Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

Karen skewered me with her eyes, but her voice was sweetness itself when she drawled, for benefit of the camera, ‘No, ma’am, can’t say as I do.’

In all of the hullabaloo over the pig, I’d lost track of Amy. I sent Karen next door to Pit Boy Oysters to look over the seafood while I went in search of my errant lady’s maid. Finally I spotted her in the glass enclosure occupied by the Annapolis Visitors’ Center and, as I feared, she was talking on her iPhone. Unfortunately, Chad, who was hot on my muddy satin heels, was about to find Amy, too.

I swayed, touched my left hand to my forehead, flailed blindly with my right in the direction of the Gelateria counter, then crumpled gracefully to the floor in a puddle of petticoats. Almost immediately I heard a woman shout, ‘Call 9-1-1!’ so I thought it best to bring a quick end to my charade. I stirred, opened my eyes, fluttered my eyelashes in a damsel-in-distress sort of way, and stammered, ‘So, so sorry. I don’t know what happened.’

Rather than leap to my assistance, Chad stood to one side, camera grinding away, as a woman in a pink jogging suit knelt down and took my hand, rubbing it briskly. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I think so.’

She helped me into a sitting position just as Amy came rushing out of the Visitors’ Center. ‘Hannah! My God, what happened?’ Wild-eyed, she glanced around at the passersby. ‘Did she fall?’

I touched Amy’s arm. ‘No, no. Just a little light-headedness, is all.’ I smiled (weakly) at the gallery of concerned faces that hovered around me. ‘These costumes…’ I waved vaguely. ‘Very hot.’

Befuddlement turned to smiles. Nodding. Tight corset. Of course.

Several observers went on about their business while Amy helped me to my feet. Others stayed, cell phones held at the ready in case I took another spectacular fall that they could upload immediately to YouTube.

We shuffled back to Pit Boys with me holding on to Amy for support. As we passed Chad, I snapped, ‘I could have been having a heart attack, you jerk!’ Then I smiled toothily and strolled on.

‘What the hell were you doing on your cell phone?’ I whispered to Amy when Chad was out of earshot.

Amy stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You saw me?’

I faced her, eye to eye. ‘The whole world was about to see you! Why do you think I faked the faint?’

‘You were certainly convincing,’ she whispered back. ‘Georgette Heyer would have been proud.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere, Miss Cornell. I thought we agreed that you’d put the phone away.’

‘You’re not going to rat me out?’

‘No, but you’re either going to put that phone away, or turn it in.’

Amy clouded up. I thought she was close to tears. ‘I can’t, Hannah.’

Chad was closing in, so I rested a hand on Amy’s shoulder, inclined my head toward hers. I kept my voice low. ‘You must . And you didn’t answer my question. Why were you talking on that damn phone?’

‘When we got here, I pulled it out and saw that I had a message from my Navy contact about Drew. I’m sure it’s something to do with the paperwork declaring him officially dead, but I won’t know until I call the guy back.’

‘So, did you talk to him?’

‘No. I left a message, though.’

‘Amy, if you want to stay in the cast, you have got to get rid of that phone. Change your voicemail message, for heaven’s sake. Say you’re away and that if they need to reach you in an emergency, call the number that Jud gave us.’ I tugged on her arm, and set off in the direction of Pit Boys. ‘Frankly, I can’t believe you didn’t do that already.’

‘The battery is about to crap out anyway,’ Amy confided. ‘I’ve got the charger, too, but it’s no freaking good without electricity.’

Just as we caught up with Karen, I extracted a solemn promise from Amy that she’d deep six the iPhone. Her face looked sincere enough as she spoke, but I worried that she had her fingers crossed behind her back.

With four-dozen fresh Maryland oysters wrapped in paper, not plastic, tucked into my string bag, we headed home. Our last stop was Vivo, an eco-friendly shop at the foot of Fleet Street where everything was strictly off limits except their homemade soaps and candles. I charged six-dozen candles to the Donovan account and asked that they be delivered. Perhaps in his day William Paca had been more frugal, but we had been running through candles at a rapid clip. I had learned how to make candles in colonial Williamsburg out of meat fat and ashes, but like so many things about being a card-carrying member of the gentry, I was happy that our family was rich enough that we could afford to buy them.

‘I just got my period and they expect me to deal with it by stuffing rags down my panties. It’s totally gross. If you can’t bring me some Tampax, I’m out of here .’

French Fry, housemaid

They say you get used to the cameras; that after a while they become invisible. As if. Derek and Chad followed us around like malevolent shadows. I always seemed to be tripping over one or the other, or knocking into them with my skirts. Not surprising, considering my farthingale gave me the hip-span of a Boeing 747. Moving around the house became an obstacle course. Like an enthusiastic, tail-wagging collie, I could clear a low-lying table of knick-knacks with a single sweep of my skirts.

That day Thing One and Thing Two must have been working on overtime because they filmed us at breakfast, zooming in for a close-up on my fresh strawberries and cream, and tag teamed Amy and me as we kept our appointment at the dressmakers for a second fitting.

At the dressmakers, or in the shops, whenever I made purchases, the shopkeepers simply added the items to our tab, the colonial equivalent of ‘charge it.’ I had no idea what Jack Donovan made per year – it’s not something a wealthy colonial gentleman like Mr Donovan would share with his household minions, but several days later, I learned that thanks to our Founding Father, Jack’s pockets were apparently not bottomless.

Jack found me in the parlor where I was squinting in the flickering candlelight, reading aloud from a book I had been delighted to find on the bookshelf in the library, shelved between Middleton’s Life of Cicero and Friend on Fevers and Smallpox – namely, A History of Tom Jones, Foundling , the actual 1749 edition. Amy was sitting on a low stool by the fire, knitting a balaclava out of beige wool for the troops in Afghanistan. From time to time, I would put the novel down to help Melody with her sampler, demonstrating, for example, how to tie the French knots that formed the stamens of the tulips beds that bordered her work.

Jack loomed over me, fidgeting until I came to the end of a paragraph. ‘Wasteful!’ he grumbled when I raised my eyes from the page to his face, ruddy even in the semi-darkness. He waved a bit of parchment under my nose. ‘Mrs Ives, do you have any idea how much these candles are costing me?’

‘Peasants in India are sewing sequins on T-shirts under twenty-five-watt bulbs that generate more light than these candles do.’ I paused a beat. ‘Sir.’

‘Be that as it may, I must ask you to economize, madam.’

‘Papa!’ I felt, rather than saw, Melody rolling her eyes. Her skirt rustled as she rose, cupped a palm around one of the three candles flickering in the candelabra on the table next to her chair and blew it out. ‘There. Happy now?’ She plopped back into her chair, bent her head over her work. ‘Besides,’ she added, picking up her sampler, ‘it’s not like it’s real money.’

‘Of course it’s real! Who do you think paid for that frock you’re wearing?’