I turned to Cullah. I said, “We are not yet wed.” Then to August I said, “Two ships. Two? Oh, la! You shall take us home to Jamaica! Take us with you! I have money to pay passage if you wish. August, take us home!”
August’s face went cold and all the merry light drained from his eyes. “Ressie. There is no home for me but the sea. Why would you and your betrothed want to go to Jamaica? It is not a place for an honest woodsman and a gentle young lady.”
Tears flooded my eyes and poured down my cheeks. “Do you know about Mother?”
“I have seen her grave. I had its location from Lucy, one of the slaves, when I freed her with some others back on the island. I put a stone there with her name carved. I stood at Ma’s grave and said a prayer for her.”
I felt Cullah’s hand on my arm. I trembled. His hand was so warm. My chest ached as if I were run through with a cutlass. I closed my eyes and said, “I want to go home.” When I opened them, Cullah’s face was all I could see.
He said, “Would you leave me, then?”
I hesitated. “No. Come with us. We three shall go. We shall be happy there.”
I heard August’s voice. “I have made our graces to Lady Spencer and family. I told her you were too overcome to continue to dance.”
For the next four days, in my little parlor, I heard all about how August had grown up aboard privateers’ ships until he had earned enough in wages and booty to buy his own rigs. He had fought Rafe MacAlister across the Atlantic and the Caribbean seas, had marooned the blackguard on a lowlying cay off the southern colonies, but from there Rafe had made his way north to find me.
I told him that Cullah and Jacob had killed the man, and August nodded, holding his mug of beer high. “My best to your man, then, and his father. No fouler devil ever stepped aboard a deck than MacAlister. Yet I never knew what his reason was to chase me all over the bloody, pardon, sweet sister, all over the forgotten sea.”
I told him what Rafe had said to me of our mother’s death, too. I did not tell him what I had suffered. August grew quiet. In those moments of silence, we exchanged looks that imparted to me some of the haunting sadness in his eyes, and I understood without hearing every dire nuance.
The house had seemed roomy enough with only myself, and had not lessened by Cullah’s presence, but August seemed to fill the room with vibrations and light. When we had our fill of sad things he told me of adventure and gold, treasures and battles, and that he had made the Cape of Good Hope once but swore never to sail it again. August said he might purchase a house in Boston to be near me, though I told him he had a house in Lexington anytime he wished.
“When do you marry?” he asked.
“Soon,” I said.
“I plan to sail before the snow flies again to get out of this heathen cold. I would be favored to leave you with a chest or two, to keep for me, if I may. I like your man. A straight and square fellow. And not a seaman; so much the better. And do you love him, or are you at least well suited to each other?”
“I do love him. But not as I thought love would be. Not so that I cannot think or carry on. I love him practically. I appreciate him, and I like his character. I am not charmed out of my mind by his presence.”
August laughed. “That sounds so like you. Always a head on your shoulders. Why stoop to dashing charm and passion when you can have a solid, hardworking husband?”
“Why, indeed,” I answered. The memory of Wallace’s kisses flitted before me like a moth that had been disturbed and settled again in a new place. I said, “I saw Patience swayed into doing things unconscionable because of passion or love or whatever it was. I am perfectly happy to find love that comes with steady and honest good thought. Have you a wife?”
His eyes shaded then, growing darker as if a veil had pulled across them. “No.”
*
Within a week, Cullah nailed our marriage banns to the door of the church. We spent days, he and Jacob, August and I, discussing where we should live, how we would make our ways together as one. It was decided that since I was literally the “lady of property,” he would live in this house with me, and add to it. August asked him to build a wing, too, saying he would finance it, so that he had a place “in the country,” to visit. Jacob declared he meant to live in Goody Carnegie’s house. Cullah blanched at that thought, but Jacob said he knew ways to keep fairies out, and that he feared nothing with or without skin. Cullah’s knee touched mine under our table when he said that. I knew Cullah to be mindful, indeed, of things which skin could not contain. Haunts, ghosts, fairy folk. The man was strong as any warrior, but worried about the wind.