JoAnn Wendt Read online

“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 i
ndentured.

  Irritably, the captain jabbed a finger at Flavia and went on in broken English.

  “Thy name iss not—iss not—”

  He jabbed a finger at her.

  “Rochambeau,” she shouted above the wind. “Flavia Rochambeau.”

  The captain’s disbelieving laugh was half snort, half bellow. Flavia’s stomach knotted in helpless anger. Her eyes dropped to the deck she’d been forced to scrub in the freezing cold only yesterday.

  While she clung stubbornly to her name, she no longer claimed to be a duchess. Almost a month in the bondslave hold had taught her that. Her fellow passengers had leaped upon her title as a pack of dogs leap after a rabbit.

  They tormented her. They taunted, jeered. The children had made up singing games, with her the butt of their joke. And she’d gathered the unwanted attention of men who tried to touch her breasts whenever she forced her way through the crowded hold to the vile slop bucket that served as the only privy, behind a curtain of tattered sail.

  But the women, excepting Mab Collins, were cruelest of all. Their jibes were tipped in the poison of jealousy. They jeered at her dainty ways, mocked her speech. They roared with laughter when she shrieked upon finding lice crawling in her own hair. During deck scrubbing, one of them always contrived to spill a bucket of cold seawater on her, soaking her to the skin.

  The meanness had gone unchecked until Obadiah Collins put an end to it. Exploding in righteous indignation, that gentle giant made it known he would tolerate no further baiting of Flavia. Each night she thanked God for Obadiah’s presence. No person, male or female, was foolish enough to risk the big man’s wrath.

  “Thy name iss—”

  Flavia jerked herself to alertness. The captain thumbed through his log, his irritation increasing with each page he was forced to search. At last he stabbed a long yellow fingernail at an entry.

  “Hah! Jane Brown!” he read victoriously. “Come Schilaack September the thirteen.” He glared up at her, his bearded mouth twisting in contempt. “Come Schilaack drunk.”

  Flavia’s mouth flew open in protest. Then she shut it tiredly. What was the use? The Collinses had told her she was “Jane Brown” from the first. They even remembered her solicitous “cousin” who’d brought her aboard. And she’d wakened in rude clothes reeking of rum.

  A dry hysterical sob forced its way up through her despair.

  “I am Flavia Rochambeau!” she cried out.

  But the captain wasn’t listening. He’d already dismissed her and was dealing with two brothers who argued hotly about the possessions of a third brother. The man had died of consumption just an hour before in a bunk near the one in which Flavia and the entire Collins family were crammed.

  She turned away, sickened for herself and sickened at the avarice exploding behind her. While the brothers railed, the captain thundered, cursing the untimely death. He could not collect passage if a bondman died before the ship passed the halfway point in the journey. Had the young man lingered, the captain could have tacked the indenture on to that of the young man’s widow.

  Sick, despairing, wishing hers was the body being passed out of the humanity-packed, fetid hold, she pushed her way through the throng. Her ears were deaf to the insults that trailed after her.

  “Ay there, Duchess. Crawl over to me hammock t’night ‘n’ I’ll give ye somethin’ from the duke!”

  “Blimey, Duchess! Where’s yer diamond and rooooby tiara? Lost it in the privy bucket, has ye?”

  “God! Ain’t so proud now ‘at she’s dirty as the rest o’ we!”

  There was a crevice, a little “hidey” place as the children called it, between the starboard railing and a dozen water barrels that were strapped between cabin wall and railing. Only a child or a slender adult could slip in. Flavia made for the haven and squeezed into it. Alone, she clutched the railing and rested her burning face on her hands.

  She felt defeated. Empty. The ship rolled under her. Whitecaps smashed at the hull, sending spits of foam flying. The spits sizzled on her hands for an instant, then melted away. She was too tired to think. Too tired to live.

  Am I dead to everyone who loved me? Does only my husband know I’m alive? Oh, why haven’t I the courage to end it! The sea beckons . . .

  But she had neither the courage to die nor the energy to live. And prayer had deserted her weeks ago. There were only two thoughts, burning like candles, that kept her spirit from being totally extinguished.

  Garth.

  Baby Robert.

  In the past week she finally had come to terms with the fact that she would never see either of them again. But as long as she lived, she could send them her love with every breath she drew. Perhaps her fervent love thoughts could find their way across time and distance, blessing her beloved two.

  She knew she must never seek them out. The duke must never suspect what Garth had been to her. He must never suspect Garth had sired Robert. For if he did, she knew he would kill them both.

  She swallowed hard. Her heart ached. God, how it ached. Leaning back upon the gurgling water barrel, she raised her face heavenward and sought solace in the winter sky. Clouds galloped overhead like gray mares running free and unfettered. Cold raindrops spat down. She drew one last long breath of sweet air before turning toward the foul hold.

  “Let someone give my son the love I cannot give,” she whispered passionately. “Let someone give Garth—”

  No, no. It was all too much.

  Numb and beaten, Jane Brown turned and descended into the squalid darkness.

  * * * *

  Garth McNeil shucked boots and stockings and scrambled up the fore-rigging in the moonlight. There’d been an odd humming sound from the after-shrouds. A frayed rope? He had to find out. He was a careful sailor and tolerated no sloppy sailing or worn, weakening equipment.

  Hanging on in the wind with the Caroline bounding under him, he found nothing amiss in the after-shrouds or the futtock shrouds. He climbed up into the fore-topmast rigging, checking the foot ropes and the lower fore-topsail braces. All was well. He continued to climb up into the bright moonlight, up to the fore-topgallant mast. There he hung on in the wind and looked out at the sea. The sea was painted with moonlight, and the night was as light and bright as day.

  At sea a month now, McNeil had fallen to taking the night watch from eleven bells to three bells. It was a lonely watch and counterproductive to his efforts to forget Flavia. Still he persisted in the watch, perversely torturing himself in the quiet hours by thinking of her. At the end of the watch, he would go to Annette’s cabin. These days he went there with intense urgency. It wasn’t the urgency for simple animal release. It was the urgency to forget.

  But on Annette’s side, McNeil knew she interpreted his passion as increasing affection. She reveled in it. Annette was blooming like a girl in first love. McNeil knew he should set her straight in the matter, but he made no effort to do so. He wasn’t thinking of Annette. His head was full of Flavia.

  The Caroline leaped into a deep trough between waves, throwing him against the rigging. He shook his head to clear it, then called up to the man aloft and exchanged a few words.

  He scrambled down the rigging, jumped to the deck and pulled on stockings and boots. He began his usual night prowl of the sleeping ship, listening for any change in the hum of the rigging, alert to any discordant creaking of wood spars or ship’s hull. He took a lantern and went down into the cargo hold, checking for any sign of shifting among the lashed-down crates. All was as it should be.

  His prowl completed, he returned to the moonlit deck, checked the Jacob’s ladders at bow and stern, then had a few words with Harrington at the wheel. The ritual finished, he treated himself to a smoke.

  He’d not smoked half the cigar before his unwilling mind ran back to Flavia. He ached. Normally cynical about women and what they had to offer, McNeil was at a loss to explain his feelings for Flavia and why he should grieve so sorely. The cynic in him said that real love—if there was
such a thing as real love—came gradually, if ever; “instant” love was merely lust masquerading in fine clothes. But the man within him denied it. What he’d felt for Flavia had been love. That love had been born full-grown the moment he’d opened that tavern door on the quay and looked into those vulnerable eyes. He knew it now.

  He was confused by all of it. Why had sweet Flavia played the harlot that first night on the quay? Why?

  Seeking answers, he’d questioned the duke’s young footman during the voyage, and by now the lad must think him mad. When the lad said things about Flavia that were unbearable, Garth tongue-lashed him into scared silence. Eager to toady to the ship’s master, the boy spouted gossip willy-nilly. Garth found it hard to sort truth from lie.

  Only one thing stood out in a certain light. The duke had chosen Flavia as wife because Flavia’s mother had been a prodigious child-bearer. The duke expected Flavia to reproduce as her mother had done. He demanded heirs. An odd, unformed thought stirred in him like a hazy dream, then faded as a brass bell sounded.

  Three chiming strokes rang out in the wind and echoed out over the moonlit sea. There was the tramp of feet, the usual shouts of instruction as the watch changed. He surrendered his watch to Jenkins, exchanged a few words and turned to go. But he didn’t go. He stood in the stern of the ship, watching the foamy churning wake. An odd thing about churning wake. Stare at it long enough and it conjures up pictures. A girl’s white skin, a dewy cheek damp from running through fog...

  A light step sounded behind him on the deck. He turned. Annette’s blue silk wrapper shimmered in the moonlight as wind ruffled it. Her dark hair was unbound and feathering in the wind. She smiled.

  “Come to bed, Garth.”

  He slung his dead cigar into the sea and strode toward her. She came into his arms, and he was jolted by the warmth of her body. He’d not known he was so cold.

  He sought her mouth. He kissed her with fierce, bruising urgency.

  Chapter 6

  “Jane?”

  Flavia woke instantly, the way she’d always done at Tewksbury when Robert was fretful with teething and the mother in her would not permit deep sleep. She shifted up on one elbow, careful not to wake the Collins babes, who snuggled warmly against her, one at each side. She rubbed her tired eyes.