Silver Tears

by Weyrich, Becky Lee

  When he was done with her, he ran into the forest and vomited. Soon the others arrived and took charge. They found Lady Cynthia kneeling beside the body, weeping for the death she had caused. She never told the rest of what had happened, but she often threatened to do so. From then on, whenever she stopped at Lord Geoffrey’s hunting lodge, unaccompanied by her husband, she never failed to summon Chris. Although he hated himself for it, he was unable to resist Lady Cynthia.

  Then all the other women flashed through his nightmare—all the wives of lords who eventually drove him from England’s shores. He took all those nameless, faceless, titled females to punish Cynthia as she had punished him. For never did he lie with Lady Cynthia that his father’s words and the sight of his father in death did not come back to haunt him.

  Yes, Lady Cynthia’s breasts were full and sweet and her thighs soft and as white as a lily, but her heart was black and rotten, her body befouled by so many lovers that she tainted Christopher Gunn’s very soul as they lay together.

  As the ship drew ever closer to Boston, Gunn’s nightmares grew more intense. Far off in the wilds of Maine he was able to put all this away from his mind. But whenever he would visit Boston or any other civilized town, he began smarting under the guilt of his uncivilized passion with that London “lady.”

  For years he had tried to block those painful times from his mind. He’d thought he had at last purged Lady Cynthia’s wantonness and his own dreadful sins from his soul. Why, now, were such black memories flooding back to haunt him?

  Gunn awoke with a jolt. The answer to his question came almost before his mind could finish asking it: Alice. The blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair, had brought Cynthia back to mind. But there, he told himself, any resemblance ended. Where Lady Cynthia had been cruel and cunning and hungry with lust, Alice was kind and gentle and innocent of false passion. The two of them were as different as Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess. But still, the old guilt returned to torture him whenever he looked into Alice’s eyes.

  What could he do? Where could he go to hide from his past? He ran his fingers through his tumbled hair and sighed. Somehow, he had to find peace. But if he married Alice, wouldn’t he always look at her, only to be reminded of Lady Cynthia?

  There seemed no answers to his questions. One thing he was sure of, however. He wanted Alice for better or worse.

  Alice tried to enjoy the trip, but it was difficult with Gunn being so remote. She’d hardly set eyes on him since the day they sailed.

  Captain Hargrave, on the other hand, was very much in evidence, always on deck to make sure this ship’s Boston-bred master and his crew were doing their jobs properly. Only once did Hargrave speak to Alice. Turning a cold, haughty stare on her, he said, “Gunn won’t marry you, you know. I know exactly what he wants from you, and it isn’t a bride’s sweet promise.” He stalked away then, leaving her to wonder what on earth he meant by that.

  A week later they sailed into Boston harbor. Everyone was on deck. It was a fine, clear October day, the skies brilliant and the waters smooth. Alice stood at the railing with Gunn and Will Phips. Will was in high spirits. Alice found his mood contagious and tried her best to draw Gunn into the conversation. But he remained aloof and glum, scanning the bustling port with a wary eye and a frown.

  As the ship pulled closer to the docks, Phips began waving frantically. “See there? That’s my Mary.”

  Alice’s gaze followed his pointing finger, and she spied a plump, rosy-cheeked woman of perhaps forty, a bit older than Phips himself. She was dressed in a fine purple gown, standing beside a shiny new carriage. Sir William’s treasure hunt had indeed left him well off.

  “Wait till you meet her, Alice,” Phips continued. “You two will have fine times together.”

  Boston wasn’t quite London, Alice soon discovered, but it was a far cry from the rustic fort in Maine. She felt she had finally returned to the real world. That world, unfortunately, did not seem to appeal to Christopher Gunn. Now that he was well on his way to recovery and they might have enjoyed all the sights of Boston together, he was as gruff and infuriating as he had been when she first met him. She had half a mind to buy a bow and arrow from the first Indian she met so she could shoot him in the leg again.

  After the closeness they had shared in that rumbling old wagon, she could not understand why she was the last person on earth that Gunn wanted to be near. She simply couldn’t figure it out.

  “It’s all my fault,” Will Phips had told her the night they arrived. “He hates city life. I coaxed him into coming by agreeing to invite you along, Alice. You two seemed to be growing so close and getting along so well, I never thought there’d be a problem once we got here. I’m sorry. I wish I could fix things for you.”

  Alice thanked him and told him not to worry, that everything would be all right soon. But soon came and went, and things still seemed all wrong. Gunn kept his distance and remained locked within his own private torment.

  Mary Phips gave Alice little time to brood over Gunn. From the moment they arrived, the older woman took Alice under her wing as if she were welcoming her own daughter home. Alice was given the largest guest room in the beautiful two-story brick mansion. She marveled at Mary’s palatial home, almost as fine as any townhouse in London, with its leaded windows, Italian marble fireplaces, and elegant European furnishings. Will Phips had sent his ships all over the world and had spared no expense in collecting the treasures that he knew would please his wife.

  But their pleasant surroundings could not improve Gunn’s mood. To Alice it seemed that a dark cloud had hovered over him since the moment they boarded the ship for Boston.

  Two weeks after their arrival the four of them sat at the Phipses’ dinner table as Alice mulled over the problem. Mary, even prettier than usual in a rose brocade gown, and Will, looking ever so dapper in city clothes, sat at the head and foot of the table. Gunn—with clean buckskins at least—sat across from Alice, scowling silently at his china plate. Alice dared not try to make polite conversation when he was in such a horrid mood.

  Will piped up cheerily, “Mary and I are planning a gala so everyone can meet you, Alice. Gunn, you’d better get yourself in a party mood, too.”

  “Won’t be here,” Gunn mumbled, stabbing a chunk of mutton fiercely with his silver fork.

  “He’s joking, ladies,” Will said, smiling first at Mary and then at Alice. “Even a good Indian uprising couldn’t keep him away from such a gay evening. Fine wine, excellent victuals, music for dancing…” Will started to add “lovely girls just panting to be kissed,” but thought better of it in the present company. “I’m as rich as a king now, and I plan to entertain like one.”

  Gunn looked up, unsmiling. “I said I won’t be here and that’s my last word on the subject, Phips.”

  “Oh, come now,” his friend cajoled. “I know I shouldn’t have made plans without telling you, but who the hell can talk to you these days?”

  “Will, please, your language,” Mary cautioned.

  Phips offered his wife an apologetic smile, then continued, “You can’t let us down, Gunn. Think of Alice.”

  Alice felt uncomfortable listening to the conversation. It was clear that Will had not told her the whole truth earlier. She had believed that her invitation to come along came directly from Christopher Gunn. Apparently, that was not so. Perhaps Gunn hadn’t even planned to come to Boston at all, and Phips had used her merely as bait. The great pike on his hook obviously was a reluctant catch.

  “Don’t plan anything special on my account,” Alice said.

  “But, Alice,” Mary broke in, “Will and I have our hearts set on showing you off to our friends.”

  Before she even thought about her reply, Alice said, “If I had a husband, I’d feel exactly as you do, Mary. I’d want to do exciting things with him. But I can’t seem to get enthusiastic about a social event when I’m all alone. And it doesn’t look as if I’ll have a husband again anytime soon.�
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  Gunn pushed his chair back with a loud scrape, rose from the table, and after giving Alice a furious glance, stormed out of the room.

  Phips sighed deeply. “Well, I guess that’s it. Alice, you really shouldn’t have provoked him.”

  “I know, Will,” she said, truly sorry. “It’s just that he is so infuriating.” She turned suddenly on her host. “And you, Will, why did you tell me he wanted me along?”

  He shrugged and smiled apologetically. “He said he did and that he’d come only if you came, too. He refused to leave you alone in Maine or to come here without you.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t seem happy,” she replied.

  “You’re not at fault for his mood, Alice,” Will assured her. “He’s just gotten used to being in the wilds. Bringing Gunn to Boston these days is like trying to bring a wolf into the parlor. He’s changed since he left England.”

  “Well, something has to be done and done quickly,” Mary declared. “The invitations have already been sent, and I want both of you there. Alice, you simply must help us.”

  “You must,” Will echoed.

  “But how?” Alice’s voice was almost a wail of dismay. “You know what he wants to do, Will. He’s thinking of going straight back to Maine. I can feel it more every day.” She stared down at her plate, feeling desolate. “I don’t want to lose him. Truly I don’t.”

  “Then the best you can do, Alice, is side with us and hope that Gunn will relent at the last moment.”

  “Will, you know he won’t,” she said with a sigh.

  Her host smiled at her and leaned closer, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh, I think he will when he finds out that Captain Jonathan Hargrave has accepted our invitation. Christopher Gunn’s a jealous man. He’ll do anything to keep you and Hargrave apart.”

  Alice didn’t know whether she was pleased or disgusted by the plan.

  “Well, Alice, what do you say?” Phips demanded.

  A smile lit her whole face. “I say it’s high time, Mary, that I dug my best ball gown out of my trunk.”

  While the others were still at the table, plotting away, Gunn left the stately brick manse and stalked out into the night. He needed some cold air to clear his head. But Boston air was not what he longed for. The port town reminded him too much of an English village, more so than Philadelphia with its solemn Quaker atmosphere or New Amsterdam and its bawdy, hard-drinking, hard-living pace. Boston was proper and quaint and tidy, like a little piece of London transported to America’s shores. The place conjured up too many memories for him to be comfortable.

  As he walked the dark, narrow way, his mind and heart continued the battle that had been waging in his soul since the moment he left Maine. His nightmares continued and the comparison between Alice and Cynthia nagged at him. He’d tried to pull himself out of his foul mood, but to no avail. Could it be that he was punishing Alice because she looked so much like that lady of long ago who had so befouled his life? If so, he was the villain of this piece.

  He stood for a time, looking out over the harbor at the great vessels riding calmly at anchor. The cold wind seemed to clear his head. Turning quickly, he started back toward Will Phips’s house. He knew what he must do.

  Alice awoke the next morning to bright sunshine. It was one of those perfect fall days—crisp air, but warm skies. She felt as grand as the morning. Quickly she climbed out of bed, washed up at the china bowl, then dressed in a warm woolen gown of autumn leaf gold.

  As she approached the bottom of the stairs, she heard Mary Phips talking to someone in the dining room. A muffled male voice drifted to her. It couldn’t be Will—he’d be at the docks by this time, supervising the final details of one ship or another. She paused, craning her neck to catch a word or two of the conversation. She heard far more than she’d bargained for.

  “I want to do this thing right, Mary, every step of the way.” It was Gunn’s voice.

  Mary laughed softly. “My word, you do go from one extreme to the other, Christopher. But you know I’ll help any way that I can.”

  “You’re a good person, Mary. If it weren’t for seeing what vast improvements you’ve made in Will Phips, I wouldn’t even consider marriage. But I suppose I have a few rough edges that could be honed, too.”

  Again Mary laughed. “The very fact that you’re thinking in terms of courtship is a vast improvement, Christopher.”

  “Well, we’ll have to wait and see what happens after tonight. Do you suppose she’ll go along with it?”

  “We won’t know until we ask, Chris.”

  “And you will ask her?”

  Alice could take it no longer. She had to know what was going on. “Ask what of whom?” she chimed brightly as she hurried into the room.

  Gunn was on his feet immediately, looking as if he’d just been caught at some dastardly plot. “Morning, Alice,” he said with uncharacteristic politeness. “You’re looking fine today. I’d like to stay and chat for a bit, but Will’s waiting for me at the docks.”

  With that, he tore out of the house as if all the hounds of hell were yapping at his heels.

  “What on earth was all that about, Mary?” Alice sat down as a servant poured her a steaming cup of tea.

  Mary gave her young friend a smile almost as radiant as the morning light and reached over to pat her hand. “It’s hard to say for sure, Alice. But it seems you’ve wrought a remarkable change in our favorite backwoodsman.”

  “What kind of change?” Alice asked suspiciously.

  “Time will tell. He has much on his mind just now. Since you have no guardian, he came to me to ask permission.”

  Alice was frowning. “Permission for what?”

  “We have a courting custom hereabouts called ‘bundling.’” She looked at Alice quizzically, but the younger woman gave no evidence that she’d ever heard the term before. “It seems Christopher wants to pay proper court to you, Alice. What do you think of that?”

  Alice’s face glowed. “Oh, Mary! You don’t know what a relief that is to hear. I believe I can deal with courting just fine. It’s his moods and tempers that throw me into a dither. I honestly never know when he’s going to grab me and kiss me or bite my head off. I’m so fond of Gunn,” she added, “but I can’t figure him out.”

  “That could be said of most men by most women, my dear. Perhaps tonight is a good idea, although I had my doubts when he suggested it.”

  “What about tonight, Mary?” Alice demanded. “You still haven’t explained.”

  “Oh, but I did, Alice. Tonight you and Christopher will bundle together. You’ll have to excuse me now, dear. I must get everything ready.”

  Alice sat there in dumb silence staring at her friend as she left the room.

  “You and Alice… bundling?” Will’s laughter exploded on the calm morning air.

  “Pipe down, won’t you?” Gunn growled when several sailors turned and grinned at them.

  “I’ll try.” Will swallowed a chuckle. “But, dammit, Gunn, the two of you slept together in that wagon for several nights. Isn’t bundling rather a step in the other direction?”

  “We did not sleep together. Besides, with that hole in my damn leg it was too painful to… ” Gunn cast his gaze to one side and a red flush crept up his cheeks from his beard.

  “But you tried, I vow.”

  Gunn kicked at a piece of rope with the toe of his boot. “I was hurt, not dead.”

  Will laughed aloud, then asked, “Do you think Alice will do it?”

  Gunn glared at him. “Why the hell wouldn’t she? It’s respectable.”

  “Don’t worry, my friend. If my Mary agreed, then Alice will accept the idea. You know how women stick together.”

  “I don’t want her to do it for Mary, Will.” His voice was almost a moan. “I want her to do it for me.”

  The wind quartered around and Phips wrinkled his nose. “A piece of advice, Gunn. If you want Alice to go through with
this, you’d better go buy yourself some decent clothes and shuck those smelly buckskins before tonight. A bath might not hurt, either, and maybe a shave. You don’t need that grisly face-warmer getting in the way of your kissing tonight.”

  “I never said I was going to kiss her.”

  Phips smiled. “No, you didn’t, did you?”

  That evening Alice waited nervously in the back bedroom upstairs. She still wasn’t sure what this bundling was supposed to accomplish, but Mary had assured her that it was an accepted form of courtship brought to America by the Welsh, Dutch, and Germans.

  It seemed to Alice that she and Gunn had “bundled” pretty well in the back of that old wagon. But Mary seemed to set great store by everything being “perfectly proper,” as she put it, so Alice agreed to go along with this odd form of courting.

  Mary wanted Alice to go on and get into the double bed. “It just wouldn’t be right, Christopher actually seeing you climb into bed, dear,” she insisted.

  “Why not?” Alice wondered.

  Mary smiled nervously and gave a twitchy shrug. “Oh, I don’t really know, dear. It would just seem so much better if you were already lying there waiting for him when he arrived.”

  Alice tossed her long hair in a coquettish gesture, really getting into the spirit of being courted now. “Seems to me he ought to invite me to join him, if he’s any kind of gentleman at all. Why, I’d look rather foolish lying there waiting, wouldn’t I?”

  Mary Phips rolled her eyes, shook her head, and left Alice, sitting in a rocker beside the fire, to await her beau. Gunn was late, giving her plenty of time to think before he arrived.

  Alice sat, staring into the fire, listening to the wind howl around the eaves, and she remembered another cold, stormy night long ago. She wondered if Gunn remembered. Probably not.

  It had been several years before her mother’s execution. Lord Geoffrey had taken extremely ill that night during a dinner he was hosting. He had been so bad off that he needed his charm-woman at his bedside. That had meant that Alice was left alone in her bedroom in the big, dark castle.