Mood Indigo (9 page)

Whatever his thoughts, she knew she was part of them. There was a bond uniting the two of them; a bond that could not be broken; a bond that she herself could not adequately explain.

A cowbell jingled, startling her out of her reverie. The chill of nightfall crept over the land, and she took reluctant steps toward the front entrance. Already candlelight seeped from beneath the ivy-framed door to fan across the rounded cobblestones laid before it. All her valid reasoning vanished. She could match wits with the liveliest of minds at George Ill’s court; but how did one argue successfully with the simple, unyielding logic of a Quaker yeoman?

She pushed the door ajar to find him sitting on the stool before the hearth, which was cold with a banked fire. He did not look from the long jaeger rifle he cleaned. Next to him the betty lamp susp
ended from the stand cast flickering shadows and eddied smoke upward to soot the ceiling.

She closed the door behind her but moved no farther into the room. At last Ethan looked up, and the tallow’s light flared over the puckered burn on his cheek, lending a frightening appearance to h
is otherwise pleasing countenance. “You’ve been out walking?”

“I—” Her hand tightened on the door’s hasp behind her. Better to broach her request in the light of day. Not here, alone in the semidark with a man whom she still did not know despite having worked for him a full month. “It was hot . . . and I’ve finished all my work.”

She stepped past him, making for her cubicle. “Stay,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder to find his dark eyes fastened on her.

“Join me, mistress.” He flung out a hand, indicating the rocker opposite the hearth from him. “I grow lonely of my company.”

Warily she advanced further into the dimly lit room to take a seat in the proffered rush-bottomed chair. Sometimes she sensed that the man actually enjoyed baiting her. Too, she suspected the lout was not as slow-witted as he seemed.

Sitting stiffly, her spine never touching the chair’s back, as she had been taught, she folded her roughened hands. Uneasily she searched for something to say.

The Quaker bent his head over the firearm, and he did not seem so formidable now. In fact, that side of his profile was almost handsome. His legs were stretched out before the hearth, his jackboots nearly touching her skirts. She watched his hands deftly work the cleaning rod in and out of the flintlock’s grooved bore. “I thought you didn’t believe in the use of weapons?”

He never lifted his head. “I don’t believe in violence. But there is the necessity of game for food, is there not? And the necessity of protection from the snake that slithers across yonder floor?”

She twisted in the chair in time to see King George bound from a darkened corner to caper about the slender, serpentine form. Unheeding, the snake continued its slow, writhing progress across the plank flooring toward the small chink in the clay-mortared logs.

“A harmless creature, the grass snake,” the big man commented and went back to his work.

Her hands gripped the rocker’s arms, but she managed to say casually, “You would have me talk. I—”

“I would have thy company.”

“I want to buy back my indenture papers,” she said baldly.

He looked up, then set the rifle and cleaning rod on the rock hearth. “With what, mistress?”

“I will repay you—within the fortnight. You have my pledge.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be difficult to replace thee.”

She leaned forward, her temper sparking. “A lie! The linen is badly washed, the food more often than not scorched, the spinning a shambles, the candles sputter and die!”

He grinned then. “As I said, it would be difficult to replace thee.”

Her fist slammed down on the chair’s arm. “You are cruel!”

He rose and stretched, displaying a muscle-roped body that needed no padding as did the courtiers of Buckingham House. “Thou doesn’t know the cruelty men are capable of, mistress.”

“Lady! Lady Jane! Now release me from my servitude, or—or I shall—”

“Run away?” he asked, reaching for the walnuts in the basket on the side tabl
e. “I’ve warned thee of the penalty—a whipping, which I think thee heartily needs.”

Her chin tilted in a characteristically stubborn gesture. “If you can find me.”

“If thee can survive the wilderness. Listen—hear the cry of the lynx? His jaws will tear thy soft flesh and crush thy bones as easily as this.” The man’s powerful knuckles effortlessly cracked a nut’s hard shell. “And then there are the Indians. Not all of the tribes are friendly, mistress.”

She sprang from her chair. “You do not frighten me!” But she knew he was right. Still, she did not give up. Instead she shifted her tactic, as a general would a military maneuver. Sophistry and charm would yet win the day over this backwoodsman!

Hands clasped demurely before her, she crossed to stand before him. From beneath the tangle of lashes her eyes beseeched his unyielding gaze. “You are in love with your neighbor’s wife, yet you cannot have Susan. Do you deny it?”

If black-flecked eyes could darken, his did. “How does thee come by this knowledge?”

“Oh, Ethan,” she said softly, “you cannot hide such a strong feeling as love.” She could not bring herself to touch that scarred portion of his face and, instead, laid a helpless hand against his cambric shirt. “No more than I can.”

One auburn brow arched over the outer corner of his eye. “No more than thee can—what?”

“Why, help loving you, master.” Her lids lowered, as surely Susan’s must when she was flustered. “It is torture for me to remain here—to see you every day, watch you climb the stairs to your bedroom every night—and yet know you love Susan. That is why I must leave. I am promised to another man, and—”

“And what?”

“And since you love Susan”—her words faltered beneath his dark gaze—“and since there can never be anything between us . . .”

A slow grin crooked his mouth. “My love for Susan is no reason to hold back the desire I and thee may feel for each other.”

“But ... but you’re a Quaker. They—”

“I am a man, first, mistress.” His fingers caught the tapered hand she laid on his chest, and his lips planted a warm kiss in her callused palm.

She jerked it away. “I am betrothed, sir!”

“Thee is my servant, mistress, and I thy master.” He grinned openly now. His gaze perused the hollow of her throat, laid bare by the open collar. “And I wish for thee to warm my bed.”

Her hand came up, but his was quicker, halting her intended slap in mid-arc. “You swine!”

“Careful, or I shall be tempted to use the hickory stick on thy lovely back.”

“I will never warm your bed!”

“You will—now.”

Something about the eyes, the laughter she saw lurking in their depths, eased her fears. “You would not make me?”

“Nay, mistress.” He released her hand. “It is but the warming pan I speak of. The nights grow cold.”

Despite her recent anger, dimples creased the unhealthy hollows beneath her cheekbones. “My virtue has been spared,” she said wryly, “but I think my pride has been dented.”

“Thee has too much pride, mistress.”

She turned away from his woodsman’s scrutiny. “Not enough. Or else I should not have lowered myself to the status of a servant.”

“A servant’s position is not without pride.”

“How would you know?” she asked bitterly.

The walnut he cracked made the only noise in the room. Then, “Because I was an indentured servant when I came to the colonies.”

She heard her bitterness echoed in his voice. She looked over her shoulder. “You jest.”

“Scarcely. I came to the colonies on a convict ship.” Her breath whooshed down her throat. She faced him fully. “You were a convict?”

“Aye, mistress.” He passed by her. “Now, about warming my bed . . .”

A convict! Dazed, she followed him as he took a candle from the stand and walked to the pitch-black well behind the stairs. No longer d
id she feel so safe. When he retrieved the long-handled pan and passed it to her, she almost jumped.

Above the tallow’s light, she saw his sober expression. “I would not harm thee, mistress.”

“But you will not let me go, will you?”

“Nay, that I will not.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he two men shared the same hair color, though the twenty-nine-year-old Ethan’s was a deeper, darker red and the other man, at thirty-eight, was graying at the temples. They were both backwoodsmen and former riflemen with the elite Virginia Militia. And they also shared the same political viewpoint. At that moment the raw-boned Patrick Henry sat before Ethan’s desk, writing furiously.

Ethan hitched his le
g up on the casement of his bedroom window, where he could watch Jane as she hung the freshly washed linen on the hemp stretched between two live oaks. When the delegate for Hanover County had appeared on his doorstep, Ethan introduced him to Jane as a merchant interested in the indigo crop.

Ethan did not fully trust his maidservant. He had no doubt that she was a Tory. But was she also a spy? Her father could have chosen
to plant her here as an intelligence mole for the Tory agents in Virginia. But what father would subject his daughter to such hardship? Lord Wychwood, possibly.

Ethan recalled the grains of sand he found on his desk top two days earlier. To whom had she been writing? A Tory agent? A frown furrowed Ethan’s broken nose. Would she have reported Bram as a zealous rebel who needed watching? And how would she have smuggled her letter out? With an unsuspecting Susan? A reason, perhaps, for him to ride over and question Susan. No, an excuse to see her, to enjoy the comfort of her quiet laughter and gentle companionship.

His lids narrowed as an afternoon breeze buffeted Jane Lennox’s skirts, silhouetting her body’s deep indentations and delightful curves. Perhaps he was wrong about the pampered young woman who was now his bondswoman. Perhaps the letter was bound for this Terence she had spoken of during her illness.

“Ethan!”

Ethan looked back at the self-taught lawyer who, though he spoke with a Piedmont twang, was known as the Son of Thunder for his electrifying orations in the House of Burgesses. “I’m sorry—did thee say something, Patrick?”

“Twice now.” The delegate laid the quill down. “I’ve finished. I think everything of import that took place at the Continental Congress is on those pages. Congress has voted to support Massachusetts if Britain tries to use force. It’s best you warn the Committees of Correspondence across Virginia to start preparing for war in case of British attack on other Massachusetts towns.”

Ethan grunted. “War is already here, Patrick. Last week in Williamsburg a Negro was tarred and feathered for expressing Tory sentiments—some of Uriah Wainwright’s vigilante work.”

“Fanatics like him only hurt our cause.” Henry stretched his lanky arms above his head. Observing his friend’s preoccupation, he
said gravely, “The Sons of Liberty in Boston report another spy out of Gage’s nest, Ethan. Goes by the code name of Ahmad. Your dispatch carriers operating between the Northern and Southern colonies should be made aware of this spy.”

Ethan grinned. “I’m beginning to think that serving with the Virginia Militia is easier than this drawing-room diplomacy of yours.”

“But not as valuable. What you did in London—learning the names of the Tories entrenched in the colonies’ governmental assemblies—proved your worth to the Committee of Correspondence.”

Henry rose, clanging on the desk the tip of the scabbard beneath his coat’s skirt, and crossed to stand next to Ethan at the window. He laid a companionable hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “In Williamsburg, Ethan, there is a welter of
skullduggery, rancor, and gossip. Would you think about finding a reason to go to the capital more often?”

Ethan’s black eyes turned to the window again, seeking the feminine figure below. Come General Assembly and Public Times, dare he leave her here to create her own political intrigue? Dare he take her with him? Despite her present state of unattractiveness, he could imagine the scandal that would arise in Williamsburg at the idea of a man with so young a maidservant living in the same house. Immorality would be charged from the Wren college building at one end of Duke of Gloucester all the way to the capitol at the other; hardly conducive to his Quaker’s image or the low profile he needed to keep.

Jane Lennox was going to be nothing but trouble for him.

“That is the Tory maid you bought?” Henry asked, following the direction of his friend’s gaze.

“Aye.”

“Can she be trusted, Ethan? There’s Dickey Lee and Daniel Franks and the others you are in contact with to think about.”

Ethan fixed a sardonical eye on the lawyer. “Should I tar and feather her as the more conservative Whigs would do? Or brand her with a T, as the rabid Uriah Wainwrights of the colonies prefer?”

“You could marry her,” Patrick said, following Ethan’s gaze. “That would solve any problems.”

He laughed ruefully. “That would only be the start of my problems, Patrick.”

No, his wife would be sweet-tempered like Susan. Small and soft, instead of tall, taut, and slender; obliging instead of distracting and unpredictable; submissive where Jane Lennox challenged. Fragile and loving and gentle. Not a contentious shrew.

CHAPTER TWELVE

P
osing as an ordinary surveyor in brown clothes and a red handkerchief about his neck, the spy Ahmad left Boston on foot. He went by way of Charlestown and passed through Cambridge, a nice town, it seemed, with a college built of brick. The weather was cold but dry for October, and he made good time.

With his surveyor’s instruments as a ruse, badly rusted though they were, he made a pretense at charting when he was actually drawing road maps and terrain sketches. And all the while he watched and listened. In the course of five days he counted twenty wagonloads of flour that passed from Marblehead to Worcester. The rebels were laying in supplies of food and munitions. Tools were being made at Menotomy and pickaxes at Mystic. Obviously the skilled American axeman was a colonial product, not a European import.

Gage wanted roads and distances from town to town, as well as the situation and nature of the country—the streams, woods, hills, defensible places in towns, and local supplies of food, forage, straw, and extra horses.

And most of all, he wanted the mood of the people reported.

Ahmad reached Watertown without being suspected and, before making the last leg of his trip, paused for dinner at the crowded tavern of Jonathan Brewer. The agent quietly took a seat at the board in the taproom and mentally reviewed his report while he waited for the young Negro servantwoman to see to him.

Gage was not goin
g to be happy. Plymouth, Marblehead, Worcester—the towns could easily turn out fifteen thousand minutemen. The rebels already had thirty-eight field guns, most of them at Salem and Concord, along with twelve brass cannon.

The spy’s attention was drawn back to the dark-paneled, smoke-congested tavern room. The owner, Brewer, and a dozen or so men, mostly farmers, were gathered about the kegs at the bar, whose rear wall shelved pewter tankards, salt-glazed pitchers, and long-stemmed glassware. The lowered voices, deep in conversation that mixed with laughter, aroused Ahmad’s suspicion, for he was quickly learning that innkeepers were often retired militia officers.

The sentence fragment, “ . . . adequate supply of tar and feathers laid in for anyone suspected of harboring lobsterbacks,” brought a tightening to his lean lips. Whigs. He had walked into a rebel nest.

The neglect of Gage! The general had developed no spy system at all. There
should be some way for Tory sympathizers to identify themselves. And there should be a dossier on the location of Tory homes when the need to go underground arose. There was neither a code nor cipher, and no one other than himself who knew how to make them.

When the young Negr
ess, large of hip but with a gazelle-like grace, came to his table, he ignored the wide white grin she flashed. “Good cheer to yuh, massa,” she purred, eyeing his tawny locks. “What’s yo’ want?”

He perused the bill of fare. “Planked shad—and grog to drink.” No patriot ever ordered tea.

“Yo’ shor that’s all,” she persisted. Here obviously was a man who would know how to handle her . . . who understood the ways of a woman . . . who wouldn’t bide by that “unnatural stuff” the white folks’ Bible frowned on.

“I’m—” He broke off as he saw the chocolate-brown eyes flare. His gaze followed hers to his set of maps. Most people would expect them to be surveyor’s maps. But the uneducated woman, in t
hat atmosphere of general suspicion and with all the talk of spies and tar and feathering, she had jumped to the right conclusion—that he was a spy. He could see it in the way her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Yassuh, massa, I’ll see to yo’ order.”

Unobtrusively he rose and followed her sashaying hips as she hurried outside to the kitchen in back of the tavern. In the dark his silent footsteps on the marl path gave no warning until he caught up with her. By then it was too late. He gagged her mout
h from behind with the red handkerchief. The edge of his left hand chopped the woman’s windpipe. He let her slip gently down on all fours. With a gurgled gasp, her hand reached for her throat.