A Dream of Daring Page 34

  “She’ll hang, regardless!” said Rachel. “Won’t she, Mama?”

  Charlotte didn’t reply. She looked distant and disturbed, in the throes of a vivid memory.

  “Mama, are you all right?”

  “Wiley . . . Wiley . . . what did you do?” Charlotte spoke in the dazed manner of a sleepwalker.

  Ladybug looked curiously at Rachel. “If the senator was your father,” she said, her curiosity turning to revulsion, “does that mean he was also . . . my—”

  “No! He’s nothing to you. I’m nothing to you!”

  “I wonder . . .” Ladybug stepped away, toward the French doors opening onto the gallery. She looked out, absorbed in her own recollection, whispering to herself. “I was left with Miss Polly in the basket of flowers . . . with the scarlet ladybug. . . .”

  Charlotte was glassy-eyed, disturbed by something in the past.

  Rachel placed her hand on her mother’s arm. “Mama, are you feeling all right?”

  Charlotte absently patted Rachel’s hand while she stared at the strange new person in their lives. Then her face looked alarmed. “Wiley, don’t! Don’t!”

  “See what you’ve done?” Rachel said to Ladybug. “You’ve upset my mother. She’s in shock because you’re trying to ruin us with lies, all lies! You murderess!”

  Deep in reflection, Ladybug didn’t reply. As her eyes were pulled outside the French doors, her attention was pulled out of the scene and into the distant past. “Miss Polly said the flowers were red too. Yes! I remember, there was a scarlet ladybug with black spots on the scarlet flowers in the basket. . . .”

  “Goodness, Tom, you’ve gone and spoiled everything we could’ve had!” cried Rachel. “Tom?”

  He wasn’t listening to her. Ladybug’s recollections had captured his attention. He walked toward the disheveled figure in the gown, trying to hear her over Rachel’s raving and Charlotte’s rambling.

  “Miss Polly said the flowers had no stems . . . just the blossoms were in the basket. . . . Miss Polly said I looked so tiny and fragile among all those blossoms.”

  A few tears dropped softly from Charlotte’s unblinking eyes. “Wiley, what did you do?”

  Rachel vigorously tapped her mother’s hands. “Now, Mama, snap out of it!”

  Then the young redhead walked close to Tom. She pressed against him, clutching his shirt, her robe and negligee slipping off her shoulders.

  “You know, we’ve suffered enough already, thanks to your invention and the tragedy it caused. Now you come here with this girl to bring shame to us. Don’t you see, this whole matter will ruin Mother? Look at her. She’s in shock. Everyone looks up to her. She’ll never be able to show her face again in town. And what about me? I have a standing to maintain too.”

  He quietly studied her.

  “What if my father had an . . . indiscretion . . . years ago? Why stir up ancient ashes to make Mother ill and bring us disgrace?”

  Distracted by another voice, Tom slowly took her arms off his chest and turned back to Ladybug.

  “Why would someone snip off the stems?” Ladybug asked herself aloud.

  Tom’s brows arched sharply, anticipating the direction of her thoughts.

  “Unless there were thorns on the stems . . . if the flowers were . . . roses . . . like those.” The girl from the basket pointed curiously to the perimeter of blossoms outside, which the morning sun now captured in its full crimson glory.

  Charlotte whispered to herself. “Oh, Lord, we were . . . so . . . young. . . .”

  Ladybug’s finger stood suspended in space, pointing at the roses beyond the gallery. “Who would wrap an infant in flowers? I always thought it would be a . . . woman.” She suddenly looked astonished. Her body pivoted so that her finger was now pointing inside the room. At Charlotte.

  Her look of astonishment turned to certainty. She lunged at Charlotte. Her formal attire proved no excuse for manners and femininity, with her elbows high, her eyes ruthless, and her furious tangle of hair flying through the air and blocking the view of her prey to anything but her urgent presence.

  “Stop! Stop! Leave me alone!” Charlotte looked like the hapless victim of an attack by a wildcat. “You mustn’t! Stop!” She tried to throw off the headstrong creature, but Ladybug was tenacious.

  Rachel rushed to stop the assault on her mother, but she was halted by Tom’s powerful arms thrown around her.

  Ladybug tugged at Charlotte’s robe and the nightgown beneath it, pulling the fine silk garments down to expose the older woman’s ivory shoulders and the skin above her breasts.

  Then everyone froze: Rachel stopped fighting. Tom’s arms loosened their grip on her. Ladybug halted her attack. And Charlotte broke off her screams. She and Ladybug stood staring at each other.

  The ever-modest Charlotte, she of the high-collared dresses and the obsessive concern for propriety, possessed skin that was still as smooth and lovely as that of the young women now gaping at her.

  Another feature of hers also matched that of the two others, one that still looked as exotic and beguiling on her as it did on them. It was the little heart-shaped birthmark.

  CHAPTER 29

  Mortified, Charlotte closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was staring at the person from whom she had hidden for nineteen years. Her face softened to show a tinge of regret, even of motherly caring. The sadness in her eyes met the coldness in Ladybug’s. Charlotte took a step toward her, but Ladybug moved away.

  Then the mother turned to face the other daughter from whom she had hidden the truth.

  Rachel was aghast. A hoarse whisper replaced her voice. “Mama! How can this be?”

  Charlotte spoke with resignation, almost relieved at no longer having to hold the lid on a powder keg. “I couldn’t explain, not even to you, dear. When you were two years old and your . . . when she was born”—she gestured to Ladybug—“I saw on her the same mark that we had. It was scarcely the size of a pinhead on her newborn skin, but it was there from the beginning. After that, I wore high-necked clothing and applied powders to conceal the mark, even around you, Rachel. And I used a doctor outside of town, in Mortonville,” she said, naming a nearby village to the east. “I was discreet, so no one would discover my secret marking and ever link me to . . . her.”

  The person to whom she pointed stared at her with contempt.

  “Your father and Aunt Polly knew about her,” Charlotte added. “And also my midwife, who died a few years later. I couldn’t let anyone else know. Not even you, Rachel.”

  “This means I was born free!” Ladybug almost sang the words like a hymn. According to the law, children of mixed race were pronounced slave or free depending on the status of their mothers.

  “You’re a free person of color at best. That’s not the same thing.” Rachel corrected her.

  Free people of color were caught in the corridor between the two great halls of slavery and freedom, and they shifted nearer to one or the other depending on local laws and the men who interpreted them.

  The three women had not moved to cover their exposed birthmarks: Ladybug in a plunging gown, and the Barnwells, who were either too stunned to pull their night clothes up over their shoulders or no longer cared because the truth was now out.

  “The tombstone!” Tom suddenly recalled. “At the Crossroads burial grounds, there’s the grave of Leanna Barnwell, the stillborn child of Charlotte and Wiley, who was two years younger than Rachel.” He shot a questioning glance at Ladybug.

  “I’ve seen that grave,” she said.

  “That’s you. You’re Leanna Barnwell.” He turned to Charlotte. “People would’ve known you were expecting a child. You had to account for that. So you went through a mock burial, didn’t you? Who could suspect there was no body inside a cast-iron casket supposed to contain a lightweight infant? That casket’s empty, isn’t it?”

  “It was filled with straw,” Charlotte admitted.

  “That’s why you declined to join Rachel when she put flowers a
t Leanna’s grave after Polly’s funeral. You knew there was no child buried there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Rachel, this is Sis.” Tom gestured to Ladybug. “This is the sister you always wanted to have, the sister you yearned for and made your imaginary companion through childhood. You wished she were alive. Well, she is. She’s Ladybug.”

  “No! Never!” Rachel screamed. “She can’t be my sister. Mama, if this unspeakable scandal gets out, I’m ruined. I might as well be dead! How could you do this to me?”

  Ladybug looked as unhappy with her newfound relatives as they were with her.

  “Of course, Leanna wasn’t the stillborn child of Wiley but the very-much-alive child of another man.” Tom’s eyes sparked as more circuits connected in his mind. “That was why the senator was in a hurry to sell Ladybug on the morning of the funeral, with Polly’s body hardly cold. He wanted her out of there before you arrived, didn’t he, Mrs. Barnwell?”

  “Wiley talked of selling her. He worried about my seeing her after all these years and what I might do.” She looked solicitously at Ladybug, as if she could ease her own guilt with a sign of her daughter’s forgiveness. “You know, one can never completely stop the beating of a mother’s heart.”

  “You needn’t keep such a weak thing beating on my account, Mrs. Barnwell.” Ladybug spoke with the detachment of a judge hearing a case about someone else’s mother.

  Tom continued. “So when Nash noticed the birthmark on Ladybug, that cinched the matter for your husband. It pushed him over the edge to do what he was tempted to do anyway.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “At the funeral, when I heard the senator tell you that he took care of more than he had expected to do that morning, I wondered what he meant. You knew what he meant, didn’t you, Mrs. Barnwell? You knew that he had disposed of your daughter. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes.” Charlotte lowered her head guiltily. Then, as if a mother’s shame were battling with a wife’s supposed duty, with the latter winning for the moment, she raised her head more boldly. “Wiley didn’t discuss the matter with me. He didn’t consult me, but why would he? It was his right to do what he did.”

  “It was his right to sell your daughter—born a free woman—to a cruel man who abused her?”

  Charlotte looked dismayed. Tom had a pesky way of unsettling her conscience. “Polly treated her well, and I can’t help what Wiley did. But she couldn’t ever be free. That was always out of the question.”

  “Only because you couldn’t admit to being her mother.”

  “How could I admit to such a thing, Tom? Do you think Wiley could hold political office after such a scandal? Do you think I could be received in a single household here? Do you think Rachel could grow up here and find a husband? It would’ve destroyed our lives.”

  “So instead you destroyed her life.”

  “You’re heartless, you are! The colonel’s son, and you have no pity!”

  “So that’s why you never visited Polly. It was always Polly who visited you, wasn’t it, Mrs. Barnwell?”

  Charlotte looked away evasively.

  “You said the air at the Crossroads didn’t agree with you, but what didn’t agree with you was having to come face-to-face with the daughter you abandoned to slavery,” Tom charged. “By your laws, she was born free. You condemned her to bondage!”

  “I let her live! I saved her from Wiley! Do you realize what a feat that was?”

  Ladybug, who had stepped away from the others, detaching physically and emotionally from her newly discovered family, now approached her mother. “I’d like to know, if you’ll tell me, who is my father?”

  “A wonderful man!” A glow appeared on Charlotte’s face. “You remind me so much of him, with those flashing eyes . . . and the spirit!”

  Charlotte glanced out the window and off in the distance, reminiscing about someone who brought a smile to her lips. The worry lines seemed to vanish from her face as she suddenly looked younger and more vibrant. “He was a slave child who was my age, living on my father’s plantation. We played together as children; we were inseparable, actually. I secretly taught him to read and write, and I brought him books he liked to read, especially ones about building and architecture. He drew sketches of beautiful palaces and placed me in them. He was so playful and made me laugh! When he was old enough for a man’s labor, he became my father’s carpenter, and when I married Wiley, he came with me to the Barnwell household.”

  She sighed with contentment at her recollection.

  “Every loving sentiment that the town thought Wiley felt toward me really came from Leanna’s father. He adored me. He built this house for me. The plans and the majesty of it were his idea. He made it a joy for me to live in,” she said fondly. “He was more than a carpenter. In another place and time, he would’ve been an architect. He took so much care in picking just the right site for Ruby Manor and designing all the rooms to suit me. He placed my music parlor where I’d have beautiful vistas and my bedroom where I’d have cool breezes. Wiley just approved the plans and paid the expenses. He didn’t dwell on me the way Leanna’s father did.”

  Charlotte pointed out the window to the brilliant red streak along the grounds outside.

  “And it was Leanna’s father who created the border of roses to surround me with my favorite flower. He went to great lengths to get the heartiest stocks with the most vibrant color and fragrance, and he supervised every detail of the planting . . . all for me. By the time I moved in, the roses were already blooming. In years to come, the little bushes grew to the massive display you see today. I awake every morning to the sight and fragrance of those stunning blossoms because he planned everything that way.”

  She put her hands up over her heart.

  “He was the prime mover of this manor . . . and of my affections. Ruby Manor wasn’t a testament to Wiley’s love, as the town thought. It was a testament to another man’s love for me, a romantic man who always kept my pleasure and comfort foremost in his mind.” She sighed wistfully. “That was Daniel.”

  “Daniel?” Tom said. “That name means something. . . .”

  The daughters turned to him as he pondered the matter. Charlotte offered no help.

  “I know!” he said. “When I looked back in Polly’s plantation journals to find a record of Ladybug’s birth, I didn’t find any mention of her, but right about that same time Polly noted that some of her slaves went to Ruby Manor to attend the . . . funeral”—he looked incredulous—“of a slave named Daniel who had . . . drowned.”

  The last word gave Charlotte a start. Tom and Ladybug looked at each other grimly, forming the same conclusion.

  “Daniel’s death wasn’t an accident, was it, Mrs. Barnwell?”

  Charlotte’s fearful eyes met Tom’s probing ones.

  “Your husband drowned him, didn’t he?”

  Rachel looked dismayed. Charlotte looked grieved. Ladybug and Tom looked repulsed. But none of them looked surprised at the charge against Barnwell.

  “Dear God, Tom, you don’t understand.” Charlotte’s reproach had the tone of a plea for mercy. “You have this wild devotion to your ideals, and you’re oblivious to how things really are! It makes you cruel!”

  “I’m cruel for mentioning it, but your husband wasn’t cruel for doing it? For drowning your lover? That was the price Daniel paid for Ladybug, wasn’t it?”

  Charlotte wept softly, covering her face with her hands, as if the pain was fresh and piercing.

  “I saved the child!” she whispered, composing herself. “It wasn’t Daniel’s fault. I provoked him. Back then I had passion. It’s funny, because now I can’t even remember what that felt like. But then, oh, I had an overwhelming passion . . . for romance, for a man who cherished me, for him, Daniel. I provoked him . . . and that led to his . . .” The agony on her face was evidence that she too had paid a price.

  “Daniel was everything Wiley was not. Daniel was full of life, whereas Wiley was cold and aloof. Daniel look
ed at me in a way that Wiley never did, as if I were the sun rising in his world. He was so gentle, affectionate, and caring. Wiley was none of those things. Wiley ignored me. He showed so little affection. You see, Wiley didn’t love people. Instead, he . . . controlled them. He wanted a wife to host his parties, to look beautiful on his arm, and to say the right things to suit his political ambitions. My father pushed me into the marriage. Wiley was a successful planter and a budding town leader—everything my father wanted! But Daniel was what I wanted. I was young and spirited. So I did the only daring thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I was unbelievably happy in Daniel’s arms!”

  Ladybug listened intently to the story of the love that had conceived her.

  “It didn’t last long. I was terrified and broke it up. I didn’t think my trysts with Daniel had led to anything. Then when Leanna was born, it was obvious I was wrong. Polly was with me when I gave birth. Wiley walked in on us. He took one look at Leanna in my arms, and he knew who the father was. The way Daniel and I looked at each other, even a dull man like Wiley could sense the sparks between us that he himself was incapable of feeling.

  “I tried to explain to Wiley how lonely I was, how ignored I felt, how attracted I was to someone else. Is that so bad, to be attracted? I told him it was completely my fault. But he would have none of it! He told himself I was forced. And in his mind, that justified anything. He stormed out and . . . the next day the slaves found Daniel’s body.”

  Charlotte wiped away a tear.

  “When Wiley left to go after Daniel, I knew he would come back for Leanna. I had the midwife go out and pick the roses. I told her no stems, no thorns, just the softest blossoms. I wanted a basketful of them. She brought me the flowers as I lay in bed with you in my arms,” she said, looking at Ladybug as she spoke. “I wrapped you in the roses your father had so lovingly planted for me. And I gave you to Polly. She agreed to raise you; she loved you from the start.” Charlotte smiled at the image of the bundle in her arms. “You were such a sweet baby. You made no sound. You seemed to like lying in your perfumed blanket of flowers. That was how Polly sneaked you out into her coach.