Keturah Read online

  Even a woman like Keturah.

  He stood up abruptly, brushing his hands together, sending the last of the weed’s head to the wind. Not Keturah. Never her. She clearly was no longer even fond of him, as she once was. That much was certain. The years and their dividing paths had left them little more than strangers. Their paths … and her husband.

  He swallowed the rising bile in his throat at the thought of her late husband, Lord Tomlinson. Her overheard words—“the difficulties of my first marriage, I have no intention …” Intention of what? Marrying again? Ever again? What had the lout done to her to make her so distant, so guarded? How terrible had her short marriage been? To make her this determined to fairly swear off all men, even the offer of her own cousin’s care? Cecil’s desperate plea for Gray to look after the Banning girls, given no other recourse, lingered in his mind.

  As Cook would say, if you boiled a stew down, you were left with the most important ingredients, but all that dissipated could still be tasted. Boiling Keturah’s stew down … Her mother was dead, her father too. And her family’s estate was in jeopardy, if what he’d learned in the hallway were true. But more of her stew’s flavoring resulted from the years that she supposedly sheltered under Lord Edward Tomlinson’s wing. Those years between the day she took his hand as a bright-faced, hopeful bride and the day she returned to Hartwick as he’d seen her today.

  Taut. Wary. Defensive.

  Gray’s hands clenched into fists. He longed to return to the evening he first spied the older man, Lord Tomlinson, observing Keturah across the room as she chatted with the other girls. Sizing her up as he might a prize heifer. Gray had felt a surge of protection in that moment. But it had confused him. It hadn’t been his place to object. It had been her father’s. But her father had wanted her to marry Tomlinson. Gray assumed he knew best, and he’d been too intrigued with the pretty girls about to give his old friend further thought.

  Then.

  He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, feeling the wind on his face. “I was a fool, Lord,” he whispered. “So foolish. In so many ways. Thank you for not holding it against me.” He smiled. “Please grant us favor in the Indies,” he added, “both for Keturah and for me. Lead us forward into a happier future. Help us to find … friendship again. Somehow. Someway.”

  Gray opened his eyes and looked at the manor again. Patience was the word that rang in his mind. Distance was another. Time to heal.

  Keturah would require patience and distance? In order to heal her heart? How was he to allow that? He let out a humorless laugh and turned back toward his gelding. “That shall be rather difficult, Lord,” he muttered, “aboard a ship for six weeks, and then living next door on an island.”

  But if there was one thing he’d learned in these last few years, he mused, it was that his Lord had a sense of humor.

  They arrived at the wharf with little time to spare, followed by three wagons full of furniture and supplies. Keturah thought she might not ever wrest Verity away from the stables—she’d literally had to tug her weeping sister from her beloved stallion—and as soon as she managed to settle her in the enclosed coach, she had to retrieve a distraught Selah from the arms of their beloved cook.

  In the years since their mother had died, the girl had formed a special attachment to the woman; for the hundredth time, Ket wished that for Selah, Cook was just ten years younger and able to make the journey with them. Unfortunately, though six servants accompanied them, both she and Cook knew from the start that the old woman wouldn’t be among their number. Not that that had kept Selah from trying to convince her.

  As one of two paid Hartwick servants—the rest were slaves—it had been Cook’s choice. Ultimately, she chose to leave the manor and go to a daughter in Manchester rather than remain. The thought that she would not be at Hartwick, even upon their return, threatened to be Selah’s undoing. Truly, it had been as much a hardship to watch the two part as it had been to tell Selah that their father was dead. Perhaps it was because Cook had been more mother figure than servant to Selah, Ket surmised. Indeed, Mother had died when Selah was but thirteen, and Cook had filled the gap.

  It agitated Ket, these further forced partings for both her sisters. Their pain was borne as her own, leaving her heart burdened and her ears ringing as she listened for ways she could soften, deter, distract.

  Meanwhile, two of the Negro gardeners had been acting quite oddly, as if they had half a mind to run rather than board the ship. Ket studied Edwin’s wide eyes and Absalom’s furtive gaze as they struggled to untie two crates, giving the sailors access, but as if in search of an escape route. Had they heard the terrible rumors of how slaves were treated in the Indies? Did they think she might transform into some ghoulish mistress once her feet were upon island sand rather than firm English soil?

  She sighed in exasperation and brushed it aside, once she saw Baxter, her white butler, taking command—and clearly keeping an eye on the two young men. They had nothing to fear. They were under her protection; everyone knew that the Bannings treated their slaves like family. It’d be no different when they reached Nevis. But what would happen when Baxter was no longer with them to assuage their fears? He, too, had elected to remain behind. It was good, she told herself. She needed Baxter at Hartwick to keep an eye on things and manage the hulking house. To keep up with correspondence and act in her stead. But still, the thought of doing this without him …

  The maid who was to attend them—a lithe, pretty Negress of sixteen named Grace—as well as Cuffee, a lighter-skinned stableboy of twelve, brought to keep track of Verity’s falcon and Tabletop’s livestock—had formed a tidy line with Gideon and Primus, carrying boxes along the gangplank and aboard the Restoration.

  The ship was a huge schooner, armed with twenty-four guns. The sight of the cannon windows in the hull gave Keturah a start, thinking of the need for defense. Thank the Lord that Britain is at peace, she thought. No pirates. No privateers. No, this, this was the perfect time to set out for the Indies, even for a woman.

  A sailor stopped beside Ket, catching her pensive stare toward the cannons. “Plenty of firepower to keep you safe, m’lady,” he said with a wink and touch to the brim of his hat. “Not that a British vessel has needed to fear in recent years.” He was ruddy and round-faced, about her height, but in a clean, faded blue shirt and breeches, and polished black shoes.

  “Indeed,” she murmured politely, aware that he was too far beneath her station to address her in so forthright a fashion. Apparently he was not equally informed.

  “No, the storms are far more fearsome than any threat of pirates,” he went on, propping a leg up on the edge of the gangplank and allowing his small brown eyes to droop to her tight bodice and back before seeming to remember himself. “Our navy does a right good job keeping the passage clear for us. ’Tis in her Majesty’s best interest for you Indies planters to get to your land. After all, if we’re to bring back sugar, we—”

  “Selby!” shouted the first mate from the deck, his neck red with agitation, and slicing the air with his hand. Clearly he wanted this Selby to be doing something other than chatting with one of the passengers.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Lady Tomlinson,” the man said. “Duty calls and such. Sailor Urquhart Selby, at your service, ma’am.” He removed his hat and bowed gallantly. Or at least as much as a commoner might assume the ways of a gentleman.

  She was charmed, in spite of herself, sensing this as a bridge between her past and her future. Would she not soon have little recourse but to speak to any man necessary in order to get what she needed done? “Lady Keturah Tomlinson,” she said in return. It was awkward, an introduction without the benefit of a mutal acquaintance. Perhaps this might be her common circumstance in the Indies? She blinked, trying that on for size as she might a new cloak, smiling as Selby scurried aboard. Selby adeptly circumvented her man Gideon—an ebony-skinned, square-jawed footman in his early thirties—jumping to the railing and
on board as if he were more lemur than man.

  At the top of the gangway, the first mate leaned in toward him, angrily gesturing to him and then to Keturah and back again, then pointing to the ropes. As she watched, the man leapt to the cross section of rigging and rope ladder and scrambled upward as easily as he had jumped to the rail and aboard. She shaded her eyes and watched, wondering what it would be like to climb that high. So impossibly high …

  “It’s much taller than the old oak on Crabapple Hill,” said a low voice beside her.

  She started and turned toward Gray. “What? Oh yes. Much.” She paused, it taking a moment to remember climbing the giant oak with Gray when they were children. Part of her wished to seize this temporary cease-fire and reminisce, whilst another urged her to make her excuses and walk away. Ket was about to do so when he beat her to it, touching the brim of his smart-looking black tricorn hat and leaving her side with a curt, “I fear I still have much to do before we cast off. Good day, Lady Tomlinson.”

  “Good day,” she murmured. She looked back to her cargo as if disinterested but allowed her eyes to slide back to him, watching as he lifted and carried his own trunk aboard the Restoration—following Philip, his longtime servant and friend, who was carrying another. Her eyes searched for others assisting him, but to no avail. So, she surmised, he intended to make his way to the Indies without the benefit of more than one manservant. Was it not impossible? Her eyes scanned the docks, certain she’d misunderstood. But there it was. His wagon, drawn by two horses and a slave she recognized from Teller Hall. Then a second wagon, containing nothing but a shining silver plough, so new it glinted in the sun.

  A plough? The Bannings had arrived at the docks with three wagons full of goods for their new home, but he intended to embark with little more than a plough? Half of her admired his gumption; the other half wished for the simplicity of being a man. After all, was it not far more simple for a gentleman to dress himself than a lady? But what of laundering? Cooking? Tea? Making not only a home but a footprint in this new world before them? Surely it was shortsighted of him not to bring even one footman. His brother, Samuel, most assuredly offered.

  Keturah frowned. Perhaps he hadn’t. Selah had heard a rumor that Samuel was completely against Gray’s scheme to make a fortune in the Indies. Samuel had said that fortunes were no longer made among the islands, that again and again he’d seen them siphoned away. According to him, the “glorious days” of the Indies were over. Keturah certainly hoped he was as wrong as she’d insisted with Selah, because she was betting their future on it. She glanced back at her sisters, who hovered on the edge of the dock, chatting with three children who had come to see Verity’s falcon Brutus.

  Please, Lord, let me not be wrong in this. She swallowed hard. She well knew that she prayed not as a believer, but out of some vestige of wanting to protect what was hers. She looked toward her sisters.

  She’d lost her mother. Her father. Even Edward—as little as she cared for him. But she’d lost so many and dared not consider losing more.

  She looked to the tarnished-silver waves, washing along the planks of the ship. When she returned here to this wharf, she wanted to disembark with the Banning fortune restored, both the plantation and the manor safe from creditors. Her sisters’ future ensured. Verity and Selah needed to know Hartwick Manor would always be a haven for them, just as it had been for her after Edward died. Even before he’d died, she’d dreamed of returning to it. Of—

  “Lady Tomlinson?”

  She looked up to spy Lord Harrison Shantall, an old friend of her father and president of the West Indies Company. The man, perhaps in his sixties, smiled as he took her hand, bowed, and kissed it. He stooped a bit with age and yet was still taller than she. “So ’tis true,” he said, clasping her fingers, eyes filled in wonder. “I thought it nothing more than society whisperings, the rumor that the Ladies Banning were to sail for Nevis.”

  “It is far more than rumor, Lord Shantall,” she said, sliding her hand from his. “We’re off on quite the adventure, it seems.”

  “Quite,” he said and forced a smile. She could see the same concern behind his eyes as she’d seen on nearly everyone’s face since making her decision.

  “But we do not travel alone,” she added, hating the edge of defensiveness in her voice. “We have a number of servants to accompany us, so we shall enjoy every comfort of home, even in the tropics.”

  His doubtful eyes followed her gesture toward the line of servants still unloading the wagons. High above, the two massive crates containing furniture had been bound, and with the use of a winch, the first mate was shouting orders, seeing that they were carefully loaded into the hold. She saw Gray walking down the gangplank again. He looked to her and Shantall as if assessing them before turning to make his way to his wagon.

  Gray’s casual observation chafed. She faced her companion more squarely. “Lord Shantall, are you embarking upon the Restoration?”

  “Alas, I am not. I am merely here to see you off. Have you met your captain?”

  “Not as of yet,” she said, his words running through her mind. Why was she so disappointed that he, too, would not be a passenger? Had she not insisted to Cecil that she needed no man to attend them? “If you would be so kind as to introduce us, Lord Shantall, I’d be grateful.”

  “But of course.” He gestured forward whilst taking her arm. She looked to her sisters, and catching Verity’s eye, they hurried to join them. At the gangway, Lord Shantall waited for Keturah to proceed, and then her sisters, before following behind. As she moved along the slanted walkway, feeling the water progressively farther beneath her feet, her heart began to beat faster and faster.

  It was no longer merely a plan. They were truly doing this, embarking upon a ship set to sail for the West Indies. Over all these years, Keturah had imagined what it would be like to walk along the sugarcane, to see Nevis’s towering dormant volcano rising above, to swim in the warm waters of the tropics. Now she would no longer have to imagine it; she would know what it was like firsthand. In a way, the best part would be to know what their father had experienced, perhaps understand him a bit better as a result of living in that corner of the world. Somehow it would make him feel closer, Keturah thought. Almost as it did to wrap herself in his morning coat or scarf.

  They reached the deck, and Lord Shantall led them forward. Spying their approach, the captain—surprisingly young, only a few years Ket’s senior—dismissed his men and turned toward them, greeting Lord Shantall as he might an old friend. The captain was brawny with sun-bleached brown hair and hazel eyes that seemed to glint in the sunlight, his face ruddy from years at sea.

  He looked from Keturah to Selah and then settled on Verity, his keen eyes taking in her long leather glove and the fine falcon she carried, then back to her. Cocking a crooked smile, he gave Verity a courtly bow. “I take it ye are Lady Tomlinson?”

  “No, Captain McKintrick. I am Miss Verity Banning.” She gave him a brief curtsy as she blushed furiously under his gaze.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said with a grin, “but still, I am in your service, Miss Banning,” he said, giving her a nod that spoke of breeding. His eyes lingered on her a moment longer before turning to Keturah. “Then ye are Lady Tomlinson … unless this wee sprite at your side is a grown lady in disguise.”

  “I am,” Keturah said, curtsying, “and this is my youngest sister, Miss Selah Banning.”

  “I am in your service,” he said, casting them each a gentlemanly but slightly roguish smile. Then he turned back to Verity. “And who is this?” he asked, taking in the golden feathers and crooked beak of Brutus as the bird’s eyes darted back and forth. “I dinna recall offering passage for such a bird.”

  Verity’s mossy-green eyes opened wide in fear, and Ket’s heart sank. “This … this is Brutus,” her sister managed to say. Might he truly object?

  But Captain McKintrick was smiling as he reached up to stroke the bird’s chest with the back of his finger. “D
inna fash yourselves, ladies. I only ask that he kill every rat he sees in exchange for his passage aboard my fine ship.”

  “That he shall gladly do,” Verity said with a nod, and in that moment Ket could see how her eyes shone. How she now cast this man the tiniest coy gaze, looking to Brutus and then slowly back to him. She fancied him!

  Well, her sisters had license to choose their own beaus, but Verity would do well to remember that Ket and Selah had to approve of said beau, and a sea captain would not be her first choice. If some thought moving to the islands was dangerous, it was nothing compared to the dangers a man who routinely spent his days on a schooner encountered. Storms. Disease. Mutiny even.

  “This is my first mate, Mr. Gordon Burr,” he said, turning to the tall silver-haired man who had been dressing down Urquhart Selby and shouting orders to the large crew ever since they had arrived at the wharf. “Burr, this is Lady Keturah Tomlinson, and her sisters, Misses Verity and Selah Banning.”

  “At your service, misses,” said the man, nodding toward each but not offering to take their hands. Clearly he did not welcome them as their captain had. Crossing his arms, he leaned over to say something in McKintrick’s ear. The captain turned back to them as the first mate bowed briefly and then departed, again yelling orders to a man up in the rigging.

  “Burr has told me that your servants have been shown the way to your quarters, Lady Tomlinson,” he said, his attention straying to Verity again. “I would advise ye and your sisters to become comfortable there now as we finish preparations to make way. I’ll send a man to fetch ye when we’re prepared to weigh anchor, but until then it’d be best if ye lasses not remain abovedecks. Three as fair as ye are a sore distraction when I need every man to be paying keen attention to their tasks.”

  “Indeed,” she said, lifting her chin and yet striving not to take offense, even as she seemed to feel the lingering stares of crewmembers now as she hadn’t before. One man slowly untying a knot of rope. Another on a mizzenmast, methodically securing the sail. Apparently neither man was moving with the efficiency that their superiors demanded. “We do not wish to get in your way, Captain, nor your crew. We shall look forward to your kind instruction as to when we might comfortably return to the deck.”