Blackmail, thought Georgiana, with a sinking heart. Wily Erica was bent on finding a way to manage them all!
“I will think on it,” she said coldly.
“Do so.” Erica’s voice was suddenly crisp. “I think you will find that we can come to an amicable understanding.” When Georgiana remained silent, she turned and strolled from the dining room into the empty drawing room, moved restlessly to the window. “Ah, I see Brett walking down the bluff,” she called over her shoulder to Georgiana. “A sloop full of guests must be arriving.”
Georgiana came into the drawing room to see for herself.
“I think I will go down and join him,” said Erica. She turned at the door, her expression bland. “Won’t you come along, Georgiana? After all, they are your guests.”
My guests—but you might be giving the ball! thought Georgiana resentfully. With compressed lips, she accompanied a smiling Erica down to the pier to greet her guests, who turned out to be the Van Rensselaers from upriver. They had arrived, belatedly bearing wedding gifts for the patroon’s new bride. Georgiana liked the Van Rensselaers, she thanked them warmly for their gifts—and it gave her a respite from Erica, who seemed bent on welcoming the arriving guests as if she were still the chatelaine of Windgate.
Georgiana had linked arms with the Dutch patroon’s lady and was chatting with her as they strolled up the bluff toward the house when Van Rensselaer, who was walking just ahead of them, flanked by Brett and a laughing Erica, turned jovially to say something to his hostess, cast a keen look downriver and came to a sudden stop.
“What sloop is that?” he wondered, peering southward, and the entire party came to a halt and stood, watching the sloop sail upriver and tie up at the wooden pier. “Why, that’s Govert Steendam,” he cried, and turned to Georgiana. “I thought you said he wasn’t coming?”
“He must have changed his mind,” murmured Georgiana, stifling a sudden burst of mirth as she and Brett excused themselves and went down to greet this new arrival. Her turquoise eyes were dancing as Erica detached herself from the group and hurried ahead of them down the slope to meet Govert.
Erica would have to abandon her role of chatelaine now, thought Georgiana gleefully, and concentrate on the gray-haired, stoopshouldered Dutchman whose eyes lit up at sight of her, and who greeted her in such a possessive fashion. She would have to stay by his side at least for a seemly interval and leave Georgiana to do her own hostessing. Lest she lose ground with her wealthy betrothed, who was pivotal to all her devious plottings.
New Orange, New Netherland,
1673
Chapter 30
Nothing in Mattie’s short life had prepared her for Nicolas’s enticing seduction, his skillful flattery, the pressure of his overpowering masculine charms. Fresh from the lash of Arthur’s continual sharp criticism, bowed from his contempt, bruised by his hard fists, Mattie had instantly flowered under Nicolas’s lighthearted wooing, her petals opening like a rose on a dewy summer morning.
It had all seemed beautifully unreal to her, made of substance and moonbeams—not wrong, surely.
She had felt herself to be exactly like a long-ago ancestress who her mother boasted had made a dizzying upward march as mistress in swift succession to five minor noblemen, ending up at the altar—in Canterbury Cathedral no less—bride to a belted earl. Nicolas—who was almost a patroon in Mattie’s excited fancy—was miles above Arthur, who was only rich and bad-mannered. But she did not even think of that.
She was entirely carried away and knew for the first time a rich and engulfing bliss.
A man—and such a man!—had taken her in his arms gently, beguilingly, and made love to her for pure joy.
Mattie’s openhearted nature had responded buoyantly. In Nicolas’s enticing arms she had forgotten Arthur and all the times he had hurt and humiliated her, forgotten him as if he had never been.
Not till after it was over did she really remember him.
And then it hit her like an iron-shod hoof right between the eyes. She had committed adultery! She had become a strumpet! She would, in her sudden tragic view, be drummed out of the human race.
In her agitation, after Nicolas had gone and she was back in her room beside a heavily sleeping Arthur, Mattie sat up in bed hugging her shivering body with her arms and castigating herself for all her sins—especially this last, overwhelming one. Her head was bowed and tears coursed down her pale cheeks. Dawn came and still Arthur had not awakened. The sun poured through the small-paned windows and yet he slept as heavily.
Mattie could stand the inaction no longer.
She jumped up and dressed, intending to go for a walk before breakfast. Nicolas had said Arthur might not wake till noon. She must be calm and collected by then.
In her haste to leave she tripped over one of Arthur’s carelessly shed boots as she went out the door—and from the bed Arthur gave a snort. With her nerves in an uproar, Mattie swung around so violently that she lost her balance and her jaw collided painfully with the door jamb. She fell away from it with a little cry, only to stand trembling in silent horror, clutching her jaw, watching with dilated eyes that form on the bed.
But Arthur had only made a noise in his sleep. He was as dead to the world as ever.
With her jaw aching, Mattie closed the door and leaned against it for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she hurried downstairs and out of the inn, brushing by in succession with downcast eyes and humble manner (for she felt herself brought low): a smiling chambermaid who had borne five children out of wedlock fathered by five different men (but all of them Dutchmen and religious, the girl was prone to assert piously); the innkeeper’s swaggering broad-hipped daughter who had only last week been wed at the point of a musket to a lad so frightened he could not find the voice to explain, that he had not been the one who seduced her; and the innkeeper’s blowsy loose-lipped wife, who owed her laces and fine petticoats to the favor of traveling gentlemen with whom she nipped upstairs for a swift surreptitious romp while her husband was busy pouring out ale below. Past all of these women Mattie scuttled in abject misery with her head hanging, for she felt herself beneath their contempt.
Having enjoyed the deed, Mattie was now suffering additional agonies because she had enjoyed it. If only it had been distasteful, or if she had fought bravely and been overpowered, she might have squared it with her suddenly refocused conscience. But she had loved it, all of it—every sigh, every touch, every scorching embrace. Indeed she was still tingling with the wonderful remembered glow of Nicolas’s long body hot against her own. All she could think of was when she would see him again.
It was wrong. She knew without a doubt that she would burn in hell for it.
And besides she was Arthur’s wife and what she had done was an inexcusable affront to Arthur, who was still her husband, no matter how badly he had treated her.
So reasoned Mattie as—trying blindly to escape her own thoughts, her own deeds—she hurried down New Orange’s waterfront, dodging small children and women laden with ducks and geese and food-stuff's, and occasionally crashing into a tipsy sailor who laughed loudly as his arms closed around her and then guffawed as she fought free.
Halfway down the dock she tripped over a piece of loose lumber and collided with a sailor who did not let her go, but held on to her arms and looked down at her in amazement and said as if he could not believe it, “Why, ’tis little Mattie Waite! What brings you to New Orange, Mattie?”
Flustered and startled, Mattie found herself looking into a familiar and surprised Bermuda face—the face of Flan O’Toole, who had set all the girls’ hearts aflutter in St. George.
But it was a new and transformed Flan O’Toole, Mattie saw as she stepped back. For he now swaggered along sporting a dangerous-looking cutlass, and a brace of pistols were stuck in his belt. He had a red scarf wrapped round his sunny yellow head beneath a new-bought (or stolen) plumed hat and one big gold earring swayed jauntily from his left ear. There had been wild stories circulating ab
out him in Bermuda, where it was whispered that he was “the wrecker’s son”—but he had never looked like this. Piratical. Mattie regarded him in amazement.
“Why, I—” For a moment Mattie was so rattled that she couldn't for the life of her think what she was doing here in this faraway Dutch colony. “What are you doing here. Flan?” she cried. “Don’t you know there’s a war on between England and Holland, and yet you’re standing in this strange place wearing all the pistols in the world?”
“Not quite all,” corrected Flan, his dark eyes dancing. “Look about you. And our crew is welcome enough in port. Look behind you,” he laughed. “You’ll see our ship, the Swan, is flying the Dutch flag!”
“I can’t believe it,” cried Mattie, scandalized. “You’re a traitor. Flan, you’ve gone over to the other side!”
“Nothing of the kind.” Wide-booted legs spread apart, he stood solidly before her with the sunshine gold upon his hacked-off yellow hair, and flexed his broad shoulders with a slight swagger. A stooped elderly man carrying a basket of fish tried to squeeze between Flan and a stack of kegs; Flan did not give ground. The old man sighed and went around. Mattie did not notice. Her gaze was fixed on Flan accusingly, and he saw that in her eyes he was most reprehensible.
“We've only just docked,” he told her easily, anxious to get that look off her face, for whatever he was now, he had danced in her father’s house and drunk his wine and flirted with his daughters. “We're trading here, Mattie.” His voice had gone low and conspiratorial so that it would not carry to a clot of nearby black-clad burghers. He gave her a smiling wink.
The impact of his words struck Mattie like a slap. “You’ve become a pirate!” she breathed, staring at him while a flight of seabirds wheeled overhead, clamoring after the man with the basket of fish.
Flan gave her an uncomfortable look. That sort of gossip—and he hardly thought Mattie would keep her opinion of him to herself— would not stand him in good stead in Bermuda when he got back there. In point of fact, the Swan was carrying wreckers’ loot taken in Bermuda to whatever ports currently paid the highest price and wealthy New Orange, as New York was now called, was always a good port of call for such as they.
“Oh, nothing so romantic,” he protested, lowering his voice a little as two wide-breeched gentlemen with gold money chains swinging from their lace-collared necks brushed by. “ ’Tis only honest trade and the high prices these Dutch burghers will pay for goods that’s led us here.” Being chased off course by a prowling Spanish warship and then caught in the teeth of an Atlantic gale had also led them here, but Flan saw no reason to enlighten Mattie about that.
“Oh.” Mattie didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. It would have been exciting to believe that Flan O’Toole had become a pirate—or a buccaneer; she wasn’t quite sure what the difference was. But what had come to her suddenly was that here in the person of Flan O’Toole was salvation.
“Oh, Flan,” she blurted out, ignoring the painted dockside whore who was just sidling by and who had captured Flan’s admiring attention. “I have to get back to Bermuda. Can you take me back aboard your ship?”
Flan turned tardily from his hot inspection of the woman, who had paused and given him an arch look. She was now posing seductively with one striped satin-clad hip outthrust and her arms akimbo, displaying her majestic bosom. Flan, deciding that the bawd’s face beneath its layers of ceruse and Spanish paper rouge was older than he’d thought—he was looking for someone young and kittenish to play with—hastily got back to what Mattie was saying. “Why, Mattie, what’s amiss?”
“It’s Arthur,” admitted Mattie, her face reddening with shame. “He—he beats me, Flan.”
The dockside whore heard that and gave a contemptuous snort. With a shake of her hennaed head she sidled on, past boxes and barrels, to confront a group of disembarking sailors with her broad hips and generous bust. Flan had already forgotten her.
He was digesting Mattie’s remark slowly, and now he focused his attention on her more closely. There certainly was an ugly new bruise on Mattie’s jaw and an older yellowing one beneath her right eye—and her eyes were red and swollen as if she might have been crying. “And you a bride,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Mattie nodded miserably.
Flan remembered suddenly some of the things an overwrought Anna Smith had told him the day he sailed—about Arthur. “But what’s Arthur Kincaid doing here?” he demanded, for there must be more to this. “I thought he’d be taking you to Boston?”
Mattie shivered. “He’s still after Anna.”
“Anna?” Flan’s jaw dropped. “But Anna’s in Bermuda!”
“No, she married right after you left. She lives in New Netherland now.”
Anna—married! Flan felt rocked to his foundations. Used to being careless with things, with people, it had never occurred to him that Anna would not wait for him—after all he’d promised her he’d come back rich! “Who’d she marry?” he demanded harshly.
“You don’t know him—his name is Danforth.”
Flan shook his head. “Never heard of him,” he said in a surly voice.
“Oh, you will if you stay here! He’s a patroon with a great estate somewhere upriver.”
A look of chagrin flashed over Flan’s hard face. Chagrin, for he had for a wild moment hoped to come charging in and save Anna from Arthur and with that one bold stroke—win her back. But Anna, it seemed, was held in strong hands. “Rich, is he?” he growled, well aware that such as he could hardly expect to lure away a rich man’s wife.
“Yes. Oh, Flan, I’m so afraid of Arthur—I’m afraid he’ll kill me!” That this blinding new fear came from Mattie’s guilty knowledge that she had cuckholded her husband, Flan had no way of knowing. But the very real terror in Mattie’s voice reached him.
“We couldn’t take you on the Swan,” he reflected, remembering uneasily the kind of men who manned her—not the kind of men timid little Mattie could deal with. Nor would he, he knew with honesty, be able to protect her from them. “And, anyway, we’ll be here three weeks and more, for we’re determined to get the best prices we can and that takes time—and we made a slow voyage, the crew is tired and needs rest.” What he meant—although he didn’t say it to this hurt-looking child-woman in her frumpy pink gown—was that the crew were entirely delighted with New Orange’s motley collection of dockside whores and it would probably be a month before their money had run out and they could be persuaded to face their trade again. “But”—so great was Mattie’s disappointment, so accusing her big brown eyes that he found himself shuffling his feet and feeling as if he’d struck her himself—“it might be I could find you passage on some other ship, Mattie.” He looked doubtful.
“Oh, any ship at all,” cried Mattie. “And I don’t care how roundabout she sails, just so long as I can get back home, away from Arthur!” She was hanging on to his flowing coarse cotton sleeve in her desperation.
“Have ye not tried to find passage yourself?”
“Oh, no, I’m afraid to. If Arthur found out—!”
Flan reached up under his hat brim and scratched his head. The gesture freed him from Mattie’s clutching hand. “It’s possible there’d be a ship sailing for one of the Dutch islands in the Caribbean that might be willing to stop and let you off at Bermuda— not St. George, perhaps, but somewhere along the coast, maybe Sandys or one of the smaller islands where fishermen would find you.”
“Oh, that would be fine—just so I could get back home, Flan!”
“But—“ Flan’s face grew solemn. “It will take money, Mattie, for they’d be taking a chance that some British warship might blow them out of the water.”
“I’ll have the money,” promised Mattie bravely. Her mind was casting about wildly for just how she could get it. From Arthur’s strongbox, that was it! She knew he carried a little metal strongbox nestled in the bottom of his heavy round-topped leathern chest—for she’d seen it. One night he’d taken the key—which he wo
re on a chain around his neck underneath his doublet—and gotten out some money and pocketed it. There were a number of coins in the box, gold coins. Some of them, she thought bitterly, were part of the meager dowry her parents had been able to thrust into Arthur’s greedy hands before they left. Well, that money would now take her back to Bermuda and into her parents’ arms! Unused to coping with life, it never occurred to her to ask Nicolas for help. Terrified Mattie was running back home, back to her dull humdrum life, back to safety. “I’ll have the money,” she repeated more firmly.
“All right.” Flan nodded is head thoughtfully. “Where are you staying?”
“The Green Lion.”
Flan smiled down at her. His was a light nature and he had already partially recovered from the shock of Anna’s marriage. “Just hang on,” he told Mattie. “It may take a while but we’ll get you home.”
“Arthur—Arthur mustn’t know,” cautioned Mattie in a frightened voice.
“Nor will he,” promised Flan, and took his leave with a bow, swaggering away from her, past barrels and ropes and produce and people, down the dock.
Mattie felt a sinking feeling steal over her as she watched him go. Would he do it? She’d never known him very well—it was Anna he cared for. For a moment she stood there in the bright sunshine of the dock biting her lip. Arthur cared for Anna too....
Then she took a deep breath and lifted her chin, looking out to sea. Somewhere out there was Bermuda—she’d see it again. Of course. Flan would do it! Everybody said Flan O’Toole’s people were wreckers, and no doubt part of the money she’d give him for ship’s passage would stick to his fingers—but he’d do it, all right! Because there was money in it....
Shy little Mattie was learning the ways of the world.
But time dragged by and Flan brought her no word.
Arthur spent most of his hours away from her. That was a blessing because Mattie had come to realize bitterly that her husband disliked her, would always dislike her. Only the nights were terrible, for it was then that Arthur staggered up the stairs drunk and took her with the same callous disregard he showed for the New Orange whores—whose company he much preferred.
Rich Radiant Love Page 43
