In the midst of these thoughts, May-Jewel’s mind turned to the woman who sat motionless beside her. The woman’s breathing had become stilled as if the revelation of her parentage was strangling her. The joy that May-Jewel had felt a moment before faded. If this woman, this servant, is Robbie’s daughter too, then… then she is my half-sister! My sister? The realization left her disturbed. Her mind whirled with the knowledge that she would suffer socially if ever this connection was known in Boston. For even in her mother’s secluded society, there were limits as to what was tolerated.
Katherine leaned forward and placed her shaking hand on the desk as if to stand.
“You must be mistaken.” Her raspy words were barely audible. “You have the wrong woman. I was nothing to Robert Craig when he was alive, and I am nothing to him now that he’s dead!” Each word spilled over her lips like a vile mass erupting from a rancorous heart.
“No, you are indeed the right woman,” Neal Jameson said, his forefinger striking the desk with each word. “Are you not Katherine St. Pierre? Daughter of Cora St. Pierre? Who was born…”
Katherine raised her hand to silence him. She didn’t want to listen to her vital statistics. She didn’t want to hear how she could be Sir Robert’s daughter, for if she truly was, she’d have her veins emptied of his blood, even if she had to drain it herself.
But the solicitor continued with the details of how Katherine’s parents met. At fifteen, Cora St. Pierre, daughter of an islander and a French seaman, was to be sold to pay her uncle’s debts. It was Robert Craig who, hearing of this, had paid those debts, thus buying her freedom. “Robbie told me that he had every intention of leaving her with her people. But as she was very beautiful, he brought her home to Scotland instead.”
Caught up in the story, May-Jewel leaned forward in her chair. “What happened next?”
Mr. Jameson frowned at her forwardness, but continued, “Unfortunately, Rob didn’t think much beyond that one act. And Cora soon was with child.” He paused, waiting for his words to penetrate the thick veneer of the women’s social sensitivities.
Katherine slumped back in her chair. She hadn’t known any of this! Her mother never even hinted at such things. Her mother and Sir Robert? Why had she not been told about him before? The sudden truth of her own birth and the exposure of her mother’s sin being divulged by one stranger and in front of another was almost more than she could take. Her ignorance of her own life left her defenseless. How mortifying was the knowledge that her mother had been bought, purchased as one purchased a frock or a fish! Her mind screamed with indignation, and she wanted to cry for her mother who had been caught between the worlds of affluence and poverty, caught in a limbo between belonging and not belonging. Katherine’s lifelong thoughts began to untangle. I didn’t belong. Even on the estate where I was born and to the man I was born of, I was only tolerated. I was tolerated at school and tolerated by the McGill’s as their governess but only because of my excellence, an excellence that was forced onto me in school by Robert’s money and the political favors owed him. Suddenly it made sense, her mother’s adoration of Sir Robert, their living on his estate, and her going to school, a privilege not granted to many girls. She remembered Robert and his thick copper hair and fire-colored beard, though he seldom came to the cottage to see them.
Turning her turbulent eyes toward the solicitor, Katherine asked. “Did they ever legalize their relationship?”
“You mean wed?”
“Yes! Did they wed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if there were such a union.” He regretted insensitive reply and busied himself by rummaging through the papers on his desk. “I’m sorry Miss St. Pierre. I don’t seem to have any such paper here, but I’ll check through the ship’s records and the entries in the Registry at Somerset House as there is a compulsory registration for all marriages. There’s the possibility that during the months of the return voyage there could have been some sort of ceremony, either on board ship or on one of the islands.” What else could he say? What else could he suggest? How could he make this young woman feel better about her existence, about the news he had just revealed?
Neal cleared his throat, trying to get past the awkwardness of the moment. Even Miss Belwood seemed embarrassed for she glanced down at the floor, seemingly interested in the pattern of the rug.
“But I assure each of you that even without solid documentation, you are, indeed, the off-spring of Robert Craig, and, therefore, sisters. Well, half-sisters.”
Not a look was exchanged by either woman to acknowledge this statement.
Neal continued, “It was Robert’s wish that you treat each other as such, as sisters.”
Silence.
The solicitor scowled at the mute heiresses. “You will, I’m sure, become accustomed to one another in time.” Impatient with the lack of reactions and wanting to conclude his business with the women as quickly as possible, Neal unfolded a document before him and began to read it.
“This is the Last Will and Testament of Sir Robert Andrew Craig: As it is apparent that I’m no longer upon this earth, God have mercy on my soul, I leave my estate Wistmere, with its livestock and steadings and all acreage between Lanark and Carstairs, my four ships and the business that encompasses them in Aberdeen, along with all my goods to my surviving children.”
Neal
