“A city I had destroyed?”
“Yes.”
“And the rest?”
“Only true in part. My mother was indeed of an old Cornish family. All the rest was false.”
He sighed and the motion made the gold buttons on his wine-red coat flash brighter in the sun. “I do not know what you are running away from, Mistress London, and from the set of your jaw I think you are of no mind to tell me, but you heard much discussion last night that we would prefer not to reach the governor’s ears.”
He thought her a spy! Her eyes widened in fear.
“I am new to Virginia but I am not an admirer of the governor. I have heard evil things of him!” she protested.
“What things?” he asked sharply.
“That he will not protect the settlers from the Indians because it would harm his own trading interests—and in this he is egged on by a rapacious wife who will stop at nothing. That he leaves the planters and their families to fend for themselves, instead of sending troops to protect them against marauding Indians. Indeed, that he sends out troops to attack the planters if they try to protect themselves. I’ll warrant you he’d take a different tack if Green Spring were threatened!”
“I’ll warrant you he would,” murmured Bacon. He was regarding her thoughtfully. “I see that by your own words you are not of Berkeley’s persuasion,” he said at last. “Have you anything else against the governor?”
“Yes, I have seen him as he rode by, and I liked neither his face nor his overbearing manner. And most particularly I did not like the way he looked at me—as if I were a sweetmeat!”
Her indignation was so real that the young man with her threw back his dark head and laughed.
“Mistress London,” he said, wiping eyes that still twinkled with mirth, “in all else I may condemn him, but in that last he is scarcely to be blamed.”
He began walking again, a graceful figure in his wide-topped boots and jingling spurs. Taking her arm, he led her back to the house.
But for all his amusement, she thought uneasily, he could still lock me away or possibly hand me over to the others . . . since he is still not sure that I was not sent by Berkeley as a spy!
They had reached the drive and he stopped, turned squarely to face her. Lorraine drew a deep breath and lifted her chin. He was, she knew, a man of swift decisions and almost simultaneous action—and he was looking at her ruefully.
“Mistress London,” he said, “I am noted for my rashness. So before wiser heads can counsel me, I am going to let you go. By the way, where is your luggage?”
“Aboard a ship I wish never to set foot on again!” said Lorraine in a trembling voice.
“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps that explains it. You will forgive me, but I anticipated this contretemps last night after we had supped together.”
“Why? Was I so poor at playing the ‘governor’s lady’ then?” asked Lorraine, crestfallen.
“No, let us say you were rather too perfect—as if you had been schooled for the role. You had come out of nowhere and yet you were so instantly one with us.” His expression hardened. “I have come to mistrust perfection.”
There was a slightly dazed look in Lorraine’s eyes. She had seemed to this born-to-the-purple aristocrat to be a perfect governor’s lady! Surely he was jesting! But that kindly expression told her he was not.
“Since you have told me you do not ride—and that, I confess, was one of the things that set me to thinking, for it is rare to find a lady who does not ride—I have arranged a carriage for you. I can see that it is coming round now, and my horse as well. The carriage will transport you to the York and a river barge that will deliver you downstream to Yorktown.”
He was offering her escape! She looked up into that darkly handsome countenance that once again looked so tired.
And he felt something for her too—he did not have to tell her. It was there between them, unspoken. If I were free . . .
He had taken her hand to help her into the carriage that was even now drawing up with Johnny Sears sitting in lordly fashion in the back. He held her hand a moment too long. His voice was caressing.
“Lawrence believes you may have been sent by Berkeley. Drummond is coming round to his opinion. You had better leave quickly.” His smile flashed. “I would not like to have to call them out!”
Lorraine paused but a moment. “I do not know if I heard anything last night that I should not,” she told him earnestly. “But whatever I heard is safe with me, I promise you.” He was hurrying her into the carriage, eager to get her gone, away from danger.
“Now I know why your men are so eager to follow you,” she added softly.
“Put that on my epitaph!” he laughed, and sprang lightly to the saddle of the big black horse the groom had brought.
As the carriage wheels began to roll down the drive, Lorraine leaned out and blew him a saucy kiss. “May you win all of Virginia and hold it forever!”
He waved a gloved hand to her. Then he wheeled his mount and galloped away toward the Curies of the James—and his Elizabeth.
Chivalry rode with him. . . .
He was every inch a cavalier, Lorraine thought mistily, watching him go. He should win Virginia—how he would grace the office of governor! In another time, another place, she could have loved this man with all her heart. She dashed a tear from her eye.
“Why are you crying?” It was Johnny Sears’s curious voice.
“Because I fear for him,” sighed Lorraine. For one splendid evening she had played at being a governor’s lady, and Bacon at the other end of the long table had been her governor—a situation to foment wild dreams. She pressed the cool petals of the rose against her hot cheek. It was all she had taken away from Green Spring—and its petals were already blowing away on the breeze. She would not see Bacon again, she knew.
She tried to shake off her gloomy mood. She told herself the life at palatial Green Spring was not meant for such as her, but found herself hard to convince.
“Is it not a beautiful day, Johnny?” she forced herself to say. “You and I are bound for Yorktown!”
“The Captain won’t find us there,” he muttered darkly.
Lorraine was in no mood to bother with him. “If you object, I will put you out along the road,” she told him fiercely. “And you can find your own way back to Jamestown! Do you think he will look for us in a burned-over city?”
Johnny sat back, chastened. Lorraine looked up alertly at the driver’s stolid back to be sure he had not heard.
But Johnny’s mention of the captain had brought back memories of Raile and the Lass. She was suddenly homesick for the ship where she had enjoyed being with . . . Heist and L’Estraille. She would put Raile out of her mind! But L’Estraille at least had loved her. She missed L’Estraille.
“I wonder why André did not come ashore with us,” she murmured.
“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Johnny brightly. “He was afraid. The law is after him. He married some Huguenot girl in Bordeaux whose family took her away to America when they learned he was already married to two other women. That’s why he came aboard as ship’s doctor. The Huguenot girl’s somewhere in Virginia and he’s afraid to come ashore because he might run across her and be clapped in jail for bigamy.”
André married? To three women!
“It can’t be true,” she said slowly.
“It is,” Johnny assured her complacently. “I guess you’re the only person on the ship that didn’t know about it.”
Lorraine sat back with her lips compressed, seething with indignation. Her cheeks grew hot and her eyes snapped as she remembered how the attractive Frenchman had professed undying love and begged her to marry him!
The journey to Yorktown took longer than she had expected. They had to spend the night in the tiny village of Williamsburg and the next day were taken to the banks of the York, where they clambered into a canopied river barge going downriver to Yorktown.
During the last two days,
lurching over bumpy roads in an open carriage, Lorraine had had time to think. That night spent at palatial Green Spring had given her something: perspective. The scalding pain of Raile’s deception still burned bright, but there was something else too. She had misjudged herself, misjudged what she wanted in life.
She looked out at the wide river, glowing rose in the dusk of evening, flowing so smoothly down to the sea.
Her own life was like white-water rapids, always turbulent, never smooth.
What was there about her, she asked herself, that made men burn so hot—and then blow so cold? Was it the wild look of her? Perhaps. Her unfortunate circumstances? Most certainly—no one wanted to wed a ragamuffin who might at any time be yanked away by the law to a life of servitude!
And wed she wanted to be, she realized sadly. She wanted a lifetime of sharing—with one man. She sighed to herself. The Green Flash was what she wanted—a signal that this would be the one love beside which all others paled. She had thought to find that love with Philip, and then again with Raile—oh, especially with Raile. Perhaps she would be one of those women who would never find it, she thought sorrowfully.
But now she knew the truth about herself.
She wanted to love a man who would cherish her above all other women. Forever.
And most especially she did not want to love a rogue.
Not ever, ever again.
CHAPTER 24
Yorktown, Colonial Virginia
LORRAINE HAD HER first surprise when she reached the Swan, the inn in Yorktown that had been recommended to her. The Swan was a sturdy white frame structure, gambrel-roofed, with broad-based sloping brick chimneys that rose like giant slanted stairsteps at either end. Like the rest of the town’s buildings, the Swan was situated on the bluffs overlooking the wide shining expanse of the York River, where a medley of merchant ships lay at anchor in the busy port.
In the common room, a little birdlike man in a bottle-green coat of conservative cut stood supervising the lifting of two boxes by a harassed lad in a greasy apron. The boy protested that he couldn’t carry any more boxes down to the ship, that he was needed back in the kitchen!
The little man had his back to Lorraine, and she scarcely noticed him, for the innkeeper, a sober-looking middle-aged man in homespun, with white hair and very pink cheeks, came bustling in in response to the bell that had clanged as she and Johnny entered.
“Do you have two rooms to let?” she asked him hopefully. “This is Johnny Sears and I am—”
“Lorraine London!” cried the little man in the bottle-green coat, who had turned about when the bell clanged. “I cannot believe it is you—at last!”
Lorraine stared at him in bewilderment. “Do I know you, sir?”
“No, you do not—set those boxes over there in the corner, lad, that’s right, at the far end of that table. Your father pointed you out to me one day in Providence. You were delivering a package for your mother at the time, I believe.”
In Providence! Lorraine felt she should turn and flee! But his next words took a reassuring tone.
“You have . . . er . . . filled out since then, but you’ve an arresting face and I’d still know you anywhere. Landlord, bring us some cider, if you please— Mistress London and I have much to talk about. Is that lad with you a blood relation?”
Lorraine gave him a dazed look. “No.”
He turned to the aproned boy who had just set down the boxes. “Take this lad away to the kitchen with you and give him some cider. My talk with Mistress London is private.”
A bewildered Johnny Sears was hustled away to the kitchen and an equally bewildered Lorraine was led by the little man—who tugged at her sleeve—to the far end of the empty room. There he set a small leather chest that had been tucked under his arm down upon the long trestle table and beamed at her. The landlord brought two tankards of cider, stopped to study Lorraine with great interest for a moment, and left them.
The little man edged closer. “I did not want anyone to hear what I am about to say,” he told her in a confidential tone. “Mistress London, I have been searching for you for a long time. My name is Nicholls.” Lorraine continued to regard him blankly. “Benjamin Nicholls,” he said softly. “Your father entrusted me with—”
He did not have to say another word. Lorraine caught her breath, and Nicholls, seeing that she now knew who he was, chuckled. He was the man her father had long ago entrusted with the wild venture of sending ginseng to China that nearly broke her mother’s heart!
A great stillness seemed to fill the room.
“You have sold the ginseng?” Lorraine guessed, raising her tankard of cider to her lips.
Nicholls bobbed his head merrily. “And for a price that will stagger you.” He leaned forward and whispered, “A hundred thousand pounds.”
Lorraine choked on her cider. “But... but that is a fortune!”
He nodded solemnly. “When I got back to Rhode Island and learned that your parents were dead, I felt it was my duty to find you. I have been chasing you ever since Captain Bridey came back from Bermuda with word that he had seen you there and that you were on your way to Virginia. Mistress London, I am told that you are your father’s sole heir.”
“That is true but—”
“The money is in gold on the Matilda. I’m about to sail on her to Barbados. Even the Matilda's captain does not know that he is carrying such a great sum. But”—he looked around him doubtfully—“I would not advise you to invest so much here in Virginia. The colony is in upheaval, there is talk of confiscation when this rebellion is ended. As a newcomer to these shores, it would be easy for you to find the wrong friends and lose everything.”
I have already found the wrong friends, thought Lorraine bitterly.
“What, then, would you advise, Mr. Nicholls?” she asked, troubled, for such matters were new to her.
“Allow me to suggest that you invest it where there is profit to be made, in one of the islands. In Barbados new fortunes are being made all the time. As I said, I am on my way there myself. My ship leaves tomorrow.” Barbados ... a new life, a fresh start. She saw herself suddenly transformed into a lady, seated in her own carriage, waving a ruffled parasol in the sunlight, driving past an enormous house—her own.
“Mr. Nicholls . . .” She studied the man before her. Shrewd, certainly. And honest enough to come half around the world to deliver gold that would have made him rich had he been scoundrel enough to keep it. “Would you be my agent? Would you select a suitable plantation for me in Barbados—something on the sea with a handsome house? And take over the management of my affairs until I can get there?”
“Until you can get there?” His eyebrows elevated.
She drummed her fingers upon the table. She would like to straighten out her affairs, especially buy back her articles from Oddsbud, before starting her new life. “Are you familiar with my reasons for leaving Rhode Island?”
“A lovers’ quarrel,” he said promptly. “And we have had a deal of a time finding you! I was told your father had left you with the Oddsbuds. What a terrible thing to find them both dead and the Light Horse Tavern burned to the ground.” He shook his head.
Lorraine started. A variety of emotions surged through her. The Oddsbuds were both dead and if the Light Horse Tavern had burned to the ground, then her articles of indenture must have been consumed by the flames along with it. She was free! She could hardly take that in at first, and then it washed over her. She could go anywhere she pleased. She was free!
Suddenly, she realized that Nicholls had said “we.” “Who came with you?”
“Young Dedwinton, of course.”
“Philip?” she said incredulously.
“Who else but a betrothed would go on such a quest?” he asked in jocular fashion.
She looked wildly around her. “Then where is he?”
“Out seeking you. It seemed reasonable to assume that you had not had time to get settled in the interior, that you would still be living nea
r the coast. Whilst I have been making inquiries, sending word as far as the Falls of the James, he is off to the Eastern Shore to see if you could possibly be there, for we have been informed that in this rebellion that is going on, the governor himself is repairing there with the entire population of Jamestown.” He patted her hand in commiseration. “Young Dedwinton will be back in a day or two—he has been gone this past fortnight.”
Philip—here! And seeking her! Lorraine seemed to have entered into a mad world where nothing made sense.
And then it came to her that she was now an heiress, and Philip, opportunist that he was, was seeking her out not for love but for her newfound wealth!
All the resentment she had felt toward him welled up in her again. How she would like to bring him down a peg or two!
Her eyes narrowed as she studied Nicholls. “How do you know Philip will be back so soon?”
“Well, he can be back no later than three days hence, for that is when the Lizard, which brought us here, sails back to Rhode Island. He has booked passage aboard her.”
“Does Philip know of my good fortune?”
“Yes, but not the extent of it,” laughed Nicholls. “I told him only that I was bringing you a thousand pounds. As for the rest, I thought you might prefer to tell him yourself.”
A thousand pounds. ... It was a great sum, but perhaps that was not Philip’s reason for pursuing her. That thought suddenly put a new light on things.
She frowned. “Mr. Nicholls, had Philip already arranged for passage south before you arrived in Rhode Island?”
“No, we made arrangements together—after he told me where Captain Bridey said you were to be found.”
So Philip had not planned to set out alone—or perhaps he had not had time to do it before Nicholls arrived. She checked her desire to question Nicholls further, for he had dragged out his large gold watch and was glancing down at it uneasily.
Lorraine’s plan came to her all at once. “I will follow you to Barbados on the first available ship,” she told him rapidly. “Leave with me only enough money for passage and a small amount over.” She looked perplexed. “I have no good place to secrete it. Could we leave it with the innkeeper here?”
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