The Prize. Brenda Joyce

      Then she felt Tillie behind her, and slowly, she turned.

      Tillie smiled, tears staining her coffee-and-cream complexion. She was as tall as Virginia was short, as voluptuous as she was thin, and very beautiful. “I knew you’d come home,” she whispered.

      Virginia moved into her arms. The two young women clung.

      When she could control her tears, she stepped back, smiling. “My feet hurt like hell,” she said. “And I’m starving to death! How did the burning go? Did we find rot? And what do the seedlings look like?” She grinned as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

      But Tillie didn’t smile back. Her golden eyes were frighteningly solemn.

      “Tillie?” Virginia asked, not liking the look she was receiving. Dread began. “Please tell me everything is all right.” For something seemed terribly wrong and she was so scared to learn what it was.

      She’d had enough of misfortune. She couldn’t stand one more stroke of bad luck.

      Tillie gripped her arms. “They’re selling the plantation—and everything and everyone on it.”

      Virginia didn’t understand. “What did you just say?”

      “Your daddy’s in debt. Beg pardon—Master Hughes was in debt—and now your uncle has an agent here and he’s started selling off everything…the land, the house, the slaves, the horses, he’s selling it all.”

      Virginia cried out. A huge pain stabbed through her chest, so vast that she reeled. Tillie caught her around the waist.

      “What’s wrong with me! Here you are, skinnier than ever, as hungry as a winter wolf, and I’m telling you our troubles! C’mon, Virginia, you need some hot food and a hot bath and then we can talk. You can tell me all about what it’s like to be a fine lady!”

      Virginia couldn’t respond. This had to be a nightmare, an awful dream—it couldn’t be reality. Sweet Briar could not be up for sale.

      But it was.

      SHE WAS WEARING HER MOTHER’S Sunday best. Virginia smiled bravely at Frank, who had driven her into Norfolk, smoothing down her blue skirts, adjusting the bodice of her fitted blue pelisse and then her matching bonnet. Her mother’s clothes were loose upon her small frame, but Tillie and two other slaves had been sewing madly all night to make everything fit perfectly. Now Frank tried to smile back and failed. Virginia knew why—he was heartsick, afraid his wife and children would be sold off to some distant owner and that he’d never see them again.

      But that wasn’t going to happen. Virginia intended to move heaven and earth—and more specifically, her father’s good friend Charles King, the president of the First Bank of Virginia—in order to prevent Sweet Briar from being sold. She swallowed hard, her entire body covered with perspiration. The stakes were so damned high. She was so deathly afraid. But Charles King had been a good family friend and now he’d see her not as a child but a capable lady. Surely, surely, he’d loan her the funds necessary to pay off her father’s debts and save Sweet Briar.

      Virginia closed her eyes tightly against the glaring sun, her smile faltering. God, she hated her uncle, the Earl of Eastleigh, a man she’d never met. He hadn’t even discussed the state of the plantation with her! Yet it belonged to her!

      Or it would, if it hadn’t been sold off by the time she turned twenty-one.

      Now the three years between the present and her majority loomed as an eternity.

      “Miz Virginia,” Frank suddenly said, restraining her from entering the imposing facade of the brick-and-limestone bank.

      Virginia paused, her stomach churning with fear and dread. She managed a small smile. “I may be long—but I hope not.”

      “It’s not that,” he said roughly. He was very tall, perhaps five inches over six feet, and dangerously handsome. Tillie had fallen in love with him at first sight, almost five years ago, not that anyone would have known it, with the way she’d snubbed him and put on airs. Apparently it had been mutual—not six months later he’d asked Randall Hughes for permission to marry her, and that permission had been instantly given. “I’m afraid, Miz Virginia, afraid of what will happen to Tillie and my boys if you don’t get this loan today.”

      Virginia had been acutely aware of her responsibility to save Sweet Briar and her people, but now it crashed over her with stunning force. Fifty-two slaves were depending on her, many of them children. Tillie, her best friend, was depending on her, and so was Frank. “I will get this loan, Frank. You have nothing to worry about.” She must have sounded forceful and confident, because his eyes widened instantly and he doffed his hat to her.

      Virginia gave him another reassuring smile, silently begged God for a little help and entered the bank.

      Inside, it was blessedly cool, oddly reverent and as quiet as a church. Two customers were at the teller’s queue and one clerk was at a front desk. At a desk in the back sat Charles King. He looked up then and saw her, his eyes widening in surprise.

      This was it, she thought, lifting her chin to an impossible height. Her smile felt odd and brittle, fixed, as she marched forward through the lobby and the spacious back area of the bank.

      King stood, a fat man neatly and well dressed, his old-fashioned wig powdered and tied back. “Virginia! My dear, for one awful moment, I thought you were your mother, God rest her beloved soul!”

      Her father had told her many times that she looked just like her mother, but Virginia hadn’t ever believed it because Mama was so beautiful, although they shared the same nearly black hair and the same oddly violet eyes. She held out her hand as Charles took it firmly, clearly pleased to see her. “An illusion of light, I suppose,” she said, impressed with her own grace and bearing. But she had to convince Charles that she was a fine and capable lady now.

      “Yes, I suppose. I thought you were at school in Richmond. Do come in—have you come to see me?” he asked, leading her back to his desk and the high chairs facing it.

      “Yes, frankly, I have,” Virginia said, gripping her mother’s elegant black velvet reticule tightly.

      Charles smiled, offering her a chair and some tea. Virginia declined. “So how have you found the big city, Virginia?” he asked, taking his seat behind his desk. His gaze held hers, with some concern. Virginia knew he was finally noticing how peaked she was, due to the terrible strain of her grief and now her worry over the state of her father’s finances.

      Virginia shrugged. “I suppose it is fine enough. But you know I adore Sweet Briar—there is no place I would rather be.”

      For one moment Charles stared and then he was grim. “I know you are a clever young lady, so may I assume you realize your uncle is selling the plantation?”

      She wanted to lean forward and shout that the earl had no right. She didn’t move—she didn’t even dare to breathe—not until her temper had passed. But even then she said, “He has no right.”

      “I am afraid he has every right. After all, he is your guardian.”

      Virginia sat impossibly stiff and straight. “Mr. King, I have come here to secure a loan, so that I may pay off my father’s debts and save Sweet Briar from sale and even possible dissolution.”

      He blinked.

      She smiled bleakly at him. “I have helped Father manage the plantation since I was a child. No one knows how to plant and harvest, ship and sell tobacco better than I. I assure you, sir, that I would repay your loan in full, with any necessary interest, as soon as was possible. I—”

      “Virginia,” Charles King began, too kindly.

      Panic began. She leapt to her feet. “I may be a woman and I may be eighteen but I do know how to run Sweet Briar! No one except my father knows how better than I do! I swear to you, sir, I would repay every penny! How much do I need to pay off Father’s debts?” she cried desperately.