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whose dark green leaves grew along the fence? she wondered. Jordan Bolling was the name on the deed to this plantation, but the sight of the lilies, the daffodils, made her wonder if this Jordan had had a wife. And what had happened to her when she learned her husband had died? No wife, but rather this Valentine Bolling, had written to her grandmother asking to buy back the plantation.
    The Governor would row away today to return to his duties and Williamsburg. He wanted her to return with him. For the first time, standing here in what was farm cut out of forest, Barbara seriously considered it.
    She tilted her head to listen to the morning silence, which was not silence, but, like Tamworth’s, a country quiet in which one heard birds calling one another, small creatures rustling, the wind in the tops of the trees, and finally, if one was attentive, oneself.
    I hate weak, whining women, Bab; I have no patience for them, said her grandmother in her mind.
    Neither, Grandmama, do I.
    Years, my Bab, it takes years—not days, not months, but years—to recover if the grief is deep enough.
    How many years, Grandmama?
    Don’t look at me with that impatient expression upon your face. Two, perhaps three, more.
    Bah.
    Bah, yourself, Bab. You’ve lost everything—husband, brother, home, fortune, dreams, all you thought to have. Give yourself the time to heal from those losings. There will be other dreams.
    Other dreams? Other loves? Here? Barbara looked around, taking in the small, sturdy house, its clearing, the barn in the distance, the fields all around, the thick woods.
    On her fingers was the soil of the garden, rich and crumbling. Tobacco tires land, she remembered a Major Custis saying in Williamsburg, so that more land is always necessary. She turned in a circle, slowly, trying to decide what she’d do.

     

    B ARBARA STOOD with the Governor at the first creek that cut through her plantation. His slaves were in the galley, waiting to pole it out into the river.
    “I only leave because I have no other choice. I have a meeting with my council that I may not miss. But I don’t like this,” said Spotswood. “It is settled then; you will come to Williamsburg a month from now, in October, during our village fair, and I will give a fête for you, to introduce you to the colony as you should be introduced. I will send this galley from Williamsburg for you, and you can ride back down the river in style.”
    Can you last until October? he was thinking, remembering the expression upon her face as she’d walked up from the creek yesterday, toward an empty house engulfed by woods and fields. You’ve pride, he thought, perhaps too much. He’d stop by Perry’s Grove, tell Edward Perry to see to her. That thought made him feel better. The Lionheart would have approved of Edward Perry. There wasn’t a better man in all Virginia. She is quite courageous, he’d tell Perry, wishing to do her duty to her grandmother, to learn the plantation, but I wouldn’t leave my daughter alone in such a forsaken place; no, I would not.
    Barbara held out her hand.
    “Thank you for seeing me to my journey’s end. I will write to my grandmother and my cousin, the Duke of Tamworth, of your many kindnesses to me—and they were kindnesses. Safe journey, sir.”
    “Remember, Lady Devane, if you need anything, Colonel Perry is at Perry’s Grove, and you can reach your closest neighbors by foot within an hour.”
    “Yes.” Her grandmother’s solicitor in Williamsburg had drawn a map. It was in the house.
    “Remember if you ride out alone to take a blanket and knife with you, and something to start a fire.”
    “Yes, yes, I remember. Good-bye.”
    Spotswood stepped into the galley and gestured for the slaves to begin poling out of the creek and into the river. “Mind you make sure there is plenty of firewood cut. The weather here can change abruptly once autumn comes.”
    He called various other reminders as she followed along the bank of the