To Love a Rogue

by Valerie Sherwood

  Laurie Ann laughed. She had been keeping her face somewhat averted from the town lest indeed that happen—although at this distance it was doubtful if even the keenest-sighted would recognize her. “But suppose it was your husband that recognized me, Mistress Council Member’s Wife?” she drawled in her Scots burr. “He might take a shot at you just so’s he could have me!"

  The council member’s wife gasped and turned pale, but she moved on, prodded by a tall woman in lace-trimmed indigo linen behind her.

  “We shouldn’t have to walk this barricade with you!” she flung out at Laurie Ann as she passed. “You’re not one of us!”

  “No, praise be, I’m not! And I’ll wager your husbands are watching us over their barricade right now, laying bets on who the red-haired beauty is—and wishing themselves married to me, not you!" She burst into outrageous laughter again.

  But her lightly flung remark had made several of the unwilling marchers wince, for Laurie Ann was indeed a blazing beauty—the sunlight turned her red-gold hair to flame and gilded the toasty tan her outdoor life on the frontier had given her. Clad in coarse homespun, strong and vivid, she was very different from the handsomely gowned swaying ladies with their artfully curled hair, their pale, carefully shielded complexions. Different and somehow challenging.

  “Come on, ladies, step lively!” sang out Laurie Ann. “Show the gentlemen down there in Jamestown that you’re still able to walk even if you’re not much use in bed!”

  As her clarion voice taunted the wealthy wives, there was a general bridling and grinding of teeth.

  “I don’t have to endure this!” cried one of them. “Who’s going to shoot us down if we leave this barricade? Certainly not our own husbands down there in Jamestown! And I doubt me if these rebels will do it either, even if they did drag us here and order us to march!”

  The line of aproned marchers wavered. Bacon’s rebel forces were on the brink of a petticoat rebellion—although the men hard at work finishing the hastily flung-up earthworks didn’t know it yet.

  But Laurie Ann’s voice rang out in warning:

  “Your own husbands might not shoot you—unless they’re tired of having you in their beds. And Bacon’s men might not—but I will if you don’t keep marching!"

  From beneath her apron she pulled out a large pistol and brandished it. “And if you think I don’t know how to shoot this thing, you’re wrong! I’ve had to deal with Indians out for my blood—twice!”

  A murmur of fright went through the aproned throng. “Do move along there, Hortense,” a plump woman remarked nervously. “That dreadful Scotswoman would welcome any excuse to shoot us!”

  “You’re right!” Laurie Ann laughed boisterously again. “You’re a bunch of coldhearted witches to think it’s all right for you to sleep safe between scented sheets whilst we on the frontier fall into bed never knowing if we’ll get through the night without being scalped! So keep walking, ladies,” she added blithely. “Why do you think I’m here? To prove to Bacon’s men that a woman can be as good a shot as any man! Of course, I won’t have to do that unless you get out of line or try to run away!”

  Somewhat subdued, the marching women continued, with murmured grumblings and black looks cast at Laurie Ann, who tossed her homespun skirts merrily as she strolled with her pistol concealed beneath her apron amidst the line of reluctant marchers.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Siege of Jamestown, September 1675

  IN THE CAPITAL there were no accommodations to be had, as Lorraine and Raile quickly learned, even though the town seemed to be bursting with inns and ordinaries strung out along the river. All were filled to overflowing, “worse than in the Publick Days,” when court was in session, they were informed. Jamestown’s population was almost entirely male and Lorraine—female and a beauty—was the object of much interest. Heads turned wherever she went.

  “There will be a battle when that breastwork is completed,” Raile told her. “And it looks to me to be receiving its finishing touches now. I had better take you back to the ship.”

  “I will not go!” she flared. “These two gentlemen, Mr. Harley and Mr. Green, who have been showing us about”—indeed more than two had been clamoring to show the beauty whatever sights there were, but Harley and Green had won out—“have just told me of an inn that serves excellent food.”

  Raile inclined his head graciously. “Very well. We will sup there. Perhaps the gentlemen who recommended it will be our dinner guests?”

  After a swift acceptance, Harley nudged Green. “The captain means to fill the wench with wine and carry her off, safe from harm,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Safe from us, y’mean,” was Green’s cheerful whispered reply.

  Lorraine was not supposed to overhear their comments, but she did, and she vowed to be sparing of how much wine she drank. If they were lucky enough to find a bed, she would cling to that bed like a leech and refuse all efforts to dislodge her. She planned to stay right here in town until Raile had made his “arrangements”—whatever they might be!

  They dined that evening with their newfound friends, Harley and Green, in the smoky common room of one of the many inns. Long boards had been spread the length of the room to accommodate the crush and at these crowded tables everyone sat. It was very noisy, merry with song and the clinking of tankards of Governor Berkeley’s new recruits. All were agreed that the governor would swoop down upon Bacon “and destroy him, as soon as the ladies are taken away from the barricade!”

  “I see that the governor has kept his ships handy should he have reason to flee,” murmured Raile cynically. “I wonder if these young bucks would be celebrating with quite this much enthusiasm if they had noticed that.”

  “With five or six times the men, he has overwhelming odds,” was Lorraine’s comment. “ ’Tis obvious he expects to win tomorrow’s battle.”

  “If battle be joined.” Raile’s eyes narrowed as he glanced about him. “I doubt me these lads will have much stomach for real fighting.”

  Heist and Derry Cork came through the door just then and Lorraine waved a greeting. “I wonder why André did not come ashore,” she mused. “It’s so unlike him, don’t you think, to stay and skulk aboard ship?”

  “I am not as conversant with L’Estraille’s likes and dislikes as you are,” was Raile’s answer. Then he turned to the elderly gentleman in a plum coat who sat on his other side, and engaged him in conversation about the chances of victory on the morrow.

  Thus snubbed, Lorraine turned her attention to Harley and Green, who introduced her to a rakish gentleman in tawny who had been covertly admiring her. She so charmed him that within a few minutes he had offered her his accomodations—“a mere cubbyhole upstairs, mind you, but large enough to squeeze in both yourself and your husband.”

  Lorraine let the “husband” pass. “But what of yourself?” she demanded. “Where will you sleep?”

  “I will impose upon a friend of mine,” he drawled, signaling the harassed serving maid to refill Lorraine’s wineglass. “If perchance one might see you on the morrow? Perhaps I could beg of you a token for good luck in the coming battle?”

  Lorraine promptly gave him her kerchief. Handling it as if it were precious, he placed it inside his coat.

  Raile turned in time to see that and be amused. “You have made a conquest, I see,” he muttered. “Faith, it takes you no time!”

  “This gentleman is Oliver Carr of Gloucester,” Lorraine told him in an outraged voice. “He has taken pity on us in our plight and has kindly offered us his room for the night. You should thank him!”

  “I do indeed thank him.” Raile leaned around Lorraine to extend his hand. “Your servant, Carr. Raile Cameron here. I was hoping my lassie would not have to sleep in a doorway this night!”

  His lassie gave him a baleful look.

  When dinner was over, Oliver Carr said, “I’ll take you to my inn just down the street and get you settled, else we may find the innkeeper has locked the doo
r!”

  “I would think that tonight he might not lock the door at all,” murmured Lorraine. “Considering what the morrow may bring!”

  “They keep early hours,” Carr warned them. “I fear they may not be up.”

  He was wrong. They were not only up, but the lady of the house was packing. “I care not what you say,” she was telling her husband in a strident tone as she panted down the stairs under a load of hatboxes. “I will not stay here with ball and shot whistling about my ears! They say there will be a battle tomorrow and I am off to the Eastern Shore at first light to stay with my cousins!”

  “Even if these rebels overrun us, they will not steal your hats, Mollie,” her husband remonstrated mildly. “Indeed they are more like to be after the plate.”

  “I’m taking that too!” she cried. “I warned you—oh, I warned you, Horace!” She turned to Oliver Carr for confirmation. “Did I not tell you when that comet lit the heavens for a week, that it was a sign? And again when that enormous flight of pigeons darkened our skies?”

  “Aye,” sighed Carr. “And again when those swarms of big flies rose right out of the earth and ate the trees bare.” He stole a humorous look at Lorraine.

  “I said it was a sign, and look what has happened! Troops marching, guns mounted! We are on the brink of something here in Jamestown, mark my words! And I’m packing my things and leaving. At first light!” She wagged a threatening finger at her husband and bustled off again upstairs. Carr explained the situation to the landlord, then escorted Raile and Lorraine upstairs to show them their room.

  When Carr had finally left them, Lorraine sat down on the bed and crossed her legs. “If you have any idea that you are going to take me back to the ship, Raile,” she warned him, “I promise you now that I shall resist!”

  He stood in the center of the room studying her. Then, “I have no intention of dissuading you,” he drawled. “But I do intend to sleep in that bed.”

  Lorraine bridled.

  Raile gave her an amused look and began to undress. “I realize that you are still angry that I have exposed you to danger by bringing you here,” he tossed over his shoulder as he hung his coat over a chair and pulled off his flowing white shirt. “But I think you might reconsider.”

  “Why?” Lorraine asked in a hard voice. She was looking at his back as she spoke. It was by far the handsomest back that she had ever seen. The muscles rippled under fine tanned skin. He has a mighty wingspread, she thought dreamily, and the way his lean body tapers to his narrow waist and buttocks . . .

  She dragged her mind back to her “anger.” “Why should I reconsider?”

  He turned to face her, clad only in his trousers, and he was even handsomer from the front than from the back. His broad chest, smooth, muscular, and sprinkled lightly with fine dark hair, was made for a girl to lay her face against—and sigh. . . .

  “Because no one is taking any notice of you save that you’re a beauty dressed as gentry,” he said lightly. “There’s a war going on in case you haven’t noticed. Anyway, I expect to be here very briefly—just long enough to sell these muskets. Then we will be away, Lorraine!”

  He had said the magic words! The rebel army was but a gunshot away, the rebel leader at its head. He had not come to see Laurie Ann MacLaud after all—he really was here to sell his guns!

  A kind of glow came over Lorraine. It made all her body warm. She rose and stretched her arms over her head languidly.

  “We do both need a good night’s sleep,” she said virtuously.

  Raile laughed. “But perhaps we need something else first.”

  Lorraine was already slipping out of her dress and she felt her face and shoulders grow even warmer at his remark. They glowed pink when she was down to her thin chemise. Raile stretched out on the bed and watched her undress. She took her time about it, teasing him, making a great show of removing each slipper, each garter, propping a foot on the four-poster and slowly, carefully sliding down her stocking—after all, silk was expensive: she must not damage them.

  “Come to bed,” Raile suggested huskily. “You have teased me long enough.”

  She had been looking down at her leg; now her lashes fluttered and she looked up to see that he had divested himself of his trousers and lay sprawled in manly comfort upon the coverlet. She blushed.

  At that moment he leaned over and blew out the candle. Cold moonlight filtered down through the small paned window and silvered the pair of them—a little wary, evenly matched. For even though the specter of Laurie Ann MacLaud had been removed, it had still been a long time . . .

  And then all at once Lorraine was snuggling delightfully into Raile’s arms, feeling his long body move like heavy silk against her own. She sighed blissfully. It had been so long, so long . . .

  “Why do I love you so much, I wonder?” she murmured blissfully.

  “Because you’re young and lack judgment,” he told her promptly, sliding an arm beneath her bare back and scooping her toward him. “If you were older and wiser, you’d be looking over those rich dandies who surround the governor and forget the likes of me!”

  “I find it very pleasant to lack judgment in this case,” she told him dreamily, and moved her legs to accommodate his long body the better.

  He needed no further invitation. Slowly, with many kisses and caresses, Raile enfolded her, and the Virginia night was filled with magic. Lorraine’s deep heartfelt sigh went right through him and he cradled her more tenderly than ever before. She was a wonder, he thought, this wild, fascinating, reckless girl who had come to him as a waif and developed into a magnificent woman under his tutelage. He was proud of himself to have found her; he was proud of her for being what she was.

  Together they strained and shivered and gasped at the fierce beauty of their joining, together rose to splendor, together drifted down complete.

  Lorraine went to sleep that night with her head blissfully pillowed on Raile’s shoulder, certain she had no rival.

  She awoke to the sound of guns. She sat straight up in bed.

  “Raile!”

  He was gone. She tumbled out of bed and into her clothes. Downstairs she ran into the innkeeper, who told her that Raile had been off “at first light.” The thought panicked her. Surely Raile had not left her to—

  Her thought was never to be completed. Raile himself was coming through the inn door.

  He had come back for her. She felt weak with relief. “What is happening?” she asked.

  “Governor Berkeley’s troops have surged toward the rebels,” he told her briefly. “They are attacking the breastwork.”

  “What happened to the women who were walking the barricade?”

  “Oh, they’re long gone.” He shrugged. “They were brought in only to keep the governor’s forces from attacking until the rebels were ready behind their own ramparts. He’s a shrewd fighter, is Bacon, I’ll give him that.”

  The battle was short. Incredibly, it seemed to Lorraine, the governor’s newly recruited forces dissolved before the first volley of the invaders. Soon the troops were noisily falling back into the town.

  Lorraine watched from the window as some horsemen charged by, shouting to each other.

  “Some of Governor Berkeley’s officers,” Raile explained.

  Lorraine turned to him in bewilderment. “But there were so many of them. How could they—”

  “Lose? Berkeley may have been out for blood but his new recruits weren’t so eager—they were just hungry for the rewards he promised them.”

  “Where will they go?” asked Lorraine, thinking of Carr, to whom she had given her kerchief for good luck.

  “Back to the Eastern Shore, I suppose, where I’m told there are no Indian attacks and therefore more complacency about keeping things as they are.”

  “But if their countrymen are being butchered . . .” began Lorraine indignantly.

  Raile cocked an eye at her. “Most men look out for themselves first, you will find. Sentiment is strongest on the fronti
er where men have seen their wives and children killed—it weakens the farther you get from the battle. Although two of the ringleaders, Lawrence and Drummond, live here in Jamestown, and I’m told that theirs are the best houses here. We must have seen them yesterday.”

  “I suppose now we will be going back to the ship?”

  He shook his head. “I gave orders early this morning for Tav to take the Lass out to sea lest the governor’s men try to seize her. Derry Cork and most of the officers are already aboard. She’ll be gone at least a week, maybe longer. But that should not discomfit us. We are still ensconced in Carr’s room. Perhaps he will let us stay on.”

  “I wonder how he fared.”

  “Oh, he looked spry enough when he rode by in the crush. He waved at you. Did you not see him?” Lorraine was ashamed to admit that she had not. Raile had anticipated this rout, and she looked at him with new respect.

  They dined that night with Oliver Carr, who insisted they keep his room “for as long as you care to.”

  “We accept your kind offer!” said Lorraine instantly. Carr was crushed by their defeat. He kept brooding about it all through dinner. “Our lads broke and ran,” he kept saying sadly. “Ran!”

  “They were green troops facing seasoned Indian fighters,” Raile pointed out. “How many of your lads had ever fired a musket in anger?”

  Carr was silenced but he was still despondent. “What will the governor do now?” asked Lorraine. “Try again?”

  “Oh, I doubt me he’ll do that,” sighed Carr. “He is disgusted with his forces. There’s talk he will retire again to the Eastern Shore. It shames me that it should be so.” He pulled out her kerchief. “I will return this to you—I have not done it honor this day.”

  “You are not to blame!” flashed Lorraine. “You couldn’t help it if the men around you turned and ran!” She pressed the kerchief back into his hand.

  Her voice had risen high enough that it could be heard by nearby diners. Lorraine was the recipient of several black looks.