Page 14 of The Indigo Heiress

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These are the times that try men’s souls.

Thomas Paine

Leith left the ballroom, wanting to clear the color and confusion from his mind. Too many names and faces mixed with dancing, spirits, and incendiary politics were a potent combination. He stood in the cool silence by a boxwood hedge and noticed the skeletal outline of what appeared to be the beginning of a summerhouse.

All seemed a bit lacking, even threadbare, at Royal Vale. Though handsome, the place had peeling paint, cracked plasterwork, sagging floors, and crumbling brick. New World Virginia lacked the richness and grandeur of layered centuries of civilized Europe, but it didn’t deserve the slur of rustic or backcountry either.

He walked a shell path away from the main house to what looked like a walled garden. Illuminated by hanging lanterns, the acre of space was of English design, the central fountain solid marble, its waterless basin strewn with leaves. Italian made, he guessed, the waterworks reduced to a single spout, or jet d’eau, as the French called it.

He sat down on the fountain’s broad edge. Was no one else outside? As he thought it, into the lantern-lit darkness came a footfall. One of the Ravenals? He looked over his shoulder, surprised—and pleased.

Miss Juliet Catesby came to a stop a stone’s throw away. “Are you in the habit of worrying your hostess with your absence, Mr. Buchanan?”

“Worrying?” he answered. “Not the term I’d use when you’ve fled like a fox before hounds since my arrival.”

A startled hush ensued, and then she laughed—a low, rich, warmhearted sound. “Your Scots bluntness is, I must say, refreshingly welcome amid so much fawning and cringing going on inside.”

He smiled—an unforced smile that felt retrieved from some dim, dusty part of himself. Fawning and cringing, aye. With her so close he was definitely guilty of the former. He watched her move to an ornamental copper spout along a brick wall, where a trickle of water splashed onto the ground. Taking something hanging beneath it—a cup?—she turned toward him again.

“The least I can do is offer you some pure, sweet Virginia spring water, though perhaps Scots whisky is more to your liking.”

He took the cup she held out to him and downed the bracingly cold water in two swallows before handing it back to her. “Is this an olive branch of sorts after our rather contentious beginning in town?”

She refilled it as if in answer, her silvered features serious as the moon moved behind a cloud. Tall as Lyrica, she was, but comelier and dark. The miniaturist who’d painted her had not done her justice by half. What would she do if he withdrew her likeness from his pocket?

“As for my absence,” he said, taking the cup again, “where were you half an hour ago?”

“We seem to be very aware of each other, Mr. Buchanan, which I’ll blame on our rather tumultuous beginning in town, yes.” Her gaze—and then his—turned toward the top of the house, where glass shimmered and a weathervane shifted slightly in the rising wind. “I escaped to the cupola.”

He kept his eye on the cupola instead of her. It took Herculean effort. Whatever pulsed between them was business, he reminded himself, though attraction didn’t hurt.

“I’m afraid the ball in your honor has become more a political debate, hardly what I had in mind when I planned it. Our American obsession with independence runs like treasonous fire through everything these days.”

He stood. “Matters are nae less fiery over the water.”

She turned toward him as the music crested. Lady Ramsay’s Strathspey? “I do believe, given the furor all around, that George III will be the last king of America.”

Treasonous, aye. Finished with the spring water, he replaced the cup. “If independence is given free rein, it will have irreversible consequences for us all.”

“You’re thinking of your Glaswegian dynasty.”

“Dynasty? A grand word for a Scots merchant firm.”

“You are too modest, sir.”

“Modest? Nae, honest. We’re not aristocracy.”

“I do wonder what you make of us Virginians, being an outlander.”

“And I wonder what you Virginians think of us Scots.”

They faced each other as if at some sort of an impasse. In truth, his concerns about Glasgow shrank to pin-sized proportions in her presence. He’d not thought of Havilah or the bairns or business all evening. For a few hours, at least, the darkness seemed pushed back.

“Which side of the fight are you on?” he asked quietly.

“Am I a Patriot or a Loyalist, you mean? I’ll let you decide.” She gestured toward the ballroom. “By now my father might have gathered a search party for us both. Won’t you accompany me back to the house?”

“Only if you’ll promise me a dance.” Her resistance was palpable, but the challenge didn’t deter him. “Though it might be better to arrive inside separately lest we stir up another sort of storm.”

“Wise, yes.” She raised a hand to her unpowdered hair, where a curl hung loose. “But I must warn you, there’s no hurry. The dancing will likely last till dawn.”

He watched her go ahead of him up stone steps, her indigo skirts trailing.

A graceful ghost in the moonlight.

They stepped to the lively “Rakes of Rochester.” Truly, the ballroom floor was no less empty now at a quarter past one than it was at the ball’s beginning.

Smile undimmed, Loveday partnered with one of the Taliaferros in the longways set, and all the dancers wove in and out, Juliet and Mr. Buchanan the topmost couple. Though tired and thirsty, Juliet didn’t miss how well the Scotsman performed, not with the exaggerated, theatrical movements of some gentlemen but with an easy grace that belied his stature—almost the equal of Colonel Washington, who’d once been their guest and referred to dancing as “the gentler conflict.”

Juliet remembered it now with a half smile. Conflict, yes. That was how she felt dancing with the man whose presence turned her upside down. Though some pairs conversed amid all the sidestepping and circling, she and Mr. Buchanan did not exchange another word, only glances. And that, somehow, seemed a conversation in itself. A lingering, intent look not once but again, till she found herself watching for them—watching him—as if trying to decipher their meaning. But it was the touch of his hands that most startled her. Not womanish hands as many gentlemen had, not pale and thin and blue-veined and unremarkable, even repulsive.

“Give me a virile man with callused hands.”

Was that what Loveday had recently said? Why had Juliet, the elder sister, not realized this heaven-sent situation sooner? Was this not her answer to prayer? To all their debt and misfortune? Loveday might make a match with the man right before her.

Loveday Catesby Buchanan.

It even sounded poetic.