The Maidenhead

by Parris Afton Bonds

  "Uhh—Rose.” He still had her hand.

  “Aye?”

  "Rose'—” His face flushed. “I am no earl."

  Her brows furrowed. “Why did ’oo tell me ’oo were?"

  He looked elsewhere, at the musicians, the governors, anywhere but at her. “Tis a bad habit I have." He looked at her now. “One of many. Rose, I lie, I cheat, I steal, I—"

  Her anger surprised herself, surprised even him. "All me life, I let people mistreat me because I didn’t think I was good enough! But I had faith in ’oo. All the time, ’oo must ’ave been laughing at how gullible I was. Why, ’oo are no better than me. ’Oo are worse because you mistreat people!"

  With a mocking curtsey, she detached herself and threaded her way through the dancers.

  "Who was th—that?" Walter asked.

  "Who?” she asked innocently. She could tell he was more puzzled than jealous. It never occurred to him that she was more than a mother to his two sons.

  "The man you were da—dancing the reel with.”

  "Oh. Remember, I told you about 'im. 'E was the man who rescued me from the river."

  "And de—delivered your ba—baby.”

  She held out her arms to Bart and Isaac. "Boys, would you care to dance?”

  “Aye!" Bart said and grabbed her hand.

  Isaac looked bashful but followed her back out onto the floor. If only their father would follow, too. If only their father could forget his first wife. If only Jack hadn’t ruined her illusion.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  So much unspent energy charged through Clarissa that she felt as if her shoes would dance off on their own. With a sigh of exasperation, she snapped shut her fan.

  She glanced at Patrick. He stood in a corner, conversing with Modesty's husband. The man looked almost civilized. Almost. True, he was clad in deer hide trousers and moccasins, but he wore a fine lawn shirt with a frill down the front and an open buff coat with large turned-back cuffs. His tawny-brown lion's mane, seasoned with silver, flowed onto his shoulders.

  "Your husband is a splendid man,” Mistress Pierce said beside her. Her knitting needles clicked in time to the music. "Reminds me of me own dear departed man. When he had all his teeth, he was a good-looker, upon me word.”

  Clarissa's gaze switched back to Patrick, and she snapped open her fan. "Aye, my husband is a splendid man."

  But where was his passion, his conviction? Alas, he was as colorless as his clothing.

  For the ball, she had abandoned the somber clothing she had taken to wearing at Henrico. She had the rest of her life to wear brown homespuns. Tonight, she had chosen a gown of sapphire satin with silver ribbon bows lacing the bodice. The gown had a high-standing collar and drapings of lace that gave way to a décolletage so low that the brown rings of her nipples were almost visible.

  When Patrick and Modesty’s husband finished their discussion, which most likely was about politics, Patrick approached her and bowed low. “Mistress, the fiddler needs a rest, as do my ears. I fear tomorrow may come earlier than I like. Shall we retire?"

  Her fan snapped shut again. "Oh? I thought you already had."

  Her sarcasm passed over both him and Mistress Pierce. She rose, bid the woman good night, and, putting her hand in the crook of Patrick’s arm, accompanied him from the State House.

  Once outside, beneath the newly risen southern moon, her snippish mood subsided. “You know, I don’t think the moon is as big in London.”

  Patrick smiled down at her. "Let’s take a stroll across the green before returning to the Mercers.

  “Aye,” she agreed readily. The local gunsmith and his wife had kindly offered a small room in their tiny house to accommodate her and Patrick for the duration of the General Assembly session, but the old couple were nosy. She felt they were always listening, always watching. She suspected that they judged her too worldly for her husband.

  She spoke aloud her thoughts. “Tell me, Patrick, does there exist somewhere God’s condemnation of the aristocracy?"

  He peered down at her. "Whatever are you talking about?”

  "That somehow 'tis wrong to have wide interests in the arts and literature, to see beauty in color and harmony in tradition?"

  "But the tradition of your Old World," he said, strolling on beneath the white-flowered magnolias, "gave authority to only a few."

  "That's just the problem with this wild land.” she gestured vaguely toward the river with its fringe of riotous foliage. "For all its freedoms from authority, this New World had done away with the aristocracy of the past. I feel out of place here. In the Old World, gentry's coach gave way to a nobleman’s, the yeoman tipped his hat to the gentry. Here there are no rules. No linkage between the conservatism of the Old World and the chaos of the New.”

  He turned to face her, taking both her hands in his. "There can be. You and I can create it.” The intensity in his eyes mirrored her emotions. "What do you mean?”

  “We can build a bridge with our love.”

  She hardly dare to breathe. “How?”

  "Through expressing our love for both the servant and the master, the red man and the white, the commoner and the aristocrat.”

  “Oh!" She felt like stamping her foot. “Your nobility is too much to suffer!"

  "And between the puritan and the sophisticate," he continued, unperturbed, then lowered his head over hers and kissed the rounded O of her mouth.

  When he released her, her fingertips flew to her lips. "You kissed me," she mumbled in astonishment.

  His smile was gently mocking. "Aye. Even puritans are capable of expressing affection.”

  Affection? She wanted unbridled lovemaking, as wild as the new land itself.

  Reluctantly, she let her footsteps follow along with his as he walked on to the gunsmith’s house. Mistress Mercer greeted them at the door. She held an arthritic finger to her lips. "The husband is already asleep," she whispered.

  Patrick nodded and led Clarissa on through the darkened house to the small anteroom where their bed was barely large enough for one.

  In the dark, she and Patrick changed into shift and nightshirt, much as they did at home. But when they climbed into bed, there was no empty space as in their own bed.

  Forced to lie on their sides, they faced the wall in the time-honored spoon fashion. His breath stirred the tendrils of hair that had escaped her nightcap. She was acutely aware of his larger thighs supporting her own, his left arm draped negligently across her waist, and, most of all, that fleshy scepter that proclaimed itself most prominently.

  She had never seen a man naked, and her imagination dueled with her curiosity. "Patrick, I feel cramped. I need to turn over.”

  Wordlessly, he shifted, and she found herself facing his broad back. One bent arm cradling her head, she wrapped her other arm, almost carelessly, around his midsection. Her hand touched a long ridge just below.

  He tensed.

  She left her hand there.

  His breathing quickened.

  Slowly, gradually, her fingers closed over the ridge, measuring its thickness through his nightshirt. Marveling, she let her fingers follow its length.

  She wasn’t certain, but she thought that he made a low noise. It was a rusty sound like that of a gate hinge grating somewhere in the distance.

  Her hand slipped beneath his nightshirt to encounter hard flesh.

  This time, she was certain that the noise he made was a groan.

  It didn’t stop her. With excitement zephyring through her, she grasped his shaft which seemed to throb with a life of its own. From exploring, her fingers turned to caressing.

  She took perverse pleasure in hearing his low, mumbled words. "Oh, God, Clarissa. Please.”

  “Aye." She had finally made her mild husband lose control!

  But her entertainment was short-lived when he rolled over suddenly, pinning her beneath him. "What—!”

  His hand clapped over her mouth. “Sssh."

  His hand still silencing her, he pushed h
er nightrail up to her waist. With great care, he placed himself at the entrance to her maidenhead. She gasped against his palm.

  "Sssh," he said again. "The gunsmith's good wife will hear thee."

  He hesitated, and she feared that his common sense would be restored. She goaded him further. As if by accident, her tongue stole out and licked the center of his palm.

  "God help me!” He prodded that thin wall of resistance, saying, "I fear I am lost to the clamor of my senses!"

  With that he thrust inside her. Whatever pain she felt was overcome by a great burst of pleasure as he continued his long, rhythmic strokes. Later, when they both lay spent, he whispered, "Forgive me, Clarissa."

  Her cheek upon his sleek chest, she smiled in the darkness. Until he muttered, ‘"Twill not happen again. I swear I'll abide by your decision if it means keeping you forever.”

  Why couldn’t he fight for her love?

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mad Dog sprawled in the wainscot chair. A direct descendant of medieval thrones, it was made for dignity, not comfort. Everything was uncomfortable in the small house he rented from John Smith, who was presently mapping the Somers Islands that some were calling Bermuda. "You refused to go to the public ball last night, so why this?”

  Modesty, still in her nightrail that early in the morning, ran a boar-bristle brush through her tousled hair that did not quite reach her shoulders. With her slender hips, she would have made an enchanting boy—were it not for her small, pert breasts. Neither they nor her stomach gave any indication that she was with child. He had taken himself a woman whose womb was as barren as his heart.

  She peered at him from beneath her upraised arm. "Why would I want to mingle with the very people who wanted to burn me?”

  “Yet you want to go to Market Square today."

  Her bewitching eyes glanced to the window, where the shutters had been thrown back to let in the morning breeze off the river. “Aye. Polly, Rose, Annie, Clarissa—all the women transported with me will be there."

  He watched her over his pyramided fingertips. "You wouldn’t think of sailing with the Maidenhead on this evening’s tide, would you now?" he drawled in an offhanded manner.

  She turned wide eyes on him. "Why would I do that? We made a pact, didn’t we?"

  “You are an endless source of amusement, Modesty.”

  She eyed him through narrowed lids. "Wot do yew mean?”

  “You could have gone to the trouble to unpack your valise. After all, we're going to be here a full week." He canted his head. "Unless you didn’t plan on staying.”

  “I don’t understand wot yew’re talking about."

  “Mayhaps you’ll understand this—that the Maidenhead sailed this morning—on my instructions."

  "Yew knew! Yew—" Beyond self-control, she hurled the brush at him.

  He ducked. It glanced off the chair’s paneled back, and he laughed at her furious expression.

  She flung herself at him. "Yew scurvy clod-skulled arse! Yew bloody piss-bowl of an oaf! I could—!"

  "Ought, ought, Modesty,” he reproved, trying to subdue her flailing fists.

  When that didn’t work, he threw her across his knee and hitched up her nightrail. The magical half light of an August dawn lent a rosy tone to her buttocks that he couldn’t resist. He slapped the delightfully curved bottom with the flat of his hand.

  Her answering scream was more from rage than the pain left by his reddened handprint. "Yew bugger, yew—"

  His hand clapped one rounded cheek and stayed there. “Is that what you prefer? To be buggered?"

  She tried to wriggle free, and when he held her fast, she screeched, "Better that horror than the other—to conceive by yew!"

  Abruptly, he stood, dumping her unceremoniously on the floor. "I am late for the assembly.” He watched her scramble nimbly to her feet, her eyes flashing fury, then said, "Try to make yourself presentable by the time the courts adjourn for dinner."

  Mad Dog forced himself to put aside his disgust with his marital situation and turned his attention to the General Assembly. For one purpose only, he sat through tedious debates concerning competition with the superior Spanish tobacco, the planters’ resentment about marketing their tobacco by way of the Company when they might do better on the open market, and grumbling over the Indian menace.

  Throughout the session that day, Mad Dog studied his formidable opponent, the burgess member sitting diagonally to his left.

  The private plantations had presented a tricky problem to the Company. They represented the investment of influential men, the sort the Company wanted to attract to Virginia but also the sort who would bristle at interference in their affairs. To solve this, the plantations employing both bondservants and tenants were allowed their own representative in the House of Burgesses.

  Richard Radcliff was now by far the most influential planter in the colony. And a burgess member. At every turn, every discussion, every vote, the man sought to improve the status of Radcliff Manor.

  Mad Dog knew that he had guessed aright about the chink in Radcliff s self-satisfied armor. And it was within Mad Dog's means, or would be when Holloway returned from England, to bring down Radcliff s estate as easily as toppling a house of cards.

  He wanted to see the man sweat blood, he wanted to see the man lose what he valued above all else—as he himself had.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Strange, Rose thought. Home was over two thousand miles away, more than a year and a half in the past. And yet, here she sat, once more carding wool.

  She added another small bunch of wool between the thickly wired teeth of her two paddles and began rubbing them back and forth. These days the grinding noise set her own teeth on edge.

  She glanced at Bart and Isaac, snuggled beneath the goose down blanket. October’s howling, freezing wind warranted a fire that evening, and Walter had stepped out to the woodshed to return with another armful of logs.

  The door banged shut behind him. Chilly air slithered along the floor. “Gonna be sn—snow by morning. I should have kno—known to expect an early snowfall. The hornets built their nest higher than usual this year.”

  "And I was planning on making apple butter tomorrow." It was a chore better suited for outdoors.

  "Lucky for us, some Powhattans st—stopped by to sell us the two turkeys they killed." He knelt to lay two logs on the andirons. "We won’t have to lo—look to our larder.”

  "Aye, but I still feel uneasy around them, Walter.”

  "’Tis just that ti-time of year again that makes you feel that way." He brushed the dirt and bits of bark from his spindly fingers. “But I te—tell you, Rose, those Indians who kid—kidnapped you at this time last year were just renegades."

  “True,” she conceded. "The Indians are being unusually friendly.” She paused in carding long enough to lean over the wicker cradle and tuck the blanket more securely around little Jack.

  "Rose.”

  She glanced up at his thin, anxious face on a level with hers. "Aye?"

  "I’ve never asked you about your pa—past, have I? About the child you carried when we mar—married.”

  "No, Walter.” She leaned over and smoothed into place the thin wisps of hair across his smooth pate. He smelled of earth and sweat and new-sawn wood. “And I am verily grateful for that kindness. 'Oo are a good man.”

  She had been especially proud of him at the meeting of the burgesses two months earlier. With only a few stutters, he had argued persuasively against the Crown's right to end the Company's seven-year exemption from English import duties.

  He looked down, as if concentrating on brushing the scattered wood chips toward the hearth, and mumbled, "The child, Jack, is it that man’s you danced with at the Sta—State Hall?"

  She set aside her carding panels and took his face between her two hands. "Dearest, I didn't know Jack until the day he . . . saved me life."

  She could feel the tense muscles in his jaws relax. "I just wanted to know."

  "
I understand. There is something, too, I would like to know."

  She hesitated, and he prompted her with an "Aye?”

  "Are 'oo still in love with your first wife?" She was weary of being nice, of being patient. She couldn’t carry on a one-sided marriage—no, wouldn't. It was up to Walter to take some initiative.

  Blank astonishment yanked up his sparse brows. "Martha?”

  She nodded solemnly. She had to know. She firmly believed that when one faced the worst, one could deal with it. It was the unknown that was so frightening.

  He grinned. “Martha was a scold. I would have se—set her on the ducking stool had I the courage.”

  "But 'oo said . . . once ’oo told me that in bed were the times 'oo liked the best.”

  He flushed. "That’s because in the dark I found it easier to ta-talk.”

  Of course, it made sense. She still had one more question. “We've been married over a year now. I’m no longer with child. Why haven’t ’oo. ...” Now it was her turn to blush.

  He sifted dead ashes through his fingers. “I di-didn’t know if you would welcome . . . if you would like . ..”

  Her anger surprised her. “I think ’tis time ’oo found out." There, she felt better having challenged him. Anger didn’t have to mean she didn't love him or that he wouldn’t love her.

  He came rapidly to his feet. He glanced around, took in the three sleeping boys.

  She had been so intense, so intent on resolving her problem that she had all but forgotten the boys. “Where—where can we—?"

  He grinned, then blushed from his prominent Adam’s apple up past his cheekbones, all the way across his balding pate. "Ever made love in a wood—woodshed?"

  “Large flakes at first, the storm will last; small flakes at first, it’ll be over fast."

  “When a dog howls at the moon in winter, it is a sign of snow.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  At first, the folklore of the Henrico people had seemed ridiculous to Clarissa, but now she was learning to give some credit to local superstition. The snow was falling fast and thick, obliterating the parishioners’ tracks before they even closed the door behind them. Appropriate for Christmas Day. Against the cold, she was wearing a red velvet cloak with fur lining and a beaver muff.