“I don’t think teasing a contented woman is ever a good idea,” she replied, relaxing against him. “I’m certain it didn’t bring anything nice his way.”
“Growls, mostly,” Jack admitted. “He used to ask her what she was doing—cutting fabric into smaller and smaller pieces and then sewing them all back together again. He used to declare her quilting a most monstrous waste of time, and a pastime only a woman could devise.”
“And, is that how you see it, sir?”
“Not at all. In fact, I’m looking forward to pulling the finished product up to my neck and curling up in bed with you.”
“You may have to wait longer than you—”
The sentence was never finished. His mouth, ever hungry, had found hers.
Chapter Eleven
The wedding party outside was getting wilder, fueled by oceans of whiskey. The haunting discord of fife and fiddle, accompanied by a rhythmic drum, drove the dance. As Angelica watched from the roof hole, a vicious nose-breaking and blood-splattering fight broke out. The savage crowd cheered.
From below came the sound of a ladder being pulled into place. A moment later, the trap door popped up.
“What’s keepin’ you?” M’Bain’s head, now topped by a magnificent gilt-trimmed military hat, emerged. “We’re a waitin’ on you both.”
Jack said nothing. He looked wary, ready to meet whatever challenge was about to be offered.
“Come on. Don’t be a gloomy bachelor. Tie the knot with the rest of ‘em,” M’Bain encouraged with a cheerful leer.
“You heard the man,” Jack said, turning to Angelica. “Let’s go, Miss TenBroeck.”
“Ah—Mr. Church—” Angelica shuddered. The idea of going down was terrifying—from any way she looked at it.
Taking her hand, he drew her close and whispered, “Don’t fuss. We’ll play the fox to their hounds and live to fight another day, just like your General Washington. Courage, Miss TenBroeck.”
A huge bonfire in the street roared skyward. At first Jack and Angelica stood at the back of the crowd. The young men were dancing, leaping and skipping like rams. The whiskey bottle, addressed lovingly as Black Bet, was passed and passed again.
Next came the women’s turn. They swirled their skirts, showing with equal abandon legs that were young and shapely or roped with the purple of veins of childbirth. They tossed their loosened hair and swayed.
Angelica had never seen anything like it in her life and whispered so to Jack.
“The only thing that surprises me is how exactly it is like Irish bandits. ”
Men and women alike were drinking, passing Black Bet hand to hand. Finally, Angelica was pressed to take a sip. The stuff burned her throat, then made her cough and her eyes water.
Beside them, M’Bain roared with laughter. He took the bottle back and lifted it high.
“To the Dutch princess and our fat ransom!” he cried.
Nancy Bankhead, looking splendid tonight in the satin gown, a crown of wilting spring flowers in her black hair, was making the rounds with her stumbling drunk, red-headed Johnny. She was shaking a basin as she moved among the onlookers, calling for her brideswain. As she passed, coins and jewelry were dropped in.
Nancy stopped in front of Angelica and aggressively shook her basin.
“You cain’t do that, honey,” someone said. “She’s a bride, too.” “She can give me brideswain easier than anyone here,” Nancy shrieked.
Angelica stared at the woman before her, and then took off her small gold earrings and dropped them, one at a time, into the basin. It made her want to choke. Still, with the pressure of Jack’s hand in the small of her back, and the expectation on the thuggish faces surrounding them, she did what she had to do.
“Thumping luck and big children,” Jack added mildly. Angelica could feel the warm pressure of his hand.
The onlookers seemed surprised he knew the proper blessing to give, then they grinned, showing gums and broken teeth. The cry began to be repeated.
“Thumping luck and big children!”
“Ha!” Nancy exclaimed, reaching in to take the earrings up. In spite of herself, she smiled very prettily at Angelica.
“What about me?” It was Ima who stepped forward next, pushing through the throng.
Angelica wondered what to do. Ima had been a bulwark between her and the other women, especially in the fight at the creek. She’d a thousand times rather have given her earrings to Ima than the vain, bullying Nancy.
“Here, ma’am,” said Jack. He dropped something into the basin. Angelica saw a silver sovereign make a magical appearance among the gifts.
Ima’s eyes widened. Jack winked at her.
“Thank ‘ee, sir,” Ima said softly.
Being who she was, Ima understood quite well that where there was one such coin there might be more, but she was also friendly enough to stay mum.
“What’d he give ya?” Her Donnie, another reeling drunk, staggered forward to peer into the bowl.
“This,” Ima suggested, pointing to a thick gold finger ring.
“The last thing you fellows left on me,” Jack explained. He grinned ingenuously.
“Hey! Thar’s a real English George!” Donnie cried, his eyes lighting on the sovereign. He picked it out and tested it with his teeth. “Who gave it?”
“Chief M’Bain, I think.” Ima was all discretion. “It sure was nice of him.” Then, Donnie in tow, she moved away, calling for her brideswain.
Jack and Angelica remained, leaning against the wall of the cook shed. “I thought they stole all your money when they got your pistols and sword,” she murmured.
“So did they,” he replied, winking again.
A circle dance began. It was played faster than Angelica had ever heard, so the participants had to dash through the steps. She leaned against Jack, feeling a strange elation as the rhythm of the shrill music beat in her ears.
The central bonfire, loaded with pine, whistled and sent up showers of sparks. Hard-faced men and women drank and sang and danced around it. The sun had gone and the blaze threw everything into black and red relief.
Jack’s arm around her was a saving grace. It might have been unfounded, but she felt entirely secure as long as he was beside her— even in the middle of this devil’s banquet.
Then, suddenly, the music stopped. Jack and Angelica found themselves pushed forward to stand with the other couples who faced Parson Witherspoon.
“Mr. Church? Miss TenBroeck?” Reverend Witherspoon stared at them. He looked shocked.
“Yes,” M’Bain cried. “What do you think o’ that? Another pair for you to join, parson.”
Witherspoon looked sharply at Jack, but Jack just nodded. “Go ahead, reverend,” he said. Then the reverend leaned forward and put his hand on Angelica’s. “And you, miss?”
“It seems to be for the best, sir.” Somehow Angelica managed to keep her voice level.
“Get to it,” Donnie Graham grumbled drunkenly, giving Witherspoon a quick, shoulder-bruising punch.
The reverend raised his head and surveyed the scene around him.
Then, though clearly daunted, he cleared his throat and began.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and this—uh—”
The reverend stumbled and Angelica sympathized. The very idea that this gang of cut throats might be called a congregation!
“Make it fast, parson.”
“Yes. Get to it!” came shouts from all sides.
“Yes! Before one of these rascals changes his mind.”
In spite of the harassment, Witherspoon doggedly went on reciting the words of his prayer book.
“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. ”
“For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwis
e than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God. Neither is their matrimony lawful.”
He stuck to it, even through a loud chorus of, “Enough of yer Popish nonsense!”
Angelica’s knees were knocking. Sparks shot skyward, red clots into the spring night. As she stared at the Reverend Witherspoon, his prayer book in hand, it struck like a fist. This was a real marriage. Not in the clean and quiet parlor of Uncle Jacob’s house, not before the hearth with friends and family gathered, but in Hell, in the midst of a gathering of rustlers and murderers, their twisted drunken faces leering from every side.
She swayed, but Jack’s arm around her waist supported. The warm strength of it and the assurance she found in his beautiful eyes held her steady.
“Now,” said Reverend Witherspoon, “I will put the question to you together and you will answer together.” He cleared his throat portentously.
“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
Women said, “I do.” And one of those voices, she thought, is my own.
lined faces. Everything looked small, bright and far away.
M’Bain’s powerful body intruded. He was holding out a gourd dish with five or six rings in it.
“Take yer pick,” he said. “We’re gettin’ to that part, ain’t we?”
There was a pause while Nancy rummaged and chose the gaudiest one. The preacher didn’t speak, but a weary disdain showed in his thin face.
“Look ‘ee! I got a good ring here,” cried Donnie Graham proudly. He held it up so everyone could admire it. “Got it off a damned scurvy Frenchman afore I cut his throat.”
“Well, what’re ye waitin’ for, gal?” M’Bain asked, shaking the bowl with the remaining three rings under Angelica’s nose. “Don’t look so haughty,” he chided. “The fingers ain’t still in ‘em.” A burst of his loud, mirthless laughter followed.
Jack reached in and took out a plain, worn gold band—a ring that looked as if it might have spent fifty years on someone’s hand.
“Thank you, Chief M’Bain,” he said mildly. “I was wondering what to do at this part.”
Reverend Witherspoon, perspiration from proximity to the huge fire running down his face, cleared his throat again and began to complete the ritual.
“With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods, I thee endow. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
Angelica heard the man beside her repeat those words. With a shock, she felt him firmly slide the worn, thin band onto her finger. Oddly, it was a perfect fit.
Jack’s gray eyes, when she met them, surprised her. Instead of the fellow conspirator’s wink, the laughter she saw in his eyes seemed, for just an instant, to be that of a trickster.
Laughing at me, not with me!
Uncertainty and fear shot through Angelica, but the whoops which followed the end of the ceremony distracted her and drew her attention away. When she sought his eyes again, the mockery had evaporated.
People began to cry for quiet, and the noisy throng fell silent. The fiddler stepped up, bow in hand, and began in a fine tenor voice to sing a hymn tune called The Heavenly Bridegroom. Angelica had heard this ballad-like song before at far more decorous Scots-Irish weddings.
Let Christ the glor’ious lover
Have everlasting praise,
He comes for to discover The riches of his grace
He comes to wretched sinners To woo himself a bride, Resolving for to win her,
He will not be denied.
The marriage is made ready, The parties are agreed,
The holy son of David,
And Adam’s wretched seed; The sinner is attir’d,
With raiment clean and white, Her sins are freely pardoned And she’s the Lord’s delight...
Chapter Twelve
A patter of rain came in the night. This, and the long hunger now so well satisfied, made it easy to sleep.
Downstairs, no one stirred. The first sound they heard was the mooing of disconsolate cows in a nearby shed, calling to be milked.
Angelica lay awake, watching Jack light their candle. Naked, her long golden hair loosened, she gazed at him, languidly admiring. He wasn’t bulging like Nancy’s brawny Johnnie, but deep muscles rippled on his back, thighs and arms. Here and there were the white lines of scars, testimony to twenty years of war.
There was none of Armistead’s spare elegance. Jack had no waist to speak of, but years of rough riding and long marches had stripped any excess. To Angelica, it seemed perfectly appropriate that she should have such a husband. Out of his clothes, Jack was revealed as a muscular and well-exercised male who shared the blood of her sturdy Dutch tribe.
Sandy locks trailed over his broad shoulders, shoulders she’d kissed, buried her face against, shoulders she’d bitten, shoulders she’d clung to while he’d rocked her. He’d filled her many times during the night, each time not satisfying himself until he’d heard her cry, wrung from her the panting, reflexive struggle which signals ecstasy.
She lifted the covers for him. As he joined her, he took a kiss. She responded by putting her face against his chest, feeling the crinkly light brown hair. In spite of his see-through eyes, he wasn’t as fair as she. Angelica was honey blonde even to the sensitive triangle.
“What do you suppose will happen today?” she murmured.
“Well, the rain will keep everyone and everything quiet, for there are going to be some monumental hangovers.”
“Won’t they expect me in the kitchen?”
“No, as a matter of fact, they won’t. The day after the bridal is one of the few times in her life when a Border woman doesn’t have to work like a slave for her man. If these folks go true to course, they’ll bring us water and then breakfast. You’ll be expected to stay in bed, ready to submit to the insatiable desires of your husband.”
This pronouncement was followed by a kiss on the nose. She didn’t reply, just nestled closer, thinking she had already done a good deal of that! Jack dropped another kiss on her forehead.
“Don’t fret, little Dutchwoman,” he said. “I shall stick to the promise I made before the good reverend, even if our only witnesses are a band of cutthroats.”
Angelica reached to touch his face, the strong line of his jaw. “Is this real?” she asked.
There was a recurring sense that everything, beginning with her abduction on the river, was some long, savage dream, one from which she must eventually awaken.
“It’s a surprising turn for me, too.” Jack soothed her, stroking her back. “Six months ago, I was swearing to myself that I’d never love another woman.”
He tilted her chin, the better to gaze into her blue eyes. “But I do believe what I said about seizing the moment. From the first dance at Governor Tryon’s, I knew I must be your knight.” Another kiss brushed her mouth as she lay languidly back in his arms.
“Still—” He shook his head. “—I’ve strayed from the original chaste errand I set out upon. And I warn you, things are going to be most unpleasant—above and beyond this damned war—after I get you home.”
“Do you suppose you ever will?” she asked, fingers tracing the hardness of his chest. At this instant, the present was all that mattered.
“I intend to.” The gray eyes levelly regarded her. “But if a bullet parts us, at least we shall have had a taste of heaven here on earth.”
Angelica closed her eyes against the pain the idea of losing him brought. Tears squeezed from beneath her golden lashes.
“I was selfish to make love to you here but, damn it, I’m glad I did. Courage, dear heart,” he said. “We shall escape and live to be happy together.” He gathered her close.
Angelica was buoyed upon an inexorable tide. All she kn
ew at this moment was that she loved him, that she knew she wanted him, and wanted more of the frank joy he had given her .
On one side, danger threatened. On the other, disapproval frowned and fretted, twin mountains of impossibility hemming her in. Set against her passion for Jack, against last night’s absolute surrender, was the stark fact that in so doing, she had stepped over the boundary of her Hudson Valley world, and had made a choice her family would hate.
Worse, life with this adoring and adored man would join her with those who wanted to enslave her country. Nevertheless, this morning, she, Angelica TenBroeck, the woman who had defied Major
Armistead, who had lectured all and sundry upon the rights of man and America, had woken wedded, bedded, and close in the arms of an avowed Tory.
***
Leaving Angelica in bed, Jack pulled on trousers and went down the ladder. He returned not only with water, but a chunk of cold beef from last night’s feast and a steaming square of fried mush piled on a wooden trencher.
“Molly was in the cook shed. When I came in, she handed me this,” he said, smiling.
Then, without ceremony, he stripped and washed, using the treasured castile soap. Although she was suddenly shy, it was soon her turn to wash in front of him.
Hoping not to blush, Angelica arose and began what was necessary. Jack kept stealing admiring glances at her as he tied on his crumpled stock.
“I’ve always thought one of the most beautiful sights on this earth is a woman at her bath.”
“And how many women have you seen in this defenseless state?” Angelica replied.
“I choose not to incriminate myself,” her new husband answered. The cheerful grin wasn’t denying anything, but nothing could bother her this morning.
She went on washing, beginning with face, ears and neck and then going to breasts and underarms. At last, she crouched beside the basin on a length of clean toweling to which she’d laid claim yesterday. The most necessary part of the bath, the time of sitting in the basin, was fast approaching.
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