Philip! She remembered then that he had struck her. He must have carried her away with him! Indignation surged through her.
“I have been abducted!” she gasped.
There was a ripple of laughter from two of the ladies nearby. They made a point of turning their backs when Lorraine struggled to her feet and scrambled up to the deck. Above her, white sails billowed. To her dismay, there was no land in sight.
“Where is the captain?” she cried, looking wildly about her. “He must put me ashore immediately!” Her arrival on deck in such disheveled state, hair wild, jaw swelling, clothes rumpled, still reeking of brandy, created a stir. Passengers collected around her.
“I tell you I have been abducted!”
Philip appeared from nowhere, shouldering his way between two male passengers who looked distressed. He seized Lorraine by the wrist.
“What have you been telling these people?”
“I have been telling them the truth,” gasped Lorraine, trying vainly to extricate herself from his grasp. “That you took me away from Yorktown last night against my will!”
A short stocky bearded man had come up behind Philip. He laid a heavy hand on Philip’s shoulder. “Here, what is this commotion?” he asked roughly.
Philip shook the hand off and turned about, perforce dragging Lorraine with him. “Captain, this matter is between me and my bondservant,” he snarled.
“I am not his bondservant!” Lorraine appealed to the captain, whom she felt had an honest face. “He’s lying!”
“When you brought her aboard last night, you told me she was your betrothed, the wench you had come south seeking, and that she had gotten drunk celebrating your arrival. Now you tell me she is your bondservant. Which story is true?”
“Both!” exploded Philip.
“Neither!” screamed Lorraine.
Philip flung Lorraine from him with such force that she was catapulted against the chest of a passing passenger. The big man caught her breathless form and set her upon her feet, looking indignant that a young girl should be so roughly treated.
“Here, I will prove it to you!” Philip fished inside his coat. “I have here her articles, duly signed over to me by one Oddsbud.” He thrust the folded parchment at the captain.
With deliberation the captain read the paper and looked up at Philip. “This appears to be in order,” he sighed.
“It cannot be!” Lorraine leaped forward to snatch at the paper. “Oddsbud said he would never sell me!” It was the wrong thing to have said. It made clear that she was bound to someone. The buzzing voices around her stilled suddenly. Her remark brought a hard smile to Philip’s face.
“But he did—after you ran away,” he told her. “And I came searching for you.”
That put a different complexion on everything. Lorraine fell back. “I can buy back my articles, I can pay in gold for the remaining time of my indenture!”
The captain frowned and pulled at his beard. It was customary for a betrothed to pay in money for the remaining time of a woman’s indenture so that he could marry her—but this situation seemed a bit different.
“Do you have this gold?” he asked her.
“No, but I can get it!”
“She lies,” said Philip flatly. “ ’Tis true she came into an inheritance whilst she was hiding from me, but she has spent it all—and more. Indeed she has run up debts and was trying to escape her creditors when I found her. She should count herself lucky to escape debtors’ prison.”
“The poor child had to live, and food and lodgings cost money,” cried a female voice that Lorraine recognized as belonging to the woman who had volunteered the information earlier that she was aboard the Lizard bound for Rhode Island.
Philip swung about to address the voice. “They were gaming debts.” He sneered.“She has already squandered a fortune.”
“It is not true!” cried Lorraine distractedly. “I made it all up to get back at him. He had done me a hurt in Rhode Island—”
She was never to finish her sentence. Philip’s hand lashed across her face. “Lying wench!” he growled. “I’ll take a whip to you!”
“There will be no flogging of women aboard my ship,” thundered the heavy voice of the captain. “Mistress London—is that your name? For it is the name on your articles.”
“Yes,” whispered Lorraine, clutching at the nearest arm to steady herself.
“You will be treated as any other passenger on board. You will sleep with the women belowdeck, and when you are on deck you will be treated with respect and propriety.” He turned to Philip, concealed rage in his voice. “I think you may be practicing some ugly game upon this girl, and I would have you know that if I discover what it is I will haul you before the authorities when we reach Providence.”
Philip stood white-faced and undecided for a minute. Then he bit back the angry words that sprang to his lips, turned on his heel, and stomped away.
The passengers seemed to melt back from Lorraine. Only the captain remained, chewing his lip as he considered her. “Is it true you have gold to pay this man off?” he asked sternly.
Lorraine nodded hopelessly. “I had saved passage money for Barbados out of my inheritance,” she said sadly. “It is true that I ran away from Rhode Island because of ... of something bad that happened there, but I was told that Oddsbud was dead, and since he had no living relatives, I had assumed that I was free. Then yesterday Philip turned up and seized me and carried me off.”
“Where is this gold?”
“It is being held for me in Yorktown. Oh, could you not turn the ship around and sail back and let me get it? It is twice enough for my passage on your ship!”
“No, I cannot do that,” he said thoughtfully.
“But this man is carrying me away for years of servitude!” she cried. “And you heard what he said about a whip!”
The captain continued chewing his lip. “What is this man to you?” he shot at her.
“Once he was everything,” admitted Lorraine. “But now he is nothing.”
The captain had no mind to become involved in lovers’ quarrels.
“He came south to marry me to secure my inheritance,” she explained anxiously. “But I tricked him into believing that it was gone—and that is when he struck me down and carried me onto your ship.”
“You arrived reeking of brandy,” he reminded her grimly. “He said you had been celebrating your reunion.”
“Another lie! He must have poured it on me while I lay unconscious.”
“It will have to be sorted out in Rhode Island,” he declared. “Meantime you will be well-treated on board my ship.”
The female passengers did not share his opinion. They had already “sorted it out.” To a woman, they drew away from her. Even the one who had spoken up for her. Lorraine heard the woman’s sister whisper, “Leave her alone, Susie, we don’t want to know that sort!”
Miserable at being treated like a leper in the women’s quarters, Lorraine sought the deck on every possible occasion. But even that did not give her much companionship. The married men aboard, who slept in separate men’s quarters belowdeck, had been instructed by their wives to avoid the “loose-living” bound girl in their midst. Of the three bachelor passengers, one had a melancholy air, coughed a great deal, and kept to himself. The other two were each separately threatened by Philip, who offered to “break their bones” if they trifled with Lorraine.
The voyage north was maddeningly slow. The Lizard had no fore and aft sails at all, no spritsail below her bowsprit, and was an indifferent sailer. Ordinarily passengers were kept below in bad weather, but the captain made an exception for Lorraine. Her woebegone face touched his heart and she was allowed to while away the time on deck in fair weather or foul.
Philip did not like that.
It rained their first two days out of Yorktown, but on the third day the weather cleared and the other passengers were allowed on deck. Philip came up with the others—and found Lorraine already there,
looking beautiful in the sunlight. When she saw him, she promptly turned her back—and one of the passengers tittered.
Philip, seizing Lorraine’s arm, swung her around to face him. “You are my bondsevant,” he rasped. “How dare you turn your back on me?”
“I will always turn my back on you,” declared Lorraine bitterly. She was struggling to break his grasp. “For I cannot bear the sight of your face!”
Infuriated by the remark, which had been overheard by several of the passengers, Philip raised a hand to strike her.
The captain, who was watching them from the bow, strode over and promised Philip in a bellow heard throughout the ship that Philip would travel to Rhode Island in irons if the blow fell.
“You have bewitched him, Lorraine,” panted Philip, leaning down over her fiercely after the captain had gone. “As you bewitch all men.”
Lorraine looked up at him with flashing eyes. “If I am a witch, then you are a devil! I will find the money to pay for my indenture if only you will let me go!”
“And we both know how you’d ‘find’ it—by selling your favors to any who offered!”
Paling at that insult, Lorraine drew back her arm to strike him, but he seized her wrist before she could and bent it downward so that she was hard put not to cry out.
“If you call for the captain now, it will be the worse for you later,” he warned. I am your master, Lorraine. Accept it!” His brown eyes gleamed down upon her with a kind of demonic triumph that made her shrink inwardly. At that moment she wondered how she could ever have loved him.
“Well, you are not my master on this ship!” With a wrench that hurt her wrist, she managed to free herself from his grasp. “And maybe never!” she flung back tauntingly as she moved swiftly away. She could see Philip’s shoulder muscles hunch under his tan satin coat and stayed away from him, prudently hovering in the captain’s vicinity all afternoon.
“I would like to help you, mistress,” the captain told her bluntly. “But if the papers are not a forgery, if Dedwinton actually bought your articles, there is nothing I can do.”
“Even if they are not genuine, I could not prove it,” said Lorraine with a bitter glance back at Philip. “For Philip tells me the Indians killed Oddsbud.”
“Then you must either placate him or”—he gave her a wintry smile—“find someone to buy you from him.”
I found such a man once, she thought sadly. Raile Cameron. And just thinking of him caused her to fall further into a brooding mood.
The full splendor of the New England fall was all around them as they sailed into Narragansett Bay. On either side the trees in their autumn colors made a brave display of crimson and scarlet and russet and lemon and gold. Rhode Island looked to be the promised land.
It was not. Suddenly, before the horrified passengers on board the Lizard stretched a leveled skyline broken only by charred beams and burned chimneys.
“The Indians have burned Providence!” screamed one of the women passengers on a high keening note.
“Aye,” muttered the captain soberly into the hubbub. “I suppose it was bound to happen, with so many other towns already overrun.” He sighed.
Philip stood clutching the ship’s rail, staring at the town in enraged disbelief. “Damn them!” he cried with a sob in his voice, and Lorraine followed his gaze.
The distillery that belonged to Lavinia Todd’s father had been leveled.
For all that she was stunned by the magnitude of the devastation, Lorraine could not restrain herself from giving Philip a mocking look.
“Lavinia will not have such a large dowry to give you after all,” she could not resist saying.
From the rail Philip whirled. His rage and frustration had now found a target.
“If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, I’ll truss you up like a chicken—yes, and gag you too!”
Lorraine’s arrival in Providence harbor was made doubly ignominious because Philip had a heated discussion with the captain in full hearing of the passengers over whether or not to tie her up. Lorraine stood rooted to the deck, red with embarrassment, while they discussed it.
“I will not land a woman from my ship in bonds,” insisted the captain.
“But she will try to escape!” protested Philip.
The captain’s short laugh had a snarl to it. “That is your concern, not mine!”
So Lorraine made the shore with Philip’s left hand clamped tightly over her arm while his right hand held a heavy length of rope. Once ashore, Philip—with a dark look back at the ship he had just quitted—set himself to tying her wrists together.
There were a number of people standing on the wharf to witness Lorraine’s degradation—but not much else had been left standing. Around them Providence was a scene of utter desolation. The buildings Lorraine remembered lay in charred ruins. Warehouses, mills, distilleries, tanneries, cooperages, inns, taverns, private dwellings—all had been destroyed. Here and there chimneys of stone that had not split and fallen to the fire’s rage remained standing—mute evidence that here had once been a human habitation. Some sites were being cleared and on others there was evidence of rebuilding having begun, but to Lorraine’s shocked gaze, the Providence she had known was gone.
Around them on the wharf—amid the moans of those who, like Lorraine and Philip, had not seen the town since the Indians had ravaged it—there were excited questions.
The war, which had begun in June and swept through Massachusetts and Connecticut as well, had flashed into neutral Rhode Island again as the Indian fighters—always avoiding direct contact with colonial troops—raced from settlement to settlement making lightning-fast strikes and leaving death and smoking ruins everywhere behind them. Rhode Island had raised no troops.
After all, Rhode Islanders had bought their land from the Indians, it was explained, and who could expect this? And Governor Roger Williams, a longtime friend of the Indians, who had learned their language, had used his best persuasion. But eloquence had not saved Providence and Governor Williams’ own house was burned to the ground along with the rest of the town.
Standing near Lorraine on the wharf, a gentleman from Warwick was informed that he would find the same desolation in Warwick as he now saw in Providence. The Indians had raided all along the bay. Wickford fortunately had been evacuated, but Smith’s trading post had been burned, Warwick too—although it was nearly deserted at the time. Then Providence, garrisoned by only about thirty men and no match for the superior forces that overran it, had fallen victim to the flames.
Once Philip had attached the length of rope securely to Lorraine’s already bound wrists, he was prudent enough not to be too rough with her, for that might bring immediate repercussions from men on the dock who moved restively and looked uneasily at one another to see a young woman tied up.
“What is her crime?” muttered one.
Lorraine heard that. “The crime of wishing to be free!” she cried, and pulled backward violently from Philip’s clutches.
The lurch had put her off balance. Calmly Philip let go of the rope and let her fall.
Lorraine landed on her back with a sob. But—made awkward by her bound wrists—before she could scramble up, Philip was there, relentlessly reattaching the rope to her wrists.
“Up and walk!” he ordered grimly. “For if you fall, I will not hesitate to drag you.”
He left the wharf and set off along Towne Street, pulling Lorraine along behind him on the makeshift leash.
Lorraine met the astonished and disapproving gaze of those they met along the way. She was preoccupied enough with trying not to fall, for they were leaving the charred remains of Providence behind them, and Philip strode along at such a great pace that Lorraine was hard put to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?” she gasped, casting a look about her. “Surely you do not intend to walk all the way to your family’s farm?”
“It is my farm now,” he flung over his shoulder in a hard voice, “but there is nothing
left there. I had hoped to rebuild.”
With my thousand pounds' she thought. Oh, how he must have counted on that! She stumbled as he gave the rope a vicious jerk that almost sent her headlong.
After that she fell silent, half-running, trying not to trip over her skirts on the uneven ground. Around her there were fewer remains of burned chimneys and sad trampled garden plots, and the glory of the trees took over in bursts of scarlet and gold. She did not ask their destination again but suddenly it came to her where they were headed.
They were going to Lavinia Todd’s house.
Lorraine stared ahead of her with a set face as the house came into view. Lavinia had always had luck, she thought bitterly. With all Rhode Island a charred ruin, her home had been spared. The Indians had somehow missed it.
The handsome “stone-ender” was set among stately maples, leaves flashing gold against the dark trunks and the vivid blue of the autumn sky. She saw the familiar steep gable at the front and the huge stone-pilastered chimney which had so awed those here about. Although she had never attended any of the many parties held there, Lorraine had been told about the grandeur of Todd House often enough.
Eleazer Todd’s splendid mansion. . . .
The front door swung open at their approach and Lavinia Todd herself, wearing a ruffled white cambric apron over her violet lutestring gown, cried ecstatically, “Philip, you’re back!” Rushing toward him, she threw herself into his arms with such force that he staggered a step backward.
Although he did not release his grip on the rope, Philip’s arms enfolded Lavinia. He held her for a long time, his brown head bent over her bronze one.
“How I have missed you!” he murmured on a long drawn sigh.
Lorraine, standing with one hand resting on her hip, cocked a skeptical eye at them both.
A few moments later she was being dragged on her crude halter behind Philip into the house she had so often wistfully wished to enter. Luxurious paneled walls with beaded and beveled edges gave the house its interior tone, and the furnishings, most of them locally made of cedar or rock maple, were well-crafted. Hand-braided rugs adorned the random-width floor planking. To Lorraine’s surprise, no one was about to witness her meeting with Lavinia.
To Love a Rogue Page 31