be caught in the crossfire.”

  “What more can be done?” Seamus’s tone knotted with impatience. After his years of being in command of a situation, the maze of legalities baffled and frustrated him.

  Henley put on his spectacles and removed a paper from atop his desk. “You’re aware your first wife has filed her own petition, charging you with neglect and abandonment—”

  “Because I was serving my country, a charge that will not hold up in court.”

  “True enough, but one that must be dealt with nevertheless, including the more recent charge of bigamy.” Henley’s thin mouth twisted. “Take heart, General. You’re not the only man involved in a bigamy scandal. Others have done the same during the war, quitting their first families and starting second ones, though none are quite as well placed as you.”

  Seamus failed to find even grim humor in it. “I did not quit my first family, mind you. Nor did I falsify my death, abandon my daughter, and flee to England.” Despite his best efforts, he spoke with a rancor that soured his stomach. “I am simply asking for a full dissolution with the right of remarriage.”

  Henley pulled another paper from a hefty stack. “As matters stand, the innocent party will be set free from the bonds of marriage while the guilty party will be unable to remarry during the lifetime of the innocent spouse.”

  “And my daughter? There is no question about custody?”

  Henley met his gaze full-on. “Absolutely none. Virginia law is clear about paternal rights. Even Fitzhugh, all bully and bluff, hasn’t a leg to stand on.”

  The reassurance rang hollow. “I want all that can be done to move this forward as if there were no expected delays, no impediments.”

  Stokes rose from the desk to open a window as the sticky, early summer heat blanketed them. “Depositions from friends and relatives are needed, of course. Both Henley and I will be coming to Tall Acre to collect those with your consent.”

  “What sort of depositions?”

  “Statements from friends and relatives, even trusted servants, that may help in the case regarding your first wife’s conduct, among other matters.”

  He felt a qualm. The newspapers would waste no ink printing every sordid detail. “There’s no avoiding dredging all this up for public consumption?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Stokes said.

  Seamus looked down, the ensuing silence rife with questions. Where had it all gone wrong? He was far from blameless, but he had tried to be a worthy husband. Faithful. Honorable. He’d put Anne’s needs above his own in the matter of a second child. He’d been a good provider while he was away fighting. But somehow it wasn’t enough. Now, as then, he was back in the thick of battle, sweating and harried, uncertain of the outcome.

  Henley wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “You understand that the court might not consider any of the above things I’ve mentioned sufficient grounds for dissolution. Under colonial law, marriages are seldom dissolved unless there is evidence of cruelty or infidelity, though prior cases do exist in New England where abandonment for three years or longer is justification enough.”

  Seamus stood, returning his cocked hat to his head. “You simply need to determine the truth.”

  Henley and Stokes looked at him. “The truth?” they said in unison.

  “Aye, the truth behind Anne’s leaving Virginia. The truth behind her years in England. The truth behind her return. I don’t know what that entails, but given time the facts will stand.”

  He looked at them, a strange peace flooding his soul, so at odds with the anguish twisting inside him. Only that morning he had read a verse that seemed an anchor for his shifting circumstances.

  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

  34

  Sophie stood in the mulberry grove after a week at Three Chimneys, no longer spinning dreams of silk production. Would the estate revert to Clementine Randolph’s kin once again? If so, she’d be without a home, in the same predicament she’d been in at first. Nay, ’twas far more tangled now. She’d simply been a spinster then. Now she was a wife set aside. And a guarded one, at that. Her protector lurked nearby, back turned as if to give her some privacy, at least.

  She pressed her palms to her bodice, so snug she’d soon have to set it aside. All her dresses seemed smaller, her bosom fuller. Despite her unsettled stomach and circumstances, she was blooming right before the eyes of anyone who cared to take a second look.

  Leaning against a mulberry’s rough trunk, she shut her eyes. When she opened them, the guard was gone and Seamus stood before her. Sunlight skimmed his handsome features, warming his gaze and shimmering off his dark hair. He always carried himself like a soldier, tall and stalwart no matter their situation. Her heart gave a little leap. Might he bring . . . good news?

  “I’ve been in Richmond. Matters are moving slowly.” He swallowed, the cords in his neck taut. “I’ll spare you the details.”

  Her disappointment went bone deep. “How is Lily Cate?”

  “Missing you, but busy in the schoolhouse with the new Scots tutor. I expect she’ll speak with a Scots brogue ere long.”

  “So he’s come.” She smiled past the irritation of feeling excluded, unnecessary. “And Jenny, everyone else?”

  “The fever is finally subsiding.” He tucked his hat under one arm. “Myrtilla is back in the spinning house again. The planting, all the seining for shad and herring, is done, but my correspondence is getting out of hand.”

  “You need a personal secretary.”

  “That would be you, Sophie.”

  “Send over your papers and I’ll see to them gladly.”

  His gaze sharpened, and he brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. He was looking at her as if they’d been apart weeks, not days. His touch told her the same. “Mistress Murdo said you’ve been ill.”

  Self-consciously her arms went round her waist. “Nothing for you to worry about. Just missing you and Lily Cate.”

  “She’s missing you.” His eyes darkened to a deeper blue. “She needs you in a hundred ways I cannot answer.”

  “She’s welcome to walk across the meadow now that it’s spring.” Saying it brought back the sweetness of that first time, when they’d met gathering chestnuts. She kept her voice light. “I’m always right here.”

  He tipped her chin up with his hand. “Do you have need of anything?”

  “What could I possibly need? You’ve stuffed Three Chimneys’ larder with more goods than Tall Acre since my arrival. At least bring me your papers so I can earn my keep.”

  “You’ll have them by tonig
ht.”

  “Tonight? Send them by way of the staff, then.” The surprise in his face begged explanation. “Because if you bring them yourself, you might be tempted to stay, and I—we—cannot.”

  “By the staff, then.” He took a careful step back as if ready to leave, then tossed aside his tricorn and gathered her in his arms.

  “Seamus, I—” Words of caution died in her throat at the beloved scent and feel of him. He was naught but fresh linen and fine soap, muscle and sinew. Her refuge.

  He kissed her like a man who couldn’t remember what she felt or tasted like, with an urgency, a sweet fierceness, that had been missing before. “Sophie, love, this is nearly beyond enduring. I walk into the house and it feels empty. I feel empty. I reach for you in the night and you’re not there.” His tone was oddly tender and brusque. “By heaven, if I’d known you before the war, I would have been a failure on the field. You take up my every thought.”

  “There was a time when I wondered if you’d ever love me.”

  “Then wonder no longer.” For long moments he held her, saying nothing, and then his gaze fell to her hands resting against his chest. “Where is your ring?”

  In answer, she fingered the fine chain about her throat, pulling it free of her bodice. “Near my heart if not my hand.”

  His features tightened and he turned away, walking through the haze of sunlight to his waiting horse. When he rode off, it seemed he rode right out of her heart. Wooziness, once held at bay, now overcame her, and she barely made it to the bushes in time to empty her roiling stomach.

  Sophie took out her sewing, the needle and thimble glinting in the firelight. The flannel fabric in her lap had been gotten in Roan by Mistress Murdo, who said not a word but seemed to know it was needed. Sophie rubbed it against her cheek. Soft as a rose petal and the blue of Seamus’s uniform coat, it seemed reassurance of a boy. Carefully she cut an infant’s gown from an old pattern kept by her mother with newly sharpened scissors.

  Her thoughts drifted and refused to settle. Just yesterday, the day after Seamus had surprised her in the mulberry grove, Lily Cate had come. They’d spent an afternoon sewing together in the garden, Sophie full of praise for the little sampler Lily Cate was working. The alphabet was interwoven in a simple floral pattern, Lily Cate’s initials at the center.

  “When I grow up, I want to sew as well as you, Mama.”

  Sophie leaned nearer and kissed the sun-warmed crown of her head. She’d forgotten her hat, but Sophie didn’t want to scold her. Their time together was too precious to squander on foolish reproofs.

  “I asked Papa if I could stay here with you till you come back.” She was chattering now, swinging her legs beneath her skirts, her sewing forsaken. “But he said you’ll be home soon.”

  Oh Seamus . . .

  “He’s teaching me to play chess. He says he misses you, that you are very good company. He even moved the painting of you.”

  Sophie stopped her stitching. “Out of the Palladian room?”

  Lily Cate nodded. “He put it over the mantel in the small parlor. ’Tis almost like you’re there with us.”

  The guileless words left a mark. Lord, I cannot do this any longer.

  “Florie says I might have another mama. But I don’t want another mama. You’re my mama.”

  Florie, nay. She’d often spoken to Florie about being discreet. To no avail.

  Setting aside her sewing, Sophie gathered Lily Cate in her arms, biting her tongue to keep from mouthing flimsy reassurances. I’ll be home soon. We’ll have a tea party in the garden and read fairy tales and say bedtime prayers . . .

  Her stomach was churning again along with her emotions. She looked to the bushes. She would not be sick in front of Lily Cate. She would stay strong. She would remember the promises in Scripture. She would hope and pray and not give way.

  The depositions had begun. One by one the servants who had been at Tall Acre during Anne’s brief tenure as its mistress were called to make a statement, Henley and Stokes presiding. Seamus kept to his study, hearing only a low murmur of voices through the closed door as he tried to work on ledgers and tally accounts.

  He’d awakened at dawn, surprised he’d slept. Without Sophie, his humid nights were a tempestuous stretch of war-torn dreams and pulse-pounding regrets, leaving him half sick, unfit for work. Without her, even the staff seemed on edge.

  At day’s end an abrupt knock pulled him to the present. The attorneys came in, hands full of papers, expressions grave as they took seats opposite him.

  “We’ve finished the depositions under oath,” Stokes told him, his youthful zeal in sharp contrast to Henley’s mature caution. “Your overseer, Riggs, provided the most comprehensive testimony, but ’tis your spinner Myrtilla’s that is most advantageous.”

  Seamus gave a nod. “I’m glad to see it done but don’t care to hear the details.” ’Twas punishment enough that his people, his staff, were subjected to this. A humiliation for everyone involved.

  Henley fixed solemn eyes on him. “Though the spinner’s testimony is certainly the most damning, I doubt it will be admissible in court given she is an enslaved woman—”

  “Myrtilla is enslaved no longer. She was manumitted prior to my marriage to Sophie Menzies.” His tone was saber sharp, regrettably so, but his legal counsel’s continual presence put him on the defensive even if he had retained them. Henley had even had the nerve to remind him on more than one occasion that he’d not wed Sophie, at least legally.

  Stokes gave a wan smile. “Her manumission may prove helpful. I intend to push for consideration of her entire testimony, even if it means calling her as a witness.”

  Henley grunted his doubt. “That is highly improbable. We need more than a statement. We need something tangible. A letter, perhaps, or something written that supports the spinner’s words. You have no such evidence, I suppose.”

  Seamus shook his head. “The Fitzhughs moved Anne to Williamsburg when she fell ill and took all her personal effects. There’s nothing remaining.” Though glad of it at the time, he now saw just how damaging the lack was.

  “We’ll go to Williamsburg, then, in hopes of recovering something.” Henley removed his spectacles and returned them to a leather case. “The Fitzhughs are more cooperative than we’d hoped given the pending charge of falsifying a death and erecting a gravestone before them. We’ve also threatened to have the judge removed from the bench.”

  Seamus drew in a breath. He could only guess how the haughty Fitzhugh reacted to that. All these accusations and bad feelings were stacked like ammunition between them, between him and Anne. But not between him and Sophie. He had to keep reminding himself that he’d done nothing wrong. She’d done nothing wrong.

  “No one is forgetting your reputation as a decorated war hero. That alone should carry weight.” For once Henley looked almost smug. “The ensuing press, all the papers, might work in our favor. You helped win a war that seemed to have no end. That’s fresh in American minds at present, including the Virginia courts.”

  Seamus listened, steeling himself against false hope. What if Anne won? What if the testimony of Tall Acre’s staff and Anne’s misdeeds weren’t enough to dissolve their tenuous tie? What if everything was excused because their lives had been torn apart by war and the court was willing to let it go at that?

  “We have your first wife’s statement, of course.” Henley reached into a satchel and removed another document. “Therein she claims your Patriot sentiments conflicted with her British sympathies, and she fled to England after threats were made on her life, leaving your daughter in the care of Williamsburg relatives.”

  Sane words. Sensible words. All believable, even understandable. But what about desertion? Betrayal? Cleaving together for better or worse? Seamus looked to the mantel where his guns and saber rested, the wounds inside him festering again. Only the years on the field under impossible conditions kept him from tearing the papers from Henley’s hand and feeding them to the fire.


  Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.

  Henley tugged at his stock. “She also cites your neglect during that time—”

  “Which has been explained sufficiently, I should think,” Seamus interjected. Would Anne have everything dragged into the public arena? Every intimate detail better left behind closed doors?

  Another hour ticked by, crowded with legal terms and speculations that left his head pounding.

  “General?”

  In the aftermath of Stokes’s and Henley’s exit, Myrtilla stood before him. She raised dark, liquid eyes to his. “Sir, is a freedwoman’s word no better than that of a slave’s?”

  He swallowed, feeling the injustice like a burr. “’Tis more your word against that of a white woman’s.” Another inequality he could not remedy. “Virginia law is slow to change. One day, mayhap, matters will be different.”

  She nodded, lips pursed in contemplation. Curiously, a glint of satisfaction shone in her dark eyes, so at odds with what he had just told her.

  35

  Sophie came awake, snatched from sleep by Mistress Murdo’s frantic words. “’Tis Lily Cate—the general has sent for you. She’s worsened.”

  Worsened? She’d had but a summer’s cold, someone said. By now Lily Cate should be better. Guilt and anger rushed in as Sophie’s head came clear. Guilt she’d not been there from the first. Anger that matters with Anne had kept her away. She’d seen neither Seamus nor Lily Cate for nigh on a week. The lapse loomed large in her already troubled mind.