The Ninth Daughter by Barbara Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

day. As Abigail approached it a carriage was brought to its door, and the two surviving Malvern children emerged, followed by a black manservant and Miss Malvern’s plump, giggling maid. They lie about me to their father , Rebecca had whispered desperately. They carry tales—terrible things!—and he believes them . . .
    And what parent would take the word of a new young wife, before that of his own daughter and son?
    Jeffrey must be twenty now. From the opposite side of King Street Abigail watched them. Rebecca had written to her that the young man had begun at Harvard. Taller than his father, he favored the first Mrs. Malvern’s pale beauty, especially when he threw back his head and laughed at one of the maid’s flirtatious sallies. Mistress Tamar Malvern tapped her brother sharply on the sleeve with her fan, but laughed as well. From a sharp-faced little vixen of eleven when her father had married Rebecca, she had grown into a lovely peaches-and-cream brunette, with the air of a girl who is quite aware that men swoon at her feet. Neither gave the manservant so much as a glance as he opened the carriage door for them. The servant stepped back sharply to avoid being splashed as the carriage pulled away.
    “Mrs. Adams.” He saw her across the street and smiled, teeth very white in a fine-boned ebony face. His name, Abigail recalled, was Scipio; he’d greet her with his sunny smile at the Brattle Street Meeting, if he was sure his master wasn’t looking. Sure enough, he glanced back at the house as if to make sure he was unobserved before crossing to her. “Are you well, m’am? And Mrs. Malvern: Is all well with her?”
    “No,” said Abigail softly. “I am sorry to say a shocking thing has happened, and I was coming now, to let your master know of it. As far as I know she’s all right,” she added, seeing how the man’s eyes widened with alarm. “It wouldn’t be right to tell you details before I’ve spoken to him—”
    “No, of course not.” He collected himself quickly, hastened ahead of her, to open the house door. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
    No fire burned in the grate of the book-room where he left her, though there were Turkey carpets on the brick floor. Charles Malvern was not a man to heat rooms when they were not in use. A portrait of the Fair Althea hung on the wall, very like Jeffrey but with kindliness rather than wit in her smile. Beside it hung a painting of Tamar, done recently, where once Rebecca’s pen-sketch of little Nathan had been displayed: the child whose birth had cost his mother her life. Abigail remembered that Nathan had been fascinated with it, had sat, too, looking up at the likeness of the mother he had never seen. The sketch was gone. Abigail wondered whether Malvern had disposed of it when Rebecca had left, or after the boy had died.
    “Mrs. Adams?” Scipio reappeared in the doorway, to usher her across the hall.
    “Good day to you, m’am.” Charles Malvern rose from his desk when the butler admitted her, came around himself to bring up a chair. His wide-skirted dark coat and plain Ramilles wig were not one shilling more costly than they had to be, to let others know of his consequence in the world of trade and business. Their former encounter and her championship of his estranged wife flickered like malign fire in his eyes, but he asked politely, “Will you take tea? ’Tis a raw morning.”
    “Thank you, no.” Any number of Abigail’s friends observed the boycott but made it a point to call on their less political friends for a cup of Hyson or Bohea in the course of a cold afternoon. That, in Abigail’s opinion, was cheating.
    He didn’t offer the acceptable Whig alternative of coffee, but signed Scipio from the room. “To what do I owe this honor, m’am?”
    “A shocking thing has happened.” He was walking back around his desk as she spoke, and Abigail couldn’t keep herself from waiting until she had a good view of his face, to see how he