A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [611]
Brianna nodded; she’d heard something of Duncan’s trouble from her mother.
“Well,” Phaedre said with a sigh. “He wrong about that.” She glanced at Brianna, to see how she might take this admission. “He wasn’t meaning no harm, and nor was I. It just—happened.” She shrugged. “But Ulysses, he find it out; he find out every single thing goes on at River Run, sooner or later. Maybe one of the girls told him, maybe some other way, but he knew. And he told me that ain’t right, I put a stop to it this minute.”
“But you didn’t?” Brianna guessed.
Phaedre shook her head slowly, lips pushed out.
“Told him I’d stop when Mr. Duncan didn’t want to no more—not his business. See, I thought Mr. Duncan, he the master. Ain’t true, though; Ulysses be the master at River Run.”
“So he—he took you away—sold you?—to stop you sleeping with Duncan?” Why would he care? she wondered. Was he afraid Jocasta would discover the affair and be hurt?
“No, he sell me because I told him if he don’t leave me and Mr. Duncan be, then I tell about him and Miss Jo.”
“Him and . . .” Brianna blinked, not believing what she was hearing. Phaedre looked at her, and gave a small, ironic smile.
“He share Miss Jo’s bed these twenty years and more. Since before Old Master die, my mama said. Every slave there knows it; ain’t one stupid enough to say so to his face, ’cept me.”
Brianna knew she was gaping like a goldfish, but couldn’t help it. A hundred tiny things she’d seen at River Run, myriad small intimacies between her aunt and the butler, suddenly took on new significance. No wonder her aunt had gone to such lengths to get him back after the death of Lieutenant Wolff. And no wonder, either, that Ulysses had taken instant action. Phaedre might have been believed, or not; the mere accusation would have destroyed him.
Phaedre sighed, and rubbed a hand over her face.
“He ain’t waste no time. That very night, he and Mr. Jones come take me from my bed, wrap me up tight in a blanket, and carry me away in a wagon. Mr. Jones, he say he ain’t no slaver, but he do it as a favor for Mr. Ulysses. So he don’t keep me; he take me way downriver, though, sell me in Wilmington to a man what owns an ordinary. That’s not too bad, but then a couple months later, Mr. Jones comes and takes me back—Wilmington’s not far enough away to suit Ulysses. So he give me to Mr. Butler, and Mr. Butler, he take me to Edenton.”
She looked down, pleating the quilt between long, graceful fingers. Her lips were tight, and her face slightly flushed. Brianna forbore to ask what she had done for Butler in Edenton, thinking that she had likely been employed in a brothel.
“And . . . er . . . Stephen Bonnet found you there?” she hazarded.
Phaedre nodded, not looking up.
“Won me in a card game,” she said succinctly. She stood up. “I got to go; I had me enough of crossing black men—ain’t risking no more beatings from that Emmanuel.”
Brianna was beginning to emerge from the shock of hearing about Ulysses and her aunt. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she jumped out of bed, hurrying to catch Phaedre before she reached the door.
“Wait, wait! Just one more thing—do you—do the slaves at River Run—know anything about the gold?”
“What, in Old Master’s tomb? Surely.” Phaedre’s face expressed a cynical surprise that there could be any doubt about it. “Ain’t nobody touch it, though. Everybody know there a curse on it.”
“Do you know anything about its disappearing?”
Phaedre’s face went blank.
“Disappearing?”
“Oh, wait—no, you wouldn’t know; you . . . left, long before it disappeared. I just wondered, you know, whether maybe Ulysses had something to do with that.”
Phaedre shook her head.
“I don’t know nothing about that. But I ain’t put one thing past Ulysses, curse or no.” There was a sound of heavy footsteps on the stair, and she paled. Without a word or gesture of farewell, she slipped out the door and closed it; Brianna heard the frantic fumbling of the key