“Soldiers came this morning with a magistrate and constable. Mr. Roberts had lost everything to the Seaman’s Mercantile. The owner is calling in the debt, taking the house. Mistress Roberts has to leave immediately and will be guarded so that they take nothing of value.” My heart was not brought down for them, for I had my own life ahead of me. I had Wallace ahead of me. I would be in the arms of my mother in two months or less.
“Are you asking me to take it on? You know, do you not, that I am dependent. I could not ask my father to assume such a debt.”
“I am asking you to marry me now. Take me off their hands. We are promised. Let us marry and be wed, and they will have that much less with which to concern themselves. When I am come to Jamaica, my estate will be yours. Then if you agree with my wish to help them, we shall be able to do it.”
Wallace grew still and silent. He lost all his merry ways and gentle looks. He said, “There’s one thing to be said for changing horses in the middle of the lane.”
Oswald appeared carrying a tray. I poured tea into the delicate porcelain cups. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Nothing. Tell me how it happened, for I have been so busy preparing our new lives I gave it no thought at all. I knew the old man had a weak heart. It was spoken about town. He was known, you know, among our circles.”
“His heart did not fail him. His financial partner did.”
“I insist on knowing, dear one.”
“I thought you knew and were just being polite. He hanged himself from a rafter in his study. Hard to believe the servants have not passed that around the town.”
“Lord,” he said, and downed the last of the tea in his cup.
I reached for his hand and he took it as I said, “Yes.”
“They were notified today, this very day, you said, yet the magistrate insisted they had had prior knowledge? I must go there at once.”
“I came in their carriage.”
“Wait for me in the hall.”
I felt hurt by his brusque tone, but thought of Mr. Roberts’s manner of speaking. Perhaps it was the way with these New Englanders.
At the Roberts estate, soldiers stood by each door to the outside. Wallace marched past them as if they were curtains, going straight into Mr. Roberts’s study. He sat at Mr. Roberts’s desk and leafed through papers, tossing down one after the other, causing the stack to collapse. The letter from the solicitor of Two Crowns slid to the floor with several others. If I were to write to him directly, bypassing the use of the lawyers at Foulke and Harrison, I would need it. I put it in my pocket. By then the rest of the family had entered the room and he came up with one written in Mr. Roberts’s hand, a sort of apology for the state of his affairs, and another from Mr. Barrett’s solicitor dated two months prior. I said, “It is late, Wallace. There is nothing you can do.”
Wallace turned a stern countenance to me as if he were a father, or worse, a master, and said, “Do not pretend to know what I am about. It makes you unseemly. A man’s bride must not presume to know his business.” Serenity gasped, threw her hands to her mouth, and ran out, sobbing. Her sisters and mother shrieked and followed her.
I felt chastened as if Birgitta had thumped me with her stick. My heart wrenched in its place, tears welled, and I felt shocked. “Of course not,” I said.
He managed a smile but I could see through my own tender feelings that it strained him to do so. “First lesson. When it comes to business, you mind your tatting.”
Why they let Wallace go through their father’s and husband’s papers, scattering them as any mouse searching for crumbs might do, I surmised was the result of years of convincing that anything a man said or did was not to be questioned. I wondered then if I would ever have the patience to bear such indignity as they, and with such peaceful countenance. Was it true what Patey had said about needing a man for business? I hoped his sharp tone was due to his concern for the family.
Finally, he held up a sheet of paper and said, “So it is the Honorable Alexander Barrett who has claimed this house.”
Mistress Roberts returned in time to hear his last words. Her face streaked with tears, she held a kerchief to her mouth. Her hair hung in frenzied coils, her fichu askew.
“I don’t know how he could do this,” I said.
“Legally,” Wallace said. “That’s how. That rascal gypsy Cole no doubt convinced both men the risk and the ship were real, took the cash, and left. Now Barrett has no other option but to foreclose to recover his losses.” He stood and straightened his coat, moving toward the door.
“But,” Mistress Roberts asked, “could he not see we’ve lost everything if he takes this house? Where will we live? How shall we eat?”
I said, “Could you speak to Mr. Barrett for Mistress Roberts? Or introduce her to him so she could ask for the house?”