Rebel Enchantress (8 page)

He thrust his arms into his coat.
She’s a witch. She’s one of these Puritan witches I’ve heard about. They can make you think anything they want.

Of course he didn’t believe that.

Priscilla Noyes was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. She was really quite attractive—she had a thin, fragile beauty, much as her mother must have had twenty years earlier; but lines of discontent were already visible on her face, and the hard, predatory look in her eyes made Nathan’s skin feel cold and damp. His aunt made no secret of the fact that she planned on Nathan’s marrying his cousin, but Nathan had no intention of sharing his name, his fortune, or his bed with Priscilla Noyes. To him, that would be practically the same as marrying Serena.

“Going out again?” Priscilla sighed with spurious sympathy. “It must be a great responsibility to be so rich.”

“It’s easy to
be
rich,” Nathan said impatiently. “The hard part is to
keep on
being rich.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult. Mama says Uncle Ezra left you a simply huge amount of money.”

Serena Noyes never missed an opportunity to use the supposed size of her brother’s fortune as a weapon. When she wanted something Nathan wouldn’t buy, she didn’t see how anyone so rich could be so stingy. When she offered him advice, she did so because even such a huge fortune wouldn’t last long the way he was handling it.

“What Uncle Ezra left me,” Nathan responded, too brusquely for courtesy, “is dozens of farms which need careful management so they won’t
cost
money rather than make it, widely scattered investments in businesses suffering due to poor times, hundreds of uncollectible debts scattered the length and breadth of Massachusetts, a huge house that swallows money without making a shilling, and a few hundred pounds in cash. We could easily end up as poor as Delilah.”

Priscilla tittered; it was a silly laugh, one intended to show she knew they were sharing a joke. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know you’re just saying that because of mother.”

Nathan swore aloud.

Priscilla drew closer. She was always trying to get close to him, to get her hands on him. It made Nathan’s skin crawl. She whispered confidentially in his ear.

“She’s still angry that Uncle Ezra left you his money. She says you’re an Englishman, that you really aren’t part of the family.” She laughed. It was the same silly titter. “She says there ought to be a law against Englishmen inheriting our money.”

“Just as there ought to be a law requiring all colonials to pay their English debts?”

Priscilla stared at him, her face blank. Nathan was exasperated with himself for letting his temper get the best of him. “All Uncle Ezra did to become an American was cross an ocean. I’ve done the same, so I guess I’m an American too.”

“That’s not what people are saying,” Priscilla told him. She was leaning against him, their bodies touching from thigh to shoulder. “But they might look upon you differently if you married a
real
American.”

“I’m not ready to think of marriage,” Nathan said, carefully disengaging himself. “I have too much to do.”

Priscilla put a hand on Nathan’s arm and looked directly into his eyes with her vacuous gaze. “You need a wife who won’t make demands on you, one who understands you, one who knows how to be the mistress of your house.”

“I couldn’t ask anyone to marry me. I may go back to England.”

“A dutiful wife would follow her husband anywhere.”

Not even the threat of returning to England seemed capable of driving Priscilla into retreat.

For the last two weeks Nathan hadn’t let himself think about going back. He had come to Massachusetts with the intention of converting his inheritance into cash, but two things stopped him. First, the amount he could realize from the sale of his uncle’s estate wasn’t enough to enable him to reestablish the family business. Second, even if he could sell all his uncle’s property and business interests, he wouldn’t get half of what they were worth.

“Mother says you’re going to lose everything Uncle Ezra left you,” Priscilla continued. “She says you don’t have his brains or his backbone.”

She said that just as blithely as if she were telling him to expect company for dinner. If this was her idea of how to seduce a man, she would never get married.

“Let’s hope your mother is in for a big surprise,” he said, trying to control his temper. “It would be a shame if all of us had to leave Maple Hill.”

“We can’t. Where would we go?”

Nathan could see genuine fear at the back of Priscilla’s eyes, and some of his impatience disappeared. She was selfish, vain, and maybe a little bit stupid. She could never adapt to poverty.

Delilah could go from being rich to poor without a pause, he thought. And without making her husband feel it was his fault. Not only that, she would find a way to help him get ahead again. With a woman like that, no man would be poor.

Damn! He had to get his mind off Delilah.

“Tell Aunt Serena I won’t be back for dinner,” Nathan said as he picked up his gloves and riding crop from a long, narrow table.

“You always work so hard. Don’t you like to have fun?”

“I don’t have time,” Nathan replied impatiently. “I’ve got to see several people tonight. It’ll be easier if I eat at the tavern.”

“You must be tired of talking to men all the time. You need a change of company.” Priscilla smiled sickeningly. She oozed over and leaned suggestively against Nathan.

“The more I move among the neighbors, the more quickly I will begin to understand them,” Nathan said, disengaging himself once again. “And the quicker I understand them, the better I will manage my property. I want to start making money, not just to be trying to collect what’s owed me.”

“Uncle Ezra always said the easiest way to make money is to take what someone else already has.”

That’s not my way,” he said.

But now he understood his uncle better. It was a wonder the old bastard had been allowed to die in bed.

Chapter Five

Nathan had a choice. He could think about the cold and tasteless dinner served him at the tavern, he could brood over the fact that everyone seemed anxious to avoid his company, or he could ignore both disagreeable realities and let his mind dwell on Delilah.

He took the easiest alternative, despite knowing it was a waste of time to think about her. Or any woman. They could not be trusted. He had reason to know. He had made a fool of himself once already.

Nevertheless, thoughts of Delilah invaded his mind. He couldn’t fool himself into thinking this weakness had its roots in a feeling of guilt over leaving Maple Hill before she’d had time to settle in. Delilah could take care of herself. He’d seldom seen a more self-sufficient woman.

No, he had run away because he couldn’t control his response to her. Not admirable behavior, certainly not the kind he expected of himself. And he couldn’t use Delilah’s devastating effect on him as an excuse. Any self-respecting man ought to be in better control of his emotions. It was probably just as well he’d learned of his susceptibility. A few days more and it might have been too late.

If their first meetings had been battles, he would now be suffering from nearly mortal wounds. And as far as he could tell, he had yet to make any impression on her. She still hated everything he stood for, and her feelings for him consisted of equal parts of dislike and distrust.

A prudent man would recognize when the encounter was lost. He would withdraw his forces and wait for a more propitious moment to fight. If the war could not be won, he would gather his forces and remove to a foreign land where he might begin over again.

Nathan knew he wasn’t being prudent. He might never win the friendship of these silent, angry colonials—Americans they called themselves now—but he intended to win their respect. However, he wanted more than respect from Delilah.

He knew he couldn’t treat her as he would another woman. As with the mute, somber men who directed angry gazes at him across mugs of rum or ale, too much stood between them. If he made a direct attack, she would repulse him without a second thought.

If he made a flanking maneuver … Well, one could never tell what might happen.

Nathan was back.

For a week the house had slumbered in a state of quiet waiting while he had traveled about the area to survey his holdings. Serena visited friends or spent the days in bed. Priscilla spent most of her time out riding. That left Delilah, Lester, and Mrs. Stebbens pretty much to themselves.

“It’s almost like we own the place,” Lester had observed after they had spent a quiet evening in the kitchen.

Delilah enjoyed Mrs. Stebbens’s company, but she didn’t feel the same way about Lester. She was certain he disliked her—she didn’t like him much either—but he had already shielded her from Serena’s vindictiveness.

“Don’t think I do it for you, girl,” he’d said when Delilah tried to thank him. “I was just looking out for myself. If that woman makes trouble for you, Mr. Trent will make trouble for me.”

When Delilah asked him what he meant by that, Lester replied quite rudely, “When I wants you to know, I’ll tell you.”

After that Delilah pretty much ignored Lester, and life quickly settled into a dull routine.

Nathan’s return to Maple Hill shattered that.

Serena got dressed and issued so many orders Lester turned from an affable despot into a moody tyrant. Mrs. Stebbens had to cook a dinner large enough to feed ten people, Delilah ran up and down the steps with cans of steaming bath water, Priscilla just puzzled over which gown to wear for dinner.

“Get yourself a pot and shell them peas,” Lester told Delilah. “When you’re done with that, pull a dozen ears of corn and shuck ’em. Mind you, I don’t want them ears full of worms. I don’t want silks left between the kernels neither.”

“I’m not supposed to work in the garden,” Delilah objected.

“You work where you’s needed,” Lester said. “Old Applegate’s too laid up with the rheumatism to go fetching vegetables for dinner.”

“I don’t even know where the garden is.”

“You can find it, girl. Ain’t nobody trying to hide it.”

“Why don’t you give her a hand,” Mrs. Stebbens suggested. “It’s time for me to have dinner in me pot.”

“It ain’t no good being a butler if I has to go digging in the dirt while some green gal who ain’t never been inside a house without dirt floors stays in the cool,” Lester stated flatly. “Besides, Mrs. Noyes said she was to take over picking the vegetables. With all this rain, old Applegate can hardly get out of his bed.”

“Come on,” Mrs. Stebbens said. “I’ll give you a hand.”

“You supposed to be cooking supper, not gallivanting about no garden.”

“There won’t be any cooking without vegetables,” Mrs. Stebbens grumbled as she searched in the cupboard for the particular bowl she wanted. “Wouldn’t be any needed either if Mr. Trent would take a cold supper like civilized folks. When I agreed to cook for Mr. Buel, I never knew I’d be working for some foreigner who’d want hot food all hours of the day. You’d think that much to eat in the middle of me night would give me man nightmares.”

“Sleeps like a baby from all I can tell,” Lester said.

“I don’t much care for that man,” Mrs. Stebbens said to Delilah as they made their way to a kitchen garden.

“These peas are cold,” Serena said the moment Delilah set the bowl on the table. “I told Lester you were to bring the food to the table the minute it was done.”

Delilah gaped at Serena. She could see the steam rising from the bowl.

Nathan raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. “You should try eating your dinner in England,” he said. “Half the time the grease is hard in the dish by the time it reaches me table.”

“I wouldn’t tolerate it,” Serena stated emphatically.

“You’d get used to it,” Nathan replied. “Or not eat.”

He had done no more than glance at Delilah during the meal, but she thought she detected a note of sympathy in his voice. Serena must have heard it too because she unwisely decided to pursue the topic.

“I never admired the English,” she stated, completely ignoring the fact that she had been born in England herself, “but I should hope they have better servants. This girl is useless.”

“Why?”

“Just look at her.”

Nathan sat forward in his chair and scrutinized Delilah intently. A flush rose in her cheeks.

“Speaking purely from a man’s point of view, I find her appearance quite pleasing.”

Delilah’s cheeks flamed pink.

“Go wait for the next course,” Serena snapped at her. “And make sure it arrives hot.”

The peas are hot, Mother,” Priscilla said after Delilah had left the room. “They burned my tongue.”

“What do you mean her appearance is pleasing?” Serena demanded of her nephew, ignoring her daughter. “She has no notion how to carry herself …”

Nathan’s mind filled with the picture of Delilah’s upright carriage and the way it thrust her young breasts well forward.

“… her hair is too thick and long …”

He could imagine the clean scent of her luxuriant dark tresses as he buried his face in her neck.

“… her skin is actually brown …”

He longed to touch her shoulders to see if they felt as soft and smooth as they looked.

“ … and that dress is an embarrassment.”

Unburdened by thick layers of cloth and whalebone stays, the dress clung to Delilah’s limbs, delineating every part of her body as she moved. Nathan’s own body tightened in response to visualizing that.

“I would be embarrassed for her to serve any of my friends.”

Nathan forced himself to focus on his aunt. “Then let Lester do all the serving or provide her with new clothes. Priscilla can teach her deportment. You can even offer to cut and style her hair,” Nathan said, imps of mischief dancing in his eyes. “That way you can be sure it’s just the way you like it.”

“It’s unthinkable I should personally tend a servant,” Serena stated, aghast. “Not even your Uncle Ezra would have suggested that.”