She was about to deny knowing the man, then paused when a vague memory surfaced. “I think the fellow visited Washington not long after I moved here, before this war broke out. He must have been on an official trade or diplomatic mission, because he was given a reception at the President’s House. I made gowns for several women who attended, and they talked about the reception on their next visits. It was quite the grand affair, apparently. He brought his wife with him. How strange to think she might have been one of my sisters and she recognized me somewhere about town!”
“If so, why didn’t she talk to you?”
Callie considered. “Maybe it was the sister who betrayed me to my father when I ran away with you. Perhaps she feared my reaction. And justly so! If she hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t have been beaten half to death and transported to the other side of the world.”
“Strange to think that if not for her, we might have made it to Scotland and married,” he said pensively. “But we were very, very young. Too young for marriage.”
She’d believed that, too, but despite their youth, she thought they’d have made it work. “I ended up married anyway, but to a man more than three times my age.”
“How did you come up with the name Mrs. Matthias Audley? Your husband wasn’t an Audley, was he? You’d have mentioned that to me when you were trying to escape the marriage.”
“His name was Matthew Newell. I chose Matthias as being similar but different from his real name.” She smiled ruefully. “And I chose Audley in memory of my long dead childhood friend.”
“I’m flattered, I think. Was he a horrid husband? I hope not. I often wondered.” He smiled without humor. “If I’d been the praying sort, I would have prayed that he treated you well.”
She hesitated, wondering how to explain Matthew. “He treated me kindly. I could have done much worse. But his situation in Jamaica was complicated, and he preferred to avoid conflict, which produced more complications.”
“At least he treated you well.” Richard smiled a little. “I want to know how many children we have. Do any of them look like me?”
“There are two, and neither looks at all like you.” Wondering how he would react, Cassie continued, “They’re quadroons.”
Chapter 7
Much of Gordon’s attention was focused on what a very beautiful woman Callie had become, how translucent her chemise was, and on the effort required to prevent his interest from showing. He’d never thought about her appearance when they were children—she’d been the indomitable Callie with the red-gold hair and freckles. He’d been startled when she’d said the planter from the Indies wanted to marry her because she was so beautiful.
At that age, to the extent he’d thought about Callie’s appearance, he would have classified her as pretty enough, but nothing special. Familiarity had blinded him to the classical perfection of her features and the smooth grace of her movements. Her figure was a little fuller now, in the best possible way.
He forced his thoughts away from admiring her to thinking about the comment she’d just made. “A quadroon means being one quarter African and three quarters European, doesn’t it? Your husband was half African?”
“No, he was as English as you or I.”
“So your husband’s first wife was half African?”
“No, she wasn’t, either.” Callie sighed, some of her tension fading at his mild acceptance. “It’s a complicated story. They’re my stepchildren. I have no child of my body, but they aremineeven though not of my blood.” Her expression was challenging. Gordon suspected that issues of race had complicated her life in Jamaica. But clearly she loved her stepchildren, and he wanted to know more.
“I’d like to hear the whole story,” he said quietly. “My curiosity hasn’t faded with the years.”
She smiled a little. “Does it still get you into trouble?”
“All the time,” he said promptly. “But I’ve come to realize that curiosity is incurable. Haven’t you learned the same?”
“I’ve probably had less opportunity to indulge my curiosity than you, but it hasn’t gone away,” she admitted. “Merely been suppressed.”
He supposed that her responsibilities had caused that. “So what is the long, complicated story about your children?”
Her brow furrowed. “I’ll have to talk about my marriage, which is at the root of the complications.”
“I heard you swear to your father that you’d be a good, docile wife in order to stop him from beating me to death,” he said. “You paid a very high price for our mutual foolishness that night.”
“We both did, but yours was higher.” She brushed a strand of red-gold hair from her cheek. “I wouldn’t have chosen to marry Matthew, but he was a decent man. From things he heard me say when he visited my father, he deduced that I was a rebellious sort who might welcome moving away to an exotic new home. He was ready to remarry and he liked my looks, so he offered for me.”
“And your father was keen to get rid of you at a profit,” Gordon said dryly.
“Exactly. Luckily, Matthew was a much nicer man than my father. Speaking of which, is my father alive, or has an apoplectic fit carried him off?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know my own father’s fate,” Gordon said. “I’ve heard no news from Kingston Court or Rush Hall since I was dragged off and imprisoned.” He’d been so badly beaten that he wasn’t aware of much until he was deposited on the ship that would take him to the prison colony. “It was years before I made it back to England, and by then I had no interest in my family.”
“With any luck, both our fathers have gone to their eternal rewards in a place much hotter than Jamaica,” she said tartly. “To return to my story, I found the Caribbean interesting and beautiful, but the slavery there appalled me.”
