Chapter 11
West End
December 1853
Thomas returned to the Duvall farm more than a week earlier than expected, saying he’d already taken Alden to the wharf in town. Victor didn’t care a lick about Alden, but he’d been stewing since yesterday over what Eliza had done. He already hated his wife, but she’d propelled his hatred to an entirely new level.
Victor had insisted the coachman turn right back around, transporting him to Scott’s Grove in the dark. Thomas said the two carriage horses needed rest before they started another journey, and none of the other horses on the farm were strong enough for the journey.
Victor began to reprimand him for his impertinence—and his laziness—until he saw the animals collapsed on the straw in their stalls. And he saw snow piling up on the ground outside.
There was no sense finding themselves stranded on the road, no matter how much he wanted to leave. Isaac would be safe enough with the Paynes, though John would put him right to work. Perhaps, after Victor rescued him, the boy would have a greater appreciation for his life here. A few days of hoeing or cleaning out the barns would be a good reminder of his comforts back in West End.
He spent the first hours of the night packing. Then he settled into his bed, but sleep evaded him. Every time he tried to close his eyes, all he could see were Mallie’s eyes looking back, haunting him.
Leaning over on his pillows, Victor lit a candle and tugged on the brass knob of the writing desk drawer. He shoved aside David Copperfield—a ridiculous story that he and Isaac hadn’t yet finished—and a copy of a brilliant new novel, Moby-Dick. They’d read the book about the whale twice.
Under the books and smattering of letters was a portrait he’d painted of Mallie after his father died, the image wrapped in a cream-colored silk. Eliza didn’t know he had kept it. At one time, he’d had to keep it hidden, but Eliza never came to his room anymore.
He lifted Mallie’s portrait from the silk and examined her face in the candlelight, the amber-colored eyes and slender nose and smooth skin free of any blemish. So very beautiful in those months before Isaac was born.
Mallie had been everything to him. A perfect rose among inferior weeds. A diamond buried in Virginia’s red clay, waiting for someone like him to cut and polish and refine her beauty. He’d never known a fairer woman. Nor one so challenging.
His mother and then the Honorable Arthur Duvall protected her while they were alive, as if Victor meant to harm her. He had wanted nothing more than to love Mallie, to keep her as his own.
Arthur the Honorable couldn’t stop him from beyond the grave.
Still, Mallie had resisted him, but in the end, she’d had no choice but to succumb. He hadn’t wanted to be so harsh. He knew what was best for her—for both of them. He’d only wanted them to be together.
He held her portrait up to his chest.
Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.
He and Mallie were supposed to be true to one another—like Melville wrote—heart to heart. No matter what trials they faced in this life. They were never supposed to separate.
Anger ripped through him, like it always did when he thought about Mallie. The portrait shook in his hands.
Where had she gone? And after he had loved her so deeply, why had she abandoned him? Since he was fifteen, he’d known that she was supposed to be his—and then she left him. The loss tore him up on the inside.
He’d searched everywhere for her that spring and then summer, traveling to the slave markets and even up to Boston and Philadelphia after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. It was illegal now for the Yankees to harbor runaways, and he’d hoped that he might find her hiding among the freed slaves. With this law, she would have had no choice but to return to Virginia with him. He didn’t care a whit what Eliza thought.
His search had availed him nothing, though. It seemed the woman he’d loved more than anything had disappeared.
One day, Mallie would return to him. He’d find her—and she would pay for leaving him—but she’d change her mind. One day, she would love him as he loved her.
Closing his eyes, he savored the thought of reclaiming her as his slave. Once he found her, she would never leave him again.
He wrapped the portrait back up in the silk and secured it in his leather portfolio, along with his art supplies and the important documents he carried with him wherever he went.
Isaac hadn’t left him as Mallie had done. Nor would he ever leave this house again without Victor at his side.
After Isaac’s birth, Victor had swept in and personally found a colored nursemaid to care for him without Eliza’s interference—at first for collateral and then because he grew fond of the boy. As long as the boy treated him with respect, he would have a comfortable home here. John Payne would have to find another slave to help in the fields.
When the clock struck the six o’clock hour, he rose from his bed and dressed quickly. He’d planned to go alone to Scott’s Grove, but Eliza was waiting for him downstairs. She climbed into the carriage behind him without a word and didn’t budge.
Instead of protesting, he decided that it was exactly as it should be—she could explain to her father why she gave him Isaac: because she was obsessively, insufferably jealous of a nine-year-old slave boy.
John would understand why Victor wanted him back. He was equally protective of the slaves in his care.
They arrived at Scott’s Grove before noon and found Nora Payne in the drawing room by herself, beside the unlit pine tree. When she turned and saw Eliza, her stoic lips turned upward into a sad smile.
“My dear,” Nora said, hurrying toward her daughter. “Why are you here?”
Eliza didn’t return her smile. “Victor insisted that we visit.”
Then Nora squeezed his neck much too hard. “You are a good son,” she said, soaking the shoulder of his waistcoat with an enormous amount of tears.
When she released him, he searched the room for Isaac, as if the boy might be hiding behind a high-backed sofa or the long drapery around the windows.
“John’s in Charlottesville,” Nora said. “He should return soon.”
“Do you know where Isaac is?” Victor asked, stepping away from her before her tears ruined his clothing.
Nora looked over at him, confused. “Who is Isaac?”
Eliza snorted. “His personal page.”
“Why would your servant be here?”
Victor motioned toward his wife, but didn’t look her way. “Eliza sent him with Alden.”
Nora pressed her eyes closed for a moment, then reopened them. “There was a boy who arrived with Alden, but I don’t know where he went. Alden left us yesterday while we were in church.”
Tears began to pour again.
“Yes, yes,” Victor replied with a wave of his hand. “Thomas said he took Alden to Alexandria.”
“He was supposed to celebrate Christmas with his family.”
Victor stared at the woman, perplexed. Is that why she was crying? Because her son left early? Women were absurd. Alden was a grown man, yet Nora treated him like he were a child. His brother-in-law was a radical. An idealist. Victor wished he would stay up in Cambridge permanently instead of returning to Scott’s Grove.
He moved back to the door. “Perhaps Isaac is with the other house slaves.”
Nora returned to the sofa. “I suppose.”
“I’ll go search for him.”
The two women began babbling nonsense. About the snow, the journey, Eliza’s plans to stay here until the New Year.
Eliza hadn’t discussed her plans with him, but Scott’s Grove would be as good of a place as any to spend a week or two this winter. A welcome relief, really, from the doldrums of the farm. He and Isaac could begin reading the whale book again, and he could amuse himself with the other books in John’s library.
Downstairs, he asked a woman stirring the kitchen fire about Isaac, but she gave him a blank look which made him deem her either deaf or daft. The upstairs servants said they’d seen a new boy, but they didn’t know where he went.
Victor searched the bedchambers. John’s office.
“Isaac,” he called out into the small library, but still the boy didn’t answer. Had his father-in-law already sent Isaac out to the fields?
When he couldn’t find Isaac in the house, he found his coachman in the stables, grooming a horse. “Thomas, have you seen Isaac?”
The man kept brushing. “Yes, sir.”
Confound it. He should have asked Thomas hours ago. “Where is he?”
Thomas looked up, confusion in his eyes. “I took him and Master Alden to Alexandria yesterday.”
Victor kicked a stool. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you.”
Victor clenched his fists. “You just told me about Alden.”
“I didn’t think you’d care about the slave.”
Victor took a step toward him. “Why did he go with Alden?”
Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps Master Alden needed a boy to help him at school.”
He didn’t care one whit what Alden needed. Isaac was his; no one else could claim him. “Does John Payne know?”
“I’m just the driver, sir. No one ever tells me what the master knows or doesn’t know.”
Victor pointed at the horse. “Get them ready.”
“They’re too tired for another journey.”
His eyes narrowed. “You ever felt the whip on your back, Thomas?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll whip you and your horses if you don’t have me on the way to Alexandria in the next hour.”
Turning, he stomped back toward the house, trailing snow behind him as he tramped across the wooden floor in the hall. When he marched into the drawing room, Nora excused herself.
Eliza leaned back on the sofa, sipping a glass of brandy. “Where’s your slave?”
He towered over her. “Did you tell Alden to take him to Cambridge?”
“I did not, but it’s a brilliant thought.”
“What if Alden decides to sell him?”
She took another sip. “Good riddance, for all of us. That boy’s not fit for any kind of decent work.”
“You’re right. He’s much too smart to be a slave.”
“Oh, Victor,” she said, setting her glass onto a table. “Just because you fathered him does not mean he’s smart. In fact, quite the opposite.”
He fought to ignore her words. “I’m going to retrieve him.”
Eliza’s smile fell. “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“The boy reminds you too much of Mallie, doesn’t he?”
She shook her head. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“But you know exactly how I felt about Mallie.”
Her laugh was bitter. “And we know how she felt about you. Left you the first opportunity she had to run.” Standing, she walked toward the decorated tree and fingered the needles. “Perhaps that’s what Isaac is doing too. Running away from you.”
If only he could put his hands around that long neck, choke the life out of her. If the judge knew what it was like to live with this woman, he’d let him go without consequence. “I’ll find Isaac and bring him back.”
She stepped toward him, her voice hard. “If you go after him, I swear I’ll leave you.”
“Then that seals my decision.” Eliza may threaten, but she would never leave him. According to the law in Virginia, a divorced woman couldn’t own a single item of her husband’s property. Eliza had a firm appreciation for prestige and the finer things a plantation and their slaves could offer.
“This is ludicrous,” she said.
“What’s ludicrous?” John was standing in the doorway, his top hat in his hands.
Victor stepped toward him. “Alden took one of my slaves north with him.”
When John swore, Victor sneered at Eliza. He knew the man would understand.
“If you don’t go now,” John said, “you’ll never see your slave again.”
The chill from the hall swept over Victor. “Will he sell Isaac?”
“No. He’ll probably set him free.”
Eliza laughed again as he stomped back out of the room. He would find Alden and Isaac. And he would bring Isaac back home with him for good.