Cain looked deep into Magnus's eyes, then gazed across the room at Sophronia. He bent down to right a chair that had been upended in the struggle and spoke gruffly. "You'd better get some sleep, Magnus. We have a big day tomorrow." He turned to Sophronia. "You can go. I won't be needing you anymore." The deliberate way he emphasized his words left no doubt about his meaning.
Sophronia rushed from the room. She was furious with Magnus for upsetting her plans. At the same time, she feared for him. This was South Carolina, and he'd struck a white man, not once but twice.
She barely slept that night as she waited for the devils in white sheets to come after him, but nothing happened. The next day, she saw him working side by side with Cain, clearing brush from one of the fields. The fear she'd felt turned into seething resentment. He had no right to interfere in her life.
That evening, Cain instructed her to leave his brandy on the table outside the library door.
6
Fresh spring flowers filled the ballroom of the Templeton Academy for Young Ladies. Pyramids of white tulips screened the empty fireplaces, while cut-glass vases stuffed with lilacs lined the mantels. Even the mirrors had been draped with swags of snowy azaleas.
Along the ballroom's perimeter, clusters of fashionably dressed guests gazed toward the charming rose-bedecked gazebo at the end of the ballroom. Soon the most recent graduates of the Templeton Academy, the Class of 1868, would pass through.
In addition to the parents of the debutantes, guests included members of New York's most fashionable families: Schermerhorns and Livingstons, several Jays, and at least one Van Rensselaer. No socially prominent mother would permit a marriageable son to miss any of the events surrounding the graduation of the latest crop of Templeton girls, and certainly not the Academy's final ball, the best place in New York to find a suitable daughter-in-law.
The bachelors had gathered in groups around the room. Their ranks had been thinned by the war, but there were still enough present to please the mothers of the debutantes.
The younger men were carelessly confident in their immaculate white linen and black tailcoats, despite the fact that some of their sleeves hung empty, and more than one who hadn't yet celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday walked with a cane. The older bachelors' coffers overflowed from the profits of the booming postwar economy, and they signaled their success with diamond shirt studs and heavy gold watch chains.
Tonight was the first time the gentlemen from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore would have the privilege of viewing the newest crop of Manhattan's most desirable debutantes. Unlike their New York counterparts, these gentlemen hadn't been able to attend the teas and sedate Sunday afternoon receptions that had led up to this evening's ball. They listened attentively as the local bachelors speculated on the winners in this year's bridal sweepstakes.
The beautiful Lilith Shelton would grace any man's table. And her father was to settle ten thousand on her.
Margaret Stockton had crooked teeth, but she'd bring eight thousand to her marriage bed, and she sang well, a pretty quality in a wife.
Elsbeth Woodward was only worth five thousand at the outside, but she was sweet-natured and most pleasant to look at, the sort of wife who wouldn't give a man a moment's trouble. Definitely a favorite.
Fanny Jennings was out of the running. The youngest Vandervelt boy had already spoken with her father. A pity, since she was worth eighteen thousand.
On and on it went, one girl after another. As the conversation began to drift to the latest boxing match, a Bostonian visitor interrupted. "Isn't there another I've heard talk about? A Southern girl? Older than the rest?" Twenty-one, he'd heard.
The men of New York avoided each other's eyes. Finally one of them cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. That would be Miss Weston."
Just then the orchestra began to play a selection from the newly popular Tales from the Vienna Woods, a signal that the members of the graduating class were about to be announced. The men fell silent as the debutantes appeared.
Dressed in white ball gowns, they came through the gazebo one by one, paused, and sank into a graceful curtsy. Following the appropriate applause, they glided down steps strewn with rose petals onto the ballroom floor and took the arm of their father or brother.
Elsbeth smiled so prettily that her brother's best friend, who until that moment had thought of her only as a nuisance, began to think again. Lilith Shelton tripped ever so slightly on the hem of her skirt and wanted to die, but she was a Templeton Girl, so she didn't let her mortification show. Margaret Stockton, even with her crooked teeth, looked fetching enough to garner the attention of a member of the less prosperous branch of the Jay family.
"Katharine Louise Weston."
There was an almost imperceptible movement among the gentlemen of New York City, a slight tilting of heads, a vague shifting of positions. The gentlemen of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore sensed that something special was about to happen and fixed their attention more closely.
She came toward them from the shadows of the gazebo, then stopped at the top of the steps. They saw at once that she wasn't like the others. This was no tame tabby cat to curl up by a man's hearth and keep his slippers warm. This was a woman to make a man's blood surge, a wildcat with lustrous black hair caught back from her face with silver combs, then falling in a riotous tangle of thick dark curls down her neck. This was an exotic cat with widely spaced violet eyes so heavily fringed, the very weight of her lashes should have held them closed. This was a jungle cat with a mouth too bold for fashion but so ripe and moist that a man could only think of drinking from it.
Her gown was fashioned of white satin with a billowing overskirt caught up by bows the same shade of violet as her eyes. The neckline was heart-shaped, softly outlining the contours of her breasts, and the bell-shaped sleeves ended in a wide cuff of Alençon lace. The gown was beautiful and expensive, but she wore it almost carelessly. One of the lavender bows had come undone at the side, and the sleeves must have gotten in her way, because she'd pushed them a bit too high on her delicate wrists.
Hamilton Woodward's youngest son stepped forward as her escort for the promenade. The more critical guests observed that her stride was a shade too long-not long enough to reflect badly on the Academy, just long enough to be noted. Woodward's son whispered something to her. She tilted her head and laughed, showing small, white teeth. Each man who watched wanted that laugh to be his alone, even as he told himself that a more delicate young lady would perhaps not laugh quite so boldly. Only Elsbeth's father, Hamilton Woodward, refused to look at her.
Under cover of the music, the gentlemen from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore demanded to know more about this Miss Weston.
The gentlemen from New York were vague at first.
Some talk that Elvira Templeton shouldn't have let a Southerner into the Academy so soon after the war, but she was the ward of the Hero of Missionary Ridge.
Their comments grew more personal. Quite something to look at. Hard to keep your eyes off her, in fact. But a dangerous sort of wife, don't you think? Older. A bit wild. Wager she wouldn't take the bit well at all. And how could a man hope to keep his mind on business with a woman like that waiting for him at home?
If she waited.
Gradually the gentlemen from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore learned the rest of it. In the past six weeks Miss Weston had captured the interest of a dozen of New York's most eligible bachelors, only to reject them. These were men from the wealthiest families-men who would one day run the city, even the country-but she didn't seem to care.
As for those she did seem to favor… That was what galled the most. She picked the least likely men. Bertrand Mayhew, for example, who came from a good family but was virtually penniless and hadn't been able to make a decision on his own since his mother died. Then there was Hobart Cheney, a man with neither money nor looks, only an unfortunate stammer. The delicious Miss Weston's preferences were incomprehensible. She was passing over Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, and Jays for Bertrand Mayhew and Hobart Cheney.