Рита Браун - Probable Claws

Knowing of her father’s disaffection for lawyers, she kept silent.

He placed the letter on his desk. “I don’t mean to distress you, my dear, but I wonder if we are in a better state than France. Every state, like every prince, comte, duke, whatever, is out for itself. Petty. Selfish and retarding commerce. This can’t go on any more than France’s borrowing can continue.”

“Someone has to take the first step. Washington?”

Ewing shook his head. “The general will stay above the fray. But if some form of assembly is called it will only work if he blesses it.” He rubbed his forehead. “I wish I had answers. And, my dear, we had best prepare ourselves for losses from our French clients. I doubt we will be paid for our large tobacco shipment. I hope I am wrong, but we will face large losses.”

“The English?”

A lip curled slightly. “Convinced though they are of their superiority and that we are traitors, they will pay. Actually, I suspect the ire of the educated has been splenetic, focused on Lord North. We are somewhat off the hook.”

“We sent much tobacco there.”

“Safe. For one thing they sit around in those coffeehouses, talk politics, and smoke. I would question English industry in the cities. Too much talk.”

“Perhaps they save the coffeehouse for when work is done. Consider their power,” Catherine countered.

“I do. I do.” Ewing folded his hands over his chest.

Two sets of small footsteps echoed in the polished hall. Bettina’s echoed behind them. JohnJohn, Tulli, and Bettina stopped at the library’s open door.

“I rode today!” JohnJohn, tipping over two years old but a big boy for his age, much like his father, loudly announced.

Tulli, nine, kept a close watch on the child, loved him, really. “He did. Cold as it is he rode all by himself.”

“I’m going to be a soldier like Father.” His little chest puffed out.

“That’s wonderful, JohnJohn.” Catherine stood, walked to the door, picked up her son.

Ewing laughed. “Next thing you know, he’ll be in the irons, racing against you and Jeddie.”

“I will.”

Tulli, turning into a good little rider, said nothing, but Catherine, sensitive to such things, put her hand on his shoulder. “He’ll have to catch you, won’t he, Tulli?”

A wordless grin followed this statement.

“All right, you two beggars. Back to the kitchen. Never know what you’ll find in there.” Bettina turned to walk down the hall.

“A pie?” JohnJohn shouted.

Bettina threw up her hands as she kept walking.

Catherine remarked, “I’d find out if I were you. No one can cook or bake like Bettina.”

The little fellow ran, not terribly well but he did run. Tulli skipped behind him.

Catherine returned to her seat, then stood up, carried a log to the fireplace, an upward shower of molten sparks emitting dots of color and light.

“Roger can do that,” Ewing said.

Roger, the butler, performed many services. Like Ewing, age was encroaching. He was training his son, Weymouth, to succeed him since being butler is a position of responsibility, power. A good butler understands the politics of any situation. He is also the head man among the slaves. Weymouth, obedient but unmotivated, did not have the makings of a good butler. Roger tried to hide his disappointment.

“I know he can but I like to keep a fire going. And I’m sure Roger is back there in the kitchen with Bettina. They’re solving some problem on this place of which we know nothing.”

He nodded. “They’re uncanny, those two. By the way, how do you think Bettina’s romance with DoRe progresses?”

“At a stately pace.” Catherine laughed. “They’re in their forties, lost their first mates, and DoRe works for that holy horror.” She meant Maureen Selisse Holloway.

He shook his head. “Holy horror she is, but she is uncommonly shrewd about finance. She obviously picked up a great deal from her father.”

Maureen’s father, a powerful banker in the Caribbean, made money both honestly and dishonestly, but make it, he did. As did Maureen.

The fire hissed, cracked. Ewing inhaled the pleasing odor. His desk, at a right angle to the fireplace, allowed him to view the fire as he worked. In summer’s warm weather he would have his desk turned so it faced the fireplace, which would have been scrubbed out, a large brass fan put in the middle with another fan of huge turkey feathers in front of the brass fan.

Catherine, too, watched the flames.

“Sometimes the world weighs on my shoulders. Then I listen to JohnJohn or watch Marcia and Isabelle together. The world vanishes for a time.” He smiled. “Then again, bad as it seems it’s not as fearful as when I could have been hanged for supporting the rebellion.”

“It’s God’s grace that we won.” Catherine, not given to religious sentiments, believed that.

“Indeed.” He inquired, “Feeling all right?”

“The baby’s not due until July. I’m fine.”

“Well, you know anytime you wish to nap or rest, tell me.”

“I will. Given the baron’s letter, should we not seek other sources of revenue?”

“I have been doing so. I have tried to create sources of income that cannot be wiped out at once. Hence the timber, the apple orchard, the tobacco holdings south of the James and in North Carolina. The only other things I can conceive would be a flour mill, a sawmill, a foundry.”

“All needed. But we would have to build them, find people with the knowledge to run them and run them honestly.”

“Pestalozzi has the best flours, cornmeal,” Ewing added. “I doubt we could do better.”

“I’ve been putting off a decision but given our potential losses, I will contact Yancy and agree to race Reynaldo against Black Knight.”

“Is that wise? You would be training as you grow closer to birth.”

“True, but I will be on the ground. Jeddie will be breezing him.”

“He’s a good young man.”

“He is. With Jeddie working the blooded horses and Barker O. training the driving horses, we are formidable.”

“You’re formidable. I sit back and watch.”

“You can ride.”

“Not well and I don’t love it,” he admitted. “You have always loved it. And it looks as though JohnJohn may grow into that also. I haven’t asked but I can’t help myself. Do you want a boy or a girl? If I’ve heard the answer I don’t remember. I think I would remember.”

Catherine laughed. “A girl. I live with two boys now, my husband and JohnJohn. I need an ally.”

He laughed with her. “Now you know how I felt surrounded by you, Rachel, and your mother.” He paused. “I believe I learned more from your mother than anyone else in my life. She was an uncommon woman who could see around corners. She perceived things I missed. She felt things. I would try to be logical and she’d kiss me on the cheek and say, ‘Husband, people are not logical. They pretend to be.’ She was right.”

“She’d say that to me, too. She’d point her finger at me, usually walking in the garden. ‘You are just like your father.’ I’m glad of that.” Catherine complimented him.

He smiled. “I have many shortcomings.”

“Don’t we all, Father? But as to being logical, it seems to me, we can try to be so. The French could use a bit of bracing logic and so could we. We do need an assembly. I say nothing. It’s not my place and in some ways that gives me an advantage. I can listen to the conversation of your friends and absorb it all. Some people can peer into the future better than others, but no one really knows, do they?”

“And they never will,” he declared with finality.

17

January 18, 2017

Wednesday