O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [42]
Daisy and Laveda were both twenty years of age, arriving at Inverness with forty steamer trunks belonging to Daisy and one belonging to Laveda. The new Mrs. Kerr became heavily dependent on her slave. All of the building taking place and the staff and management of a fifty-three-room mansion were beyond Daisy’s capabilities.
That was fine with Horace. Daisy was lovely to behold and a social wizard, well tutored in the arts, and with a great eye for quality. There was also her mighty family. She’d grow into her other responsibilities, budgets, personnel, and such. For now, Daisy was a fabulous hostess and charmer.
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Leamington were imported from England as majordomo and head housekeeper, positions they had held for the late Earl of Harlingham. Professional and polished, proper speck-of-dust hunters, they were a class act who knew their place.
Yet . . .
Daisy soon realized that the Leamingtons would run Inverness their way and was uncomfortable with them from the outset.
Inverness was largely staffed by slaves, not typical fieldhands but well selected and slightly elevated household, grounds, and stable workers. None was employed in a supervisory capacity, although some held rank and privileges, such as the chefs and horse trainers.
The Leamingtons did not find them near the caliber of English and Irish servants. Their manner was curt and authoritative.
The Fancy couple annoyed the Leamingtons the most. Matthew had been an all-around assistant to the managers of the Blanton estates. He had learned numbers, could count, add, and subtract, and recognized a hundred or so written words on sight. He was also an unofficial liaison between slaves and supervisors.
Laveda’s position was the major threat to the Leamingtons’ authority, for she had the ear of Daisy Kerr. Inverness glided along smoothly but with no sense of joy. The Leamingtons’ noses were constantly sniffing and the distant sounds of spirituals from the Negroes’ cottages became more mournful.
True to their professional skills, the majordomo and his scratchy wife played up to Mr. Kerr and deftly insulated him from household problems. Horace remained oblivious of the mounting tension. He was too consumed with his business and those other things a man of his station needed to be consumed by.
When he entered his home, all he wished to see was serenity, efficiency, and sparkling banisters, and he prided himself on his brilliant move of bringing the Leamingtons over from England!
Daisy dared not complain in light of her husband’s satisfaction with the British couple. She was masterfully cowed by them and often left their presence trembling in Laveda’s arms.
Leamington was unable to enlist Matthew Fancy as an informer. Intrigue was whispered through the Inverness corridors, past the closet doors. As enemy camps formed, Daisy became more dependent on the Fancys.
So, there it was, one big happy Inverness, with crisply cut lawns, highly polished silver, magnificent horses, prize roses, and impeccable service, all sailing on whispers.
Down the ways into the bay at Dutchman’s Hook, the Kerr shipyard sent hulls as fast as they could be pegged together. Horace’s wealth was becoming immense.
Horace was able to pay off his loans early to the Blanton bank. While things looked nearly perfect, a damned crisis was brewing in Baltimore. Although Maryland would probably remain in the Union, it had a nasty mix of sympathies. From a dead-on practical point of view, Maryland had the largest number of slaves, aside from Virginia. Maryland’s tobacco fields required as much hand and stoop labor as the cotton fields farther on down south and were as backbreaking to keep up as the sugarcane plantations in the Deep South.
A fair number of Baltimore public places had begun having separate entrances for Northerners and Southerners, and a good part of the press railed against Lincoln.
Horace came under pressure from the Washington establishment and particularly from his Republican Party to make a bold, clear