Page 21 of The Indigo Heiress

20

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Benjamin Franklin

Leith returned to Williamsburg half frozen to the saddle, snow turning his matchcoat stark white. He’d made a circuit of half his Virginia stores on the coast and up the James River till rough weather had beaten him back. Visiting the southern colonies in summer was punishment enough, but mayhap winter was worse. His horse had thrown a shoe in the northern neck, and he’d had to cross a stream that seemed more river when a ferry failed. One tavern had no private room, so he’d shared a garret with one too many odiferous, snoring colonials. The next night, rather than repeat the travesty, he’d slept in the stables.

Now, frozen to the core, he’d never been so glad to see a kirk spire or smoke rising from countless brick and wood buildings. He turned onto England Street, the slush muting his horse’s hooves. The borrowed stallion was smaller than he was used to and trained to a snaffle bridle yet tough as an Indian pony and of impeccable pedigree.

“Well done, Janus.” He ran a gloved hand down the snow-white mane once he’d dismounted at the Ravenals’. Behind their townhouse, a small brazier burned at the stable door. “An extra measure of oats,” he told the groom through numb lips.

After scraping his boots clean at the rear entrance, he went through the back door and up a back stair, finding the house empty. Had the Ravenals gone upriver again? His host had given him free rein of the townhouse during his stay, and the silence was welcome. Too exhausted to be good company, he passed down the second-floor hallway to his bedchamber, needing a bath and a meal but not necessarily in that order.

Within an hour he’d had both. The hearth’s robust fire chased the chill from the room and cast orange light on the papered walls. Snow still swirled down and mounted against the windowsills. Finished with a hearty meal on a tray, he dozed in a Windsor chair beside the fire, chin to his chest. A deep, dreamless sleep was curbed by the sudden snap of the fire, returning him to the December dusk. Voices sounded from outside.

“The first noel the angel did say

was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;

in fields where they lay keeping their sheep,

on a cold winter’s night that was so deep.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel...”

He pulled himself to his feet, went to the nearest window, and looked down, finding a dozen or so carolers crowding the front steps below. Mumming and wassailing he was used to, but not caroling. They were a picturesque bunch in the snow, all wearing capes, the women’s bonnets trimmed with bright ribbon, the men in beaver hats.

He’d nearly forgotten it was December. His parents, like many Scots, refused to celebrate Christmas or Yule.

When a knock sounded on his bedchamber door, a masculine voice invited him below. The footman? The last thing he wanted was to be sung to. He wasn’t dressed for company. His hair hung lank and damp about his shoulders, and he was in a long sark, no breeches, feet bare.

“Nae,” he half shouted to still the footman’s knocking, then felt a sudden chiding. Why had he not simply ignored him instead?

The revelers were as exuberant as he was reluctant, their outright joy somewhat nettling. When had he felt that same sense of freedom? Of unguarded release?

To his dismay, they began another song. Yet he couldn’t move from the window despite the chill reminding him to return to the fire’s warmth.

“God rest ye merry, gentlemen,

let nothing you dismay ...

O tidings of comfort and joy,

comfort and joy.”

Comfort and joy? He ken neither. His body felt cold and his soul colder still. It had been cold for a long time. Before Havilah’s passing even. That coldness seemed akin to the shadow that encased him. A flat, joyless, comfortless cocoon he couldn’t break free of.

The singing faded on a final note. Still he didn’t move. The carolers were silent now, backtracking down the steps, all but one. A face turned up to him, framed by an odd mix of dusk and weather. Snow light. The white plume of her indigo bonnet danced in the wind. Juliet Catesby held his gaze in a way that reached down inside him and stirred something lost.

He couldn’t give up that gaze. He returned it with a fervor that felt feverish. After several exquisite seconds, she was the one who turned away, hastening down the slick brick steps to catch up with the other carolers. Half wishing he’d gone below, he watched her cloaked figure disappear in faster-falling snow.

The tick of the mantel clock in the unfamiliar chintz bedchamber was overloud. Juliet turned over in the canopied bed, facing away from the window, as charred logs settled in the grate. In this borrowed room on England Street she could hear all sorts of noises. The night watch. A dog barking. The clatter of coach wheels and horse hooves. The snow seemed to cushion yet magnify the world all at once. This, she told herself, was what now drew her to the window. Not the house across the street and slightly to the left, its handsome lines dark save a light in a single window. The very window she’d spied Leith Buchanan looking down from as they’d been caroling.

Could he not sleep?

She’d heard he was traveling. Had it been a fortnight since he’d shared their Sabbath table? She and Loveday had been in Williamsburg nearly a sennight because of weather. In that time, Hosea had relayed the message that the runaway mother and daughter were improving but needed further refuge. Meanwhile, Father had secured a marriage license, and the wedding day was set for two days hence. The Ravenals were to return from Forrest Bend in time to celebrate the nuptials in Zipporah’s parlor.

Juliet wished they were Loveday’s instead.

With the house asleep, Leith had free roam of Ravenal’s residence. In his smallclothes, he ignored the possibility of causing tittle-tattle if found by a maidservant and went downstairs. Mayhap he needed something to read. Ravenal had a library adjoining the first-floor parlor. Snow light illuminated the windows and allowed him to kindle a candelabra from the hearth’s dwindling fire.

Holding it high, he perused shelves that wrapped the room on all sides. A treasure trove of books was tidily grouped by subject. All the agricultural tomes, predominantly tobacco, bespoke Nathaniel Ravenal’s former life. Once he’d been Virginia’s most prolific planter. For years the Buchanan-Ravenal liaison was legendary on both sides of the Atlantic. Ravenal had enriched the Buchanans as much as they had enriched the Ravenals, dominating the market that some scathingly called a monopoly.

And then, all at once, Ravenal had a change of heart. It began simply enough. He declared himself done with tobacco trading. His depleted tobacco fields lay fallow, and he began to farm grains instead, selling vast amounts of acreage to settle his debts, both in Virginia and Maryland and in the Caribbean. He’d even talked lately of leaving the Anglican Church and becoming a dissenter instead.

Most shocking of all, he’d freed his Africans. Though some chose to remain as paid domestic staff, he’d contracted indentures instead. Ever since, boatloads of British immigrants had clamored to work for him because of his generous terms. Leith knew firsthand because they sailed on Buchanan ships.

But not once had Ravenal explained his extraordinary reversal. Let my actions speak for themselves , was his succinct explanation to Leith’s father by letter. Leith had expected not only an end to their complex, lucrative business association but an end to their long-standing friendship as well. How many men—and there were few—who’d forsaken slaveholding and the tobacco trade and all that came with it would continue to befriend a man who’d forsaken none of it? Not only that, he’d even extended that hand of fellowship to Leith and his brothers.

Leith had accepted Ravenal’s invitation to Virginia only because he’d wanted to avoid the scandal at home. He’d expected questioning about Havilah and his failed marriage, some form of judgment and condemnation. But there’d been no haranguing or lectures from Ravenal. No cleverly disguised counsel. Just a steady, thoughtful presence that didn’t preach.

Leith left the agricultural shelves and moved toward novels and poetry. Gulliver’s Travels. The Vicar of Wakefield. The Castle of Otranto. Robinson Crusoe. Those he’d read. He’d been traveling with Jonathan Swift’s satire A Tale of a Tub , which he’d gotten from an Annapolis bookseller . An irreligious, profane work.

Much like himself.

As he moved toward the door, his candelabra cast light on a table. There lay a Bible, open to Proverbs. Proverbs 31, to be exact.

Who can find a virtuous woman?