A Bride Most Begrudging (2 page)

God bless you all.

Love, Dee

PROLOGUE

D
EPTFORD
, E
NGLAND
A
PRIL
1643

“SAINTS ABOVE, GIRL. What are you
doing
here?” the shackled man hissed.

Lady Constance Morrow rushed those last few steps across the upper deck. “Please, Uncle Skelly, don’t scold me. I couldn’t let you leave without saying good-bye.”

“It’s only for seven years. Now get off this blasted shallop.”

She touched a hand to her throat. How could she leave? He’d been much more of a father to her than the earl. Perhaps he felt shamed by the shackles clamped tight around his wrists and ankles.

Her heart squeezed inside her chest. He looked as if he’d aged ten years since she saw him just three short months ago. She might not have even recognized him had he not spoken out.

An unhealthy gray pallor replaced the rosy glow she had grown so accustomed to seeing in his cheeks. And his pride and joy—the pure white beard and mustache he’d kept meticulously trimmed and groomed—grew in great abandon about his face.

But his green eyes were still crystal clear and, at the moment, absolutely furious.

“But
America,
” she exclaimed. “It’s so far away and wild and heathen.”

“It’s better than being dead,” he growled. “For love o’ the king, girl, this ship is not interested in men only. Those colonists need breeders, and the captain chained a whole store of female felons in the hold for that very purpose. You have no business being on board. Where is your maid?”

“I easily escaped from her. Besides, the captain would not dare allow a member of his crew to touch an English gentlewoman.”

“He’d dare that and more. All the other well-wishers have long since left, so there is no one on board that can check his actions.” He swiveled to look behind him and when he turned back, near panic lit his eyes.

“Quick,” he cried. “He has seen you!”

Who,
she thought.
The captain?
She grabbed the front of her skirts, poised for flight, yet did not move. Releasing the expensive silk, she clasped Skelly’s hands in hers. His irons clanked.

“Oh, Uncle. I can’t bear this.” Her eyes pooled with unshed tears. “I will not let the submissions to your
Diary
go unanswered. I will keep the publication going while you are away. It will be ready and waiting for you upon your return. You have my oath.”

“Have you not heard a word I’ve said? You must leave
this instant
. The captain of this ship is a villain and a coward. It will go the worse for me if he catches us together, and I’d just as soon avoid a flogging. Now,
go
.”

She paled. “Oh! I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

She glanced across the upper deck. The captain’s huge silhouette advanced, his crisp stride unaffected by the sway of the vessel. Her hairs stood on end. “I love you, Uncle,” she whispered frantically. “My prayers are with you.”

Picking up her skirts once again, she turned and hustled toward the gangway.

The captain whistled. An unkempt sailor posted just feet from her took two long steps. He grabbed her forearm.

“Release me at once!” she demanded.

The man’s dark leathery face formed a grotesque imitation of a smile.

“I think not, maiden.”

She increased her resistance. He grabbed her other arm. She tried to jerk free. He tightened his hold. She slammed her heel onto his booted toe. The heel broke off.

He snarled, grasped her around the waist, and hauled her clear off her feet, slamming her against his side.

“What’s this, Cooper?” The deep voice barely registered in her panicked mind. She could not believe they would be so bold.

She squirmed. Nothing happened. She kicked. Nothing happened. She bit his arm, gagging at the repelling taste of his sleeve.

His grip loosened. Encouraged by this tiny bit of success, she bucked and kicked with increased vigor. He swore. The air suddenly quit reaching her lungs.

The shallop lurched. The rigging creaked.

“What have you?”

“I’m not sure, Capt’n,” her captor responded. “A little bird trying to fly the coop, looks like.”

The captain fingered her hair. “And a red bird, at that.”

She yanked her head away from his touch. “You’ll hang for this!” Her threat came out pathetically weak. She struggled for air. “I cannot breathe.”

The sailor’s pressure did not let up. She labored to stay conscious as her vision began to fade.

“Arman!” the captain shouted.

She jerked her eyes open at the command.

“Sir?” Another voice filtered up the gangway.

“What conveyances are on the dock?”

Her lungs were on fire. She opened her mouth, gasping. A thimbleful of air entered. She needed more. Much more.

“A hired hackney, sir.” This, again, from the gangway.

“Anyone in it?”

“Just the driver, sir.”

Her eyes refused to stay open. Icy prickles bombarded her fingers, toes, arms, and legs. Yet her hearing still functioned perfectly.

“Take her below with the others.”

The captain’s quiet words produced seconds of pure terror before blackness overtook her.

chapter
O
NE
   

V
IRGINIA
C
OLONY
T
WO
M
ONTHS
L
ATER

THE GOWN THEY GAVE her fit too closely. It displayed her figure with humiliating clarity, but perhaps that would work to her advantage. She had lost so much weight, she couldn’t imagine any farmer wanting to invest in such a sickly looking woman.

Several tobacco planters had been on board already to examine the “cargo.” The men stood chained on one side of the upper deck, the women on the other. The men were being sold as indentured servants for seven or fourteen year terms, depending upon their sentence.

But the women were to serve a lifetime sentence. They were to be purchased as brides. One bride in exchange for 120 pounds of tobacco leafage, the colony’s cash crop.

All except Constance, that is. She had been placed alone up on the half deck, her wrists and ankles shackled, the first mate standing guard behind her right shoulder. The captain was asking two hundred pounds of tobacco for her. Ridiculous.

Her gaze drifted over the indentured men. Uncle Skelly was not among them, of course. How could he be?

Only twice during the voyage had the captain allowed the women onto the upper deck for fresh air. The first time up, she’d passed Uncle Skelly on the mid deck. With a collar and padlock about his neck, they had chained him not only to a board but to three of the most abominable creatures she had ever seen. Jail fever consumed one of those creatures.

The second time up, she had found Uncle Skelly’s place on the board eerily vacant. The first mate, Cooper, had confirmed her fears. Skelly Morrow was dead.

Constance swallowed the rush of tears that even now accumulated in her throat at the memory.

“Look lively, maiden. Here comes a’one,” Cooper snarled.

She stiffened as a young farmer of but a score or so years approached the half deck. He looked at Cooper, nodded slightly, then turned to her.

She jerked back when he captured some strands of her hair between his long work-roughened fingers. The captain had not allowed her to wear a headcloth this morning. He’d insisted on having her hair loose and uncovered around her shoulders and back.

This display was nothing short of blasphemy. A woman’s hair was sacred and a recognized symbol of her maidenhood, only to be worn free while speaking wedding vows.

She’d never felt so naked in her life. Her hair wasn’t soft and silky like other women’s. It was wild and thick with tightly coiled ringlets that seemed to multiply when unbound.

The bay breeze picked up, causing her hair to swirl around her face. She tried again to free herself from the man’s grasp.

“Easy, miss. I’ll not hurt you,” he said.

His voice was kind, as were his eyes. He did not rake her with an offensive look nor handle her roughly. If he asked to see her teeth, though, she’d be most uncooperative.

Below, two men captured her attention. One was a dark-haired farmer with a straw hat in his hand. The other was blond and had been on board the ship during the passage over. He’d not been a prisoner, nor had he been a crew member. She’d learned he had paid an extraordinary fee for his passage to the colony, a place he claimed as his home.

The pair singled out Mary, the woman who’d been chained next to Constance the entire voyage over. They spoke with Mary, checked her teeth, and had her walk the length of the deck and back.

The captain approached them. More words were exchanged. The bargaining had begun. In a few minutes, Mary’s fetters were removed and she left the ship with the blond man, while the dark-haired farmer signed a voucher for the captain.

Constance tapped down her panic. Mary was more than a fellow prisoner. She was Constance’s only friend.

Of a sudden, the captain pointed to Constance and the farmer turned in her direction. He narrowed his eyes, finished his transaction with the captain, and headed to the half deck.

She returned her attention to the young man in front of her. He still had hold of her hair, but he was focused on Cooper.

“… a gen-u-ine lady, she is,” the first mate was saying.

“Then why was she transported?” the man asked.

“Oh, we didn’t ask questions. Not our job to ask questions.”

She rolled her eyes.

“You have papers for her?”

“No, he does not,” Constance replied.

Cooper grabbed her arm. “Keep quiet, missy, or you’ll be the sorrier for it.”

“Looking for a bride, Gerald?” The dark-haired farmer had reached the half deck.

The man who must have been Gerald released her hair and jumped back. “Drew! No, not at all.”

“Is she for sale?” Drew asked Cooper.

“Aye, mate.”

“As a tobacco bride?”

“Aye.”

Drew turned back to Gerald and raised an eyebrow.

“Now, Drew, it is not what it appears. I was merely curious.”

“You gave up the right to be curious the moment you married my sister.”

Gerald’s face filled with color. “Actually, it was you I was thinking of,” he sputtered.

Drew lifted both brows this time.

Gerald swallowed. “I, uh, just thought if you found someone of an, uh, acceptable nature, you might be interested.”

“And you deem this female acceptable?”

Gerald paused. “They say she is a lady of the realm, Drew.”

“She has red hair, and I absolutely abhor red hair.”

She stiffened. Gerald’s face suffused with color. Although her hair was more auburn than red, Gerald’s hair was almost orange, it was so bright.

“Your pardon. I did not know.”

“Well, well, well. What have we here? Looking for a bride, Master O’Connor?” A scrawny, slovenly man with more teeth missing than not swaggered onto the half deck.

Tension bounced between the three men. Drew put on his hat, shifted his attention to Constance, and tipped his brim. “If you will excuse me, miss.” He, along with his brother-in-law, moved past her, past the man with the missing teeth, and past two other farmers now approaching the half deck.

The scraggy man watched them leave and ejected tobacco-colored saliva onto the wooden planks as he followed their progress.

“Emmett,” greeted one of the advancing farmers. He and his companion both had great bushy black beards, jolly faces, and rounded bellies. Perhaps they were kin.

“Woodrum,” Emmett said, then turning to her, grabbed her cheeks and squeezed until her mouth gaped open. “Well, would you look at all them teeth. Why, she’s got a mouth full of ’em. How’s the rest of her, Cooper? You patted her down?”

She reared back, trying to grab his arm, but the chains around her wrists and waist restricted her movement. He tightened his grip. The rank smell of him took her breath away, and if he’d had any fingernails at all, they’d have cut half-moons into her cheeks.