It was as much the gentle closeness of him as it was his words that quieted Noelle. "I wish I'd known your mother," she finally murmured into his damp shirtfront.
"She would have liked you, Highness." He smiled. "She liked unconventional women."
"Will you tell me about her, Quinn? Really tell me this time."
"What would you like to know?"
Everything! she wanted to say. Everything that has been hidden away from me, that has made you a bitter, driven man. But instead she only asked, "How did she and Simon meet?"
Quinn was quiet for so long that she didn't think he was going to answer her question, but she was wrong. His answer, however, left her stunned.
"Simon bought her."
"Oh, no!" She began to tremble again.
Carefully Quinn eased her down into the chair and disappeared through the dressing room. He returned with a glass of brandy, which he held up to her lips. When she had taken several swallows and was steadier, he moved to a wing chair across from her. Stretching his legs out in front of him and sipping from the remaining brandy, he told her the story of Simon and Amanda, all of which he had not learned himself until after his mother's death.
Quinn explained that Amanda's father was a white trapper, her mother a pureblood Cherokee. She was raised in her mother's village near the Georgia-Tennessee border. Her parents died within a short time of each other when she was fifteen, and her father's brother, a miserly man named Carter Slade, came for her. He took her to his farm near Augusta, where he worked her from dawn until long after dark.
One evening, Simon appeared at the Slade farm, leading a lame horse. He asked for shelter and, for a price, Slade agreed. That night, Slade saw Simon watching his niece, and when she left the room, he asked if he wanted to buy her.
At first, Simon had laughed. It was illegal; Cherokees hadn't been sold into slavery since they had fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. But Slade insisted that as a Cherokee, Amanda would honor any agreement a member of her family made.
And so, Simon Copeland, a man who didn't believe in slavery, a man who had never owned a slave, bought Amanda Slade for five hundred dollars.
Simon never knew what Amanda felt when she learned she had been sold, but as Slade had predicted, her honor demanded that she keep the infamous agreement. And so, the next morning, she turned her back on the past and went off with the handsome stranger who now owned her.
Even then, Simon wasn't an impulsive man. He was horrified at what he had done and didn't permit himself to touch her, yet each day he grew more fascinated with her. It was Amanda who finally went to him, giving her love freely, asking for nothing.
"It was a bittersweet moment when Simon realized how much he loved her in return. He was an ambitious man who had planned to make an advantageous marriage, and Amanda had neither money nor background to recommend her. To make matters worse, even though her father was white, she considered herself Cherokee.
"Quinn, none of what you've told me explains your bitterness toward Simon. Even if he did buy her, he took your mother away from a horrible life. From what Emily told me, he was a wonderful father to you, a loving husband-"
"Oh, he was a loving husband, all right!" Quinn exclaimed bitterly. "Everyone in Cape Crosse will tell you that. And a wonderful father. If you press them, even my friends will tell you I've been an ungrateful son to have turned against him. Christ! If I've heard once about Simon taking me everywhere with him on that bay of his, I've heard it a thousand times."
"Then why?" Noelle's eyes pleaded with him to finally tell her the truth, but when she saw the pain etching itself so deeply across his features, she almost wished she had kept her peace.
"He didn't marry her, Highness," Quinn finally said. "Not until a few hours before she died. She was his slave until the end."
"He didn't marry her!" Noelle exclaimed. "What reason could he have had?"
"You should know the answer to that better than anyone. She wasn't a suitable Copeland bride. No family, no education." He stared into the depths of his glass and muttered, "Nothing but a loving heart."
Then he told her how he had overheard the brief, hushed ceremony, trying not to let himself understand what it meant but knowing, without question, that, at the age of twelve, his world had come to an end. Later, when his mother called him to her, she sensed that he had discovered the truth.
"She told me that I mustn't blame him. Said it hadn't been important to her. But I've never been able to forgive him. It was only the threat of having her die leaving me a bastard forever that finally forced him to marry her."
He stood up and walked over to the fireplace, staring down into the dying embers. "After the funeral, I ran away to the Cherokees."
"Did Simon come after you?"
Quinn nodded. "But it took him over a year to find me, and then I was so filled with hatred that he couldn't trust me in the same house with him. That's when he decided to send me to England to stay with the Peales and go to school."
A silence fell between them that Noelle finally broke. "I'm sorry, Quinn," she said simply.
Brusquely he rejected the pity in her voice. "I'm leaving at first light tomorrow for Milledgeville. Wasidan asked me to try to make the governor see reason."
"But you told me there was no hope, that the Cherokee removal to the west was inevitable."
"It's a fool's errand, Highness. But I can't say no to him."
Sleep eluded her that night, and she was still awake at dawn when she heard Quinn riding off. She threw herself from the bed and pulled on her riding habit remembering his words as she did.
"We poison each other," he had said, and he was right.
The bricks were still wet with dew as she cantered down the drive toward the road. Her thoughts turned to Simon. She sensed that he had suffered more than Quinn wanted to recognize and that he was a wiser man now. Instinctively she understood that Amanda had forgiven him even if Quinn hadn't. She wondered if Quinn was capable of forgiveness, tortured as he was by the past, torn by the two conflicting halves of his nature-the proud Cherokee and the master shipbuilder.
Simon… Amanda… Quinn… They had managed to snare her in the tangled web of their lives and make her part of them.
Chapter Thirty-three
After that morning, Noelle had little time to indulge in introspection, for following Emily Lester's example, her new neighbors began to arrive at the door. She soon found that between returning their calls and making frequent visits to the shipyard, she was no longer able to supervise the house and the servants by herself. As had become her habit, she turned to Dainty Jones.
" 'Spect I'd better see if I can find Nathan Davis. Used to work for Miz Burgess 'fore she died. He's the man for the job all right."
And so Nathan Davis was installed as majordomo of the household to double as Quinn's valet when he returned. A gentle man with chocolate skin and a trace of a limp in his left leg, he commanded the respect of the rest of the servants without ever lifting his voice.
Quinn's abrupt departure meant that he could no longer take her to Savannah, and for this Noelle was grateful. The intimacy of a journey together was more than she could have borne. Still, with the main body of the house nearing completion and a wardrobe that desperately needed to be supplemented with dresses more suitable to the Georgia climate, she had to make the trip. When she discovered that Copeland and Peale's own sloops made regular runs to Savannah for supplies, she announced that she was going along and invited Emily to accompany her.
The trip to Savannah helped Noelle temporarily put aside her unhappiness. With Emily companionably beside her, she bought upholstery and drapery fabrics to take back with her, as well as lightweight cambrics and muslins for her dresses. She returned to Televea to find that Quinn was back from Milledgeville, his trip as unsuccessful as he had predicted. Life progressed as usual.