“Well...” Juliet glanced at Loveday as she handed Father a glass of murky contents. “Her disposition, perhaps. Is she garrulous or quiet? Fair or dark? Plump or slight?”
He drank the tonic down, then leaned back against the pillow-flanked headboard. “She is a woman of many merits, second to your mother.”
Juliet was glad to hear it yet sorry, too, the widow must henceforth live in Charlotte Catesby’s shadow.
“Alas, my love life is none of your concern, though I am very concerned about yours.” He skewered both Juliet andLoveday with a look. “I have high hopes that this ball will bring about a change in your matrimonial fate as well as fête Buchanan.”
“I don’t suppose Mr. Buchanan’s wife has come to Virginia with him?” Loveday asked.
Wife?Juliet hadn’t thought of that in her estimation of him as a doddering old coot.
“Let the ball answer.” For a trice Father’s expression seemed more pleased than pained. “Ravenal has sent word Buchanan is to arrive at Forrest Bend by sennight’s end.”
10
There is nothing like tobacco. It’s the passion of the virtuous man and whoever lives without tobacco isn’t worthy of living.
Molière
Leith steered clear of the Raleigh’s public rooms and went straight up the stairs, the black patch over his bloodshot, battered eye the only visible reminder of his bruising from the York Town fight. At least his nose wasn’t broken. He’d wait here in Williamsburg till his injuries healed before venturing up the James River. But he had another, better reason to tarry.
The date for deciding tobacco prices was at hand, and he, by some stroke of fortune, had arrived one day ahead of the annual autumn meeting. The tavern was overfull, so he’d gotten the last available room, and a private one at that. Surprising what a little coin instead of tobacco credit could win.
His quarters were small, equivalent to the cabin aboard ship, but he wouldn’t share a bed with snoring, unwashed strangers, at least. He’d asked for supper to be brought tohis room—and an abundance of ale. It was the best remedy he knew for his aching body and would help him bide his time till the meeting on the morrow.
Juliet stepped from the Royal Vale landing into the bateau, the mist hovering over the James River like a veil. Sunlight skewered the cool dampness and added a fiery glint to the oaks and maples clinging to shore. The autumn dawn promised a fine day.
Their Jamaican waterman greeted her, pole in hand. She returned the greeting, sitting down at the boat’s center, Lilith behind her. Father had insisted Lilith, Rilla’s daughter and a housemaid, accompany her for propriety’s sake. Juliet missed Loveday’s company, but her sister remained home as Father was still abed.
Gathering her wits, Juliet pondered the long day ahead as the bateau reached midriver, safest from snags and shallows. Other water traffic floated both upriver and down, most burdened with cargo bound for Richmond and other landings. Plantations peeked from behind tree-lined banks anchored with newly erected tobacco warehouses and bateau sheds built since the great storm two years before. How that calamity had sunk them further, wiping out thousands of hogsheads of tobacco and seedlings in the fields and deepening the abyss of credit they’d fallen into.
Facing forward, she tried to distract herself with a bit of verse by Andrew Marvell, borrowed from the Ravenals’ library.Now therefore, while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew ... let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life.She’d memorized the poem in its entirety save a few last lines.
Reaching up a hand, she slanted her hat forward against the rising sun, glad her unpowdered hair was pinned in a cascade of waves and curls at the back, not in the high poufs seen everywhere at present. Just like Mama’s with its gloss and blackness, Loveday had said as she wielded the curling tongs. Juliet couldn’t quite recall. Charlotte Catesby’s presence, the way she’d moved across a room, and the gentle cadence of her voice were becoming increasingly hazy.
Juliet shut her eyes against the river’s glare, the watery ride gliding by. A chariot would be bumped nearly to pieces on the rocky, rutted road to Williamsburg.
Once they reached the Lower James, a coach would be waiting to take them the rest of the way to Williamsburg. If only they still had their England Street townhouse. Though small, it was charming and comfortable and had been part of her mother’s dowry years before. Thankfully, Mama had not seen it sold to settle a debt.
Instead Juliet would lodge at Christiana Campbell’s, the town’s finest, at least for ladies. Let the gentlemen frequent the Raleigh Tavern. She’d only set foot there for the meeting, though she did look forward to visiting the millinery farther down Duke of Gloucester Street and bringing Loveday a bit of lace or ribbon or some inexpensive trinket.
Juliet and Lilith reached the capital before noon and went to their lodgings, then made their way down the cobbled street on foot. Steeling herself against the Raleigh’s smoke and spirits, Juliet stepped onto the tavern’s wide front porch as Lilith left her side to wait on a bench around back near the kitchen house. Dread pooled in Juliet’s middle as she entered, seeking the spot reserved for the meeting, a thick, ink-stained daybook clutched to her bodice. Several frock-coated gentlemen standing by the Apollo Room door greeted her and stepped aside, cocked hats doffed.
“Good day, Miss Catesby.”
“Standing in for your father today, I presume?”
“How is the Upper James of late?”
The large chamber’s new Prussian-blue paint was admirable, but her nerves were too taut to linger on it long. Planters and factors and agents stood cheek by jowl. A quick head count numbered nearly a hundred.
The Scottish merchants, those few tobacco lords who’d braved the Atlantic on various vessels to attend this autumnal meeting, stood in a line along the wainscoted back wall. Half a dozen in number, they were easily distinguished by their garments. Scarlet cloaks marked them, as did their ebony canes and silver wigs and cocked hats. These Scots looked proud. Entitled and imperious. Ruthless to a man.
Was Buchanan here?
A flicker of resentment kindled as Juliet moved to an open, fly-spackled window, her back to the chamber. Digging deep in her pocket, she found a vial of Loveday’s. Bending her head discreetly, she breathed in the distillation of lavender, sage, marjoram, and mint. Suddenly her sister seemed close and the tightness around her temples eased, though her hand clutching the daybook stayed damp.
These meetings were notoriously long—and long-winded. Men loved dickering over the price of their premier crop, besting each other and calling out flaws and flummoxes. Today, freight expenses and custom duties ruled the day, voices already raised in varying degrees of aggravation. When a door clicked closed and the moderator made his way through the throng, Juliet let out a sigh of relief.
