Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  And so they were swept on in a last deep surge of desire, then flung at last on to distant shores, only to realize that they were still here in a dormered room at the Raleigh, sharing a lumpy bed before a dying fire - and that their covers had all fallen off.

  ‘I’ll stir up the fire.’ Rye pressed a quick kiss on the crest of Carolina’s breast, and got up.

  Lazily she watched him from the bed. His lean naked body glowered in the firelight as he prodded the spent logs to life. The fire blazed up suddenly, turning his broad shoulders and narrow hips and powerful thighs to flame. He looked formidable, larger than life, this lover of hers - a man to dream of.

  ‘Come to bed,’ she murmured, still tingling in the afterglow of passion.

  He did so - but not before, grey eyes gleaming, he took a last look at the lovely sight of her, tumbled into the mattress.

  ‘And reach me the quilt,’ she added languidly, stretching. ‘I don’t seem to have any covers at all!’

  But his inspection of her feminine nakedness as she stretched out in the firelight, her pink-tipped breasts glowing rosy, her body gilded, had heated him up again.

  ‘I’ve a better way to warm you than by quilt,’ he declared huskily and spread his broad-shouldered form over her again, teasing her deliciously, making the afterglow turn into sighs of desire, and desire flame into passion - causing her every nerve to quiver with delight as he stroked and caressed and teased her slim responsive body. Until once again they were melded as one, tingling and aglow.

  Once, in between bouts of lovemaking, they lay there peacefully with the quilt half over them and he stroked her breasts as they talked.

  ‘I have learned tonight that you are your mother’s daughter,’ he said meditatively, stroking the smooth satin with gentle appreciative fingers.

  She snuggled up to him, enjoying the quivering delight his roving fingers brought her. ‘Yes. I was always that.’

  ‘And the Bramway woman was standing in your dining room when she cursed the tobacco . . .’ he murmured in amusement.

  ‘I was afraid Mother and Virginia were forgetting that if a bat or a weasel cursed our tobacco, they could hardly charge Amanda Bramway with it,’ declared Carolina, leaning down to nip at his fingers which were just then worrying her right nipple.

  ‘What will happen to her? Amanda Bramway?’

  ‘Nothing will happen to her,’ Carolina said with a shrug. ‘Or to Estelle either.’ She shivered as her shrug caused the fingers of his left hand, which was just then roving over her stomach, to drop lower. ‘It will be a stand-off - you’ll see. Amanda Bramway won’t dare to bring witchcraft charges against Sandy Randolph’s wife now - she’ll be too afraid she’ll be charged with witchcraft herself! Mother was just getting Sandy Randolph out of a bad mess. She guessed that he had found me and had brought me back, and she wanted to repay him.’

  ‘He might have preferred repayment in other coin,’ Rye murmured thoughtfully, remembering the open hunger that had flashed in Sandy Randolph’s silver eyes when he looked at Letitia.

  ‘Yes. He might.’ Carolina’s voice was suddenly sad. ‘It is too bad about Sandy and Mother. Sandy is what I guess you would call her “natural mate”. They think alike, feel alike about things, rise to the same challenges. But I think she truly loves Fielding, too - in a different way. A different way altogether.’

  ‘Women,’ pronounced Rye - as had many a man before him, ‘are difficult little monsters to understand.’ Carolina’s laugh gurgled, as much from what he had said as from the sudden tickling in intimate parts that was making her bounce about the bed. ‘Rye, we mustn’t make so much noise!’ she gasped. ‘It’s late and the inn’s quiet - people will hear us and there’ll be talk that you had a woman in your room tonight!’

  ‘And I wonder who they’ll think it was?’ he said, his lips suddenly pressing down on hers to silence her admonitions, while his lean body swept her away to wonderland.

  Later, when they had returned to earth and were mere mortals again, almost drifting off to sleep, when the fire had been banked and the whole world seemed still, she said, ‘I’m sure you didn’t understand but the quarrel really isn’t between Sandy Randolph and the Bramways. It’s between Mother and Amanda Bramway. You see, Mother was in love with Sandy but she couldn’t marry him because he was already married and his wife was mad and he couldn’t divorce her. And Amanda Bramway had expected Father to marry her but Mother took him away from her. It was a runaway marriage, very sudden - they just dashed off to the Marriage Trees and tied the knot. But Amanda Bramway has never forgiven Mother and she’s been a vicious enemy to us all these years. She knows if she hurt Sandy that Mother would feel the pain, so she was just striking back at Mother and using Sandy’s mad wife to do it.’

  ‘Ah, that makes a difference,’ he said softly. ‘It must have cost your mother a deal to come to the defence of the woman who stood between her and her lover.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carolina. ‘It must have.’ She sighed. ‘But Mother is like that. She wasn’t going to let Sandy be hurt by the Bramways - because if his wife really were accused of witchcraft - put on trial, I mean, Sandy would storm the jail and take her out, I know he would.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rye. ‘I believe he would.’

  ‘And then Sandy would be a fugitive and he could never come back here and Mother would never see him again and, don’t you see, that’s what Amanda Bramway wants? Mother made her unhappy years and years ago and she’s never forgotten or forgiven - she’s determined that since she couldn’t have Fielding that Mother shall not have them both - she wants to cost Mother even those little glimpses she still gets of Sandy. Oh, Rye -’ Suddenly she clutched him. ‘Mother and Sandy’s story is so sad. Think how unhappy they’ve been all these years! Oh, Rye - ’ Her voice held a note of panic. ‘Tell me that nothing like that can ever happen to us!’

  His hands, his lips were soothing, his long body curved as if to protect her, and his voice in her ear murmured quite convincingly that nothing so dreadful could ever happen to them.

  Somewhere, far off, the gods were laughing . . .

  PART THREE

  Candlelight and Wine

  Shadows of madness, dusting the hills,

  Danger and witchcraft, combing the rills,

  Hearts ever breaking, love without frills,

  Soul to soul, heart to heart, clashing of wills!

  AUNT PET’S HOUSE

  WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

  Winter 1689

  7

  Carolina crept back to her room just before dawn and crawled in beside a sleeping Virginia. She woke to find Virginia up and dressed and peering out of the window.

  ‘We’re snowed in,’ commented Virginia without turning from the frosted windowpanes. ‘I went downstairs and heard someone say that the road to Yorktown cannot be negotiated by a coach. I also saw’ - she turned to smile at Carolina - ‘the landlord helping a gentleman upstairs who kept clutching his head and groaning. The landlord called him “Mr Huddleston”.’

  ‘Poor Mr Huddleston,’ sighed Carolina, stretching luxuriously, ‘I fear he will have a vast headache this morning from so much over-indulgence in wine. Rye drank him under the table last night and left him downstairs in the common room.’

  ‘Yes. Well, Mother knows about it,’ sighed Virginia.

  ‘She what?’ Carolina sat bolt upright in bed.

  ‘She was just coming out of her room as the landlord was urging this groaning gentleman down the hall, saying, “Now, Mr Huddleston, spending the night downstairs should be enough for ye - ’tis not much farther and ye’ll be in your own bed”.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ cried Carolina, scrambling up. ‘Now there’ll be the devil to pay!’

  But there wasn't.

  She was just fastening her ice-green satin petticoat about her slender waist when her mother came through the door, fully dressed and pulling on her gloves.

  ‘What, so late abed, Carolina?’ she said carelessly. ‘And yet we were not
so late to bed last night!’

  Carolina gave her an uneasy look.

  ‘Well, hurry and dress,’ urged Letitia, ‘so that you will not keep us waiting.’

  ‘Waiting? Where are we going?'

  ‘To Petula’s. We’re far too crowded here at the Raleigh, and it’s too bad to have one of our party put into a room with a total stranger.’ Her gaze on Carolina was bland. ‘I’ve already told the innkeeper we'll be leaving this morning and Fielding is rousing Mr Evistock now.’ She insisted on being formal and calling Rye ‘Mr Evistock,’ Carolina noted. ‘So throw on your clothes and come down.’

  Carolina already had her dress on and Virginia was working the hooks. ‘But what about breakfast?’ she asked with a look at Virginia, still so painfully thin.

  ‘Virginia shall run down and pick up some hot crumpets and Sally Lunn and a keg of hot cider and we shall all picnic in Petula.’s kitchen. Along with you, Virginia. I’ll finish these hooks.’

  It was on the tip of Carolina’s tongue, once they were alone, to tell her mother about that other not-quite-legal wedding, but her mother kept up a light conversation that brooked no interruption, ending with, ‘There you are - oh, let your hair alone, your hood will cover it.’ She tossed Carolina her cloak and started for the door.

  ‘But what of our coach?’ cried Carolina.

  ‘Already ordered.'

  Carolina grabbed up her pattens and followed her mother. Downstairs in the common room, already bustling at this hour, the rest of their party was waiting, Virginia with a large linen square full of some of the hot breads and pastries for which the Raleigh’s kitchens were famous. Tall and smiling and looking not the least bit the worse for wear - indeed he might have got a full night’s sleep instead of a couple of hours - Rye Evistock stood watching them descend the stairs. He set down the keg of hot cider he was holding and helped Carolina on with her pattens.

  Fielding had been frowning about him as if looking for Duncan Bramway, and when Letitia told Carolina impatiently they must get started, he warned her, ‘The horses may get stuck in this snow.’

  ‘Nonsense, ’tis but a short way and then they’ll be bedding down in Petula’s stable!’ Imperiously Letitia would have led the way out, ignoring the depth of the snow which had not yet been swept and was deep where it had drifted against the inn, but Rye stopped her.

  ‘Mistress Lightfoot, allow me to carry you to your coach.'

  'I’ll carry Letty - you take charge of the girls.’ With a resigned look at them all, Fielding hoisted his velvet-clad burden, while Rye turned to the girls, who stood waiting in their pattens and cloaks, with, ‘I’ll take Mistress Virginia first.'

  Virginia looked pleased to be thus carried ceremoniously to the coach but Carolina, alone for the moment with Rye as he returned to carry her through the snow, said, ‘Mother isn't fooling me. She knows the Bramways sleep late and she's anxious to avoid a confrontation between Fielding and Duncan Bramway - that’s why we're leaving so early. And by the way, she knows. About us, I mean, about last night."

  He sighed. ‘Am I to be hauled on to the carpet for bedding my own wife?’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t know I’m your wife,’ corrected Carolina. ‘And she hasn’t actually said anything, but Virginia said she saw the landlord escorting Huddleston up to his room this morning.’ She cut off as they reached the coach and Rye handed her in, but she cast a questioning look back at him.

  His whimsical shrug said, what would be would be.

  Over snow not yet cut up by cart wheels and wagon wheels, the horses floundered through the rutted streets to Aunt Pet’s green-shuttered pink brick house where snow crested the tapering brick chimneys and mounded over the boxwood and the clipped live oak hedge. Snow fell from the dormers and roof as they drew up before the house, and Aunt Pet’s well-cared-for garden with its fruit trees and its sunken turf panel - whose sculpted corner seats, shaded by tall locusts, were so lovely in summer - was well-nigh unrecognizable beneath a thick blanket of white.

  ‘Well, Petula’s property seems to have survived the wind and snow,’ observed Letitia, peering out of the coach window to view the neat dormers and the handsome iron knocker on the familiar green-painted front door.

  ‘I told you it would be, but you must needs come and see for yourself,’ declared her husband morosely as he lifted her down from the coach. ‘Premonitions!’ He snorted, stomping on snowy boots through the deep snow to Aunt Pet’s front door.

  When Carolina was carried in, it came to her almost with a thrust of homesickness how many happy hours she had spent in this house, for at Aunt Pet’s she had felt more welcome than even in her own home. It was a forlorn feeling to arrive shivering in these cold rooms and know that Aunt Pet was far away in Philadelphia.

  ‘We always spent our holidays here,’ she told Rye wistfully as he set her down. And looking about, it seemed to her that she could almost see the house alight with the candles that had sparkled on the decorations of so many Christmases past, bright with the waxy green of the holly and its vivid scarlet berries, the bayberry and mistletoe and boxwood - she could almost hear the carollers and bell ringers outside and almost smell the fruitcake and plum pudding above the scent of the fragrant hickory logs that had burned so brightly on the hearth those holidays past.

  While the men busied themselves making fires - for Petula’s house had prudently been left with logs in the fireplaces ready for immediate lighting - the women busied themselves spreading a tablecloth in the dining room and setting out plates and cutlery, crumpets and Sally Lunn and tankards of hot cider from the keg they had brought along with them from the Raleigh.

  ‘I must find me a horse that is rested and strong and get me back to Level Green today,’ Fielding told his wife as he downed his still-warm cider.

  ‘Fielding, the plantation can get along without you!’

  He frowned at her. ‘I’ll not leave the children alone like this!’

  ‘But the servants - ’

  ‘Are only that,’ he corrected her. ‘Who knows, they may build the fires too high in this bitter weather and burn the place down about their heads.’

  She was silent, studying him - and there was a smile in her eyes. Carolina in that moment felt very close to her mother.

  ‘And you can’t stay here, Letty,’ he worried. ‘Even though I've no doubt Evistock here will see no harm comes to you’ - at this point, across the table, Rye nodded gravely - ‘there are no proper provisions in the house. It will be impossible to procure them in this snow, and you know as well as I do that Petula’s servants are working elsewhere while she is gone.’

  ‘Oh, I know you are right, Fielding,’ sighed Letitia, who was being very conciliatory now that she had got her way about everything. ‘I realize you must go back today, but of course the rest of us must stay. For how else will I be able to obtain the materials for Carolina’s wedding dress?’

  So, swiftly, she had arranged it. Fielding was packed off to Level Green - and to safety, thought Carolina, from another brush with Duncan Bramway. And as it turned out, her mother had no intention of doing any cooking. They would eat their meals at various inns - indeed, the Raleigh would do well enough tonight.

  With some alarm on the girls’ part, they all trooped back to the Raleigh for supper, over streets where the snow was now cut to ribbons by sleighs and carts and carriages. But if they had expected another confrontation between Letitia and Amanda Bramway, it was not to be. Letitia passed the Bramways as if she did not see them, and Amanda only sniffed as they went by. But Rye was quick to note the sullen glances that followed them.

  Obviously, Duncan Bramway had had a talk with his wife about the danger of charging Sandy Randolph’s mad wife with witchcraft - the danger to herself.

  Carolina had a feeling it had all blown over - and said so lightheartedly to Rye, when the next morning the four of them were scouring those shops whose proprietors had managed to clear pathways in the snow.

  ‘I hope so - for your sake.’
His gaze was tender on this girl he loved so much.

  They had gone through a blue-painted shop door with a clanging bell to announce their entrance and had fallen behind to talk to each other as Letitia critically inspected some blue and white Delftware plates ‘on which to serve the bride’s cake’.

  ‘But you have not enough of them,’ she told the shopkeeper with a sigh.

  ‘I expect a new shipment from England any day now,’ he assured her. ‘Coming in on the Bristol Maid.'

  Hearing this, Letitia ordered such a number of plates that her daughters were quite dazzled - and followed by recklessly ordering a vast amount of new cutlery which would be arriving on the Bristol Maid as well. And then turned her mind to bridal finery.

  Still lingering behind her mother and Virginia on their trek down Duke of Gloucester Street, Carolina turned from the inspection of a passing sleigh, jingling with sleigh bells, to shoot a glance upward at Rye. ‘What would you like me to wear for the wedding?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Anything,’ he said promptly. ‘Just so we can get us wed and - the other matter taken care of.’

  The ‘other matter’, she knew, was his pardon. But there was still no word from the governor and he had not returned.

  Letitia found at last the material she wanted for Carolina’s wedding gown. ‘I think you would be most striking in white,’ she said critically, holding up a length of rippling white velvet.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ agreed Carolina dutifully. For herself she would have preferred some pale shade - delicate blue perhaps or a pastel green. But bridal white was coming into vogue and her mother had always an eye to the latest, the smartest thing.