A Bride Most Begrudging

by Deeanne Gist

  He found some spoon bread in the basket and shoved it into his mouth. “You obviously made the bread too. Mary sure didn’t.”

  She sighed. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Well, I wish you’d let her. That’s what she is, Connie. My cook. And I like the way she does it.” He tunneled around in the basket. “Is there anything to drink?”

  “Yes. There’s some cider in the wine skin there on the left.”

  He dug through the contents, purposely abusing the other prepared foods, then yanked out the wine skin, squirting a stream of cider into his mouth.

  She settled across from him, her skirts billowing out around her. “The workmanship is exquisite, Drew. I had no idea the house would be so fine.”

  He wiped his hand across his mouth, then burped. “Even we colonists have some skills.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, loosening the top of her bodice. “I meant--”

  “What are you doing?!”

  She froze, eyes wide. “What?”

  He jumped to his feet. “Don’t what me! You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  She looked down at the basket. “Is something amiss?”

  “Your bodice, Constance.” He ground his teeth together.

  She snatched her hand away from her laces. “I was merely warm.”

  “Well, it’s spring and Virginia gets much, much hotter come summer. So if you’re hot now, you’ll be miserable in the summer.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, I do!” he declared, fisting his hands. “Now lace your bodice and get out of here.”

  She fumbled with her lacings. “But I haven’t seen the house.”

  “Out!”

  “Why are you shouting, Drew? Why are you angry?” She stumbled to her feet.

  “I’m not shouting! I’m not angry! I’m just ready for you to be gone from here, and as soon as the ship in port is loaded with tobacco, I will put you on it and be done with all this!”

  Her eyes flew to the window facing the water, but of course, she wouldn’t be able to see the ship from here. “Right now? There’s a ship out in the harbor right now?”

  Bitter cold swept through him. Was that eagerness tingeing her voice? He couldn’t quite tell. “Yes.”

  “And...and you want me on it?”

  He felt his chest heave in order to take in enough air. “Yes.”

  “Why?” She moved toward the window, her back to him.

  Because I love you and I want you to be happy, not miserable. “You don’t belong here, Connie. And you know it.”

  She bent her head down. “Because of my math?”

  “Among other things.”

  ”But we’re married, Drew. We said a handfast, to Preacher Morden, to God, and to each other.”

  “Consider yourself a widow.”

  She spun around. “But you’re not dead!”

  “No one will know.”

  “I will know! God will know! Surely you do not think I would return home and take another husband when I already have one?”

  His temper began to climb. He said nothing.

  “Well, I’ll not do it, Drew. I’ll never take another. Not ever.” She bit her lip. “I want not to go. I want to stay.”

  By my troth, must she rip his heart from his very chest, leaving nothing in its wake? “So you think, but years from now you’ll be thanking me.”

  “You’re attracted to me, Drew.” She wrung her hands. “I know you are.”

  His heart slammed against his ribs. “It matters not.”

  Tears spilled over and onto her cheeks. “How can you say so? It matters. It does.”

  “It doesn’t. Not in the long run.”

  “When did you decide to send me back?”

  Lord, why couldn’t women have been given the foresight of men? Why couldn’t they see what was best for them? Why must they always fight it? “You know when.”

  “Christmas Day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you’re still attracted to me.”

  He clinched his teeth together. “Yes.”

  “Then take me to wife, Drew. Just one last time before you send me away. Please.”

  Heat shot straight through him. “Absolutely not.”

  A new flood of tears. “Why? Why?”

  Because it would kill me, it would. His mind scrambled for another answer, then zeroed in on one equally as important. “Because my seed might take root, and I do not want you to have my child.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Come on, Sally!” she snapped, turning around for the umpteenth time.

  Sally pumped her pint-size legs but gained little ground. For the first time, resentment reared its ugly head. If it hadn’t been for Sally, Constance could have made if not a dignified, then at least a swift exit from the big house, then given herself over to the vanquishing weight bearing down upon her heart.

  Instead, she’d had to go out to where Josh and the men were eating their meal and exchange pleasantries before collecting Sally and heading toward the cottage as if her very life hadn’t just been wrenched from her body. But it had. And if she succumbed now, Sally would no doubt report it all to Drew in vivid detail.

  Compressing her lips, Constance marched back toward the child.

  Sally’s steps faltered, her eyes widening. “I hurry!” she implored.

  She hauled Sally up and off her feet, propping the child against her waist as they moved toward home. Sally wrapped her legs and arms around Constance, whimpering.

  Constance hardened her heart, offering no comforting word or gesture, for she had nothing within her but anguish. Nothing. By the time they reached the clearing, Sally had exchanged whimpers for actual sobs. They were minor compared to the sound Constance made upon the sight that greeted her. Screeching in horror, she barely kept herself from dropping the child. “Noooooo!”

  Letting Sally down with a thud, Constance ran toward her seedbed, waving her arms. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  The goat looked up inquiringly, a tobacco stem still in its mouth.

  “No! Oh, no! How could you! How could you?!”

  The goat shied away, then bolted when Constance struck its flank with every bit of force she could muster. Pain shot through her hand, surging up her arm. She paid it no heed but spun to face the damage, then fell to her knees, covering her mouth.

  The flat of tobacco seedlings was no more. Snowflake had nipped the buds off all but two plants. Short stubby stems no more than a quarter inch tall stuck up above the imprisoned earth. An agonizing wail slowly escaped from her as she grabbed her stomach and rocked back and forth.

  Mary rushed outside. Looking at the scene, she quickly captured Sally in her arms, carried her into the cottage, and left Constance to grieve alone over the ruined seedbed.

  Constance plunged her fingers into the fertile soil, tangling them in the roots beneath the surface. Curling her fists, she yanked the fibers out, crushing them within her hands.

  She squeezed harder, harder, her arm muscles quivering, her fingernails drawing blood. The desolation within her strained against the boundaries of her being until like a great serpent of the deep, she roared to her feet, hurtling the roots at the seedbed.

  They hit with a very soft, dissatisfying thump. She booted the flatbed with her foot, jamming her bare toe and moving the flatbed not one mite.

  Fury clawed through her. Blast these infernal seeds. Blast Drew. And blast him for making me care! With quicksilver movements, she grasped the flat’s edges, pulling it up and over. Dirt spilled out into a huge jumble, and she let the crate fly.

  You want me not to bear your child? Well, you’re too late, you three-suited knave! You’re too late! She kicked the dirt, stomped the roots, and cursed with renewed vigor.

  “Sissy? Your di‘ry make you feel better?”

  Constance jerked her head around to see Sally tentatively holding out the diary, her tiny chubby hands extended.

  It w
asn’t until she tried to focus that she realized tears obstructed her view. Mopping her eyes with a hard swipe, she lost sight of Sally and beheld only the diary.

  The pamphlet took on a life of its own, growing larger and larger in Constance’s eye, until she perceived it as a laughing, mocking, heinous creature.

  She snatched it from Sally’s hands. The child gasped and stumbled backward, her lower lip quivering. But Constance merely spun and raced away. Away from the cottage. Away from the seedbed. Away from Drew.

  For nothing would she slow. Not for the sharp stitch in her side, not for the tearing flesh on the bottoms of her feet, not for the nausea swimming in her stomach. She noticed not the blooming dogwoods, the colorful phlox sprinkled alongside the path, nor the stillness of the forest. She simply plunged forward, eyes straight ahead.

  She heard the creek before she smelled it, smelled it before she saw it, and then she was there, racing toward it. With legs whizzing over the ground beneath her, she cranked her hand back, squeezed the diary tight, then launched it through the air.

  The momentum of her action slammed her to her knees. With nothing short of sheer determination, she caught herself on her hands, never losing eye contact with her journal as it arched above the water then somersaulted into it with a splash.

  Sunning turtles slipped from their logs. Unsuspecting ducks squawked and flapped their wings, painting ribbons of water in their wake. The Ladies’ Mathematical Diary: A Woman’s Almanac Adapted for the Use and Diversion of the Fair-Sex bobbed to the surface before swirling downstream.

  Constance stayed on her hands and knees watching until it turned from a booklet, to a speck in the distance, to nothing. Then she curled up into a ball and wept.

  Drew worked like a man possessed, driving his brother and the other men with excessive pressure. They tore open crates, unloaded furniture, and hauled it into the house. But the satisfaction, the fulfillment, the exultation he had expected to accompany this moment were sorely lacking.

  In their place was mirthless, pathetic dejection. He cared not about the superior craftsmanship of the pieces they unloaded. He cared not if any had been damaged during their shipment. He cared not if he even had furniture.

  Sunlight poured through the huge diamond-paned windows, exposing a jumble of chairs, tables, and assorted pieces crowding the great room. The men jostled about, lugging bits of a bed abovestairs, stacking chests against the walls, fitting drawers into an elaborate secretary, none of them talking, none of them exhibiting the relaxed air that usually permeated the atmosphere.

  Drew gave Josh a nod, then moved back outside to the few unopened crates remaining. The physical demands of tearing open wooden boxes suited his mood. Picking up the pry bar, he wedged it into a seam.

  Connie’s reaction to his words had surprised him. Shock, acute anguish, then blazing anger had played across her features in a matter of seconds. He’d realized immediately she’d misinterpreted his words. Typical of a woman.

  He didn’t mean he thought her unworthy of bearing his children, only that it was unwise. Yet he chose not to clarify his statement. Let her think what she would.

  As strong-willed as she was, any crack he revealed in his defenses would soon be a huge crevice if she discovered it. No, it was best to let her think the worst.

  The crate resisted his efforts to open it. Cursing, he moved the bar down to another point in the seam. The rest of the furniture should be in the house well before sunset. As soon as the job was done, he’d walk over to the public warehouse and see how the loading of tobacco progressed.

  They’d spent the last week rolling their many hogsheads there and collecting the crates of furniture. With no animals for pulling, the transfer of crates over the pock-ridden terrain had been long and arduous, with Drew, Josh, and the men all dragging borrowed flatbed wagons back and forth more times than he cared to remember.

  He’d decided that would be the last time he did any dragging of that magnitude. He would have a couple of extra weeks before planting commenced and he’d use those weeks to build himself a dock right at the bottom of the slope here.

  A tight bubble formed in his stomach, growing larger and larger while he tried to dismiss the fact that Connie would be gone and would never see his new dock, nor anything else, for that matter.

  He glanced up, the Indian boy’s rapid approach giving him pause. The boy had filled out since he last saw him, his arms and chest taking on a more refined edge. But that wasn’t what held his attention.

  It was the manner in which the boy approached. Ordinarily, he stood at the perimeter of the yard and waited until he was noticed.

  Of their own volition, Drew’s feet moved toward the Indian, each step quicker than the next until he matched the boy’s hurried lope. They met halfway. “What is it?” Drew asked in the native tongue.

  The young warrior hadn’t yet learned to guise his emotions as well as his adult counterparts. Still, it was hard to decipher other than the fact that the boy was troubled, maybe even torn.

  “What?” Drew repeated.

  The boy’s nostrils flared with each rapid intake of breath. His lips thinned. ”My leader, Opechancanough, grows old. And with age, so grows his bitterness. He speaks with great hatred for the white planters as they turn ancestral land into sot weed. Again and again Powhatans die from white man’s disease and from white man’s anger.”

  A shadow of alarm touched Drew as he translated the words within his mind. “White man’s anger? Someone has died from white man’s anger?”

  A steely light entered the boy’s eyes. “One of my brothers take ground nuts and tuckahoe from land once ours but now claimed by your John Emmett.”

  Unease swept through Drew. “And did Emmett detain the next available Indian for the paying of compensation as agreed upon between your chief and mine?”

  The young warrior’s jaw tensed. “John Emmett killed the next Powhatan he see.”

  Needlelike pricks spread from Drew’s scalp to his toes. “Sweet, merciful God.”

  “Opechancanough set forth big plan. My brothers fan out through our overtaken land and approach the white planter with no weapons or war paint. Upon entry into the homes, they attack with whatever implement at hand, slaying all, then burning their dwellings with the dead and wounded inside.”

  Drew’s heart slammed within his ribcage, then accelerated in tempo, each beat faster and harder than the next. “When?”

  “Now.”

  No! Panic surged through him, gnawing at his throat. He grasped the boy’s forearm, squeezing. “My wife?”

  “You must go to her. Quickly. My brothers move toward there even now.”

  Drew whirled around, barreling up the hill toward the big house.

  “White Coon?” the youth called after him.

  Drew spun back to the boy, his chest heaving.

  “We are enemies,” the young warrior said in his guttural language. “If we meet again, it will mean death for one of us.”

  Drew nodded. “So be it. And thank you.” Turning his back again, he sprinted to the house.

  “Josh! Joooosh!”

  His brother and the other men poured out the front door.

  “Indian attack! Quickly, to Grandma and Nellie!”

  Without another word, Josh grabbed a pry bar and raced toward his sister’s home.

  “Thomas! Take two men and get to the public warehouses! Hurry!” He tossed the remaining men pry bars, hammers, and anything else he’d happened to grab on his flight up the slope. “Isaac, sound a warning to the east!”

  Isaac caught a hammer and headed out with a companion.

  “You two, to the west! And make haste! There’s not a moment to spare!”

  No one asked him how he knew, no one asked him for details--they simply took the orders and executed them.

  Denouncing himself a fool for having no guns in the new house, he clutched the remaining pry bar in his hand and outstripped the wind in an effort to reach Connie and Sally. He leapt o
ver tree roots, plowed through overgrown brush that whipped against him, and focused on reaching the cottage rather than on what might take place if he were too late.

  Please, God, please. Let me not be too late!

  The distance between the big house and the cottage had never seemed so far. He pushed himself even harder, unaware of the protests his body made.

  He was closer now and neither saw nor smelled smoke. A good sign. Please, God, please.

  Pebbles sprayed from beneath his boots, sweat plastered his shirt to his chest, his hair fell loose from its leather binding. Almost there, God. Almost there. Hold on, Connie! He accelerated, thoughts of Connie and brutal Indians consuming his mind.

  Just one more bend. He made no effort to disguise his approach but exploded into the clearing, a bloodcurdling scream on his lips as he sighted the Powhatan ready to torch his cottage.

  He rushed the Indian, driving the pry bar against the warrior’s wrist, sending the torch flying. Drew followed the lever’s momentum, whirling around with it full circle before slamming it into the Indian’s head. The pry bar swung from Drew’s grasp upon contact, shooting white heat up his arm.

  The Powhatan careened and then fell to the ground. Drew checked his temptation to run into the cottage, forcing himself to first make sure the Powhatan would not rise again. He reached down for the Indian’s neck. The warrior’s arm flashed up, grabbing Drew, kicking him, and tossing him backward before he had a chance to react.

  Then the Indian was on top of him, encircling his throat with a vengeance. Drew butted the Powhatan’s arms. The pressure against his throat increased.

  He clawed at the man’s face, flesh collecting beneath his nails. The pressure increased.

  The warrior’s tight-lipped grimace hovering above him faded in and out of view. Drew gasped for breath. His ears began to ring.

  He was going to die. Connie! Sally! No. Not yet. He couldn’t die yet. He had to breathe. God, help me! Help me!

  The crackling of the fiery torch penetrated the fog within his brain. The torch. The torch. The fire from the torch. He could hear it. Feel it. Almost taste it upon his lips.