The admission did not make her a hero.

It made her a witness whose words could be tested.

Chapter 35: The Price of a Signature

Richard’s lawyer attempted to persuade Catherine to withdraw her statements by threatening to challenge her control of inherited property.

She met him in Rebecca’s drawing room, no longer within Richard’s walls, and asked him to explain the documents line by line.

The lawyer spoke of marital interests and customary arrangements, then suggested that public embarrassment would harm everyone.

Catherine pointed to a signature placed on a transfer she had never seen.

“If that is mine, show me where and when I signed it,” she said.

He declined to answer.

She asked for copies of every record he cited.

For the first time, she did not accept a summary as an explanation.

Alden advised that Catherine should retain independent counsel because her position was not identical to Lydia’s or the families whose rights had been violated.

She followed that advice.

Her attorney explained that she might face claims arising from her past acquiescence and that some assets could be tied to illegal transactions.

Catherine listened without asking whether she could escape every consequence.

She said she wanted an accounting that separated her personal possessions from property acquired through coercion and fraud.

The lawyer warned that the process would be slow.

Catherine replied that she had spent fourteen years avoiding difficulty, and slowness was no longer a reason to stop.

At Riverbend, creditors began arriving.

Richard had borrowed against future crops and used inflated inventories to support loans.

Once the records were challenged, lenders demanded proof of assets he could not lawfully establish.

His apparent wealth had rested on calculations that treated people as saleable numbers and assumed no one would question their identities.

The same confidence that made him reckless with lives had made him careless with money.

Jacob watched men carry desks and silver from the house and felt no pleasure in the spectacle.

He knew creditors could still try to seize people as though they were furniture.

The collapse of one man’s fortune did not automatically create freedom for those held under the system.

Mrs.

Fenwick helped assemble a complete list of the families at Riverbend and their stated relationships.

She insisted that husbands, wives, children, and elders be recorded together rather than separated by work assignment.

Rebecca used those details when seeking protection against hurried transfers during the legal dispute.

The effort did not overturn Virginia’s slavery laws, but it created documentation that complicated Richard’s attempts to conceal people in anonymous transactions.