The Patriot Bride (5 page)

Sleep didn’t come as readily to Hannah, despite her exhaustion at having been spanked not once, but twice within such a short time. Her anger kept her awake, burning as brightly within her as her bottom did beneath her. She couldn’t believe the situation she found herself in. She had been so sure that a high and mighty Duke wouldn’t take any notice that she’d run away rather than marry him. What consequence was that to him? She had been quite sure that he could and would find someone else much more suitable to marry, and that she’d be able to get on with whatever life she made on her own in the colonies with no one being the wiser.

Apparently she had wholly misjudged her intended.

She wasn’t at all sure what she should do now, and she was equally unsure exactly what she could do. Her . . . her husband was a powerful man, and she doubted there was anywhere in the Empire that she could run to that he couldn’t follow her. He had the money and the inclination, it seemed, damn him. And although she was living simply right now, she had hopes of perhaps starting her own business as a seamstress some time in the future and thus bettering herself and her surroundings. She could hightail it for the wilds past the Mississippi and would most likely be able to lose herself there. But she didn’t want to do that. She liked having four walls around her and a fire in the hearth. Perhaps she was too soft and should have given that idea more thought, but she knew she wouldn’t last very long in the West.

So here she was, lying next to a man she barely knew who was supposedly her husband. She kept thinking of him as such to hold him at bay within her mind, even if she could never do that with any success physically. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been completely nude for any reason, yet he had taken a position right next to her as if they’d been sleeping like this for years.

As he slept, he repositioned himself a little, and she found her hand coming into contact with something long and thick that she couldn’t place. She wasn’t trying to touch it, it was reaching out for her, growing thicker and harder as his hips began to pump slightly, moving that part of him back and forth against her palm.

Thoroughly mortified despite the fact that she didn’t really know what was going on, Hannah made several valiant attempts to sit up, deliberately waking him.

They were so close that she heard him swallow before his sleepy voice rumbled into her ear, “Where do you think you’re going?”

She didn’t have a ready answer for that question, but one fell off her lips nonetheless. “I have to use the out house.” It wasn’t the best solution to the matter, she was sure, as she colored violently once the words were out of her mouth, but it would get her away from him for a while.

Reluctantly, he removed his arm and let her get up. Hannah began to rummage around in the small chest of drawers for a nightgown, but found him carefully gathering her arms and closing the drawer. She blustered. “I have to have something to wear to go outside.”

“Who’s going to see you?” he asked, having come much more awake than she had wanted him to. Wolf reached down and took the quilt off the bed. “Wear this, if you have to.”

Hannah shrugged the quilt over her shoulders, and it more than covered her. “I do have to, thank you very much.” She stalked to the door but paused with her hand on the knob as she realized that he was following her as he rubbed his eyes. “I really can make it to the outhouse by myself,” she complained, letting her tone leave no doubt that she thought him following her out there was patently ridiculous.

“I’m quite sure you can, Madame, but you’ve slipped away from me once and I don’t intend to have to trail you to Canada. Let’s get going so that we can get back to sleep.”

The man was going to send her round the bend, she knew it! Hannah seethed the whole way out, the entire time on the pot, and then the cold trip back. The quilt hid what she wanted it to, but it wasn’t the best source of warmth, although she thought the severe humiliation of having him standing outside while she made use of the facilities would have been enough to keep her warm for years.

When they got back into the cabin, he took the quilt from around her and put it back on the bed, standing next to it and staring at her, as if issuing a silent command.

Hannah pursed her lips. She did not want to get back into that bed with him. She also did not want to be treated to another session over his lap. She thought if he so much as looked at her bottom threateningly that she was going to obey him instantaneously, and that thought made her sadder than anything else that had happened this evening.

She didn’t want to be broken, by him or anything else. She’d always been a fighter – first for her sisters’ against her sometimes violently drunken father, and then for herself as she’d made her way in a new land. But within the space of a few hours, he’d made her want to comply with him, just to avoid the pain of another spanking.

She was going to have to get away from him. Somehow. She didn’t know how she was going to do it yet, but she would keep her eyes and her ears open for any reasonable opportunity.

In the mean time, she would stay as strong as she could and resist him as completely as she could without risking her own health, and without feeling guilty when she couldn’t. After all, he was more than twice her size. There was only so much she could do.

She wasn’t running, Wolf’s still somewhat sleepy mind noted, but she also wasn’t coming over to him as she knew she should. He sighed heavily, lumbering towards her with much less grace than he usually owned, cold and tired and just wanting to crawl back into the warm bed.

Hannah reacted purely by instinct and shied away from him. Not running, not screaming, not even holding up her small hand against him. She hunkered down, away from him, folding in on herself, and presenting a smaller target, keeping her eyes firmly on the glowing embers of the fire.

Wolf stopped in his tracks, his heart clenching tightly within his chest. He didn’t like the fact that she was, in effect, cowering from him. Perhaps he had pushed her a little too far. But he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He was already half asleep again, just from the warmth of the cabin. He continued towards her, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to their bed, tucking her in for the second time between the wall and his own bulk, which was at least as unyielding as the wall.

His left arm fell around her waist naturally as he settled his head near her ear and ordered gruffly, “Sleep.”

And, surprisingly, she did.

***

Having gotten to sleep so late, Hannah understandably overslept the next morning. When she awoke and stretched, she regretted the movement immediately, since her bottom was apparently still aflame from last night. She was both gratified and surprised to find that she was alone, her purported husband apparently had better things to do, and she was immensely grateful for that fact.

She rose quickly and went about a seriously abbreviated version of her usual morning routine, getting washed and dressed and buttering a slice of bread to eat on the way to Mrs. Wentworth’s. She yanked the cabin door open, prepared to trot as quickly as she could to work, only to find a painfully young Redcoat standing directly in her way, looking as surprised as she felt.

Belatedly, he brandished his rifle at an angle across his body, saying in what he must have hoped was an authoritative tone but what just ended up cracking boyishly at the end, “Halt!”

Nonetheless, he had a gun in his hands, and Hannah respected that, if nothing else. For a long moment, they had a stand off, then Hannah smiled broadly, and said in her softest, most feminine tone, “I was just going to work.” She wasn’t at all above using what few feminine wiles she owned to get her way, although she knew she wasn’t that pretty so she didn’t rely on them very often.

“His lordship, the Colonel, said that I was to watch and make sure that you don’t escape.”

The boy’s Cockney accent sounded hard on her ears after so long with the softer, colonial lilt. Still smiling, she moved slowly towards him, saying, “Well, I have no intention of escaping whatsoever. I just want to work. I work at Mistress Wentworth’s, as a seamstress.” She tied a frayed bonnet over the hair she’d hastily piled on top of her head, still smiling sweetly up at him. “You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you, Corporal - ” she left his name hanging.

“W- wilkins, Ma’am,” he fumbled nervously, bowing slightly and tipping his hat.

Hannah looped her arm boldly with his, gently guiding him along on her route to work, chatting him up flirtatiously so that he barely noticed the trip. When they’d arrived, she turned to him and said, “I’m here until six thirty this evening, Corporal . Will you be here when I get out to escort me home?” Hannah batted her eyelashes at him once or twice, just for effect.

Corporal Wilkins was lost. He wouldn’t be anywhere else if his life depended on it. “Y-yes, Ma’am. I’ll be right here.”

“Thank you so much, Sir,” Hannah smiled softly, closing the door on Corporal Wilkin’s blotchy, hopeful face.

The front part of Mistress Wentworth’s was the dressmaker’s shop, and the first thing that always struck Hannah when she first came to work was that it always smelled like vanilla, as if Mrs. Wentworth, who was a horrible cook, always had a tray of cookies in the oven. Her grandmother was the first woman to set up shop in Boston, thus the business was extremely well known and well patronized. Mrs. Wentworth was well beyond sewing herself, both in age and inclination. She handled the customers, and she had three young women working for her who actually sewed the dresses her customers chose.

She was an exceptional employer, who treated her girls like family, even though she tended to lose them rather frequently to marriage. Not only did she pay them a more than fair wage, but she also provided the noon meal for them. Hannah knew of her generosity first hand – the older woman had taken her under her wing when she’d first arrived, and had given her more than just lunch on more than one occasion. The job had worked perfectly for Hannah, especially since the last girl had left the Wentworth cabin empty.

The other girls greeted Hannah warmly. They were already well tucked into their work. Mrs. Wentworth was with a customer, and Hannah new better than to interrupt her just to apologize for being late. She would stay later this evening to cover for her tardiness. Mrs. Wentworth always set out the leftover baked goods from the previous day that had been in the shop for the customers, and that one slice of bread wasn’t nearly enough to break Hannah’s fast, so she made herself a cup of tea and took one of the sweet buns to eat as she sewed.

But as she took her usual seat, Hannah whimpered when her sore bottom came in contact with the hard chair. Sarah leaned over and patted her arm. “Are you all right, Hannah?”

Pretending that she hadn’t just squealed because her bottom had been beaten last night – twice - Hannah gathered the skirt of the dress she had all but finished so that she could get the last stitches into the hem. “I’m fine. Why?”

“Because you look like you’ve been crying your eyes out. And who was the redcoat you were parading across the common with?” Martha, who had been there longer than either of them and sat by the window, was nothing if not shy and retiring.

Chapter Four

Hannah’s hands immediately went to her face, then she shot up and commandeered the prized full length looking glass that Mrs. Wentworth kept in the back. When she first saw herself, she thought she was looking at a stranger – a stranger who had had a very bad night. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut, and her face was whiter than if she had used the flour most women used on their faces and in their hair.

She looked more bedraggled than her ratty clothes usually caused.

Hannah sighed. There was no hope for it. She straightened away from the mirror, and started back towards her chair, which she claimed a lot more carefully than she had before. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

Martha was using her teeth to sever a thread, and thus was almost unintelligible to the untrained ear. “That doesn’t answer the question of who the Tory is.”

“He’s – he’s no one.”

Although Mistress Wentworth was a staunch Tory, the young women in her employ were much more likely to side with the Whigs and their truly revolutionary talk. The girls were all firmly behind anything that would get the crown to leave the colonies alone. They were being taxed practically out of existence, and a body could barely make ends meet. But they understood their employer’s stance. The people in this town who had the most money to buy new dresses each season were loyalists, and she had a business to run.

Things were escalating between the two factions, and who knew how they were going to end?

“You’re not going over to the other side, are you, dear?” Sarah, who was much less outspoken and tender hearted than Martha, asked.

Hannah had to chuckle, considering her current situation. “No, no, I’m not,” but she felt compulsed to add, “at least, I’m not trying to.”

All was right for the first hour or so. The work was mind numbing, but Hannah actually liked it that way – the monotony of setting stitch after stitch set her mind free to go where it wanted. And, when she got the chance, Mrs. Wentworth even let her sketch a few designs she’d come up with. She had a dress that several women had bought, and, since she got a portion of the price of the dress as its designer, it had added a tidy sum to her usual wage packet at the end of the month.

She was just about to start working on a dress for one of her favorite customers when there was some sort of commotion in the other room. Martha peeped through the curtain that kept the customers from seeing the help, and her exclamation of surprise mirrored those that had come from the front room.

“What is it? What is it?” Sarah asked, practically squealing in excitement.

“It’s some Redcoat toff. He’s got some manners, he does. He’s bowing to our lady, just so genteel, even though he’s a big one, he is.”

Hannah’s heart sank at her friend’s description, afraid she knew exactly who had entered the establishment. She began to gather her things around her, intent on escape through the back door – although from there she really had no idea where she’d go – when Mrs. Wentworth, flush with having the Colonel of the British Army in her little shop, threw back the curtain and exposed Hannah in the act of trying to pick her way through the piles of material and well away from the clutches of her new found husband.