Bronwyn Williams - The Paper Marriage

Bess bustled about cheerfully, gathering up her hand luggage, which consisted mostly of books, notebooks and writing material, while the young mate toted their trunks ashore. If it hadn’t required too much energy, Rose could have hated anyone who looked so chipper after enduring an endless journey through the bowels of hell.

“There’s Luther come to drive us to the Point.” Waving her furled umbrella, Bess marched surefootedly down the narrow bouncing plank. Rose followed cautiously, trying not to look down at the expanse of dark, choppy water between wharf and deck.

The wind caught her hat, which had been anchored, with the only hatpin she could find, onto hastily reconstructed braids. She slapped one hand on top of her head and with the other held down her blowing skirts.

Luther, a handsome young man whose eyes belied his obvious youth, offered her a shy smile as he handed her up onto a crude bench seat. “Welcome, Miss Bess, ma’am.”

“Poor Billy. I know you miss him.” And without pausing for breath, Bess went on to say, “I thought Matt was going to get a proper cart horse. Don’t he know the difference between a mare and a mule?”

“Yes’m, this here’s Angel. She swum ashore off’n a barge that went aground back in January. Nobody else wanted her, so we kept her. Even for a mule, she’s not real smart, but she took to the harness right off.” He turned to grin at Rose. “We got some nice horses if you like to ride.”

Rose had never ridden a horse in her life. She’d driven her own gig and ridden behind any number of coachmen, but a mule cart was a new experience.

I can’t believe I agreed to this mad scheme, she thought again as they set out along a deeply rutted sand trail for a place called Powers Point. She should’ve applied for a position at the asylum, it was obviously where she belonged.

Luther asked Bess if there was any news of the captain’s bride, and Rose felt her face grow warm.

“She’ll turn up directly,” Bess replied calmly. “How’s Peg mending?” Briefly, she explained to Rose that the ship’s carpenter had broken several bones when the jolly boat had fallen on him in the storm of ’91, and still suffered for it whenever the weather changed.

“Same’s always. Don’t slow him down much. He built on a new room for Annie, so you and Miz Littlefield can take your pick of the rest.”

Mrs. Littlefield. Merciful heavens, that’s me. Not Augusta Rose, not Mrs. Robert Magruder, I’m Rose Littlefield again.

The young driver made a noise with tongue and teeth and slapped the reins across the mule’s thick hide. “Git on home, Angel, we’ve not got all day. I reckon maybe Miz Powers’ll have some say in who sleeps where, but so far, she’s not showed up.”

“Oh, we’ll leave as soon as Matt’s bride shows up. One woman in a household is aplenty, I always say,” Bess chirped.

Do you? I’ve never heard you say that, but then you say so many things….

Rose knew she was being uncharitable and promised to think kinder thoughts if she ever recovered from this awful journey. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on her own knotted fingers, she waited cautiously to see if mule travel would affect her the same way boat travel did.

Evidently not. Her head was still reeling, but her stomach no longer threatened rebellion.

Gradually she began to take more notice of her surroundings, reminding herself that she was stuck here until she made up her mind whether or not to accept her paper marriage. Or until she could bring herself to board that awful little mailboat for the journey back home.

Wherever home was.

Her sole impression, once they left the wooded village, was emptiness. Sand, a strip of marsh grass to the left, a single rutted cart track, and a few wind-twisted, vine-covered shrubs.

And water. With the Atlantic on one side, Pamlico Sound on the other and, according to Bess, an inlet on either end, she was completely surrounded, held captive, by water.

She was familiar with Cape Cod and Cape May, having vacationed at both places with her parents. Robert had wanted to build on Cape Cod, but the best he’d been able to do was a small cottage on Smith Creek, on the outskirts of Norfolk.

This barren place had nothing whatsoever in common with either of those fashionable watering holes except for the water. Even the village consisted only of a few unpainted houses scattered haphazardly under enormous, moss-hung live oak trees. No streets, no shops, only the weathered cottages, a few tomb-stones, a few boats at various stages of repair, and nets strung between sprawling live oaks like giant spiderwebs.

Oh, Lord, you’ve done it again, haven’t you? Leaped before you looked.

As they bumped along over the rutted road along a stretch of open beach, she hung on to her bonnet and wondered why any woman in her right mind would choose to live in such a desolate place. Evidently, she wasn’t alone in making bad choices and being forced to live with them.

Powers Point, which according to Bess, had been family land for generations, came into view slowly. My husband’s estate, Rose thought as she gazed over the backside of the mule at the scattered assortment of buildings, none particularly impressive so far as she could determine.

“You remember Jericho, Miss Bess? Matt’s got him to where he can ride him and not even get throwed more’n once or twice a day,” Luther said proudly.

“That so? They make a pair, all right. One stubborn as the other.” To Rose she explained that Jericho was a wild stallion her nephew had bought in a moment of weakness.

Taking some small comfort in knowing that even men could occasionally make unfortunate choices, Rose gaped at the only thing resembling a residence. Unpainted, it seemed to have come together by accident. Although it might once have been an ordinary two-story frame house, rooms had been added on with no thought as to style or balance. There were random gables, mismatched bay windows, even a widow’s walk.

“Humph! Whose idea was that?” Bess pointed to the small railed platform on the highest part of the roof.

“Peg thought now that the captain’s married, his wife might want to keep watch for when he passes offshore. He can fly a flag or something when he rounds the Cape so she’ll be able to tell the Swan from the other ships.”

Oh, my mercy, he means me, Rose mused, picturing herself standing high on the rooftop, frantically waving her scarf at every ship that sailed past.

As far as she was concerned, the sole appeal of her husband’s estate was that it stood high and dry on solid ground, each gaunt, weathered building telling the world, “What you see is what I am. Accept me or not, I’m here to stay.”

Which was more or less her own position. Here I am, she announced silently. This is what I am and who I am, and you can take me or leave me, I’m sure it won’t matter to me in the least as long as someone will direct me to a bed and a bucket and leave me alone for the next few years.

The mule meandered to a halt. Several speckled chickens ran squawking to greet them. Luther reached into one of the sacks in the back of the cart and tossed down a handful of grain. “Go on inside, ma’am—you, too, Miz Littlefield. I’ll fetch in your bags as soon’s I feed up and unhitch.”

Bess hopped down as nimbly as someone half her age. Rose followed more cautiously, willing her knees not to buckle. It was bad enough that she was here under false pretenses without landing in an ungainly heap at her husband’s feet.

“Matt, we’re here! Now where’s this baby of yours?”

Trudging through the sand behind the older woman, Rose heard a door open and glanced warily past Bess’s portly frame. Her eyes widened.

This was Bess’s nephew? This giant of a man?