Chapter 11

Rain poured over the next six days, for the whole time it took Natalie and Angelique to journey by carriage from New York City, upland to Boston and to the woodlands beyond. They slept by night in roadside taverns of lesser and lesser comforts. By day they jostled on countryside farm trails and wagon paths with deep ruts that strained the carriage's axles.

On the sixth day they reached the recently incorporated town of Bangor—a modest collection of about five hundred shingled homes and brick buildings. The tavern was more of a converted barn than a lodging establishment. But it was here that Angelique was introduced to a sweet, creamy beverage spiced with a jigger of rum: the hot toddy.

"How much farther is it, to Collinwood?" the countess asked the innkeeper.

"About a day, if you're walking." He wiped at the bar's counter with an already dirty rag.

Natalie blinked rapidly. "But, we have a carriage."

"Oh, then, two days."

From Bangor, the carriage wheels churned through the black mud of Maine for another day and a half. Several layers of thick blankets swaddled them together, like mismatched babes in the same cradle, but still they could not keep warm. They kept the curtains drawn over the carriage's windows to shield against the heavy rain that pelted the canvas. On occasion, it sounded as if someone were throwing pebbles at the carriage roof. "Hail," the countess explained to Angelique's wondering expression. "They call it hail, when the raindrops freeze."

Angelique recalled the letters that Barnabas had written describing in poetic detail the features of this stormy land. He had mentioned bizarre things such as hail, and frost, and high dunes of white snow. She had never imagined from his words that it would be like this. Even by day, nothing in the landscape had color; the road, the trees, and the sky were faded to a dull palette of brown and gray. Now she understood why Barnabas had enjoyed the garden in Martinique so much, but at the same time, she thrilled to the drums of the thunder and the almost human scream of stormy winds.

The axle cranked. The coach lurched tilting sideways. It jostled to a dead stop. Outside, the coachman cracked his whip and hollered. The horses grunted, straining in their harnesses, but could not get the carriage to move one more inch.

"What's happening?" the countess asked out the window.

The driver's boots squelched in the mud. He opened the door and displayed his weary, unshaven frown. "Stuck in the mud. Can't budge."

Countess duPres waved her hand at his face. "Well, do something! Put a board under the wheel and pry it out."

Rain showered onto the man's broad brimmed hat. Rain made a liquid fringe over his ears and obscured his face. "Beg your pardon, Ma'am, but that's not possible. I'm just one man."

"Then what do you propose we do?" she challenged him.

"Walk."

"Surely you're not suggesting that I walk through the mud, in this tempest?"

"I am." He gazed off to the road ahead. "Collinwood's about two, maybe three miles. A little rain ain't goin' to kill you."

""I refuse. It's out of the question!" The countess held the blankets tighter to her chest. She settled in to the carriage seat as if ready to sleep there for the night.

"Then I'll walk and bring back help," he said.

"No! What if there are highwaymen on the road? What if someone comes to rob me of my jewels and silver? Who will defend me?"

The coachman tapped the handle of a flintlock pistol stuck in his thick belt. "Can you shoot one of these?"

Both women looked back at him, wide-eyed, and shook their heads, no. The idea of Barnabas only three miles away kindled a fire in her gut. Angelique made a decision. She threw off the blanket from her lap.

"I shall walk to Collinwood, mistress." She pulled up the hood of her cloak, and crouching, she emerged into the rain.

"Alone?" Natalie asked.

"I'll say a prayer to Saint Christopher. I'm sure I'll be fine." Angelique smiled a good-bye and launched off. She passed the team of horses standing miserable in their harnesses, heads bowed against the pounding rain. She proceeded along the muddy road through the forest.

Daylight struggled to pierce through the storm, enough to make everything a dull shade of gray. Her ankles sank with every step but she did not mind. It was her way of getting acquainted with the loa of this land—Barnabas's land—and she sensed the heart of him pulsing in the soil. She had thought that loa were only in Martinique and certainly not in the lifeless brick cities of New York and Boston. Even the countess must have sensed it, the woman with no real intuition of the unseen relying on her Tarot cards.

But here, in the wild black woods, each tree shook in the wet wind and each rattling branch had a spirit with a secret name. May I pass? Her mind whispered to the unseen eyes in the shadows who watched her go by. Though a stranger in their midst, they recognized her as one who could know them. They allowed her. As a polite visitor, she carefully stepped over protruding roots and caressed the coarse trunks of oak and aspen and elm. Lichen was a pale green lace showing her the direction. She did not so much as crack a fallen twig with her heel.

The majestic house shined as a lighthouse in the storm. Partially hidden by the woods, the trees swaying in the wind lifted their branches and revealed to her the way. Collinwood, the place was called. The very land bore his name. Names are power, her nursemaid Veronique had taught her. By knowing the name of the place, Angelique felt confident she would be able to call out the forces sleeping dormant in the soil. If she should need to fight to win her lover, then she would need every ally—seen and unseen.

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Arriving at the house, she ascended an incline of broad stone steps. At last, after more than an hour of trudging in the rainy mud, she came under the shelter of a roof. She passed between gigantic Doric columns like birch trees stripped of their bark. The stone was lifeless and without spirit, but the pillars stood on an older sleeping loa in the soil. Never before had she felt such a sense of sacredness in a place. She had the urge to kiss the ground and beg its permission to cross. Gingerly, she stepped from flagstone to flagstone—avoiding the mossy cracks—and approached the main door.

On the door was mounted a knocker of a brass lion's head biting a ring in its mouth. Angelique rapped the ring against the wood. From inside she heard men's voices indistinctly. She could not make out their words but she sensed they were arguing. Angelique strained to hear more clearly, to try and identify Barnabas's voice if he were one of them, but the rain kept pouring and rushed over the roof and stones with the force of a mighty waterfall.

The door swung inward. Angelique looked expectantly to whoever had opened it, hoping to see him there. It had been so long since she had seen him. She ached for the sight of his face.

Instead of Barnabas, a white woman dressed in a plain cotton gown of brown-and-gray stripes held the door. "Why look at you! You're soaked!" Without so much as a good afternoon or a won't you come inside, the woman grabbed Angelique by the forearm and yanked her in over the threshold.

Angelique was so glad to get out of the rain that she allowed herself to be tugged about like a child, though this waxy-faced woman appeared not much older. Twenty-five at most. She had a plain round face without a trace of powder or paste. So she was certainly not the lady of the house, as if there were any doubt from her coarse gown and the narrow cotton ruffle gathered around the neckline. She had dull brown hair styled into a limp coiffure. Her eyes were devoid of spirit.

"Stay right there, dearie," the woman ordered. "I'll get you a towel."

Angelique closed the door behind herself. She obediently stood there dripping wet on the throw rug just inside the door. Awkward, she was not sure what to do or where to go. The woman hurried off a few feet, down the hallway, to open the door of a little closet under the stairs.

Just inside the front door was a coat rack and on it several wool capes. To her thrill, she saw Barnabas's walking cane with the silver wolf's head. Her heart surged in a thrill; he was home!

A young girl came down the stairs. By her dainty pink gown and lacy bonnet, she had to be Barnabas's younger sister Sarah. Angelique pretended not to recognize her from past visions when her mystic eyes had viewed a scene. She smiled politely at the little girl as if seeing her for the first time. Sarah had grown taller since Angelique had last viewed her—she would be nine years old. She had a gentle open face, blue eyes, and light brown hair that hung loosely to past her hips.

Sarah carried a ceramic mug and reached over the stairs' railing to gesture with it. "Phyllis, my cider smells funny!"

The servant woman, Phyllis, gathered a large fluffy blue towel out of the closet underneath the stairs. She scowled up at the little girl a few steps above her.

"I told you, Sarah, drink your cider and take your nap! Now, you go back to the nursery or I'll have to get stern with you."

"But it smells funny and it tastes bad." Sarah looked to Angelique for an ally. She hopped down the rest of the way and raised her mug of cider towards her face. "Here, you smell it."

One breath, and Angelique caught the unmistakable scent of rum. Why would someone give rum to a child?

Phyllis rushed to push herself in between them on the pretense of handing Angelique the towel. Probably in her dim-witted audacity, she thought she had gotten there in time. She man-handled the little girl, a bit roughly perhaps. By a hawk's grip on her shoulders turned little Sarah around. She quickly patted a smack to Sarah's rump. "I said, there's nothing wrong with your cider. Drink it all up, every drop. Go take your nap! Don't be so spoiled or I'll tell your father."

Sarah glanced nervously to the open archway framed in salmon-colored columns. Her stare extended to a parlor from where the men's voices were coming.

Angelique heard the sonorous snobbish stern voice of Joshua Collins himself, scolding, "How will you ever get through life if you give such importance to really unimportant things?"

"Yes father," Barnabas grumbled.

While dabbing her face and hair with the towel, Angelique moved forward to the columned archway that separated the foyer from the parlor. She no longer cared about Sarah and her rum-spiked cider, or Phyllis, or the father of the house. She got her first full view of the parlor's warm-colored décor, the rouge drapes, the luxurious Persian rug, and a fireplace carved from one gigantic block of pink marble. A magnificent crystal chandelier bolted to the rafters cast twinkles into her eyes, but she did not care for the room or its elegant furnishings.

Barnabas stood on the rug facing the man seated in the chair. He was almost within arms' reach. When he turned about to look at her, she had an urge to rush into his embrace. Two quick steps and she would be there—to hold him and kiss him in front of everyone. It took all of her will to restrain herself.

"Angelique!" he exclaimed. "Wha-... what are you doing here?"

"You are surprised?"

"Astonished! We weren't expecting the countess for at least a week. Where is she?" Barnabas looked down at the mud-soaked hem of her long skirt. "And why are you soaking wet?"

Continuing to pat and dab the towel at her skirts, she said, "Your roads, monsieur. Pigsties, the countess calls them. The carriage is in the mud. It's stuck!"

Barnabas looked to the broad bay window, its glass panes dark and speckled with rain. "Where?"

Feeling a surge of fury and frustration, Angelique cast her eyes downward. "Too far for my lady to walk."

Phyllis standing beside her lightly huffed through her nose. She shared a knowing glance that the gentlemen did not see, servant-to-servant, a private joke, the impotence of servitude. At that moment, Angelique decided to dislike the woman. I am nothing like you, Phyllis. I am no one's servant but his.

Barnabas said, "Well, I must go immediately. Come in and rest."

He started to reach for her elbow but then changed his mind about touching her. Instead he turned around and used the outstretched hand as a gesture of introduction. "Father, you remember the Countess duPres's maid, Angelique?"

"Monsieur Collins." She dipped her knees in a graceful curtsey.

Joshua Collins was the same sour, bitter man with small eyes and a large frown as she remembered him from his brief visits to Martinique. He looked off and away at something else, at nothing in particular, as he spoke to her. Without so much as a bon jour, he said, "Your mistress wrote us that she would be visiting New York until the day before the wedding."

Glad that he had no news of the yellow fever plague, she answered, "The city does not suit my lady."

"Well, I wish we'd known she'd changed her plans. Barnabas, fetch one of the stable boys or Ben..." He leaned on his walking cane to stand up out of the chair. His legs seemed to be in pain; the price of growing old. "I'll go inform your mother of our visitor's arrival."

Barnabas asked the servant woman, "Will you see that Angelique is shown her room, Phyllis?"

"Of course, sir."

Barnabas hurried to the door and pulled his long black cloak from the hook. He raised his arms to swirl it around himself, settle it on his shoulders, and quickly tied the strings under his stiff collar.

Angelique approached to stand facing him. "I must return with you!"

"It isn't necessary," he said.

"It may not be to you, sir, but it is to my mistress."

Barnabas regarded her briefly. His face was a stone mask of self-control, allowing nothing of his thoughts to show. Yet deep within his dark eyes something unnamed glimmered. What was it? Desire? Embarrassment?

"Then, very well," he said. "Come the back way to the stables."

Barnabas started off down the hall in swift strong strides, not glancing back to be sure if she followed or not. Angelique gazed down the long hallway to the dark-on-dark figure moving easily in the shadows.

Phyllis brushed past her on the way up the stairs. "I'll be up in the nursery with Sarah. It was nice to meet you, uh, Angelique. My name is Phyllis Wick, the governess. I'm sure we'll be good friends."

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Her hopes of a romantic coach ride in the rain were dashed when Barnabas invited two laborers to come along. One was a stout and sober fellow named John Riggs. The other was a tall burly white man referred to simply as Ben.

Angelique tucked herself into the coach seat next to him, with all the frustrating layers of clothing and cloaks in between them. As near to him as she had been in months and yet farther away than ever. She could feel the strength of him beneath all those layers of wool, feel the movement of their bodies synchronized, jostled together by the rocking of the coach. She looked to him but he avoided her gaze. She only saw him in profile, his strong features, his hooked nose like a raven's beak. Outside the coach, the black storm-whipped trees swayed. The wind howled. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. All of it a fitting backdrop to his stormy mood. This is his domain, she thought. The spirit of his blood is in this soil, not in the white sands of Martinique. He does not belong in the fair skies and sunshine; he belongs in the dark with me.

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Angelique spent the whole of the afternoon with the countess's luggage and hanging up her delicate underclothes on a cord by the fireplace mantle. Rain had seeped into everything, and the feathers of some of her hats were wilted. She wiped the satin shoes and laid out the assorted items of the lady's toiletries on the dressing table. She despaired over what the rain had done to the velvets—water flattened the delicate plush. Angelique whispered an invocation to the down-like fuzz to encourage it to fluff up softly once more.

When evening fell, she descended to the kitchen and supervised the Collins's staff preparing supper. Every last one of them was of white European stock, from the head cook on down to the girl who shucked the peas. It seemed the Collins family did not own a single black slave. The Irishman named Riggs had managed to snare a few quail and a pheasant, and the plucked birds were being roasted on an iron rack.

"Where is the bread?" Angelique asked.

"Bread? We don't serve bread every day," said the cook, a severe woman who spoke in a foreign accent that harshly spit her consonants. "I'll make a Weihnachtsstollen when I burn ze Yule Log, but tonight we've got rice and cornbread and pumpkin."

"Pump-...kin?" she stammered over the unfamiliar word. Orange gourds were being boiled and mashed into a pulp. "I'm not sure if my lady will like that. She always has bread and butter with her supper."

"We've got no butter."

Angelique's eyes flared wide. "No butter!"

"Not today, but we'll churn some for Christmas."

The rest of the evening passed in a daze, of Angelique on her feet gliding around the supper table. She assisted with serving plate after plate and listened to the countess complain about the lack of seasoning, the absence of any sauce, the clams and scallops overcooked, and the French peas boiled to a green mush. Joshua Collins fumed and scowled, consuming his dinner in silence. Barnabas followed his father's example and said very little at dinner, but occasionally gazed off at the large bay windows running the full length of the dining room. Perhaps he thought of other days, or perhaps was thinking of nights yet to come.

Naomi Collins, the mistress of the house and Barnabas's mother, did not come down for supper. Since their arrival, the matriarch had not made an appearance at all. The word was that she felt unwell, which Angelique expected would cause some concern, but instead the men seemed to take it as a normal course of events.

After supper came more chores: lugging buckets of boiled water upstairs for the countess's bath and sprinkling potpourri into the water, and warming the bed's mattress with a brass pot full of stones heated in the fire. The hours dragged on, darker and darker, before the countess was finally tucked in bed and Angelique was free of the lady's demands.

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She rushed down the corridor to his bedroom. She did not even carry a candle to light the way so that no one still awake at this hour might see. Lightly she rapped her knuckles on the door.

Barnabas called from within, "Who's there?"

She did not answer in case someone else down the hall—his mother, his sister, or the governess Phyllis—might hear her voice. Considerate of causing a scandal for him, she did not dare allow him to be seen with a young woman coming to his bedroom door at this hour.

Her answer was to lightly knock again. She waited, waited for him in the dark. Her yearning quickened her blood. Her whole body tensed like a spring. If he did not open the door soon, she would call upon the forces of every tree and fire spirit she knew to blast the door off its hinges.

Once more, he called through the door, "Who is it?"

He opened the door at last. The wood-paneled room was all golden brightly lit by candles and a blaze in the fireplace. Barnabas blocked the light of the room, himself a deep brown shadow. Angelique smiled as she murmured in a sultry voice, "A ghost from your past."

She rushed inside, past him, and spun to a stop near the foot of his bed. He just stood there like an idiot gawking at her. She had to insist for his own good, "Close the door, quickly!"

Barnabas with a hand on the knob stepped backward and shut the door behind him.

"I've waited for this moment all day long." Angelique reached forth her arms to him, still so far away, still hanging onto the doorknob. "Come to me. Hold me!"

"I'm sorry, I can't." Barnabas crossed from the door to the window in broad, quick strides. He took a stand with his back to her at the windowsill. His fist clutched the drapes. His onyx ring glimmered darkly in the candlelight.

"Why?"

"You know very well." He sighed like a man in pain.

Angelique took a step towards him. "Barnabas, look at me!" When he did not turn around, she insisted, "Do you think I'm not pretty anymore?"

"Of course you are," he said. "But I... well... I should have..."

"Come to me, Barnabas." Angelique reached across the empty gulf between them. If only he would look at her now and see her gentle welcoming smile. "Hold me and let me remind you."

"No, please don't. Oh, I know it's wrong to say it this way, but... Well, it's my fault, I know... It was my weakness to... to..."

Angelique filled in the pause. "Love me?"

He rotated away from the window and dared to look straight at her. "I love Josette."

"Do you?" She rushed at him, landing against his chest as if falling from a great height. She clutched his shoulders and leaned into him, rising on her toes to press her cheek to his shoulder. From sitting by the fire, one side of him felt warm but the other sleeve was chilled. She slipped her arm around his neck and squeezed him close. He felt like hugging a tree that would not bend to the wind.

"Angelique, please stop." He pried her arms off his neck and held her off, firmly, at arms' length. "Josette is coming."

"She's not here yet." Angelique glanced aside to his bed. The elegant frame had a high headboard carved out of mahogany. The rich quilt of burgundy twinkled with gold brocade. Briefly she imagined the two of them, naked and clutching each other, rocking about on that luxurious stack of mattresses.

Barnabas pushed her off a little farther. He stepped back to brace himself against the windowsill. "Stop it. Have some pride in yourself."

"I have no pride!" she cried out. "I don't want to have pride. I want you!"

"You mustn't."

Angelique clutched on his arm, feeling the strength of his lean muscle through his blousy sleeve. If only those arms would seize her as they had so many times before. "You are as cold as that wind outside your house!"

"I'm not cold," he groaned. "But I want to be... I have to be!"

"Why?"

"Because when you and I... when we... I... I didn't know that I was going to marry Josette then..." As soon as he said the words 'marry' and 'Josette' in the same breath, a howling wind filled her mind. His words blurred and Angelique could hardly understand a word of his eloquent, probably rehearsed speech. She only came back to clarity when he looked her straight in the eye and finished, "You and I, well, it's quite impossible."

"Are you sad about it? You still desire me, don't you?"

"What good would it be to admit that? We both have different roles to play now."

She drew back from him, her jaw setting into a firm frown. "And what is my role? The countess's maid?"

"For now, perhaps, but in this new land you may have an opportunity to make something more of yourself."

Angelique opened her arms out to the sides, open, in the pose like the Blessed Virgin Mary offering heavenly compassion to the lost weeping souls of earth. "If you only knew me as I truly am."

"What do you mean?"

"I am offering you an opportunity, Barnabas, to take me in your arms as you did those nights in Martinique. Allow me to serve you, and I will show you..." She paused to dredge up a quote from the Shakespeare play that was his favorite. "...more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"No, Angelique." He crossed to the door and took hold of the knob. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave, if you would."

Arms stiff at her sides, she prowled to the door and restrained herself from hurling a wave of magic at him. With a mere thought, she could push him out through the glass of the second story window. "You will come to me, Barnabas."

"I think not."

"You will see." Angelique allowed him to open the door for her, like a gentleman would for a lady. She stepped into the corridor without a backward glance.

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