The Raider (3 page)

Alex gave a groan of disgust.

“That's the least of it. The English have sent every soldier at their disposal to look for you. There are already posters out for your arrest. You are to be shot on sight. They've been here twice this morning and demanded to search my ship.”

“I'll go then,” Alex said, moving to sit up, but he was very weak from the loss of blood and his shoulder hurt abominably.

“I've kept them away by threatening them with war with my country. Alex, if you stepped onto that gangplank, you'd be shot within minutes. They are looking for someone tall and slim, with black hair.” Nick's eyes burned into Alex's. “And they know you're wounded.”

“I see,” Alex said, still sitting on the edge of the bed, and he did see. He knew that he was facing the end of his life, but he could not stay here and risk getting his friend involved. He tried to stand, leaning heavily on the chair in front of him.

“I have a plan,” Nick said. “I have no wish to be pursued by the English navy, so I'd like to allow them to search.”

“Yes, of course. At least that way I won't have to walk down the gangplank. I was dreading that.” Alex tried to smile.

Nicholas ignored his attempt at levity. “I have sent for some clothes of my cousin. He is a fat man and a gaudy dresser.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at that. To his taste, Nick's clothes put even peacocks to shame, so what must this cousin's be like?

Nick continued. “I think that if we pad you to fill the clothes, fortify you with a little whiskey, put a powdered wig on over that mass of black hair, you'll pass the soldiers' inspection.”

“Why don't I put on the disguise and just walk off the ship?”

“And then do what? You will need help and whoever gives it to you will be putting his life in danger. And how many of your poor Americans could resist the five-hundred-pounds reward that is being offered for your head? No, you will stay here on my ship with me and we will sail for this town of yours. Will there be someone there to take care of you?”

Alex leaned back against the wall, feeling even weaker than when he woke. He thought of the town of Warbrooke, the town his grandfather had settled and most of which his father now owned. There were people there who were his friends, people he'd known all his life—and he was a product of those people. If he was brave, then they were twice as brave. No English soldiers were going to frighten the town of Warbrooke.

“Yes, there are people there who will help me,” Alex said at last.

“Then let's get you dressed.” Nick threw open the cabin door and called for a servant to bring the clothes he needed.

*   *   *

“Alex,” Nick said gently. “We're here.” He looked at his friend with sympathy. For the last week Alex had been running a high fever and now he looked as if he'd been on a week long drunk: his eyes were sunken, his skin dry and red, his muscles weak and rubbery.

“Alex, we're going to have to dress you in my cousin's clothes again. The soldiers are still searching for the Raider and I'm afraid they've come this far north. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Alex mumbled. “They'll take care of me in Warbrooke. You'll see.”

“I hope you're right,” Nick said. “I'm afraid that they may believe what they see.” He was referring to the ridiculous sight Alex made in his fat padding and brocade coat and powdered wig. He certainly didn't look like the handsome young man come home to save a town from a dastardly brother-in-law.

“You'll see,” Alex slurred, since Nick had been giving him brandy to help him face the coming exertion. “They know me. They'll laugh when they see me like this. They'll know that something has happened. They'll take care of me until this damned shoulder heals. I just pray they don't give me away in front of the soldiers. You'll see, they'll know that no Montgomery ever dressed like a peacock. They'll know there's a reason for this.”

“Yes, Alexander,” Nicholas said soothingly. “I hope you are right.”

“I am. You'll see. I know these people.”

I
DON'T
know why
I
have to be there to meet him,” Jessica Taggert said for the thousandth time to her sister, Eleanor. “Alexander was never anything to me—nothing good, that is.”

Eleanor tightened her sister's corset strings. Eleanor, by herself, was considered a pretty woman, but when Jessica was present, she was overshadowed—as was every other woman in town. “You have to go because the Montgomery family has been very good to us. Get down from there, Sally!” she said to her four-year-old sister.

The Taggert house was little more than a shack, small and only as clean as two women with full-time employment and the responsibility of taking care of seven young brothers and sisters could make it. The house was on the edge of town, set back in a tiny cove, with no close neighbors; not because the family chose to be so isolated, but because eighteen years ago when the fifth loud, dirty Taggert had entered the world and there didn't seem to be an end to their numbers in sight, people stopped building near them.

“Nathaniel!” Jessica shouted to her nine-year-old brother who was dangling three, fat, angry spiders on a string in front of his little sister's face. “If I have to come over there you'll be sorry.”

“At least you wouldn't have to see Alexander,” Nathaniel taunted before wisely scurrying from the house just after he tossed the spiders onto his sister.

“Hold still, Jess,” Eleanor said. “How do you expect me to lace you into this dress if you're wiggling about?”

“I don't particularly want you to lace me into it. I really don't see why I have to go. We don't need charity from the likes of Alexander Montgomery.”

Eleanor gave a heartfelt sigh. “You haven't seen him since you were both children. Maybe he's changed.”

“Hah!” Jess said, moving away from her sister and lifting the infant, Samuel, off the floor where he was trying to eat some unidentifiable substance. She saw he had one of Nathaniel's spiders in his fat, dirty little hand. “No one as bad as Alexander changes. He was a pompous know-it-all ten years ago and I'm sure he hasn't changed. If Marianna was going to get one of her brothers to come and help her get away from that man she was fool enough to marry, why couldn't she have asked one of the older boys? One of the
good
Montgomerys?”

“I think she wrote each of them and Alex received his letter first. Sit still while I get some of the tangles out of your hair.” Eleanor took her sister's hair in her hands and couldn't help feeling a little jealous. Other women spent many hours trying to do what they could with their hair to make it look good, while Jessica exposed hers to sun, salt air, sea water and her own sweat—and it was more beautiful than anyone else's. It was a thick, soft blonde that shone in the sunlight.

“Oh, Jess, if you just tried, you could get any man—”

Her sister cut her off. “Please don't start on me again. Why don't
you
get a husband? A rich one who'll support us and all the kids?”

“From this town?” Eleanor sniffed. “From a town that's afraid of one man? From a town that lets a man like Pitman run it?”

Jessica stood and pulled her hair back from her face. There were few women pretty enough to be able to scrape their hair back that tightly and still be beautiful, but Jessica succeeded. “I don't want one of those cowards any more than you do.” She put baby Samuel down on the floor again. “But at least I'm not fool enough to think that one man, especially somebody like Alexander, is going to save us. I think all of you remember the Montgomerys as a group, not as individuals. I couldn't agree more that there was never a more magnificent group of men than Sayer and his two oldest sons and I cried as hard as any of you when the boys went off to sea—but I didn't cry when Alexander left.”

“Jessica, I don't think you're being fair. What in the world did Alex do to you that's made you dislike him so much? And you can't count the schoolboy pranks he pulled. If they counted, Nathaniel would have been hanged four years ago.”

“It's his attitude. He always thought he was so much better than anyone else. His brothers and father would work with everyone else, but Alexander thought of himself as too good. His family was the richest one in town, but he was the only one who was aware of it.”

“Are you talking about the charity? The time you threw the lobsters he'd brought us in his face? I never understood that since the whole town was always giving us things.”

“Well, they don't now!” Jessica spat in anger. “Yes, I mean the charity, living from hand to mouth every day, never having anything, always wanting. And Pa coming home every nine months, just in time to get Mother—” She paused to calm down. “Alexander was the worst. The way he smirked every time he brought a bag of cornmeal. The superior way he looked at all of us each time he saw us. He used to wipe his breeches every time a Taggert baby got near him.”

Eleanor smiled. “Jess, it was necessary to wipe your breeches—or your skirt or your hair—every time a Taggert baby got near you. I don't think you're being fair. Alexander was no better or worse than the other men in his family. It's just that you two are only two years apart in age and therefore you felt more kinship with him.”

“I'd rather be kin to a shark than to him.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “He did help Patrick get the post as cabin boy on the
Fair Maiden.”

“He would have done anything to get rid of one more Taggert. Are you ready to go?”

“I have been for some time. I'll make a deal with you. If Alexander turns out to be the pompous spendthrift you seem to think he is, I'll bake you three apple pies next week.”

“I'll win this without trying. With his arrogance, he'll probably be expecting us to kiss his hand. I hear he was in Italy. Probably met the Pope and learned some things from him. Think he'll wear scented lace underwear?”

Eleanor ignored her sister. “If I win, you have to wear a dress all week and be nice to Mr. Clymer.”

“That old fish-breath? Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I'm going to win. This town's going to see that, when Alexander is alone and not surrounded by his brothers and father, he's a lazy, vain, condescending, pompous—” She stopped because Eleanor was pushing her out the door.

“And, Nathaniel, if you don't watch after those kids, you'll hear from me,” Eleanor called over her shoulder.

By the time they got to the dock, Eleanor was having to drag Jessica. Jess kept enumerating all the things that needed doing: the fishing nets that needed repairing, the sails that had to be mended.

“Well, Jessica,” said Abigail Wentworth as the Taggert sisters stepped onto the dock, “I see that you couldn't wait to see Alexander again.”

Jessica was torn between wanting to smack the woman and turning to leave the dock. Abigail was the second prettiest girl in town, and she hated being second to Jessica's first. Therefore, she loved to remind Jessica that she was a ripe and ready sixteen while Jess was drying on the vine at the grand old age of twenty-two.

Jessica gave Abby her sweetest smile and prepared to tell her what she thought of her when Eleanor grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

“I don't want you two to get into a fight today. I want this to be a good day for the Montgomerys without Sayer having to get you out of the stocks. Good morning, Mistress Goody,” she said sweetly. “There it is, that's the ship Alex is on.”

Jessica's jaw dropped at the sight of the ship. “But that beam is too narrow. I'm sure that's against statutes. Has Pitman seen that yet? He'll probably confiscate the ship and then where will your precious Alexander be?”

“He's not mine. If he were anybody's, Abigail wouldn't be here waiting for him.”

“How true,” Jess sighed. “Wouldn't she just love to get her hands on the Montgomerys' eight thousand feet of dock space? What are those people looking at?”

Eleanor turned to see a group of townspeople standing stock still and gaping. The crowd began to part, their mouths open, but no sound came forth.

As Jessica and Eleanor waited, a man came toward them. He was wearing a jacket of canary yellow, with a wide border of embroidered flowers and leaves about the edge and hem. The jacket covered an enormous belly, and sunlight flashed off the many colors of the silk embroidery. The breeches covering his fat legs were emerald green, and he wore a full wig that hung down in curls past his shoulders. He walked across the dock, stumbling now and then from what was obviously too much drink.

The townspeople seemed to think he was another official from England, but Jessica recognized him right away. No amount of weight or wig could completely cover that imperious Montgomery expression. In spite of his extra hundred pounds, she could still see those cheekbones that Alexander had inherited from his grandfather.

Jessica walked forward, swishing her skirts and letting everyone see her. She'd always known that Alexander Montgomery was rotten to the core and here was proof. The minute he was out from under his father's rule, this is what happened to him.

“Good morning, Alexander,” she said loudly and with laughter in her voice. “Welcome home. You haven't changed a bit.”

He stood there and looked at her, blinking uncomprehendingly. His eyes were red from drink, and once he swayed so badly that a dark, burly man had to catch him.

Jessica stepped back, looked Alex up and down, then put her hands on her hips and started to laugh. Moments later the townspeople began to join her.

They couldn't stop even when Marianna Montgomery came running onto the dock. She halted when she saw Alex.

“Hello, Mary, my sweet,” Alex said with an off-center smile and again the man in the dirty shirt had to steady him.

The crowd stopped laughing while Marianna looked at her brother in disbelief.

As Alex kept smiling, Marianna's mouth kept falling farther open. At last, she put her apron over her face and began crying. She ran from the docks, her heels showing beneath her skirts, her sobs carrying on the wind.

That sobered the crowd. They gave Alex and his peacock coat a few contemptuous looks and began to go back to their work. The wind echoed with the words “Poor Sayer” and “But his brothers are such men!”

Within a few minutes, there were only four of them on the dock: Jessica, enjoying it all enormously because she'd always told everyone that Alex was no good, a frowning Eleanor, a bewildered Alexander, and the big man in a dirty shirt.

Jessica just stood there with a triumphant grin on her face while Alex's eyes began to clear and he turned to look at her. “This is all
your
fault,” Alex whispered.

Jess's smile grew broader. “Oh, no, Alexander, this is your fault for at last showing your true self. You had them all fooled for years, but not me. You must tell me who your tailor is.” She turned to her sister. “Wouldn't you love to have a petticoat that color?”

Eleanor squinted her eyes at her younger sister. “You've said enough, Jessica.”

Jess widened her eyes innocently. “I have no idea what you mean. I was merely admiring his clothing—and his wig. No one in Warbrooke has worn a wig for years.” She smiled her sweetest smile at Alexander. “But here I am keeping you and you must be hungry.” She looked pointedly at his enormous belly. “Something like that must take constant work.”

Alexander made a lunge for her throat, but Nick caught him.

“My goodness,” Jessica mocked. “The piglet has claws.”

“I'll get you for this, Jessica Taggert,” Alexander said beneath his breath.

“With what? Cream cakes?”

Eleanor stepped in before Alex could say another word. “All right, Alexander, let's get you home. You there,” she said to Nicholas, “get his baggage and bring it. You can take care of your master in his home. And you, Jessica, we need something to eat for dinner. Go fetch it.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Jess said. “I'm just grateful I'm not part of the Montgomery family. I can feed half a dozen kids, but that…” She looked at Alex's big belly.

“Go!” Eleanor ordered and Jessica left the dock, whistling happily and talking about the pies Eleanor owed her. Eleanor took Alex's arm, not saying a word about the fact that he was obviously too drunk to walk by himself. The man she thought was Alex's servant stayed behind on the dock.

“What's his name?” Eleanor asked Alex.

“Nicholas,” Alex said through clenched teeth, his anger making his face red and his eyes black.

Eleanor stopped, still holding Alex's arm. “Nicholas, you are to do what I say. Get your master's belongings and come with me. And I mean for you to do it now.”

Nick stood where he was for a moment, then gave Eleanor a lusty look up and down. He smiled just slightly and turned away to get the small bag of clothing that he'd borrowed from his cousin for Alex's use. “Yes ma'am,” he said softly when he joined them, and walked behind them, watching the sway of Eleanor's skirts.