The Maidenhead (18 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Before proceeding to London, the Maidenhead put in at Jamestown. Disembarking for the Publick Times were the burgesses and their families from upriver Henrico, as well as the governor’s new chaplain and his wife. Watching them leave the ship, Jack felt the knots ease from his shoulders. His masquerade had not been detected. He wondered how well he would fare as he mingled with the crowds.

Jack knew from his business encounters with the colonists that every July Jamestown’s population of three hundred doubled almost overnight for the convening of the General Assembly and the courts, as well as for the Publick Times.

Since it was the social, cultural, and political center of the Virginia Colony, all sorts of people descended on the capital to seek pleasure as well as to settle their legal concerns and to conduct business. Rich Tidewater aristocrats who had townhouses in Jamestown rubbed elbows with the small freeholders in the Piedmont, the rolling country beyond the fall line of the rivers. Merchants and dockhands from the cape wharves mingled with settlers searching for pitch, tar, and turpentine in the Dismal Swamp. German ironworkers jostled with frontiersmen from deep in Indian territory, and the members of the Council of State mixed with planters who had lawsuits to plead in the General Court and with yeomen who had petitions to lay before the assembly.

Jack's passengers had boasted that the shops would be stocked with the latest goods imported from London as well as with the products of local craftsmen and that the town would hum with activity for the entire week. There would be horse races, fairs, and formal balls. Auctions would be held at various taverns and on Market Square.

Though he was relieved to see his charges melt into the crowds, he knew he would see them all again that evening at the opening ball at the State House. But Jack’s real uneasiness came from being under Mad Dog’s watchful eye. Just in case the perceptive planter might suspect something amiss, Jack felt compelled to put in an obligatory appearance for the sake of the man’s mercantile interest.

His own mercantile interest lay elsewhere.

The caravel’s rich cargo could find lucrative markets in the Far East with exotic names like Java, Macao, and Malaysia. Aye, the spice trade would be profitable—and would keep the
Maidenhead
far from the vengeful tentacles of the English high admiral who was Mad Dog’s uncle.

In less than three days, Jack could vanish with the
Maidenhead
on the vast, trackless sea.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“These crude provincials dance as well as the best London society," the outgoing governor told Wyatt, the new one. The two men stood just inside the State House doorway.

Sitting nearby, Rose overheard the statement and had to smile. The "provincials" included ladies, knights, and younger sons of aristocrats who, prevented from inheriting by the law of entail came as adventurers to this promised land. Even a baron—Jack Morley, her rescuer.

She was one of those adventurers, wasn’t she? Coming to the New World and leaving all that was familiar had taken a courage she hadn’t know she had. At home, she had always been the biddable, submissive daughter. Here, in this wild Eden, she could sense herself gradually changing, growing stronger in spirit. No longer did she cry out inside, Love me. Please someone love me.

She curled between her fingers the downy, flaxen hair of her sleeping infant, whom she cradled in one arm. Strange, she could not remember the face of her son's father.

Instead, another face, Jack’s, occasionally intruded on her thoughts. A gallant man, a gentleman, a handsome man. Not that looks were important to her. Dear Walter was certainly not handsome by any means.

It would have been wonderful had Walter loved her with the passion that Reverend Dartmouth loved Clarissa. It was so obvious in the minister’s adoring eyes.

On the opposite side of the elongated room, sitting on a long bench with several other women, Clarissa tapped her foot impatiently to the lively music played by a backwoods fiddler and by old Clem on his flute. But the minister’s puritan calling forbade him from asking his wife to dance. A shame, Rose thought.

A shame too that Walter was preoccupied in seeking out the German ironworkers to help him finish the remaining sections of his sawmill. Rose would have loved to dance—reels, jigs, hornpipes, contra dances—any and all of them.

Then again, how fortunate she was that she had a good husband, a man willing to work hard for her and the boys.

She sighed and turned her attention to her baby, who was trying to nuzzle her milk- engorged breast. She shifted him against her shoulder and began patting his back. "Go back to sleep, little one," she murmured along with the music. “Go back to—"

"He’s so precious!" Annie cooed beside her. "Oh, let me hold him, Rose.”

Feeling motherly pride, Rose passed her baby to the big-boned young woman, who was now large with child herself. Coming to her feet, Rose smoothed out her crumpled apron. “'E’s a handful. Bart and Isaac are tame compared to Jack.”

"Where are the rascals?” Annie asked, then rubbed the baby's tiny nose with her own.

"Outside with their pa."

Annie raised her head and grinned. "Sampling the beer as me Jamie is no doubt doing."

But Rose wasn't listening. Her gaze locked on Jack Morley, who had just entered the room. He was dressed in a black velvet doublet and thigh-high leather boots fastened to his Venetian breeches by points. A short Spanish cape was draped from one shoulder so that the scarlet lining showed.

Her hands outstretched, she crossed toward him. "Jack! Jack Morley! I 'adn't thought ever to see 'oo again!"

Uneasiness flashed across his face and quickly disappeared. “Rose? I wasn’t certain it was you." He gestured at her slim, corseted waistline. "You look so . . . slender.”

Her laughter was light, airy. Like she felt at that moment. "I imagine I looked a bit bloated back then.” She nodded toward the baby. ‘"Tis 'oor doing, if you remember that—”

She stopped and flushed, realizing what she had said. Later, she knew Annie would be all questions. "I mean, about 'elping bring the babe into the world and all."

He leaned over to view the object in question.

"Why, he has become a handsome lad! When first I saw the wee one, he was as ugly as a monkey.”

Annie and she laughed, but her laughter ebbed when she saw that now the Earl of Monteagle was embarrassed. She knew why. They both were recalling that very intimate moment when he helped deliver her baby.

She lowered her voice. She knew Annie was eavesdropping over the music. '"Is name is Jack, you know."

He straightened, shook his head. “No. I did not." He seemed at a loss for words. Even anxious.

"I would like to introduce 'oo to me 'usband. If
'oo
don't mind, 'e’s outside—”

He glanced around the room nervously. "Would you care to dance, Rose?"

His request took her by surprise. Polly was dancing with her Duncan. John Rolfe and his wife, Joane, also shared the floor, as well as several other couples. "Well, I—I—”

"Go ahead," Annie said with a puckish grin. “I can manage little Jack just fine."

The dance was a round. She barely recognized these new colonial steps, but Jack’s hands, lightly lifting her fingers at the appointed intervals, helped guide her through the set. At one close, lingering pass, he inclined his head and murmured, “You smell sweet. Of milk."

She thought he was belittling her. A hasty peek up into his sun-burnished face told her he meant no harm. Rather, she thought she detected a bemused expression. She felt herself blushing. This man knew her better than her husband. Incredible. “Little Jack has a mighty appetite for me milk," she mumbled.

At that moment, she spotted her husband standing in the doorway with Isaac and Bart. “Oh, my menfolk are here. I can introduce ’oo now. My husband Walter is the tall one there.”

"Uhh—Rose.” He still had her hand.

“Aye?”

"Rose'—” His face flushed. “I am no earl."

Her brows furrowed. “Why did
’oo
tell me
’oo
were?"

He looked elsewhere, at the musicians, the governors, anywhere but at her. “Tis a bad habit I have." He looked at her now. “One of many. Rose, I lie, I cheat, I steal, I—"

Her anger surprised herself, surprised even him. "All me life, I let people mistreat me because I didn’t think I was good enough! But I had faith in ’
oo
. All the time,
’oo
must ’ave been laughing at how gullible I was. Why,
’oo
are no better than me. ’Oo are worse because you mistreat people!"

With a mocking curtsey, she detached herself and threaded her way through the dancers.

"Who was th—that?" Walter asked.

"Who?” she asked innocently. She could tell he was more puzzled than jealous. It never occurred to him that she was more than a mother to his two sons.

"The man you were da—dancing the reel with.”

"Oh. Remember, I told you about 'im. 'E was the man who rescued me from the river."

"And de—delivered your ba—baby.”

She held out her arms to Bart and Isaac. "Boys, would you care to dance?”

“Aye!" Bart said and grabbed her hand.

Isaac looked bashful but followed her back out onto the floor. If only their father would follow, too. If only their father could forget his first wife. If only Jack hadn’t ruined her illusion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So much unspent energy charged through Clarissa that she felt as if her shoes would dance off on their own. With a sigh of exasperation, she snapped shut her fan.

She glanced at Patrick. He stood in a corner, conversing with Modesty's husband. The man looked almost civilized. Almost. True, he was clad in deer hide trousers and moccasins, but he wore a fine lawn shirt with a frill down the front and an open buff coat with large turned-back cuffs. His tawny-brown lion's mane, seasoned with silver, flowed onto his shoulders.

"Your husband is a splendid man,” Mistress Pierce said beside her. Her knitting needles clicked in time to the music. "Reminds me of me own dear departed man. When he had all his teeth, he was a good-looker, upon me word.”

Clarissa's gaze switched back to Patrick, and she snapped open her fan. "Aye, my husband is a splendid man."

But where was his passion, his conviction? Alas, he was as colorless as his clothing.

For the ball, she had abandoned the somber clothing she had taken to wearing at Henrico. She had the rest of her life to wear brown homespuns. Tonight, she had chosen a gown of sapphire satin with silver ribbon bows lacing the bodice. The gown had a high-standing collar and drapings of lace that gave way to a décolletage so low that the brown rings of her nipples were almost visible.

When Patrick and Modesty’s husband finished their discussion, which most likely was about politics, Patrick approached her and bowed low. “Mistress, the fiddler needs a rest, as do my ears. I fear tomorrow may come earlier than I like. Shall we retire?"

Her fan snapped shut again. "Oh? I thought you already had."

Her sarcasm passed over both him and Mistress Pierce. She rose, bid the woman good night, and, putting her hand in the crook of Patrick’s arm, accompanied him from the State House.

Once outside, beneath the newly risen southern moon, her snippish mood subsided. “You know, I don’t think the moon is as big in London.”

Patrick smiled down at her. "Let’s take a stroll across the green before returning to the Mercers.

“Aye,” she agreed readily. The local gunsmith and his wife had kindly offered a small room in their tiny house to accommodate her and Patrick for the duration of the General Assembly session, but the old couple were nosy. She felt they were always listening, always watching. She suspected that they judged her too worldly for her husband.

She spoke aloud her thoughts. “Tell me, Patrick, does there exist somewhere God’s condemnation of the aristocracy?"

He peered down at her. "Whatever are you talking about?”

"That somehow 'tis wrong to have wide interests in the arts and literature, to see beauty in color and harmony in tradition?"

"But the tradition of your Old World," he said, strolling on beneath the white-flowered magnolias, "gave authority to only a few."

"That's just the problem with this wild land.” she gestured vaguely toward the river with its fringe of riotous foliage. "For all its freedoms from authority, this New World had done away with the aristocracy of the past. I feel out of place here. In the Old World, gentry's coach gave way to a nobleman’s, the yeoman tipped his hat to the gentry. Here there are no rules. No linkage between the conservatism of the Old World and the chaos of the New.”

He turned to face her, taking both her hands in his. "There can be. You and I can create it.” The intensity in his eyes mirrored her emotions. "What do you mean?”

“We can build a bridge with our love.”

She hardly dare to breathe. “How?”