All her senses were abnormally alert—pungent wood- smoke mingled with the sharp, crisp air that tingled her cheeks and vapored her breath. She could almost imagine she heard the sun pinging off the water. As she set off along the bank’s path that was bordered with thickets bare of leaves, she wondered if she had ever felt this much alive.
Yes, when Ethan kissed her. The plague take the religious rogue!
Her strides were long and possessed an easy elastic grace that spoke of her ecstatic sense of freedom. Her skirts swung in rhythm with her legs. She hummed the little ditty Peter played on his fife—“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a song left over from the French and Indian War, until the rustling of dead leaves just behind her brought her up short. Ethan’s warning of lynxes and Indians tore a gasp from her throat as she whirled. A raccoon stared up at her, his sharp little nose wrinkling with her scent.
“King George!” she breathed. She stooped and caught his furry body to hold before her face. “Now listen, you can’t follow me. I’m not coming back. Ever.” The raccoon stared back at her with eyes as black as Ethan’s. “Don’t look at me like that.” She set the raccoon on the ground with a gentle whack on its rump. “Now go on back, King George. Return to your master.”
For I shall not.
Turning, she started off again, but the continued crackling of dry leaves behind her told her that King George was as stubborn as she. She did not look back but quickened her steps. The rustling in the brambles grew fainter, and her mouth curled in satisfaction. Nothing would stop her.
As the morning eased into midday, she felt the first pangs of hunger. Why hadn’t she thought to pack some¬hing to eat along the way? By afternoon her stride shortened; the rhythmic swing of her legs was broken. At the confluence of the Chickahominy and the James, her feet refused to move another yard without rest, and she dropped to the earth, still damp from previous rains that winter. Wearily her gaze sought the sun’s position in the sky. Would Ethan have returned to Mood Hill yet?
The thought of him, the sure knowledge that he would come after her, catapulted her to her feet. “You’ve wasted your fifty pounds, Master Gordon,” she mumbled wrathfully. But even as she stalked down the trail she knew her English stubbornness had met its match in his Yankee obstinacy.
She studied the narrow path that stretched far ahead until it was lost in the overgrowth. How much farther was Williamsburg? She tried to recall the journey by gundalow, but that day she had been more aware of the man who had purchased her than of her surroundings.
Now her surroundings—and the very elements—seemed to conspire against her progress as she walked. Thorny thicket branches reached out to snag her skirts. A humped cypress root caused her to stumble. Her pace quickened. Mottled gray clouds scuttled across the sun, and the wind whipped her mantle about her legs. Her fingers clutched the hood against her cheek to ward off the sudden biting cold.
The wilderness had lost its initial intimations of beguiling innocence. Rather, a sinister gloom settled over that primeval forest. The Great Dismal Swamp—what if she were near it? Her feet slowed, cautiously picking their way over untried ground.
An owl’s dismal hoot warned her that darkness would soon descend and she would have to find some kind of shelter in which to spend the night. Already it was growing bitterly cold. Her fingers and toes were numb, and she tripped again to sprawl in a mesh of moldering leaves and moss. The creeping wildness—suffocating branches and strangling vines—prickled her nape. Struggling to her feet again, she brushed the dirt from her hands, her teeth staying the bottom lip that threatened to quiver.
Then in the twilight she saw it—shimmering through the latticework of denuded, wind-tossed branches, a light beckoned in the far distance. A house! Refuge!
Her feet found new impetus. Gathering her bundle in one hand and her skirts in the other, she started to run, though she knew the cabin had to be a great distance away. At first she thought the sound of her feet was echoed by the labored pounding of her heart. But the reverberating thudding amplified until she could hear neither her own footfall nor her panting. Behind her. She spun. In that ghastly nether light of dusk she saw the horse—and the dark rider, with his surtout’s many capes flapping, beat down upon her.
Simultaneously she threw her arm up before her face and cried out. The horse reined in, rearing slashing hoofs above her, and came down to one side of her to prance nervously under the control exercised by its rider. Jane’s arm fell away, and she looked up into Ethan’s ravaged countenance. He leaned forward on the pommel to fix her with an angry glare. “Did thee truly think I’d let thee go?”
Despair sapped her last vestiges of strength. She sank to her knees, her skirts billowing about her, and gasped little heartbroken cries that were much like King George’s mewing noises. She had been so close to freedom. After walking all day—only another mile or so!
She heard him dismount to stand over her. Then he lifted her tear-stained face. Tension hardened his mouth in an unrelenting line, and she dropped her chin to her chest again. “ ’Tis said that those who run away secretly wish to be caught,” he said in a low voice.
Her head snapped up toward him. “Not so!”
But the fierce light that pinpricked his eyes so that they gleamed like those of a night animal crumpled her defiance. Head bowed again, she whispered, “You can humble me no deeper than this moment. Free me from the bonds with which you hold me. Please.”
She felt his hand on her head. Her hood was pushed back and her mobcap was lifted off. His fingers insinuated themselves in the silky black strands smoothed back sleekly and caught by the thong at her nape. Her scalp tingled with something that was akin to anticipation. She did not move beneath the stroking hand.
Suddenly it was withdrawn. “I cannot,” he said hoarsely.
Her head snapped backward; her eyes beseeched him. “Oh, dear God, please!” she cried, flinging her arms about his knees. Her tears dampened his soft buckskin britches.
He made a sound in his throat and seized her shoulders, jerking her to her feet. His eyes were smoky. “Don’t beg me. Thee is a lady, Jane!”
She twisted free of his grasp. “I am nothing more than merchandise! To be bought and sold as you will!”
“And I will not sell thee.”
“You are unreasonable!”
“I am thy master!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“My dearest life . . . since me aravil here, I write you with a feeling heart to inquire of you and me dear infants’ welfare, this being the return of the day of the year on which I was obliged to leave you and my dear infants, which day will be ever remembered by me with tears until it shall please God to grant us all a happy meeting again. . . .”
The quill Jane had pilfered scratched hastily over the page in order to keep up with Icabod’s broad Scottish brogue and make the corrections necessary as he dictated the letter. At her feet, King George’s paws alternately slapped at a raveled ball of yarn or snagged at her woolen hose.
“I am in perfect health, for neither the heat in summer nor the cold in winter gives me the least uneasiness. Only two months ago I laid aside my summer dress and put on a suit of new claret-colored duffle . . .”
At that moment a draft of frigid wind swept into the kitchen as Ethan opened the Dutch door. Immediately Jane rose to stand before the table, her skirts hiding the quill and paper. Since the night two weeks before when Ethan brought her back to Mood Hill riding pillion behind him in furious silence, she had treated him with a civility that bordered on insolence. Sometimes she thought that the field hands could sense the tension that sparked between her and Ethan. Neither Icabod nor Peter ever made reference to her attempted escape, but, for a few days the songs Peter piped were mournful dirges. And deaf Josiah eyed her with unspoken sympathy.
The wintry gusts whipped Ethan’s navy-blue surtout about his powerful body. King George deserted the skein he batted at and padded happily over to Ethan to brush his bristled tail around and between the man�
��s damp jackboots. Ethan ignored the raccoon’s playful plea for attention. His weary eyes moved beyond the startled Icabod to seek Jane’s tall, slender form. “I have something for thee, mistress.”
Curious, Jane tilted her head to the side to see that a slighter figure stood positioned behind Ethan’s form. He stepped aside to present a dusky young woman, wrapped in a heavy blanket. Her hair, plaited into two braids, was as black and thick as Jane’s, but with a brownish cast rather than blue.
Ethan murmured something to the girl in that language Jane did not understand, and the young woman raised her eyes—tilted brown eyes that were wide and dark with apprehension. “This is Porhatras, Mistress Jane. I’ve brought her to help thee.”
A finger of renewed resentment prodded Jane. “Brought or bought, master?”
He shrugged his large shoulders. “She was to be left behind for the winter by her people. Four freshly killed turkeys purchased her.”
“Left behind, you say, master?” Icabod asked. “A purty lass as that?”
“The Indian maiden is clubfooted,” Ethan said flatly. “The Seneca don’t waste time with infirmities.”
“Where shall she sleep?” Jane asked.
“Porhatras will have thy room.”
Jane’s black brows lowered in confusion. Her bed was scarcely big enough for her as it was.
“And thee shall take the room upstairs across from mine,” Ethan clarified. He turned on his heel to leave. But at the door he said, “Mistress, ’tis a sin to steal. Next time you need a letter penned—ask me. I will willingly give thee quill and ink and paper.” With that he was gone.
The young Indian woman looked frantically after the closed door. Gently Jane touched the blanketed shoulder. “Come with me, Porhatras. You must be hungry.”
The Indian woman understood nothing Jane said but obediently followed. The rest of that day Porhatras, her gait slowed by her limp, shadowed Jane as closely as King George did Ethan when the man was about the house. The young woman showed a willingness to work and a dexterity with the simple chores that Jane lacked. And this greatly pleased Jane, so much so that she gathered her courage to seek out Ethan that evening.
She found him in the vat shed, moving among the stacks of dye cake as he counted and marked on a ledger. The smell of fermented indigo swept over her, an earthy but not particularly pleasant smell. At her soft closing of the door, he glanced up. The lone candle in the wall’s sconce cast a sheen on his red hair, setting his whole person aglow so that she remained transfixed inside the doorway.
“Does my disfigurement frighten thee so, mistress?”
“Nay.” She forced her steps down the aisle of dye cake until she stood only a few feet from him. A blue glow seemed to envelop them. “But your unrelenting nature does.”
He sighed. “Thee comes about thy indenture papers again?”
“Aye.”
“I believe that it is thee who is unrelenting. Thee will hound me until the day thy indenture is completed.”
“You have Porhatras. Her hands will fulfill their duties much better than mine.”
“Porhatras is to stay here at Mood Hill. Thee is to go to Williamsburg this spring to serve me there.”
Jane’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe she heard right. Williamsburg! Civilization! Coffee houses and dressmakers, theaters and—and the opportunity to gain her freedom.
Ethan caught her square jaw between the large span of his thumb and forefinger. His eyes burned into hers. “But do not think to make another attempt at escape,” he said harshly. “The pillory and stocks—or worse, a beating – will await thee at the public gaol. Do not doubt my threat.”
Jane’s lids lowered to hide the excited gleam in her eyes. “If I can move among other people . . . pretend that I am one of them, not a commodity . . . I will resign myself to serving out seven years.”
His eyes scanned her face, as if searching for truth on her parted lips or in her submissive eyes. At last, as if satisfied, he released her chin.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The figures on the ledger blurred before Ethan’s weary eyes. He knew well enough the standing of the accounts that March without looking at the numbers. With the Non¬exportation Act against England, there was little hope of finding foreign buyers for this year’s indigo crop. He could not blame the impending war for Mood Hill’s financial woes. He hoped that the indigo warehouses he was estab¬ishing along with the Scottish merchant Angus MacAbee in the ports of Hampton Roads, Alexandria, and Norfolk would be new sources of income—and consolidate his nonpartisan image since MacAbee was of Tory leanings, as were most Scottish merchants.
Only that week at the Virginia Convention in Richmond Patrick Henry committed himself to liberty or death in a great speech that would mark him as an arch-rebel. The balance of political power in Virginia was slowly shifting from the Tidewater planters to the Piedmont farmers.
Ethan thought about his own part in the revolution—the probability of disgrace, most likely a dishonorable death. Hardly the kind of prospects that would entice a woman to marriage, particularly considering the abysmal state of Mood Hill’s finances.
He had known when he cleared his acreage, his back protesting with each swing of the axe, that it would be difficult to make ends meet for those first few years. He had known that he would need help, and that it would be costly. But none of the indentures he had purchased had been as costly as Lady Jane Lennox. Fifty pounds! He must have been out of his head to bid that sum. And why he had done so, he still did not know.
Ethan’s Folly it was called in Williamsburg, as Bram reluctantly divulged. Fifty pounds for a titled lady who knew not the first thing about labor!
And why did he go after her that day she fled Mood Hill? Could he be falling in love with her? No. He would attribute it more to his possessive nature. The hulking horror of the gray granite Kilmainham Jail had taught the child he had been to guard his few possessions—the scraps of food to ward off starvation, the lice-infested blanket to keep out the cold, the bartered clothing to hide nakedness. What was his, was his—and for that reason he had gone to reclaim his maidservant.
It was her damnable regal beauty shining through that disreputable maidservant’s masquerade that tempted him far past his limits of restraint. The brutal way he had forced his kisses on her the afternoon she came upon him translating coded messages out of the Bible—they were not the gentle kisses he dreamed of giving to a wife.
Ezra and Miriam had rescued a guttersnipe, a boy of the streets who was wise in the way of stealing, of using a knife deftly when set upon. With patience they had taught him trust and kindness and love. With their love they had changed him. Yet where was that man now?
And to consider taking her to Williamsburg—aye, he was daft. He would have to rent a house, for he could not afford two separate rooms in an ordinary for what may be a month or more. Finding a home to rent would not be difficult with so many Tory families sailing for England. But at what expense a rented house? Mentally he tallied the cost it would run him to rent a house for a couple of months against taking a room at the tavern. Expensive. And money was dear.
And how would he find a wife to court, with a maidservant like Lady Jane Lennox on his hands? He did not doubt that she secretly laughed at his rustic simplicity, which remained despite the education old Eliza had afforded him.
Ethan’s fingers gripped the quill. The mere view of her trim ankle encased in woolen stockings tantalized him. If he thought to turn her tart asperity into sweet, loving kindness . . . Ethan’s Folly, indeed!
Lady Jane Lennox, thy cooked peas are like gun pellets.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On April 19th, the day before Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore, seized the kegs of powder from the Williamsburg magazine, General Gage marched on Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, to confiscate the arms and ammunition cached there. The war materiel’s location, along with Massachusetts Militia records—the principal officers, the number and l
ocation of units, including the “minute companies” and the general scheme of mobilization and planned resistance, was provided by the spy operating under the code name Ahmad.
However, word of Gage’s planned march on Concord was inadvertently leaked—by, among others, the very servants of the British officers. These scurrying batmen, preparing their officers’ gear for field service, dropped unguarded hints in billets. Something big was up.
Not only was the Massachusetts Militia alerted, but Revere himself rode to warn Hancock and Adams of their arrest orders, and the leaders of the American intelligence ring escaped just ahead of Gage’s troops.
The battle that followed between the rebel colonial minutemen and the British soldiers resulted in a nightmare for the redcoats. They lost 273 men—more than twice the number of lost colonists, who, rather than fight in drilled formal formation, had chosen not only hit-and-run tactics but also had taken aim when they had fired.
For Ahmad, the battle meant his spying operations would be that much more perilous; for as a result of that skirmish England’s Whitehall declared the colonies in a state of rebellion against Great Britain and the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia that May voted to use that military confrontation in Massachusetts to put all the colonies on a war footing.
The Continental Congress picked a forty-three-year-old delegate from Virginia who had fought in the French and Indian War some fifteen years earlier as the commander of all the continental forces. And Ahmad’s more primitive instincts sensed that his hope for the total abasement of the house of Lennox depended in some way upon this tall, rawboned man who carried himself with such great dignity, a man by the name of George Washington.
The spy lay on the tester bed of the small third-floor room he rented at 114 Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia and absently perused the gilt curlicues that writhed across the ceiling. The city was the largest and most modem in the colonies, with finely cobbled streets paved with Belgian blocks. It was also the seat of the recently formed colonial government’s congress.
Mood Indigo Page 10
