Petals on the River

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  Shemaine was amazed that a master would even concern himself about his slave’s feelings. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mr. Thornton. You’re not responsible for other people’s actions. You’re no better able to dictate Morrisa or Mr. Harper’s behavior than you can command the sun to go hither or yon and expect it to obey.”

  “I was, at the very least, tempting fate by bringing you in here. For some years now, the sailors have been inclined to gather here for odd and sundry reasons.”

  After being around Morrisa, Shemaine could well imagine what those reasons were. “You gave me a chance to decline, but I must tell you truly, sir, that I have seen and heard far worse on the London Pride than I’ve noticed going on here tonight. If I was at all naive about life before my arrest, then I can honestly say, Mr. Thornton, I’ve learned much through my ordeal, some of which I’d rather forget. I assure you I’m not made of spun sugar. I’ll not shatter into a thousand pieces the very moment I’m faced with adversities. I’d not be sitting here now if I were so fragile. I’d have probably succumbed to Mrs. Fitch’s abuse or Morrisa’s spite long before the ship ever reached safe harbor.”

  “ ‘Tis good to know that, Shemaine,” Gage murmured, “because this land is tough and sometimes rather austere. It’s difficult for the weak to survive here. The hardships can overwhelm, even break, a strong-minded person if he’s not prepared to meet the challenges of living in the wilderness. It certainly helps to be resilient.”

  “Growing up in the safety of my parents’ home, I never once imagined there would come a day when I would have to face calamity,” Shemaine mused aloud. “Before my arrest, I seemed destined to become a marchioness. Little did I suppose that I would soon be subjected to the hostility and brutality of others who had the power and authority to dictate my circumstances, or that I’d be cast adrift in a way of life with which I was unfamiliar. I’ve learned some harsh lessons since the thieftaker snatched me, Mr. Thornton, but I’ve come to realize that I’m not without substance or stamina. God willing, I’ll see these seven years through to good advantage.”

  Gage permitted her a glimpse of a smile. “I think I’m already seeing a change in you since yesterday.”

  Shemaine blushed, realizing she might have sounded a bit boastful of her own strengths and perseverance. “I understand, Mr. Thornton, that any benefit I might derive from my servitude to you will stem mainly from your forbearance with my shortcomings. I know there is much that I have yet to learn, but if you will be patient with me, I’ll try to overcome my faults.”

  “You’re much more of a blessing to Andrew and me than you realize, Shemaine,” Gage said with a generous measure of honesty. “You’re as refreshing as a spring shower after a harsh winter. Right now, I’m too busy appreciating your worth to notice whether or not you have any flaws.”

  Shemaine smiled, feeling pleasantly reassured. “If we’re not too late arriving home, perhaps you and Andrew would like to have some custard pie before you retire. I made it for you both this morning.”

  A nearby lamp cast a golden aura over Gage’s face, lending a luster of softly polished brass to his noble features. For Shemaine, it was like looking at a statue of a fabled god who had come to life. The same glow lightened his brown eyes to a rich, translucent amber, making her marvel at how beautiful they were. But it was the gentle radiance of his smile that infused her heart with a strange, stirring warmth.

  CHAPTER 8

  Night had descended by the time they left the tavern, but a mild breeze had sprung up from the south. Its fragrant warmth was intoxicating to Shemaine, who, not too many days ago, had almost despaired of ever savoring fresh air again. She accepted Gage’s assistance in mounting to the seat of the wagon, and receiving his drowsy son from him, cuddled the boy on her lap as his father stepped away to free the horse’s tether. But a muttered oath from Gage made her glance up in sudden worry.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “The mare has thrown a shoe.” Gage ground his teeth, knowing only too well what that would entail. He sighed pensively. “There’s no escape from it, I fear. We’ll have to pay a visit to the Corbins before we can leave for home.”

  Shemaine shuddered at the thought of having to face Roxanne again, but she said nothing, for Gage was apparently suffering similar qualms. “Should we get down so you can unhitch the wagon?”

  “You can stay where you are for the moment. I’ll lead the mare to the smithy’s and unhitch the wagon once I get there.”

  Upon reaching the blacksmith’s shop, at the far end of town, Gage helped Shemaine down and then handed Andrew back to her. He unharnessed the mare and led the animal to a covered lean-to where a glowing heat could still be seen radiating upward from a brick-hewn forge.

  A large man with a ponderous belly hobbled out the front door of the log cabin with the aid of a makeshift crutch. Holding his broken, wood-splinted leg carefully aloft, he made his way to the edge of the porch and braced himself there on his good foot as he peered intently into the night-born shadows that surrounded the visitors. His gruff voice seemed to boom through the darkness. “Who’s out there?”

  “It’s Gage Thornton, Mr. Corbin. My horse threw a shoe.”

  Hugh Corbin responded with a loud, angry snort. “ ‘Tis a poor late hour of the night for ye ta be makin’ your way here with a horse that’s lost a shoe. Any levelheaded man would be at home where he belongs, but ye’re not such a man, are ye?”

  “Are you able to help me or not?” Gage questioned gruffly, ignoring the insult.

  “I guess I’ve no choice in the matter if I want ye out of here,” Hugh retorted irascibly. “Let me fetch a lantern from the house.”

  Having recognized Gage’s voice in the brief exchange, Roxanne stepped out the front door with a lantern that she had hurriedly lit. Her hair hung loose down her back, and she had hastened to don a wrapper over her nightgown.

  “Get some clothes on!” Hugh barked at his daughter as he sought to take the lamp from her.

  “I’m wearing clothes!” Roxanne snapped back, snatching the light beyond his reach. She quickly descended the steps and almost ran toward the blacksmith shop, making no effort to accommodate her father’s hitching gait. In the lantern glow, her eyes seemed animated and full of joy until the aura of light spread beyond Gage to the slender form standing a short distance from him. Then the gray orbs took on a steely hardness. She had hoped that Shemaine would still be incapacitated after her ordeal and that Gage had reconsidered his options after her warning that morning and was there wanting to apologize. But Roxanne now realized such a notion was farfetched. The cabinetmaker was as stubborn as her father.

  Sauntering close to the bondslave, Roxanne swept her with a malevolent perusal. “Well, Shemaine, I see you’ve recovered well enough. But then, perhaps you weren’t really hurt after all. Perhaps it was just a ploy to extract a bit of sympathy from your master.”

  Shemaine smiled blandly. “Imagine what you will, Miss Corbin. I’m sure nothing I say will change your mind.”

  Raising her chin to a haughty level, Roxanne smirked. “You’re right, of course. I’d never pay much heed to what a convict has to say.”

  Roxanne whirled away, and with the breezes billowing beneath her wrapper, it seemed as if she floated toward the man to whom she had once offered her heart and who, after the months of devoted service she had given him, had cruelly rejected her gift of love. In a hushed, hurt tone she confided, “I thought you had come to make amends, Gage, perhaps even to tell me that you’d be getting rid of your bondswoman. But I see you intend to be obstinate. True to your inclinations as always, aren’t you?” She shook her head regretfully. “A pity . . . for your sake as well as your son’s.”

  Sensing a threat in her words, Gage fixed her with a harsh scowl, but he remained mute, preferring not to get into another hassle with her or anyone else while Shemaine was near enough to hear. It seemed the whole day long he had been involved in one confrontation after another, and all he wan
ted at the moment was to go home and enjoy a nice, peaceful evening alone with his son and his bondslave.

  Limping to the forge, Hugh rested on his crutch as he barked at Gage. “Stoke the embers and make yerself useful if ye want me ta shoe yer horse. I can’t do it alone.”

  “I’m able to do it myself if you’d prefer,” Gage offered. “All I need from you is the loan of your equipment.”

  “Ye’ll pay the same no matter who does it,” the elder informed him brusquely. “So don’t think ye’ll be using me as your dupe.”

  “I hadn’t intended to,” Gage rejoined tersely. With a slowly steeping resentment brewing inside of him, he began pumping the billows to push air into the forge.

  The smithy pivoted about to settle a speculative stare upon Shemaine, pricking her mettle with his disparaging perusal. Turning stoically, she carried Andrew to a large tree stump some distance from the blacksmith shop and sat down upon it, hoping that she had gone far enough to be safely off the Corbin property, for she had already concluded that she liked the blacksmith no better than his daughter.

  Cuddling the boy to her, Shemaine began to sing to him as she rocked back and forth. Gradually Andrew relaxed in her arms until his eyelids sagged. A sigh slipped from his parted lips, and he fell asleep, snuggled close against her soft breast.

  Hugh fought an inner conflict with himself as he watched Shemaine gently nurturing the boy, but he was powerless to subdue the raging turmoil that roiled within his heart and mind. Tormenting impressions spewed upward from the murky depths of long-buried memories, vexing him sorely, and he turned on Gage, bedeviled by a darkly brooding envy. “Ye’ve bought yerself a fine-lookin’ convict there,” he jeered in scorching reproof. “No doubt, with ye ownin’ her, ye’ll be gettin’ yer manly cravings appeased at the snap o’ yer finger, so’s I’m thinkin’ ye’ll be havin’ second thoughts ’bout weddin’ me girl.”

  Gage had been leaning over the forge, examining the horseshoe he had been heating, but at the man’s words, he lifted his eyes to Roxanne. The woman grew unsettled beneath his sharply pointed stare and, turning away, busied herself suddenly by hanging the lantern on a nearby post. Gage’s angry scowl reverted back to the smithy. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Corbin, if you think I have ever asked your daughter to marry me. Since that is definitely not the case, I really don’t see that I owe you any explanation about my reasons for buying Shemaine. In short, Mr. Corbin, it’s none of your damn business.”

  “Ye arrogant libertine! I’ll teach ye ta show proper respect for yer elders!” In a spitting rage, Hugh seized the small end of the crutch in his hand and, holding it like a club, hopped forward on one foot, intending to give the younger man a proper thrashing.

  Slowly straightening to his full height, Gage raised a condescending brow as he regarded the elder. “If you mean to hit me with that, Mr. Corbin, be assured that I won’t stand here and take it meekly. I’ll finish anything you start, believe me.”

  The cold gaze piercing the lantern-lit gloom cooled Hugh’s temper effectively. The memory of the pain he had suffered when the horse he had been shoeing sat on him and broke his leg was too fresh in his mind for him to willingly invite further injury. Finding no graceful way of retreating from a confrontation, he flung up a hand in a vivid display of temper and snarled, “Finish what ye’re doin’ and then get out of here. Me girl and me don’t want ye and that filthy li’l slut around here, do ye hear!”

  It took a fierce effort of will for Gage to curb the goading temptation to drive his fist into the man’s face. All the reasons for refraining from such an assault were there before him, so obvious a simple dolt could recognize them. Hugh Corbin was twice as old as he was and, at the moment, lame. If he punched the elder, he’d be no better than Jacob Potts battering Cain. No matter how much he longed to at that precise moment, he just couldn’t hit a crippled old man!

  “Shemaine is not a slut, and I take great exception to you calling her that,” Gage ground out. “My only regret right now is that I must finish shoeing the mare. Otherwise, I’d tell you to go to hell.” He snorted in contempt as he thought about it. “But why should I waste my breath? As mean as you are, you’re bound to go there anyway.”

  The air fairly crackled with tension as the two men glared at each other. Hugh wanted to launch an assault right then and there, but he just couldn’t dismiss the dreadful prospect that he might come to further harm. For once, better judgment took precedence, though he still chafed beneath the harsh bit of fermenting animosities.

  Hobbling around, Hugh returned to the porch with a halting gait and clumsily took a seat on the edge. From that vantage spot, he could keep watch until the shoeing was complete. Though he had never had a reason to believe that Gage Thornton would ever cheat him, Hugh trusted no man with his possessions. Once he received the coins due him, he would send the cabinetmaker on his way.

  Leisurely Roxanne meandered back to a spot where she could see Gage more clearly. Leaning against a post, she scanned his downturned face above the glowing coals and was amazed that even now she yearned to look into that fine, handsome countenance and declare her love. It would take nothing more than a gentle smile from him to encourage her. But even as she admired his noble visage, Roxanne saw his brows gather in a harsh frown, as if he were annoyed by her close attention. The idea set spurs to her temper. “What are you going to do, Gage? Fight every man who insults your convict?”

  “If I have to!” he retorted sharply without glancing up.

  “You’re a stubborn man, Gage Thornton, and I right now, think you’re a fool. Shemaine doesn’t deserve your protection.”

  Though her words incensed him, Gage refused to yield his gaze to her. “Your opinions really don’t concern me, Roxanne. They never have.”

  His words assaulted her as brutally as any slap across the face, and Roxanne felt her temper soar at his blatant indifference. How many times throughout the nine years she had known him had she guilefully offered herself to him? And how many times had he failed to notice? Or had that been a deliberate ruse on his part? It had driven her nearly mad wanting him the way she had and then being politely dismissed each and every time, as if he were unable to think of her as his mistress . . . or his wife. She could not imagine him being so insensitive to his bondslave. Oh, no! He had other plans for the convict!

  “You intend to take that trollop into your bed, don’t you?” Roxanne demanded, her voice fraught with emotion. “That’s been your desire from the first moment you saw her, to fornicate with that slut!”

  “What if it has been?” Gage barked angrily, seeing no difference between father and daughter. Despite his qualms about pushing the woman closer to the crumbling precipice of an irrational jealousy, he deliberately whipped her ire into a slavering frenzy as he braced his palms on the brick buttressing the forge and leaned forward to fix her with a probing glare. “Tell me, Roxanne, is it really any of your business what I choose to do with Shemaine in the privacy of my cabin . . . or, for that matter, my bed?”

  The corners of Roxanne’s mouth twisted downward in an ugly grimace, and in the depths of her throat, a low gurgling growl was born. With all the fury of a woman scorned, it burst forth in a horrendous shriek. The hem of her robe swirled around her bare legs as she whirled and, like a wraith in the night, fled back to the cabin. Racing past her father, she stormed through the front portal. The resounding crash of the door slamming against the jamb made Hugh Corbin duck his head and grimace as if he fully expected the porch rafters to fall down upon him.

  On the long ride home, Shemaine sat quietly on the wagon seat beside Gage, holding his sleeping son in her arms. The moon had risen above the trees and cast its silvery glow upon the land, enabling Shemaine to see the ominous scowl that drew the man’s magnificent brows sharply together. She dared not ask what was troubling him. It went against all propriety for a bondslave to inquire into the personal thoughts, inner turmoil and feelings of her master, but she could not help but wonder wh
at the Corbins had said that had caused his mood to turn so bleak. She had been aware of the quarrels that had arisen. Indeed, she would have had to have been completely inattentive to miss the threat that Hugh Corbin had made with his crutch or the rage that Roxanne had exhibited just before she had fled back to the cabin, but the wind had snatched away their words, sweeping them into oblivion. Still, Shemaine was of a mind to think, inasmuch as the first altercation had begun shortly after Hugh had eyed her, that the argument had started because of something he had said about her.

  Even in the meager light of the lunar orb, Gage felt the museful stare of his indentured servant resting on him, but many miles were traversed before he could trust himself to glance her way. Finally doing so, he found himself staring into shining, moonlit eyes. “You are troubled, Shemaine?”

  “I only sense your anger, Mr. Thornton,” she murmured timidly, “and wonder what I might do to soothe it. I perceive that somehow I am to blame.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Gage stated emphatically.

  No, he thought pensively, the difficulty had started soon after his arrival in Newportes Newes. It hadn’t taken Roxanne long after meeting him to develop an obsession to become his wife. She had woven her wily tricks to entrap him in a forced marriage, feigning innocence as she brushed herself against him in provocative ways, clearly hoping to arouse his bachelor’s starving senses. Recognizing his own vulnerability as a man with unsatisfied carnal needs, he had been extremely cautious to ignore any and all overtures, even at the cost of seeming thick-witted. After all, he had not fled England and pretty Christine just to dally with a woman he couldn’t bear to look at the morning after. Judiciously he had busied himself elsewhere.

  When he had wed Victoria some years later, Roxanne had shut herself up in her father’s house and grieved as if the end of the world had come. At length, she had emerged from her den of gloom. Even so, she had treated him for a time with all the contempt and hatred that a defiled maiden might have heaped upon an unprincipled roué who had callously thrown her aside after stripping away her innocence. Her bitterness after being spurned had eventually subsided, giving way to yearning looks, wavering smiles and, finally, subtle overtures, until he had come to dread and even abhor her visits. Victoria had failed to see through Roxanne’s subterfuge. Nor had he cared to enlighten her. His wife had merely felt sorry for the spinster and, in her gentle way, had been the best friend Roxanne had ever had.