He grinned, his irregular teeth white against his weather- tanned skin, and for a moment she forgot the disfiguring burn. “That would be difficult to say, milady, until I have seen everything of her.”
The insolence of the man! She flashed an artificial smile. “Do I sense a tone of disrespect to the mother country?”
The rise of his thick, dark-auburn brows acknowledged her thrust. “That I did not say, Mistress—?”
“Lady,” she said frostily. “Lady Jane Lennox. And you are Lord—?”
“Mister,” he drawled with an impertinent and humorous tone. The bumpkin was quite obviously enjoying himself. “Mr. Ethan Gordon.”
“And I suppose you are here with Mr. Franklin to protest the closing of the Boston port? No, don’t tell me,” she interrupted with a disparaging smile. “You, no doubt, are one of those colonial oafs who threw East India’s tea chests into the Boston Harbor last December.”
He held his large palms up in a gesture of mock defense. “Please, Lady Jane. I don’t believe in violence—nor disloyalty to the mother country. I am a member of the Society of Friends.”
A Quaker as a dinner partner! Her father’s doing, doubtless. No wonder she had sensed contempt in the curl of the provincial’s cleanly defined lips. “You don’t look like a Quaker,” she murmured, and at his wry grimace that somehow passed for a smile, she hastily added, “The red hair—and all.”
“And pray tell, what do I look like, Lady Jane?”
She chewed on a bite of the roast duck, while her face took on a pensive air. With the sun-and-wind pleats about his mouth and the squint lines fanning eyes that were somewhere between brown and black, she judged the big man to be in his late twenties or maybe Terence’s age, though Terence eclipsed him in every other way. “Oh, perhaps a pirate.”
“Thy jest misses the mark.”
Mark! She felt as if she had suddenly ridden to the brink of a precipice that yawned before her. The stranger shall be marked. The fine hairs at the back of her neck prickled.
Her gaze swerved to the shriveled patch of burned skin. No, she refused to believe in the sham and chicanery of gypsies’ cards and swamis’ tea leaves. But the colonist was a marked man. Faith, but she was not a marked woman. So much for the old Hindu’s hoax.
“Since you are neither a pirate nor a rebel Yankee, what does bring you to London, Mr. Gordon—other than the grand tour?”
“I am but a simple planter come to purchase supplies and indentured servants, milady.”
This time she almost choked on the veal pie. “Indentured servants?”
“Of course,” he said casually. “Quakers don’t hold to slavery, Lady Jane.”
Jane barely managed to control her excitement. “And where does one go in the city of London to purchase indentures, Mr. Gordon?”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A heavy swinging sign suspended from an ornamental bracket portrayed a silvered half circle, which announced the address of the Half Moon Coffee House near Ratliff Crossing. Inside, Jane sat at a tiny table, dawdling over a cup of tea. That morning, with her maid in tow, she had made the perfunctory calls. Afterward, she visited Charing Cross and the Strand to browse among the shops, which was becoming a national pastime. People journeyed from as far as France and Germany to visit London, the City of Shopkeepers.
After a drapier had patiently unfolded a hundred bolts of material, regaled her with a glass of wine, and bowed and scraped as he handed her into her coach, she had deemed it safe enough to set out on her primary mission.
In the Half Moon Coffee House she and her personal maid, who sat stiffly opposite her, were the only women customers. The men exchanged stocks and shares and discussed politics, philosophy, the “American” problem, and life’s vicissitudes in general.
Female customers were not unknown at the Half Moon, though few came dressed as elegantly as she. True, she wore her singularly black hair not powdered but covered by a large, concealing Lunardi hat that dipped charmingly over her classical brow. And true, her satins were decorously hidden by a summer pelisse of the finest broadcloth. Yet the quality of the lady was clearly evident. Then again, it was impossible not to notice her, if only because of her unusual height.
Ignoring the rowdy conversations of the gentlemen at the rear of the coffeehouse, she slowly sipped the tea in her Wedgwood cup. Through the leaded casement window she watched the people enter and leave the establishment diagonally opposite the coffeehouse, the guildhall.
“Ma’am, are ’oo certain that ’oor father would be approving ’oo being ’ere.”
Jane drew her gaze away from the guildhall to fasten on Meg O’Reilly. The Irishwoman shifted uncomfortably, unaccustomed to sitting at the same board as her mistress. The reddish brown hair that peeked out from her high starched mob cap reminded Jane of the Quaker and her purpose for being at Ratliff Crossing. “Of course, I’m certain, Meg.” She set down the cup with a resolute motion. “Now wait for me, and I shall return shortly.”
Oblivious to her maid’s protests, she gathered up her parasol, her reticule, and her long gloves with the fashionable open fingers. She left the coffeehouse to wend her way through the maze of post chaises and chariots to the far side of the narrow, littered street. Here at the guildhall, people desperate for employment after the Panic of ’72 were lined up to indenture themselves before the Board of Trade’s magistrate.
Others who came to indenture themselves were husbands who had forsaken their wives, wives who wished to abandon their husbands, children who were running away from parents, and, quite often, criminals escaping from prosecution. In addition, there were the maids who despaired of ever having husbands in England and sought to indenture themselves to employers in the New World where members of the female sex were at a premium.
Indenturing herself was Jane’s one hope. The mighty political arm of her father reached far. Even if she could sell her jewelry and persuade some unsuspecting captain to give her passage to the American continent, her father could still track her down before she found Terence.
But, she hoped, her father would never think to look for her disguised as an indentured servant.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to enter the open doors of the guildhall. Studying the people over her cup of tea, she had seen the misery, the poverty, the hunger etched on each of their faces. But was she that desperate—to sign away anywhere from two to seven years of her life, merely in exchange for passage to the American continent—and to Terence?
And then, high above the stream of people coming and going like ants, she saw the deep red hair of the Quaker. “Mr. Gordon,” she called out impulsively. He stopped and looked at her with a puzzled frown, and she hastened to identify herself, feeling suddenly quite foolish. “Lady Jane Lennox—your dinner partner at Buckingham House last night.”
He crossed to her, and she noted then that he had not the honed, lean length of Terence but rather was more solidly built and measured a full six inches taller than she. With him, certainly, she need never resort to that old childish ploy of hunching her shoulders to minimize her height. She drew herself up tall and said calmly, “I am hoping that you can perhaps help me.”
“Ahh, yes . . . mother country. ” His big hand engulfed hers as he made a deep, mocking bow, and she could feel the calluses on his blunt farmer’s hands. “I am at your service, Lady Jane.”
She ignored his barb. “No.” She put out a restraining gloved hand. “That’s just it, Mr. Gordon. I wish to be at your service.”
His black eyes quizzed hers politely, but she could see him curb the impatience at the corners of his mouth. “How so, Lady Jane?”
She nodded toward the doors of the guildhall. “I wish to indenture myself to you.”
Amidst the cacophony of the city, an abrupt strained silence held between the two people. Jane knew full well what she meant to do. She was securing passage to the American continent in order to join Terence. And after her three years of international intrigue at St. James’s Cou
rt she felt she was a good enough judge of character.
This Yankee planter seemed of a kindly nature, if his membership in the Quaker sect was any indication. But for the most part, she was counting on her sophistry and charm to handle the plodding colonial. Surely, after but a few months of dutiful servitude, she could convince him to release her from her bondage.
And as for the provincial’s reaction, she could see flickering behind the dark eyes first surprise and then doubt, which was followed once more by mild impatience. His marred countenance was an easy one to read. “I don’t have time to waste with bored, spoiled noblewomen who indulge in pranks, Lady Jane. Tell thy companions, whomever they are, that thee has lost thy wager.”
“Spoiled!” she sputtered. The strain of the past few days broke her cool reserve. She had lowered herself to petition this simpleton for help, and he had castigated her! She glared up at him, hands on hips. “And a yokel such as you deem yourself capable of judging character? You insensitive swine, you haven’t the slightest knowledge of me or what forces me to come—”
The fine weather lines about his black-flecked eyes gathered to narrow the deep, thick-lashed lids, and the brows lowered over a nose that most certainly had been broken. “Thee needs to be humbled, mistress, and I would take great delight in the task, had I the time.”
He pivoted from her. “Follow me, Betsy—Jonah,” he said to the slight, shabbily dressed woman and rail-thin boy whom Jane had failed to notice standing next to him. Only then did Jane spy the indenture papers the Quaker held rolled in his hamhock hands. He strolled off with the middle-aged woman and child dutifully trailing him.
Jane, her spirits drooping, watched the crowd swallow up the three. She had let her pride get the best of her. She turned back to the guildhall’s open doorway. Before a board the people who could read pressed to study the public notices posted.
“A Pennsylvanian colonist desires a tutor,” someone near the front called out.
Jane’s eyes swept over the list:
Men: tanners, coopers, shipwrights, sawyers, ropemakers, carpenters, wigmakers, millers, iron workers, bricklayers, ship chandlers, binders, bookkeepers, cardswainers.
Women: seamstresses, cooks, domestics.
The paucity of occupations on the women’s list explained why so many men were gathered at the guildhall. Apparently few in the colonies wanted maids. They wanted craftsmen to build the New World.
“You be needing help,” a haggle-toothed woman said to Jane.
“No—no, I don’t,” she murmured, backing away from the men and women who suddenly encircled her with hope- filled faces. She hurried away to the comparative safety of the coffee shop.
Yet the dawn of the next day found her slipping through London’s fog-shrouded streets. No one would have recognized Lady Jane Lennox as the frowzy wench who took her place in the line that formed before the guildhall’s as yet unopened doors.
Her heart pounded erratically against her rib cage. What ever was she about? She could still change her mind. Yet when the double doors were thrown open and business began, she willed her feet to cross to the caged counter along with the other men, women, and even children— most of them looking as if they had recently come from the countryside in the hope of finding employment in the already overcrowded metropolis. The burgeoning malt shops and gin joints that flourished in the slums and now jostled for elbow room in the middle-class districts testified to the hopelessness of gaining employment in London.
When she neared her turn at the cage, the freckle-faced boy ahead of her hunched himself down, much as she used to do as a young girl, and piped, “Ye got chimney sweep work here in the city?”
“Nothing,” the old clerk muttered, not even bothering to look up from the paper he wrote on. “Only in the colonies. Ship sailing next week. Mark an X on the line, boy. Then take the paper over to the magistrate in the next room and swear you have not been coerced into signing.”
Parliament had passed a law requiring the signature before a magistrate the year after the Earl of Anglesey’s son had mistakenly been kidnaped for indentured service in the Barbados. But men were still gang-pressed into service; women abducted, never to see their families again; children and infants often indentured to serve until their twenty-first year.
Jane took the boy’s place, and the clerk, busy again writing, asked without looking up, “Well—what qualifications?”
She hesitated. With her education, she could tutor. But that was a man’s job. And her father’s wealth had made it unnecessary to learn a vocation like cooking or sewing. Maids had done everything for her. She naturally knew needlepoint, but how many positions were open for that fine craft? “I am afraid I have none,” she finally got out.
The clerk’s head snapped up, and she knew her refined voice had given her away. Now what? The man’s wrinkled lids narrowed. “It’s employment in the colonies you be wanting?” he asked dubiously.
Canada would be better, but beggars could not be choosers. Virginia was the nearest she could manage. “Aye.”
After a moment his head bobbed, as if he had been suddenly enlightened. One thin eyelid closed in a sly wink. “Ran afoul of the law, did you? All right. Just sign your name. You know ’ow to do that, don’t you?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“Let’s see . . .” His ink-stained finger jabbed at a name on another list. “Your ship—the Cornwall— is bound for Virginia.” He passed her the paper. “Your indentured papers, they are. They will be auctioned off in the colonies. Take them along now to the magistrate.”
Jane stared blindly at the parchment for several moments before the words came into focus.
THIS INDENTURE made the twelfth day of August in the Year of our Lord one thousand, seven hundred and seventy-four between on the one part and of the other part do hereby promise to serve in such employment as is the custom of the country for a period of years, of which the said shall pay the passage and allow meat, drink, apparel, and lodging during the said term; and at the end of the said term to pay the usual allowance according to the custom of the country. IN WITNESS whereof the parties above-mentioned to these Indentures have interchangeably put their Hands and Seals.
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered in the Presence of:
Below was the one sentence: I hereby acknowledge that I have not been coerced into service. Jane took up the quill, dipped it in the inkwell and beneath the sentence wrote the name Meg O’Reilly.
CHAPTER THREE
Ethan lit the pewter lamp on the escritoire and set to writing. Penmanship came laboriously to the backwoodsman, but his quill scratched hastily over the parchment, for his ship was due to sail with the tide.
My dear Franklin,
I learned today that our illustrious King George, as Prince of Hesse-Kassel and Hanau, has called for the troops of that German ministate to relieve those English soldiers stationed in the Mediterranean—so that the royal troops can reinforce those already stationed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Also discovered that a certain member of the cabinet has put forth the idea of appealing to Catherine of Russia for troops to conquer those “rebellious Boston provincials.” This from my voluble dinner partner, the Duchess.
He paused, the quill twirling absently between fingers the size of piano keys. His other dinner partner . . . aloof, distant, witty, sparkling. In a way she reminded him of Susan. But Susan warmed and soothed like wine and did not go to the head like champagne. The Lady Jane—brilliant and brittle.
CHAPTER FOUR
The lean, bronzed body slipped lower past the woman’s flesh-padded rib cage. The Canadian cabinet member’s wife gasped, “Mon Dieu!” as the tawny head buried itself between her ample thighs. The British officer was doing something her husband had never attempted to. “Mon Dieu!” the Frenchwoman cried out again, and clutched the sun-streaked head to her.
Afterward, she lay spent on the rumpled sheets, her soft, voluptuous body exposed. The officer, supporting himself on one elbow, plucked
with teasing fingers at the thick tufts of hair beneath her outstretched arm. Yet she sensed with some disquiet that he was no more aware of her now than he had been during the hours he had made love to her. She knew the officer no better now than she had three weeks earlier. Assigned to the governor’s retinue, he had been in her husband’s office with Governor Carleton one afternoon when she called upon her husband.
She could not honestly say the officer seduced her. He had offered no flowery blandishments, as did the other British soldiers garrisoned in the Province of Quebec. At another chance meeting in the Chateau Frontenac he had simply told her he wanted her.
She had been shocked, angered, shamed—and intrigued by those pale-blue eyes whose depths, were openly candid yet as distant and unreachable as the night’s stars. She watched as he uncoiled his long body and rose to pull on his knee breeches. “Terence?” she called softly.
But either he did not hear her or he ignored her. Bare-chested, his skin baked by the hot sun of India, he crossed to the French doors and threw them open to the pale September sunlight. Out on the balcony he braced his hands on the black wrought-iron grillwork and looked out upon the walled citadel. As the English General Wolf had breached that citadel, claiming the French province as England’s own, so would Terence breach London society to claim again the Manor House as his own—but not from a backwoods province like Quebec.
Once more Robert Lennox of Wychwood had bested him. But Terence knew his own assets. His patience—and shrewdness—would bring about that for which he had been striving since he was sixteen. He was in no hurry.
His transfer to Quebec that Lennox had effected—he might make it work for him, under the right circumstances. He considered the chaos erupting in the American colonies. Were he there, the opportunity could present itself for the object he sought—the total devastation of the House of Lennox.
Mood Indigo Page 2
