Ciji Ware (62 page)

“I ought to call you out for that, Hopkins. I am her husband. Her distaste for the normal activities of married life is unnatural, and one more proof that she’s unhinged, just like her mother.”

Simon gazed narrowly at his uninvited visitor. “Why have you bothered to call at Hopkins House, when you know my wife and I completely oppose your idea of whisking poor Daphne to a mental institution when she’s made a remarkable recovery in your absence and has family and friends willing to look after her?”

“Willing to feed off her inheritance, rather,” Aaron retorted, “just as your father did all those years.”

Simon rose abruptly from the chair behind his desk in his father’s old study and pointed to the door. “I must ask you to leave, sir, for no one provided more care and counsel to the beleaguered Whitakers after the death of Charles, nor gave more selflessly to that poor benighted family, than did my father.”

“Oh, come now,” Aaron scoffed. “Your father made a tidy enough profit merging the two cotton enterprises, just as you and Keating are doing to this day. Do you think I haven’t had a look at the ledgers since I’ve been back? When Daphne is committed and living in the hospital where she belongs, I shall take full charge of her share, and there’ll be some changes made in the business’s accounting methods. You can rely on it!”

“Ah… so
that’s
what all this is about,” Simon said angrily. “You’ve squandered your supply of cash on your travels abroad, have you? Now you propose to commit your wife to a lunatic asylum and gain management and control of her share of Devon Oaks, is that it? Well, there is no need to punish Daphne in such cruel fashion. Keating and I are prepared to form a triumvirate to govern these two plantations, if you insist… but I warn you, you will be outvoted if you propose actions that are not in our mutual interests, including Daphne’s.”

“You are to play no role in these affairs. Keating may be the sole legal heir to Devon Oaks, but as Daphne’s husband, and as one who looked after the property in his long absence in Edinburgh, I plan to sue in her interest to separate the affairs of Devon Oaks from the Hopkins plantation to keep you two from conspiring against the profits of a poor, witless—”

“And what judge in these parts would be persuaded by the transparent efforts of an interloper like you to rob your wife and her family of their birthright?”

“The courts and the wheels of justice are supposed to be impartial,” Aaron replied calmly. “And merely answering my legal demands for proof regarding the way you’ve conducted the business of the two plantations during my absence abroad will keep you too busy and too penniless even to plant cotton seed!” He laughed mirthlessly. “I also happen to know that both of you currently owe the Natchez bankers some rather large sums since the Depression of 1819. What a problem you will have if I allege mismanagement of the land the banks hold as collateral. Your friendly bankers will panic and call your loans like
that
!” he said, snapping his fingers.

“I understand this game of greed you’re playing, Aaron,” Simon growled, “but tell me this. Why do you want to imprison your wife in the bargain, when clearly, she has recovered her spirits and begun to thrive? God knows, I could charge you with genuine neglect when it comes to the way you abandoned your wife and Devon Oaks these last years, but our two plantations are bound to recover from this temporary financial setback more quickly if we keep our assets combined.”

But Simon already knew the answer. Aaron had to neutralize his wife to get what he so desired—forcing Simon and Keating to grant him a half stake, with or without a male Clayton heir. In Mississippi, the only way a Massachusetts-born husband could strip his wife of her rights in a family-owned enterprise was to have her declared insane. If Aaron’s demands weren’t met, a protracted legal battle would bankrupt them all. But if he later had his wife pronounced a lunatic at a hospital in Pennsylvania, he would effectively be their partner forever, even if he had no son to inherit down the line.

“What does Keating say to all this?” Simon demanded.

“He’s up to his cravat in debts to his bank, just as you are,” Aaron replied evenly. “He said I should take up the matter with you.” Daphne’s husband pursed his lips in a sour smile. “I think he is quite shaken by her taking such an abrupt turn for the worse.”

Simon slammed down his fist on his desk. “Did you tell Keating how you violated your wife the instant you reclaimed her bed?” he demanded. “Did you tell him how much his sister fears you… and probably loathes you… and how this accounts for her taking ‘a turn for the worse’ as you so delicately phrase your effort to drive her mad?”

“No, I did not discuss my private life with Keating,” Aaron said, his tone steely, “and such subjects are none of your damned business, either! Instead I warned Keating—as I warn you now—a protracted legal battle could deal the fatal blow to both your houses.”

Simon glared at Aaron with loathing and contempt. Everyone in Natchez had suffered from the boom-and-bust economy since the War of 1812, but only the vilest sort of profiteer used it as a means to vault himself into affairs where he didn’t belong.

“You are absolute scum, Clayton,” Simon declared quietly.

“So, what’s it to be, Hopkins?” Aaron demanded, brushing aside the insult. “Endless legal wrangles, or will you cut me in as a full partner with the two of you at
both
Devon Oaks and Hopkins House? You have my word that I’ll be a good lad and use my legal prowess—not to sue to separate the two plantations—but to help us three make more money than you ever dreamed of from the current bumper cotton crop.”

“Your word is the pledge of the devil.”

“I will never expect you to like me,” Aaron replied coldly, “but I do expect that you will come to respect my legal and business acumen.”

A Harvard-educated man, formally trained in the law and in commerce, Aaron Clayton held all the cards and both men in the room knew it. And Simon also knew he would probably never again see Daphne Whitaker Clayton in Natchez, or—if by some miracle Aaron ever allowed her to return—he doubted she would ever again be in her right mind. The poor woman’s grasp on sanity, which was held by a thread, was about to be severed forever.

How
can
I
stand
by
and
allow
this
to
happen?
he thought morosely. He had inherited his father’s stewardship of the Whitakers, but who could have predicted Aaron’s role in this mess?

Just then, there was a knock on the door, and his young son, Trey, ran into the study.

“Daddy, Daddy,” Simon Hopkins III chirped excitedly. “Mama says for you and Mr. Clayton to come quickly. Mr. Audubon has arrived with a beautiful great-footed hawk he shot today on the Trace!
Falco
peregrinus
,” he said proudly, reciting the Latin name Audubon had taught him. “He intends to paint a picture of it for his bird book. Mama let him put it on the table on the veranda. Come and see, please, sir!”

“In a minute, son.” Simon allowed Trey to climb onto his lap. Absently, he tousled the boy’s auburn hair. Aaron shifted in his chair, discomforted by the show of affection between father and child. Simon put a protective arm around his eldest son and heir. He tightened his grip and thought with fierce determination that he simply could not allow Aaron Clayton to rob this boy of his birthright. Surely his late father would agree that a Hopkins’s first duty was to his own?

Simon slowly allowed his gaze to meet Aaron’s keen, assessing one. It was up to Keating to insure that his sister was not condemned to an institution. Perhaps, Simon thought, poor Daphne was actually safer from harm far away in Philadelphia, now that Aaron had returned from abroad. Living with such a man would drive even a strong woman insane. Simon could see that the unintended consequences of his father’s kindly act toward the bereft Whitaker clan had trapped his son into an unwilling partnership with Aaron Clayton whether he liked it or not.

Well, he thought, gazing at Trey’s rumpled locks, it would take slow, measured steps over time to disentangle himself from the Devon Oaks operation. With renewed determination, the owner of Hopkins House gently set his young son on his feet and addressed his hated visitor.

“You, Keating, and I will have to try to make the best of our unhappy business arrangement,” he proposed, “but I will ask you not ever to set foot on this property unless invited to do so for purposes of conducting our affairs.”

“What an honorable man you are,” Aaron mocked.

“I’m a man who looks after his own,” Simon replied, “which is a far-sight more than I can say for you.”

***

Dr. Keating Whitaker waited in the vestibule outside the office of the chief of Philadelphia Hospital. On his previous visit, when his older sister had first been admitted, Whitaker had been surprised and even impressed by the premises, built in elegant Federalist style, with flanking wide corridors and large rooms where the wealthier patients resided. After Aaron left that terrible day, Dr. Whitaker had seen to it that Daphne was given an airy chamber where shafts of sunlight poured through broad casement windows overhead. Well-mannered attendants took patients outside to exercise along a kind of dry moat that surrounded the building, and he had thought, then, that the institution was far in advance of others observed during his medical studies abroad.

However, upon his arrival today, he had been alarmed to read a history of the doctors’ orders concerning his sister’s course of treatment. As a physician, Dr. Whitaker had been allowed that privilege. Perusing Daphne’s chart, he’d been disturbed by the raft of purges and bleedings and doses of laudanum Daphne had endured since her incarceration. Miraculously, such treatments had not aborted the child she had unknowingly been carrying when Aaron Clayton committed his wife here against her family’s wishes. When the hospital informed her husband by post that Daphne was six months pregnant, Aaron immediately cleared out his bank account in Natchez and decamped for Europe once again.

“I’m done with watching the woman produce dead babies,” he’d shouted at his brother-in-law while he tossed clothes into a leather traveling trunk. “Here’s the address in London to which you are to send a bank draft of my share of the yearly profits.”

Keating stared out the hospital’s barred windows and tried to calm his pounding temples. What a callous bastard his despised brother-in-law was!

“She was probably diddled by an attendant at that place,” Aaron had pronounced upon hearing the news his wife was with child. “I should sue. At any rate, even if the thing is mine, I won’t play sire to a child—male or female—tainted by Whitaker blood!”

“Do the arithmetic, Aaron,” Keating had said harshly. “According to the doctors, she conceived the babe prior to being brought there for treatment.”

“That’s their defense,” Aaron had scoffed.

Keating Whitaker had long ago recognized that Daphne’s condition had only been partially responsible for her husband’s abrupt departure abroad. The truth was, Aaron had soon tired of the backbreaking work of cotton production. Keating knew that Daphne’s latest pregnancy had merely tipped the scales, prompting Aaron to escape his domestic troubles with a fat purse and no more hard labor. Before the lawyer left Natchez, he conferred on Keating a written legal authority—and also personal responsibility—for his wife’s mental condition. Keating’s duties included custody of young Maddy, the couple’s only surviving offspring.

Suddenly, the door to the vestibule opened, and a white-coated physician appeared.

“Your sister’s resting comfortably,” the doctor announced.

“And the child?”

“Surprisingly fit. It’s a boy,” the doctor said with pride. “I delivered him myself.”

Keating’s brow furrowed. Would the arrival of a male child summon Aaron back from Europe to involve himself again in the day-to-day running of the two plantations, despite the legal documents he’d signed? There was no end to the man’s machinations.

“I will spare you the trouble of informing Mr. Clayton,” Keating said, “and write to him myself next post.” He smiled, knowing he would do no such thing. “May I see my sister now?” he asked.

“Certainly,” the doctor said. “You may see them both. Follow me.”

The footsteps of the two men echoed hollowly as they strode down the ward’s long, empty corridor. Strange, bleating sounds emanated from behind one door on Keating’s left, while quiet sobbing could be heard behind another. At the end of the hall, they paused in front of a room where they listened to the lusty cries of a newborn child.

“Come meet Master Drake Whitaker Clayton,” the doctor said jovially.

“She was… fit enough to think of a name?” Keating asked, amazed.

“She had a remarkably easy birth. Her spirits lifted immediately when I told her you were coming to take her back to Natchez. It was at that point she announced to matron and me that she’d chosen a name for the baby.”

“Our grandmother was a Drake,” Keating murmured. Then he frowned. “Does she also know that her husband… that Mr. Clayton has decided to make his home in Europe permanently?” he inquired carefully.