As her mind became alert, she remembered seeing Clayton throwing rocks at the dogs and putting her on his horse. The ride was a vague memory, and the time after they reached his house was a blank.
She looked about her, realizing that this must be a bedroom in Arundel Hall. It was a beautiful room, large and bright. The floors were oak, and the ceilings and walls were painted white. Around the two doorways and three windows were carved pediments, simple and elegant. One wall contained a fireplace, another a deep window seat. The four-poster bed hangings, the curtains, and the window seat upholstery were all of the same fabric—white linen with blue figures. There was a blue wing chair before the fireplace and a white chippendale chair in front of a window, facing an empty rosewood embroidery frame. Another chair and a tall, three-legged tea table were at the foot of the bed. A matching wardrobe and bow-front cabinet of walnut inlaid with curly maple took up the rest of the room.
Stretching, Nicole could feel her headache leaving her, and she threw back the covers and went to the wardrobe. All the clothes she and Janie had made hung there. She smiled, feeling welcome; it was almost as if this beautiful room were meant to be hers.
She slipped into a thin cotton chemise, the top of the bodice embroidered with tiny pink rosebuds, and over it went a dress of India muslin, a wide velvet ribbon around the high waist. The low neckline was filled with transparent gauze. Hastily, she swept her hair back, curls falling forward to frame her face, and she tied it with a green velvet ribbon to match the one on her dress.
Pausing as she turned to leave the room, she saw that two of the windows faced south toward the garden and the river. When she looked out the window, she expected to see a garden like the English had, but what she saw made her gasp. It was closer to a village!
To her left were six buildings, one attached to the corner of the house by a curved brick wall. Smoke curled from the chimneys of two of the buildings. To her right were more buildings, including another one connected to the main house. Most of these buildings were hidden by enormous walnut trees.
Directly in front of her was a beautiful garden. There were paths bordered by high walls of English box. In the middle of the paths was a tile pool, and just to the right could be seen the corner of a little white pavilion, hidden under two great magnolias. There was a long bed of flowers and herbs, a kitchen garden walled by a brick fence covered in honeysuckle.
Past the garden, the land dropped away sharply to form low, flat fields, and she could see cotton, golden wheat, barley, and what she suspected was tobacco. Past the fields was the river. And everywhere there seemed to be barns and sheds and people going about their work.
Breathing deeply of the sweet summer air, catching the scent of the hundreds of different plants, she lost her headache completely and was impatient with a need to see the outside herself.
“Nicole!” someone called.
Nicole smiled and waved down at Janie.
“Come down and get something to eat.”
Nicole suddenly realized she was ravenous as she opened one of the doors and went down the stairs. The hallway held several portraits, a few chairs, and two little tables. Everywhere she looked, she saw beauty. On the ground floor, the stairs ended in a wide central hallway, capped by a lovely, carved double arch over the stairs. She was standing there trying to decide which way to go when Janie appeared.
“Did you sleep well? Where did Clay find you? Why did you run off in the first place? Clay wouldn’t tell me what he’d said to make you run away, but I can guess it was somethin’ terrible. You look a little thin.”
Laughing, Nicole held up her hand in surrender. “I’m starving. I’ll answer what I can if you’ll show me where I can get something to eat.”
“Of course! I should have guessed and not kept you standing around.”
Nicole followed her to the garden door, which was covered by an octagonal porch with steps leading off in three directions. The right-hand steps, Janie explained, led to Clay’s office and the stables; the center steps led into the shady, secret paths of the garden. Janie took the left stairs, which led to the cook houses.
The cook was named Maggie, a large woman with frizzled red hair. Janie explained that Maggie had once been an indentured servant, but, like a lot of Clay’s employees, she’d decided to stay on even after her time of indenture.
“And how’s your leg this mornin’?” Maggie asked, her blue eyes twinkling. “Not that I think it’d be anything but healed after the sweet tendin’ it got last night.”
Nicole looked at the cook blankly and started to ask her what she meant.
“Be quiet, Maggie!” Janie said, but there was an air of conspiracy between the two women as she pushed Nicole toward the table and wouldn’t let her speak.
Maggie piled food on Nicole’s plate—eggs, ham, batter cakes, tansy pudding, fried apples, hot biscuits. Nicole could not eat half of it and apologized for the waste. Maggie laughed and said that with sixty people to feed three times a day, nothing went to waste.
After breakfast, Janie showed Nicole some of the dependencies, as the outbuildings were called, of a Virginia plantation. Off the kitchen was a milk room where the butter and cheese were made, and next to the kitchen was the long, narrow loom house where three weavers were at work. Beside the loom house was the wash house that stored enormous wash tubs and barrels of soap. There were quarters above these buildings for the plantation workers, who were a mixture of slaves from Haiti, indentured servants, and employees working for wages. The malt house and smoke house stood near the kitchen.
Across a path from the kitchen was the produce garden, where a man and three children were weeding the vegetables. Janie introduced Nicole as Mrs. Armstrong to everyone. Nicole tried twice to protest, saying that her visit was actually temporary and should be treated as so.
Janie put her nose in the air and acted as if she were deaf, mumbling something about Clay being as sensible as any man could be and she had great hopes for him.
Across the family garden, which Janie said she’d let Nicole discover on her own, was Clay’s office, a large brick building shaded by maple trees. Janie did not offer to show this to Nicole, but she smiled when Nicole strained to see inside the windows. Near the office, under cedar trees, were more buildings: workers’ quarters, ice house, storage shed, gardener’s house, estate manager’s house, stables and carriage house, tannery, carpenter’s shop, cooperage.
Finally, when they were standing on the edge of the hill where the land fell away to the fields, Nicole stopped, her hands to her head. “It is a village,” she said, her ears ringing with all the information Janie had given her.
Janie smiled smugly. “It has to be. Nearly all the travel is by water.” She pointed ahead, across acres of fields to the wharf on the river. “Clay has a twenty-foot sloop down there. In the north, they have towns like in England, but down here each planter is almost self-sufficient. You still haven’t seen all of it. Over there is the dairy barn and the dove cote. A
little farther past that is the poultry house, and you haven’t met half the workers. They’re down there.”
Nicole could see about fifty men in the fields, including a few on horseback.