River Lady (James River Trilogy 3)

Regan gave a short laugh. “Wesley is usually thought of as Travis’s little brother.”

“Not to me,” Leah said with confidence.

Travis was sitting behind an enormous desk, ledgers open before him, one of his clerks beside him. Regan stood Leah before the desk and when the clerk looked up, his mouth dropped open in amazement. Travis glanced up, saw the man’s expression, and turned to look at Leah.

“Good God!” he said, sucking air through his teeth. “She’s not—.”

“She is,” Regan said proudly.

“Fetch us some tea,” Travis commanded his clerk. “And stop gawking! Here, sit down. Leah, is it?”

As if she’d always been treated as a lady, Leah demurely sat on the upholstered chair Travis held for her. The robe had parted somewhat and was exposing a great deal of cleavage, which Travis was enjoying. He looked up to see Regan glaring at him.

“Filled out some, hasn’t she?” he said with a grin.

The tea arrived almost instantly with two maids and a butler carrying a big silver tray, all three of them and Travis’s clerk gaping at Leah.

“Out! All of you!” Travis commanded.

Leah sat still, returning all their looks with curiosity, wondering who they were and what their jobs were.

When the room was clear, Travis poured tea for Leah into a fragile porcelain cup and held it out to her with great politeness.

“I am hungry,” Leah said and noisily moved her chair closer to the desk where the tray of cakes and sandwiches had been set. She blew loudly on the tea, slurped it so it bubbled through her teeth, set the wet cup down on the wooden desktop, then picked up three small pastries, mashed them in her saucer, poured cream from the silver pitcher over them, and began eating the concoction with her teaspoon. Halfway through she looked up to see Travis, Regan, and Nicole gaping at her.

Nicole was the first to recover. “We have a bit more work to do yet,” she said softly before sipping delicately from her teacup.

“That you do,” Travis said with a grunt.

Leah resumed eating.

Three days later Leah swore she hated those little cups and saucers that looked so pretty but seemed to always be falling apart in her hands. Regan threatened Leah’s life if she broke one more piece of expensive imported porcelain, so Leah again tried to learn how to handle them.

“What does it matter how you eat as long as you get it inside?” Leah half cried as Nicole again corrected her use of a fork.

“Think of Wesley,” Nicole said, using the phrase as a slogan to urge Leah on—and it always worked. The women used Wesley to entice Leah, to force her to be patient and learn the manners she needed to know. And they got the whole story from Leah about how she’d met Wes, how she’d loved him forever.

After Leah had been at the Stanford Plantation for two months, her father, Elijah, was found dead in the river. Travis paid for a funeral that was beautiful. For the first time since she’d married Wesley, Leah saw her brothers and sisters. Each of them had gained weight, were unbruised and clinging to the hands of the people who’d taken them in. They looked at Leah with wide eyes, not even sure who she was, and left with their new families; Leah shed tears of joy because they seemed so happy now.

Once, Leah looked across her father’s coffin and into the gaze of a beautiful young woman. But before Leah could even look her fill at this vision, Regan nudged her and Leah turned away. When she looked back, the woman was gone.

“Who was she?” Leah asked later.

“Kimberly Shaw,” Regan answered tightly.

The woman who was supposed to marry Wesley, Leah thought, feeling very smug. She may have wanted him but I got him.

Seeing the woman, Leah resolved to work harder so she’d please Wesley when he returned in the spring.

Leah set her cup down easily, quietly, as if she’d always known how to eat and drink properly, leaned toward Travis, and smiled prettily. “And do you think this new cotton gin will help speed production? You don’t think the cotton market will collapse like the tobacco market did?”

Regan and Nicole leaned back in their chairs and watched their protégé with pleasure. It had taken months of work, but Leah was passing the test. They’d never attempted to instruct Leah in what to talk about, merely how to say the words, so they were surprised when her main interest was farming. But of course she’d never been able to read—and they’d not yet tried to teach her how—so Leah talked of what she knew: farming.

And Travis was eating it up, Regan thought with disgust. Sometimes, when Regan was talking about household problems, she’d see Travis’s eyes glaze over, but with Leah asking about his beloved fields, horses, and blacksmith shop, Travis was practically on the edge of his seat.

“In the morning,” Travis was saying, “you can ride out with me and have a look at the tobacco.”

“No,” Nicole said softly. “Tomorrow Leah goes home with me. I have been away too long and it’s time we dressed her.”