“We are cousins, then, Miss Talbot. My name of birth is Mercer. My mother was a Cameron. I married Lord Spencer on the night before the Battle of Preston.”
“Cousins?” As she named off those names, I pressed the fingers of my right hand against my lap as if to press the names to memory. I had a feeling they would be important to me and that if she were not so full of wine she would not speak this way. I said, “If you and I are cousins, then I am a cousin to Wallace, too. It is good we did not marry, then.”
“Marry? Hah. It is good you did not marry but not for that reason. Wallace is not the man his father was, nor his brother Edward. James Edward Stuart Spencer we named him. Of course, you understand the name if you are a Radclyffe. Blast, how the good ones seem to die young. Wallace is clever and ambitious. But Edward…” She tapped her brandy glass and a man filled it again as she said, “Edward, now he was a son. Edward died five years ago, when Wallace was but a lad. You would have done well to marry Edward. In fact, I would have insisted upon it. You are not so close cousins that it could not be. Indeed, many a royal bed is shared by closer. And you, my dear, have a sauciness that would have complemented Edward’s depth and humor.”
“Madam, I—”
“Now, let us speak no more of this. Wallace, I fear, shall go instead for that ninny Serenity Roberts. He claims he loves her, but the truth is that her mother married again, to a man of great means. Oh, never mind. What does it matter?” She finished the brandy yet again. The butler refilled it again, too. “I see that you are indeed the kind of young woman who should make any mother proud; you must take care for the good do die too soon, dear.” She looked so sad, peering into the brandy glass. A moment passed in silence. A single tear ran down her face.
“Madam, I fear you are disturbed by something.”
“Disturbed? Why should I be disturbed? Wallace has ordered the purchase of two dozen more slaves than he already had. That makes eighty on one plantation alone. His father allowed it and so I cannot forbid it. Got them from Africa. And how was he to pay for it? He told me that place would be making a profit within six months, but it has not. He has torn out the sugar his father planted and put in tobacco, but it will be two years before he pays for a single pipeful, I tell you.”
“Because of poor sales of tobacco, madam?”
“Because of slaves. I hate the very thought.”
I nodded, though I had no wish to discuss something that touched my most painful memories with a woman deep in her cups. “Lady Spencer? Should I help you upstairs to your room?”
“I think you should.”
I left her at a dressing table and went to my little room, closing the door and feeling an immense peacefulness come to me at the sound of the latch. Lady Spencer had laid out to me things of her heart as Donatienne and I had done. This was a trust which did not come often, regardless that it came upon the wings of the grape. I would hold it sacred.
In all the time I worked for Barnabus and slept at Lady Spencer’s home, I did not see Goody Carnegie.
CHAPTER 18
August 18, 1736
On a Wednesday four weeks after I began it, the cloth was finished. Barnabus declared my work superior to any but his wife’s. On Thursday, it was delivered to the dressmaker for the use of Lady Spencer, and a good deal of money was paid to Barnabus. That very day he began disassembling the loom, even replaced a raddle with worn pins, the brake, and two heddles. I tried to memorize every part as he moved this to loosen that. He whistled happily as he worked, but then at supper on Thursday he said it was bad luck to break anything down on a Friday. He would work on Saturday and by Monday, he would be ready to deliver it, so I drew a map so he could find the house. He filled my basket with thread, then, so many spools I feared it would tear loose from the handles. “Never mind,” he said. “I will bring the rest with the loom. Grace be on you, Miss Talbot. And thanks.”
“And on you, Barnabus. I thank you, likewise.”
“I see orders undone and work unfilled. I have much to do.” He bowed over my hand and said, “You are always welcome.”
Lady Spencer allowed her coach to bear me and my trunk to the stone house on a small hill in the center of the Carnegie farm, which was now in my name. She also supplied me with a mix of odds from the kitchen, a roasting pan, a good iron cooking spider with a legged lid, four spoons of differing size, two knives, a pronged fork for meat, and a table and chair.