Patricia Rice (34 page)

A commotion on the stairs outside the parlor drew
their attention. A moment later, a servant threw open the double doors
and made a deep obeisance. “Master Thomas Montague and Lady Faith
Henrietta Montague, milords, milady.”

Lady Carlisle gasped and held her hand to her breast
as the roguish Thomas entered with a demure young woman in dove-gray
gown and modest bonnet. Edward glared thunderously. But it was the old
marquess’s approval they sought, and Mountjoy’s sharp gaze softened to
one of relief as the girl made a dutiful and graceful curtsy.

“Welcome home, granddaughter. It is good to see you at last.”

Thomas smoothly accepted the congratulations and
answered the eager questions that followed. He smugly tucked his
newfound cousin’s arm through his and relished the feeling of the shoe
being on the other foot for a change as he offered all the evidence his
family could possibly require to verify his cousin’s identity.

***

“Word is, he’s in high circles now, rubbing elbows
with the Quality. I don’t know his lay, but it’s payin’ well if he can
keep up with the likes of them. You needn’t worry ’bout Jack, Faith.
He’s a right one.” Toby tried to reassure her as he quaffed his ale and
watched her polish the high table in the taproom. It was early afternoon
and there was none about but themselves.

Faith didn’t even attempt to smile. She turned from
the table to the row of pewter mugs. “That’s nice, Toby. And what are
you doing these days?”

Toby watched her busy hands with something akin to
despair. Faith wasn’t Faith anymore, but some scullery maid named Alice.
Before long, she would begin blending in with Whitehead’s dingy
woodwork. He didn’t know how to change things, but putting a bullet in
Jack’s back probably wouldn’t help.

“I’m just round and about. With winter coming, maybe
I ought to take up my brother’s offer and go to Virginia if it’s as
warm there as he says. Want to go with me?” Toby had been trying for
weeks to get up the courage to ask this. Jack’s fancy man of business
had urged it, and even offered to pay him to persuade Faith, but it
wasn’t the money that made him ask.

Faith didn’t answer. She stared at the mugs as she polished them to a high gleam.

It was early November, almost a year since she had
met Morgan. It seemed a lifetime, and then again, it didn’t seem long
enough. Going home to face the empty cottage each night had become an
ordeal she found more and more difficult to face. At first she had done
so eagerly, hoping against hope to find Morgan there waiting for her.

After more than two months, it was obvious even to
her that he didn’t plan to return. With the weather turning bad, she had
taken to saddling and riding Dolly to the inn every day. It would be a
simple enough matter to leave the mare in the stable and take one of the
upstairs rooms for herself and not go back at all.

The front door creaked in the empty corridor outside
the taproom. Whitehead had gone into the village and his wife was in
the kitchen with the cook and the new tavern maid. Molly had left for
London soon after she sold her babe to a couple who couldn’t have
children. That left only Faith and Toby to man the front rooms, and
Faith didn’t deal with customers if she could avoid it.

Toby frowned and nodded toward the room where the
kegs were kept. “Go on in there. I’ll see what they want and call Mrs.
Whitehead for you.”

Faith hesitated, then did as told. She had learned
caution these last months, and she suspected there might be extra reason
for caution now. She stepped into the storage room and listened as the
stranger or strangers spoke to Toby.

“Where’s Whitehead?” The voice spoke with authority, although the accent held a definite cockney note to it.

“To town. If you’re needin’ a room, I’ll fetch his missus.”

“Just give me an ale. You live in these parts?”

Faith smiled at the wary tone Toby adopted. She had
heard that cautious tone often enough. The men that frequented the
Raging Bull had reason to avoid questions, and they did so adroitly.
Unlike their London brethren, they were not given to selling information
to the law. The last one who had tried that had mysteriously
disappeared, never to be heard from again.

“For a piece,” Toby answered evasively, drawing the requested drink.

“You remember a gentry mort who worked here a while back? What was her name?”

Faith felt the bottom drop out of her stomach, and
the unusual coldness of Toby’s reply was indicative of his nervousness.
“You must be thinkin’ of somewhere else. Ain’t no gentry in these parts,
and no one ever mistook Molly for gentry.”

“Molly? No, that ain’t the name. Alice, she was. I
remember now. Alice. Went to London with Black Jack, if I remember
rightly. Pretty thing, wasn’t she?”

Standing in the darkness of the closet, Faith nearly
succumbed to a wave of dizziness. Why would anyone be looking for her?
And under that name? It couldn’t be her family. Why would the law be
looking for Alice Henwood?

There was only one reason Faith could think of, and
the memory of a black night and a gunshot and a fallen man came back to
haunt her. She had blacked the memory out, refusing to think of it, and
Morgan had spoken of it no more, but it couldn’t go away entirely. She
had killed a man. She held her hand to her spinning head and sat down
abruptly.

Toby sent the man on his way, but when Faith didn’t
immediately reappear, he went around the bar to find her. She was
sitting on a keg, holding her head. He crouched down beside her and took
her hand. “Faith? He’s gone. Everything’s all right.”

Faith’s hand fell to her lap and cradled her abdomen as if she were about to be ill. “Jack isn’t coming back, is he?”

Toby clenched his fingers into his palms. “Not
likely, lass. He’s doin’ the best thing for you. Them that he’s with
would use you in turn if he let them. It’s not a life for the likes of
you.”

And it wasn’t the life for a child. Faith clenched
her teeth and held her chin up to keep the tears from falling. God had
punished her once for living in sin, and He had punished Morgan for his
life of crime. She didn’t know if she was married in God’s eyes now, but
she had done as well as she could. She had a name and a piece of paper
that gave this child she was carrying a father.

Morgan had done his job well. Had he gone to the
gallows, there would still be a part of him to live on. He might go to
the gallows yet. She would never let his son know of it. His son would
know only of the proud man who had lost his home and died earning it
back. He would have the father that Morgan could have been.

“How often do ships go to Virginia, Toby?”

Toby stared at her in mixed relief and dismay. The
voyage terrified him, but for Faith he would sail the seven seas. He
rose and pulled her up with him. “I’ll find out, then, lass. You go home
and wait for me.”

Miles Golden had given Toby a bank draft in Faith’s name, and coins enough to pay their passage, but Faith wouldn’t touch them.

When the time came to leave, she carried her small
horde of hard-earned money and rode Morgan’s mare. It was bad enough
that she rode a horse purchased with stolen money and wore gowns from
the same source. She would start out in the New World with only honest
wages.

Toby held his tongue and shook his head after they
arrived in Portsmouth, and Faith argued the ship’s captain into taking
the mare in exchange for their passage. Having no knowledge of the cost
of the journey, Toby couldn’t decide if the deal were a fair one or not,
but the tears in Faith’s eyes as she said her farewells to the horse
were enough to make a man weep.

He had reason enough for second thoughts in all the weeks that followed.

***

Faith groaned and turned green as the ship hit
another swell. Even the fact that Toby had just arrived to tell her that
land had been sighted wasn’t sufficient to ease the churning of her
insides. The brazier barely heated the cold and damp from the tiny
cabin, and the weevily bread and watered soup that had been their fare
this past week made her ill just to think of. Huddled in her blanket,
Faith turned and retched over the chamber pot and wished Toby and the
rest of the world to hell.

Perhaps God hadn’t thought her sufficiently
punished. Perhaps she should not have taken the mare or the gowns, but
left the cottage as she had arrived. As another wave of illness swept
over her, Faith knew that to be impossible. She wasn’t the same as she
had arrived. She had to give the child what few advantages she could.

The error had been in leaving in December. The
winter seas had been miserable. She hadn’t seen the deck since they set
sail. She was being punished of a certainty, but only for her stupidity.

As the nausea subsided, Faith sat back in her bunk
and pushed her hair from her face. Toby stood in uncertainty just inside
the door, his hands in his pockets as his gaze drifted to the visible
mound of Faith’s stomach. They had not spoken of this growing symbol of
Morgan’s possession, but it was time that silence ended.

“Do not look so, Toby. I’ll not die of it. Once we
are onshore, I’ll be fine. Women have babies all the time. You would do
better to speak to the captain and find out where we should stay when we
arrive. I’d not be left in a flea-infested hole while I look for work
and you hunt your brother.”

Toby ran his hand through his hair and spoke with
some degree of authority. “I already talked with the captain.
Williamsburg is some few miles inland. We’ll need to hire a cart. He
says it’s one of the biggest cities in the colonies and there’s lots of
places to stay as long as the House isn’t in session. It being February,
it might be, but he gave me the names of one or two places to try.
We’ll be fine, don’t you worry.” He bit his lip anxiously, then offered,
“Maybe you should try to eat a bite again? Seems like the babe ought to
be fed more regular.”

Perhaps the babe ought, but Faith couldn’t face the
thought of food. She shook her head. “If you can persuade some hot water
from the cook, there’s a little of our tea left. I’ll share a cup with
you.”

Toby nodded and strode off, leaving Faith to stare at the hated four walls again.

Her mind wandered back to the cottage, the place
where she had found peace if for only so brief a while. In those days
while Toby had sought shipping, she had polished and cleaned and
straightened. The shirt she had started for Morgan, she finished and
laid upon his trunk. She was quite proud of her workmanship. The lace
had looked every bit as professional as a tailor’s. If Morgan ever
returned, he would have a decent shirt in exchange for the gowns he had
given her.

She had left him a note. It had been a foolish thing
to do, but at the last minute she could not leave without saying
farewell. The note hadn’t said much, just a few senseless words of
gratitude and a reassurance that she was gone and wouldn’t bother him
anymore, but tears had poured down her face as she wrote it. She should
never have signed it as she had, though. It would make him feel bad, and
she hadn’t wanted to make him feel bad. But there had been no other
honest way to sign it. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind knowing that she had
left without bitterness.

Perhaps she ought to be bitter, but she wasn’t. Toby
and Miles didn’t understand that she had never expected anything from
Morgan and that he had never given her reason to believe she deserved
anything. She had told him she could not marry a thief. She had, but it
had been in hopes that he would give up his life of crime. Morgan
understood that. Morgan understood her better than anyone else ever had.
She just wished that understanding and love could be the same thing.

But they weren’t, so there was no use in crying over it anymore.

By the time the ship docked, Faith was ready to say
farewell to the past. She wrapped herself in her mantle, pulled the hood
up to hide the tear tracks, and waited on deck while Toby found a cart
and loaded their few trunks.

The sky was overcast and the wind strong, but it
wasn’t a bitterly cold wind. There was even some green in the weeds
along the shore. The birds crying overhead gave her the feeling of
impending spring, and Faith smiled. It had been spring when Morgan first
took her to his bed. It would be spring when his child arrived.

The cart driver grudgingly took them to the inn that
the captain had recommended instead of the one that he was paid best to
deliver them to. When the proprietor apologized to say he was full, the
driver muttered “I told you so” and set out for his usual
accommodation. Toby insisted that they try the next place on the
captain’s list, and the man gave him a surly look.

“They be closed. Needham died last month and his
widow’s selling the place. You got any more suggestions before I take
you where you belong?”

Disliking the man’s insolence and intrigued by the
idea of an inn for sale, Faith spoke up for the first time since they
had set out. “Take us to Needham’s or set us down, please. I would speak
to the widow.”

The building the driver brought them to was on the
outskirts of town, out of the way of the main thoroughfare. It was
small, but solidly built of brick, with shutters to pull against the
cold and rain. The place looked deserted, but Faith ordered the trunks
brought down and dismissed the driver. She was too tired to go farther.
Somehow, they would persuade the widow to let them in.

Toby tried the door and found it open, but the
chambers echoed empty when they stepped inside. A loud “Halloa!” brought
the sound of scurrying feet above, and a white apron over a black wool
skirt appeared on the stairway. Soon a woman with neatly dressed white
hair covered by a full mobcap came into view. “Who is there? The inn’s
closed; I’m sorry. I have no help. Would the lady care to take a seat
while you go to look for better accommodations, sir?”