The heat of the fire had reached them, and the horse was beginning to panic, but Lorraine felt as if a chill wind had passed over her. Her hands were cold on the reins and her head swimming, when of a sudden she heard André L’Estraille speak up.
“Ah, but he did sell them. To Captain Cameron—and for such a price that Oddsbud can retire from—”
“From tavernkeeping,” Lorraine cut in desperately. “This is André L’Estraille, Captain Bridey. Indeed he was present in the White Horse Tavern when my papers were signed over.”
The Frenchman had been about to say “retire from all endeavor,” which was pleasantly vague, but he looked with approval upon Lorraine for her quick uptake.
“Aye, in the White Horse Tavern,” he agreed pleasantly. “Our captain fancies her,” he added with a broad wink at Bridey.
Bridey scowled and turned away with a grunt.
Curious glances were directed at the bound girl in the elaborate blue gown who had been sold to a captain who “fancied” her. Hot with embarrassment, Lorraine wished for a wild moment that the smoke would close over her head. Fortunately, at that moment there was a horrendous flash of lightning and an accompanying crash of thunder that seemed to rock the earth. The heavens opened and water cascaded down in solid sheets. Lorraine felt the cart beneath her shimmy with the force of the downpour.
“The Lord be praised!” Mistress Pym had struggled to her feet and was standing up in the cart, holding up her clasped hands to heaven while the rain battered her and poured down her joyful countenance.
“Sit down or you’ll fall out!” Lorraine pulled her back down.
“The fires will be drowned out, now that it’s raining. We can go on!” shouted Mistress Pym. “Cedarwood is over there—to your right. The fire can’t have reached it yet or we’d have seen it—and now it won’t.”
“Out of the way!” cried Lorraine. “We’re coming through!”
The men surrounding the cart stumbled aside. Horse and cart floundered on.
The way to Cedarwood was short, but to Lorraine, humiliated, frightened, gasping at each new onslaught of rain, and nearly blinded by the curtainlike downpour as she followed Mistress Pym’s shouted directions, it seemed interminable.
Though John Pomeroy’s “plantation house” was large, it was certainly no mansion. It was a rude half-timbered cottage much like the other medieval-style houses Lorraine had seen in the town, and rain was creating a veritable waterfall off its palmetto-thatched roof.
There was no need to pound on the door. It flew open at their approach and a scared-looking servant girl grasped Mistress Pym’s arm. “Oh, do come quick,” she pleaded. “Hattie’s pains have started and the midwife didn’t come. I’m the only one here!”
“Yes, yes. You go take care of the horse, Marnie,” directed Mistress Pym. “Get him under cover.” As Marnie left, a woman’s scream reached them from some distant part of the house. Mistress Pym let her drenched cloak fall to the floor and sprang forward. “Stay here,” she called back to Lorraine. “I’ll see to Hattie and find us some dry clothes.”
Lorraine, standing in soaked shoes, was dripping a puddle on the floor. She unwound the drenched blue scarf from around her head and looked around as she shook out her wet hair. If this house had ever known a woman’s touch, she decided, it must have been long ago. The main hall had no furniture at all save for two stiff upright chairs and a gateleg table.
Mistress Pym bustled back shortly. “It’s good we got here, the baby’s coming soon.”
As if to underscore that, another scream rent the air.
Mistress Pym led Lorraine through the dining room, which was cozy and bright, lit by tapers in brass candlesticks. Its furnishings were handsome against walls painted a soft blue. Enshrined above the fireplace was a portrait of a woman whose resemblance to Trinity, the red-haired girl she had seen earlier, was the first thing Lorraine noticed.
“That’s Trinity’s mother.” Mistress Pym paused to glare at the portrait. “She died bearing Trinity and that was the trouble.” She sighed. “Pomeroy loved her too much. He keeps all the things she brought from England in this room and he broods on that picture of her at dinner every night.”
“Until your sister . . . ?” asked Lorraine hesitantly. “Even now,” was the mournful reply. “And poor Hattie, caring for him so much!”
Lorraine’s heart went out to Hattie, whom they found lying on a tumbled bed in a small room at the back of the house. She had thick soft brown hair and when her face relaxed after being contorted with pain, Lorraine could see how kind it was and the honesty that shone from her hazel eyes.
Lorraine, swept along by circumstance, found herself swiftly attired in a clean homespun bodice and kirtle and apron. Her own sodden clothing, she hung dripping over chairs in the kitchen. Protesting that she knew nothing about such things, she found herself assisting Mistress Pym in the delivery of Hattie’s child. She was soon fetching and carrying, wiping Hattie’s forehead with a damp cloth—and all to the accompaniment of the rain on the roof, pouring down in torrents.
On her treks to the kitchen, where Marnie was kneading dough and making hot broth on Mistress Pym’s orders, Lorraine learned more about John Pomeroy’s runaway daughter.
“Poor Trinity.” Marnie plunged floury hands into the dough. “She loved Jeb so, but her father said he wasn’t good enough for her. Jeb swore he’d been pressed aboard a vessel in Portsmouth and then sold as an indentured servant to cover up the crime. He insisted he had a wealthy sister in Somerset and was going to inherit a tidy sum from his grandfather there— but nobody believed him.”
Lorraine picked up the hot water she’d been sent to bring. “Couldn’t Jeb have written to his people?” she wondered. “And bought himself free?”
Marnie shrugged. “Jeb was a sporting man, he was, and he’d never learned to write.”
Sighing for the lovers, Lorraine turned away with the bucket of hot water. At that moment, a long drawn-out riveting scream came from the back of the house.
“Lor’!” cried Marnie.
Lorraine hurried back through the dining room to find Mistress Pym, beaming, holding up a tiny redfaced bundle that emitted little mewing sounds.
“Why, he’s crying to be fed already!” her landlady exulted. She thrust the baby into the outstretched arms of the exhausted woman on the bed, who gazed proudly upon her son.
“He looks like John!” Hattie cried happily.
Lorraine found it hard to believe that little screwed-up face resembled anyone at all, but Hattie’s remark brought instant agreement from Mistress Pym.
“The living image!” she echoed breathlessly.
Marnie, still somewhat floury, arrived with hot broth for all, then retreated to the kitchen while Mistress Pym and Lorraine tidied up the room. They whisked away the sheets and remade the bed, plumped the pillows, and settled Hattie comfortably with the babe on her breast. It was a far different scene from the tumbled agony they had first come upon in that room.
Leaving the mother and her sister alone to croon over the baby, Lorraine went in search of her clothes, which she hoped would be dry by now.
They were gone.
“Captain Cameron took them,” Marnie informed her importantly. “He come by with Mr. Hubbard looking for bandages to bind up one of his men that got hurt in the fire. He said your clothes were ruined and he’d rip them up for bandages too and they went away with them.”
Her beautiful blue dress! Her petticoat! Her chemise!
Lorraine fled back the way she had come.
“Oh, Mistress Pym, what am I going to do?” She burst in upon the two women. “All my clothes have been torn up for bandages!”
“You can take what you need of my daughter’s,” came a tired voice from behind her. “For Trinity will not be needing them ever again.”
Lorraine whirled to see a man standing behind her in a drenched burgundy velvet coat and muddy boots. He looked years older than when she had last seen him wrestling wi
th Trinity in the carriage.
“Oh, John—no!” That sincere cry of grief came from the woman on the bed. “Surely there’s hope!”
He shook his head. “Charles Hubbard saw them slipping away into the deep ravine to the north of us. He and Captain Cameron have been searching, but the fire surrounded that ravine first and it’s burned to a cinder. I must face it, Hattie. I’ve lost a daughter through my blundering.”
“Come see your son, John,” she whispered.
He came and stood over her, peering down at the baby now suckling at her breast. “I’m going to marry you, Hattie,” he said, breathing hard. “As soon as the banns can be cried. The baby’s mine, I’ll swear to that. ’Tis true I’ve lost a daughter—and I’ll put up a stone to her—but you’ve given me a son to take her place. And he’ll grow up strong, Hattie, and make us proud.”
The glory that broke over Hattie’s face was a wonder to see. Lorraine turned away from that sight with her eyes misty.
Mistress Pym nudged her. “Come, we’ll find you some proper clothes.” She led Lorraine to a handsome bedroom and opened the big cedar wardrobe. “Here, you might like this one.” She held out a lovely gown of coral pink linen over a peach-pink sarcenet petticoat. “Trinity was a mite taller than you, but if you turn over the petticoat band and hitch up the overskirt into panniers—”
“I know how,” said Lorraine. “But I need a chemise.”
“La, she had plenty of those!” Mistress Pym rummaged in a trunk and produced one. It was dazzlingly sheer and trimmed with expensive point lace. “I’ll wager her shoes will fit you too.”
Lorraine took the things in silence. First, Jocko the Wolf’s pall; now, a dead girl’s finery. She had the eerie feeling that nothing would ever be truly her own.
“Do you think Jeb Smith’s story was true—about having rich relatives in England?” she asked soberly.
“La, who knows? Poor things.”
Outside, the rain drummed a funeral dirge.
“You might as well take the gloves too.” Mistress Pym held out a pair of peach kid gloves that matched the slippers. And when Lorraine hesitated: “Trinity won’t be wearing them and they’re too small for Hattie.”
Lorraine pinned up her fair hair with Trinity’s hairpins and cleverly worked in a shining ribbon of coral satin. The effect was too festive, so she wrapped a scarf around her hair. But even so, as she turned about critically before the mirror, a shimmering vision of peach and pink greeted her sober view.
“Lor’!” gasped Marnie, who entered at that moment. Her mouth was agape. “I’ll grant you Trinity was pretty, but she never looked like that!"
Lorraine’s smile was a bit wan but Mistress Pym looked as pleased as if Lorraine were her own daughter. “Where is John Pomeroy?” she asked. Lorraine hoped she wouldn’t run into him.
“He’s sitting on Hattie’s bed and he’s promising her the moon. Charles Hubbard is back and he’ll take you both back to town in the canopied cart—to keep the rain off you. He’ll send your horse and cart down later. And Hattie asked that you please not let him see you in his daughter’s clothes—it would hurt him too much.”
“I’ll be careful,” promised Lorraine with a catch in her voice. Kindly Hattie, who had endured so much. From a full heart, Lorraine wished her well.
Charles Hubbard’s thin shoulders drooped as he led the women to the canopied cart a servant brought around. He helped them into the back in silence, draped a light coverlet around them to keep them from being splattered when they hit ruts that were still rivulets even though the rain had slackened.
Lorraine did not try to talk to him as they made their way back to St. George’s Town. Even Mistress Pym’s ebullient spirits were dimmed in the presence of such misery as was evinced by the hunched-up figure of their driver.
When they reached the inn, Hubbard handed over the reins to a servant who dashed out and helped them alight. He appeared about to speak to Lorraine, but Mistress Pym pulled her away with an impatient “Get inside quick or your dress will be ruined!”
In the doorway Lorraine turned to look back and saw Hubbard square his shoulders and walk away rather jauntily into the rain. That jauntiness jarred her—Trinity was barely dead and he was able to forget her already! She turned to observe Mistress Pym’s reunion with her irate husband.
“They’re going to be married!” that lady cried joyfully. “Now Hattie can make up with Father. Isn’t that wonderful, Pym?”
Forgotten for the moment, Lorraine trudged upstairs, still heartsick at what had happened to the runaway lovers. Fatigue washed over her in waves. Her room was empty and she stripped down to her chemise and crawled gratefully into the big square bed.
It was after sunset when she waked to find Raile smiling down at her. From the eaves she could hear water dripping, but the rain had stopped and stars shone cold and white in the black patch of sky she could see through her window.
Raile was in an excellent mood. “Your wild escapade as a midwife had netted us one reward,” he told her. “L’Estraille tells me he completely convinced Captain Bridey that Oddsbud had sold me your articles. So since Bridey will be none the wiser until he returns to Rhode Island, you may come out of hiding and dine out with me tonight.”
Lorraine glared up at him. “How could you tear up my clothes for bandages? The house was full of linens!”
A glint came into his gray eyes. “You disobeyed me,” he said silkily. “I told you to wait for me here. When I chanced upon your clothes in Cedarwood’s kitchen, I realized you had not. Anyway, you look to have fared rather well.” He eyed the coral-pink gown and peach sarcenet petticoat flung over a chair.
“No thanks to you!” she flashed. “Didn’t you realize those were the only clothes I’d brought with me? Did you expect me to come back to town naked?”
“Oh, hardly that,” he said easily. “I’d have turned up eventually with something—an old shirt, patched trousers . . .”
He was teasing her! She glared at him. “Go away.” She waved him to the door. “I want to dress.”
“Hurry,” he counseled, sticking his head back into the room. “We’re dining on Hoppin’ John and cedar-berry wine at the best hostelry the town affords.”
It was hard to resist the impulse to throw a slipper at him. Even so, she hurriedly pulled on her clothes, telling herself the eagerness she felt was entirely due to hunger.
True to his promise, they dined that night in the low-ceilinged common room of the Gull and Tortoise—dined upon fish chowder and Hoppin’ John—that popular Bermuda dish made of rice, peas, and salt pork—and cassava pie. Lorraine created a sensation as she entered the smoky room where at that late hour mainly seafaring men sat about drinking from pewter tankards and smoking long clay pipes. All eyes turned toward the girl in a low cut gown which made a reckless display of the smooth pale skin of her bosom and the silvery sheen of the tops of her firm young breasts. Across the room at a long table surrounded by men from his ship, Lorraine saw Captain Bridey staring at her. She remembered how often he had ordered her to “Bring more ale and be quick about it!” at the Light Horse, and the thought made her give an extra swish to her silken skirts as she returned him a cool look.
They had just settled down at the oaken table when L’Estraille and Heist came in and joined them. Raile was in an expansive mood and did not seem to mind.
“Always you find wonderful clothes, mademoiselle commented André in wonder as he took his seat. “Mon Dieu, it is a talent!”
Lorraine tried not to remember whose dress it was. She smiled at André. “I want to thank you,” she said softly. “For rising to my defense when Captain Bridey turned up last night.”
“I would always rise to your defense,” he told her, and there was a richness in his tone that made her color deepen. “Although I will admit that on the way back to town it was difficult to fend off questions from Bridey’s crew.”
Raile’s dark head swung toward him. “I thought you told me you entirely
convinced Bridey,” he said in a low voice. “Yet all at his table are viewing us with suspicion.”
“I did convince him.” L’Estraille shrugged airily. “I told him I witnessed the sale—I even told him you were bound for Virginia, so he’s not like to follow you. You have nothing to worry about.”
Raile’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you choose Virginia?”
“Why not Virginia?” countered L’Estraille. “MacTavish says the Lass does not frequent Virginia ports—and ’tis a long way from Barbados.”
“Aye, it’s that,” Raile muttered.
There was an undercurrent that made Lorraine lean forward.
“Raile rescued me from a terrible situation in Rhode Island,” she said impulsively.
A melancholy look played over the Frenchman’s handsome features.
“I wish I could have been the one to rescue you,” he murmured. Lorraine felt a sudden catch in her heart. André had teased her aboard ship, he had pursued her unmercifully, but he had unhesitatingly sprung forward to save her, not knowing what he might be getting into.
Raile did not notice them, but looked across the room at Captain Bridey and his group. He drummed his fingers. “We’ll sail tomorrow night,” he decided abruptly. “We’ve taken on fresh water and our provisioning is completed. I had thought to stay over mainly to give Lorraine a chance to walk free on strange shores.” He looked regretful and Lorraine felt her anger at him melting away.
“Perhaps she will walk between us—as she did upon arrival,” challenged L’Estraille.
Heist rolled his eyes, fearing a clash. Fortunately the food arrived just then and they were all hungry enough to attack it at once.
“I had hoped to explore the island with you,” Raile sighed as Lorraine ate her pudding. “I’ve heard a great deal about the famous Cathedral Rocks of Sandys and the caverns around Harrington Sound, where I’m told there is a fairyland of stone icicles and winding underground waterways, cool as ice.”
“Stay till the end of the week,” suggested L’Estraille draining his tankard. “We’ll all go!”
“Couldn’t we stay, Raile?” asked Lorraine longingly. She had never seen either caverns or cathedrals.
To Love a Rogue Page 19
