Chapter 1
Virginia Riverfront
September, 1803
The rain enclosed the little tavern, darkening it so that the lantern’s golden light made eerie shadows on the wall. The late fall sunshine that had warmed the morning was gone now and the tavern was almost cold. Behind the tall oak counter washing pewter mugs was a woman, pretty, plump, clean, her soft brown hair caught in a white muslin cap. She hummed as she worked, smiling now and then and showing a dimple in one cheek.
The side door, not the door for patrons, opened and in a gust of cold, wet wind a girl slipped into the room, pausing for a moment until her eyes adjusted to the light. The barmaid looked up and, with a frown and a little click of disgust, hurried forward.
“Leah, you look worse every time I see you. Sit down here while I heat a toddy for you,” the plump woman said as she pushed the shivering girl into a chair and went to set the poker in the fire, all the while surreptitiously studying her younger sister. If possible, Leah had lost weight. Her unfleshed bones seemed to poke through her dirty, mended dress; her eyes were sunken, the skin under them blue, her nose sunburned and peeling. There were three bloody scratches running the length of one side of her face, and a long bluish-green bruise on the other side.
“He give you that?” the barmaid asked in disgust as she jabbed the hot poker into the mug of flip.
Leah merely shrugged and eagerly put her hands out toward the hot beer and molasses drink.
“He give any reason for hittin’ you?”
“No more ’n usual,” Leah said after drinking half the contents of the mug and leaning back in the chair.
“Leah, why don’t you—?”
Leah opened her eyes and gave her sister a hard look. “Don’t start on me again, Bess,” she warned. “We’ve been through this before. You do what you must and I’ll take care of me and the kids.”
Bess stiffened for just a moment before turning away. “Layin’ on my back for a few clean gentlemen is a lot easier ’n what you have to do.”
Leah didn’t even wince at Bess’s crudity. They’d had this argument too many times before for her to be shocked. Two years ago, Bess had had her fill of their crazy father who beat them constantly because “women were born in sin.” The older girl had left their poor backwater farm to find herself a job, and, on the side, she was “friendly” to a few men. Leah, of course, had been beaten for Bess’s sins. Now, Bess was always trying to get Leah to leave their father’s shack of a house. But Leah remained to care for her six younger brothers and sisters. She plowed, planted, harvested, cooked, repaired the house, and, most of all, she protected the little ones from their father’s wrath.
“Look at you!” Bess said. “You look forty-five years old and you’re what? Twenty-two now?”
“I think so,” Leah said tiredly. It was the first time she’d sat down all day and the warm drink was relaxing her. “Do you have any clothes for me?” she whispered lazily.
Bess started to complain again, but instead she went behind the counter and reached for cold ham, bread, and mustard. As she set a plate on the table beside Leah, she took a seat across from her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Leah hesitate before touching the food. “You even consider not eatin’ that and takin’ it back to them kids and I’ll cram it down your throat myself.”
Leah gave a little quirk of a smile and tore into the food with both hands. Her mouth full, her eyes downcast, she said, as if the answer meant nothing to her, “Have you seen him lately?”
Bess gave the top of her sister’s dirty head a sharp look. “You’re not still thinkin’…,” she began but stopped and looked back at the fire. A flash of lightning lit the tavern.
Poor Leah, Bess thought. In many ways Leah was like their father, as stubborn and hardheaded as a piece of stone. Bess could walk away and leave the little ones, but to Leah family was everything, even if a lunatic, rampaging old man was part of her family. After their mother died, Leah had decided that she was going to take care of the kids until the last one was old enough to leave. No matter what happened, or what was done to her, she refused to leave.
And just as Leah remained with her father, she stubbornly clung to a dream. The dream wasn’t the one Bess had always wanted: food, shelter, and warmth. Leah’s dream was one she could never attain.
Leah fantasized about one Mr. Wesley Stanford.
When Leah was a girl, Mr. Stanford had come to their hovel, asked her a few questions, and, in gratitude for her answers, he’d kissed her cheek and given her a twenty-dollar gold piece. When Leah had told Bess of the incident, there’d been stars in the young girl’s eyes. Bess had immediately wanted to spend the gold on new dresses, but Leah had gone into a rage, screaming that the coin was from her Wesley and that she loved him and he loved her and when she grew up she was going to marry him.
At the time, Bess’s only thought had been of that shiny gold coin hidden somewhere, unspent, all its gl
ory wasted. She began to wish this Wesley had given Leah a bunch of flowers. She tried to forget about that coin, but sometimes she’d see Leah, plow harness about her shoulders, stop and stare into space. “What you thinkin’ about?” Bess would ask, and Leah would say, “Him.” Bess would groan and turn away. There was no need for Leah to say who him was.
Years later, Bess decided she could take no more of her father’s hideous temper and the constant work, so she left the farm and took a job across the river as a barmaid. Elijah Simmons had disowned his eldest daughter and had forbidden her to visit the farm or see her siblings. But during the last two years, Leah had managed to slip away a few times to visit her sister and get the clothes Bess collected for her. The townspeople wanted to help the desperately poor Simmons family, but Elijah refused to allow his family to accept charity.
On her first visit to the tavern, Leah had asked after Wesley Stanford. At the time, Bess had been enthralled with having met all the rich plantation owners, and Wesley and his brother Travis were the wealthiest. Bess had talked for thirty minutes about how handsome Wes was, what a considerate man he was, how often he visited the tavern—and how happy Leah would be when they were married. To Bess, it’d been like the creating of a fairy tale, something to pass the cold winter evenings, and she thought Leah had seen it that way too. But a few months ago, with a laugh, Bess had told Leah that Wes had become engaged to a beautiful young lady named Kimberly Shaw. “Now who are you going to love?” Bess laughed before she saw Leah’s white face. Under the bruises and dirt Leah looked as if her blood were draining away.
“Leah! You can’t be serious about a man like Wesley. He’s rich, very rich and he wouldn’t let a couple of…of, well a ‘lady’ like me and a scrawny, filthy thing like you in his second-best parlor. This Miss Shaw is from his own class.”