by Once a Rogue
“Lucy works her fingers to the bone and she may not be the most efficient, but you can’t fault her for trying. Time you stopped waging war on the poor girl. This is all new to her, but she’s adapted very well, truth be told, with no praise from you. Would it harm you to be pleasant to the girl? I can’t think what’s got into you of late!”
Poised to speak again, he glanced over and saw Lucy emerging through the door. He blinked rapidly, cheeks reddening slightly under all the sun-browning. Grabbing his luncheon pail, he took off for the fields, not saying another word.
He left his mother in a very rattled mood. Angrily declaring the housework would wait for once, she announced a desire to stroll up the lane and show Lucy the fortress that was once home to the Barons Sydney. For the excursion she packed a small basket of bread, cheese and fruit, with a little jug of her special plum wine. It was a brew of considerable strength and something of which John disapproved, especially for women. His mother, apparently, was in the mood to defy his rules and orders.
Glad of the chance to get out and explore, Lucy followed her along the lane, hurrying to keep up, dodging puddles and tripping over muddy ruts. At such a furious pace it didn’t take long to reach their destination.
Grass and weeds grew long between the ancient stones, and great tall thistles stood guard around the old gatehouse. No one had tended the place in a long time and the wildlife took over with relish. As they stood in the cobbled courtyard in the shadow of the great stone fortress, doves took startled flight from the battlements. It was a mad cacophony for a moment, the sky dark with fluttering wings, then all was still again, tranquil.
“Sometimes we forget where we came from,” Mistress Carver said, hugging her basket of provisions. “I’m sorry to say it, Lucy, but my son is too much a Carver, with all his rough edges and hidebound ways. He’s buried our noble Sydney pride under a hard skin and refuses to acknowledge my blood is just as much a part of him as that damned Carver insolence. He never appreciates the finer things in life, has no time for any of that. He deliberately drops his ‘h’s and ‘g’s, Lucy. He knows how it grinds on my spleen. I tried my best to instill a little of the gentleman in my boy, but now I see it was a lost cause!”
Lucy thought how strange it would be to see John acting like a fine gentleman. It would probably make her faint, or fall over laughing. But, seeing his mother upset, she kept a straight face. They walked further, into the shadow of a great apple tree.
“I hoped, having a young lady about the place, he might soften his ways and think of brushing his hair with something other than his fingers. I thought he might take an interest in his appearance and smarten his manners. But it seems he’s more determined than ever to deny the noble strain in his blood.” Mistress Carver shook her head. Looking up into the branches of the apple tree, she closed her eyes. “Of course, he idolizes his father’s memory. I suppose that’s why he acts that way, trying to be his father.”
Sunlight trickled through the gently rustling branches and dappled her face with a veil of emerald and gilt lace. She looked girlish, dreamy.
“I used to sit up in this tree when I was young. Could hide in it for hours and no one would know where I was—especially amid the blossom in spring.” She patted the thick, gnarled trunk, as if it was an old friend. “Well, time passes. We can’t stay young forever.”
“No,” Lucy solemnly agreed.
“We shall never be younger than we are today. I try to tell my boy, try to make him see…but he’s too busy with his head down, rushing forward like a bull. I’m afraid he pays no heed to an old woman like me.” Then her mood changed, or else she forgot her train of thought. “Come, Lucy, I’ll take you up the tower and we’ll have our luncheon on the roof. You can see for miles.”
They ascended the ancient tower steps, onto the walkway, skirting the battlements, and sat together looking down on the spread of villages, fields, lakes and a battalion of tall pines. The sloping roof and jumbled chimneys of Souls Dryft seemed closer than they did as they’d walked up the lane, and she watched birds bobbing in and out of the dovecote, Vince chasing their shadows across the yard.
When Lucy tentatively asked if Lord Oakham might think they trespassed on his property, Mistress Carver replied that this tower belonged to Sydneys long before any upstart Oakham trotted along to claim it and if he wanted some excuse to find her guilty of any crime, she’d damn well give him one.
“Oakham!” she snorted, passing Lucy the jug of plum wine. “Where were they at the Battle of Hastings? I daresay they weren’t riding to victory like my ancestor, the great Norman knight Remy St. Denis.”
Lucy agreed, sipping the wine cautiously and wincing as it burned her throat all the way down. Her father generally gave her watered-down wine and she’d never drunk anything like this. Mistress Carver’s plum wine made her decidedly merry and also deeply thoughtful about everything, especially the shape of the clouds, which seemed close enough to touch.
Somewhere in one of those distant fields, glowing in the sun, John was hard at work. She wished she might work alongside, sharing his burden, but of course he would never let her. It was not her home and never could be. A hunted woman, she must soon be on her way again, for the longer she stayed, the more likely she’d be discovered, captured and taken back to face what she’d done.
She looked at the woman beside her and said warmly, “Thank you for making me at home here. I will always remember your kindness.”
Mistress Carver smiled. “There is no need to thank me.”
“But you’ve been so patient. It’s almost as if you weren’t surprised when I came, as if you expected me.”
“I did.”
“But how ?”
“Nathaniel wrote to me.”
“Oh.” This had never occurred to her.
“I decided not to tell John when he left to fetch his cousin’s belongings. If he knew there was a woman involved, he might have refused to go, but I knew, once he saw you there, he wouldn’t turn you away. Nathaniel wrote that you were a young lady in trouble, in need of friends.”
Lucy took another drink from the wine jug before passing it back to Mistress Carver. Perhaps she’d had enough. It wouldn’t do to lose her inhibitions and start telling the lady all her troubles. “Well, thank you,” she said, meaning it with every fiber of her being. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if he’d refused to bring me.”
The old lady brushed crumbs from her skirt, brisk and no-nonsense. “John would never turn his back on a woman in need.” She sipped her wine. “Whatever trouble you might be in, John will help. I know he seems a hard nut, but he’s a good boy at heart, and loyal.”
Still troubling over how much her hostess knew, she finished her luncheon quietly while Mistress Carver eventually continued her rambling lesson on family history and why Sydneys were, in fact, far superior to Carvers.
* * * *
John was not at all happy.
His mood grew steadily worse, as the truth became ever more inescapable. Why had he not seen it before? Perhaps because he daren’t look at her too long, daren’t let himself imagine…
For weeks she’d haunted him. He’d just begun to think she was fading out of his mind at last, and now she came back again, in the flesh, to torment him further.
Full of pent-up energy, he threw himself into the harvest. At night he was wakeful, couldn’t settle and the summer heat gave little respite. All too well aware of the woman across the narrow hall, he tried innocent thoughts, of skipping lambs and such like, but in no time his mind returned to her, wondering whether she was awake too, and frantically counting sheep.
On this Saturday, when he stayed late haymaking in the fields, his mother sent the hussy to fetch him home to supper.
Hearing soft murmurs of surprise and appreciation from his hired laborers, he looked up, stretching out his back. There she was, venturing outside the boundaries he’d set. She picked her way through the field, holding her skirt out of the hay, eyes down.
She still wore her hair up under a linen cap, which was looking decidedly worse for wear now, but a few strands trickled loose down her neck and the sunset caught on them as she came closer, revealing a deep luster under the patchy black dye. When she stumbled over her own two feet, the cap was dislodged briefly and, for just a moment, her hair was aflame.
“Hey ho! Who’s this then?” someone said.
Fury leapt in his chest. He’d told his mother never to let her out into the fields, because he knew the other men would ask questions he’d rather not answer. And some he couldn’t.
She stumbled again, falling forward. Every man, except John, stepped up to save her, but she saved herself, laughing. Another lock of hair fell loose down the side of her neck. Definitely copper.
“Are you coming to supper, John?” she asked, slightly breathless. “Your mother sent me to fetch you.”
All eyes now turned to him in surprise, amusement and a fair spattering of envy. She waited for his answer, gently blowing a loose tendril of long hair from her lips, while the men looked from her to him and back again.
He turned away, not having decided what to do with her yet, and swung his scythe. “No,” he muttered. He heard the rustle as she moved closer and so he stopped again. “Mind out o’ the way.”
“But it’s late and your mother waits to eat. She said I’m not to come back without you.”
He was painfully aware of the other workers standing around, gathering closer to get a better look at the beauty in the fancy scarlet frock.
“You must be hungry by now,” she added.
When he made the mistake of looking over at her, he realized just how hungry he was. She stood framed by the sun’s blush, hands behind her back, face turned up to the sky, her arching pose showing off her long, graceful neck and the plump curve of her bosom as she watched a flock of geese pass overhead.
“Aye…well…” All the pent up lust of a healthy, young red-blooded male soared through his veins and pumped life into his manhood. “I suppose I can stop…for now.”
Her gaze still followed the geese for a moment, while he greedily drank in the sight of her steeped in gold. Then she shaded her eyes with one hand, looking at him again. “Good.” Her smile was a little too wide and relaxed, her body swaying. Something was amiss, but he didn’t know what.
As he wiped his face on his sleeve, one of the workers closed in for an introduction. Martin Frye was an eager lad, whose callow boldness never concerned itself with stepping on another fellow’s toes or territory. The boy almost fell over his own feet as he rushed forward. The Friday wench turned her gaze to Martin Frye, looked him up and down with interest, and smiled again in that lazy, sensual way.
John quickly stepped forward, took her elbow and steered her back across the field.
“Your friend seems a pleasant young fellow,” she observed as he tightened his fingers around her arm.
“He’s not my friend.”
“Oh?”
He stared straight ahead, not yet trusting himself to look at her again. He smelled the plum wine on her breath, so now he knew the source of her odd smile and the stumbling. Churlish, he thought about finding every jug of that stuff and pouring it out in the yard. It was never wise to let a woman near something so potent, no matter how his mother protested she was allowed one vice in her life. At her age she ought to know better. Fancy giving this wench, who was plainly trouble enough, plum wine, just to add coal to the fire!
Once through the gate and out in the lane, he stopped abruptly, hand still around her arm. “It was you, wasn’t it ?”
“What was?”
“In Norwich.”
All amusement melted from her countenance. She tried to remove her arm, but he gripped her tightly. He would not let her get away again. She’d left him once before, left him to suffer.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, eyes flaring, shooting sparks of reflected sunset. “I’ve never been to Norwich. I…I don’t even know where it is.” Up went her eyebrows and the disdainful little nose.
“I met a woman there in a bawdy house, two months ago,” he said slowly. “She wore a mask and wouldn’t tell me her name.”
“A house of ill-repute? How dare you suggest I ever visited such a place!”
Releasing her arm, he muttered, “Can’t imagine where I might get the idea. Can you?”
“Certainly not.” She fussed with those loose strands of hair, trying to put them back under her cap. “And frankly, Master John Carver, I wonder what business you had in such a place either!” She stormed off, head high, as if she had somewhere important to go without him. Oh no, the strumpet would not walk away, dismissive and haughty.
His long stride soon caught up with her. “Nathaniel put you up to it, did he, trollop? Was it another of his little jests to send you to seduce me at Mistress Comfort’s?”
Even her freckles paled. “You stinking, wretched, hypocrite! Filthy, rotten…goatypig!”
“Goatypig?”
“Yes. That’s what you are. A goat,” she held up one hand and then the other, “and a pig.” Clapping her hands smartly together, she just missed his nose. “But with none of the good, just the worst aspects of both rolled into one.”
“You’ve been at my mother’s plum wine haven’t you?”
Hands on her waist, she stood her ground. “So what if I have?”
Glowering down at the bedraggled creature with the stubborn lips and prim, upturned nose, John once again suffered an undeniable jolt of need. At least once a day, since he’d brought her here, these feelings came to him and usually at a very inconvenient moment.
She could deny it all she liked.
But he knew her. Intimately. In every way.
Where had she been before then? How many other men had she known since him? Had she thought of him at all in the time between? Anger, jealousy and hurt battled for supremacy. No woman had ever done this to him. No woman would dare treat him this way.
She was leaving him again, her quick step already passing through the gates to the yard. He followed, grabbed a pitchfork from the hay cart and ran around in front of her, holding it like a weapon. She skidded to a halt, eyeing the pitchfork fearfully.
“Tell me the truth, Friday wench.” She stepped back against the cart and he followed. “It was you, wasn’t it? Confess!”
She regarded him sourly, lips pursed, head on one side. He resettled the pitchfork across his thighs, holding it with both hands.
“Well?”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life. Not before you found me waiting on the Captain’s cart in Yarmouth.”
The little scar under her eye was not familiar to him, but her lips were. So was the dimple and the hair, now its true color began to show. She had the sheer gall to feign ladylike, dainty manners when he knew exactly what she was and what she’d done to him, damn her.
She was the best birthday gift he’d ever had.
There was an odd break in the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“You’re not a very good liar,” he observed coolly, trying to remain calm. “Surprisingly enough, for a whore.”
She was silent.
“Is that where Nathaniel found you? At Mistress Comfort’s?”
“I don’t know what you–”
“After you left my bed, did you go to his?”
“You speak nonsense.” Now she put on a little display of exaggerated outrage, almost comical, waving her arms wildly. “I’ve never been in any bed with you. I’m shocked you would suggest it.”
He stepped closer and she turned her face away. “Did he celebrate with you later?” he spat. “I’m surprised he didn’t come to crow over me, once he proved I couldn’t stay celibate until I married. He chose you, I suppose, because he knew I’d never resist you.”
“How dare you mistake me for some sixpenny whore?”
“I’ve no doubt you charge more than sixpence.” He remembered every sweet inch of her butter-soft skin. “I’m lucky Nathaniel p
aid your fee. It was my birthday, but I never expected him to remember me with such a generous gift. Since I’m covering your living expenses while he’s away, I’m entitled to some arrangement surely. I realize your accommodation here in my humble abode is hardly luxury, but it must count for something toward the fee.” The anger he’d sworn to restrain refused to oblige for the sake of his pride. It sputtered out of him, wild and tempestuous, too much even for him to handle. “What would you charge me, then? Just out of curiosity. Not that I’ve any intention of paying for it. How much for one night?”
* * * *
Lucy was too indignant to manage any reply. She certainly wasn’t ready to tell him what sent her to Mistress Comfort’s or how she came to be with Nathaniel. In many ways John Carver was still an unknown quantity to her, as much mystery as he’d been the night they’d met. Back then, the only two things concerning her had been his ability to perform the job and that she’d found him attractive. Now, he was an entire person with a life and family. She’d never wanted to make anyone like her before, never sought approval from anyone other than her father, and the Lord knew that was a thankless task. But she realized how much she wanted John to like her, respect her, not to have him think her a whore, shout at her with fire in his eyes, the veins standing out on his neck, his hands clenched into fists.
If he ever hit her he would do more damage than old Winton, she thought grimly.
But he wouldn’t hit her. Or would he? How did she know?
She’d recently discovered she knew a great deal less about men and life in general than she’d thought she’d known when living under her father’s strict governance. Sometimes, when more of this shocking self-pity welled up in her throat, she wished she’d never left her old world where all was familiar, even if it killed her slowly. Better that, perhaps, than to be out here, tired, sore and unappreciated, with this dreadful, uncouth, rough-handed, big, gorgeous man yelling at her. If her father were here, he’d have something to say. Yes he would. John Carver would be put in his place then and never dare raise his voice to her again.
