JoAnn Wendt Read online

  There was a flurry on deck, as the woman sent a half-dozen tars scrambling for slate and chalk. When the materials were brought, she thrust them at Flavia.

  Flavia seethed. How dare this common, ill-bred American treat her so! Shaking with fury, she squeezed the chalk. She paused. A quotation from Obadiah’s Bible flew into her mind. Swiftly she penned:

  Proverbs 9:13: A foolish woman is clamorous; she is simple, and knoweth nothing.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Mr. Sewell burst into hearty laughter. His eyes twinkled.

  “By God, wife, she’ll do. She’ll do.” Mrs. Sewell pursed her lips, waiting for her husband’s laughter to abate. She was not intelligent enough to know she’d been insulted, but the expression on her face was one of confused displeasure.

  “I think, Mr. Sewell, she will not do.” Without another glance, she gave Flavia her back. She turned to Mab, and instantly Flavia regretted venting her pride. Sewell Hall might have been an easy post. The master seemed a good and kind man, the mistress too vain and lazy to generate overly much work.

  “Now this one, Mr. Sewell,” the woman began, putting a finger in Mab’s face.

  To Flavia’s amusement, Mab immediately drew out her red-stained kerchief and coughed violently into it.

  * * * *

  The weather changed. Winter deepened. Arctic winds swept down for one last onslaught before the advent of spring. The Chesapeake Bay threatened to freeze, and the captain grew eager to set out for London. He redoubled his efforts to rid himself of the remaining bondslaves.

  Sarah Bess was sold at Norfolk. Mab fought to keep her, but the Dutchman had his way. He refused Mab the option of extending her own indenture to cover the cost of the child’s passage. He pointed out that Mab already had her own contract to serve plus Obadiah’s four years. With additional time to serve for the little girl, Mab would become unmarketable and he would lose his profit. He pointed out that he’d already been generous. He’d not charged her for the dead infant although the baby died past the halfway mark.

  As before, Flavia raged inwardly at the man’s lack of compassion. She shook with frustration at her own inability to help. Were she Flavia Rochambeau, duchess of Tewksbury, she could make Mab’s life come right again in a trice. But she was Jane Brown. For all she knew, Jane Brown’s lot could become harder than Mab’s.

  Forced into complaisance, she could only stand at the rail, her arm around a stiff and sullen Mab as the dinghy carrying Sarah Bess pulled away from the Schillack. In the dinghy, Sarah Bess howled in hysteria, both of her small thumbs pressed to the roof of her mouth. As Flavia held Mab, her own wounds opened. Pain knifed into her. Robert. Her bright-eyed darling baby,

  wrenched from her embrace at the ball. She could feel the sudden emptiness of her arms as the nurse had grabbed him. Robert’s terrified screams seemed to mingle with the fading screams of Sarah Bess.

  When the dinghy disappeared amidst harbor traffic and the child’s fair head could be seen no longer, Flavia squeezed Mab’s stiff unresponsive shoulders.

  “You’ll see her again someday,” she tried. But even to her own ears, the words were hollow, devoid of conviction.

  Mab said nothing. She stared out over the choppy gray water. Her lips twitched, as though in the bleak interior of her soul she wrestled with some new resolution. At last she turned. The burning defiance in her eyes scared Flavia.

  “Mab? Promise you’ll do nothing foolish?”

  Mab uttered a cheerless bitter laugh.

  “Foolish? Nay, Jane, For the first time in m’ life I aim t’ do something smart.”

  Flavia raised her eyes to Mab’s, questioning.

  “I aim t’ run away.”

  Chapter 7

  “How tiresome to have to wear black to the royal governor’s birthday ball. Black ill becomes me. I wonder if I mayn’t get away with wearing the scarlet silk gown. Just this once?”

  Getting no response, the baroness Annette Vachon shifted up on one elbow and shook her silken mane. Dark tresses tumbled over a pleasantly plump white shoulder, a full bosom. She drew up the cambric sheeting of the four-poster bed and tucked it into her cleavage.

  “McNeil. You’re not listening.”

  Lying back in Annette’s bed in the lavish, French decorated house she’d rented on North England Street in Williamsburg, Garth McNeil grunted sleepily.

  “True. I’m not listening.”

  The baroness curled thumb and forefinger. She snapped him smartly on the taut nipple of his bronzed muscular chest. He jumped. His eyes flew open.

  “Bitch!”

  She giggled her low, sultry giggle, then bent to him, tonguing small purring kisses into the abused spot. McNeil relaxed. Eyes closing, he dreamily let himself enjoy the cool sweep of Annette’s perfumed hair on his chest, the warm throbbing promise of her breasts. God, he was tired! He was between sailings. It was already May. Since his February arrival in Virginia, he’d made three sailings to Barbados. Next week would see him off to England with a full load of tobacco.

  Work was the palliative. Work was the key to forgetting. Exhausted, he sometimes fell into his bunk at night without a single thought of Flavia. So he pushed the Caroline at a furious pace. The crew thought him mad. Harrington and Jenkins grumbled, but his brother and partner and his stockholders were ecstatic. McNeil was making them rich, and making himself rich too, as a by-product of the work frenzy.

  While he sailed, Annette stayed in Williamsburg. Charmed by what she called “the provinces,” Annette had leased the most elaborate mansion available in the capital. She entered the social scene with the zest of a child discovering an old-fashioned but delectable sweetmeat. As a titled lady, she had the run of the Governor’s Palace. If a baroness ranked low in London peerage, in the colonies she glittered like a queen.

  “Bother! Must I wear mourning to the ball?” Annette reiterated. “Is it too soon to wear red? What do you think, McNeil?”

  He chuckled. Annette’s new sense of propriety amused him. Being “queen” had its shortcomings, evidently.

  “Go in the altogether if you wish.”

  She pretended shock, then giggled and gave him a playful slap. She pulled herself up to a sitting position in the middle of the canopied four-poster. She collected the sheet and draped herself.

  “It’s not as if the baron and I married for love, McNeil. The marriage was an arrangement. A convenience. He wanted my wealth. I wanted his title. As for bed—” She shrugged prettily, giving McNeil a wry smile. “He. . . he preferred boys in his bed.”

  There was something in her voice—a catch, a faint quaver—that stirred loyalty in McNeil.

  “The baron,” he snapped, “was crazy.”

  Instantly he regretted his gallantry. Annette’s face lit with love. Judas! Now he’d be forced to set her straight, to make it clear once again that he would never marry her. Why couldn’t she accept things as they stood? They were lovers. Nothing more.

  Sighing happily, she slipped into the crook of his arm and lay beside him. Her fingertips traced feathery circles on his chest, on his hard belly.

  “Still, I do hate being a widow,” she simpered in a little girl voice he’d never heard her use before.

  McNeil stiffened. So she thought to trap him, did she?

  “Then marry, damn it.”

  She gasped. She wrenched herself from his arms, flung herself off the bed, and angrily yanked on a green silk robe. She rammed her feet into silk slippers.

  “You—you colonial barbarian!” she sputtered, flinging back her dark tresses with the backs of both hands. Her eyes shot dark fire. “Am I to suppose you will never marry me?”

  He sat up. He matched her angry glare.

  “You would be wise to suppose nothing else.”

  She flinched before his coldness.

  “You—you—”

  “Attila the Hun?” he teased imprudently.

  Annette let out a howl of frustration. She whipped off her hard-heeled slippers. McNeil du
cked and feinted as the slippers came winging at him.

  Missing her quarry, Annette shrieked in frustration. She whirled around, and with a comment that left him in no doubt about the origin of his birth, she flounced from the room.

  The door banged shut with a tremendous crash. Alabaster vials of perfume danced on the marble-topped dressing table. On a green damask cushion in the recessed windowseat, Annette’s napping cat sprang up, arching with a hiss. The loud bang reverberated through the mansion, and McNeil lazily watched a few specks of dust filter down from the disturbed green silk draperies, the tiny dust motes twirling in the afternoon sunshine.

  He relaxed, satisfied. This was the Annette he preferred. Not whining and begging to become his wife, but passionate and hot-tempered as a mistress should be. The baroness was never so good in bed as after a tantrum.

  At that thought, lust began to stir again in his groin. He turned his head on the pillow, watching the door with more than slight eagerness. Annette was predictable. He did not have to wait long.

  The door swung inward with a furious push, then crashed shut. Again, the cat hissed, glass rattled, dust motes went spinning. Annette put her back to the door, leaned upon it and tightly crossed her arms over her bosom. Fire blazed in her eyes.

  “Why, McNeil?” she demanded loudly. “Why won’t you marry me?”

  He grinned. Ignoring her question, he drew back the rumpled sheet. He patted the bed. At his unspoken but clear invitation, she jerked her head aside with a curse and would not look at him. But the color heightened in her throat, and McNeil did not miss the taut sudden lift of her breasts that always signaled her own rising desire.

  Angered, she pretended to stare out the window. Pretended interest in the green vista of formal garden rolling into pasture where fluffy white Merino sheep wandered, tugging at sweet spring grass.

  He waited until the time was right to speak.

  “Annette,” he coaxed, “come here.”

  She seemed to wage some inner battle for a minute or two. At last she turned and came toward him. The silk of her exotic robe rustled sensuously as she slowly made her way across the room.

  She stood before him, seemingly undecided as whether to laugh or to cry. Her hands fluttered at her sides.

  “Damn you, McNeil,” she whispered helplessly.

  With a rueful laugh, she came into his waiting arms. McNeil’s throat thickened with urgent desire. He roughly unrobed her. He kissed her with fierce, savage hunger, and for the next few minutes he took not one thought for his sweet Flavia. For a few minutes his devastating loss was as far from his mind as Williamsburg from the moon.

  When he lay back, sated, all senses at rest, the baroness lazily rolled toward him.

  “Why, McNeil?” she demanded with sleepy good nature. “Why won’t you marry me? I make you happy in the bedchamber. We are good friends as well as lovers. I’m rich. I’m not unattractive. I would be a charming hostess for your house on York Street.”

  As though to endorse her mistress’s proposal, Annette’s long-haired white cat leaped to the bed, nuzzling McNeil’s hand, begging for a head scratch. He shoved the cat off the bed and dropped his hand on Annette’s back.

  He placated her with a lazy pat on the fanny.

  “Go to sleep.”

  But she would not be placated.

  “Is it because I’m older than you?” She waited for an answer. When it didn’t come, she tried again. “Is it because I can’t give you children?”

  The question irritated him.

  “Go to sleep, damn it.”

  McNeil rolled away, punched his pillow and settled into his nap. Marriage? Children? God knows, such subjects had been foreign to his mind until Flavia. The huge-eyed girl had stirred alien feelings in him. An adventuring, seafaring man all of his life, he’d never yearned for hearth or home. Until Flavia.

  The baroness sensed she’d struck pay dirt.

  “It is the issue of children.”

  He emitted a growl of protest.

  “Let me sleep,” he ordered, “or you’ll find yourself treated exactly like a wife. I’ll beat you.”

  She giggled, then lay back with a long sigh.

  “What vain creatures men are. They set such store in having an heir.” She giggled her low throaty giggle. “Like old Spindle Shanks, the duke of Tewksbury, McNeil? Lord knows what he did to get his heir! It’s rumored that he poisoned his first two duchesses because they proved barren. Though some say he sold them into an African seraglio and only pretended they died of illness.”

  McNeil had gone tight as a coiled spring at her mention of Tewksbury.

  “Be silent, Annette,” he warned.

  Ignorant of his relationship with Flavia, she blithely rattled on.

  “Of course, the duke finally got his long-awaited heir from poor dead Flavia. But I wonder . . . suppose . . . Flavia cuckolded him? Suppose she saw the handwriting on the wall... married several years and no sign of children. Suppose she assumed it was the duke’s fault? Suppose she assumed the duke was unable to father a child? Suppose she decided to lie with a servant to get with child? Suppose—”

  McNeil lunged out of bed. His heart raced. Blood hammered thickly in his jugular vein and thundered in his temples. His vision went black. He couldn’t see. Yet, for the first time, he saw clearly. Judas, how stupid he’d been! How blind! She’d come to him that night on the quay, frightened to death but determined to see the liaison through. His heart stopped as the enormity of what he now knew hit him like a lightning bolt.

  I have a son! he exulted. My Flavia is dead, but our son—our son lives!

  Galvanized into action, he seized his clothes and threw them on. He had to get out. Had to think, plan . . .

  Forgetting the baroness existed, he wrenched the door open, strode down the hallway and vaulted down the stairs, two at a time. Annette’s alarmed voice echoed after him, fading under his strident, booming footfalls.

  “McNeil? What . . . where are you going? McNeil? You won’t forget you’re escorting me to the governor’s birthday ball tonight? McNeil?”

  Chapter 8

  May 1754 -- Chestertown, Maryland

  “Jane! Jane Brown! Get down here, you worthless chit. Earn your keep, girl. This is Market Day. You’ve the hens to do, peas and lettuce to pick. Your master’s not yet seen hide nor hair of his breakfast. Must I shout my lungs out? Jane!”

  Flavia groaned. The straw-filled mat snapped crisply under her as she stirred. Surely she’d been asleep no longer than five minutes. She was bone-weary. Every muscle hurt. Even in her dreams she’d gone on stooping and bending, stooping and bending as she and Neddy planted the huge garden in green beans.

  She forced her eyes open. Blinking, she tried to get her bearings in the windowless attic loft. A dull gray glow illuminated chinks where chimney mortar had pulled away from siding.

  Dawn? Already?

  Flavia’s heart jumped in dread. She flung herself up, her shoulders twitching in sharp recall. She’d no desire to feel Mistress Byng’s switch once again.

  Swiftly, she threw on the ill-fitting muslin clothes that marked her as a bond servant. She grabbed a mobcap. There wasn’t time to wash or even pull a comb through her thick, coppery curls. Such niceties would only earn her a thrashing at best. Mistress Byng would accuse her of primping.

  She hoped fervently that Neddy was awake and about his duties in the barn. The boy was simpleminded. Given a specific duty, Neddy would plunge in at once. But let a bird fly by or a dog bark, and Neddy was as easily distracted as a three-year-old. His poor, undeveloped brain could not find its way back to the assigned duty. As a result, Neddy got more than his share of beatings.

  Her heart ached for the boy. Bound to Josiah Byng at the age of six, Neddy was now fifteen. He must serve until twenty-one. Even at twenty-one, Flavia doubted the Byngs would take pains to explain freedman status to the boy. Doubtless they would use fear and food to keep the lad bound to them for life.

  Not daring t
o take time to straighten her cot, Flavia rushed down the creaking loft ladder and into the large lime-whitened kitchen that was the center of the Reverend Josiah Byng’s modest house.

  The fire was already blazing in the hearth, a sure sign that Flavia’s day would be an unpleasant one. As she hurried to the larder cupboard to start the corn cakes, Mistress Byng hauled herself up from lighting the fire. Her lips puckered.

  “I shall speak to the magistrate, Jane. Your slugabed ways cost me dear. The magistrate shall be persuaded to indemnify me for your laziness. He shall extend your indenture by a year.”

  Flavia swallowed back rising anger. It was Mistress Byng’s usual threat. In the first months, Flavia’s knees had gone watery with fear whenever she heard it. And she heard it often, being all thumbs at servant work and unable to please. But now she knew her rights. An indenture could be extended only if a bondservant ran away or stole.

  “The time cannot be more than half-past four o’clock,” she returned coolly. She lifted a heavy piece of crockery from the cupboard and measured cornmeal into it.

  “ 'Tis Market Day and well you know it, girl. Market Day requires an early rise.”

  Flavia sighed tiredly.

  “I prepared everything last night. The cheeses are wrapped. The tins of butter stand in cold water in the springhouse. The egg basket is packed.”

  “Packed well?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Last Market Day it was not packed well. You let Neddy carry the basket, and three eggs got broke before they could be sold.”

  Flavia’s head throbbed. She was tired. The woman’s shrill voice gave her a headache.

  Incautiously, she blurted, “You packed the eggs last time, ma’am. You told Neddy to carry the basket.”

  Mistress Byng’s small hard eyes lit with challenge.

  “Oho, missy! Saucy, ain’t we? Shall the magistrate hear of it? Have a yen to ride Chestertown’s public whipping post, do you?”

  Flavia reddened in anger. Her headache banged, increasing. Its throbbing pain made her throw caution to the wind.