“Did Percy come up with that low serpentine wall?” Catherine asked.
“He said too many straight lines create fatigue.” Rachel laughed. “I never know what that man is going to say or do. He talked me into camellias and I don’t like camellias, but when they first bloomed, the white against the dark waxy green leaves, he was right. Just set off the front gardens.”
“Hmm. Well, the daffodils have broken through the ground. Mother always said, daffodils first, then tulips will follow. Once the tulips have bloomed, spring is truly here. She had such a gift.” Catherine sighed. “You’ve inherited it.”
“I don’t know,” Rachel murmured. “When I asked do you think the worst is over, yes, I did mean winter, but allow me to ask it again. Do you think you are all right?”
“My body has recovered. John holds me at night but we don’t yet mingle. He’s fearful. He’s more fearful than I am. Still, I should perhaps wait a bit.”
“Yes,” Rachel simply replied, then stopped to admire a forsythia, buds swelling, ready to open in a riot of yellow. “You’ve heard about Maureen? You and I haven’t had a minute to catch up.”
“You’ve been at St. Luke’s every day.” Catherine smiled.
“What a beautiful job Charles has done. I can’t wait for you to see it. We’re almost there. The men can begin painting as soon as the temperature stays fifty degrees or above and we’re almost there. But I digress.” She smiled sweetly because Rachel, like her mother, could wander off on tangents. “Maureen is allowing Jeffrey to begin a carriage business. He will build everything. The tools alone will cost plenty. She will build him a shop impervious to all weathers.”
“Where did you hear that?” Catherine’s eyebrows lifted up.
“DoRe.”
“Bettina?”
“Well, yes, but DoRe told her the shop alone will be huge. He swears it will be fifty by fifty yards. There will be room for ironwork, copperwork, even gilding. Gilding!”
Catherine put her hand on her hip. “Help us dear Lord. She will build herself a carriage of gold.”
“I believe you’re right.” Rachel burst out laughing.
“He is good. Once people see how well crafted his work is—look at the carriage he imitated from ours—I think people will come to him. Especially people from Philadelphia and Charleston. God forbid they don’t own the latest or the best.” She paused, grinned widely. “Including matched pairs as well as four-in-hand horses. Hard to find. Hard to train, and we’ve got Barker O. No one can make a carriage horse like that man.”
“DoRe?”
Catherine considered this. “Close. A terrific whip.” She used the correct term for a coachman who drives. “Uncanny. I wish I had both men. What we are losing to France we would recoup here. Nothing we can do about DoRe until he asks Bettina to marry him.”
“He will, won’t he?” Rachel frowned for a moment.
“He will, but he’s a cautious man who works for a difficult but clever woman.” Catherine stopped to examine a green daffodil shoot. “Isn’t it a miracle how plants know when to grow, when to open their blooms? It really is a cycle of life and then death.”
“Yes.” Rachel changed the subject. “What have you heard from Yancy? Of course, he will want the last race to be Black Knight against Reynaldo. I certainly wouldn’t leave Reynaldo alone in any stall down by The Levels. Nor would I allow anyone else to touch him.”
Catherine smiled. “Jeddie and I have thought of that. No one will get near my boy. But Yancy did put in writing—the letter came yesterday—that whoever wins their race takes the entire purse. He also said the entry fee will be one hundred dollars.”
“What! That’s an enormous sum.”
“It is. I expect he thinks this will weed out the bit players and really pump up the purses. John, Jeddie, and I will travel down to The Levels next week. I’m not agreeing to anything until I see the place.”
“You don’t trust him, do you?”
“Not one hundred percent,” she confessed. “But I do know he has more to lose than I do if I don’t race or if my horse is mysteriously injured. He needs Reynaldo.”
“I suppose…” Rachel’s voice trailed off.
“Aren’t the mountains ravishing.” Catherine shielded her eyes, for the sun had just touched the rim of the Blue Ridge.
“I never tire of gazing at them.” They turned to go back to their respective homes.
“Has Charles heard more from his brother?”
“All dismal.” Rachel grimaced.
“I have an idea. You will need to broach it with him.”
Rachel, knowing her sister well, held up her hands, palms upward. “Catherine?”
“Just listen. If Hugh becomes bankrupt he will be ruined in more ways than one. No heiress will marry him now. Think what will happen if he loses everything? By the way, is he good-looking?”
“I asked Charles that. He said it’s hard to judge one’s own brother, plus women look at men differently than men do. So I asked, ‘Do you all resemble each other?’ To that he answered ‘Yes.’ He can’t be all that bad-looking.”
“No. You must convince your husband to convince Hugh to adopt Jeffrey Holloway.”
“Catherine, you can’t be serious.”
“Hear me out. Maureen, after I talk to her, which means after Hugh agrees, will bail him out plus give him a monthly allowance. Jeffrey will visit once a year but stay here. However, he will be the son of a baron.”
“How do you know or even think that Jeffrey will outlive Hugh? They aren’t that far apart in age.”
“Doesn’t matter. He is the heir.”
“I don’t think Jeffrey wants any of this.” Rachel’s lower lip protruded slightly.
“He doesn’t. He is a sensible man in many ways, but she wants it. She can’t stand the fact that people think she married a nobody. A handsome nobody, but still. He could at least come from a Tidewater family.”
Rachel weighed this. “Well…yes, but it is absurd.”