JoAnn Wendt (11 page)

At Norfolk Flavia saw her first American woman. She was a Mistress Sewell and she came aboard on the arm of her husband who was shopping for a stout Dutch drudge, one skilled in tending dairy cows. Flavia ached with longing as she drank in the woman’s smart ensemble. She wore thick plush green velvet. Jacket and skirts were topped by a cape trimmed with ermine tails. Her hands were gloved in soft black kid leather and diamond earbobs flashed in the winter sunlight. A handsome hat and muff of fox far rippled in the chill breeze.

Flavia sighed. She’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to wear beautiful clothes, to wear warm clothes. Unconsciously, she shrank inside the rough serge cloak.

“Mr. Sewell!” the woman trilled brightly as she trailed along on her husband’s arm. “Mr. Sewell, I’ve a mind to buy a new serving girl.”

“You’ve Tansy and Queen,” he countered agreeably. “And Noah, my dear.”

She made a face.

“Africans, Mr. Sewell!” She pouted, flirting up at her husband through a thick fringe of eyelashes. “How can Sewell Hall become known for its genteel entertaining if bush slaves oversee the serving? You’ll recall what happened last July, Mr. Sewell. When the kitchens grew too hot.” She paused for effect. “Tansy simply shucked petticoats, bodice and stays. She carried the roast meats to the dining table in her
shift.”

“And Noah trooped in wearing only his shirt-tails.” He chuckled. “I thought it funny.”

Mrs. Sewell drew herself up.

“I, Mr. Sewell, did
not.
I daresay Lord and Lady Carlisle still grow faint when they remember.”

“I daresay they’ve forgot,” he said pleasantly.

She shifted her tactics.

“If I bought an English girl who could read, write and cipher, I could use her as my secretary. She would supervise serving too, of course. She could assist me with my accounts. She could pen invitations to our dancing assemblies, and I could dictate my correspondence.” She paused. In a burst of fresh inspiration she added, “In her spare time she could assist the tutor, spelling the little ones.”

He laughed merrily.

“You would work her to death in six months, my dear.”

Her eyes narrowed. As Flavia watched, fascinated, Mrs. Sewell arranged her lovely features in the manner of an innocent who’s been wrongly accused.

“I do believe, Mr. Sewell, you have no appreciation of how hard I toil for Sewell Hall. Merely assigning the slaves’ tasks employs the shank of my day. Some evenings, Mr. Sewell, I am faint with weariness. Though far be it from me to let one word of complaint escape my lips. I am your dutiful wife, Mr. Sewell. Your happiness is my sole concern.”

He sighed.

“Very well, my dear. Buy your girl.”

She swung around with glee, the lovely long fur of hat and muff shivering like wheat in a field.

“This one,
Mr. Sewell.”

Flavia jerked, finding herself at the end of a pointing gloved finger.

“Do you suppose she reads, Mr. Sewell? Has she lice? Oh, dear, do you suppose she had a promiscuous life and carries the French disease?”

Flavia flushed. She looked down at her feet. It was humiliating to be examined by a woman so clearly her inferior. The duchess in Flavia flared. She lifted her head high.

“I can read,” she snapped, deliberately ignoring the other queries and omitting the obligatory “ma’am.”

“Write and cipher?”

Flavia bit back her anger.

“Yes.”

The woman swung her head to her husband. She gave him a flirtatious, helpless glance.

“Bondslaves will tell you
anything, of
course, Mr. Sewell. They are every bit as bad as Africans,” she said, contradicting the argument she’d used just moments earlier. “Test her, Mr. Sewell.”

The man reddened.

“If you want her, my dear,
you
test her.”

There was a flurry on deck, as the woman sent a half-dozen tars scrambling for slate and chalk. When the materials were brought, she thrust them at Flavia.

Flavia seethed. How dare this common, ill-bred American treat her so! Shaking with fury, she squeezed the chalk. She paused. A quotation from Obadiah’s Bible flew into her mind. Swiftly she penned:

Proverbs 9:13: A foolish woman is clamorous; she is simple, and knoweth nothing.

For a moment there was silence. Then Mr. Sewell burst into hearty laughter. His eyes twinkled.

“By God, wife, she’ll do. She’ll do.” Mrs. Sewell pursed her lips, waiting for her husband’s laughter to abate. She was not intelligent enough to know she’d been insulted, but the expression on her face was one of confused displeasure.

“I think,
Mr. Sewell, she will
not
do.” Without another glance, she gave Flavia her back. She turned to Mab, and instantly Flavia regretted venting her pride. Sewell Hall might have been an easy post. The master seemed a good and kind man, the mistress too vain and lazy to generate overly much work.

“Now
this
one, Mr. Sewell,” the woman began, putting a finger in Mab’s face.

To Flavia’s amusement, Mab immediately drew out her red-stained kerchief and coughed violently into it.

* * * *

The weather changed. Winter deepened. Arctic winds swept down for one last onslaught before the advent of spring. The Chesapeake Bay threatened to freeze, and the captain grew eager to set out for London. He redoubled his efforts to rid himself of the remaining bondslaves.

Sarah Bess was sold at Norfolk. Mab fought to keep her, but the Dutchman had his way. He refused Mab the option of extending her own indenture to cover the cost of the child’s passage. He pointed out that Mab already had her own contract to serve plus Obadiah’s four years. With additional time to serve for the little girl, Mab would become unmarketable and he would lose his profit. He pointed out that he’d already been generous. He’d not charged her for the dead infant although the baby died past the halfway mark.

As before, Flavia raged inwardly at the man’s lack of compassion. She shook with frustration at her own inability to help. Were she Flavia Rochambeau, duchess of Tewksbury, she could make Mab’s life come right again in a trice. But she was Jane Brown. For all she knew, Jane Brown’s lot could become harder than Mab’s.

Forced into complaisance, she could only stand at the rail, her arm around a stiff and sullen Mab as the dinghy carrying Sarah Bess pulled away from the
Schillack.
In the dinghy, Sarah Bess howled in hysteria, both of her small thumbs pressed to the roof of her mouth. As Flavia held Mab, her own wounds opened. Pain knifed into her. Robert. Her bright-eyed darling baby,

wrenched from her embrace at the ball. She could feel the sudden emptiness of her arms as the nurse had grabbed him. Robert’s terrified screams seemed to mingle with the fading screams of Sarah Bess.

When the dinghy disappeared amidst harbor traffic and the child’s fair head could be seen no longer, Flavia squeezed Mab’s stiff unresponsive shoulders.

“You’ll see her again someday,” she tried. But even to her own ears, the words were hollow, devoid of conviction.

Mab said nothing. She stared out over the choppy gray water. Her lips twitched, as though in the bleak interior of her soul she wrestled with some new resolution. At last she turned. The burning defiance in her eyes scared Flavia.

“Mab? Promise you’ll do nothing foolish?”

Mab uttered a cheerless bitter laugh.

“Foolish? Nay, Jane, For the first time in m’ life I aim t’ do something smart.”

Flavia raised her eyes to Mab’s, questioning.

“I aim t’ run away.”

Chapter 7

“How tiresome to have to wear black to the royal governor’s birthday ball. Black ill becomes me. I wonder if I mayn’t get away with wearing the scarlet silk gown. Just this once?”

Getting no response, the baroness Annette Vachon shifted up on one elbow and shook her silken mane. Dark tresses tumbled over a pleasantly plump white shoulder, a full bosom. She drew up the cambric sheeting of the four-poster bed and tucked it into her cleavage.

“McNeil. You’re not listening.”

Lying back in Annette’s bed in the lavish, French decorated house she’d rented on North England Street in Williamsburg, Garth McNeil grunted sleepily.

“True. I’m not listening.”

The baroness curled thumb and forefinger. She snapped him smartly on the taut nipple of his bronzed muscular chest. He jumped. His eyes flew open.

“Bitch!”

She giggled her low, sultry giggle, then bent to him, tonguing small purring kisses into the abused spot. McNeil relaxed. Eyes closing, he dreamily let himself enjoy the cool sweep of Annette’s perfumed hair on his chest, the warm throbbing promise of her breasts. God, he was tired! He was between sailings. It was already May. Since his February arrival in Virginia, he’d made three sailings to Barbados. Next week would see him off to England with a full load of tobacco.

Work was the palliative. Work was the key to forgetting. Exhausted, he sometimes fell into his bunk at night without a single thought of Flavia. So he pushed the
Caroline
at a furious pace. The crew thought him mad. Harrington and Jenkins grumbled, but his brother and partner and his stockholders were ecstatic. McNeil was making them rich, and making himself rich too, as a by-product of the work frenzy.

While he sailed, Annette stayed in Williamsburg. Charmed by what she called “the provinces,” Annette had leased the most elaborate mansion available in the capital. She entered the social scene with the zest of a child discovering an old-fashioned but delectable sweetmeat. As a titled lady, she had the run of the Governor’s Palace. If a baroness ranked low in London peerage, in the colonies she glittered like a queen.

“Bother! Must I wear mourning to the ball?” Annette reiterated. “Is it too soon to wear red? What do you think, McNeil?”

He chuckled. Annette’s new sense of propriety amused him. Being “queen” had its shortcomings, evidently.

“Go in the altogether if you wish.”

She pretended shock, then giggled and gave him a playful slap. She pulled herself up to a sitting position in the middle of the canopied four-poster. She collected the sheet and draped herself.

“It’s not as if the baron and I married for love, McNeil. The marriage was an arrangement. A convenience. He wanted my wealth. I wanted his title. As for bed—” She shrugged prettily, giving McNeil a wry smile. “He. . . he preferred boys in his bed.”

There was something in her voice—a catch, a faint quaver—that stirred loyalty in McNeil.

“The baron,” he snapped, “was crazy.”

Instantly he regretted his gallantry. Annette’s face lit with love. Judas! Now he’d be forced to set her straight, to make it clear once again that he would never marry her. Why couldn’t she accept things as they stood? They were lovers. Nothing more.

Sighing happily, she slipped into the crook of his arm and lay beside him. Her fingertips traced feathery circles on his chest, on his hard belly.

“Still, I
do
hate being a widow,” she simpered in a little girl voice he’d never heard her use before.

McNeil stiffened. So she thought to trap him, did she?

“Then marry, damn it.”

She gasped. She wrenched herself from his arms, flung herself off the bed, and angrily yanked on a green silk robe. She rammed her feet into silk slippers.

“You—you colonial barbarian!” she sputtered, flinging back her dark tresses with the backs of both hands. Her eyes shot dark fire. “Am I to suppose you will
never
marry me?”

He sat up. He matched her angry glare.

“You would be wise to suppose nothing else.”

She flinched before his coldness.

“You—you—”

“Attila the Hun?” he teased imprudently.

Annette let out a howl of frustration. She whipped off her hard-heeled slippers. McNeil ducked and feinted as the slippers came winging at him.

Missing her quarry, Annette shrieked in frustration. She whirled around, and with a comment that left him in no doubt about the origin of his birth, she flounced from the room.

The door banged shut with a tremendous crash. Alabaster vials of perfume danced on the marble-topped dressing table. On a green damask cushion in the recessed windowseat, Annette’s napping cat sprang up, arching with a hiss. The loud bang reverberated through the mansion, and McNeil lazily watched a few specks of dust filter down from the disturbed green silk draperies, the tiny dust motes twirling in the afternoon sunshine.

He relaxed, satisfied. This was the Annette he preferred. Not whining and begging to become his wife, but passionate and hot-tempered as a mistress should be. The baroness was never so good in bed as after a tantrum.

At that thought, lust began to stir again in his groin. He turned his head on the pillow, watching the door with more than slight eagerness. Annette was predictable. He did not have to wait long.

The door swung inward with a furious push, then crashed shut. Again, the cat hissed, glass rattled, dust motes went spinning. Annette put her back to the door, leaned upon it and tightly crossed her arms over her bosom. Fire blazed in her eyes.

“W
hy,
McNeil?” she demanded loudly. “
Why
won’t you marry me?”

He grinned. Ignoring her question, he drew back the rumpled sheet. He patted the bed. At his unspoken but clear invitation, she jerked her head aside with a curse and would not look at him. But the color heightened in her throat, and McNeil did not miss the taut sudden lift of her breasts that always signaled her own rising desire.

Angered, she pretended to stare out the window. Pretended interest in the green vista of formal garden rolling into pasture where fluffy white Merino sheep wandered, tugging at sweet spring grass.

He waited until the time was right to speak.

“Annette,” he coaxed, “come here.”

She seemed to wage some inner battle for a minute or two. At last she turned and came toward him. The silk of her exotic robe rustled sensuously as she slowly made her way across the room.

She stood before him, seemingly undecided as whether to laugh or to cry. Her hands fluttered at her sides.