“What an adventure you’ve had, Mrs. Church,” she murmured, her green eyes alight.
Angelica nodded, tried to smile.
“You must have wondered whether you’d get away alive,” the girl breathed, her hand protectively covering her own full belly.
“Yes,” Angelica replied. “I was really and truly afraid.”
She could see Jenneke was full of questions. Ordinarily, she would have gratified her curiosity, but the sight of this clean refuge and the cozy little bed, made her know just how tired she was. How long had it been since she’d slept in a safe, clean place?
“I saw all those wicked men hanged or dead this morning,” she said. “As much as I knew they deserved it, it was horrible. I need to forget in the worst way.”
“Well, this is a good, strong aches-and-pains tea,” Jenneke said indicating the steaming cup. “It will certainly put you to sleep.” “Jenneke!” The summons came from the lady of the house, now somewhere down the hall. “Don’t dawdle!”
“I have to go,” the young woman said. With a last shy look she added, “Sleep well, Mrs. Church.” She dashed through the door in a way that did credit to the authority of her mother-in-law.
Amused, but relieved to be alone, Angelica sat on the bed and sipped tea. She tasted the bitterness of willow bark, incompletely covered by the smoother tastes of chamomile, hops and honey.
She thought the medicine and her aching muscles would carry her into sleep at once, even if it were barely six o’clock. Downstairs the family was busy, voices rising and falling. There was a clatter of plates and the scamper and chatter of the children.
It was odd to be in bed while the sun was up, as if she herself were a child again. Lying there in the lingering twilight, hovering on the threshold of sleep, Angelica kept seeing images of the sprawled and bloodied dead, the contorted bodies of the hanged. In her mind, too, were echoes of the weeping women and the wailing, frightened children.
Candles came and went in the corridor, beside the peevish protests of youngsters being put to bed. Finally, Angelica drifted away.
“Everything will be fine,” Jack said. Spurring Hal onward, they galloped over a cliff and out into space. Behind them panted hideous pursuers—a group of twisted, blackened, reanimated corpses.
The three of them hurtled down, toward the gray bosom of the Hudson. Her arms, as they had been for so many days, locked tight around Jack’s hard waist.
“It’s just me,” Jack said as she started upright, out of the dream. Her motion was accompanied by a noisy squeal of protest from the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’m glad you did,” she whispered, settling down again.
He placed the candle upon a chest. Then he set down the clothes he’d been carrying.
“Our kind hosts supplied me with some water so I could wash, and loaned me these. Tomorrow, the ladies will indulge us with food and sleep and laundry.”
“These are such good people,” Angelica said softly, settling back and rubbing her eyes.
“Indeed they are. I sincerely hope they come through this business safely.”
“So do I.”
“I’m going to have to get in there somehow,” he observed, looking dubiously at the little bed. “There’s not so much as another scrap of blanket in this house.”
From the pillow, she regarded him. Light rose into the peaked corners of the room, transforming him into a benign, fair giant.
Jack pulled the eelskin out of his hair and shook his ashy locks.
Next, he stepped out of his trousers.
Heaven help me. He is magnificent!
“I shouldn’t let you sleep with me at all,” she said, “but well only promise me that you won’t...” Shifting in the squeaking bed, she couldn’t quite muster the strength for what she wanted to say. “What kind of a brute do you think I am?”
He was beside her now, a muscular god in a long, baggy shirt that must have been made for the body of a heftier van Driessen. In spite of what she was saying, the sight of his strong thighs bare below the shirttail raised a tremor of excitement.
“I must admit—” He betrayed a teasing gleam in his eye. “—that after seeing you asleep, I could almost find it in myself to be exactly that kind of a brute.”
“Jack!”
“Hush, Angel,” he said. “I’ve never forced myself upon a woman, and I shall not begin with an exhausted, injured one. No matter how attractive she is.”
As he joined her in the bed, it shuddered and let out a feral squeak. “Precarious,” he observed, continuing to carefully settle.
“Still,” she murmured, “everything is so clean. It’s quite wonderful.”
Once more they rolled up together, his arm drawing her close, his knees pressed against the backs of hers. There was no other way to fit.
Angelica’s knees pressed the wall. She could feel the chill through the patched, thin blankets.
“What time is it?”
“About eight o’clock,” he replied, his warm breath in her hair. He stroked her side gently and then asked, “How do you feel, love?”
“I ache all over,” she replied, wishing her reply hadn’t come out sounding so querulous. “But I know I slept a little, for when you came in, I was having a nightmare.”
“Not surprising. This has been a hard day,” he said.
Angelica found herself smiling at his soldier’s understatement. Then, stroking her, he asked, “What was it about?”
“When you came in, I had just dreamed you had ridden us off a cliff to get away from those devils from the Clove.”
Somehow it wasn’t possible to tell the whole story, and that the pursuers had been missing their lips and noses.
“You said don’t worry. Then you gave Hal a tap and he jumped off a cliff. We were all falling into the Hudson.”
“It would take more than a tap to get Hal over a cliff,” Jack replied. “And,” he went on, humor entering his tone, “if I told you not to worry, it’s probably reasonable that you should not.”
“The usual conceit on your part, sir.”
“Guilty as charged. It’s nice to hear I’m now protecting you even in your dreams. Although, I am sorry you believe I take foolish risks.” The arm around her was warm, strong and brotherly.
“It was the last straw in a way,” she mused, relaxing against him, “that this awful day ended with these kind people. I’m afraid for myself, and afraid for them. I’m afraid for every living thing I see.” Her voice caught in her throat and she huddled down, hoping to find comfort in the clean pillow.
Jack soothed her cheek. “Since you left New York, you’ve had to survive on a battlefield. For several days, your life hung by a thread. The fact is, no matter how good we are, or how important we think we are, we may be gone in the wink of an eye. That was the lesson of my first battle.”
“Did you lose friends?” she asked.
“Several.” Jack moved his bare feet to touch hers. He used the moment to change the subject.
“Little blocks of ice,” he whispered. “Put them against me.”
Silently, she curled up as he asked, resting the soles of her feet against his legs and settling her body closer to the warmth of his. If she hadn’t been so tired, the position might have aroused her.
As it was, she felt him stir and harden, but they were both bone weary. The present warm fit of their bodies was somehow beyond erotic, simply comfortable and right.
Tension drained in the growing warm pool of creature comfort. Angelica remembered what he’d said about how her mind stood alone, stubbornly refusing this new love her body and heart had so entirely embraced.
The candle burned low and steady, shedding a golden light. With his strong body so close, she felt much better. At last she was able to relax, safe within his encircling arm.
Mrs. van Driessen, Angelica made her way downstairs. In the kitchen, she was offered a breakfast of sweet sassafras tea, bread, and slices of cold ham and cheese.
Jack was already outside at a guest’s chore, splitting wood.
As Angelica ate, she heard the distant chunk of the ax. Jack is no stranger to these common tasks. For a well-born English gentleman, he seems to know many practical things.
Afterwards, she went out to see about the washing, but her blue - and-white calico dress was already hung, dripping from the line beside Jack’s shirt and stock. On the far end, the women were just laying up a row of men’s heavy, sodden trousers.
“But I must do something,” she said to Goodwife van Driessen. “Well, dear,” the old woman said, “it’s not necessary, but if you want, sit and shell peas for a while.”
She pointed to the wide porch. “But you mustn’t be out in this sun without a bonnet,” the old lady added as Angelica obediently turned. “Back to the kitchen at once, Mrs. Church, and get a hat from the pantry door.”
Meekly, Angelica returned to the house. To submit to this imperious grandma felt like being home again, being ordered about Uncle Joseph’s housekeeper, Mrs. De Keys. Last year it might have annoyed her, but these echoes of the familiar, ordered world—a world she’d begun to think lost forever—were suddenly precious.
Broad straw bonnet tied on over her cap, Angelica sat on the porch beside baskets heaped with green pods. The sun, even here, was bright and she was soon glad she had the hat.
Swiftly, she ran her finger through the fat green pods, stripping peas into an empty bowl. It wasn’t long before her head began to throb again. At last she excused herself and retreated to her room.
The day, for Angelica, was a succession of long naps. When she finally got up, the good food at the van Driessen table put her back to sleep again. Jack companionably joined her on several of these lie downs, though he was usually gone when she woke up.
Soon after supper, she was back in bed again. When she fretted about how weak she was, Jack explained.
“Besides being scared almost out of your wits, that was a bad fall you took. You’ll feel better tomorrow,” he soothed, climbing into bed beside her.
porch again, facing yet more peas.
“Oh! Goodness! I must’ve bundled it in with the shift and skirt, and never even thought about it yesterday,” she exclaimed, reaching for it. “What was I thinking?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Jenneke added, “but I looked at your patches. I adore the calico bluebirds! And that bit of Chinese silk is like a spring sky!”
“Yes.” Angelica smiled as she remembered.
Pieces from sophisticated New York, pieces from a jumble at Tarrytown, pieces from some unfortunate person’s trunk in the middle of the uncertainty, terror and passion at the Clove composing themselves into a quilt.
This quilt, if I live to finish it, will chronicle a time of danger, a time of love.
“I’m working a Broderie Perse on white muslin.” Jenneke spoke shyly. “Whenever I get the time.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Oh, would you? Perhaps you can give me some ideas, Mrs. Church. Your work is so different from anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Probably because no quilt has ever been worked in the midst of such a tempest,” Angelica replied. Taking the pieces, she began to lay them out across her lap.
“These stars are the ones I sewed at the outlaw’s camp,” she said, running her fingers across them. “I found a wonderful cache of cloth in a trunk they’d stolen from some poor person.”
Shyly, Jenneke reached into the pocket of her skirt. When she withdrew it, something was clutched in her hand.
“Perhaps...” she stammered to a halt, blushing in her confusion. “What, dear?”
“You would honor me by...” The girl writhed with awkwardness.
I shall have to shake it out of her, Angelica thought, sighing. “Don’t be silly, Mrs. Jenneke van Driessen.” She teased her, hoping to stiffen the girl’s spine by using her married name. “Do show me.”
“Well. Here.” Jenneke pushed the packet into Angelica’s lap. “Maybe you can work this in somewhere. It would be an honor to have a part of mine—the quilt I’m working—with yours...your quilt.” She looked about to expire with embarrassment.
Angelica unfolded the packet and discovered a lovely swatch of printed calico, a beautiful pink rose surrounded by tendrils of grape ivy. It was beautiful.
“Oh, Jenneke, thank you!” she said with feeling. “Are you sure you don’t need it?”
As the girl shook her head dumbly, Angelica impulsively hugged her and was rewarded by a scarlet blush. “There is certainly a place for something as grand as this. After all, whenever I look at it, I’ll remember how kind and generous your family has been to us poor strangers. And I will most certainly remember you. It will be our bond.”
Jenneke smiled and nervously smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt. “Do you really like it, Mrs. Church? My—my Mama always said— about quilts, you know—that it’s the sharing that brings folks together, no matter how far they travel, or how many years pass.”
“Your Mama sounds like a wise Mama, and a good one,” Angelica replied. Tears, which lately sprang so easily, gathered in her eyes.
“Mama said it’s mostly what women can do for one another,” Jenneke continued breathlessly. “Outside of birthing babies, I guess. Children grow away, she said. Quilts outlast all. And so, I thought that wherever you go, you’ll always have a piece to remind you of us. Of— of me.”
Angelica took Jenneke’s hands into hers. “What a dear you are,” she whispered, gazing into the girl’s honest green eyes. “You just go on as you are, Mrs. Jenneke van Driessen. Soon this family will have to love you for who and what you really are.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Jenneke’s lips. She looked down at Angelica’s hands, clasped upon hers. “Think of the stories we can tell our children, Mrs. Church,” she murmured. “They’ll think we were very brave and adventurous, won’t they?”
“And they’ll be right. We’re the bravest people we know—and that’s a fact!”
A little later, they sat at a table by a window, sewing together. Angelica had secured her new friend an hour of freedom from the daily chores by asking her hostess if she could have her company.
Her head still ached, but to have the needle in her fingers and fabric beneath her hands was such a relief. Jenneke worked diligently at the fine appliqué stitches of the Broderie Perse with the material trapped, a section at a time, within an embroidery hoop. Angelica worked at piecing her stars.
The room, with its spotless black-and-white tile floor, its mantel decorated with fine china, and all the plain dark furniture, was a comfortable mirror of her Uncle Jacob’s house. At first, she felt warm and completely content, but after little more than an hour of this placid, familiar activity, an ache returned.
This room is like—but, it is not—home! And oh! How I long to be there!
***
Deep in the night, there was a noisy skittering. Jack’s accompanying leap out of the bed summoned her roughly from sleep.
Then Angelica was falling. A high, hysterical squealing and a jolting crash came at the same instant.
From her new position on the floor, past the strong bare legs of her husband, Angelica saw a pair of cats streak past.
Gray blobs streamed from the corn meal basket. In wild haste, several frightened mice raced straight across the blanket covering her legs. Finally, a thump in the darkened hall and a loud, terrible squeak announced that one of the furry intruders had met his end.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked, reaching for her hand.
“I think so,” she replied, accepting his help in getting out of the fallen bed. Apparently, the rickety wooden frame had come unpegged. Under the strain of Jack’s leap, it had given way, dumping Angelica, the slats and the mattress, onto the floor.
“Let’s just lay the mattress out here,” he said, after a survey of the situation.
“But the mice...” she objected, peering suspiciously at the baskets.
“They’ll run over us, I suppose, but maybe the cats—” He gestured at a curious calico still sniffing the basket with interest. “—will make them mind their manners.”
“What happened?” Their discussion was interrupted by a groggy shout from down the hall.
“The bed fell!” Jack shouted back.
Giggles and shushing came from the neighboring rooms. Apparently, their mishap had awakened the household.
“So—now we understand the joke about Gerrit’s bed,” said Angelica.
“So it seems.”
“I hope it wasn’t where they spent their wedding night,” Angelica added.
“More likely,” her husband responded with a grin, “it was the tattle-tale which hastened them to the altar.”
“Jack Carter!” Angelica scolded. At the same time she recognized that, considering the youth of the bride, the size of her belly, and the attitude of the mother-in-law, his assumption was probably correct.
The fine beeswax candle cast a vacillating light as they dragged their mattress into the middle of the room. Then, again, they lay down again.
Angelica adjusted herself again and again. She couldn’t seem to fall asleep. The mattress suddenly seemed lumpy. Legs, hips, back— something was either uncomfortably cramped or uncomfortably stretched.
After a time, courting sleep seemed hopeless. Jack didn’t complain, although she was certain her inability to lie quietly bothered him. The fact was he seemed restless, too.
“Blow out the candle,” Angelica finally suggested. “Maybe it’s the light.”
Obligingly, Jack got up, but instead of doing that, he closed the door.
“Jack—um—the mice...” She began to protest, for she’d caught his drift immediately. The look on his face as he returned—all desire and mischief—was sufficient.
“Shh,” he whispered, getting down and pulling away the covers. “I shouldn’t let you,” she breathed. He rolled her onto her back, his muscular body coming to unceremoniously cover hers.
“Why not, sweet little wife?”
“Because you’re a wicked liar. Because you’re my enemy. Because you’ve tricked me and mocked me and told stories about everything.”
Angel's Flight Page 18
