Embrace the Day Page 7

  Genevieve listened carefully as Joshua Greenleaf presented his family to her. Mimsy, his wife, was a stout, cheerful-looking woman with a smile as wide as Chesapeake Bay. Calvin, a boy of eighteen, was as tall and lean as his father, with the same glint of intelligence in his eyes. He was the only member of the family who wasn't smiling; he regarded Genevieve with hostile skepticism. The other three boys, Curtis, Phillip, and Eustis, were scruffy and playful looking, but they paid their respects in a mannerly way. The girls, Caroline and Rose, gawked at Genevieve, openly curious. She knew they'd inundate their father with questions as soon as her back was turned.

  Quickly, Joshua sketched out Genevieve's plan. Calvin turned away with a snort.

  "Slaves again," he said darkly, "and this time she gets us without bidding at the auction house."

  "That's not what I offered," Genevieve said firmly. "I'm talking about a partnership, Calvin. Your father and I will be equals."

  "So we all starve together."

  "No, we all get rich together," Genevieve insisted.

  "That's just what I mean to happen," Joshua added.

  At that, Mimsy Greenleaf burst into tears. Genevieve swallowed hard to relieve the tension in her throat. She, too, felt like weeping with relief. After all the months of being alone, wondering whether she'd ever do anything other than scratch out a meager existence on her lonely farm, her life was suddenly full of plans and people and hope.

  Dancer's Meadow was a tiny hamlet embraced by the Rivanna and Dancer's Creek, dwarfed by the line of the Blue Ridge to the west. Its single street, unpaved and dotted by tree stumps, was lined with a few buildings that managed to look neat despite the dust.

  The town boasted one tavern. Its name, the King's Arms, was the only grand thing about it. Walls of rough-hewn timber and plaster surrounded the dirt-floored taproom, which was furnished with stump-legged tables clustered around a large central hearth.

  A few patrons had gathered at the front door to look across the road at the trading post. Roarke joined them when he heard Genevieve's name mentioned.

  "Lookee there," said Elkanah Harper, gesturing with his mug of cider. "The Widow Culpeper's got herself a gang o' slaves." She was standing on the dock, supervising the unloading of Luther Quaid's boat.

  "Lot o' seed there," said Simon Gray, the barkeep.

  Elk Harper's boy, Wiley, came running into the tavern, puffing with exertion. "They ain't slaves," he announced. "I heard Mrs. Culpeper say they was business partners. They're gonna raise tobacco."

  Roarke couldn't suppress a grin at the open-mouthed astonishment on the men's faces. They'd always regarded Gennie with curiosity and not a little resentment; she'd made it clear from the start that she was quite happy without a husband.

  He wasn't at all surprised to hear of the plan. It was exactly like her, plunging headlong into a plan so audacious that it just might work.

  "Tobacco, eh?" Elkanah slurred. He liked to call himself a philosopher so as to excuse his disdain for an honest day's work, but everyone else knew him as the town drunk, one who had a tune for every occasion. "What's a green Londoner know about tobacco?"

  The other men laughed in concurrence. "She'll be wiped out by summer," Simon claimed. "Maybe then she won't be so disdainful of us menfolk."

  Roarke knew then that Simon had been one of Gene victims.

  "Like to lay odds on that, Simon?"

  The barkeep laughed. "Hell, yes, if you're fool enough to bet in her favor, Roarke." Simon scratched his head. "I'll give you three to one she doesn't even see a crop through to the first harvest."

  Roarke raised his mug. "Done," he said, and took a long drink to Gennie's health.

  Seth Parker had hewn a stump into a low seat for Amy. She called it her weeding stool, and the profusion of herbs and flowers that grew around it attested to her care. Seth brought out two stools from the house so that Amy and her friends could sit in the herb garden in the soft autumn sun.

  Genevieve sipped her tea, savoring its rich herbal flavor. "This is lovely," she said to Amy. "What is it?"

  "Raspberry, comfrey root, sassafras. Seth won't allow a single leaf of English tea in our house."

  "Roarke is the same way," Prudence admitted. "He's very much in sympathy with Boston and won't stand for paying the tax." She set her cup aside with a little moue of distaste. Leaning forward conspiratorially, she added, "But I managed to lay in a supply of good English tea. Rather dear, but Roarke knows nothing of it."

  Genevieve and Amy exchanged a look. Amy excused herself to check on the bread she was baking. Genevieve forced the matter of the tea from her mind and turned her eyes to the brooding line of the Blue Ridge to the west.

  "It's beautiful here, isn't it, Pru?" she said.

  Prudence shrugged. "In a wild sort of way, I suppose, it is." Catching the look on Genevieve's face, she added, "I know you're disappointed in me, Genevieve. But I just can't be happy here."

  "Good God, Pru, why not? You've a lovely house, a husband who treats you like a queen—"

  "I know," Prudence said with uncharacteristic fierceness. "But I'm not like you, Genevieve. When you left London, you left nothing." She lowered her eyes. "I left the only thing that truly matters to me."

  "Edmund Brimsby," Genevieve said dully.

  "I loved him. I love him still."

  Genevieve stifled a curse. "How can you love the man who ruined you?"

  "You talk as if I have a choice. But it's not like that, Genevieve. I can't help what I feel."

  "What about Roarke?" The question leaped to her lips before she could stop it.

  "I'm grateful for all he's done for me. He'll be a good father to the baby. Genevieve, I wish I could be a better wife to him, but I can't. Roarke's a strong, bighearted man. He deserves better than me." Prudence gave her friend a sudden look of surprise. "He needs someone more like you, Gene."

  Genevieve felt a jolt of understanding, a blinding clarity. She knew then that she wanted Roarke. Wanted him in a way that made her cheeks flame, in a way that she must, at all costs, deny.

  "Gennie, you're behaving like a child," Roarke said, frowning at her.

  "You're not my bloody nanny, Roarke Adair!" Prudence gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Roarke wants you to come to meeting with us because he cares about you, Genevieve. We both do."

  "I've no time for churchgoing."

  "Nonsense," Roarke said. "All of the Greenleafs have gone to the slave church at Scott's Landing. You'd do well to look to their example in observing the Sabbath."

  She opened her mouth to protest again, but Roarke was lifting her out of his cart and tugging her into the church before she could speak. Mercifully, they sat in the back, away from the curious stares of the townspeople. Genevieve kept her eyes downcast, her hands folded firmly in her lap.

  Furtively, she stole glances at Prudence and Roarke. He'd settled comfortably beside his wife, making a cushion for her by placing his. arm behind her waist. Prudence smiled distractedly at him and began fussing with a bit of lace on her bodice. Genevieve became fascinated by Roarke's hand at the small of Prudence's back. Great strong fingers were making tender circles there in a mindless rhythm of gentle affection. Prudence gave no indication that she'd even noticed his solicitousness.

  Resentment prickled within Genevieve. She would never be so indifferent to that touch, she—

  Suddenly, a fragment of the Scripture that was being read penetrated her thoughts. She imagined a note of accusation in the Reverend Carstairs's voice.

  " '… Flee also youthful lusts; but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, and them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart…' "

  Genevieve fled from the church. But as fast as she ran, she couldn't escape the guilt she felt at what she'd been thinking.

  "Bloody hell," Genevieve breathed, regarding the loaf she'd just brought from the oven.

  "Ma," Rose Greenleaf whispered, "Miz Culpeper's swearing again."

  Genevieve smiled a little sheepishly. "I'm
sorry. It's just that I can't seem to bake bread. Look at this! Flat as a hoecake."

  Mimsy Greenleaf hid a grin behind her hand. Her husband's partner—Genevieve wouldn't stand for being called the mistress—tried hard in the kitchen but simply had no talent for cooking and baking.

  "That's all right," Mimsy said, shooting Rose a look to quell the girl's giggling. "We'll break it up into the stew tonight." She bent over the hearth and gave the pot a stir.

  Genevieve inhaled the fragrance of the bubbling small-game stew. Phillip, the Greenleafs' youngest boy, was a cunning hunter and was always bringing in a rabbit or squirrel, sometimes even a buck, which Mimsy transformed into a sumptuous meal.

  "Luck was smiling on me the day we met," Genevieve declared. "I don't know what I would have done without you." She turned her eyes to the window, where in the distance she could see Joshua and the boys carving furrows in the late-autumn fields with the new plow. Ordinarily, Genevieve was out there toiling alongside them, but she'd fallen into a hole and twisted her ankle. Mimsy wouldn't hear of her working until the sprain had healed.

  So Genevieve stayed with Mimsy and Rose and Caroline in the kitchen. The Greenleafs had made a cozy home in the barn, but Joshua had yet to finish the chimney. At Gene insistence the girls slept in her house, where it was warmer.

  A shout brought her limping to the door. Curtis, Eustis, and Phillip ran tumbling down from the fields, calling out in delight.

  "Mr. Adair! Mr. Adair, what did you bring us?"

  Roarke swung down from the seat of his cart, his big arms spread wide to receive enthusiastic hugs from the boys. As always, he pretended ignorance as the youngsters repeated their question but soon relented and took out three pieces of maple-sugar candy.

  Smiling, Genevieve stepped out onto the porch.

  "You'll spoil the boys, Roarke Adair."

  "Those fine fellows?" He laughed and doled out candy to Rose and Caroline, who giggled and ran back into the house. "Never, Gennie. Besides, I'd best get used to young ones. I'll be a papa soon."

  "How is Prudence?" she asked quickly. Unlike Roarke, she knew Pru's time was coming sooner than anyone else expected.

  "As a matter of fact," Roarke said, "I'm here to collect you. According to Mrs. Weems, the midwife, we'd best hurry."

  The cart creaked beneath them as they drove toward the Adair farm. The acres that rolled by the river road were brown and sere, the trees stark and stately against the sky. A grouse rattled in the brush at the roadside, startled by their passing. Overhead, geese wheeled and cried out, spreading silver-gray wings that matched the color of the sky.

  Genevieve glanced over at Roarke. The months of outdoor work had deepened the color of his skin, and the sun had burnished red-gold highlights in his hair. Roarke looked totally at ease in his surroundings—strong, confident, full of vigor.

  He caught her staring at him and grinned. "I'm a Virginian now, girl. An American."

  "An Englishman," Genevieve contradicted.

  Roarke's eyebrows descended a little. "Maybe not for long. Plenty of folks aren't too happy with the way England's been treating her own."

  Genevieve nodded, conceding his point. Every so often, Luther Quaid arrived with a copy of the Virginia Gazette from Williamsburg, which regularly contained long lists of Parliament's abominations in the colonies. There had been talk of breaking away from the mother country, turning the colonies into a confederation of their own.

  "Such things don't concern us," she told Roarke. "It's all we can do to coax a livelihood from the land."

  "You'll be concerned enough when you get a taste of the tariffs they put on your tobacco," he said darkly. Then he looked thoughtful. "I've decided to put in extra corn next season. For the people of Boston."

  "You'd best forget politics, Roarke Adair," she said firmly. "You've a farm to run and a child on the way."

  The moment she said it, she was sorry she'd brought it up. Roarke's eyes grew slightly harder, as if some unpleasant thought had stirred in his mind.

  "Our wedding night was but seven months ago," he remarked, watching Genevieve closely for a reaction.

  She flushed and looked away.

  "Prudence is a good deal more than seven months along."

  "I know nothing of such things," she insisted, now blushing furiously.

  "Did Prudence ever tell you whose child this is?"

  Genevieve couldn't bring herself to meet his hard gaze. "You'd best speak to Prudence about it, Roarke."

  "Prudence and I speak of nothing," he said. Genevieve stiffened at the note of bitterness she heard in his voice.

  "Roarke—"

  "Don't make me pretend, Gennie, not with you. Prudence and I attend church together, we go calling, we set our table for the parson… But it isn't right. I don't even know who my wife is, Gennie. And she doesn't care who I am."

  Privately, Genevieve was astounded that a woman married to Roarke Adair could keep her mind off her husband at all. He was such a powerful presence, his booming voice and deep, rich laugh impossible to ignore. But she was quick to rally to her friend's defense.

  "Roarke, she hasn't had an easy time of it. She's never really had anyone in her life. How can you expect her to know what to do with a brute like yourself?"

  He laughed at her assessment of him, and his mood grew lighter. "Perhaps you're right, Gennie. Perhaps I've a few things to learn myself."

  "Sweet—merciful—God!" Prudence's scream pierced the stillness of the November night, bringing Genevieve to her feet. She'd been dozing after spending most of the day mopping Prudence's brow and soothing her as her labor progressed.

  But now, in the darkest hour of the night, there was no consoling the woman who suffered on the bed. Prudence's hand clamped convulsively around Genevieve's, the veins on it standing out with tension.

  "Please, Pru, try to relax," Genevieve said helplessly.

  Mrs. Weems, the midwife, was more matter-of-fact. "Every labor has its dark moment," she said, studying her patient with an experienced eye. "It passes quickly."

  But there was nothing quick about the birthing. A day and a half before, Prudence had taken to her bed with vague twinges in her back. Sharp pains had started soon after, but the baby seemed to be making no effort to join the world.

  Genevieve sat at the bedside and put her arms around Prudence, who moved her head from side to side in a delirium of pain.

  "Please, God, I want to die," she said through gritted teeth.

  "Pru, don't—"

  "Leave me alone!" Prudence said with sudden fierceness.

  Mrs. Weems shook her head at Genevieve's frantic look. "She don't know what she's sayin', Genevieve. Don't pay no mind to her rantings."

  By the time the pink light of dawn tinged the sky, Prudence no longer spoke. She merely shivered and gulped quick, uneven breaths of air and shook her head as if to deny what was happening to her.

  Even Mrs. Weems could no longer mask her concern. She lifted Prudence's wrist and felt her pulse.

  "She's weakening."

  Prudence's eyes flew open, and she let out an unearthly howl. Then she began to grunt through clenched teeth, eyes wide and unseeing.

  Mrs. Weems rushed to her and let out a whoop of gladness as she spied the top of the baby's head. "It's coming!"

  she called, clasping her hands to her chest. "God be thanked, it's coming."

  A baby boy slid into the midwife's hands.

  Genevieve froze, staring. And then tears began pouring down her cheeks. Never had she seen anything so utterly beautiful, so fine, so sweet. The baby was a healthy red color, and as Mrs. Weems daubed at his nose and mouth with a bit of linen, he coughed and let out a small, thin cry.

  "Fetch her husband," Mrs. Weems said, laying the baby beside Prudence as she began tying off the cord.

  Genevieve was out the door in an instant. "Roarke!" Her cry was a shout of gladness. "Roarke, where the devil—"

  He appeared in the hall, haggard and unshaven, lines of worry s
howing around his eyes.

  "It's the baby, Roarke," Genevieve called. Before she knew what she was doing, she leaped to him and felt the pressure of his arms wrapping about her. The embrace lasted only a moment, but it was enough for a familiar feeling of unease to begin creeping into Genevieve's heart. But today it was easy to push aside.

  "It's a boy, Roarke," she said. "You've a fine son. Come see."

  Taking his hand, she led him to the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness within. Then, hesitantly, he approached the bed.

  "Prudence?"

  At the sound of Roarke's voice she opened her eyes and smiled weakly. She moved the quilt aside to reveal a small ruddy face.

  "Isn't he beautiful?" she whispered. "Such a fine little lad…" Her voice trailed off, and she closed her eyes again.

  Roarke was fascinated by the baby, and more fearful than he'd ever been in his life. How could anything be so small? So perfect?

  Genevieve pushed him forward, holding a candle so he could see. Roarke knelt beside the bed and touched the blanket that swaddled the child. Then, growing bolder, he ran his finger along the wizened little cheek.

  The child turned his head toward the finger and opened his tiny mouth. Roarke felt a sting of emotion in his eyes. It didn't matter that the child hadn't sprung from his loins. The boy was his now, in every sense of the word.

  While Roarke marveled over the child, Mrs. Weems busied herself with Prudence. She removed the bed linens and toweling. Watching her, Genevieve felt a shiver of fear. So much blood… There wasn't an inch of linen that wasn't soaked.

  She followed the midwife out into the hall. "What's wrong?" she asked. Her voice was low, as if she were loath to give voice to something dark and unimaginable.

  "She's very weak," Mrs. Weems explained. Her face was somber. "She's spilled enough blood for a dozen birthings, and it shows no sign of stopping."