JoAnn Wendt (7 page)

McNeil’s head spun.

The young man fell to his knees. “Please, sir, I be fearful scared. I’ve runned from my post. Footmen what does favors for His Grace’s steward, them footmen has a way of disappearin’. Please, sir, take me to the New World?”

Garth scowled, scarcely hearing the boy’s plea. He tried to think, tried to make his pickled brain work. For some reason the duke wanted all eyes on the
Caroline.
Why? His meeting with sweet Flavia could not have been the reason. Their few moments in the garden had been chaste and short, a lifetime too short.

As he stood thinking, Annette dismissed the boy, sending him to the
Caroline.
Garth shook his head to clear it.

“McNeil, wake up!” Annette scolded. “There is not a moment to waste. The duke is sparing no effort to have the
Caroline
impounded. Thus far, he’s not been successful.”

She swept through the room, muttering after his boots. When she found the boots, she hurled them at him.

“Get dressed. I have ordered the baron’s steward to do everything possible to delay impoundment. But it won’t last forever. Your first mate, Mr. Jenkins, has obtained clearance from the harbor master. The
Caroline
sails on tonight’s tide, before Tewksbury can do further mischief—”

She broke off, breathless. Garth drove a foot into a boot, listing a little as he lost his balance. Damn! He was captain of a ship first, a man in mourning second. The
Caroline
was his responsibility. He would see her safely to Virginia. He owed that much to his stockholders. After that, he could drown himself in rum, drink himself into the very oblivion that held Flavia.

As he wrenched open the door, the baroness flung herself against it. Twisting under his arm, she placed her hands upon his chest in warning.

“McNeil, you
shan’t
leave on your own two feet.
It would mean instant capture.”

Stupidly, thinking slowly because of the alcohol, he stared down at her urgent face. Her eyes were startled starlings.

“Then how?”

She petted his grizzled cheek, touching it gingerly as one touches an animal that both charms and frightens.

“You shall be carried aboard in a wardrobe trunk belonging to the Baroness Annette Vachon.”

“What!”

“The Baroness Vachon sails to America to inspect her husband’s land holdings. She travels with a dozen large trunks. No
one—
magistrate or harbor master—would have the audacity to search those trunks.”

He stared at her. For the first time in many weeks, a thin smile strained over his lips. He was baffled. Amazed. To think this cheerful titled wench had courage enough, brains enough, to arrange such a deception.

She sensed his thoughts and bridled.

“Jackanapes! There is more to me than tail and tit. As you would know if you took the trouble to find out.”

She pushed past him in a huff, and McNeil found himself swaying like a stripling tree in a hurricane. To steady himself, he reached for her arm. Coordination failed him. He ended up with a handful of silk skirt. He was surprised when she did him the kindness of not pulling away.

“Annette,” he said softly. “You place yourself in danger for my sake. Why?”

She colored slightly. For a moment, her brassy confidence wavered. She shrugged the moment away and eyed him boldly.

“Because you amuse me, McNeil,” she said crisply. “Were you thrown into Newgate Prison, darling, I should be deprived of my amusement, should I not?”

Her retort hung in the air, brittle as ice in January, and as much a lie. McNeil did not know what to say. But even in his rum fog, he knew he would despise himself if he deceived this gallant woman.

“I don’t love you,” he said bluntly.

In a snappish gesture, she jerked her skirt from his hand. “‘Love’!” she said scornfully. “Every woman knows she must choose between love and amusement. I find amusement the wiser investment.” She granted him a dazzling smile. “It is far less costly, is it not?”

He grinned. A weary, soul-wracked grin. So, she understood. Knew the limits of their relationship and would not complain when more was not forthcoming. He found building in him the urge to fondle her chin, as one fondles a dear relative. He did so, and earned her ire for it.

“Damnation, McNeil!” she said, slapping away his hand. “I may be old enough to be your mother, but may I roast in hell if I let you treat me like it.
Now,
come. Pay attention. Let us tend to the details of your departure.”

A quarter of an hour later, the baroness threw a gray cloak over her silks and swished to the door.

“Oh,” she called back in her artless way, “I near forgot to tell you. The queerest happenstance, McNeil. That dull little duchess of Tewksbury? She’s died of the smallpox. Had you heard?”

McNeil sucked wind. His head roared. Something violent smashed about in his ribcage.
She’s dead, McNeil. Accept it. The kindest thing you can do for Flavia is to pretend you never knew her.

He took a deep breath.

“No,” he said with deadly calm. “I hadn’t heard.”

Chapter 5

“Try ‘nuther sip, dearie. There, that’s a luv.”

Flavia’s throat was as parched as a desert. She desperately craved the water that someone seemed to be holding to her cracked lips. But she couldn’t swallow. The water trickled down her chin.

“Don’t be wastin’ it, luv. Little’s enough yer ration on a ship.”

The cup was offered again. Flavia struggled to swallow. She was disoriented. Her head was spinning. Every bone and muscle in her body ached. Her eyelids were leaden. Try as she might, she couldn’t force her eyes open.

There was the roaring sound that never ceased, and she felt bruised, as though her bed were flinging her from bedpost to bedpost.

Where am I? Oh, my throat! Why does it burn like fire? And my bed—why does it buck and pitch so? If I could have something hot to drink—send the maid—

“Please,” she croaked in an unused voice, “I want my tea.”

A cackle of laughter hit her full in the face along with a gust of breath well laced with garlic.

“Her wants tea!” the garlic voice crowed. Flavia flinched as the laughter cackled forth again. This time, there was an answering echo of snickers and jibes.

Flavia tried to open her eyes. They were gummy, stuck. As though she’d slept weeks.

“D’ye make me yer servant, luv? Step ‘n’ fetch yer tea, do I?” Laughter and garlic breath hit Flavia. She flinched. “Even be I of a mind t’do it, luv, I cain’t. ‘Tis Wednesday. Tuesday and Satiddy be hot food day. No, luv, you’ll make do w’ hardtack and water. Like the rest of us.”

While the words were rough as chopped kindling, they were delivered without rancor. Even in her delirium, Flavia had sensed the woman’s goodwill. Her racing heart slowed to a gallop. She rubbed her eyes open.

Slowly, things came into focus. She was in a darkish place, a cubbyhole. There was barely space to sit up. Similar cubbyholes honeycombed the strange room. Hammocks hung everywhere. The only light was sunlight from a square grating in the low ceiling. The pitching room vibrated with noise. Babies cried. Men argued and swore. Someone was reading aloud in German. Female voices whined in complaint. But worse than the noise and the terrifying feeling of being packed in like herrings in a box was the smell. The odor of vomit, unwashed bodies and unemptied slop jars assailed her quivering nostrils. She fought the impulse to gag. Instead, she shuddered.

“Where am I?” she begged the woman who hunkered near on the bunk. “Where—what—”

She tried to sit up. The woman firmly pushed her back against the thin, rancid-smelling mat covering the slats of the bunk.

“Yer still tiddly, luv. Rest a mite.”

Flavia’s head spun woosily from the effort to get up. She fought fainting.

“Please—where am I?”

Instantly, she was enveloped in garlic breath and laughter.

“Why, yer ‘board the
Schilaack.
Bound for the New World. ‘N lucky to be, dearie. The cap’n, he balked at signin’ you on. He don’t hold w’ rum drinking. Specially in females.”

Flavia blinked, trying to comprehend.

Slowly, the speaker came into focus. She was a thin young woman, stringy-haired and cheerfully unkempt. Her lean face exuded a peasant strength. Her cheap serge bodice was grease-spotted and open to the waist. An infant sucked at one flaccid breast, a whimpering girl of about five clung to her skirts, jealously watching the baby feed, and making furtive snatches at the breast. The woman permitted the behavior for a bit, then lost patience and smacked the child.

“Whu—whu
—
whaaaaa,”
wailed the fair-haired little girl, and the woman comforted her by giving her a moment’s suck.

Flavia’s head whirled. She couldn’t take it in. Aboard a ship? It wasn’t possible. She pulled herself up and sat holding her careening head.

“Please. There’s some mistake. Take me to the person in charge. I—I’m the duchess of Tewksbury—”

The young woman burst into a delighted cackle.

“And I’m the Virgin Queen, luv.”

Flavia panicked. She had to make her listen. Had to make someone listen.

“Please! I
am
the duchess. If you’ll find the duke for me—”

She was cut off by riotous laughter from a motley assortment of the curious who’d begun to gather at the bunk. The young woman laughed so heartily that her breast jumped from the child’s mouth. The child screamed in anger, and the deprived baby shrieked with her. Into this mindless, madhouse cacophony boomed a deep, steadying voice.

“Here now, Mab Collins. What’s amiss, wife?” The largest, homeliest man Flavia had ever seen blocked out the room as he squatted beside the bunk. Flavia shrank from him, but the little girl dove straight into his enormous arms. Even the baby flailed its tiny hands, cooing happily.

Still laughing, Mab Collins wiped her streaming eyes and said, “Obadiah Collins, meet the duchess of—of—” She burst into new laughter.

Flavia was as offended as she was bewildered.

“Tewksbury,” she said tightly. “I am duchess of Tewksbury.”

Mab Collins tittered behind a corner of her apron, but Obadiah Collins did not laugh. He swung kind glowing eyes at Flavia, then shook his head at his wife.

“ 'Tisn’t the Lord’s way, Mab Collins, to tease a poor sick lass,” he chided gently. His ingenuous gaze traveled back to Flavia. With a quiet shyness that was incongruous to his size and appearance, he said, “Sister, true happiness be found in the Methody way. Forsake strong drink. Turn to the Lord, Sister. There’s naught He’ll not forgive ye, if ye’ll but repent.”

Flavia was stunned. It was like waking up in another world. Her mind went spinning, clutching at memories, clutching at anything that might serve as anchor. She could remember nothing past the night of the ball. Oh! Garth McNeil! There’d been his kisses. Rapture so exquisite she’d never dreamed such happiness could exist between man and woman. Then, slipping through the night and into Tewksbury . . . sleep . . . morning... the cup of chocolate. . . the world spinning out from under her. . .

“Please!” she begged the big man. “I
must see
the person in charge. There’s been a mistake.”

Mab Collins tittered.

“On the Sabbath, luv. After prayers. That be the
only
day the cap’n tends to the whinin’ ‘n’ caterwaulin’ of bondslaves.”

“Bondslaves?”

Flavia froze, her mind rejecting the incredible thought that was beginning to build.

Obadiah Collins frowned lovingly at his wife. “‘Tis a poor way to state it, Mab Collins. Indentured servants we are, and proud to be. ‘Tis nothing dishonorable, exchangin’ a few years’ honest work for ship passage to a land of milk and honey.”

Flavia stared at the couple blankly. Her heart thudded in her throat. She fought acceptance of the incredible thought. Surely the duke had not—surely no man could be so cruel—

Mab Collins patted her husband.

“Obadiah’s indenture will be short, as he’s a cabinetmaker. Cabinetmakers, they’s rare as hens’ teeth in the New World. The cap’n will sell Obie for four years, plus one year for the babes’ passage.” She shrugged the baby to her breast. “I be set to serve six year as kitchen drudge.” She threw her husband a proud look. “ ‘Course Obie will buy out my indenture soon’s he be a freeman and layin’ by cash.”

She cocked her head curiously at Flavia.

“How long’s yer indenture, dearie?”

Flavia sank back upon the smelly mat, her eyes filling with tears that smarted like fire as they trickled down the chapped, neglected skin of her face. So she and Garth had been discovered in the garden... the duke had been told. Nothing else could have inspired so cruel a vengeance.

“Yer indenture,” Mab prodded impatiently. “How many year?”

Flavia closed her eyes, closed them as though to shut out all memory of things that could never be again. Garth McNeil . . . her baby son . . . her family . . .

“I don’t know,” she whispered desperately. “I don’t know!”

* * * *

“Seven years!”

Flavia’s anguished outcry was swallowed up in the sounds of winter wind whistling through the rigging, winter swells hammering the ship’s wooden hull. The
Schilaack
pitched, plunging into a particularly wicked trough between waves.

Flavia went pitching forward. Her chapped red hands flew out. She caught herself against the captain’s writing table, which was pegged to the deck. She hung on while the
Schilaack
righted itself, bucking skyward with a long sucking roar.

For the offense of touching his table, she earned the Dutchman’s scowl. But she was beyond caring. Three weeks in the hellhole that served as the indentureds’ quarters had deadened her sensitivity. The weeks had been an eternity of seasickness, black despair, and of waiting her turn to speak to this stern, unfeeling tyrant.

And now to be told seven years!

It can’t be,
she thought, paralyzed with shock.

It can’t.

Seven!

Why, I shall be old before I’m free again!

And my baby—a grown boy!

Aghast at the terrible perfection of the duke’s punishment, Flavia could only stare blankly at the hardened Dutchman who was holding court on deck, dispatching of petitioners with an alacrity that bespoke his contempt of the indentured.