Woman of Three Worlds (2 page)

She folded the letter over the money and put both in the envelope. When Jem returned, she'd ask him to send the fare back to Regina along with a note she'd write in the most elegant phrasing she could devise, explaining that she thanked her cousin very much but had found a way to remain independent.

As Brittany rose and shook the wrinkles out of her skirt, she couldn't help but wonder if, even grudgingly, Regina would have offered her shelter if “little Ned and Angela” hadn't needed a governess.

With Jem gone, Brittany was overwhelmed by fresh desolation at Tante's death and aching, almost unbearable loneliness. During these last painful weeks while Tante had seemed to visibly wither away, Brittany had been kept busy taking care of her and looking after the garden and house. With Tante gone and her home about to be taken away, Brittany suddenly felt as if she had no purpose.

The house was already clean. Burnish it to impress Bradley Eustis? Brittany grimaced at the thought. Jem knew a widow who could use Tante's few good garments and he'd taken that pathetically small bundle with him. Battling her sadness and worry, Brittany fed and watered the chickens, collected half a dozen eggs, and surveyed the garden, fenced by posts set close together to keep out wild hogs and deer.

It had rained several days ago, and a whole new crop of weeds was pushing up. Later on today she'd attack them with the hoe, even though it didn't seem likely that she'd be the one to enjoy juicy red tomatoes, green beans, and succulent roasting ears. At least, until that carpetbagger turned up, she could feast on tiny new potatoes and tender peas, green onions, and leaf lettuce. Only—how hard it was going to be to get used to sitting down to eat alone!

Eyes filling with tears as she passed Tante's grave, Brittany fled down the path to where her pirogue was tied to the rickety pier. In the bayou she had always been alone. She would go there now.

Waters so dark and still that they magically reflected skies, clouds, and trees that looked as real as the actual ones. Polished rounded cypress knees rising from the water like primordial carvings; an island where two snowy egrets arched their necks, seeming to speak to each other; grapevines and feathery green Spanish moss trailing near the water from extended limbs of water oak, willow, and giant bald cypress.

Blue herons, green herons, an incredibly beautiful pair of spoon-billed rose-colored birds changing places on their nest. Perched on a half-submerged log, a snake-bird dried its handsomely patterned feathers. A row of turtles slipped into the water at her approach. Brittany laughed at them and felt better.

For hours she drifted or paddled gently, comforted by the teeming life of the bayou as much as by its beauty. When she finally tied her pirogue at the pier, she was still grieved by Tante's death and she was still lonely but she felt able to go back to the house.

After a quick meal she'd take a hoe to those weeds! By night she should be tired enough to sleep. Still, the oak floor of the kitchen echoed at her footfalls.

Oppressed by the emptiness, Brittany decided against taking time to build a fire for cooking. Spreading a big hunk of corn bread with wild grape jam and filling a glass with mint-blackberry tea, she carried her lunch to a stump near the edge of the clearing and listened to the trills of a hermit thrush and the distant rat-a-tapping of a woodpecker. She left some crumbs for an inquisitive squirrel, swallowed the last cooling tea, and went to her work.

When she leaned the hoe against the fence three hours later, her shoulders ached and hair clung moistly to her neck and forehead, but the weeds were gone and it was good to breathe in the warm smell of rich black earth. She drew up a bucket of water from the well, drank deep, and washed her face and hands, letting them dry in the sun.

Reluctant to go inside, she went off to gather may-haws, returning at dusk with a basket of the ripe red fruit. Placed in a crystal bowl in the center of the rough plank kitchen table, they looked lusciously elegant, a sort of charm against night settling about the isolated house. She lit a candle, setting it where it would reflect off the crystal, before she built a fire in the hearth and put last night's potato and pea soup to heat.

She had never noticed before how many sounds the house made. As her scalp prickled and her heart jumped, she chidingly told herself that the noises had to be a loose shingle, shutter, or floorboard. After the dishes were done, she took the candle to the library and curled up in what had been her father's big chair, but she sorely missed Tante, companion of all her years and days, and the pages of Melville's
Moby Dick
kept blurring.

At last, heart crying out for solace, she sat on a footstool and went through the books Fulkston Laird had long ago purchased for the daughter to whom he'd never gotten to read most of them. Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe
, Swift's
Gulliver's Travels
, Lamb's
Tales from Shakespeare
, the works of Dickens, Scott, and Kingsley.

Just barely, she could remember leaning in strong arms while a deep voice read:

The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat …

Picking up Lear's
Book of Nonsense
, she read whimsical verses till her eyelids began to droop. Then, getting ready for bed, she placed the book by her pillow.

She shivered in her coarse muslin nightgown as she tried to summon up the courage to blow out the candle. It was extravagant to let it burn. She had to stop acting like such a baby! But a shingle or shutter rattled just then and her heart leaped into her mouth.

Just for tonight she'd burn the candle. She didn't really believe in ghosts and Tante Aurore would never hurt her, but all the same—Using the steps to climb into the high four-postered bed, Brittany huddled into the pillows, pressed against her cheek the book her father had read to her, and, after many starts and moments of frightened listening, she sank into uneasy slumber.

Only to wake to what were unmistakably footsteps coming up the hall. She sat up, heart pounding, as a form blocked the door.

It was solid, no ethereal mist. Candlelight picked up yellow hair, revealed a smile on full red lips as the tall, heavy-shouldered young man advanced. He was dressed in tailored dark blue coat and trousers, not like a strayed hunter or fisherman. There was no weapon in reach. If he meant harm, her only defense was her wits.

“Sir,” she said, swallowing to steady her voice and trying to behave as if strange men routinely came bursting into her bedroom. “Are you lost?”

His smile widened. “How could I be when your candle was a beacon?” His tone turned mock reproachful. “Can it be you had no thought for a weary traveler but were only reading that book?”

She thrust Lear under the pillow hastily so the intruder couldn't see she'd been reading children's rhymes. He acted as if he had every right to be there, even as if she should have been expecting him. Her heart sank.

“You—you're Mr. Bradley Eustis!”

He bowed. “And you must be the Miss Brittany Laird that Lawyer Hackett told me about.” A blond eyebrow rose. “Has he seen you lately?”

Brittany frowned her puzzlement. “Not for three or four years.”

“That explains.”

“What?”

“He didn't warn me that you were beautiful.” Eustis turned his hands in a gesture of disbelief. “He only said you were the late Colonel Laird's spinster daughter dwelling on here with an aged slave.”

“Tante was no slave.”

The legal owner of Tristesse shrugged. “Maybe he said servant. No matter. I'm hungry. Could she make me something to eat?”

Brittany recoiled before reminding herself that he didn't know. “Tante's dead.” She fought back tears. “Our food is plain, but I'll prepare something for you.” Her mind raced ahead. The owner would naturally expect to spend the night in his house.

Guessing her dismay, Bradley Eustis said, “I've tinned delicacies in my saddlebags. Let me bring them in and we'll have a midnight feast. Then, in as large a house as this, there must be a chamber I can use without disturbing you.”

This amiable behavior was a surprise but, unusual as her bringing-up had been, she was sure an unmarried man and woman shouldn't sleep in a house where there were no other people.

“The bedding's clean in the room next to this,” she said. “You must have it. I'll spend the night at a fisherman's cabin just a short distance from here.”

“Miss Laird,” he said brusquely, “pray don't be ridiculous! It will take me several days at the least to look over Tristesse and decide what to do with it. It may not be practical for you to live here in future, but there's certainly no need to discommode yourself as yet.” He chuckled winningly. “Why should either of us be uncomfortable because of what people might say when no one but us needs to know?”

Put that way, it did sound silly to insist on stumbling through the night to spread a pallet on the earth floor of an abandoned hut that was sure to be occupied by spiders, if nothing worse. Before she could say anything, he turned.

“I'll get my saddlebags,” he said, and left her to hurry into her clothes.

II

Bradley Eustis had eyes the cool shade of sky overcast with a wintry haze, but they danced at Brittany's amazed wonder at the array he took out of his saddlebags.

“You might heat up this tinned mutton stew,” he suggested. “Would you fancy oysters, salmon, or French sardines? The truffled woodcock is excellent, and so is the cheese.” He added packets of dried figs and raisins, real coffee, sugar, and tea.

Jem had brought treats when he could, so she had tasted sardines and raisins, but Brittany was sure that most of these things had been brought from some expensive shop in the East, or even in Europe. While she built up the fire, he opened the stew, and soon they were eating from the Sèvres that Tante had saved even after most of the beautiful furniture had been sold.

Brittany wasn't really hungry, but she savored raisins and figs and a wedge of red-gold cheese while Eustis consumed stew, corn bread, oysters, and salmon, topping them off with mayhaws.

“Delicious,” he said. “And red as your lips.” At Brittany's startled glance, he chuckled. “Surely we can dispense with hypocrisy under the circumstances, Miss Laird. You must know that you send a man's pulse hammering.”

“Sir—”

He waved aside her protest. “Don't look so frightened. Northerners can be quite civilized, you know. I promise not to even see if you bar your door tonight.”

“I'll bar it,” she retorted. “And if you make another personal remark, I'll go to the cabin!”

He rose, yawning behind his hand. “Rest virtuously in your own bed. I'm retiring to mine.” He bowed and went up the hall. By the time Brittany had done the dishes and passed down the hall, no sound came from his room.

She entered her own and fastened the bolt. As she undressed for the second time that night, she thought she heard faint masculine laughter.

His door was still shut when she tiptoed past next morning. Resisting the temptation to use his coffee, she made mint tea and breakfasted on mayhaws and corn bread, hurrying. She wanted to be out of the house before he appeared.

She let the chickens out of the coop, which gave some protection against night predators, and took the overgrown path to the fisherman's cabin. Bursting through tangles of jasmine and grape vines, she was glad she hadn't tried to go there in the dark, though if Eustis consented she'd move there today. He'd been weary last night, but his manner had convinced her that she'd be a fool to stay on in the house.

His
house.

She winced at the pain of the thought, picked up her skirts, and almost ran the rest of the way to the cabin. The door hung crazily open and the single window had lost all but ragged tags of the oiled leather that had served as a pane.

Weeds grew in the doorway. Toadstools sprouted in dark corners. Cobwebs chained a crude bench to a cruder table. Rodents had gnawed away the rope or rawhide that had been strung between four posts to make a bed. Wrinkling her nose at the dank odors, Brittany tested the posts that were buried in the ground to keep the tops steady. They were sound. And the roof seemed to be all right.

Eustis ought to pay her something for the remaining furniture, enough to fix the cabin up. She'd better go talk to him right now so there'd be time to clean it and move in before dark.

She had corn bread baking in the covered cast-iron skillet and coffee brewing when Eustis came lazily into the kitchen. “I thought candlelight had surely flattered you,” he drawled, ice-blue gaze appraising. “But you're even lovelier by full sun.”

Flustered, she reached for another skillet. “Would you like eggs for breakfast?”

“Anything, so long as you join me.”

“I've already eaten.”

“You make me feel a sluggard,” he laughed, sitting down. “Do you always rise with the dawn?”

“Yes.” She broke three eggs into the hot skillet, watching them instead of the man as she plunged. “I've been over to see the cabin.”

“What cabin?”

“The one I hope you'll let me stay in. I'll gladly do house or garden work in return.”

She could feel him studying her before he shrugged. “After breakfast, perhaps you could show me the cabin.”

He ate heartily, heaping corn bread with marmalade from his saddlebag, insisting that she have coffee with him. “I had expected to sell this house,” he said, “but you make it seem an inviting place to live, at least some of the time.” He sipped a last cup of coffee while she washed dishes and then suggested they go to the cabin.

When he ducked an oak branch to enter the small clearing, he stopped short, staring at the forlorn little building. “You want to live
here
?”

“I don't want to leave Tristesse.” Pride forbade begging, but she couldn't keep a tremor from her voice. “It's always been home. I can't imagine going someplace else.”