Mood Indigo (21 page)

“Jane . . . Jane . . . he groaned, his mouth moving to press against that sensitive spot where her jaw curved just below her ear.

What was happeni
ng to her? Even now she was wantonly arching her neck to offer his lips access to her flesh. His right hand freed itself of her entangling hair to loosen the top button. With surprise she heard the soft mewing she made involuntarily as his lips plundered the hollow at the base of her neck. Her fingers had their way and slipped through his hair to press his head to her chest.

Her will seeped from her. She was melting again, would melt into little pools on the canvas floor covering if he did not stop stroking her flesh with his velvety tongue. “I want you to . .
.”
Oh, the shame!

“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he grated. His fingers loosened several more buttons, and his hand delved beneath her stays t
o free one alabaster breast, revealing the sweet cocoa nipples.

“I want you to . . . to . . .”

“Tell me!” His tongue licked tantalizingly nearer. “Oh, sweet, sweet Jane, tell me.”

“. . . to kiss me . . . there . . . please.”

His mouth complied and engulfed the aching tip, and her head lolled backward. His lips tugged, his tongue flicked, his mouth suckled. Her body was fluid, trying to flow into his, no muscle, no bone.

“What do you want to d
o?” she asked daringly, delighting in the delicious talk, her inhibitions shattered by the mouth that flexed on her nipple and the hands that were every where—stroking her aching belly, cupping the curves of her hips, palming her heavy breast. She must be mad! Oh, but a sweet madness.

“You know what I want, Jane.” Low, guttural, heated.

“Tell me.”

“I
want to take off every piece of your clothing, I want to hold your bare flesh against mine, I want to kiss you— everywhere, I want to bury my face lower in that fragrant patch of hair that—”

King George’s paw, snatching at a curling swath of her hair, jerked her back to reality as nothing else could have. She pulled away, hearing her ragged breathing that echoed his own. Her eyes were glazed, her mouth trembled and her body shuddered. “You would have taken me,” she whispered.

“Thee would have given thyself to me,” he stated unequivocally.

Her hands struggled with her stays and the buttons of her gown. “No!”

“Thee would have given thyself and thee will, Jane.” His fingers anchored in her hair again and drew her face near his own. “Thee will yet surrender to thy husband.”

Rage at his profound self-assurance sputtered in her like a hissing candle. “I will never surrender that part of me to you! I find you—”

“Repulsive?” he asked with a mean leer.

“Coarse and crude.”

“And thee is rude and spoiled. Someone should have delivered thee a thrashing a long time ago. It’s too late now,” he muttered, releasing his hold on her hair only to grab her shoulders a second later. “Hell, it’s not too late!”

“What—!”

She found herself shoved face forward over his knee, her petticoat tussled by the hand that proceeded to whack her exposed rear soundly. “There!” he growled. “That is for thy disobedience as a maidservant. And that”—another smarting whack on her rear—“is for thy disrespect as my wife.”

“Ohhh!” She pushed away from him. “You are—are abominable!”

He rose from his knee, and she sprawled ignominiously at his feet. “Good. Then thee need not accompany me to Williamsburg.”

He turned away, and she caught the lace at his cuff. “Wait!”

He looked down over his shoulder at her. “Aye?”

She swallowed the pride that burned in her throat. “I— I meant no disrespect.”

“Oh? And thee does not find me abominable?”

She shook her head in a negative gesture, her loose hair swaying against her back.

His eyes glinted. “Prove it.”

Her breath sucked in. Once again he was humbling her. “’Tis not fair!” she blurted out.

“Life is not fair, Jane.” He shrugged. “Besides, thee does have a choice.”

Closing her eyes, she r
ose to her feet. She took a tentative step toward him and tilted her face up, her mouth puckered as if prepared to taste a lemon. He caught her shoulders. Disgust hardened his voice. “I am not interested in bartering for goods grudgingly given.”

Her eyes snapped open, and he set her from him. “Thee may come,” he tossed over his shoulder as he strode to the door. “Only thee must behave in a respectful fashion, or I shall pack thee back to Mood Hill.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

D
uring her absence Jane found she had become the talk of Williamsburg.
Imagine, a titled lady, the Lennox lady no less, residing in Virginia! . . . And such a romantic marriage, my dear. . . . Rescued her from being returned to a convent, Ethan Gordon did. . . . No, no, Ethan rescued her from a forced marriage with a gouty old earl, ’tis said.

The last lady of nobility to reside in Williamsburg was Governor Dunmore’s
wife, who made a visit from England, only to be sequestered the last five months of Dunmore’s term as governor when it became obvious she was with child. And now almost a year later, Lady Dunmore was sequestered on the
Fowey
, standing off Norfolk in the James River.

That very first
morning in Williamsburg Jane approached Ethan, who worked on his accounts in the library, with her request. “You mentioned once I needed my own maidservant. I would like to purchase one now.”

He laid aside his pen and leaned back, tilting the scrolled chair on its rear legs. “Thee has someone specific in mind, mistress?”

Still the formality, despite the unbridled passion that his torrid caresses had unleashed upon them. Just talking with him made her weak all over, made her want to feel his mouth hard on hers again, his hands roaming her body’s contours.
Oh, dear God
.

“Yes. The indentured servant I came over with on the Cornwall. She is unhappy with her master.”

She would not add that Polly’s master was Uriah Wainwright. She could handle the obnoxious man despite Ethan’s misgivings.

Ethan flipped a page of the ledger, his eyes traveling down the boldly penned column. “It would seem that the revolution has financially
blessed Mood Hill’s indigo venture, mistress. The proceeds are at your disposal.”

She took Susan with her, though she would have never admitted that by doing so she bolstered her own courage. Susan seemed to have a homey genius for cosseting.

The day was cloudy. Horses waited at hitching bars, tail end to the cold wind that rustled the brittle leaves along the street. Jane buried her hands deeper in her woolen muff. Wainwright’s house was a small, quaint cottage on Frances Street.

“It once served as slave quarters,” Susan said in a hushed tone that bespoke her own uneasiness.

Jane’s stays did not seem quite so constraining after Polly answered the door. But the girl was changed drastically. “Polly!” Jane breathed, astounded.

Tall, almost as tall as Jane herself, and robust, Jane recalled, Polly now looked gaunt, gaunter than after the five-week voyage across the Atlantic. The pink flesh seemed to hang in folds upon her large bones. Gone were the brilliant butter-churned curls, replaced by tarnished yellow strands. Fear held sway in the once spunky gleam of the Dresden-blue eyes. And a faint black shadow smudged one broad cheekbone.

“ ’Tis Meg?” Polly asked, then drew back a step. “Nay. I forget meself. Ye be the Lady Jane, hain’t you?”

“Nay, Polly. I’m Mrs. Gordon now. Jane Gordon. And this is Susan Fairmont.”

Polly glanced cautiously at Susan, then back to Jane. “I can’t ax you in, mistress. The master—’e don’t take to me ’aving visitors and sech.”

“Your cheek, Polly—”

Polly’s hand flew to her face. “I fell—cleaning the bookcase shelves.”

Jane glanced down at Susan, then said, “Polly, would you be interested in com
ing to work for me—if I can persuade Wainwright to sell me your indenture?”

The gaunt young wo
man covered her face with work-worn hands and burst into tears. “Aye, that I could! But ’e’ll never let me go.”

“Can we come in out of the cold, Polly, and talk about it?”

The raw-boned woman’s eyes widened. “The master might come back hany time now.”

“Then I’ll talk to him,” Jane said and stepped past the tearful woman. “As
one civilized human being to another.”

“The man haint civilized!” Polly bit out. She closed the door, and watched Susan and Jane go to stand before the fireplace that lent little warmth against the eerie chill of the room. The house had a clean appearance but was musty, redolent of the Oxford Museum.

“Then we’ll make sure your papers are purchased,” Jane said, turning herself like a fowl on a spit to warm her back.

Polly paced before the worn horsehide sofa and wrung her hands. “You don’t k
now ’im. ’E delights in tormenting people. Making ’em feel as small as ’e is.” She stopped pacing to look with wild eyes at the two women opposite her. “Sometimes I think I would kill ’im with me bare ’ands.” She shuddered. “But killing hain’t in me soul.”

Susan’s face paled a ghostly white. In the warmth of the muff Jane’s hands went sweaty. “We’ll do something, Polly,” she managed to say with a false bravado. “I’m sure that—”

The front door opened, and Wainwright stepped over the threshold. Once again Jane was struck by the little man’s almost saintly face, but the meanness in his small foxlike eyes betrayed a malignance that made him loom like a specter over the room.

At once those slitted eyes shifted to Jane. “So the Tory maid comes to visit me,” he said in a tone that slithered its way up Jane’s spine.

“I come to purchase Polly’s papers.”

He removed the battered felt tricorn and passed it to Polly’s trembling hands. Now that he was close enough, Jane could see the sparse tufts of black hair that grew atop the rim of each ear. Even the man’s spidery hands were hirsute. “I won’t sell the gal.”

“We’d best go, Jane,” Susan whispered at her side.

“I think that you will,” Jane said in what she hoped was a steady voice. “Because the other members of your Executive Committee might not approve of your inhumane treatment of your maidservant, should the word get out.”

Wainwright smiled congenially and drew forth a pipe from his frockcoat’s pocket. He was so short his eyes were on a level with her breasts, and he did not raise his gaze as he said, “It’s not against the law to beat a servant.”

“But it’s twenty-one lashes for fornicating with one.” Susan crimsoned at the taboo word, and Polly gasped at Jane’s boldness in confronting the fox-faced man.

“It’s the lazy wench’s word against mine,” Wainwright said. His furry hand almost caressed the pipe’s bowl.

“No, it’s my word against yours.”

He chuckled. “A Tory’s word?”

She smiled contemptuously. “Williamsburg has not left the mother country’s ways that far behind. Its Tidewater gentry is still an elitist society and still stands in awe of nobility. If you don’t believe me, then wait. By the end of the month and the public session, I shall have the rest of the Executive Committee, f
or all its pretensions at egalitarianism, eating out of my hand, and you, sir, locked in the pillory for fornication!”

Wainwright’s small,
slanted eyes narrowed as he considered her statement. She was showing a bold front, while her insides quivered like quince jelly. Something in his crafty expression alarmed her, but it was too late to back down. “All right, Mrs. Gordon, the servant woman is yours,” he sighed in a nearly pious voice, like King Herod giving up Christ to the mob.

She almost sighed herself, until he added, “But your threat shall cost you your lovely neck.” His small furry hand reached up to stroke her throat, and she jerked back. He merely smiled, baring small, pointed teeth. “I mean to expose you as the Tory spy I know you to be, Mrs. Gordon. And before you are hanged, I personally shall brand into the flesh of your forehead the letter T.”

Her scalp prickled. And you, too, shall be marked. Dear God, let the old Hindu’s prediction be wrong.

Jane’s own prediction was coming true. Every available inn, tavern, and private house in Williamsburg was packed to overflowing, and all who came for the public session that autumn watched and talked about and copied Jane Gordon.

Out of perversity, she chose to wear the simplest fashions. Yet on her tall, slender build, with her erect, graceful carriage, the bombazine and moreen dresses were like silk and brocade gowns. If she wore a simple, inexpensive gorget collar, the women who paraded along the Duke of Gloucester soon sported one.

A milkmaid hat tilted at a provocative angle over her classic brow caused the milliner’s shop the next day to be besieged with customers wanting just such a hat made. The milkmaid hat soon dislodged from fashion the calash bonnet that, with its cane ribs, was large enough to house the high coiffures.