Hat pins were easy to find. The Countess duPres had a box full of them. Angelique cradled the doll in one hand, ever so gently, and murmured her intentions to the soul of the doll. It was so easy. One pin to the shoulder... One pin to the stomach...
Angelique smiled secretly in the privacy of her little servant room. She imagined what her eyes could not see. A little child in her sick bed—what a pathetic sight she would be. Humming a happy little Creole tune, she made herself a kettle of tea.
Soon, he will come to me. Sarah has fallen ill! Oh that is a shame, I will say. Is there anything I can do? Angelique choreographed how she would comfort him: a hand gently resting on his shoulder, a light touch to his hand, a kiss to his cheek and he would turn to her wanting more.
Someone knocked twice and, without waiting for an invitation, flung open the door. Instead of Barnabas coming to her in distress, it was the little girl's governess.
Phyllis Wick cried out, "I didn't do it!"
Angelique hurriedly tucked away the doll with its incriminating pins sticking out of the shoulder and belly. "You didn't do what?"
"Mister Barnabas is furious with me!" Phyllis was weeping unrestrained, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. The handkerchief clutched to her cheek was already limp with tears. "He accused me of spanking her beyond what's necessary. 'Beating her like a mule,' he said. To me, he said this! I have never been so insulted. He accused me of causing her pains. He demanded to his father that I be discharged from my position!"
Angelique blinked a few times to collect her thoughts. "I'm quite sure I don't know what you're talking about. Who is in pain?"
"Sarah! That wicked little brat has fallen ill. Somehow, Mister Barnabas blames me!"
Angelique sighed a tremulous sort of half-chuckle. "Well, does he have any cause for blame?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh come now, Phyllis, we're both equals here. You can tell me the truth. What did you do to torment that sweet child?"
"No, no, I never did anything but spank her gently with the flat of a spoon!" Phyllis flung herself forward into Angelique's arms. "Help me! Talk to them!"
She gripped the woman by the wrists and pried her off. "How do you think I can have influence over Monsieur Barnabas? I am a servant the same as you."
Phyllis gulped and took a few moments to wipe her face. She wiped left cheek, right cheek, and gradually her eyes cleared. Such bland, unintelligent eyes, Angelique thought, pursing her lips to restrain a haughty smirk. Brown like a horse and equally witless.
"I think you could have a great deal of influence over Mister Barnabas," Phyllis said slowly, each word carefully pronounced like dictation of a writing lesson to a child.
Angelique's lips quivered in a sort of mirthless smile, no longer haughty, no longer so confident against the way Phyllis stared at her. "However do you mean?"
"I've worked as a governess since I was sixteen. I've lived in a couple of fine houses, by now, in Philadelphia, in Williamsburg, in New York, and most recently in Boston." Phyllis pulled back her shoulders to stand a little straighter and taller. "In my first job, as I've confessed before God, the master of the house took a fancy to me and we succumbed to the devil's temptation. His wife had me discharged but, out of shame, gave me the finest references. In my next two jobs, I stayed chaste, but I saw things... I saw the masters of other houses... I saw the handmaidens who attracted their fancy the same as what happened to me. I learned to see the signs."
Angelique turned aside. "I can't imagine why you're confessing these things to me. Surely it's none of my concern what the masters of other houses are doing."
Phyllis pointed her finger at Angelique like the barrel of a pistol. "I said, I know the signs."
"What signs?"
"You an' Mister Barnabas. The way you look at him across the room, when you think no one's paying attention. And the way he looks at you, when he thinks he can get away with it."
Angelique's blood rushed in an ocean wave to her head. He looks at me? "You... you're mistaken," she stammered.
"If asked to his face, he'll confess. Mister Barnabas is too honorable a man to ever tell a lie."
She whirled about. "You wouldn't!"
Phyllis raised her chin and displayed a haughty smirk. "Help me save my job, and I'll help you be alone with him whenever you want."
How easy it would be to destroy her, Angelique thought. I could transform her into a wild turkey and have her cooked for the family supper! No one would ever mourn her. They would assume she had deserted her position.
"Well, Miss Bouchard, do we have a deal? I help you, and you help me, and we both get what we want?"
Angelique's large eyes rolled up and down to survey this common woman. She could be destroyed at any time but, perhaps for now, she could be useful.
"Yes, Miss Wick, we have a deal. I will speak to Monsieur Barnabas."
#
Barnabas stood at his bedroom window, staring through the frosted glass at the swirls of snowflakes outside that filled the entire world with whiteness. Angelique approached him cautiously, unsure of his mood.
"I heard that little Sarah is ill. Is there anything I can do?"
"Doctor Thornton is mystified. The incompetent sawbones! As if it isn't perfectly clear what's happened."
Fury boiled within him, closely held in check by his outwardly stoic manner. Angelique moved around the armchair and ventured a little closer. "What do you mean?"
"It's that Phyllis Wick woman. I'm convinced that she's gone far beyond spanking. I think she twisted her arm behind her back or pushed upon her stomach in such a way that it would not show a bruise."
"Oh," Angelique gasped as she inched ever closer to him. Now she was within arm's reach but was careful not to touch him. At any moment, his rage could surface. She could not afford to be caught in the storm. "Oh, Barnabas, those are terrible accusations. How could anyone do such a thing to a child?"
"I've seen mistreatment of children." He continued staring out the window. Angelique admired the strong lines of his profile contrasted against the deep burgundy of the drapes behind him. "Aboard ship, I've seen the captains beat their cabin boys, and in other houses I've seen fathers beat their own children. Hard to believe there are fathers in the world more stern than mine. Surely you've seen things done to the slave children on the sugar plantation?"
"Yes I have." Angelique looked aside to the frosty window, sharing his view of the cold, gray world. "But are you certain this is what ails Sarah? Tell me, what are her complaints?"
"A pain in the shoulder. A pain in the belly."
"Nothing else? No fever? No pox? No vomiting?" Barnabas shook his head, no. Angelique forced a merry grin. "I know what this is! Why, I suffered from a similar thing when I was a child about her age. My Mamma concocted an elixir of healing herbs from a native recipe, and it cured me instantly. After my recovery, she taught it to me. I'm sure I've seen those same herbs in the kitchen. I can prepare the brew... that is, the elixir in no time at all!"
He furrowed his brows. "I'm not sure."
"Please, Barnabas, trust me. You know that Sarah is also very dear to me, as she is to you. I want to help!"
His eyes crinkled at the corners. Sunlight from the window, muted by frost, shined a ghostly pallor on his pale face. Her worst fears were coming true; he was on the verge of weeping. No, no, she thought. You must not despair!
"Angelique, if there's anything you can do..."
"Yes?" she prompted when his silence went on too long.
"I would be most grateful."
"How grateful?"
His face was divided into two colors: the gold of the candlelight in the room, and the bluish white of the frost in the window. As she stood so close to him, she imagined that he was seeing the same effect in her face in the opposite mirror image.
"If my elixir cures Sarah, will you..." Angelique blinked rapidly in rhythm with her pounding heart. She worried if she were rushing things, but if she did not push now, she might never have another chance. "Will you marry me, Barnabas?"
"Marry you? How can you possibly think of marriage while my sister lies suffering in her sick bed?"
Angelique pressed her hands to the front of his shoulders. "Because it is only at a time like this that your heart is open to me. I'm not concerned about Sarah, for I am sure that I can cure her ailment. It's you that concerns me. You have withdrawn into solitude and I'm afraid that what ails you can't be cured with herbs."
He cupped his hands under her elbows but did not push her away. He remained still, his eyes staring down into hers, and allowed her to lean in closer.
"I can be a good and faithful wife to you," she pleaded. "You understand that I have never known another man but you. I've never wanted anyone else."
"Yes," he whispered. "I know."
"If you'll have me, I will never leave you. Promise you'll marry me, Barnabas, and I'll make you so happy."
His gaze lowered to stare at her mouth but he did not move to kiss her. He stayed grim and aloof, as regal in his restraint as the King Arthur in his books, and she—as a knight of his Round Table—was charged with a quest as sacred as seeking out the holy grail.
"If Sarah recovers, I will ask you to marry me."
#
Wagons bogged down in the snow. It was worse than mud. Although the ground was as hard a brick—frozen solid for miles around—draft horses sank to their knees in the dirty slush and wheels vanished up to the hub. Joshua Collins spent a few hours shouting at the workmen, at the horses, at the snow, and at God himself, demanding that wagons should transport the heavy furniture uphill to the newly constructed family mansion.
Of course, Sarah had recovered from her illness. It was simply a matter of pulling the pins from the doll.
Joshua Collins immediately declared that the family should relocate. He did not say his true intentions out loud, but everyone down to the cook's grandson understood it was to put behind them the painful memories. This was the house where a Collins had died.
"It's not quite two miles!" He raised his walking cane to point at the black trees poking up from the snow dunes like cloves in a holiday ham.
Men and beasts struggled valiantly against the elements. No one dared to try and talk sense into their master. They heaved and pushed. They shoveled the road, but the sky only sent down fresh shavings of flakes to fill in whatever path they cleared. As hours of daylight waned into night, they made no progress.
At dusk, Joshua Collins finally gave up. He ordered the workers to unload the furniture that they had spent all of their morning hours disassembling and packing aboard the wagons. "Yes sir," they grumbled. Ben Stokes in particular had a deep and murderous frown as frost caked on his eyebrows.
Joshua came back into the house, briefly, to gulp down a hot toddy and sulk by the blazing fireplace. Angelique stood nearby but at a respectful distance, waiting for him to finish his beverage so she could return the pewter tankard to the kitchen.
Naomi Collins approached from a side door. She wore all her glory of a satin gown of vivid French blue and a string of pearls around her throat. As always, her raven black hair was perfectly coiffed and her skin powdered smooth like glazed porcelain. "Well, Joshua?"
"The goddamned snow," he grumbled, taking another sip of toddy.
"I see no call for that sort of crude language," Naomi said.
"Today there is, madame."
Servants tromped into the house, two-by-two, lugging sections of furniture. They grunted with their efforts, going upstairs in a caravan. They brought back sections of canopy bed frames, loveseats, dressing tables, armoires with cabinet doors bound shut in twine, tea tables, bureaus and stacks of empty drawers.
Naomi clasped her hands gently in front of her stiffly boned and lace-frilled bodice. "Shall I take this to mean we're not moving after all?"
"Quite the contrary, we are moving tonight." Joshua handed off his empty tankard to Angelique who curtsied with her knees as she received it. "There is some furniture in the new house, intended for the guest bedrooms, but we can make use of it. Our accommodation will be somewhat sparse at first, but we shall make due with whatever we have. When I was camped at Valley Forge that one winter, we had much less."
"Valley Forge!" Naomi drew a deep inhale. "We are not soldiers, Joshua, and little Sarah is just recovering from an illness."
"Each room has a fireplace. A few of them have beds enough for now. The rest of your accessories can be transported later, in the spring, when the snows thaw." Joshua leaned with a stiff arm on his walking cane. "I shall hear no more objections from you, madame. Collect your daughter, and let's be out of here."
"Now?" she asked.
"Yes now, tonight! I shall not sleep another night under this roof."
The Collins family owned a few large sleighs. Those were used to transport the lighter crates, trunks, satchels, bundles of books and papers, oil portraits, and rolled-up rugs. Angelique marveled at the design of these strange vehicles. Instead of wheels they had a parallel row of flat planks spanning underneath the length of the carriage that skimmed like a fishing boat along the surface of the snow.
Sarah Collins was their most precious cargo. They wrapped her in thick quilts. She wore a fur-lined wool cloak and carried a rolled muff of white rabbit fur. She kept asking, "Where's my dolly? Why can't anyone find my doll?"
Young Daniel Collins mounted up his own large horse, jumping like a cricket to the high saddle. Once settled in command of the reins, he maneuvered alongside the sleigh. "Oh stop crying about your doll. You'll have a whole trunk full of toys at the new house."
"I want my doll. She got broken, and Barnabas said he would fix her."
Barnabas came onto the porch just then, escorting Aunt Abigail and Cousin Millicent. They were warmly dressed in long hooded cloaks, and gloves, and muffs, but he only wore his tailcoat and no gloves at all. So he walked them down the stone stairs as far as the carriageway. When his flat shoes crunched into slush, he retreated from the flurries of snowflakes. Riggs and Jones assisted the ladies to climb up into the sleigh.
He turned to Angelique, who stood apart from the group and made no moves to get into the sleigh with Josette and the countess. He said, "I gave you Sarah's doll. Didn't you return it to her?"
She faked an innocent smile for him. "Of course I did. She must have lost it. You know that she likes to wander all about in places where she should not go."
"Yes, I suppose so." He continued to frown darkly.
"I'll search in your father's library and the cellar and the attic," she offered. "I'm sure it will turn up somewhere."
"Thank you." Barnabas rubbed his bare hands together. Without another word, or even a glance of good-bye at his family, he trotted up the stone stairs and went back into the house.
Whips cracked. Horses heaved. Sleigh bells jingled. Off they went gliding smoothly over the ocean of white powder. Angelique hugged herself against the gnawing cold, but lingered a few minutes longer outside to watch the caravan of open sleighs dip into the tree-lined path and be swallowed up in the shadows. Glass-and-tin hurricane torches dangled from posts on each sleigh's frame. Long after the shapes of the sleighs themselves had blurred into the darkness of the falling night, the twinkling specks of fire darted among the tree trunks.
They're gone, she thought with a swelling smile of triumph. At last, they are all gone away, and Barnabas is alone. He belongs to me, now.
Ben Stokes tromped alongside her, a dark hulking shadow. "I know what you did. I thought you was evil enough before, but to hurt a child!"
"I didn't hurt her. She's fine, isn't she?"
"Something stopped you, thank God. What was it? Don't tell me you have a heart."
Angelique looked back to the house and saw a golden light turning brighter in the parlor's bay window. She imagined Barnabas stoking the fireplace. It had to be him doing his own work, as all the other servants were trudging through the snow, on foot, to follow after the sleighs. Only Ben Stokes remained.
"Of course I have a heart," she said. "Everything I've done is because I have a heart. I love him and now I will have him."
He moved to block her from returning to the stairs. He pointed his brawny arm at the forest path. "You're supposed to be going up to the new house with your mistress. I mean to see you go there if I have to carry you on my shoulder the whole way."
She laughed at him a hearty cackle. "The Countess duPres is no longer my mistress."
"What?"
"I serve Barnabas, now."
"No, by God," he growled like a bear. "I won't let you near him."
Her merriment dropped away. She fixed her harsh, commanding stare on the underside of his chin. "Oh yes, you will, and you'll pretend to be happy for us when Barnabas announces that we are engaged to be married."
"Married? You and him? But he loves Josette!"
She balled up her hands into fists, threatening to punch his broad chest. "After how she betrayed him with his own uncle? He hates her!"
"That was all your doing."
"And you'd better not give a hint of it, Ben, not one whisper that you feel anything but loyalty and friendship to me. Remember you can't say a word about what I am or what I have done, or your tongue will shrivel up in your head! Not one word out of your mouth, Ben Stokes. Not one word!"
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