“Be there no place we can sleep alone?” Cain asked.
“None that I know o’,” Bridget answered, “but I’ll ask Sean. I was lucky to find them still here. They are bound for the Virginia Colony too. But they have taken the only way poor people can to better themselves; they’ve signed on as indentured servants for passage across the sea. They will work wi’out wages for four years in America. After that, they’ll be free to take up land o’ their own.”
Leaving Robert to watch the animals, Bridget took Cain and Elizabeth to her sister’s quarters. Maureen greeted them shyly, offering them food and drink and the only stools in the cramped room.
“My Sean is workin’ in the stables,” she said when Bridget had explained why her former mistress was in Bristol. “He doesn’t get off until late, but I know Sean will help ye, if he can. He has no love for English lords, beggin’ yer pardon, yer ladyship.” She blushed and stared at Cain from under thick, dark lashes.
Bridget whispered into her sister’s ear. “. . . newly wed,” Elizabeth heard her say. “. . . someplace to be alone.”
Maureen looked from Elizabeth to Cain in disbelief. “He . . . he is an Indian?” she ventured timidly. “Ye are truly wed this day?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Truly.”
Maureen whispered something to Bridget, then tied on her apron and threw a shawl over her head. “I’ll be right back,” she said and ducked out the door.
“Ye can trust her, lady,” Bridget assured Elizabeth. “She’d cut off her right arm before she’d betray me.”
Elizabeth cast a longing glance at the only bed in the room. I’d give a manor in Yorkshire for a soft place to sleep right now, she thought. But that’s Maureen and Sean’s bed. We’ll be lucky if they find us a spot on the floor.
Before Elizabeth could finish the bread and cheese Maureen had given them, the younger girl was back. She flung open the door and grinned broadly. “Sean says if ye dinna mind sleepin’ in the hayloft, yer welcome to take clean blankets and go there. ‘Tis not what a lady’s used to, I’m certain, but ‘tis private. None will bother ye . . . and on yer weddin’ night . . .” She trailed off, blushing furiously. “‘Twas only a thought. If ye’d rather ha’ our bed, we—”
“We will take the loft gratefully,” Elizabeth assured her. She smiled at Cain. “If it suits you, husband.” She offered him her outstretched hand. “Would you spend our wedding night in a hayloft?”
Chapter 25
For a long time, Cain and Elizabeth lay wrapped in each other’s arms on the sweet-smelling hay in the loft above the tavern stables. Elizabeth had believed herself exhausted, but now that they were alone, with a fresh linen sheet beneath them and a wool blanket above, she found she could not sleep.
Below, in the barn, horses stamped and whinnied, and a cow lowed softly. The sounds were restful ones; they took Elizabeth back to her childhood in the country. The stable was clean, the hard-packed floors swept, and the stalls knee-deep in bright straw. The odors drifting upward to the loft were earthy scents of grain, horses, and oiled leather.
“This one takes you from a king’s palace to a shelter for beasts,” Cain murmured as his warm, wet tongue tasted the contours of her throat. “Be you sorry you chose to follow my path?”
“Ummm.” Elizabeth sighed and snuggled closer, letting the warmth of his heavy, muscled body permeate her tired limbs. “I don’t think so,” she teased, pulling the thick homespun blanket tighter around her naked shoulders.
“Think? You do not know?” He stopped nibbling her ear and propped himself up on one elbow to gaze down at her with almond-shaped eyes. “Look at me, Eliz-a-beth,” he commanded in his own soft language.
The eddies of warmth that coursed through her veins intensified as she rolled onto her back and smiled up at him. Moonlight spilled through the cracks around the loft window and pooled around them, illuminating his craggy, hawklike features, making his heavy-lidded eyes look as dark as glittering obsidian blades. “K’daholel,” she whispered. “I love you.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile sweet enough to charm the birds from the trees, and Elizabeth laughed.
“Why do you laugh?” he asked. He lowered his head until she felt the heat of his lips against her own. Her mouth opened slightly and their tongues caressed, retreated, and touched again.
Tremors of pleasure shot through Elizabeth. “Come here,” she ordered.
“I be here.”
“No . . . closer.” She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down until her mind reeled with the musky, virile scent of him. “God, but I love you,” she admitted.
Cain had bathed in the cold waters of the River Avon; even now his thick hair was damp. His body was always clean and free of sweat, more so than any Englishman Elizabeth had ever known. But there was a scent about him that was his alone—a wild, strong odor that never ceased to excite her.
Their lips met again and they kissed, gently at first and then with smoldering passion. Elizabeth moaned as the heat from Cain’s thrusting tongue surged through her to ignite a throbbing flame of longing. “Cain,” she murmured. “Darling.”
His left hand slipped between them to cup her softly rounding belly. “Be you well?” he asked tenderly. “This one would not harm our child with our love.”
Elizabeth trembled at the force of his hard, bulging loin against her bare leg. “You will not hurt us,” she said throatily. “This child is strong. If what has happened in the last weeks didn’t hurt it, our love cannot.” She arched her body against his and flicked her tongue along the line of his lower lip. “I want you, Cain . . . I need you.”
“Ah.” His breath was warm and sweet against her face. “My heart sings to hear your words.” He brushed her cheek with his callused right palm. “Wanishish-eyun, Eliz-a-beth.”
“I don’t know those words,” she whispered.
He sighed and ran his left hand possessively along her curving hip, then up across her midriff to cup a breast. “You must say the same to me,” he instructed as his fingertips teased her nipple to a swollen bud. “Wanishish-eyun, Cain. Nindau sauqeau.”
“Winishish-eyun, Cain,” she repeated. “Nindau sauqeau. Oh!” She cried out with joy at the exquisite sensations he was creating within her. “Oh . . . that’s nice.” He chuckled, lowering his head to take her nipple between his lips. “Ohhh.”
“Wanishish-eyun—you are fair,” he murmured. “Nindau sauqeau—this one can love a person.” He raised his head and gazed at her again, taking both hands and spreading her hair around her face and down to cover part of her breasts. “Englishwoman with hair like autumn grass, you are fair,” he said. “Most fair of any this warrior has seen.” He lifted a silky lock of her hair and kissed it.
Elizabeth lay against the heaped hay with one knee flexed and one arm thrown above her head. “And when I am not fair?” she teased. “When my body is as swollen as a whale, what then? Will you love me still, Lenape warrior? Or will you seek out a slim, dark-haired maiden with black eyes and a gentle tongue?”
He lowered his head to kiss her belly. “This one will seek no other woman so long as you live.” He kissed her again. “You worry too many. Our child will make you beautiful. And you will be fair to this man when your hair is white as wind-driven sand upon a beach, and your teeth have worn away from chewing deer hides.”
“Deer hides? You expect me to chew deer hides?”
“Of truth, all good wives do. Makes hide soft.”
“Then you’ll have to learn to like stiff hides,” she protested. They both laughed as he threw himself upon her, entangling her legs in his and kissing her willing mouth again and again. They rolled over until she lay on top of him. His hand brushed against their folded clothing and his fingers closed around Elizabeth’s string of pearls.
Still chuckling, Cain took the pearls and draped them in her hair. “Pretty,” he said. “They glow like stars in the moonlight.” With a single quick movement, he pinned her to the hay again. “
Now,” he declared, “you be this one’s prisoner. I am Iroquois brave, and I take great delust in torturing prisoner.”
She giggled. “Delust? What is delust?”
“I am showing you.” He coiled the pearls into a circle and rubbed them across her cheek, lightly touching her skin. Then he lifted the necklace and kissed her where he’d rubbed the pearls.
She giggled again. “That’s not torture.”
His dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “It will be,” he promised. “Wait.” He brushed the pearls along the hollow of her throat, then kissed her.
Elizabeth’s pulse quickened, and she twined her fingers in his hair. “I think I like this kind of torture.”
Slowly, tantalizingly, he stroked her body in small, lazy circles. His touch was soothing, and a sweet languor spread through her. First, she was aware of the cool, smooth sensation of the pearls, then his moist tongue heated her skin. “Ummm.” she sighed. “That’s nice too.”
A sheen of perspiration broke out over her body as Cain moved down to her breasts, over her navel, to caress her belly and loins. Her own hands would not be still. They moved over his broad shoulders and down the rippling muscles of his chest. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and she whimpered softly when his exquisite torture reached the apex of her thighs.
“Do you have surrender?” he said huskily. His face was taut, his eyes heavy-lidded with passion.
“ ‘Tis you who will surrender,” she replied, snatching the pearls from his hand. They dropped from her fingers into the hay as she arched provocatively against him, exploring his lean buttocks with a wandering hand and catching his nipple between her teeth to suck gently. Her body flushed with desire as she writhed beneath him. She moaned deep in her throat, rubbing her love-swollen breasts against his chest, fanning the flames of her own desire, until Cain rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him again.
“Love me like this,” he urged, lifting her hips until she settled astride him and felt the impassioned thrust of his throbbing manhood. “Come to me, wife,” he murmured hoarsely. “Join with me.”
The flame that burned within her had become a fierce aching. She gasped as he filled her with love . . . as they sought a mutual rhythm of giving and taking. She clung to him, crying out with joy as the intensity of their white-hot desire rose to fever pitch. Elizabeth felt as though they were caught in some great cresting wave, reaching higher and higher . . . until at last they tumbled together into the depths of the cool, dark sea.
For what seemed forever, she floated, unaware of time or place. Then she felt Cain’s lips against her own, and she sighed contentedly. “Will it always be like that for us?” she asked him.
He chuckled. “Perhaps. Perhaps it be better.”
She laughed and laid her head against his chest. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Hold me.”
They slept and woke to love again. And as the first rays of dawn tinged the loft with red and gold, Cain rose from his place beside her and searched the hay for the string of pearls.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked sleepily.
“Looking for your beads.”
She rubbed her eyes and sat up. “My pearls?”
“Here they be.” He held them up before her. “You say the English treasure these beads.”
“Yes, but-”
“Do the tribe called Irish value them too?”
“Of course, but why—”
“This man Sean and his wife, they go across the sea. This is true?”
“Yes. You heard Bridget. They have signed on as indentured servants. A ship will take them to Virginia, and they will work for Englishmen there until their time is up.”
“Their names be written down in an English book?”
“Yes.”
“If we try to go on ship, men will write down our names and Edward’s men will capture us—true?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Of course, but—”
“Hah.” Cain sat back on his heels and grinned. “The English never look at the faces of servants. They be servants, like some would say, ‘They be horses.’ ”
Elizabeth pulled the blanket around her breasts, blushing as she remembered what had passed between them in the night. “I don’t understand what-”
“Listen, woman. Always you talk, talk and do not listen. This Sean and his woman Maureen, they go to Virginia because they are poor. Yes?”
“Yes. Sean has no real trade and there are many men seeking each job.”
He pulled a full-sleeved shirt over his head. “Then we give them your beads, and we take their places on this ship that sails west to my land. No one looks at our faces when we go aboard. We be Irish servants, yes?”
Elizabeth dropped the blanket and stared at him in surprise. “It might work. Yes! It might—at least it’s a chance.” She threw her arms around his neck, and they rolled over and over in the prickly hay.
“You think I make good Irishman?” Cain asked as he covered her face with kisses.
She laughed. “No. But you might pass as one if I can keep you from talking.” She ruffled his short hair. “And until this grows out, you’ll be safe from Iroquois war parties.”
“Hmmm.” He grimaced. “A warrior must make sacrifices.”
She hugged him tightly, and her expression grew serious. “If we get to America, we’ll still be in danger,” she murmured. “We’ll be bond servants—prisoners. They’ll expect us to work for many years at the hardest kind of labor.”
Cain’s dark eyes gleamed. “Show me the shores of my own land,” he said softly, “and this one will find a way to deal with the English. Our child must be born free. I will wrap her in a bearskin and carry her down to the sea at the sun’s dawning.”
“A daughter? And if it’s a boy?”
Cain laughed. “A bearskin will do for a Lenni-Lenape warrior. But do not pick a name. That honor goes to Cocumtha. She will ask a blessing for our child. She will choose what the little one is to be called.”
Elizabeth grew thoughtful. “If she’s still alive. But she’s old, Cain. She may have died while we were gone.”
He shook his head. “No, Cocumtha lives. She lives to cradle our child—yours and mine.” He sighed. “One thing I have worry of.”
Elizabeth’s green eyes grew large. “What’s that?”
“Suppose my child has green eyes like cat instead of proper color brown eyes? It make great disgrace.”
“You!” Grabbing a handful of hay, she stuffed it down the front of his shirt. Cain had to remove both the shirt and his breeches to get rid of the hay, and in the process, Elizabeth lost her blanket.
The sun was high overhead when they returned to Sean’s room to meet the others.
It was midmorning before Elizabeth could explain their plan to Sean and Maureen and Robert and Bridget. “I will give you a letter of ownership,” Elizabeth said to Sean. “If you take the pearls to my agent, Micah Levinson, in London, he will sell them and give you a fair price. Then if you still want to go to the New World, you can go as landowners, not servants.”
“ ‘Twould mean us breakin’ the law,” Sean answered slowly. He looked at his wife. “But ‘twould also mean the difference between poverty and riches. What say ye, Maureen?”
“Me, I’d rather go home to Connaugh and live like squires than cross the sea to be eaten by wild beasts and carry out chamber pots for the English.” Timidly, she reached for Sean’s hand. “Take the necklace, mon. I’d see my old grandsir again before I die.”
“Ye know what yer doin’, lady?” Bridget asked. “If ye take Maureen’s place, ‘tis no turnin’ back. Ye leave yer place here and all it means to become common folk.”
“Among the people, the Lenni-Lenape, there be no common folk,” Cain said. “Eliz-a-beth will be a free woman.”
“You’d forsake all fer the wilderness, lady?” Bridget continued. “Be certain, is all I say.”
“What’s certain is that Lord Dunmore will have them murdered if they stay in England,” R
obert put in. “If they try to buy passage, someone will mark their names and report them to Lord Dunmore for the reward. They’ll not live to sail as paying passengers, I vow.”
Robert had sold the remaining two horses and had offered the money to Elizabeth. She’d refused, saying the silver was little enough reward for what he’d done to help them. “I’ve no means to buy passage, other than the pearls,” Elizabeth said. “If I try to sell them in Bristol, we’ll be discovered, and there’s no time for me to try and find Micah.”
“Ye have other means,” Bridget said. She went to a shelf and took down a tiny blackened tin. “This is yers, m’lady.” She dumped the contents into Elizabeth’s hands. “ ‘Tis your emerald necklace, as ye well know. I stole it when his lordship asked for yer jewels.” She blushed to the roots of her dark hair. “I thought ye were dead, lady, and I was afraid of bein’ turned out wi’ nothin’ for my years o’ service. I’d never steal from ye alive, but—” Her shoulders quivered, and she began to weep.
Cain took the necklace from Elizabeth’s hand and held it in the sunlight that streamed through an open window. “This is great value too?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Of use to English, but little among my people. Better we have brass fishhooks.”
“I agree,” Elizabeth said. She met Cain’s steady gaze, then glanced meaningfully at Bridget.
Cain put the gold and emerald necklace into Bridget’s hands. “We will trade,” he said. “We want good English fishhooks and needles and thread.” He grinned at Robert. “Is enough, this necklace, to buy a bakery?”
Elizabeth looked puzzled. “Bakery?”
“Robert tells me he take Bridget as wife,” Cain explained. “He says he will not be footman again. He wants to make bread and sell to others.”
“But I can’t take it,” Bridget wailed. “I stole . . . and . . . and . . .”
“I’d say my necklace will buy a bakery, and a mill to grind the flour,” Elizabeth said. She rose and went to stand beside Cain. “You have served me faithfully for many years, Bridget, and—”
“And I lied to ye too!” She sniffed loudly. “Maureen were never sick when I didn’t come to the Speedwell afore. I didn’t come because I was afraid to sail across to the Colonies.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t deserve—”
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