Counterfeit Lady (James River Trilogy 1)

She blinked several times. “Not you, but what you have to say. That frightens me.”

He pulled her against him, her head snuggled against his shoulder. “If you don’t mind listening, I’d like to tell you about me, about my family, about Beth.”

All she could do was nod silently. She wanted to know everything about him.

“I had one of those idyllic childhoods that was like the fairy tales you tell the twins,” he began. “James and I were loved and disciplined by the two most wonderful parents ever created. My mother was a lovely, kind woman. She had a great sense of humor, which bewildered James and me when we were younger. If she’d pack a lunch for us to go fishing, sometimes we’d open a crock and find a frog inside. It used to embarrass us that she could catch more fish than any of us.”

Nicole smiled against him, imagining his mother. “What about your father?”

“He adored her. Even when James and I were grown, they’d romp and play like children. It was a very happy household.”

“Beth,” Nicole whispered, and felt him stiffen for a moment.

“Beth was our overseer’s daughter. Her mother died when Beth was born, and she had no brothers or sisters. My mother just naturally took the little girl under her wing. And James and I did, too. James was eight when Beth was born, and I was four. There was never any jealousy about the little baby my mother gave so much time to. I remember carrying her around myself. When she could walk, she followed us everywhere. James and I couldn’t spend a day in the fields without little Beth right beside us. I learned to ride a horse with Beth behind me.”

“And you fell in love with her.”

“Not fell, exactly. Both James and I were always in love with her.”

“Yet she married James.”

Clay was quiet for a moment. “It wasn’t like that. I don’t think anyone ever mentioned it, but we always knew she would marry James. I don’t guess he ever actually proposed. I remember we had a party for Beth’s sixteenth birthday, and James said didn’t she think it was time they set a date. The twins were born before she was seventeen.”

“What was she like?”

“Happy,” Clay said quietly. “She was the happiest person I ever knew. She loved so many people. She was a woman full of energy, always laughing. One year, the crops were so bad we thought we were going to have to sell Arundel Hall. Even Mother stopped smiling. But not Beth. She told us all to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and do something. By the end of the week, we were able to map out a plan of economy so we’d survive the winter. It wasn’t an easy winter, but we were able to keep the plantation, all because of Beth.”

“Yet they all died,” Nicole whispered, thinking of her own family as much as his.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “There was a cholera epidemic. There were many deaths throughout the county. First my father died, then my mother. I didn’t think any of us would recover from the blow, but in a way I was glad they went together. They wouldn’t have liked being separated.”

“But you still had James and Beth and the twins.”

“Yes,” he smiled. “We were still a family.”

“You didn’t want your own home, your own wife and children?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It sounds odd now, but I was content. There were women when I wanted them. There was a pretty little weaver who—” He stopped and chuckled. “I don’t guess you want to hear about that.”

Nicole vigorously nodded her head in agreement.

“I don’t guess I ever met anyone who fit in with the three of us. We’d spent our childhoods together, and we knew each other’s thoughts and wishes as well as our own. James and I worked together, rarely speaking even, then we’d go home to Beth. She…I don’t know how to say it, she made us welcome. I know she was James’s wife, but she took care of me just as well. She was always cooking things for me, making me new shirts.”

He stopped. He held Nicole close to him, buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair.

“Tell me about Bianca,” she whispered.

His voice was very low when he spoke. “At one of the house parties Beth gave, a visitor, a man from England, kept staring at Beth. Finally, he told her that he’d recently met a young woman who could be Beth’s twin. James and I laughed at him because we knew no one could be like our Beth. But Beth was very interested. She asked the man a hundred questions and carefully took down Bianca Maleson’s address. She said that if she ever visited England, she’d see if she could find Miss Maleson.”

“But you went to England first.”

“Yes. We felt we weren’t getting as good a price from our English markets for our cotton and tobacco as we should have gotten. At first, James and Beth planned to go and I’d stay here with the twins, but Beth discovered she was going to have another baby. She said nothing would make her risk losing the baby on an ocean voyage, so I’d have to go alone.”

“And she asked you to go see Bianca.”

Clay’s body turned rigid as he gripped Nicole tightly. “James and Beth were drowned only days after I left, but it took months for the news to reach me in England. I had just finished my business and had traveled to Bianca’s house. By then I was terribly homesick. I was tired of poorly cooked meals and having to arrange for my shirts to be washed. I only wanted to go home to my family. But I knew Beth would have my hair if I didn’t make an effort to see this woman who was supposed to look like her. I’d been invited to stay with the Englishman who’d told Beth about Bianca. When Bianca walked into the room, all I did was stare. Right then, I wanted to grab her and hug her and ask her about James and the twins. It was hard for me to believe she wasn’t Beth.”

He stopped for a moment. “The next day, a man came to tell me about James and Beth. He’d been sent by Ellen and Horace, and it’d taken him a long time to find me.”