Settlement. Ann Birch

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СКАЧАТЬ she said. “It will save me from an evening with Mama and Eliza. They are stitching petticoats for the bazaar for the poor—utterly, utterly boring.”

      “No doubt your sister would have some gossip. Has she met Mrs. Jameson?”

      “Not yet. Some of the ladies intended to call today and leave their cards. Eliza has heard that she has written some popular books. And she carries a Spanish guitar and a stiletto wherever she goes. She also is apparently great friends with a man named... named... Go Thee, who wrote about the Devil.”

      “I met her briefly on the wharf the other day and summoned a cab for her.”

      “Oh, Sam, why didn’t you tell me? What does she look like?”

      “Not as pretty as you, my dear.” Though, indeed, he did not especially like the immense sleeves of Mary’s dress which closed with a tight-fitting cuff. No doubt it was the current style, but it made her arms look grotesque.

      “A new face will be welcome in this town,” Mary said. “If nothing else, the lady will furnish us with new sources of scandal, provided the stories that preceded her are true. Do you think she’ll be there tonight?

      “Possibly, but do not suppose that the Governor’s affair will be any livelier than your sewing circle. Sir Francis will be sure to bore us again with his tales of exploits in Argentina. There are times when I wish that his horse had fallen over a cliff in the Andes and—”

      “Sam, you must keep on the man’s good side. No arguments with him or anyone else, please. And put yourself forward for promotion if you have the chance to speak to him personally.” She reached up and patted his shoulder.

      “You’re singing the same old refrain, Mary. I don’t need to be told what to do. I know that I’ve got to get a promotion. I’ve heard he’s looking for someone to ‘control the savages’—that’s what he calls them.”

      “What an opportunity, dear Sam! Surely you can play up your friendship with Jacob Snake.”

      “Not sure he wants someone who has an Indian friend. But I mean to do what I can. Otherwise, I may end up in debtors’ prison. And believe me, a four months’ lockup in 1817 was more than enough for one lifetime.”

      “I’ve been thinking. We could discharge Miss Siddons. After all, twenty-five pounds would go a long way towards settling our debts with the butcher and the baker.” She attempted a laugh. “And the candlestick maker.”

      “The girls must be educated. I don’t care what it costs. Do you want them to grow up like your sister, dependent on the goodwill of relatives? Accepting handouts in return for labour in the kitchen and the sickroom?”

      “But the girls will marry, will they not? They need only to be educated to fill that capacity. My sister is a plain woman, but the girls are pretty. There will be men who—”

      “We can sell them to. Is that what you want?”

      “Is that why you married me? In return for my father letting you off on the murder charge?”

      For a moment he could not speak. He could only feel the pulse in his head and his face growing redder and redder. “Murder, Mary? Is that what you think? Do you truly believe I murdered Ridout?”

      She moved towards him then, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, Sam, forgive me, forgive me. I say these things when we quarrel. Of course, I don’t mean them.”

      He looked at his knuckles, white and clenched. He took a deep breath, sat down on the bench in front of the pier glass and spread his hands on his knees.

      “Now, Mary, you will remember that the children are my responsibility as well as yours. Our sons are at a fine school. But there is very little education for girls in this town. That is why Miss Siddons is so necessary. Hang the expense.”

      “But Eliza and I could teach them drawing and stitchery skills. I could ask her to—”

      “Stitchery and drawing be damned. Let us be clear. I will not have the girls wasting their lives making hair bracelets and watercolour daubs of the peony patch. As for your sister, what could she teach them except the pleasures of laudanum and whiskey? I don’t blame her, mind you, she must do something to relieve the tedium of her life.”

      Mary started to cry. ““Hair...hair...bracelets, Sam. You can be so cruel. Say what you want about Eliza. She has her faults, as do we all. But that remark about hair bracelets. Why do you bring up poor little Eddie? He’s part of every waking memory. I don’t need your sarcasm to make it worse.”

      Their small son, Eddie, had died in 1828, only one year old, and Mary cut off all his beautiful red hair just before his burial. Then she had spent days making a bracelet from it. He could not bear to look at her when she wore it, and she had finally put the thing away somewhere.

      “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

      But what the hell. She’d had the nerve to mention his trial for murder. It had happened almost two decades ago. And he had been exonerated. How dare she suggest that he’d made some deal with her father, Chief Justice Powell?

      “I’m sorry, Sam, so sorry.”

      He reached for her hand. It was cold, though her small, delicate face was flushed. “Let us think of the advantages of well-educated daughters. Why just last week, Ellen treated me to a dissertation on our three political parties, the Radicals, the Tories, and the Wigs, as she called them.”

      Mary wiped her face with her lace handkerchief. He watched as she struggled to smile. “Oh, Sam, do you think she will want to stay with the gentlemen for port and cigars when we have a supper party?”

      “Undoubtedly. I expect they will be greatly enlightened by her views on the Wigs.”

      He rose, leaned over her shoulders, and put his face against her cheek. “We shall say no more about discharging Miss Siddons.”

      Mary took his new fur-lined greatcoat from the wardrobe and draped it over his shoulders. It was a fine piece of tailoring, and in it he felt like a millionaire, perhaps John Jacob Astor or one of those other New York men he read about in the American newspapers that arrived at his office downtown. “Clothes make the man,” his mother had often said when she’d urged his father to spend more and more on outward trifles, and it was a proverb Sam found himself remembering too often these days when he looked at his tailor’s account.

      He and Mary went out the front door onto the wide verandah and down to the phaeton which had drawn up to the steps. John, the coachman, whipped up the horses, and they slipped down the long gravel driveway past the lawns and gardens now covered in snow. Pretty they were as they gleamed in the moonlight, but lovelier by far in summer and fall.

      Government House, located at King and Simcoe Streets, was a two-storey frame house in the Georgian style with shutters and an attractive portico. Not as handsome as his own house, though, Sam noted.

      John pulled the horses to a halt. “Elmsley House, sir.”

      “Government House, man. Why do you persist in calling it Elmsley House?”

      The house had once belonged to Chief Justice Elmsley, who had also owned the farm and field north of the town where Sam had killed John Ridout. He still could not bear to hear СКАЧАТЬ