Cecily stood when the canoe stilled, then stepped from its rocking bottom onto the shore with far more grace than when they’d launched. “’Tis ironic that we’re on Renick land and ’tis Renick I wish to discuss.”
Despite her misgivings, Selah spread a blanket on the sand. She offered Cecily a flask of cider, a sense of foreboding building. Cecily’s interest in Xander was no secret, so her next words hardly came as a surprise.
“I should like you to go to Rose-n-Vale”—Cecily handed back the flask with the hauteur of a queen giving orders—“and ask the master if he is of a courting mind.”
Forthright, she was. Straight to the point as any man. Still ... “For so delicate a matter, perhaps you should send my father instead.”
“On the contrary. I think you may be more persuasive. Your mother tells me you were a friend of Master Renick’s former wife. Matto...?”
“Mattachanna.”
“Ah. I’ve yet to see an Indian. What was she like?”
“Beautiful. Gracious. Astute.”
“A pity she died young.” Cecily made a contrary face.“The only fly in the ointment is this. I shan’t want charge of a half-breed boy.”
Cecily’s distaste was commonplace yet unpalatable. Selah bit her tongue, her thoughts veering in a new, nettlesome direction. Was that yet another reason Oceanus was left behind? So Xander’s remarrying might have no obstacles?
Cecily reached for a twig in the sand. “He hardly seems the devoted father, leaving his son behind in Scotland.”
Selah chafed at both the slight and the truth behind it. Their separation tore the heart out of her. Did Xander not feel it too? Why had he not heeded Mattachanna’s dying plea to not part? True, the latter was just rumored, but...
“You are a friend of his aunt, are you not?” Cecily fixed her with a near glare. “Visiting Rose-n-Vale wouldn’t be amiss.”
“Under pretense of speaking with Widow Brodie?” Selah shook her head. “I would not go in deceit.”
“Ha! We must be coy in these affairs of the heart. Play it sly.” Cecily smiled as if the matter was settled. “Your father said you would do everything in your power to assist me.”
“My assistance is hardly needed. A man like Alexander Renick knows his own mind. The very thought of appearing in his study about any bride business makes me shudder.”
“Well,Icannot do it. The council gave you charge of these fair maids, of which I am one.”
Selah schooled her temper. “Truth be told, I cannot see you at Rose-n-Vale.” There, she had said it. The resulting offense on Cecily’s face was plain. “I don’t see him remarrying, is what I’m saying. He is ever preoccupied with his crops, his many indentures, the affairs of Virginia. Even now he has gone over to the Naturals. He has little time for courting and less for a bride.”
“The right maid might change that. He strikes me as a shrewd, perceptive Scotsman well deserving of a wife equally so.” Cecily’s confidence remained undimmed. “Say you’ll go to him when he returns and plead my case.”
“You realize that living on a plantation—one of the Hundreds, as they’re called—places you at greater risk for Indian attack?”
“I suppose so.” Cecily shrugged her slender shoulders. “But James Towne holds no charms for me. Already I feel hemmed in by all the fences and rowhouses there, few and crude as they are. I belong in the country.”
Selah sighed. She’d oft felt the lure of open fields and unfenced lands herself. Yet the danger remained. “Perhaps one day Rose-n-Vale will be as safe and lovely as it sounds.”
Cecily began drawing in the sand with her twig. Selah made out the initialsAandC. “Mistress of Rose-n-Vale. How I warm to the title.” Tossing aside the twig, Cecily stood. “Let’s go nearer the house, shall we? ’Tis scandalously large, I hear.”
“Trespass, you mean?”
Already Cecily had started up the bank, skirts raised above her scarlet garters. Selah trailed her uphill, relieved Xander was away and would never know they’d encroached on his territory. Winded, they came to the place that gave them a territorial view, the James River at their backs. Up here where the wind blew free, the air smelled sweet in any season.
Wildflowers spread before them like a floral carpet, a few mighty oaks casting shadows and breaking up the cleared landscape. A sizeable arbor stood at the back of the main house, a showy display of red blooms not yet ablaze on leggystems. The expanding mansion so talked about in town was now before them, its newest windows large and sashed with crystal glass, the roof crowned with diamond-turned chimney stacks.
Surrounding the house stood orchards, all young, mostly of stone fruit, some trees thriving, some struggling. Timbered dependencies fronted a lane to the west beyond the summer kitchen.
Cecily came to a stop. “Why, even Governor Harvey cannot boast of such a dwelling! And fences as far as the eye can see. But all wood rails, not stone like in the Old World.”
Selah felt a grudging admiration. Truly, Xander had accomplished much and come by it honestly given the sweat of his brow and his agile mind. No one had handed him anything with a velvet glove.
“What’s that curious structure in the far field?”
