THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF NANCY RANDOLPH BY KATE BRAITHWAITE – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Kate Braithwaite
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 3.7 MB
- Price: Free
Tuckahoe, Virginia. March 1789
Death brought the family home to Tuckahoe.
Carriages swept up the lengthy driveway, and the plantation house
echoed with the knock of hard heels, the thud of trunks and the opening and
closing of doors. New scents filled the hallways. Rosemary and lavender,
musk, cloves and bayberry.
Nancy, allotted a stool at the foot of Mother’s bed, reached out and
gripped her older sister Judy’s hand. They were close in age, sixteen and
fourteen — old enough to watch their mother leave them. Father sat by
Mother’s pillow, head bowed, a bead of sweat sliding from his temple.
Opposite him, her oldest sisters, Molly and Lizzie, watched Mother intently,
their eyes shifting from face to chest. Nancy turned to Judy, but her eyes
were closed, and her lips moved in prayer. Nancy didn’t want to pray. She
wanted to send her stool flying and run from the room.
The heat from the fire, combined with the warm breath and bodies of so
many family members, made her skin itch. She counted five jugs of
narcissi. They were Mother’s favorite, but in the claustrophobic heat, their
yellow jauntiness turned her stomach. William’s silent weeping didn’t help.
She glanced at Father, saw his jaw tighten with disgust at her brother’s
weakness. William was nearly twenty. A man. Never man enough for Father
though. Tom, a year older, didn’t cry but kept clenching and unclenching
his hands. Nancy lifted her chin to gaze at a thin gap in the window drapes.
The bones of her neck shifted and settled. She willed her mind to be as
empty as the blue sky outside. If only she could pray as Judy could.
Of the children still at home, Judy was the sensible one. Where her
sister sought approval and tried to do everything right, Nancy questioned
and tested. Warned not to touch a hot kettle one day, Judy clasped her hands
behind her back and nodded while Nancy sucked on the burn on her
forefinger for a week. Everyone agreed on it. Judy was more obedient.
Better. Less prone to hiding behind the smokehouse reading novels.
Nancy forced herself to look at the woman in the bed. Anne Cary
Randolph had grown thin these last few months. Her collarbones were
hollowed out, the ropey muscles in her neck protruded. Sharp lines creased
her cheeks and dragged at the corners of a mouth unable to smile through
the pain. Her eyes were closed. Mother had green eyes with a dark rim, eyes
that could silence a room, discipline a slave, chastise a child or warn a
husband but also glow with warm approval. Those eyes.
More silence. Puffs of air and supplication escaped Judy’s lips. Lizzie
leaned in. They waited, like drops of rain quivering on a pane of glass.
“She’s gone,” Molly said.
That night, in their bedroom, Nancy and Judy scratched their names
and the date — March 16, 1789 — on the windowpane before curling up in
each other’s arms, tears on their pillow and in each other’s hair.
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