JoAnn Wendt (27 page)

The court had convened after the noon dinner hour. Because each crime and its allotted punishment was explicitly laid down by law, long deliberation was seldom necessary. The general court sat just twice a year, and a proper court could deal with a dozen or more lawbreakers in an afternoon. Already, ten prisoners had been marched back from court and stood in the jail yard, some awaiting punishment, some already undergoing it. A man hung at the whipping post, enduring his stripes none too bravely. An adolescent girl cried as she crouched in wrist and neck stocks. Two urchins with wild turkey feathers darted past the girl, tickling her nose.

McNeil surveyed the prisoners. “There she is,” he muttered tiredly to Harrington. “That one,” he said, nodding.’

“Ahhh,” Harrington whispered after a long moment. “She be a fine-looking woman, Cap’n.”

Garth shrugged irritably. “You’re looking in the wrong place. The one standing under the maple tree. The one in the filthy gown. Sallow complexion, hair like a worn-out mop.”

Harrington nodded.

“Ay, sir. I see ‘er. Ay, she be a
fine-looking
girl.”

McNeil shifted, glancing at Harrington. The man’s ruddy, beaky face softened foolishly as he gazed at the bondwoman. McNeil chuckled. Well, there’s no accounting for one’s taste in women, he supposed.

The town drunk was released from the whipping post, and the woman was next. Her charges were read aloud. She’d run away from Mrs. Spencer’s employ and had been gone eight months. She’d stolen her mistress’s earbobs, which had been recovered. But she’d ruined the clothes she stole. Her fine was sixty pounds of tobacco or twenty lashes to the bare back. Also, one year added to her indenture. At the end of the reading, the crowd clamored for the whip.

“Shall you speak up now, Cap’n?” Harrington urged.

“Wait. Let’s see if that pridey spirit turns to mush when she’s led to the post.”

The crowd shouted in excitement as the jailer walked toward the bondwoman. He grabbed for her hand, but she snatched it away. Pushing him aside with an earthy curse, she marched to the whipping post. Head held high as the sail of a proud ship, she angrily unlaced her own bodice. Closing her eyes, she let the bodice fall to the dust and angrily thrust her wrists to the post to be tied. The crowd jeered, the drunkards shouting bawdy comments about her small, thin breasts.

“Now, Cap’n?” Harrington asked anxiously.

Garth pushed through the crowd.

“Wait!” Garth yelled to the court’s representative. “I will pay the woman’s fine. I will buy her indenture.”

The crowd groaned its disappointment, and at the post, the woman whirled round, blinking in astonishment. She snatched up her bodice, yanking it to thin breasts. Her eyes narrowed warily.

A shrill voice came from the crowd, followed by its owner, Mrs. Eliza Spencer. In just moments, the bargain was struck and disappointed spectators wandered off, seeking the cock fights. It was agreed McNeil would pay the original price of the indenture and would also indemnify Mrs. Spencer for stolen clothes by sending over two bolts of flocked tabby silk, fresh from England and imprinted in the latest fashion. Mrs. Spencer tripped out of the jail yard well pleased.

“Good fortune to you, Captain McNeil,” she trilled. “For you shall have need of it. She is Newgate trash. A thief, a liar and a runaway. I’m glad to have no more truck with her.”

At the post, the woman still crouched warily, so astonished that she didn’t think to put on her bodice rather than hide behind it. But when Garth strode to the post, she lifted herself tall. Distrust and wariness flashed from narrowed eyes. Garth scowled.

By God, she was a cheeky one for a woman who smelled like a pigpen and had jail lice crawling in the hair. He guessed she would require the same rough indoctrination he used on pridey new seamen.

“Name?”
he demanded.

“M—M—” She had to lick her lips before she could speak. Good, he thought. So she wasn’t as fearless as she’d pretended.
Her mouth had
gone dry in fear of the whipping post.

“Mab Collins, sir,” she whispered.

“Louder!”

Her eyes flashed with quick anger before she threw her glance to the ground.

“Mab Collins, sir,” she repeated.

“‘Mab’?” He turned to Harrington and laughed derisively. “A stupid name. A name suitable for a cow. Or,” he said, pausing deliberately, “a sow.”

At his side, Harrington shuffled uncomfortably. He’d seen the scenario played before on new seamen. But never on a woman.

Mab Collins’s head jerked up. Again the anger flashed. This time it was tempered with hate.

“If you say so, sir.”

“I
do
say so,” he said unpleasantly. “Mab is a sow’s name. But it suits you.”

She looked at the ground, drawing quick angry breaths.

“Put on your bodice!” he ordered, and she jumped to obey. He nodded toward Harrington. “This is Mr. Harrington. You will follow him to my home. He will assign your duties. Obey him to the letter, and he’ll beat you no harder than he beats the Negroes.”

She flinched, throwing Harrington a scared look that she tried to conceal. Garth turned on his heel and strode out of the yard. To his surprise, a loud shrill shout chased after him.

“I’ll not be your doxy!”

He swung around.

“Sir,” she added, as though to ameliorate what she’d shouted.

He stared at her in astonishment. Judas, the chit had conceit! Did she think him so hard up for a female that—it was laughable. But he was too tired and exasperated to laugh. He strode back to where she stood shaking and stared her down. Even in her terror, she managed a shaky whisper.

“I’ll be
no one’s
doxy, sir.”

He studied her with growing irritation. He wanted his bath, not a confrontation with this bag of bones.

“You’re to be a nursemaid,” he snapped. Her eyes widened. “You are to be nursemaid to an orphan who lives in my house. That is, if you’re not too stupid a sow to tend a child!”

Her shoulders stiffened. Her eyes dropped angrily to the ground.

“I had two o’ me own.”

“You will be nursemaid to a little boy. Treat him harshly, and I will beat you. Treat him too soft, and I will beat you twice as hard. Understood?”

She jumped.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered, but he wasn’t fooled by her seeming docility. He turned to Harrington, who was having trouble hiding a grin. Harrington knew McNeil never beat female servants.

“Take her home, Harrington. Before you let her into the house, burn those pigsty clothes and see to it that she bathes. I’ll not have cooties in my house.”

* * * *

He turned to go just as Mab Collins’s eyes flew up in horror.

“A all-over bath? Judas, Mary, Matthew! I’ll not do it. Twill be my death. You can’t make me, sir. I’m a Englishwoman. I know my rights.”

It was time to change tactics. Garth shrugged, nodding to Harrington.

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want the sow. The bargain is off. Call the jailer. Tie her to the post.”

“Ow, sir!” she screamed. “I’ll take the bath! I will!”

“Too late,” he threw out callously, turning on his heel and tramping down Nicholson Street.

Mab Collins flew after him. She trailed in his dust, begging, pleading. He paid scant attention, walking so fast that she had to run.

“Sir! I beg! Please! I’ll be a right good nursemaid! Why, sir, I can teach the child. I can read. And cipher.”

“Ha!”

“And I know my manners, sir. Please! I was taught lady-ways by a duchess.”

“Ha.”

“Well, she claimed to be a duchess at first, sir. Aboard ship, sir. She did, sir. The girl what taught me lady ways.”

He stopped in his tracks and swung around. The chit was a bigger liar than he’d bargained for. Perhaps it
would
be better to sell her off. Perhaps she’d be bad for Trent.

Sensing that her life was in his hands and being decided for good or ill, Mab Collins bowed her head, nervously clasping and unclasping her thin hands. She began to weep. Not ladylike tears, but great gasping sobs as though the tears had been dammed up for years.

He was moved, but clearly it wasn’t in his best interests to show it. When Harrington caught up to them, Garth said coldly, “Take her home. And tell her what we
do
to bondslaves who steal, run away, or tell lies about being taught by a duchess.”

Harrington nodded uncertainly, but made a passable pretense of certainty with his hearty, “Ay, ay, Cap’n.”

But when McNeil strode off, Harrington bolted after him for a few steps and whispered in his ear.

“Cap’n? What is it we do, sir? To bondslaves who do all them things?”

Garth grinned wearily.

“How in hell do
I
know? Make up something.”

Whatever Harrington told the homely woman must’ve been more outrageous than her own lie about keeping company with a duchess. For when he rounded the corner at York Street and glanced back over his shoulder, Mab Collins was following Harrington, meek as a lamb.

McNeil grinned. He wasn’t such a fool as to believe what he saw. The chit was not as easily cowed as she pretended.

* * * *

If he thought he’d left his vexations behind him on Francis Street, he was wrong. Inside the house, Raven waited. Lounging deep in a new Queen Anne chair, with polished new boots crossed upon a new ruby velvet footstool. Raven clasped a goblet of Madeira in one hand, two buns of minced chicken in the other. He was cheerfully gorging himself on what had been intended for McNeil’s own supper.

Raven burst into instant chatter. Ignoring him, McNeil strode to the sideboard in the dining room, wolfed the remaining bun, washed it down with Madeira and went upstairs for the warm bath that waited near the crackling fire in his bedchamber.

To his annoyance, Raven followed.

“Damn it, Raven, if you mean to share my tub too, you will have gone too far.”

Raven laughed cheerfully.

“I’ve already been in it. And thank you.”

The scum floating along the waterline of the brass tub confirmed it. McNeil stared sourly at it, then sighed, shucked boots and buckskins, and got in. The warm water carried away his temper along with the grime. He groped for the bar of lavender soap that Raven had left melting on the tub’s bottom. He scrubbed his hair and his body, only half-listening to Raven’s persistent chatter. He shaved in the tub, with Raven holding the mirror.

“So you see, Garth, it’s quite simple,” Raven went on enthusiastically. “You’ve only to sail up to Chestertown, seek out the Reverend Josiah Byng and buy Jane Brown’s indenture for me.”

The water whooshed as he stood and got out of the tub, toweling himself dry.

“No.”

“Damnation, Garth! Have you no brotherly feelings? I’m dying of love and you’ll do nothing to help me! I only ask you to buy her indenture for me so that the Tates will not find out. I can’t have Maryann knowing.”

Garth snorted, went to the wardrobe and began to dress for the ball.

“If you take a mistress, let me assure you, Raven, a wife always finds out.”

Raven followed him to the wardrobe.

“No, she won’t. You recall my telling you about the little house I bought for Jane? On Capitol Landing Road?” He shrugged boyishly. “Well, I bought it in
your
name. Garth.”

McNeil jerked around.

“Goddamn it to hell!”

Mildly vexed with Raven before, he was thoroughly vexed now.

“Brother, you have finally gone too far! What of
my
good reputation? Do you think I have no use for it?”

Raven wilted. But not totally. Raven grinned weakly.

“Well,” Raven tried, “you’re not married.”

“The hell I’m not! I’m betrothed. That’s just as binding.”

Raven’s eyes grew large, then narrowed, flashing with humor. “Not the baroness Vachon? You are not betrothed to Annette?”

McNeil fumed. He’d snapped out the news without thinking. Damnation and hellfire! Now he would have to entrust Raven with his secret.

“Not Annette, you idiot,” he snapped unwillingly. “Miss Eunice Wetherby. Cousin to the earl of Wetherby. I became betrothed to Eunice on my last sailing. In Amsterdam.”

Raven plunked down in a chair, whistling his surprise.

“Annette doesn’t know about it,” Garth admitted quietly. “No one knows yet. I trust I can count on
you
to keep your big mouth shut?”

Raven stared at him, still stunned as a gaffed fish pulled out of water. Again, Raven whistled in disbelief.

“We’ll count on each other,” Raven said, warming to the conspiracy. “I will keep your betrothal a secret from your mistress and you will keep my mistress a secret from my betrothed.”

Garth wrenched a ruffled shirt of cream silk from the wardrobe, jerked it on and tied the neckpiece with quick angry twists.

“Gallows humor,” he said sourly.

“But if you could help me buy Jane —” Raven started again.

“No.”

But no did not mean to Raven what it meant to others. He brushed it away like a gnat. “There is one additional small problem that you must help me with. Jane is not completely persuaded to become, my mistress.”

Garth snorted.

“Not
completely?”

Raven laughed self-consciously.

“Actually, Garth, she has said no.”

Garth stabbed his legs into brown brocade breeches, then drew on cream silk stockings and black shoes. He threw his brother a cynical look.

“Occasionally, Raven, ‘no’ means no.”

Raven brushed the argument aside. He sighed with longing. “If only you could see her, Garth, you would understand. She’s as beautiful as an angel. Her hair—God, her hair! It glows like the richest copper. And her eyes are incredible. They’re not quite blue, but they’re not quite green, either.”

Raven went on extolling the beauty of his intended mistress until Garth lost patience and sent him packing. His mood spoiled by Raven, he kicked the door shut behind his brother, found a cigar in the new enameled Persian box on the low cherry-wood table, dipped a sliver of kindling into the crackling fire, lit his cigar and sank into one of Annette’s new purchases. He propped his feet on the stool and smoked the cigar without tasting. Outside, twilight was descending, stealing light from the room and leaving behind only melancholy shadows.