“All over the world, you say?” the old soldier said.
"Do your travels take you to France?" Sir Edward snapped.
She looked at him then, only at him. She said softly, "Aye, they did."
“I would have liked to travel,” the old soldier said, “but I do not have proper sea legs. France does not count; it was only the Channel. Perhaps if I had been born to it such as you . . . “
She waited a moment for him to finish. He never did. Kate sipped her water, ignoring her wine on purpose.
Sir Hugh said, “And how would you compare your country’s new supposed-Navy with the King’s Royal fleet?”
The question seemed to amuse some at the table. Not Kate, and not Standish either. He was shaking his head ever so slightly as Kate looked his way. She cleared her throat, and Standish started to cough that dry polite choke of propriety. It didn't do any good.
She said, "I’ve met some fine souls in your navy blue, but taken as a whole, I’m afraid that I don't think of it much at all."
Sir Edward stiffened. The old soldiers laughed. No one else said a word.
She added, “My first impression was not pleasant, you see.”
When Standish spoke up, his neck was bright red, for this was not polite dinner conversation—at least, not here.
He said, “I think you had better explain yourself, Katie. But do it delicately, won't you? You age me ten years when you speak of such things."
She took another sip of water and also her time. "Well, I was sitting on a bale of cotton, I recall. It was upwind on a particularly smelly dockside in the Charleston harbor. I was minding my own time of day, when a soldier from one of His Majesty's ships came right up and stole my piccolo and my apple.”
She had taken on a definite Irish brogue from somewhere, and the further she got into the story, the stronger it grew for some reason.
“He wore a red coat, a Marine, I suppose, and not a word of hello or how do you do, he just took my piccolo and my apple."
Sir Edward glanced around the table. He could see that he was not the only one interested in the woman now. The shared scrutiny made his neck stiffen up. He wasn't sure it was discomfort at her being the center of everyone's attention, or disquiet for him not being the center of her own.
She continued. “I was only seven or eight at the time and not so well drilled with manners or music, you see. Still, I thought the action most unjust, and I remember thinking at the time, that this must be what my father meant when he said that the British would be taking more than their fair share. Was a shame, that it was, for I liked well my piccolo and more so my apple just then."
She didn't seem to notice her own transformation. Her cheeks took on a rosy flush, and her eyes darted around as if she was seeing it all again through the eyes of an overly bright child.
Someone said, "What did you do?"
"Well, I wasn't about to go down with no fight at all, me being my father's darlin' girl, and didn’t he tell me so time and again. Well, sir, I kicked him, hard as I could, standing there on my bale of cotton.”
Some of the old soldiers laughed, quite discretely.
“I got back my piccolo, but he had chewed downed half of my apple by then and dropped the other half into the bay. At that, I wanted it no more anyway. Still, the dropping he did just for spite, I was sure."
"Seven or eight years old, you say?" Sir Hugh said, scratching his ear and fighting his chuckle with little success.
She shrugged. “Maybe more.”
Then she looked at Sir Edward again, but he didn't understand her expression. It was like she wasn't in the room at all, but somewhere else. And even so, she could still see him there, wherever she was. He shifted in his chair, for it seemed uncommonly uncomfortable just then.
She took another drink, but her hand held the wine this time. She frowned and set it aside. Her accent was now gone as she said, "I played my piccolo as we sailed out a few days later. We went around the Cape and into the Pacific and spent the next few years over there. I missed the whole war, you see. A pity, for I think I might have had something to add to the fray."
“Is that where you got the pearls?” Lady Millicent asked. “In the Pacific? They really are most fine.”
Kate touched them lightly. “Yes, my father got them there, but not then. He got them for my mother a few years before.”
Lady Millicent said, hopefully, “Do you play cards?”
Her husband gagged on his wine. Some ladies, he knew, were known to gamble with their jewels.
Kate said, “No, not really.”
Then she started picking at the food on her plate. No one spoke for a moment, and she already knew why the people had all gone quiet.
Vice-Admiral Tobin said diplomatically, "No doubt that if you have more contact, your opinion of His Majesty's service will improve."
She held up her glass in toast: "To the Royal Navy and all the men in Royal Navy blue.”
The others echoed the toast and didn’t hear the rest of it: “For the men in red have never been to my liking."
One of the young ladies was not through with Kate. She said, “Is that dress your mother’s too?”
She meant that it was old. Which was true, but older than she knew. Kate said, “Aye, but I like it still. It was made for a costume party, modeled from a painting of a lady of my family.”
“An old lady, I take it,” another young woman said.
Some of the young women snickered.
Kate smiled. “Not sure how old, but she was English. Married four times, once to a king, her name was Catherine too. I believe his name was Henry.”
They were staring at her again.
She quickly added, “Oh, pardon. She wasn’t one of those that got her head lopped off by him?”
Ambrose Standish quickly changed the subject. “Lady Millicent, I noticed that your gardens here are quite lovely. Tell me about your roses, please do? They are famous, I hear.”
The conversation turned to more acceptable banter, and Kate returned to her dinner. She didn't look up again until Lady Millicent rose and clapped her hands for attention.
"Cigars and Brandy for the gentlemen, I think. Ladies, shall we? I am in the mood for music."
The women left the dinner table. Some strolled to the parlor for sherry. The rest went to the music room. Someone started playing the piano, and the gentlemen eventually joined the guests already there. Someone started to sing, but Sir Edward didn't bother to notice much more, because Kate was not among them. He wondered if she had left for the evening.
Without saying goodbye, he thought sarcastically. It seems a bad habit with her. Maybe she was out writing more code to the French. He wanted to kick himself for not keeping her map.
He wandered out to the balcony and looked up at the stars, but the movement in the gardens below caught his eye. A few people were strolling around the grounds, some too close to one another for propriety. They soon disappeared into the hedge maze. For a moment, he watched the empty spot where they had been, then turned to go back inside. The sight of her stopped him.
Kate was perched on the balcony rail with her head leaning back against the rough stone blocks of the wall. Her face was in shadow, and most of her body. All that he could see clearly were her legs stretched out on the rail with her skirt flowing down on either side. Her feet, which were in soft boots again, not lady slippers, were crossed at the ankles.
He stepped closer and spoke lowly. "You do not care for the music?"
Startled, she gave a slight cry and lost balance. He quickly grabbed her before she fell over, pulling her towards him again. It seems like a habit with her. For a second then, he thought he smelled hay. He said, "I seem to have saved you once again."
She said, "How disagreeable of you to mention that. It would be your own fault if I fell. And what do you mean, again?"
The words were not bitter, nor mean, but comical in their challenge.
He smiled. "Do you not remember my rescue of only l
ast evening?"
"I remember the assistance that you offered as you had nothing better to do. I know, because I asked you. But I was hardly in distress, and besides, a lady doesn't kiss and tell."
His eyebrows went up in surprise.
She brushed at his jacket lapel. "No stain, that is good. A woman stands in a tree and you make it out to be the great flood. Was I crying? Did I call out in fear?"
"You were singing, if I recall."
"Hardly the act of a frightened kitten."
"It was hard to tell. You may have a better opinion of your voice than I."
She laughed. "I don't have to stay here and be insulted by you, sir. I can go anywhere for that. And thank you all the same."
He stared at her for a moment. She only stared back, though he still couldn't see her face clearly in the shadows. Nor could he help his grin. He said, "By any chance, does insanity run in your family?"
She laughed again, and he found it a pleasant sound next to the singing from inside.
"Run? Hardly that. It's more of an oozing thing that creeps through the shadows and howls from the windows when comes a full moon. But I'll ask to be sure the next time I visit Granny in the asylum. Let’s hope it skips a generation or two."
Then to his great surprise, she rose to her tiptoes, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. When she stepped away from him, she whispered, “Thank you.”
There it was again, hay, maybe clover or alfalfa. "And later?" he whispered, leaning closer. "How did you get off my ship?"
"Was that rack of rotting logs really your ship?"
He would not be baited, much. "Only for a bit longer, then I move onto something else. Something better, I hope, though the Stalwart is a fine vessel, of which I am very proud to master. Answer my question."
She edged her backside up onto the rail again, balanced precariously there for a moment, and then settled.
"A woman must have her secrets, sir. For example, if you saw what we wear under these clothes, you'd run crying home to your mother . . . or maybe not. Anyway, a woman of mystery appeals to a man, does she not?"
"You left without saying goodbye, and you left your hair comb."
She put her hand to her hair. "Goodness, don't say that in public, people might think that we know one another."
"And that would be bad?" He didn't like the sting. His skin was usually thicker about such things. He wondered why it should bother him so much this time.
“Mr. Franklin says that while it takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, it takes only one bad to lose it. Besides, I meant they would think we knew each other too well. You know what I mean, and stop acting like a woman with too-tender feelings. Be strong, be stalwart, join the navy."
He took that as a jibe, for he was sure that's how she meant it.
“And this,” he said, holding out the piccolo that had fallen away last night. All this time, he still had it in his pocket, though hadn’t thought of it until her tale.
She gave a faint squeal of glee and pounced on it like a cat on a mouse. “I thought I had lost it forever and a day.” She said it with the Irish brogue again.
When she looked up at him, her eyes held the strangest expression. The captain felt his neck grow tense again; in his throat, it was hard to swallow. He started to fidget, but forced himself still.
He didn't have any more time to react, because she came close again to whisper, "I do like you. Too much, I think. You don't remember me at all, do you? No, but that will change."
He was speechless.
She slipped away.
By the time Sir Edward had recovered and returned inside, she had left for the evening. But the American diplomat was soon at his side.
"How do you know our Kate?"
"As I said before, I do not know her, Mr. Standish. Why do you ask?"
"Touché, sir. Shall we call a truce?"
"Were we fighting?" Sir Edward said and followed the American to the fireplace.
No one else was near them now.
"She's in danger here," Ambrose said. “If you care.”
Sir Edward got the distinct feeling that Standish only said it to gauge his reactions, not out of concern for the woman. He offered, "I gathered that from her wounds."
"You know about those? How did you—”?
"Do not look so shocked. I pulled her from a tree and she fainted in my arms. I took her to my ship and my surgeon examined her."
Standish took a deep breath of relief. "Then you know nothing of her."
This was not a question.
Sir Edward said carefully, "True, but how would you know that?"
"I know Kate. That is, I have known her family all her life. From a tree, you say?"
"Yes and do not ask me what she was doing up there."
The man snorted in laughter. "I was not going to. We have to have a chat sometime, sir."
"Why not now?"
"How about tomorrow at the Blue Dolphin? Know it?”
Sir Edward did. “Mid-morning,” he said.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 08 - The Deal
The loft of the warehouse-barn was now a sort of refuge for Kate, as most people would not think to look for her here. She had left Ambrose at the dinner party, but she didn’t think he noticed her absence.
The evening had not been unpleasant, but she didn’t like such affairs in the first place. She felt foreign there, a point of amusement to others. Though perhaps most of their curiosity tonight was genuine, and not from scorn, as it had been in other places before. It felt uncomfortable all the same.
Unfamiliar too. Except for the captain. She hoped he would remember her once again, and soon. But then, what would she do?
Kate reached for her mother’s journal on customs and social norms of people’s from all over the world. How could she feel so comfortable looking at places and people there and then, yet feel so out of place here and now?
Eventually, with the book still held tightly to her chest, and wrapped in her grandmother’s quilt, she blew out the lamp and drifted off to sleep.
But again, unbidden, came the dream:
* * * * *
Spring, 1774
Senlis Family Compound on the northwestern frontier
British Colony of New York
A warrior burst from the woods, coming from shadow to light as if by magic.
Katie crouched lower in place, unable to move any farther. Her heartbeat so hard in her chest that it felt like a hummingbird was now trapped there inside.
The warrior put a foot to the carpenter’s back to pry out the war-axe embedded there. He then lifted the red-dripping weapon into the air and let out another primeval bellow.
The old native man dropped to his knees and started keening. A death song, Katie knew, for the old man reluctantly sang it once for her mother for a bribe of peppermint candy. The song seemed to warm her own blood somehow, making it rush through her heart and her head, but her limbs still moved rather slowly.
She had barely budged when two other warriors erupted from the edge of the woods, also coming from the darkness into the sunlight as if they had appeared out of thin air. It must be sorcery. Katie grasped the rock in her pocket, wishing it was magic as well.
One of the warriors bashed in the old man’s head with a war club and continued on without even breaking his stride. Other raiders came silent, crouching low as they moved. Those were not native, but French, she knew. They wore buckskin trousers; she had seen their like before, but never like this.
More warriors ran out into the light with the sharp wolf-like yells that she knew were the calls to the kill. The few people around the settlement that Katie could see only cried out and scattered as the warriors headed their way.
She soon heard more cries of alarm as the warriors ran inside the buildings. It seemed like it was happening very slowly, but Katie knew that couldn’t be true. It’s just that her senses had all been distorted as if seeing and hearing it all through very thick and old glas
s.
Then one of the raiders pointed to the largest house, and Katie heard someone say: “Mama?”
The word came out in barely a whisper, and Katie didn’t recognize the voice as her own. She was too far from the house to run there for shelter or even warn her mother with a call.
Katie heard a gun shot then, and one of the natives staggered back from the doorway of the great barn. Then came the frenzied cries of warriors avenging one of their own as they all rushed inside. She could not see them, but she knew the stableman must now be dead.
Someone said it again, this time, more certain: “Mama.”
Mama would do something; Katie was sure, but what? Hide in stillness? Flight, when that failed? That’s what a deer would do when the wolves were too near. The fawn must hide until the mother told the fawn what to do.
That’s what she would do too. Why else would the old man have taught her that lesson? Why else would Mama have written it down in one of her journals?
Katie ran for the nearest shelter she knew—the tall, lush evergreen tree near the edge of the clearing. She had been climbing it to escape her brothers for almost two years now. Two years, come early next week on her birthday. The branches were close enough together, she could easily climb up between them, but no one else could really fit through.
She ran for the tree that she had named Friendly Joe. He would hide here until Mama could tell her what to do.
Suddenly, there was silence again. The mayhem had died just as soon as it came, but it was only the lull in the storm. Soon, the warriors were touting their finds with whoops of pleasure and triumph. She jumped each time they cried out and held up a find: a mirror or necklace or knife.
From the tree, Katie could now see her brothers again. They were all still alive, standing together, back to back. From here, they looked very small.
She hugged closer to the solid trunk of Friendly Joe as her vision blurred with tears. The distress grew into a strange bee-like buzzing in her head, interrupted only by the occasional last cry of the victims or shouts from the warriors as they found other worldly treasures.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 8
