Trouble the Water_A Novel Read online

  She resented the word guardian, almost eighteen, as she was. She promised her parents she would endure this arrangement, though really, she was old enough to be on her own already, more weary and tattered than someone older, too. Presently, she simply wanted to determine where she would be spending her first night, and if she had to interrupt the gathering before her to do that, so be it. As she mustered her courage to call out, everything shifted abruptly before her eyes. There were suddenly only two people remaining in the cellar, as though the others had been consumed by the far wall. Left before her remained a large black man, wide as a bull, and a white man in business clothes, each with his back to her as they continued speaking in murmurs.

  “Hello?” Abby finally called from where she stood on the bottom step.

  Both men turned swiftly, clearly surprised they were not alone. The white man spoke first.

  “My apologies, young lady. Business is generally conducted on the main floor. If you’ll just return upstairs, we’ll be up momentarily.” He spoke professionally, in a crisp British accent, as he hastened toward her.

  The fine cut of the man’s clothes told her that she had found Douglas Elling. She was disheartened to note his flagrantly neglected personal hygiene, obvious even in the dim light of the cellar. He had a ragged mane of dark overgrown hair spilling to his collar and a shocking abundance of facial hair. Just the sort of beard that would capture wayward tidbits of a meal, where they might remain lost for days. How appropriately fetid.

  “I’m Abby. Abby Milton?” She hated herself for sounding timid. “I imagine you are Douglas Elling.”

  The man stopped as he neared her, where she still stood on the lowest riser, and looked at her blankly. Then as he squinted his eyes against the dull light, Abby saw understanding dawn. “Abigail?” He sounded startled.

  She nodded.

  “But, you’re here now? They said you were arriving on . . .,” he trailed off, looking exasperated. “Oh, damn. It was today, then? Demett,” he looked toward his companion, “you were to collect her from the pier. I reminded Larissa last week but forgot utterly to tell you. Well, Abigail, come up, and we will get you settled.” He studied her a moment longer. “You do look like your mother then, don’t you?” He asked, his voice softening.

  She didn’t answer.

  They climbed up to the main office, and Douglas motioned for Abby to sit on a corpulent armchair. She could see now that he was younger than he had appeared in the dark basement, and that his suit, which had looked fine from afar, was rather worn, and ill fitting, too, hanging loosely as though Douglas had once been a larger man. Even so, he had a broad, commanding frame that Abby imagined would be useful in whatever illegal enterprise he was engaged. He looked at her blindly for a moment, as though he had forgotten who she was. She raised her eyebrows in challenge.

  “I’m sorry,” he began, moving to the larger desk in the room, shuffling papers about. “It’s been a busy afternoon with too many loose ends. Regardless, welcome to Charleston, then.” He was speaking quickly now. “I’m sorry we left you abandoned like that. Clever of you to find the office. Demett will carry you to the house so you can settle in. Just let him know where you’ve left your baggage.”

  “I haven’t got any baggage. It’s just my sack.” She pointed to the canvas bag beside her.

  “Oh. Right then.” His speech was still hurried, and Abby was unsure whether he was embarrassed by how little she had brought or if he simply wanted to be rid of her. “Well then, hop to. Off you both go.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her, his disinterest. He had agreed to host her only as a favor to her father, and now here she was expecting a lady’s welcome. Clearly it would be paramount for everyone if she stayed out of his way, remained invisible. Despite her parents’ promises of benevolence, she saw little advantage that could come from sharing a home with a grumbling widower. Her parents had also promised that advantages would flow from her uncle’s benevolence back in Wigan. They had exalted the man over and again, insisting he was so charitable, providing so much for Abby, for her whole family. Well just look how that had turned out.

  She thanked Douglas for his hospitality, but he was busy stuffing papers into a large brown envelope, his focus already elsewhere. She looked to Demett, who was reaching for her withered sack.

  “I’ve got it.” She snatched the bag from under him. She might be a charity case, but it wasn’t as though she was useless. She had usefulness in bloody spades.

  Abby followed Demett in silence, walking through a back door of the office to a quiet alleyway where two horses were tethered in front of the waiting coach. Demett reached to help Abby into the carriage, and before she could stop herself, she recoiled from his calloused hand.

  “Forgive me for intruding, Miss Abigail,” Demett lowered his outstretched arm, “but ain’t you never seen colored folk be-fore?”

  “Of course, I have,” Abby snapped. There were free blacks in Liverpool, but very few in Wigan, where her family had been living since her da’s shop flooded. None had worked at the weaving mill, where she’d been spending fourteen hours a day since she was ten years old. It was hardly Demett’s color that frightened her anyway. He was actually rather pleasing to look at with his glossy skin and straight white teeth, his hair only beginning to gray at the temples, but all men had the same nasty appetites, and it wasn’t possible to know which ones had cruel thoughts in their heads.

  “I just don’t need anyone carrying my bag for me or helping me climb a step,” Abby quipped. “I can handle it just fine on my own. It’s how I’ve always done.” She climbed into the coach and fixed her eyes toward the opening of the alley, where she caught a glimpse of another horse-drawn carriage passing by, three ladies rooted inside with pastel parasols obscuring their faces.

  “Oh, I see, Miss,” Demett answered. “You just want us all to know you ain’t nobody’s burden.”

  Abby kept quiet, digesting Demett’s perspicacity.

  “Well don’t you fret,” Demett continued cheerfully as he climbed up to the raised bench in front of her. “If helping you around the Elling estate means staying out of your way, I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you,” Abby answered quietly to the back of his wooly head, now contrite. She turned her gaze toward the scenery as they emerged from the alley.

  As they drove into an area with fewer shops and more homes, Abby regarded the rows of residences situated neatly together and so close to the street. There were tall houses of red, lavender, alabaster, and pink, different colored shutters on them all. Some had porches wrapping around every floor, while others were protected by dark wrought-iron gates. Women came and went from the homes, perhaps to market, in the most impractical dresses. Hoop skirts double the size of what she remembered from Liverpool.

  The carriage finally turned onto another, narrower, street, and Demett guided the horses into a tree-lined gravel drive. “Here we are, Miss.”

  Abby’s breath hitched as she perceived the Elling estate. The red brick home sat at the end of the circular drive, picturesque with arched windows and thick black shutters. It was just how she had pictured homes in the American South, only much, much larger. The house was framed by manicured magnolia trees and bordered on its side by what Abby assumed were the stables. There had been many impressive homes along the short ride from the harbor, but this one dwarfed them all.

  Her family’s Wigan flat would have fit, in its entirety, on the front porch of this house. It was difficult to grasp that she had forsaken her pallet in the front room, the one she shared with her sister, Gwendolyn, and often Charlie too, for a home such as this. Abby thought about what might be expected of her in exchange for her new housing and fought against the acid rising in her throat. She noticed that the far side of the home had a different look, with brighter bricks, as though it had been constructed only recently, added to the existing structure. What absurdity, she thought, that people with so much space, such amplitude, could feel obliged to add mor
e.

  Demett pulled to a halt near the front entrance and jumped off the carriage, reaching out his arm to assist Abby. She hesitated but then smiled politely and placed her hand on his bulky forearm for balance, noticing the dirt beneath her own fingernails.

  “You let me know if you need anything, Miss Abigail,” Demett told her. “You go on over to the front door and use the big knocker. Otherwise Larissa will never hear you. Normally it’d be Jasper, the butler, who opens the door, but he had to go off on something today.” Abby studied the hefty wooden door but did not move towards it.

  “You’ll like Larissa,” Demett encouraged her. “She’s been waiting on your arrival ever since your father’s letter. You’re giving her something fine to do with herself again.” He nodded at her in farewell.

  The brass knocker, with its engraved E, looked to cost more than her mum earned in a whole year of laundering. Abby felt it was a shame to use something so fine for banging on. She snorted in protest and then knocked three times. She waited but a moment before the door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman of fading beauty and a man who appeared to be the butler, despite Demett’s assertions to the contrary.

  “Abigail!” The woman seemed inordinately overjoyed. “You’ve finally arrived. You must be exhausted from your journey. I am Larissa, your governess, and this is Jasper, our butler.” The older gentleman nodded at Abby, confirming his identity.

  As she showed Abby into the house, Larissa continued talking with refined enthusiasm. “You can’t know how thrilled we are to have you here. The house has been horribly quiet for the last few years, ever since the fire. It was coming time for me to take my leave already, until we found out about you, that is.” Larissa paused, studying Abby for a moment before adding, “Mr. Elling had given us the impression that a little girl was coming from England, but you clearly are a mature young lady, not a child at all. Rather pretty, too, I suspect,” Larissa squinted, “once you get past the rags and dirt you’re wearing. Come, let me show you to your room.”

  Stepping into the front hall, Abby was overcome by the opulence of the home. Never had she seen the likes of it. Not even when they lived in Liverpool, when they spent time with upper-class folk, when they might have been considered upper-class folk themselves. There was gold, mahogany, incandescence, everywhere. In the center of the home, leading up to floors above, was the most magnificent spiral staircase. The marbled stairs appeared to keep winding upward, floating straight into the sky.

  Larissa watched Abby’s eyes growing wide and told her they would have a grand tour in the morning. Except, the woman added, they would not venture into the east wing, as Mr. Elling had closed off that part of the home after the fire, though he first completely refurbished it. Abby realized that the repaired wing must have been the newer construction she noticed outside a few moments earlier. She knew little about the deaths of Sarah and Cherish Elling, only that they perished by fire.

  Abby’s parents had insisted that she was helping Mr. Elling as much as he was assisting her. He could use youthful energy in his home they said, just as she needed a roof to sleep under and suppers that included more than broth. After her last tantrum, they declared it was the only suitable solution. She could not stay in Lancashire continuing to claw at her own skin. Never mind what percentage of the family coffers she filled, with so many mouths to feed and endless debt, it wasn’t enough.

  If only she could have told her parents about Uncle Matthew, but he had threatened and threatened. She had long since determined that feeding her siblings was worth more than her innocence. But then she was unable to control her actions at home after each of the afternoons she spent with him. The rage she felt in the aftermath of Matthew’s attentions would come at her in violent bursts, and she had no place to stow it. Instead, her anger would seep out, soiling everything.

  It was no wonder her parents wanted to be rid of her. Mr. Elling didn’t seem to want her much either. Well, so be it. She would learn from her governess until her eighteenth birthday. Then she would find a new path, perhaps become a governess herself. She would go far away and evaporate, where she would never again be a victim, nor have to think about her squalor, and the filthy memories that she would never escape.

  But this house, she reflected with cautious enthusiasm, this house was an exploit in itself. Abby thought to write to Gwendolyn and tell her of all the elegant details and adornments that would have captivated her sister, except that such a list would also render the girl mad with envy. Abby worried for the girl, left behind so near Matthew’s clutches, and she wished anew that her parents had sent Gwen instead. Yet it was Abby who was here, with the banister beneath her hand, as smooth as blown glass, supporting her burdens as she followed Larissa up the stairs.

  3

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  1845

  This is my room, you’re certain?” Abby asked.

  “Are you unhappy with it?” Larissa’s brow furrowed as her hand moved to the tight bun on her head, almost as if she was checking whether the wound ball of faded tresses was still attached. Abby thought the governess looked like she was trying to hide her prettiness beneath that long tent of a skirt and shapeless blouse. Much the way her ma did in Wigan, always covering her lustrous hair beneath a kerchief before she left the flat. Her ma disliked anything that glistened, whether it was her own hair or a neighbor’s shoe buckle. It rendered her sorry to recollect what she’d been.

  “Um . . . uh, no.” Abby stammered, looking from Larissa to the bedroom and then back to the governess. “It’s just . . . well, not what I expected. Mr. Elling has already been quite kind, even paying for my passage. I’m not sure this is where he means for me to be resting my bag.” Abby noticed the bursting pillows on the four-poster bed and wondered how it must feel to settle one’s head down upon them. Her own head was itchy. Hot and jumbled.

  “Oh,” Larissa smiled, the lines outside her pale eyes crinkling like a silk fan. “Of course these are your quarters. Mr. Elling made clear you were to be treated as a member of the family.”

  “Even so,” Abby protested, “I am not a member of the family, just the daughter of a once-dear friend. I needn’t be given a room of the first order.” This lavish treatment did not sit well with her. Douglas Elling had barely made eye contact with her before abruptly dismissing her from his office. Surely her care was not a priority to him, and she did not belong in this room.

  Larissa’s smile faltered as she seemed to understand that Abby was uncomfortable with the room, truly. Abby began chewing on her thumbnail while she waited for Larissa’s response. Her skin was still salty from the sea, making her mouth fill with water. She suddenly heard her ma’s voice in her head. Not her ma from Lancashire. Her ma from seven years earlier. “Abigail. Young ladies do not gnaw on their own flesh.” Abby snapped her wet hand to her side, fighting the urge to wipe the dampness on her skirt.

  “Abby, dear, all the guest rooms at this estate are equally lovely, and equally empty. Nothing you do or take will possibly be a financial burden on Mr. Elling. Take a rest, and I’ll return before supper. Go on.” Larissa shooed her, urging her to move beyond the threshold.

  Abby felt temptation pulling at her. She chanced farther into the palatial room, reconsidering the space as something that might actually be available to her. If all the rooms were just as this one, there wasn’t really a choice to be made. It would probably only create more burden, more trouble, if she refused these quarters.

  Larissa prattled on about sending tea and cakes up to the room in advance of supper. Abby barely heard the woman as she absorbed the opulence of the bedroom. She was anxious to remove her stockings so she could feel her toes sink into the thick carpet, its pink and gold fibers bursting forth from the floor like fairies. She noticed that the carpet matched the gold inlay on the cascading drapes. There was also a crystal chandelier demanding attention at the center of the coffered ceiling, shooting rainbows of refracted light onto the large mahogany bureaus on either s
ide of the room’s fireplace.

  Abby looked again at the plush bed piled high with decadent quilts of deep pinks and creams, and stepped closer to it. She thought of strawberries and cream, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t dreamt of strawberries in years, and now she could almost feel the honeyed seeds wedged between her teeth. Suddenly she tasted all the weariness of her weeks of travels. The effort she had undertaken to maintain her bravery, her pretense of capability, during her journey was abruptly too much. Suddenly nothing seemed as imperative as simply lying down.

  Thankful for the upholstered footstool, she climbed to the bed and sat, sinking into the endless cushion, so far from the floor that her legs dangled like a marionette’s. Her crusty boots looked more degenerate now that she viewed them floating above the glistening rug, like buzzards let inside the house. There wasn’t much she could do about it though, unless the governess might rather look upon her split stockings beneath.

  “Very well then,” Larissa finished with a note of resignation, as though she had been awaiting some response. Abby tried to think what the governess might be waiting to hear, but before she managed to formulate a reply, Larissa was quietly closing the door behind herself. Abby shrugged, unsurprised that she was disappointing people in her new life already. She began unlacing her boots, relieved by the familiar task. After each boot dropped to the floor with a satisfying thunk, she thought how her ma wasn’t here to make sure each shoe was put neatly by the door, laces facing the wall.

  She lay back, feeling sleep grab her eyelids. Back in Wigan, her brother Charlie was probably curled up beside Gwendolyn on the pallet next to the embers of the stove. Abby would have been lying on Charlie’s other side, if she weren’t here, one of her legs kicking across at Gwendolyn, pushing her to make room, while the other leg lay on the dirt floor. Abby jumped down from the bed deciding to straighten her boots. Confronted again by their muddy soles, she reconsidered and hid them altogether, stashing them underneath the bed, where they would stop shouting out about how she didn’t belong here.