Chapter 22

Philip Wells was diligently reading the law with an attorney in Queenstown who had an office near the rude courthouse. He agreed to help Anne dispose of her property and to make a record of expenses and profits. Philip had attended the free school run by the locally-infamous Mr. Potter and then King William's School in Annapolis for a year, until the summer of 1776. He was a member in good standing of a local militia company and fully expected to be called to serve with Washington's troops in the near future.

But he was hardly a flaming rebel and probably, given the choice, would have stayed out of the thing and chased girls as he pursued the law. There had been talk of sending him to the college of New Jersey before the revolution exploded his world. His family was thoroughly divided, almost all the older generation loyal to the king while the young man and many of his cousins either favored the rebellion or tried to maintain some sort of reluctantly neutral status. Two of his father's kinfolk had marched off with the First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists in 1777, and his oldest brother was captured on Long Island as a member of the Maryland Continental Line. An uncle now captained his own privateer somewhere in the South Atlantic. Philip was, he admitted to his friends, lukewarm, more interested in the courtroom than in revolution, but every Saturday he drilled with his comrades, an old musket on his shoulder, one he had never fired.

He was tall and thin with an unruly shock of wheat-colored hair which he wore clubbed back and tied with a black ribbon, almost nineteen years old and unmarried, in fact innocent of women, despite his best efforts and because of his unwillingness to pay for copulation. He did not own a wig or a buggy.

But he had what Anne needed, a quiet and orderly mind and an eye for detail. He arranged for an auction the same week as the annual fall fair in Queen Anne's County and then oversaw the selling of the farm implements, livestock and most of the slaves. He and Anne met with one of the area's biggest landowners and negotiated the purchase of the upper woodlot, the overgrown pasture and most of the fallow tobacco land that adjoined one of the neighbor's profitable farms. That left Pirate's Luck with about twenty acres, most of it on the river, including a small second-growth woodlot and some swampy areas difficult to farm.

Wells had that property surveyed and assessed along with the family silver and the small library. He did the accounting while Anne often wandered about as if in a dream. He did not tell anyone, but he could not look at Anne without being amorously excited. He had never seen anyone as lovely or as sure of herself, nor anyone with so much bright and unruly hair, a cascading surf of red curls that seemed, despite her best efforts, to be constantly untamed.

One white-haired slave and his massive wife had not found a buyer so Anne decided to free them, and the apprentice lawyer said he would see to creating the manumission papers. She had not heard from her stepmother since the reading of the will, so Anne held back the home's diligent cook and Miranda, the daughter of her mother's favorite maid; a slim young, brown woman she had grown up with, a girl she knew to be indolent and untrustworthy as well as very likely related to her in some way. Her father's father, Old Judah he was called, had earned a very risible reputation that still brought smiles and a tap of the nose from old-timers.

Late on the afternoon of the sale, Anne and Philip sat at the dining room table with some apple cobbler and berry wine, totaling up the receipts of the day. The auctioneer had been paid his fee. People, animals and equipment were still being hauled away, but things had quieted down except for the excitement among the geese, guinea hens and ducks.

Anne was pleased that all the black women had been able to keep their children in the sale although most had been separated from their husbands or lovers. The younger fieldhands had all brought surprisingly good prices. None of the meager kitchen equipment was sold nor were her father's books or the almost-new Franklin stove. She also saved one old iron-tipped plow, a peg harrow, two elderly horses, a pair of nanny goats, a few garden tools and a good ax and maul. Philip carefully listed and evaluated each unsold item.

"Are you planning to stay here, live here I mean?" the young man asked as he pushed his accounting sheet toward Anne who was wearing a heavy apron over her dark dress, one that had been dyed blue-black for the period of mourning. Her glorious hair, like his, was tied back with a wide, dark ribbon and cascaded well down her back. He spoke extra carefully, fearing his voice might crack. Although he had once bundled with a girl near Church Hill and kissed a few others in dark corners after barn dances, he had seldom been alone with a female close to his own age and never with one who aroused him so painfully. He wondered if she could hear his heart beat.

"I don't know," Anne said, leaning back and looking at the fair young man, noting his pale, blue eyes and rather thin nose. "It's tempting. The house is mine, my inheritance." He does not look as if he shaves very often and his Adam's apple is quite prominent. She suppressed a smile when she felt his eyes on her. He has big, bony hands. She though about what a girl had told her at one of the cotillions about big hands and feet.

"Yes, it's certainly different from Annapolis, isn't it? But I did enjoy my time over there, at school I mean, and I learned to drink ale, quite a lot of ale." He chuckled. "Wish I could have stayed longer but the war, you know, independency changed everything. Must have been hard on your family." He usually had trouble talking to girls, to young women, but he found this lovely redhead companionable and relaxed. He had been awed by her beauty at first, her pale skin, her lava flow of untamed curls, but she had put him at ease by being helpful and cooperative, understanding and agreeable.

"My stepmother's son went to that school, but I'm not sure when. I assume that you are going to be a lawyer, eh?" Anne arched an eyebrow and smiled, pleased at having made such a good choice in picking Philip to help her. It was pleasant to deal with a young man who did not fawn or simper, one who knew his tasks and did them efficiently. He wrote a good, legible hand as well, unlike Billy's scrawl.

He smiled back and nodded. "Yes, I hope so. Mr. Maguire thinks I could do well; he's the man who's taken me on. I started clerking for him when I was fifteen. Of course, my militia company may be called although they now say we are to be home guardsmen whatever that means. There has been trouble over here, you know, 'bout salt among other things."

"But are you, what do they call it, reading the law?"

He nodded. "I'm trudging my way through Blackstone's Commentaries, pretty hard going. Didn't you meet him, Mr. Maguire?"

"Yes, indeed; some time back. He certainly is short and round," she said with a laugh. "But very pleasant. Is courtly the right word?"

"Oh, he can be rough, rough as a cob. You ought to see him in the courtroom." He laughed. "The man can conjure up a storm and lay it on thick as pudding when he has a jury to convince."

"I really appreciate your help, and I will expect a bill for your services." She smiled at him and saw that he actually blushed. He reminded her of Billy in some ways although Billy, as far as she could recall, never blushed, even when he had cause to do so. Very briefly, she wondered where he was and what he was doing, closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and tried to picture him, remembering him all but naked, his bloody stripes and skinny legs.

The young man nodded, hardly noticing her pause. "Of course, of course. But it has been a pleasure, Miss Conroy. Whether you're aware of it or not, you are fairly well known hereabouts. It's probably your red hair." He tried not to grin. "Some laughed when I said I was working for you, warned me of your temper, said I'd better go armed."