"But I own part of it-"

"Yes, a substantial part."

"You said it's voting stock?"

"It is."

"How can I cast intelligent votes if I've never seen the business? What it does, or how?"

"Why"-he smiled in an admiring way-"you can't, obviously. I'll be happy to schedule a visit at your convenience."

"Excellent. I'd appreciate your doing two other things for me. First, approach the owner of Kent and Son regarding a purchase. Operate through Benbow if you wish, but above all be discreet. I don't want it known that I'm a member of the family. Mr. Stovall might not be willing to sell to a Kent. He harbored quite a grudge against my cousin. That's why he took the firm away in the first place."

"So I remember hearing," Rothman murmured. "We can make the proposition this way-you are a woman of means who seeks to diversify her business holdings. At all times, we'll refer to you by your married name."

Amanda smiled. "You're very quick, Mr. Rothman. We'll get along splendidly, I think."

"I think so too. But I wish you'd call me Joshua."

"Very well-Joshua."

"You mentioned a second request-"

"Mr. Frederick Douglass is in Boston to present a lecture at the Park Street church-"

"My wife and I plan to attend." His glance said he was testing her political sentiments.

"I met him on shipboard, and I promised him a donation. Send him a draft for one hundred dollars, drawn in my name so he knows I kept my promise."

"With pleasure." He started to make a note, then noticed her upraised hand. "Yes?"

"A week from now, send a second draft to him in Rochester. Don't identify the donor."

"Is the sum also a hundred dollars?"

"Five thousand."

"Your generosity's commendable. But why give so much anonymously?"

Amanda's face looked oddly pale in the gaslight. She framed her reply with care. "Two reasons. One, I don't think the purpose of charity is to earn public approval for the donor."

"Nor do I-though many people wouldn't give a penny to any cause unless they were honored for doing so. Still, Mr. Douglass is hardly in the same category as churches and orphans' homes. Boston is the center of abolitionism, but there are also quite a few local citizens who detest Garrison, Douglass and everything they stand for-"

"That's my second reason. I prefer not to be too closely identified with the movement. A small sum attracts small notice. A large one attracts a great deal. I'm sure you understand."

He did, but he said nothing. Amanda knew she'd diminished herself in his eyes. But she was determined not to become actively involved in the slavery dispute. Whether Joshua Rothman thought she was cowardly or not, she had no time for extraneous struggles. Kent and Son came first.

"I have one final question," she said. "Negotiations with Stovall will take some time, will they not?"

"Yes, though we'll make our initial approach immediately."

"I'd like to see the firm."

Rothman tented his fingers. "I'd refrain until we have at least sounded out the owner on his amenability to a sale. Actually, it would be better if you didn't visit Kent's at all-"

"That's out of the question."

"Very well-" He was obviously not happy. "I'll inform you when I think it's all right. I'd only caution you that when you do inspect the property, do so in a businesslike way. Keep your remarks very general-you'd be astonished at how a seemingly trivial word or action can sometimes upset a negotiation."

"I'll follow the advice, thank you."

The banker smiled.

"You're amused?"

"Forgive me-I am. I have an odd feeling you'll accept advice from Rothman's when it agrees with your wishes-and disregard it when it doesn't."

"You're an astute young man, Joshua," Amanda said, smiling back. "Good afternoon. Come, Louis."

vi

July rain streamed down the marble headstones in the little burying ground in Watertown. Amanda's parasol was soaked through.

The thunderstorm had blackened the sky. Behind her, at the edge of the narrow drive, the carriage horse whinnied. She didn't look around. Her eyes were moving across the rain-blurred inscriptions on the monuments.

Philip Kent Anne Ware Kent That was her grandfather's first wife. She was the daughter of a Boston patriot, a member of the small band of men who had led Massachusetts into open rebellion against George III. Amanda knew Anne Kent had been lost at sea during the Revolution; no mortal remains lay beneath the headstone, which stood to the right of Philip's. An equal distance to the left rose the marker belonging to her grandmother.

Peggy Ashford McLean Kent To its left-she walked that way in the driving rain-the final monument.

Gilbert Kent A bird had left a spatter of white on the top of the stone. It made her angry. Heedless of dirtying her glove, she smeared the white until the rain dissolved it and washed it away. Then she put the parasol on the ground and laid both hands on the wet marble and let the tears pour down her cheeks.

Presently the sadness passed. She had discharged a small debt by coming to the graveyard. Now she must discharge a larger one-and give new life to the name a stonecutter had enisled four times. Lightning glared on it- Kent She was home. Home and ready to return that name to its rightful eminence.

The parasol offered no protection as she groped her way back toward the closed carriage, her eyes still damp and her emotions as turbulent as the thundery skies.

"All ready," she called to the soaked driver huddled on the seat.

In the carriage's small oval window, a lightning burst showed her the handsome face of Louis Kent. The lightning flickered out. The face vanished.

She had asked, but not ordered him to leave the carriage and walk to the graves with her. He wasn't interested.

What sort of emotional legacy was she passing on to him? she wondered. Was there anything he cared about?

vii

Below, the cavernous rooms of the house on Beacon Street steamed in the heat of the late September evening. With a whale oil lamp in one hand, Amanda slowly climbed the front staircase toward the second floor landing. The lamp's flame cast shifting patterns on the wall beside her.

She was vaguely aware of Louis making noise as he wandered back in the kitchen. She heard occasional shouts and catcalls from the Common. A torchlight procession had ended there at seven. Bald, bespectacled Garrison was addressing a crowd about the injustice of the recapture of a slave named James Hamlet.

The escaped black had been seized in New York City, only a few days after the Congress had passed the new fugitive slave law. Clay's compromises had finally won through, even though important legislators on both sides-including Senator Seward of New York and Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi-had withheld their support.

The Kentucky statesman had endured the worst sort of personal abuse during the debates on the bills. At one point, an opponent had gone so far afield as to jeer at Clay's thwarted presidential ambitions. Clay had replied that the work of averting national catastrophe was far more important than personal considerations. He would rather be right, he'd declared, than be president.

Once the various bills had finally been passed, the ringing of bells and an orgy of public drunkenness throughout the north celebrated the Union's salvation. But the members of the noisy throng listening to Garrison undoubtedly hadn't taken part in the revelry. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society had been denouncing the compromise as a betrayal of American liberty.

Slowly, Amanda started toward the third floor. The darkness depressed her. She thought of Bart McGill, longed for him-for the simple physical presence of someone she cared about. A son could never satisfy that need in quite the same way- Her knees ached as she climbed the stairs. Age. Time was running out for her. Thinking of that, she almost regretted refusing Bart's proposal- Why was she troubled by regrets so keenly now? The matters she had set in motion early in the summer were moving toward completion. Through the Benbow law firm, Joshua Rothman had made his first tentative offer on Kent's. The sum had been rejected by Stovall's New York attorneys, but the door was left open for further negotiations at a higher price.

And the Wheelers had succumbed when Benbow increased his offer on the house to sixty-seven thousand dollars. The Wheelers had removed the last of their belongings only this morning, transferring them to a new residence in Cambridge.

In California too the future looked promising. Amanda had received a letter from Israel Hope the last of August. The letter said the Ophir Mineralogical Combine was generating ten thousand dollars in gold per week, and on the basis of this, Francis Pelham was purchasing equipment for a prospecting trip into the Sierras.

Despite all the favorable developments, she was still depressed. Louis' behavior was one reason. He was surly with the tutor she'd engaged to instruct the boy in their hotel suite. Louis did his lessons in a perfunctory way, or not at all-it depended on how he felt that particular day. He bowed to Amanda's discipline, but with the greatest reluctance. She hoped the waywardness was merely the effect of adolescence, and that it would pass. Soon.

But you can't blame the boy for the way you're feeling, she thought as she climbed on toward the narrow landing outside the attic door. The blame's yours. You rejected Bart. You decreed that you had to go your own way. Alone- Sometimes she questioned the worth of the effort.

And even wished she didn't feel such a strong family obligation.

With a sigh, she approached the attic door. She pulled back the latch, then walked into the musty, cluttered interior. True to their bargain, the Wheelers had left any number of old crates scattered about the attic.

Amanda set the whale oil lamp on the floor. She tried loosening the slats on the side of one crate. The wood was thin, and so old she could break it bare-handed.

She opened the crate, coughing as dust clouded from feminine garments that smelled of mold. Old clothing of her mother's? Or the possessions of the people who had owned the house before the Wheelers? Impossible to tell.

She walked around the lamp and started to insert her fingers between two slats of another crate. Something standing against the back of the crate caught her attention. She swept off the tattered muslin cover- A framed painting. A large oil. She pulled it into the light- A dark-haired, almost truculent man gazed at her from the canvas. In her mind's eye, she saw the stern face in its proper setting-the wall of the library downstairs.

Philip Kent's painted eyes stared at the cobwebbed attic and the woman who wept with happiness as she attacked the slats of the second crate.

viii

"Louis? Louis, come see-!"

At the open front door, the boy turned. Amanda came rushing down the darkened stairs, grime on her cheeks and fingers, her gray hair festooned with cobwebs. On the Common, the mob yelled and waved torches.

As Amanda hurried to her son's side, she noticed a figure above the crowd on the far side. A man storming back and forth across an improvised platform, waving a piece of paper- "Louis, I found them!" She gripped her son's shoulder. "Your great-grandfather Kent's portrait-the sword, the rifle, the bottle of tea-all packed away in the attic. Come see them!"

The boy shook his head, pointed at the scene on the Common. "I want to watch this. A man who went by told me the fellow speaking is Mr. Garrison. He's going to set fire to a copy of the Constitution."

Disappointed, Amanda said, "I really feel you should show an interest-"

"I want to watch!" Louis declared, turning and dashing out on the stoop.

Someone passed a torch to the platform.

"Look, Mother-he's going to do it!"

Just as the boy uttered the last word, the mob howled and the paper in the hand of the distant figure burst alight. The roar died gradually as the man with the burning paper gestured for silence. Amanda heard him shout: "-so perish all compromises with tyranny! Let all the people say amen!"

The mob roared, "Amen!" Garrison flung down the charring document and stamped on it.

"We must go to hear him speak sometime," Louis said. "It takes a lot of nerve to burn the country's constitution-"

The boy turned, a smile on his handsome face.

"Mr. Garrison's a lot like you. He does exactly as he pleases and no one dares to stop him."

One bright eye caught the torch glare as Louis waited for her to respond to what he fancied was a compliment. Cold clear through, Amanda started to speak.

She couldn't. She turned and walked slowly back into the darkness, leaving her son staring after her, first with confusion, then outright anger.

Chapter II.

Of Books and Bloomers