Love A Rebel...Love A Rogue (Blackthorne Trilogy)

by Henke, Shirl

  Until last week, the trip had been an uneventful lark, filled with smooth sailing over glistening, blue-green water. Then her maid and companion took a fever and died suddenly, as had nearly half the crew, including the captain. The first officer, who had taken over, was drunk more than sober and eager to press his unwanted advances on a lone, defenseless lady.

  Suddenly the ship took a mighty pitch to one side, and a splintering crack reverberated from above decks. ”I may drown, but I bloody well won't do it cowering below.”

  Barbara crawled from her berth and struggled toward the door to her cabin. By the time she had clawed her way up the stairs and onto the deck, the ship was listing at a sharp angle. Two masts had been shattered, their jagged broken bases jutting up defiantly toward the roiling iron-gray skies. Some of the sailors lay bleeding and broken, tangled in ropes and sails, while others screamed and cursed, struggling to lower a couple of pitiful lifeboats into the churning white waves.

  “Lady Barbara, come with me,” one skinny yeoman cried over the howling wind as he fought his way to her side. “We got a boat ready.” He took her arm to assist her, but just then the whole ship gave a mighty lurch and began to slide under, bow first. The deck tilted crazily, and Barbara's grip on the yeoman was broken.

  She rolled and skidded to the edge of the railing, which had already been smashed when the mizzenmast toppled across it. Desperately, she clawed for purchase on the broken pieces, but there was nothing left but splinters. The ship lurched again and she was swept over the side into the dark, churning water. She did not even have time to scream.

  Rain sheeted down, blacking out the horizon. Powerful waves seemed to be dragging her under, then pulling her up again. She bobbed on the swells, being carried choking and crying wherever the caprice of the current took her. Suddenly the rain cleared for a moment just as she rose on one wave. Dear God, there was land all around her—flat and marshy, but land, nonetheless!

  She was sucked down again into the blackness, as if the fates only wanted to tantalize her with sight of deliverance before claiming her for a watery grave. But again she broke the surface, bobbing now in the slightly calmer waters of the channel. She looked to be between two low-lying islands immediately off the shore.

  Barbara held tightly to her billowing skirts and their underpinnings, which she now knew might save her life. Her underskirt was fitted with a cork-padded rump to puff out the voluminous petticoats and overskirt of her gown. Cork floated, although Barbara Caruthers did not, never having been taught the most unladylike sport of swimming.

  The current was slower now, the storm's destructive frenzy beginning to pass. She was carried toward a land mass directly ahead. Finally, teeth chattering, body bruised and exhausted, she felt the sandy bottom beneath her feet. A sickly shaft of pale yellow light began to cut through the clouds. Barbara thought she saw a figure up ahead but could not be certain. Her vision blurred as she sank on her knees in the shallows and fell face forward on the sand. Everything went black.

  She awakened to the sound of the surf roaring in the distance, and a man's voice cutting through it. He was holding her, trying to force some vile brew between her blue lips. She coughed and opened her eyes, blinking in amazement as she looked into a sun-darkened face framed by thick golden hair. He was so beautiful, she feared she was well and truly dead, mistakenly swept up by some Norse god into Valhalla. She looked at him warily, for his appearance was strange in spite of his striking countenance.

  He was dressed in a green jacket with scarlet collar and cuffs, and buckskin pants. Even the peculiar-looking slippers on his feet were made of the soft leather. A wicked-looking knife was strapped to one hip and a pistol to the other. His head was bare, and he wore his hair queued back, tied with a simple leather thong. God above, was he one of those traitorous rebels?

  Then he smiled, and his dancing brown eyes crinkled at the corners. ”I feared you'd never come around. Here, drink this. It's a marvelous restorative.”

  She sniffed the pale golden liquid's bitter aroma and took a tiny sip, then grimaced. “Who are you?”

  “Captain Devon Blackthorne, King's Rangers, at your service,” he replied, then frowned, muttering, “although the timing for this service could have been better arranged.”

  Barbara breathed a sigh of relief. Her rude colonial was at least one of his majesty's officers! Then she felt his eyes on her. Her skin itched from caked-on salt water, and her gown—or what was left of a once lovely calamanco robe à la Francaise—was now nothing but a shapeless mass of dank, seaweed-encrusted filth, ripped beyond recognition. The fine hoops of her “hen basket” stuck out at jagged angles from beneath the shredded remnants of her petticoats. Barbara reached up to her hair, which had come loose from its pins and hung about her shoulders in ratty tangles.

  Devon watched the half-drowned woman take inventory of her shapely body. Although she was bedraggled, he had already seen enough of trim ankles, full breasts, and long sleek legs to know she was a real beauty. And by the looks of her once-grand clothes, probably from a good family. “Might I enquire who you are and what you're doing washed up on a desolate Georgia beach?”

  Suddenly she was aware that he was studying her with an amused smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. She struggled to stand up. He assisted her. ”I am Lady Barbara Caruthers, in route to Savannah, where my brother, Lord Montgomery Caruthers, is awaiting me. He's a major under the command of General Prevost. How far is this ghastly place from the city?”

  ”A good day's ride.”

  “Excellent. We can reach Savannah by nightfall then.” She looked past him at two horses of surprisingly fine quality and started to walk toward them.

  “I'm afraid I can't escort you to Savannah just now.”

  Barbara turned and looked at him incredulously. “Surely you don't mean to leave me stranded in this desolate wilderness?”

  Devon frowned, then shrugged and smiled helplessly. “No, I suppose that isn't quite the thing, is it? But you see, your ladyship, there's a war going on all around us, and I'm on assignment. I can't lose two days shepherding a shipwrecked noblewoman about the countryside. I'll just have to take you with me until I can find someone trustworthy to see you safely to your destination.”

  Barbara's eyes narrowed as she inspected the arrogant lout about whose “trustworthiness” she was beginning to have grave reservations. She would have tapped the toe of her slipper, if she hadn't lost it in the ocean. “Perhaps you don't understand. My brother is the Seventh Baron Rushcroft. General Prevost will be most displeased if you don't respect my wishes—at once.” What had begun on a note of oversweet patience ended on one of considerable imperiousness. He merely stood back with arms crossed over his broad chest and smirked at her.

  “This won't be the first time old Auggie Prevost has been displeased with me, but fortunately I'm not under his command. I answer to Colonel Brown and Governor Tonyn in Florida, and they've sent me to catch a thief. Now, if you're able to sit a horse, I suggest we move along.”

  Barbara stamped her foot and was rewarded with the warm squish of mud between her toes. “Bloody provincial lout,” she muttered, then called at his retreating back, “I'll not budge an inch until you agree to take me to Savannah.”

  “Rare as the word must be to your ears, no.” He didn't even bother to turn around, just began to untie a bag on the saddle of his big bay stallion. He tossed her a small pouch which she caught rather than have it sail into her face.

  “Now see here—”

  “No, you see here, your ladyship. You're a long way from the haut ton. You chose to traipse into the middle of a war, and now you'll just have to pay the consequences. There's biscuits and dried meat in the pouch. You can eat as we ride. I've lost too much time already.”

  She hurled the pouch at his thick skull, but missed. It sailed over the horse and landed with a plop in the mud. ‘I'll see you court-martialed and shot for this, you—

  “Not hungry? Pity, for it'll be dark
before we stop again to eat.” He swung effortlessly onto the big bay and walked the stallion toward her.

  She stood stubbornly with her fists clenched at her sides. “You've not even the courtesy to assist a lady in mounting,” she spat, looking at the other horse, a handsome piebald.

  Suddenly he reached down and scooped her, kicking and screaming, up in front of him. “Satisfied? I've just assisted you in mounting.”

  ”I meant onto the piebald, you dolt,” she said from between gritted teeth.

  “You're not riding the piebald. He belongs to my companion.”

  Just then, as if summoned, a tall, copper-skinned savage wearing a scalp lock, an abundance of gaudy beaded jewelry, and little else materialized silently from the tall marsh grasses. His naked chest was scarred by blue tattooing, as were his cheeks. He wore an arsenal of weapons, a low-riding pair of buckskin pants, and those same odd, low-cut leather slippers.

  “Who is that?” She struggled not to squeal as her eyes glued onto the frightening savage, who swung onto the piebald and looked to Devon for orders.

  “If I told you his Muskogee name, you couldn't pronounce it. Translated it's equivalent is Pig Sticker. He's famous for killing wild boars with his spear. Oh, he's also my cousin,” he added conversationally as he kicked his bay into a brisk trot.

  * * * *

  July, 1780, Blackthorne Hill

  “An’ I tells ya, Aunt Agnes, she's got a fancy fer ‘em, she does,” Phoebe Barsham said in her thick London slum accent. The pretty dairymaid had a petulant turn to her full red lips as she spoke, darting her black eyes from side to side, making certain no one of consequence heard her speak so of the mistress.

  Mistress Ogilve merely nodded as she sat working on her account ledger. Her whorish sister Tabatha's child had her mother's crass manner of speech. Why had she ever suggested to Master Robert that he buy the worthless chit's papers? “I would agree that the young master's cousin Andrew has spent overmuch time visiting with the bride. Have you seen aught else?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Mistress Ogilve harrumphed in disgust. ”I thought as much.”

  “You don't like 'er any more 'n I do.”

  “Be that as it may, if you can give me no evidence beyond seeing Master Andrew squiring her about, there is no point in your petty jealousy. Oh, don't look at me so. I know about your cheap liaison with the young master—you and half the other foolish girls working on this estate. If you come to me with your belly swollen, I'll have Master Robert sell your papers in a trice!”

  “Ain't no chance 'o that,” Phoebe said sullenly. “Since he wed 'er, he ain't touched me—ner none o' the rest.”

  “Laudable restraint on his part, not yours,” the chief housekeeper replied sourly. “But it's his wife's virtue, not the master's, that I would like to impugn. If you can do no better than this, off with you and back to the dairy. I have accounts to pay.”

  “‘N cash ta pocket fer yourself, too,” Phoebe said slyly.

  One look from her aunt's cold black eyes was enough to send her scurrying from the small room.

  After Phoebe had left, Agnes Ogilve considered the matter of Madelyne Blackthorne. The willful and highly educated chit could be trouble. Old Robert and young Quintin, although scrupulously careful about their business ventures, had never been concerned about how she ran the household as long as meals were on time, the servants obedient, and the place kept clean and orderly. But since Quintin had taken a wife who desperately wanted something to occupy her time, the housekeeper lived in fear that her account books would one day come under Madelyne's scrutiny.

  She needed to find a way to discredit the wife, not the husband. All that stupid Phoebe was concerned with was Quintin's absence from her bed. She mulled on that and decided it might be a good sign. If the master got his wife with child, she might be satisfied and leave the running of the household alone.

  “Still, if Phoebe's snooping can yield me anything at all, I'd best encourage the noxious brat,” she mused aloud. There were few servants who had not taken to Madelyne. The only ones who disliked her were Quintin's cast-off paramours. Whereas every person who toiled in Blackthorne Hill hated the imperious chief housekeeper.

  * * * *

  The subject of Mistress Ogilve's ruminations strolled through the formal gardens beside the big house, kneeling in the sandy soil from time to time to prune a rosebush or pull one of the few weeds that dared to crop up on the meticulously tended grounds. There was an array of servants to do this. In fact, there was an array of servants to do everything on the plantation.

  Madelyne smiled ruefully. “Under Claud's roof, I complained bitterly about all my chores. Now I pine for tasks to do. I vow, I'd even beat rugs...if Mistress Ogilve would let me.” She had to laugh at the picture of her in those long-discarded filthy rags beating a magnificent Turkish carpet while Quintin and the housekeeper looked on, aghast. Her reverie was broken when she heard Gulliver's sharp barking and a strange bellowing sound.

  Standing up, she dusted off her skirts and walked from the gardens down toward the lane whence the racket was emanating. A plumpish young woman with long black hair was beating one of the fine Jersey milk cows with a pole.

  ”Ya bloody old sack o' bones! Damn ya. Get goin'. I'm late fer milkin' 'n it be yer fault.” Phoebe gave the cow a sharp jab in the ribs, eliciting another loud mooing cry. Then she turned her attention to the dog. Gulliver jumped at her and barked furiously. She swung her weapon toward him with a snarled oath, but he was too quick for her. “Git, ya mangy cur! Tain't none o' yer affair.” She menaced the large dog, who stood his ground, legs braced and fur bristling, growling low in his throat.

  Madelyne saw the confrontation and shouted, “Gulliver, come here! You, girl, stop tormenting that poor cow.” She picked up her skirts and ran down the road toward the pasture gate.

  Phoebe turned and saw Quintin's wife, clad in a dusty brown sack dress of coarse calico, striding angrily toward her. She tightened her grip on the pole and stood mutinously glaring at the dog, who ceased his barking and trotted obediently to Madelyne.

  “What is the meaning of this—Phoebe—that is your name, isn't it?”

  “I'm Phoebe Barsham, Mistress Ogilve's niece,” she said but deliberately did not curtsy.

  “Why are you abusing this valuable animal?” Madelyne stepped in front of the bondswoman, hating her shorter stature which forced her to look up at Phoebe.

  “Dumb beast won't move 'nit's well onta milkin' time.”

  “Well, terrifying her and causing her pain certainly won't solve anything.” She turned to the cow, who stood silently now, head down but making no attempt to graze on the high grass at the roadside. Madelyne patted her and then looked at her feet. The right rear one was caught somehow and the animal twitched her tail and pulled on it to no avail. “She's caught—probably in an animal warren of some sort. Here, help me free her.”

  “Could be a snake hole. I ain't goin' near it,” Phoebe said stubbornly.

  Madelyne knelt and worked with the cow's right rear foot, which was wedged tightly. After a moment's feckless struggle, she looked up at the strapping girl and said angrily, “Get over here at once or I'll cane you with that pole!”

  “You wouldn't dare. My aunt'd go to the master 'n he'd tell you ta mind yer sewin' and leave runnin' this here place to them what knows what they're about.”

  The truth of her useless position and Quintin's refusal to allow her any authority over the servants cut too deeply. Madelyne stood up and advanced on the larger woman with fire in her golden eyes. She yanked the pole from Phoebe's hands and hurled it into the tall grass, then reached for her shoulder, intent on dragging her to perform the task.

  Phoebe slapped Madelyne's hand away with a crude oath and placed her fists defiantly on her hips, daring the little mistress to touch her again.

  All the stress and humiliation of the past weeks seemed to well up inside Madelyne, like a dam bursting. She grabbed a fistful of black hair
from beneath Phoebe's dingy cap and gave a sharp yank, causing the girl to lose her balance and pitch forward. ”I am the mistress of Blackthorne Hill, and you are an indentured servant. You will obey me!”

  “Bloody hell I will!” Phoebe seized the neckline of Madelyne's chemise and ripped it off her shoulder, then tried to kick with her heavy-soled shoes, but Madelyne's skirts offered some protection as she doubled her fist up and struck the bondswoman in her stomach. With black and dark red hair flying, feet flailing, and hands gouging, they fell to the dusty earth, rolling over and over as each struggled to subdue the other. Gulliver raced in a circle, barking furiously while the Jersey stood stoically by the roadside watching with round brown eyes.

  “What in blazes is that racket?” Quintin muttered to Domino. He'd just spent a hellish day at the warehouse supervising the unloading of their fall trading goods for the Muskogee. He was hot, tired, and thoroughly out of sorts as he trotted the stallion up the road.

  The scene before his eyes confounded him—two shrieking women, a barking dog, and an immobilized cow who let out a lowing cry of distress when the women rolled against her legs. The racket would shortly draw everyone from the plantation. Since one of the combatants was his wife, Quintin had to put a stop to it before that occurred. Madelyne had caused him enough disquietude already. He dismounted and strode furiously toward them, then reached down and plucked his gasping, disheveled wife from atop the housekeeper's harlot niece.

  “Do you want everyone from Blackthorne Hill to Savannah to witness your disgrace, madam?” he hissed as Madelyne thrashed in his arms.

  The moment she heard that cold, clipped voice, Madelyne froze in horror, all the rage suddenly drained from her. Once more, she and Phoebe had confirmed Quintin's belief in the wild, hoydenish way all women behaved—whether ladies or serving wenches. ”I was trying to rescue the Jersey from her abuse. She was beating the poor creature quite mercilessly with a pole.”