The Mistress of Tall Acre

  He sat still, stoic, as Anne’s failings were brought to light. The humiliation of it made him want to sink beneath the bench he sat upon. Cutting across his conscience was the problem with the missing marriage certificate. Missing . . . or mishandled? Mayhap maliciously?

  The drone of voices stopped. Three days of testimony and deliberation were at an end. The judges convened in a small chamber as tense minutes ticked by. On their return, the lead judge stood. Seamus heard the verdict as through a fog.

  “By the power invested by the state of Virginia, we the council hereby declare the marriage between Seamus Michael Ogilvy and Anne Howard Ogilvy to be upheld according to colonial law—”

  Seamus shot to his feet, slamming his maimed hand on the table in front of him. “Do you think I will not fight? Appeal? Do you think your ruling can undo years of absence and betrayal and unfaithfulness?” Every eye was on him, every face taut. “Am I to be bound by archaic colonial law—English law—that I gave eight years of my life to upend? Nay!”

  There was a stunned silence as he spun on his heel and left the courtroom.

  “She’s gone, sir.” Mistress Murdo stood before Seamus in the glare of a summer’s afternoon. “I came home from market late yesterday to find this note waiting. I would have gotten it to you sooner, but you were in Richmond.”

  At that, she left him alone in Three Chimneys’ foyer to read the note privately. Apprehension, thick and potent, overtook him at the first line.

  Dear Seamus,

  I must go. By the time you return from Richmond and read this, I will have sailed to Scotland. Please forgive me. You must remember, no matter where I am, my heart will always belong to you and Lily Cate.

  Sophie

  Shaking, he turned the paper over, wanting more. More words. More time. More chances. A soaring ache, unlike any he’d ever known, took hold of him. He’d been betrayed. Twice. Only he’d never believed Sophie capable of such. She had gone behind his back. She had given up. She had . . . left.

  The vacant foyer, the unceasing ticking of the longcase clock, echoed the emptiness inside him. He crumpled the paper, his gaze fixed on the elegant clock’s maker. John Scott, Edinburgh.

  Sophie, what have you done to me?

  She’d put an ocean between them. He could not get to her. He did not know exactly where she’d gone. How would he find words enough to tell Lily Cate?

  In one severe thrust, the clock’s sparkling front gave way beneath his fisted hand. So anguished within, he barely felt the cutting and bleeding without. The jarring shatter of glass brought Mistress Murdo running.

  Rage vented, but no easier of mind, he turned and left Three Chimneys without apology, the words sticking in his throat . . .

  Seamus awoke, drenched with sweat, the bedsheet in a fierce tangle. The nightmare fled. For a few disorienting seconds he couldn’t grab hold of where he was. And then the stench of burnt meat and stale spirits from the taproom below stormed his senses. ’Twas an overwarm summer’s morn in a comfortless Alexandria tavern. On the day of his appeal.

  The dream faded but the panic remained.

  37

  Sunlight drenched Sophie’s shoulders as she sat by the open parlor window. Silver thimble on one finger, she planted tiny stitches in the blue flannel with her best needle. Every so often she would pause, turn toward the glass, and search for some sign of Seamus in the green landscape. Four days it had been since he’d left for Richmond. Four days with no word.

  Did the delay spell a denial? An end to their life together? Her every nerve stood on end, her hopes nearly spent. She almost wished theirs had stayed a marriage of convenience. There’d be no severing of hearts and souls and bodies. No baby.

  Dropping needle and cloth to her lap, she pressed her hands to her middle. This was her one comfort, her sole joy. God had given her a child even if she had no home and no husband. No secure future.

  Yet how was she to raise this child? On what funds? If the courts ruled against them, she could still sail for Scotland and plead her father’s mercy. There she’d raise their baby, holding on to a part of Seamus if she could not have all of him. But by law the child was his, not hers. If they had a son, he would be heir to Tall Acre, perhaps taken away from her and raised by . . .

  Nay. She lowered her head as if to deflect the piercing thought. Better to flee to Scotland and face her father’s wrath. The truth was she bore Anne no ill will. She’d even begun to pray for her. Yet they were not prayers for reconciliation but repentance and restoration. God could bring blessing out of anything, but He would not rewrite the past. Betrayal and absence exacted a high price. Anne’s actions had cast a long shadow and carried lasting consequences.

  Swallowing down a bout of nausea, she uttered another silent prayer. For Seamus. For the court’s wisdom. For truth. But in fact she was already moving away from him. Forced to think of a life without him. Without Lily Cate.

  What choice did she have?

  He had appealed. And now he returned home to Tall Acre to wait. No sooner had he come in than a dozen matters needed settling. Riggs was waiting, as was Mrs. Lamont. But he put all else aside till he could see his little daughter.

  Lily Cate was awake despite the late hour, driving every pressing need from his head.

  “Papa, have you been to Three Chimneys to see Mama?” Her face held joy and wonder as she sat on his lap and fingered his bewhiskered jaw. “Did she tell you our secret?”

  “Secret?”

  “Our baby is coming. She told me so when I was sick. She said I must get well to help her . . .”

  She rambled on while his breathing slowed and his mouth went dry. Sophie. Expecting. She’d been ill while he’d been . . . preoccupied . . . blind. Or was it just the hope of a sister or brother?

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded so hard her curls bounced. “’Tis time for Mama to come home.” She nestled into him again with a little sigh, sounding more grown-up than her years. “Our baby should be born here at Tall Acre.”

  “She’s out walking, sir,” Mistress Murdo told him in Three Chimneys’ foyer, her ready smile banishing his previous bad dream. “I’m not sure which direction she went today.”

  Thanking her, he went out into brilliant July sunlight. As he walked toward the river, he thought of all he had to tell her, all she’d missed—all he’d missed—being away. The threshing floor of the new barn was newly laid. A second litter of hound pups had been born. The folly had been damaged by lightning, and rain had flooded the lucerne field. Schoolmaster McCann was making strides in the schoolhouse despite falling prey to ague, a common malady of newly arrived immigrants. He was even following Sophie’s lead and continuing to teach Jenny and Myrtilla and others.

  Tall Acre’s demands never lessened. Sometimes he felt pressed against a millstone, ground and crushed by responsibilities. Never had he missed Sophie more than now. In the brief time they’d been married, she’d stood beside him, sharing the burden, lightening it in myriad ways. He craved her steady, sunny spirit. Her honesty and industry. Her gentleness.

  A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.

  Squinting in the glare, he cleared a copse of trees and saw her at the river’s edge, sitting in the grass. Head bent, she was unaware of him, making a daisy chain from those tiny yellow flowers he’d always considered more weed. Other than acting as his secretary, she was forced to be idle when a world of need awaited at Tall Acre.

  A fragrant wind tousled her upswept hair and carried her voice to him. She was humming a lullaby, low and sweet. He allowed himself the tender moment, taking her in unawares, and then all sentiment fled. She was no longer his. Might never be again. She was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, yet he might have to spend the rest of his life without her.

  If he were a lesser man, a rebellious believer, he’d take Sophie and Lily Cate and go west. Flee to the Kentucky territory and the lawless frontier wher
e men made their own rules and courts held no sway. But he was a redeemed man and seasoned soldier and would stay.

  Come what may.

  Sophie sensed him before she saw him. She looked up from her lap, aware the guard was missing, and saw Seamus instead. Flowers forgotten, she stood and began a slow walk toward him. The sudden wooziness inside her had nothing to do with the baby. The slanting sunlight seemed a barrier between them. She couldn’t get a fix on his features to gauge whether he brought good news or ill. And then she knew. A closer look told her everything. Richmond had gone hard on him.

  He took her in his arms and held her. “I’ve appealed. To the legislature.”

  For a moment the weight of it overwhelmed her. Weeks, months, loomed before her, each a mountain she had no strength to cross. “How long then?”

  His hand dropped to the lace of her bodice and traveled to her waist. “You answer me, Sophie. How long?”

  She placed her hand over his, the miracle of new life upending her all over again. “Late winter by my reckoning.”

  The tension left his face and tenderness took its place. “That’s why you’ve been ill.”

  She gave him a small, sad half smile. “’Tis worth every trip to the chamber pot or bushes.”

  “The thought of you here, away from me at such a time . . .” He left off, the sheen in his eyes saying more than words ever could.

  Her good humor returned. “You’ve little to worry about with Mistress Murdo clucking over me and the men standing guard.”

  “Does anyone know?”

  “Mistress Murdo likely suspects, though I’ve told no one but Lily Cate.”

  “You’re a far better tonic than Dr. Craik. No doubt that piece of news pulled her through.”

  “That and prayer.”

  “Aye, prayer.”

  She linked arms with him, walking along the gravelly riverbank, its soothing rush like music. “You should know that Anne came here with word of my father.”

  He went still.

  “She saw him in Bath. He and Curtis want me to join them in Scotland. I only mention it in case Anne speaks of such.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. If this isn’t resolved in the legislature, I will appeal to a higher court. I want you home at Tall Acre, and I won’t rest till that’s done.”

  She listened, uncertainty sweeping over her. His was the conviction that had won a war, but she’d begun to doubt this would become a personal victory.

  “I don’t want you burdened by any of this.” Misery framed his face. “If anything happens to you, our baby . . .”

  “No matter what has happened or will happen, I will never begrudge knowing you, loving you—and Lily Cate.”

  “You deserve far better. Far more.” The regret in his words turned her inside out. “I’ll always begrudge our beginnings, Sophie.”

  “I shan’t, ever. ‘They lived happily ever after’ is the stuff of fairy tales, Seamus. At least in this life.”

  He raised a hand, tracing the flushed curve of her cheek. “Keep praying. Hoping. Truth will prevail.”

  38

  Seamus was in court again. A month from the day he had appealed. The event had been well publicized, stealing every headline in Virginia, and now the courtroom was once again crammed and breathless in July. Anne sat in her usual place, color high and brandishing a fan, a maid beside her. Throughout the proceedings, the Fitzhughs had been conspicuously absent. Seamus thought it as a door opened at the back of the room and they made an unexpected entrance.

  The judge took up his gavel and brought the room to silence with one decisive pound to the podium. “The Virginia court is hereby in session to resolve the case of General Seamus Ogilvy of Tall Acre and Anne Howard Ogilvy lately of England.”

  Perspiring beneath his wool uniform, Seamus forced calm. His fellow soldiers sat behind him, so many it seemed his whole regiment was assembled. He could feel their tension much as he had on the field, in the hours and minutes before a decisive conflict was at hand. Now his own dread went as deep as it had then, when he’d wondered which of his men he would lose and which would stay standing after the storm of battle. If he too would survive.

  His attorneys, especially dour this morning, were prepared to cite Sophie’s pregnancy if their appeal was denied. Seamus balked against making such a personal matter public, but there was little to be done about it. He already felt exposed to the utmost, though Anne seemed not to care. She fluttered her fan and chatted with the woman beside her as if this were of no more consequence than a horse auction.

  Seamus fixed his eyes on the judge, whose attention was pinned on the doorway at the rear of the room. Turning his head, Seamus saw a slave woman enter the courtroom, her head bound with a bright kerchief, her homespun dress neat if plain. A slow awareness dawned.

  Myrtilla? All the way from Tall Acre?

  She looked neither to the right nor the left as she walked the narrow aisle to the front of the courtroom. A hum of murmuring began. She clutched a book to her chest so tightly it seemed no one could pry it loose from her bony, work-worn fingers.

  A bailiff intervened, trying to deter her, but she continued unswervingly toward the judge’s bench, her bearing confident yet respectful. The presiding judge leaned forward to hear something she said, and then he gestured toward Seamus’s and Anne’s legal counsel.

  “The proceedings are momentarily adjourned.”

  With that, the judge led the counsel and Myrtilla out of the courtroom as the hum of the crowd grew louder.

  A quarter of an hour passed, and Seamus felt he would melt from the heat. Giving a tug to his stock in a bid for air, he watched the door that Myrtilla, the judge, and the counsel had retreated behind. Beside him, Cosima whispered something, but he barely heard her.

  God, help us. The truth, please.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t fathom what had brought Myrtilla to Richmond when she’d never been more than five miles from Tall Acre her entire life. But as a freedwoman, she now had liberties she hadn’t before and no longer needed a signed pass from him.

  He squared his shoulders as a bailiff called his name and then Anne’s. A private meeting? Anne cast him a pensive look and moved into the antechamber ahead of him. He followed, curiosity overriding dread. A near-smothering longing for Sophie settled over him, though he was glad she was far removed from the courtroom drama. Lily Cate intruded next, her parting words to him haunting.

  Papa, won’t you bring Mama and the baby home soon?

  As the door closed behind him, he found himself facing Myrtilla across a battered table. Stark white light from a window illuminated a leather-bound book at the table’s center. The book she’d clutched to her chest?

  With their legal counsel looking on and the judge still presiding from a corner chair, Seamus and Anne took their seats, though Myrtilla remained standing. Anne was regarding her former servant with a telling wariness, defiance in the jut of her chin.

  “General Ogilvy, is this woman known to you?” The judge gestured to Myrtilla in an unnecessary formality.

  Though Seamus wanted to cut to the chase and reach for the mysterious book, he steeled himself and answered, “She is a freedwoman, once a slave at Tall Acre and now in my employ as a spinner.”

  The judge nodded. “Since she is at liberty, she can speak for herself in the presence of these witnesses.”

  Myrtilla swallowed and met Seamus’s eyes. “If my word as a black woman ain’t good enough, General, I thought maybe I could help you some other way.” She reached for the book and held it out to him. “This was in Mistress Ogil—” Her eyes flared at the slip. “This was in Mistress Anne’s desk, in her old room at Tall Acre, on the second floor.”

  Seamus took the book and opened it. Recognition stirred. His own heavy, sprawling hand was on the flyleaf. To my beloved, Anne, wife of my heart. “I gave her this on our wedding day but have since forgotten. ’Tis a diary, a journal.”

  Nodding, Myrtilla continued at the judge’s prom
pting, voice steady if low. “I used to watch Mistress Anne write in this book while you was away fightin’ in the war. I wanted to know what it said, but I couldn’t figure out the words till now. I always believed it might help you if I could.”

  Seamus waited, on edge.

  “Now that I can read—”

  “How dare you!” Anne lunged for the little book.

  She had but touched it when a bailiff intervened and the judge barked a sharp rebuke.

  “You shall be seated, Mistress Howard, and refrain from speaking until I deem otherwise.” The judge turned back to Seamus. “Is the writing in this book that of your first wife, General Ogilvy?”

  Seamus paged through the contents, noting entries and dates in Anne’s unmistakable hand. Details that left him feeling winded and half sick, secrets long suspected but better left unspoken, unwritten. Buried. “Aye.”

  He shut the book. His legal counsel was studying him, pensive and stone still, as he returned the book to the table.

  “I do not expect you to read it. I would advise otherwise,” the judge said. “But it contains evidence that is the deciding factor in this case.”

  He stood, and Seamus’s legal counsel stood with him. To their left, Anne’s attorneys were strangely silent. Anne herself had turned ashen.

  Seamus felt wonder take hold. Could it finally be over? Swept behind them for good? If so, he owed the freedwoman before him an immense debt of gratitude. But the shine in Myrtilla’s eyes told him that turning the case in his favor was payment aplenty.

  “This entire matter has dragged on long enough. I, for one, am glad to see it end.” The judge held open the door to resume the proceedings. “Shall we, General?”