A Wild Yearning (6 page)

"On the other hand, by God, I think I
will
bring you with me," he had said, letting out a short, harsh laugh. "Yes, by God, I believe I will."

She was glad now she had gone to the trouble to wash herself off at the public well, even though it meant that for privacy's sake she'd had to get up long before dawn, shivering out in the open as the wind off the cold bay waters had whipped at her body, clad only in its thin shift. Lord, she was probably lucky she hadn't gotten herself arrested for indecency or given herself an ague and all to please
him,
though a fat lot of good it had done her for all the notice he'd taken of her new, cleaner self. Instead, he had found fault with the way she ate, likening her to a pig. Her face grew hot at the memory of how she had shamed herself before him, arousing his disgust.
I
realize that you are hardly a lady,
he had said. Oh Lord, how she longed with her whole heart to prove him wrong...

Delia cast a surreptitious glance at his averted face. Last night she had thought him handsome. Now, studying him in bright daylight, she decided he was by far the finest-looking man she had ever seen. He didn't dress like a physician, however; for he was without the tightly curled wig, black suit, and gold-headed cane that normally denoted members of his profession. Instead, he was well-dressed in silk and snuff-colored mohair breeches, with what looked to be real silver buckles at his knees, and a dark blue coat with a lacy, high-necked stock folded over his linen shirt. The whiteness of the stock set off the stark contrast of his sun-browned face.

He was a man of contrasts, she thought. Such as the way he spoke—so posh and educated one minute and cussing up a blue streak like her da the next. And the perpetual scowl on his mouth that didn't go at all with the laugh lines around his eyes. He played the part of a gentleman rake, yet he had spoken so gently to his woman last night when they had parted; he had treated her with such respect. Delia knew it was hopeless to wish it, but still she longed for him to treat her so tenderly.

So respectfully.

No sooner had the coach rounded the Town House toward Queen Street when it lumbered to an abrupt halt, nearly dumping Delia onto the floor. She saved herself by grabbing Ty's leg. The muscle of his thigh was warm and hard beneath her palm and she felt it tense through the thin material of his breeches. She left her hand on his thigh long after she should have—until he stared pointedly at the hand, then at her. Blushing, she removed it, unconsciously balling it into a tight fist on her lap.

Slowly, Delia became aware of shouting and screaming outside, and she leaned out the window to see what the commotion was about. A woman, stripped to the waist and tied to the tail of an ox cart, was being whipped around the Town House square.

The man doing the whipping was going easy on the strokes, but even so the woman's naked back was criss-crossed with red weals. She had been branded as well, on her shoulder with the letter A. The significance of the brand made Delia think again of the woman who had been with Ty in his rooms last night.

"Seems to me yon whore is gettin' no worse'n she deserves," she muttered, loud enough for the man sitting beside her to hear. "A-lyin' in sin with a man not her husband..."

Ty looked away from the gruesome scene being enacted in the street and met Delia's accusing eyes. "I know what you're implying, Delia, and you're wrong. The woman in question—"

"Priscilla," Delia put in, just so there'd be no mistake.

"Priscilla," Ty admitted through gritted teeth, "is a widow. She's also kind, decent, honest to a fault, and one of the finest people I know. And why shouldn't she take a lover now and then if she so chooses?"

Delia sniffed. "There's many a God-fearin' folk in Boston who would argue with ye about that. An' what's more, ye ought t' marry her, Tyler Savitch, if ye're going t' do... do what ye've been doin' with her."

"If I proposed marriage to Priscilla, she would turn me down flat for she values her freedom as much as I do mine." He glared at her. "Jesus, why am I justifying myself to the likes of you? The entire matter is none of your damn business!"

Delia said nothing, although her breast rose in indignation at the hypocrisy of his words. Priscilla was a
lady,
rich and prominent, and therefore above society's censure no matter what her behavior, whereas a poor girl like herself couldn't work in a grog shop without being labeled a whore.

Ty had turned away, but he was not done with her, for a moment later his head snapped around and he growled at her
some more. "And here's another thing. If that woman"—and he pointed out the carriage window—"
sinned,
as you call it, then there was a man helping her to do it. So why isn't he out there tied to that cart and taking his licks right along with her?"

Delia stared at him in surprise. That was one form of hypocrisy that had never occurred to her before. Yet for him, a man, it had.

She was still ruminating over this strange facet of Ty's character when the coach turned down Beacon Street and drew up before a manor house set well back on a tree-shaded lot. Only four houses stood on this side of the street, which ran into the base of Beacon Hill, where flags on the signal tower snapped in the wind, a wind that brought with it the cloyingly sweet smell of molasses from the rum-making distilleries on nearby Mill Pond.

The footman opened the carriage door and helped Delia to descend into the street. She looked up in wonder at the enormous mansion built of granite and trimmed with brown sandstone. It was three stories tall with a blue slate mansard roof and row upon row of large sashed windows. The front door was decorated with a frieze and flanked by columns and in the middle of it was a brass lion's head knocker with a ball in its mouth.

"Oh, Ty, I've never clapped sight of a house so grand!" Delia exclaimed. She looked at him with shimmering eyes. "Can I go inside with ye? Please. I promise I'll act like a proper lady, truly I will."

He smiled down at her. Then he actually took her arm and linked it through his, just as if she
were
a real lady, and Delia's chest swelled with pride.

But he spoiled it all by saying, "I don't want you acting like a lady, Delia, even if you are capable of such an impossible feat. I want you to be yourself."

Before Ty could knock, the door was opened by another servant—a woman large enough to stand eye-level with Ty's six feet. Her stiff apron crackled as she moved, and she had a gigantic turban balanced precariously on her pumpkin-sized head. She, too, wore a silver slave collar, engraved with the name of her owner. Her cheerful grin was so infectious, Delia couldn't help smiling back at her.

"Mornin', mistress," she said, nodding at Delia, whose wide-open eyes were taking in the long wainscoted hall and the sweeping stairway with its elaborately carved balusters and newel posts. "And mornin' t' you, Massah Tyler," she said as she took Delia's cloak and grist sack, treating them with the same reverence as if the cloak had been made of red silk and the grist sack was a leather satchel. "A fine mornin', isn't it? You be findin' Suh Patrick in his bedchamber, Massah Tyler."

Sir
Patrick. Heaven preserve us, Delia thought, was Ty's grandfather a bloody lord or something? Suddenly she wished she'd waited outside.

"Thank you, Frailty," Ty said, and started for the stairs. But Delia held him back by his coat sleeve.

"Yer grandfather's a
lordship?"

Ty's glance automatically went to an oil portrait hanging above a delicate walnut sideboard that stood along one wall of the hall. Delia realized this must be the old noble gentleman himself. She had never seen a grander-looking personage—nor a meaner-looking one.

"Sir Patrick Graham... but he's not a lord," Ty was saying. "In fact, he was born a Scottish crofter's son. He was knighted by Queen Anne many years ago, after he discovered a sunken Spanish galleon full of treasure off the coast of the Bahamas." He gave her such a knowing grin that Delia flushed. "He's a bit of a pompous ass and I'm counting on you to bring him down a peg or two."

Frailty clucked her tongue and wagged her finger beneath Ty's nose. "Massah Tyler, you oughta be 'shamed o' yourself, usin' this po' gal t' get one back at your grandfather. Don't you let him do it, honey," she said to Delia.

Delia took another careful look at the portrait of the hook-beaked, stern-lipped old man. He didn't appear the sort who would take kindly to having a tavern wench come sashaying through the front door of his Beacon Street manor house with a notion to put him in his place.

She swallowed nervously and tugged again at Ty's sleeve. "What's your grandfather do now? I mean besides bein' a knight."

"He's a slave trader."

As Delia followed Ty up the stairs, she glanced back over her shoulder at Frailty, who still stood in the hall. Frailty smiled encouragingly at Delia and made a shooing motion with her hands. Delia smiled back. A slave trader. Ty's grandfather was a slave trader.

Growing up as she had in the Boston waterfront slums, Delia was aware of the infamous triangular shipping trade on which so many New England fortunes were built—rum to Africa for slaves; slaves to the West Indies for molasses and sugar; molasses and sugar back to Boston to be distilled into rum. But not all the slaves went to the West Indies. Some were brought here, to New England, and many of the better sort had at least one or two dark-skinned servants to give prestige to their households.

Delia followed Ty up the stairs and down a long, broad hall lined with row upon row of portraits, some blackened with age. "Lord above us, I suppose these are all yer illustrious ancestors," she whispered, awed.

Ty emitted a short bark of laughter but said nothing.

He rapped once on a door at the end of the hall and opened it immediately. Delia followed after Ty, using his broad shoulders as a shield, but peering around them with unabashed curiosity.

Delia had thought Ty's rooms at the Red Dragon were the most magnificent she had ever seen, but they couldn't touch this room for pure luxury. With silk paper on the walls, a marble fireplace, and thick carpets scattered on the inlaid floor, it was almost too much to take in at once. Dominating the room was an enormous four-poster with carved and fluted pillars and cornices, and adorned with green damask hangings. It was even draped with a fine gauze curtain to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

And there, at the foot of the bed, wearing a flowing red silk banyan and matching felt slippers with curled-up toes, must be, Delia thought, Sir Patrick himself.

He was bent at the waist with a sheet draped over his shoulders and his face thrust into a paper cone, while a manservant shook white powder from a ball onto his bewigged head.

"Ty, is that you, boy?" came an old man's querulous voice, echoing within the paper cone. "You were going to try to sneak off without me knowing of it, weren't you?" He pulled the cone off his face and flapped it at his valet. "That's enough, damn you. Go on, go on, I'm done with you for now."

The valet took the sheet and cone and left the room on quiet feet while grandfather and grandson glared at each other.

"Well?" the old man demanded. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

Delia saw the telltale muscle tick along Ty's jaw. "When I was here three days ago you told me to get out of your damn sight."

"Aye, I did, but I was hoping in the interim you'd gotten some sense pounded into that thick head of yours." He turned and went over to a walnut dressing table and, bending stiffly, studied his reflection in the looking glass. He adjusted the wig a fraction. "This stubbornness of yours must come from your da's family. It isn't a Graham trait." He whirled around and fixed his grandson with a fierce glare. "I'm waiting, boy. I'm waiting to hear you tell me that you've changed your stubborn Savitch mind. That you're staying in Boston and you're taking over Graham Shipping, just as I've always planned for you."

Ty's mouth did have a stubborn set to it. "Then you'll be waiting till snow falls in hell. I'm a physician—I want to
heal
human flesh, not
trade
in it."

The old man released an angry breath, and fine white powder drifted like snow onto the shoulders of his long, voluminous banyan. The sight of the tall, stern-faced man fuming in the middle of the room in his blazing silk dressing gown re- minded Delia of the fire-breathing creature on the signboard of the Red Dragon Inn.

"Well, don't stand there hovering in the doorway like a blamed fool," Sir Patrick scolded. "I've still got some things to say to you and, by God, for once you're going to listen."

The old man stomped the length of the room, the robe flapping around his thin legs. At the fireplace, he turned, his hands locked behind him, his shoulders thrown back, and then his eyes fell on Delia. "Good God. Who's the wench?"

"I'm taking her to Merrymeeting with me," Ty said, a mischievous smile on his face as he pulled a reluctant Delia into the room.

"Be damned you are!" the old man exclaimed, aghast.

Delia jerked her arm from Ty's grasp. She cast her eyes demurely downward and dropped into a wobbly curtsy. "How do ye do, yer lordship."

"Eh? Oh... it's a pleasure, mistress. A pleasure." Sir Patrick stared at her, and his eyebrows soared all the way up into his wig as he took in the sight of her ragged clothes and bare feet. But he said, "She's pretty, Ty. Right pretty."