The Shore (9 page)

When she told Andrew Day that her father tended to nap after the noon meal what she had meant was that he tended to be insensate from drink. The decanter came out with the salad at one o'clock, as usual, and was depleted and refilled before the chicken and the collards, also as usual, so that by the time the table was cleared, and ripe, velvet-skinned peaches had been brought out in a creamware basket, her father was nodding. She excused herself to her room and changed into a riding habit, an aging black costume originally belonging to an aunt, then waited for the young man on the side porch. There was no question in her mind as to whether he would come, and when he finally appeared the delay was instantly explained by
the temerity with which he held the reins of the two horses that were leading him across the lawn, the stableboy following some feet behind, visibly suppressing merriment. She studiously turned her face away as he mounted, but she could hear the clumsiness of it, and she set a slow pace as they started down the long drive, their backs to the house. He sat like a pile of rocks, twitching as his balance changed, but this did not keep him from telling her about his business.

He was a partner, apparently, in a company in Indiana with too many syllables in the name, that had a new, better way to grow and cure tobacco that would make her father even richer if he decided to throw in with them; all they needed was a little starting capital, but the returns would be worth the expense. She supposed he was trying to impress her, or was nattering away out of nervousness, or perhaps both. She nodded periodically, but didn't pay much attention until the house was a fading speck behind them and they were deep under the locust trees near the edge of the plantation, and she pulled her mount around and addressed him.

“You certainly have a lot of bank accounts for an up-and-coming company, don't you? A whole book of checks from the First Bank of Altona, and from the Rockville Holding Corporation, and the Golden Merchant Bank, and about a dozen others.” He froze as she said this, and she could barely keep the smile off her face. “Now I know that since the war half the money going round has ‘Confederate States of America' on it and isn't worth a tinker's dam, but I've never seen bills quite like yours. If one of your banks is printing them up special for you, they certainly aren't printing up too many.”

“You've gone through my papers, haven't you?” he finally asked.

She didn't respond, but nudged her horse into a slow walk, and his followed.

“You've gone through my papers. Admit it, you have!”

“This is what I'm thinking,” she began slowly, as if he hadn't said anything. “There is no First Bank of Altona, and you've never once set foot in Indiana.”

“Now see here—” he tried to break in.

“If I had to bet, I'd say you're from Boston,” she continued, speaking over him, “or Albany, or one of those sorts of cities, and you haven't left it more than once or twice in your whole life. You wouldn't know what to do with a harvest of tobacco if it stood up and called you Papa, but that doesn't matter, because you're planning on finding a way of walking off with your pockets stuffed with real money before the next crop even sprouts. You, sir, are as crooked as they come.”

He was taken aback, spluttering, growing red in the face. His horse danced under him and he rocked unsteadily in the saddle, but she held perfectly still.

“We can be useful to each other,” she said. “You want money, I want to be anywhere but here.”

When they returned to the house nearly three hours later, her father had not been pleased. Apparently, riding off in private with a strange young man and no one to watch over them was something that she was white enough to be forbidden. That evening she went to the kitchen while Andrew Day and her father
played cards, and let Calley brush her hair while she rested her head in the familiarity of the older woman's cool gingham lap. Her bedroom was her prison, as comfortable as she had made it, but the kitchen was her home.

“You're headed for trouble, m'dear. Sure as winking,” the old woman said to her, but Medora closed her eyes and leaned her head down, enjoying the feel of the brush. She knew what she was doing.

“They's worse places to be, child. Hate the old man all you like, least you don't have to sleep next to him. Least you can close the door against him.”

“I'm being careful.”

“Girl can't be careful enough. No way to win against them, men will always come out on top. Don't you believe a thing he or any one of them say.”

There had been a very limited amount of improper behavior on their ride, and none of it had tempted her, though she kept this information to herself. After her confrontation with Andrew, they'd dismounted to walk their horses slowly and discuss business. Or she had tried to discuss business. He had at first defended himself, explaining that he was the last of a long and noble line, impoverished by war, whose honor remained untarnished but whose name was somewhat sullied by the limited funds of its final scion. Pedigree meant nothing to her without money—if she hadn't been born mercenary, she had been brought up to it—and when she showed no interest in his he began to make court to her, first talking about her dusky beauty, at which she nearly laughed, then how well she sat a horse, and finally in desperation attempting to kiss her. Her slap had all of her muscle behind it, and he settled, somewhat sullenly, to discuss
the means by which they would remove themselves, and a decent amount of money, from the premises.

“You don't have to tell me twice. I saw what he did to my mother,” Medora answered Calley.

“Just being sure, m'dear.”

After their private ride, Andrew stayed for a further two weeks. She had made clear in that initial interview that theirs was solely a business arrangement, but as the days wore on he seemed to be less interested in their plan and more interested in getting his hands on her. At first she let him hold her hand, just so he'd stop bothering her about it. Then she let him stroke up her arm, until by the end of the first week all he had to do was set his palm on her skirt-draped knee to make her stomach jump. It wasn't love, she knew, but a sort of feline want, a purring and a pulling that she hadn't felt before. She was relieved when the day came for him to move on, though it would only be for a short time—in order for him to speak with a few other plantation owners, he had told her father, and to make a full report to his business associates. She enjoyed his attention, but she had been giving in far too much.

When Andrew left, immediately after breakfast on the sixteenth day since he'd arrived, his goodbye to her was polite but perfunctory, and she wondered for a moment if he would keep up his end of their plan. In the days after he left she frequently found herself staring into space, reading the same line of a book over and over, not exactly pining but wanting something that she couldn't name. She told herself that it didn't matter. His absence was part of her plan. A month rattled by, two months: she
still ached, still told herself that the aching was inconsequential. Whenever she closed her eyes in that time, she saw her mother.

Her plan required her to obtain a specific sleeping draft from one of the local doctors, and she found it poetic that, after a lifetime of sleep so deep and absolute that Calley had several times drenched her to be sure she wasn't dead, she was suddenly and for the first time wakeful in the private hours of the night. She had planned on simply lying to obtain the medicine, but when she went to see Dr. Parsons, everything she told him was true. He listened to her description, her tone as light and girlish and stupid as she could make it, of her restless nights and the exhausted days that followed them, and gave her a bottle of chloral hydrate with instructions to be careful with the dose. She had other purposes for it, but that first evening she'd taken the amount he recommended; it made her feel so leaden, so heavy, that she tucked it away in her drawer and thereafter mixed herself one of Calley's herbal drafts, strengthened with brandy from her father's decanter.

Nine weeks after his departure Andrew Day returned, with good news from his associates and additional backers to boast—or so he told her father. On the day that he returned she stole to the kitchen, chose one of the largest knives, and sharpened it on the whetstone while Calley was out of the room; then she saddled Mayfly and went for a long ride down the carriage drive, beyond the pecan trees and millpond, to where her father's working horses were kept.

She behaved coolly toward Andrew over dinner; his conversation was entirely business. After supper she followed them to the parlor where a decanter was opened and the cards were brought out. If she didn't know better, Medora would have
thought that Andrew had never left, that the long period of waiting had been one especially wracked and sleepless night. She settled in her usual place, the corner chair just behind and to the left of her father's shoulder, a heavy book in hand, to quietly play the part of a lady. Bets were made, cards were drawn, Andrew glanced across at her and she deliberately turned her page. He raised, and won the hand.

The evening wore on, the men bent companionably over the table and the decanter between them slowly emptying, Medora with one eye on her book, the other on her father's cards. She'd never played herself, but her regular presence on such evenings, with no company of her own, had left her with a solid understanding of the game. When the cards were right she turned her page and Andrew won the hand.

When her father's pile of chips had vanished, he tossed down his cards with a laugh.

“You show much improvement since your last visit, Mr. Day.”

“You have been most kind to me, sir. If the stakes were higher I'm certain you'd have long since cleared me out.”

“I doubt it,” her father answered flatly as he emptied the decanter into their glasses.

“How about higher stakes then? You're a betting man, you've probably grown tired of such small potatoes.”

“And what would you propose? My finest stud? Half of next year's crop?” He let out a barking laugh. “I know better than that, young man.”

“I was actually hoping, sir, for something much more valuable.” He glanced up at Medora, who continued to study her book.

“And what would you be wanting a cross-grained, plain-faced, vile-tempered wretch like her for? If I'd had any sense I would have sold her to the Gypsies when they'd have taken her, or boiled her into a pudding while her bones were still soft.” He shuffled the cards.

“A wife now, a plantation later,” Andrew said. “It sounds as though you're none too keen on keeping her.”

“You certainly are making assumptions about the dispensation of my property—and my inclination to ever die,” her father chuckled.

“She is your only child, is she not?”

“Though that appellation would usually indicate certain behavior on the part of the appellee—” his voice rose and he leaned back in his chair—“such as ‘duty' and ‘respect…' ”

“Father, really—” Medora began, but he raised his hand and she was silent.

“I own the wretch to be my child. And though I'm loath to think of her inheriting the lot, the idea of my estranged relatives getting their fingers on it disgusts me more. At least the harridan knows a good mount when she sees one.” Her father began dealing the next hand. “It should rightfully be the losing man that gets her. They're like elephants, women are. Everyone likes to look at them, but no sane man is about to volunteer to keep one.” He was silent for a moment. “But I'll take your bet. Best of three. Medora against, what, fifteen thousand? What's your offer?”

Medora kept her eyes on the page—as they drank, as they haggled playfully, and as the cards were taken up, fanned out, and rearranged in the men's hands. She turned her page and sealed her own fate.