“Naturally, gentlemen, before I undertake the task, I will want the king’s own signature on a proclamation deeding the estates over to my name upon the successful conclusion of the assassination.”
“These two gentlemen will return immediately to London with your instructions,” Gage said.
“Also, once I have the proclamation, I will not be in contact with your office again. I will make and carry out what plans are necessary on my own.”
“But suppose something goes awry? Our intelligence operations could help out.”
“Nothing will go awry, unless it occurs from your end. Once the proclamation is delivered into my hands, I will carry out the task. Good day, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jane sat on the bed, brushing out the tangles that snarled her hair before she retired for the night. King George pawed at the wooden hairpins scattered carelessly over the quilted coverlet. The flames in the fireplace that occupied her bedroom’s north wall burned low. The bedroom was the only room in the house with wallpaper—a soft design of blue and brown leaves that ended at the dark oaken wainscot.
The large tester bed, the cane-back rocking chair, the chest of drawers topped by a framed looking glass, the painted floor canvas—they added a warmth to the room. Not for the first time she reflected that Ethan had gone to a great deal of work to build and furnish Mood Hill. Had he vainly hoped that he would find someone like Susan to share Mood Hill with him, to grace the house and bring warmth and lighthearted laughter to its rooms?
She looked down at the dress of soft blue wool she wore. Buttoned to the neck, the dress was unadorned but for the simple swaths of linen that fell in graceful folds from the three-quarter sleeves. The dress was one of the many he had purchased for her. That morning at breakfast he idly commented that its color had reminded him of her eyes. Compliments those days were rare from those silent lips, and she flushed with pleasure under his scrutiny.
The abrupt knock on her door halted the sweep of her brush. “Yes?”
“I would like to talk with thee, mistress?” came Ethan’s muffled voice.
“Wait—I—just a minute.” Her fingers scrambled to retrieve the scattered pins. “I don’t have my cap on,” she threw over her shoulder. Where did she lay the frivolous lacy embellishment?
Ethan opened the door, and she saw his gaze catch on her unbound hair. Before her hair had been either powdered or cropped and hennaed. This was the first time he had glimpsed the heavy length and black luster of her hair without its concealing mobcap. After a moment’s hesitation, his gaze slid up to meet hers, and she found only indifference registered in his sulfuric eyes. “I think it’s permissible for a husband to see his wife without her hair covered,” he drawled.
Nonplussed, she asked, “You wanted something?”
He strolled across the room to lower himself to one knee at the bedside, near where she sat, and scoop up King George in one large hand. The candlelight danced on his rich auburn hair, and she almost forgot herself in the temptation to run her fingers through its thickness.
His hand stroked the raccoon’s back. “It seems that thee has captured King George’s affection.”
His direct gaze, on a level with her own, disconcerted her. Flustered, she returned to brushing her own hair, delighting in the sudden latent flare of his pupils. “You are surprised that I could capture someone’s affection?” she asked archly.
An amused grin curved his lips. Marvelous lips, she thought. “I am surprised that thee could return that affection—as unhappy as thee is here,” he added with a sly glint in his eyes.
“There is no place else for me to go now—not until the war is over.”
He set the raccoon aside and braced the heel of his palm against his bent knee to face her squarely. “Not even after the war is over, mistress.”
She opened her mouth to protest, and he silenced her with, “I come to inform thee I have to leave tomorrow for Williamsburg. My agent informs me that the market for indigo has greatly increased, and there is much paperwork to be done—accounts to be seen to, negotiations to be made. And, of course, the General Assembly is to be convened to officially transfer the power of the royal government to the revolutionists.”
She had to convince him to take her. She knew that during Williamsburg’s public sessions diplomats, spies, self-seeking businessmen, witty philosophers, scheming politicians, flaming revolutionaries, and courtiers abounded.
If the Leper and his Colony operated out of Virginia, then the Leper would be there for the public session. Only when she discovered his identity could she dare hope to be reunited with Terence. Discovering the Leper’s identity—it would be difficult, but she did have entree, through Ethan, that most Tory sympathizers did not. By watching and listening and asking discreet questions, she meant to succeed where no one else had yet. She faced him fully, the brush gripped tightly in her hand. “Please, may I go, also?”
His mouth hardened. “Thy Tory tongue would make the trip unwise.”
There was something in his expression—was he baiting her again? She could not tell. “I’ll say nothing,” she entreated.
His eyes seemed to show no leniency. “I find that difficult to believe. By the end of the month thee would have us both in the jail’s stocks.”
“At the end of the month?” she echoed, dismayed. “You shall be gone that long?”
“Thee will miss me?”
“Hardly.”
“Alas!” He made to rise, and she caught his shoulders, restraining him from leaving her. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Ethan, please—please let me go with you. I—I’m so unused to the loneliness here.”
His hands came up to remove hers from his shoulders. Abruptly, he turned them palm up, and his thumb rubbed the calluses that ridged the once-smooth skin. He frowned. Still rubbing her palms, he said, “Thy life has greatly changed since coming to Mood Hill. Thee is in need of thy own chambermaid, Lady Jane.”
The gentle pressure of his thumb sliding over her palm set off turbulent sensations in the pit of her stomach. “Not Lady Jane,” she said softly, tremulously. “Madam Jane Gordon.”
He sighed. “Aye. I will take thee to Williamsburg.” The statement was said so smoothly that it almost seemed planned.
She was impulsive with gratefulness and unthinkingly threw her arms about his neck. “Oh, Ethan!” Unexpectedly she slid off the bed’s edge, and he caught her in his arms. Knee to knee, her hands splayed against his shoulders, his hands encasing her rib cage, they faced each other. Her hair tumbled down her back, somehow finding its way into his hands and wrapping about his fingers. He tugged gently, tilting her head back. His face blurred as it moved closer. She stiffened, but his lips, brushing lightly against hers, did not demand, did not insist, only gave of their wine-scented warmth.
That human need to be held, to be touched, was her undoing. Over a year had passed since she had felt the security and reassurance of Terence’s arms. She responded, her lips easing into a pliancy that admitted the unanticipated shaft of Ethan’s tongue. Her lungs constricted in surprise. A sinking feeling sapped all strength, and she clung to this man, her husband, as he took his fill of her mouth.
His mouth tasted of honey and wine. Kisses were given in a wild, hot desperate need. They swayed together in that flickering candlelight, fused mouth to mouth, belly to groin. She wanted to get inside him, she wanted him to crush her. Fiery wine bubbled through her veins. She was drowning. Drowning in her own body’s liquid.
“Jane . . . Jane . . . he groaned, his mouth moving to press against that sensitive spot where her jaw curved just below her ear.
What was happening to her? Even now she was wantonly arching her neck to offer his lips access to her flesh. His right hand freed itself of her entangling hair to loosen the top button. With surprise she heard the soft mewing she made involuntarily as his lips plundered the hollow at the base of her neck. Her fingers had their way and slipped through his hair to press his head to her
chest.
Her will seeped from her. She was melting again, would melt into little pools on the canvas floor covering if he did not stop stroking her flesh with his velvety tongue. “I want you to . . .” Oh, the shame!
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he grated. His fingers loosened several more buttons, and his hand delved beneath her stays to free one alabaster breast, revealing the sweet cocoa nipples.
“I want you to . . . to . . .”
“Tell me!” His tongue licked tantalizingly nearer. “Oh, sweet, sweet Jane, tell me.”
“. . . to kiss me . . . there . . . please.”
His mouth complied and engulfed the aching tip, and her head lolled backward. His lips tugged, his tongue flicked, his mouth suckled. Her body was fluid, trying to flow into his, no muscle, no bone.
“What do you want to do?” she asked daringly, delighting in the delicious talk, her inhibitions shattered by the mouth that flexed on her nipple and the hands that were every where—stroking her aching belly, cupping the curves of her hips, palming her heavy breast. She must be mad! Oh, but a sweet madness.
“You know what I want, Jane.” Low, guttural, heated.
“Tell me.”
“I want to take off every piece of your clothing, I want to hold your bare flesh against mine, I want to kiss you— everywhere, I want to bury my face lower in that fragrant patch of hair that—”
King George’s paw, snatching at a curling swath of her hair, jerked her back to reality as nothing else could have. She pulled away, hearing her ragged breathing that echoed his own. Her eyes were glazed, her mouth trembled and her body shuddered. “You would have taken me,” she whispered.
“Thee would have given thyself to me,” he stated unequivocally.
Her hands struggled with her stays and the buttons of her gown. “No!”
“Thee would have given thyself and thee will, Jane.” His fingers anchored in her hair again and drew her face near his own. “Thee will yet surrender to thy husband.”
Rage at his profound self-assurance sputtered in her like a hissing candle. “I will never surrender that part of me to you! I find you—”
“Repulsive?” he asked with a mean leer.
“Coarse and crude.”
“And thee is rude and spoiled. Someone should have delivered thee a thrashing a long time ago. It’s too late now,” he muttered, releasing his hold on her hair only to grab her shoulders a second later. “Hell, it’s not too late!”
“What—!”
She found herself shoved face forward over his knee, her petticoat tussled by the hand that proceeded to whack her exposed rear soundly. “There!” he growled. “That is for thy disobedience as a maidservant. And that”—another smarting whack on her rear—“is for thy disrespect as my wife.”
“Ohhh!” She pushed away from him. “You are—are abominable!”
He rose from his knee, and she sprawled ignominiously at his feet. “Good. Then thee need not accompany me to Williamsburg.”
He turned away, and she caught the lace at his cuff. “Wait!”
He looked down over his shoulder at her. “Aye?”
She swallowed the pride that burned in her throat. “I— I meant no disrespect.”
“Oh? And thee does not find me abominable?”
She shook her head in a negative gesture, her loose hair swaying against her back.
His eyes glinted. “Prove it.”
Her breath sucked in. Once again he was humbling her. “’Tis not fair!” she blurted out.
“Life is not fair, Jane.” He shrugged. “Besides, thee does have a choice.”
Closing her eyes, she rose to her feet. She took a tentative step toward him and tilted her face up, her mouth puckered as if prepared to taste a lemon. He caught her shoulders. Disgust hardened his voice. “I am not interested in bartering for goods grudgingly given.”
Her eyes snapped open, and he set her from him. “Thee may come,” he tossed over his shoulder as he strode to the door. “Only thee must behave in a respectful fashion, or I shall pack thee back to Mood Hill.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
During her absence Jane found she had become the talk of Williamsburg. Imagine, a titled lady, the Lennox lady no less, residing in Virginia! . . . And such a romantic marriage, my dear. . . . Rescued her from being returned to a convent, Ethan Gordon did. . . . No, no, Ethan rescued her from a forced marriage with a gouty old earl, ’tis said.
The last lady of nobility to reside in Williamsburg was Governor Dunmore’s wife, who made a visit from England, only to be sequestered the last five months of Dunmore’s term as governor when it became obvious she was with child. And now almost a year later, Lady Dunmore was sequestered on the Fowey, standing off Norfolk in the James River.
That very first morning in Williamsburg Jane approached Ethan, who worked on his accounts in the library, with her request. “You mentioned once I needed my own maidservant. I would like to purchase one now.”
He laid aside his pen and leaned back, tilting the scrolled chair on its rear legs. “Thee has someone specific in mind, mistress?”
Still the formality, despite the unbridled passion that his torrid caresses had unleashed upon them. Just talking with him made her weak all over, made her want to feel his mouth hard on hers again, his hands roaming her body’s contours. Oh, dear God.
“Yes. The indentured servant I came over with on the Cornwall. She is unhappy with her master.”
She would not add that Polly’s master was Uriah Wainwright. She could handle the obnoxious man despite Ethan’s misgivings.
Ethan flipped a page of the ledger, his eyes traveling down the boldly penned column. “It would seem that the revolution has financially blessed Mood Hill’s indigo venture, mistress. The proceeds are at your disposal.”
She took Susan with her, though she would have never admitted that by doing so she bolstered her own courage. Susan seemed to have a homey genius for cosseting.
The day was cloudy. Horses waited at hitching bars, tail end to the cold wind that rustled the brittle leaves along the street. Jane buried her hands deeper in her woolen muff. Wainwright’s house was a small, quaint cottage on Frances Street.
“It once served as slave quarters,” Susan said in a hushed tone that bespoke her own uneasiness.
Jane’s stays did not seem quite so constraining after Polly answered the door. But the girl was changed drastically. “Polly!” Jane breathed, astounded.
Tall, almost as tall as Jane herself, and robust, Jane recalled, Polly now looked gaunt, gaunter than after the five-week voyage across the Atlantic. The pink flesh seemed to hang in folds upon her large bones. Gone were the brilliant butter-churned curls, replaced by tarnished yellow strands. Fear held sway in the once spunky gleam of the Dresden-blue eyes. And a faint black shadow smudged one broad cheekbone.
“ ’Tis Meg?” Polly asked, then drew back a step. “Nay. I forget meself. Ye be the Lady Jane, hain’t you?”
“Nay, Polly. I’m Mrs. Gordon now. Jane Gordon. And this is Susan Fairmont.”
Polly glanced cautiously at Susan, then back to Jane. “I can’t ax you in, mistress. The master—’e don’t take to me ’aving visitors and sech.”
“Your cheek, Polly—”
Polly’s hand flew to her face. “I fell—cleaning the bookcase shelves.”
Jane glanced down at Susan, then said, “Polly, would you be interested in coming to work for me—if I can persuade Wainwright to sell me your indenture?”
The gaunt young woman covered her face with work-worn hands and burst into tears. “Aye, that I could! But ’e’ll never let me go.”
“Can we come in out of the cold, Polly, and talk about it?”
The raw-boned woman’s eyes widened. “The master might come back hany time now.”
“Then I’ll talk to him,” Jane said and stepped past the tearful woman. “As one civilized human being to another.”
“The man haint civilized!” Polly bit
out. She closed the door, and watched Susan and Jane go to stand before the fireplace that lent little warmth against the eerie chill of the room. The house had a clean appearance but was musty, redolent of the Oxford Museum.
“Then we’ll make sure your papers are purchased,” Jane said, turning herself like a fowl on a spit to warm her back.
Polly paced before the worn horsehide sofa and wrung her hands. “You don’t know ’im. ’E delights in tormenting people. Making ’em feel as small as ’e is.” She stopped pacing to look with wild eyes at the two women opposite her. “Sometimes I think I would kill ’im with me bare ’ands.” She shuddered. “But killing hain’t in me soul.”
Susan’s face paled a ghostly white. In the warmth of the muff Jane’s hands went sweaty. “We’ll do something, Polly,” she managed to say with a false bravado. “I’m sure that—”
The front door opened, and Wainwright stepped over the threshold. Once again Jane was struck by the little man’s almost saintly face, but the meanness in his small foxlike eyes betrayed a malignance that made him loom like a specter over the room.
At once those slitted eyes shifted to Jane. “So the Tory maid comes to visit me,” he said in a tone that slithered its way up Jane’s spine.
“I come to purchase Polly’s papers.”
He removed the battered felt tricorn and passed it to Polly’s trembling hands. Now that he was close enough, Jane could see the sparse tufts of black hair that grew atop the rim of each ear. Even the man’s spidery hands were hirsute. “I won’t sell the gal.”
“We’d best go, Jane,” Susan whispered at her side.
“I think that you will,” Jane said in what she hoped was a steady voice. “Because the other members of your Executive Committee might not approve of your inhumane treatment of your maidservant, should the word get out.”
Mood Indigo Page 16
