Bellewether Read online

  “Yes, well, he’s been busy with work.”

  “So have you,” she said. “Don’t get me started. He said he’d be out tonight, he had some dinner or something to go to. He said you could Skype him tomorrow at two.”

  I covertly studied her face while I sipped my wine. Her mouth had turned down at the edges, which meant that she was disappointed. And in more than just my choice of men. It was the same look she wore any time an outing she’d looked forward to was cancelled, or a treat she had been promised was forgotten in the rush of daily life. I cast my mind back over what we’d talked about this week, and what we might have planned.

  And I remembered. I said, “It’ll have to be later than two. We’re still doing that whole Sunday brunch thing tomorrow, right? And checking out the new bookstore?”

  The light in her eyes was my answer. And my reward.

  I had wondered, when I’d first agreed to do this, whether I’d be any help at all to Rachel. She was practically an adult, even if she’d have to wait another two years, until she turned twenty-one, before she could inherit both this house and Niels’s money in her own right. He’d set things up like that when she’d been five, and hadn’t seen the need to change his will since then, because along with all the rest of us he’d never thought he’d die at forty-two. He’d been ridiculously healthy. When his heart had stopped, he had been in the parking lot outside his gym, just coming from a workout. It was dark. He’d fallen in between the cars. No one had seen him.

  Rachel had called me a few hours later in tears, and the hours after that had been frankly a blur, but I’d been here by sunrise. I’d fielded the calls from the funeral home and from my mother in Canada, sorting things through, with my father still lying up there in his hospital bed, getting over his surgery, not yet aware.

  I remembered the lawyer explaining that Niels had left everything, as we’d expected, to Rachel, but with the whole estate held in trust until her twenty-first birthday. My parents were named the trustees, which would work for the finances, but my mother had spoken aloud what we both had already known: “There is no way that your father will go back to Millbank. Even if his health allowed it, which it won’t for some time yet, he just won’t go. So there’s the problem of the house, because I hate the thought of Rachel living there all by herself. And when she’s off at university, someone needs to look after things.”

  I’d known what she was asking me to do, before she’d even put the words in proper order.

  “Charlotte, I know it’s an imposition, but do you think you could . . . ?”

  “Yes, of course,” I’d said. “Of course I will.”

  There’d been no need to think things through. No hesitation.

  And when Rachel smiled like she was smiling now, I knew I’d made the right decision.

  With a nod she let me know we were still on for Sunday brunch and shopping. “I got us a reservation for eleven thirty.”

  “Perfect. Let’s just hope this rain lets up by then. It’s no fun driving in it.”

  “Did you see the accident?” she asked me. “Was it really bad?”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t come down the main road.”

  “We?”

  “Sam Abrams, the contractor, told me the shore road was safer, so I followed him.”

  “Oh, is that the guy Malaika knows? The one who does the work on all her houses?” Rachel asked. “The Mohawk guy?”

  “No, his hair’s just cut normally.”

  “I didn’t mean a Mohawk haircut, silly. Mohawk as in Native American. He’s like, about your age, a little older maybe, really built, short hair? He drives a big, black truck? I’ve never talked to him or anything,” she said, “but he seems nice.”

  “He is. He’s very nice.”

  “Nicer than—”

  “Hey, go easy on the wine,” I interrupted as she reached to pour a second glass. “You’re underage. If Mrs. Bonetti comes over and finds you drunk, I’ll get in trouble.”

  “Mrs. Bonetti won’t care if I’m drinking wine. Anyhow, New York law says I can drink at home.”

  I’d tried that argument myself at her age, but I’d quickly learned that, when you argue with your brother and your brother is a lawyer, you get slammed by all the subclauses. The sad part was, I still remembered most of them. “Well, technically, it says that you can drink at home if there’s a parent with you, or a legal guardian. And since I’m neither one of those—” And then I stopped, because I realized what I’d said.

  Rachel glanced past my shoulder to the empty chair behind me.

  Mentally I kicked myself. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine. You’re right, I shouldn’t have more wine. I’ve still got lots of reading to get finished before classes start.” She set the bottle down and forced the little smile that hadn’t changed since she was seven, and was just as unconvincing now. And then she rose and cleared her dishes off the table and retreated upstairs to her room.

  Left alone, I reached over and picked up the bottle and filled my own wineglass. I filled it as near to the brim as I could. And I looked, in my turn, to the chair at the head of the table.

  I said, “I am trying.”

  But if Niels was anywhere where he could hear me, he didn’t reply.

  Lydia

  The path up from the cove between the trees had not yet turned to mud before she reached its top, so it was only the last dash across the clearing that exposed her to the fury of the storm.

  Her skirts still gathered to her knees, she ran more freely and had crossed the threshold of the kitchen doorway before she became aware the room was crowded with more people than it should have been.

  She looked from Joseph, standing braced beside the hearth, his face drawn and determined, to her other brother, Benjamin, who had been sitting at the table but who stood as she came in, as though to block her view. Or shield her.

  Looking beyond Benjamin, she found her father’s watchful eyes and focused on them, making no attempt to hide the pain and disbelief in hers as she asked in a tone she wished were less unsteady, “Father?”

  He was standing with two men behind him.

  No, not simply men, she thought: two soldiers.

  And not simply soldiers: two French soldiers. There was no mistaking those white coats. They gleamed like vengeful spirits in the dim space of the long and narrow kitchen, where the ceiling beams hung low above them and the windows with their heavy glass obscured yet further by the pelting rain let in a sickly shaded light.

  At first she had the dreadful thought her family might be prisoners, and fear rose up within her, swift and sudden as an unexpected wave. It closed her throat and stole her breath until she noticed that, although the Frenchmen wore their swords, their weapons were not drawn. They stood at ease, hands at their sides, and watched.

  Her father slid his gaze from hers. “These officers,” he said, “have been assigned to me, on their parole of honour. They’ll be staying with us.”

  “Staying here?” She glanced again at Joseph. “You cannot—”

  Her father spoke sharply. “I can and I have. It’s my duty.” His tone, she knew well from experience, stopped all discussion and warned her to hold her tongue. Yet his stern eyes, when they lifted once more to her own, were not demanding her compliance. They were asking for her caution. “Lieutenant de Brassart speaks very good English. He’ll serve as interpreter for his companion. You’ll find them both gentlemen, and you shall treat them as such.” In keeping with this order he stepped slightly to the side and made a formal presentation to the officers. “Lieutenant de Brassart, Lieutenant de Sabran, this is my daughter, Miss Lydia Wilde.”

  There appeared to be little enough to distinguish one man from the other apart from their long buttoned waistcoats beneath the white coats of their uniforms—one a bright scarlet with gold trim, the other a deep vibrant blue. They both wore the same sharp cocked hats, had the same dark brown hair fastened back in a queue, and wer
e much the same height, being both of an age she’d have judged to be not far above Joseph’s twenty-six years. But the man on the right, in the blue waistcoat, studied her silently as his companion stepped forward.

  The man with the red waistcoat bowed while removing his hat in a gentleman’s gesture.

  His accented English was elegant. “Miss Wilde,” he said, “we are most desolate to inconvenience you.”

  This was Lieutenant de Brassart, then.

  Lydia did not consent to return his engaging smile, yet being mindful of her father’s wishes, replied with a curtsey that any observer might think was respectful, and one she considered sufficient to answer both officers, since the blue-waistcoated one had by now also bowed—not as deeply or long as de Brassart had, but with the same sweeping off of his hat that seemed somehow more courtly than when her own countrymen did it.

  She felt, in the moment they greeted each other, as if she were standing in water again, only this time more turbulent, pressing her in on all sides. At her back she heard Benjamin restlessly shifting his stance on the floorboards while Joseph stood wrapped in a silence so fierce it was practically audible, and she could tell that her father was waiting for her to say something to lessen the tension.

  Her mother, she thought, would have known what to say; would have put everybody at ease.

  She attempted her own slightly forced imitation. “It’s no inconvenience. Do give me your coats—Father, you as well—and I will set them to dry by the fire.”

  As de Brassart turned round to translate this request to the other French officer, Lydia’s father shrugged off his wet coat and stepped forward, his eyes warm with pride.

  He said nothing to thank or to praise her, and yet she knew well he was pleased with her actions and speech as he handed the coat to her, watching her hang it on one of the pegs he had set at the side of the hearth for that purpose.

  The hearth, in her childhood, she’d thought had been built by a giant, for only a giant, she’d reasoned, would need one so large. It would stand, said her father, long after the house and its timbers had fallen, and she did not doubt it. While Mother had lived, it had been the great heart of the house, always warm, but these past two years Lydia had come to learn it was not such an easy thing keeping a fire without letting it fall low or flare up too hotly.

  It seemed too hot now, but that might have been simply because of the earlier heat of the day and the closeness and damp of the room with the rain beating down at the windows. She took care to see that her father’s coat hung not too close to the logs in the grate, nor the iron pot set on its black hook above, in which rested a large rump of beef, stuffed with forcemeat and stewing with celery and carrots in water made flavourful with pounded cloves and red wine.

  Her father leaned nearer and, pretending curiosity in what was in the pot, asked very quietly, “Where’s Violet?”

  Lydia replied as quietly, “Her head was aching badly, so after the milking was finished I sent her upstairs to get rest. I had no difficulty managing. Our dinner, as you see, is but a simple one.”

  “So simple you can cook it at a distance, I perceive.” His tone was mild and yet reminded her he knew she had been out of doors and nowhere near the house.

  “The weather was so hot, I needed air,” she said. “And anyway, I did not leave the fire untended. Benjamin was here.”

  “And where was Joseph?”

  She would not upset her father nor betray her brothers by revealing they had argued, so she turned her face away and answered simply, “He was also here.”

  Which had to satisfy her father, since the two French officers by this time had removed their coats and carried them across, as she had asked. Her father stood aside to give her room. The coats were long, of fine white wool, and now that she was holding them she saw that they were different in that one of them—de Brassart’s—had a collar faced in blue, and was itself lined all in white, while his companion’s coat was collarless and lined in the same rich blue as his long-sleeved waistcoat.

  She had heard the French were vain about their clothing and their uniforms, and looking at the coats she could believe it. Both were split below the waist along the side seams to allow for ease of movement, pleated full across the back to make them fashionably drape and swing, with rows of fine gold buttons and deep cuffs that turned back nearly to the elbow. And at each side, where the seams had been divided, there were buttons that allowed the inner corners of each panel of the coat, at front and back, to be turned upward from the hem and fastened so the soldier’s leg was free for movement and the lining of the coat could be displayed.

  A pretty thing to wear, she thought, for men who dealt in blood and fighting, musketfire and death.

  The man in the blue waistcoat spoke. His voice was deeper than de Brassart’s, less designed to charm, and more direct. It was a short speech but she did not know its meaning till de Brassart added, “Yes, of course, I wish to thank you also.”

  Lydia glanced at the other man but he was looking at her and she did not wish to hold his gaze long so she cast hers once more downward. “You are welcome.”

  Her father lightly touched her arm as though to show he understood what those few words had cost her. Then he spoke above her head to both his sons. “These officers will find it most convenient to sleep down here in your chamber. Both of you take what you need upstairs. Joseph, you can take the room beneath the eaves, and Benjamin, you’ll share with me.”

  They knew that tone as well as she did, and they did not argue. Benjamin, always the first to do what was expedient, moved towards the doorway of the small square chamber at the kitchen’s farther end. It had been his alone at one time, during those dark months three years ago when Joseph had been at Oswego, but when Joseph had returned to them—at least in body—later on that autumn, they had shared it once again.

  He might have spent the morning trading angry words with Benjamin, but he said nothing now as he, too, ducked beneath the doorway of the small end chamber, re-emerging moments later with his few belongings in his hands. And then with Benjamin behind him, he passed stone-faced through the nearest door that led into the keeping room, and so to the front entry and the staircase, since to use the back stairs would have meant a walk the full length of the kitchen, past the gauntlet of their father and the officers.

  And that was something, Lydia knew well, her brother Joseph would not do if it could be avoided.

  It had taken him a full year to be able to be in the same room as their neighbour’s hired hand, French Peter. And French Peter, being one of those French neutrals who’d been sent down by the British from Acadia, had never been a soldier so wore simple working clothes and not a uniform.

  She knew if she were finding it this difficult to have them here, for Joseph it must be nigh on unbearable.

  And that was why, after she’d waited in respectful silence while her father showed their new “guests” to their chamber, she took him aside in the moment of privacy after and said again, low, “You cannot do this. Joseph—”

  “Is not made of glass. He’s yet a man. He will not break.”

  And what of me? she almost asked him, but she closed her mouth upon the words because she saw her father’s eyes and knew he was already troubled. Frowning slightly, she observed, “You do not want them, either, do you? Why, then—?”

  “Come.” He ushered her ahead of him across the kitchen to its other end, where at the farthest distance from the chamber given to the officers, the small square buttery stood partially closed-in. The narrow back staircase was here, and the barrels of cider and ale and the bottles of spirits and wine, and the freestanding cupboards and dresser her father had built for their spices and foodstuffs and dishes. The buttery had no door in its wide and open doorway, but by standing in the corner by the dresser they could speak discreetly.

  “Why?” she asked him, less accusing now.

  His mouth compressed. “Your uncle Reuben had them sent to me.”

  She under
stood his problem then. There was no love at all between her father and his older brother, who seemed best amused when all the lives of those around him had been thrown into confusion.

  Lydia had witnessed this for all her life, in small ways and in greater ones, and knowing well the hold her uncle had upon her father—upon all of them—it brought her pain to notice that her father was too bitter and ashamed to meet her eyes.

  He said, “The magistrate’s boy came this morning, before you had wakened. He did not say why, only that I was wanted. And when I arrived, I found them. And the magistrate holding a letter from Reuben assuring him I’d volunteered for the honour.” He frowned at the floorboards. “What else could I do?”

  “Nothing.” Lydia, turning her anger away from her father to where it belonged, reached to take her spare apron down from its hooked peg on the wall at her side, and with calm, careful movements, she pinned it in place so it covered the less perfect folds of her gown. “You could do nothing, and neither can we, but endure what my uncle seems wholly convinced we cannot.”

  Over their heads, from the little room under the eaves just above, came the creaking of bed ropes and then the soft thud of bare feet being swung to the floorboards.

  Lydia looked to her father, who’d noticed as well.

  With a nod to the back stairs he said, “You had best go warn Violet, before she comes down. Reassure her there’s nothing to fear. They are gentlemen.”

  Lydia clamped her mouth hard on the truth she knew well: that no Frenchman could ever be counted a gentleman. But as she turned from her father she heard the sharp edge to her voice, like the blade of a knife not yet drawn from a wound, as she answered him, “Then let us pray, for our sakes and their own, they take care to remember it.”

  Jean-Philippe

  She wanted them dead. Not just elsewhere and out of that house, but beneath the ground, dead, or else strung from the nearest available tree. He’d encountered such hatred before, but from men he had recently captured or wounded. This was the first time he’d met that same look in the eyes of a woman.