"He's gone, Howard?" Her great-aunt's voice was remarkably calm. Lilah felt a sudden fierce surge of pity for the old woman whose unbending ways had caused her so much discomfort during her visit. Whatever else she might do or be, Amanda Barton was a lady right through to her core. Any other woman would be screaming and wailing over the loss of her husband. Amanda was meeting the crisis unbowed, according to the tenets of her birth and breeding.
"I'm sorry, Amanda. He was dead by the time I reached him. There was nothing I could do." Dr. Patterson got to his feet as he spoke, and patted Amanda clumsily on the arm. Then, as she started to rise, he helped her do so.
Her movements were very slow and deliberate, as if the shock she had suffered had in some degree affected her muscles. The gathering of guests and slaves was silent, as stunned as Lilah was herself. It seemed impossible that Uncle George was dead. Not ten minutes before he had been yelling at Joss. Her eyes lifted to that gentleman. His handsome face was hard and set. As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked in her direction. Though he had in a way been the cause of Uncle George's death, she felt a great deal of sympathy for him, too. Uncle George had been his grandfather, after all, regardless of how the old man had behaved toward him. Joss must be suffering some measure of shock, just as they all were. He might even be grieving.
She made her way toward him, sliding unobtrusively between the crush of people, only to be stopped in her tracks by her great-aunt's suddenly strident voice.
"Are you the man calling himself Jocelyn San Pietro?"
Amanda's eyes were fixed on Joss with what Lilah could only describe as absolute malevolence. She looked from Joss to the gaunt figure of her aunt and back again, her sympathies divided. Amanda must have discovered who Joss was, and the role he had played in Uncle George's death. She was an unforgiving woman. That Joss was in no way responsible for his own birth and only circumstantially responsible for Uncle George's death would not deter her virulent tongue in the least.
"I am Jocelyn San Pietro, yes," Joss replied evenly, meeting Amanda's eyes over the gapes of the assembled onlookers.
"The grandson of the woman calling herself Victoria Barton?"
"Victoria Barton was my grandmother."
"You admit it?"
"I believe proof of my identity and antecedents are in those letters that you hold in your hand. I see no reason to deny them."
"So you see no reason to deny them, do you?" A ghastly smile split Amanda's wrinkled face. Lilah, watching her, thought that her great-aunt looked almost evil. She felt a momentary shiver of fear for the man being impaled by Amanda's faded blue eyes. How ridiculous! After all, what harm could an old, embittered woman possibly do to such a strong, healthy man?
"That makes you my husband's only grandchild-that I know of. You have no brothers or sisters, have you?"
"I have a stepbrother. He is no kin of your husband's." Joss's expression changed, softened slightly as he took in the extreme frailty of the woman confronting him. "Please accept my condolences on the loss of your husband, Mrs. Barton, and my apologies. Had I any notion that my errand would have resulted in such a tragedy, I-"
Amanda cut short his explanation with a wave of her hand. "You don't know, do you?" she cackled, staring at him. "You don't have the least idea. What a tremendous joke!" She fell to chuckling, horrifying the assembled onlookers. Dr. Patterson frowned at her, looking as taken aback as any of them, then patted her arm again sympathetically.
"You must go back to the house, Amanda, and let me give you something to help you sleep. Boot will take care of the bod- of George, and if you need to you can see him again in the morning. Boot, go up to the house and get a blanket, then come back here and get some of the other boys to help you carry Mr. Barton back to the house. Is Mrs. Barton's maid here? Ah, there you are…"
Boot, tears still streaming down his face, got to his feet and went to obey Dr. Patterson's command. Jenny, Amanda's maid, pushed herself forward from the back of the crowd. She was nearly as old and gaunt as Amanda, with her grizzled hair concealed by a snowy kerchief and her bony frame hidden beneath a voluminous black dress, but she had stood the ravages of time less well than her mistress. She was stooped with age, while her mistress's spine was rigid. Amanda looked at her impatiently, then waved her off.
"Not yet, Jenny, not yet. There's something I must see to. And, no, I've not lost my mind, Howard, so you may stop looking at me in such a way. Where's Thomas? He was about not long ago."
"Thomas" was Judge Thomas Harding. He was politically powerful in Mathews County, and whenever there was any high-level legal business that any of his particular cronies needed taken care of, Judge Harding could usually be counted on to oblige.
"Here I am, Amanda," he said, pushing through the crowd. He looked over at Jocelyn San Pietro as he passed, his expression one of unmasked suspicion. "I understand that you may feel yourself in a somewhat awkward position, now that another heir has presented himself so inopportunely, but-"
"You understand nothing, Thomas," Amanda interrupted brusquely. "Answer me this without any roundaboutation: Have you the authority to secure for me a piece of personal property until Sheriff Nichols can be sent for?"
"What kind of property?" Judge Harding looked both bewildered and a little wary. Like Lilah herself and many of the bystanders, he was clearly beginning to ask himself whether Amanda's mind had been unhinged by the shock of her husband's death.
"A runaway slave," Amanda said clearly, and Lilah knew her aunt's mind had truly snapped. What had a runaway slave to do with Uncle George's death, or anything else that had happened that night?
"Come on up to the house, Amanda. You there, take her other arm. Where's that niece?" Dr. Patterson was trying to urge Amanda from the summerhouse, his eyes searching the crowd for Lilah.
"I'm right here, Dr. Patterson." She attempted to make her way to her great-aunt's side, and the crowd parted for her. Amanda gave the doctor an impatient look.
"Confound it, Howard, I am not going to let you dose me like some old horse until this business gets done! I want your answer, Thomas: Do you or do you not have the authority to order a runaway slave held?" She shook off Jenny's arm and tried to shake off Dr. Patterson's as well, but without success. He motioned to Lilah to take
Jenny's place. Lilah tried to slide unobtrusively around her aunt's other side.
"I have the authority, Amanda." Judge Harding's voice was soothing.
"Then I want you to detain Mr. so-called Jocelyn San Pietro here. He's the descendant of one Victoria, a high yeller gal who ran away from Boxhill with her girl-child some forty-five years ago. I owned her, and I owned her daughter, too, and I own this man."
"What?" Joss roared, while Lilah and the rest of the crowd turned as one to gape at him with horrified eyes. "You're insane, old woman! My grandmother was no more a slave than you are!"
Amanda smiled maliciously. "That's where you're wrong, boy. My husband bought your grandmother in New Orleans a couple of years after we were married. He said he bought her to be my maid, but I knew she'd be trouble the minute I set eyes on her. She was real pretty, with skin about the color of honey and red hair, and she had an uppity way about her that I would have cured her of if she hadn't gone off when she did. She could pass for white, and I guess she did, later, because you didn't know, did you, boy, or you wouldn't have come around trying to weasel what you could out of my fool husband. But she was an octoroon, her mother had been a planter's chire-amie, and when the planter died the mother and daughter were both sold. Immorality must have been in the blood, because that yeller gal hadn't been here a year before she was with child by my husband. He sent them away-but he never freed diem. They were slaves 'til they died, both of them-and that means you are, too. You're as much a darky as Jenny here, for all your white-looking skin. You're a slave, and I own you. Thomas, I want him held."