JoAnn Wendt (28 page)

Raven’s chatter had set his teeth on edge. No. It had done more. It had unsettled him. He, too, had once known a girl like the one Raven described. A girl with red hair and incredible eyes. A girl whose sweetness sent the heart soaring.

He drew viciously on the cigar, and just as viciously spat out the biting smoke.

“Goddamn you, Raven,” he muttered.

Outside, the sun had set. Militia Day was finishing. A few drunken shouts still echoed from Francis Street. Dogs still barked, but hoarsely, as though they’d barked themselves out during the chaotic day. The oil lamps that fronted his brick house were being lit. Soft laughter drifted up as the scullery girl carried oil to the lamplighter and stood conversing with him.

He’d not sat and thought deliberately about Flavia in a long time. He’d tried to forget. When memories pressed in, he had made it a habit to throw himself into some sort of activity. Anything to bury the ache of loss. But today, egged into it by Raven’s inane chatter, he allowed himself to think about her. He remembered so much. She’d worn the scent of heather. Fresh and light as spring rain. He remembered the rabbit-quick beat of her heart as he had held her close. The gentle innocence of her voice as she’d declared her love for him. Her startled gasp when his touch upon her soft body had brought her a pleasure she hadn’t expected.

The old misery settled upon him like a pea-soup fog enveloping the
Caroline
at sea. His sails went slack. He sat motionless in the flickering firelight, his ship becalmed.

Lost. She was lost to him forever.

Before Flavia, he’d thought loss was simply a feeling. It wasn’t. Loss was a physical weight. Under its oppression he sank low in his chair, smoking. The air in the room smelled of cigar and of melancholy.

Abruptly he lunged out of the chair, slung the cigar into the fire, grabbed waistcoat and jacket and flung the door open with a bang.

Stomping down the stairs, he bellowed for his staff, bellowing Flavia out of his mind.

“Cook! Damnation, where’s my supper?” he thundered, though he knew good and well his supper waited on the sideboard. “Patsy! Come brush my jacket this instant or you’ll get the cat-o’-nine. Toad, bring the landau at once. Drive it to the front stoop. Trent! Where are you, you little scamp? Come kiss me good-bye!”

His household exploded. The furor of scampering, excited servants, and Trent trying to kiss him while stoutly imprisoning a meowing cat in his small arms, sent melancholy flying. He stood at the sideboard in reasonably good humor, devouring minced chicken buns while his jacket and the shoes on his feet were brushed. He downed a goblet of Madeira and was about to sprint for the landau when cook bustled in.

“Cap’n McNeil, sir? At the kitchen door, sir. A servant girl begs to speak with you.”

“Send her away,” he directed, leaving.

“Sir, she says she carries a letter of introduction.”

Garth shrugged his annoyance.

“Put the letter in the library. I haven’t time to read it now.”

“She won’t leave go of the letter, sir,” cook argued, following him to the door.

“Then the hell with her,” he said pleasantly, flinging the door open. “Good night, cook.”

“Good night, sir.”

* * * *

“Sir? Captain McNeil?” said cook. “The girl is back.”

McNeil looked up from his writing table in the library and scowled. He was in a foul mood this morning. His head pounded like ten devils. He’d drunk too much at the ball, smoked too many cigars, stayed up too late. His luck had soured at the gaming tables. He’d drawn an idiot partner for whist. Between them they’d left fifty pounds at the table. Further, it was rumored McNeil & McNeil would lose Governor Dinwiddie as a shipping client. The governor had not been amused by Raven’s artillery expertise on the muster field. He’d not been won over by Raven’s earnest explanation that Raven had thought the cow was a bull’s-eye target painted on sacking and tied to a hay bale in the distant field.

“A bull’s-eye target!” he mumbled to himself, ignoring cook, who still stood before him. “Raven is a certified lunatic.”

The night had gone from bad to worse. Concerned to play the role of prim, proper widow during Lord Dunwood’s visit to Williamsburg, Annette had shaken her head at Garth’s unspoken invitation to spend the night. Bidding him a cool, polite farewell, as though they were the merest of acquaintances, she’d tripped off on Lord Dunwood’s arm, going chastely to her own mansion near the Governor’s Palace on North England Street.

In front of his desk, cook sighed heavily.

“Shall I bring her in, sir? The servant girl? The girl with the letter?”

McNeil scowled. What in the devil was cook blathering about? He racked his brain.

He remembered. Something about a petition. Scowling blackly, he vowed to dispatch of the nuisance girl as swiftly as possible. Waiting, he stared around the room. The library seemed suddenly rough and utilitarian compared with what Annette had done in his other rooms.

The girl crept in like a timid mouse. Expecting a girl, McNeil was startled to see a child. She couldn’t be more than thirteen. Her face was white with fear. Against the pallor, childish freckles stood out like a spatter of red clay on a whitewashed wall.

“Give me the letter.”

She did so, shaking so badly that she dropped it twice before she got it to him. He broke the seal, opened the letter without interest and began to read.

Dear Captain Garth McNeil,

If ever you have known the joy of true love, honor the memory of that love by helping this girl.

One Who Beseeches You

He jerked his head up. He lashed the girl with a black look. What fool nonsense? Something copied from an almanac or a bad theatrical play?
He read the note again, stirring uneasily. Who would dare!

“You!” he accused. “You wrote this.”

The child blanched.

“I can’t write, sir,” she whispered. “Nor read.”

“Then, who!”

She swallowed, shaking visibly in fear.

“A man, sir. He said—”

“What man? Where?”

A tic jumped in her cheek muscle.

“A stranger, sir. ‘Twas on the road. Between Baltimore and Williamsburg, sir. He said—”

“He was gentry,” McNeil accused hotly. “The note is written without a single misspelling.”

Her eyes slid away. She swayed as if she might fall.

“I don’t know, sir—”

“Why did he send you to me?”

“He—he—said Captain McNeil would help me.”

McNeil lunged to his feet and strode to the window. Out on York Street, two boys rolled and chased a wood hoop as they made their way to parish school. A dog chased the hoop, too, yapping and growling at it as though it were alive.

He turned and eyed the girl with cold suspicion.

“Who are you?”

“Mary Wooster, sir.”

“And your trouble?”

The white face blanched even whiter. She threw him a terrified look, then bowed her head and stared at the floor.

“I’ve runned away, sir. From my indenture.”

“That is a crown offense,” he said flatly. “I cannot help you.”

Her shoulders curled forward in pathetic hopelessness. McNeil stared at the letter. He reread it. Then read it again. He was mystified. Who, among his acquaintances, would dare make such a demand of him? And refer to love! Annette? Raven? Ridiculous. He swung back at the child.

“Why did you run away?”

She shook her head.

“Did your master beat you?” he prompted.

Red color swam up into her face, drowning the freckles. She shook her head in the negative, still staring at the floor. McNeil's anger began to abate as he glimpsed her plight. It was the old story. Common to plantation life. King of all he surveyed, the plantation owner made himself the chief rooster.

“How old are you?” he asked more gently.

“Fifteen, sir,” she whispered.

“How long has your master been forcing you?”

She cringed in shame.

“I birthed a month ago,” she whispered, her voice scarcely audible. “When I was fourteen, sir—I birthed then, too.”

He choked.

“You went to the whipping post for bastardy?”

Too shamed to answer, the child let her cloak fall to the floor and tugged at the neck of her soiled dress, revealing a small patch of upper back.

McNeil sucked wind. The snakelike scars of the whip stood out in livid purple. She would be thirty years old before those scars disappeared, he estimated.

He strode to the window, threw it open and sucked in the clean, chill air of approaching winter. When he turned again, the child had retrieved her cloak and stood swathed in it, awaiting his judgment as though awaiting the gallows.

He went past her to the door and flung it open.

“Toad!” he bellowed. “Toad, the landau at once! You’re to drive me to Hampton. And God help you if you don’t make tracks and get me to Hampton at top speed. You’re to have me there before the
Hampton Belle
sails today to Barbados.”

Chapter 15

Elizabeth Simm scandalized all of Chestertown by ordering her wedding dress from the dressmaker eight days before the long-ailing Mrs. Gresham died. It was a shockingly expensive gown. Elizabeth paid for it in full upon ordering, paid with a tobacco draft written in Mr. Gresham’s own land.

The gossip had traveled on quick hot tongues.

“Ira Gresham grows senile!”

“That dark-haired chippy bewitched him!”

“Scandalous! And Mrs. Gresham not yet in her grave!”

“Taking a
bondslave
to wife.”

“Poor Mrs. Gresham. Her bed will have no chance to cool ‘ere Betsy Simm climbs into it!”

When the news had reached the Rose and Crown, where Jimmy Barlow and his cronies were gambling at dice, Jimmy Barlow had taken to the cup. He drank himself nearly senseless. Seizing a cudgel, he’d leaped drunkenly upon his horse and galloped down Water Street, smashing out every oil lamp that burned before Chester River mansions. He’d been caught and thrown into jail. The scandal had intensified when, at noon of the next day, Betsy Simm had marched boldly to the jail and had paid Jimmy Barlow’s fine with
another
tobacco voucher written by Mr. Gresham.

Gossips had had a field day, and Flavia was glad. Mary Wooster’s disappearance was forgotten. Even the schoolboys, who spent spare hours beating the bushes for Mary in hopes of claiming the capture reward, forgot her. With each day that passed, Flavia breathed easier. She had faith that if Mary had managed to reach Garth, Mary would have found a safe haven.

Meanwhile, Betsy’s scandal had gone on.

“The brazen chippy,” Mrs. Byng had summed up to a visiting friend, as Flavia served tea. “What Mr. Gresham sees in that slut, I cannot fathom. He quite spoils my plan. I meant to bring my sister from Philadelphia to wed Mr. Gresham. Prudence would’ve made Mr. Gresham a good Christian helpmeet. True, she’s lost a tooth or two. But she don’t limp much anymore. Not since she took my advice to eat honey for joint pain.”

The visiting friend had set cup into saucer with a startled click and a bewildered, “But Mrs. Gresham is still alive.”

“Well, she won’t be,” Mrs. Byng had snapped crossly, as Flavia passed the raisin cakes. “And Mrs. Gresham can blame it upon rhubarb. I advised her in the matter many years ago. ‘Have your cook boil your rhubarb two hours,’ I said. But, no. She
would
have it boilt only thirty minutes.”

Mrs. Byng’s lip curled in contempt.

“Well, there she lies, bedridden five years and lately spitting up blood. And there’s the Simm slut, planning to walk the aisle of the church with Mr. Gresham, bold as brass.”

“Disgusting,” the friend had murmured, biting into a raisin cake.

“Outrageous,” mumbled Mrs. Byng, chewing her cake and picking a fragment of nut out of her teeth with a fingernail.

Mrs. Gresham had grown worse. Throughout Kent County, black gowns and black suits were pulled from wardrobes and given stiff brushings. Mr. Gresham had sent to Annapolis for two hundred pairs of kid leather gloves, the appropriate gift for a rich planter to give funeral guests. He’d ordered a mourning ring, and it was reported that in a touching moment Mrs. Gresham herself had selected the lock of her hair to be cut off and sealed into her widower’s funeral ring as a badge of their eternal union.

This done, her affairs tidily in order, the poor lady had bidden an affectionate farewell to her husband, her children and her grandchildren. Easing into a deep unnatural sleep, she had lingered one more day, then passed.

Mrs. Byng was keen to attend the sumptuous two-day funeral feast, and flew into a temper when word came she was urgently needed in Philadelphia. Her sister had fallen and was lying in bed with a bad leg. Grumbling, Mrs. Byng clattered off in the church warden’s inferior one-horse chaise to catch the public coach that ran between Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Flavia nearly jumped for joy to see her go. But she was uneasy, too. Except for Neddy, she would be alone with the Reverend Byng.

But Mr. Byng spent funeral week at the Gresham plantation, fawning over the bereaved family. With both Byngs gone, Flavia reveled in the rare luxury of freedom. It was a freedom she’d never known. Always she’d been under someone’s domination: her parents, the duke, her indenture. Always she’d had responsibilities. As eldest of six daughters, she’d sensed early in life that she was expected to sacrifice herself for her younger sisters. She’d done so, obediently marrying the duke at fifteen.

But, freedom.

Freedom!

It was as heady as wine. Lighthearted, laughing breathlessly, she ran through the wintry, sparrow-picked fields for the sheer joy of running. She sang at her chores. She spoiled Neddy, letting him gorge on raisin cakes. She bundled up warmly and tramped to the low bluffs of the Chester River. She counted eleven ships under sail and told herself the finest and fastest was Garth’s. She pretended he stood at the wheel, his strong shoulders straining as he guided the ship, making her leap and race like the wind.

Nights, she sat by the fire reading and musing. She thought about Garth. She dwelt fully and indulgently upon her baby son, imagining his growth. He was no longer a baby. He was past two. Sturdy, handsome, adorable? Surely! And did he talk now? Did he know the names of animals? Was there someone he sweetly called Mama? The thought wrenched her, left her sick with unbearable yearning. Wherever he was – at Tewksbury Hall or in Germany as the duke had threatened the night of the birthday ball – she prayed that someone sweet and kind and loving was taking care of him.