by Deeanne Gist
Drew took the bundle, loosening the bow secured about the numerous packets. All were addressed to one Skelly Torrence Morrow, and all were from women. Drew slowly lifted his gaze to his father-in-law’s smug one.
“They were willed to her.” The old gaffer patted his round stomach. “Enjoy.”
Hurried footfalls from the stairwell interrupted any response Drew might have had. He spun around. Sally, now four years old, bounded through the door.
“Drew! We have a baby!”
He scooped Sally up into his arms, his heart accelerating as he barely retained hold of the correspondence in his hand. Grandma entered at a more sedate pace, then came to an abrupt halt. “Well, by heaven, if this isn’t a surprise. God ye good den, Randall.” She turned to Drew. “It’s a girl and Constance is fine.”
A girl. Connie was fine. Oh, thank God. Thank God.
Excitement, jubilation, and triumph exploded within him. He wanted to shout from the rooftops. He wanted to bang on his chest. He wanted to rush abovestairs and see for himself.
Instead, he turned to his father-in-law, but before he could say a word, Lord Randall whipped himself to attention, adding a good two inches to his height. “Lady Elizabeth!”
Drew blinked. Lady Elizabeth? He scrutinized his grandmother with narrowed eyes. “You know him?”
She smiled. “Why, of course. I broke Randall’s heart once many a year ago.”
Broke his heart? The old man looked as if he’d been poleaxed.
Drew’s focus snapped back to the issue at hand. “Connie’s fine, you say?”
“Oh, yes. Just fine. Go on. You can go see her now.”
He hesitated, glancing at the stairs.
Grandma smiled. “Go on. Randall and I have things to discuss, and she’s asking for you.”
Drew gave Sally a huge smile and spun her around until they reached the stairwell. Her delighted squeal filled the hall. After setting her on the floor, he ruffled her hair, took a deep breath, and raced up the steps two at a time.
Constance pivoted her head toward the door in time to see her husband hovering about its threshold. “Hello.”
He moved into the room, his well-muscled body hesitant, his thick onyx hair mussed, his face showing signs of fatigue. He surveyed the disarray within their chamber, then focused his attention back on her. “Are you all right?”
She patted the tick beside her. “I’m wonderful.”
He inched closer, stopping just short of the polished mahogany bed. He was peering at the squirming mass swaddled in her arms. “Grandma said it’s a girl.”
“Yes.” Constance moved the blanket away from the babe’s face so he could better see her.
His eyes widened, his Adam’s apple bobbed, his face paled. “Oh, Lord.”
Constance suppressed a smile. “What are you hiding behind your back?”
He looked startled, then returned his gaze to the babe. “I want a closer look first.”
Constance laid the bundle against her shoulder. “And I want to see what’s behind your back.”
“These are for you.” He pulled his hands in front of him.
He handed her a stack of correspondence, tattered and worn along its edges. The moment she read Uncle Skelly’s name inscribed across the first one, she knew what it was. “Where did you get these?”
“They were willed to you. It appears you are now the official editor of The Ladies’ Mathematical Diary.”
Confused and afraid to allow even the possibility to cross her mind, she flipped through the many packets. “But...how?”
Drew answered not and she looked up at him again.
“Would you like to be the editor of The Ladies’ Mathematical Diary?” he asked.
She held her breath. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“No,” he said, his expression softening. “No, I wouldn’t.”
A kernel of excitement stirred within her. “But what will everyone say? What if they disapprove and take you to task for my presumptuousness?”
He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, they’ll never believe a woman could solve such puzzles. They’ll just assume I’m humoring you by editing it myself and allowing you to put your name to it.”
She raised her eyebrows. “But you wouldn’t be.”
He humphed. “They’ll never hear me admit it.”
“I will,” she said, a smile curving her lips.
“They’ll believe me, not you. Now let me see our baby.”
She allowed a soft chuckle to escape.
“Daughter?”
Constance turned toward the voice in the doorway, and the world came to a halt. “Papa?”
He nodded his head once.
She handed the babe up to Drew, then opened her arms wide. “Papa!” He entered, bending over to return her embrace.
“Oh, Papa! Whatever are you doing here?”
He straightened, pulling at his doublet. “I received a rather frantic message from my daughter some time back. This message contained tales of kidnappings and forced marriages”--he quirked a brow--“and annulments.”
She slanted a glance at Drew, but he was paying them no mind, his attention totally captured by the infant cradled in the crook of his arm. She took a moment to relish the picture they made before turning back to her father. “I changed my mind.”
“You were kidnapped not?”
“I was kidnapped.”
“You were forced not into marriage?”
“I was forced into marriage.”
“You want not an annulment?”
“I want not an annulment.”
“Why?”
She now had Drew’s full regard. She smiled tenderly at him. “Because I love my husband. I love the colonies. And there is nowhere on God’s green earth I’d rather be.”
“He wants a fifteen thousand pound settlement.”
“Fifteen thousand!”
“He says you’re a great deal of trouble.”
She hesitated for one startled moment before choking back a laugh. “I am.”
“I thought so.” He leveled Drew a look. “If I pay you the fifteen thousand, do you swear to keep her?”
Drew reared back his head. “Forever?”
Her father scowled. “Forever.”
“Oh, I suppose.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “If I must.”
She bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing outright.
“You will sign the papers this time?” her father asked her.
With an effort, she sobered her expression. “I will sign.”
Seemingly satisfied, he indicated the babe in Drew’s arms with a tilt of his head. “I advise against educating her. Will cause you nothing but grief if you do.”
Drew nodded gravely. “I quite agree.” He followed her father to the chamber door, closing it behind the man. When Drew turned back around, his shoulders shook and a smile wreathed his face.
She returned his smile. “That was really quite awful of you.”
He moved forward, blithely unrepentant. “He deserved it. He shouldn’t have been near so lax with your well-being.”
“He did the best he could.”
“I disagree. But I don’t really want the money. I say we settle it on our children.”
Her breath caught. “Oh, Drew, that would be lovely.” She patted the tick. He settled down next to her, laying their daughter in her lap, then peeled back the layers of swathing. He examined her tiny toes, rubbed her little tummy, and smoothed her eyebrow with his fingertip. “She’s beautiful.”
Love swelled within her, filling every corner of her being. “She has red hair.”
He ruffled her startlingly bright downy hair, then cupped her head, placing a kiss on her nose. “It’s auburn.”
“It’s red.”
Their daughter scrunched up her hands and legs, waving them wildly in the air. He opened his palm, allowing the babe to kick his hand. “Is she like a puppy?”
Constance choked. “What!”
“Will she get her spots later?”
Laughter bubbled up from within her as she playfully whacked him on the shoulder. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid she will. As soon as the sun touches her skin, the freckles will appear.”
A delicious two-dimple grin spread across his face. “Good. I find I’m rather partial to freckled redheads.” The babe squalled and he shushed her while rubbing her tummy. “I want to give her a name now. I want not to wait until she’s three.”
Her heart full, she fingered the bluish-black curls covering his bent head. “Then let’s name her Mary Elizabeth O’Connor, after Mary and Grandma.”
His gaze collided with hers and after a beat, he smiled. “And so it shall be.”
Leaning over, he captured her lips with his, and she encircled his neck, rejoicing in the love God had bestowed upon them.
She was a woman who had it all. A bit of her past through Uncle Skelly’s diary, an anointed present through her fine marriage, and a promise of future blessings through the fruit of their love, even now wiggling within the shelter of their embrace.
And sending up a heartfelt prayer, she thanked Him, for behold, it was very good.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many Virginia colonists truly did secure themselves a bride for a payment of 120 pounds of tobacco. The purpose of this practice was to induce the men of the colony to remain, build homes, and raise families--thus ensuring England’s presence in the colony. At first, “young and uncorrupt maidens” (usually spinsters and widows) volunteered for this unique duty. But the Crown was only able to round up a hundred or so volunteers, while the demand was for significantly more. So the government eventually resorted to transporting female prisoners. Every so often, an unethical ship captain would kidnap an innocent woman of high moral fiber and transport and sell her. Thus the premise for A Bride Most Begrudging.
The first edition of The Ladies’ Diary was compiled by Englishman John Tipper, a schoolmaster who taught science and mathematics. Inexpensive and compact, it was the first almanac on the market expressly targeting a female audience and wildly popular. Though I have Constance using it in our story, the real Diary did not make an appearance until 1704. Many of the puzzles and solutions used in our novel were taken verbatim from the pamphlet, as was its preface, which was written by Tipper’s successor, Henry Beighton. Other puzzles came from Mathematical Wrinkles by Samuel I. Jones, published in 1912.
If you want to go back in time, there are a few choice spots you can visit to actually experience life in the seventeenth century. I modeled Drew and Constance’s big house after Bacon’s Castle, which is located in Surrey County, Virginia. It was built in the mid 1600s and is the oldest documented brick house in English North America. It is America’s only surviving high Jacobean-style structure, and visitors are given warm and personal attention. Still, I’m a little reticent to mention it because if it doesn’t look like what you visualized, that means I didn’t do a very good job describing it! Additions have been made over the years, so keep in mind it is the original building that I based Drew’s house on. At the time of going to press, information about Bacon’s Castle was available at 804-357-5976 or at www.apva.org. To walk through wattle-and-daub cottages, with costumed staff performing seventeenth-century tasks, visit Jamestown Settlement. The Godiah Spray Tobacco Plantation is a living history tobacco farm of the 1660s, with actors dressed in authentic period costume reenacting the life of the tobacco farmer, complete with livestock and crops. It is located in Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland. Call 800-SMC-1634 or go to www.stmaryscity.org.
As so often is the case in the history of our nation, battles over the land upon which we encroached took many lives. In 1622 and again in 1644, the Powhatans rose up to protect their sacred home. And the colonists fought back. I very carefully researched these particular events and portrayed them as accurately as possible in the fabric of my novel. The massacre of 1622 cost the lives of almost 350 settlers and contributed to a famine and epidemic that killed another five or six hundred. It also brought on a counterattack against the Indians, in which scores of settlers and hundreds of Indians perished. The massacre of 1644 was almost as destructive as the first. These confrontations might have lasted for many years if Sir William Berkley had not captured Opechancanough. Berkley planned to take the Indian chief to England as an exhibit of the healthiness and long life of the American natives, but one of the soldiers shot him in the back. Opechancanough’s successor made a bid for peace and renounced title to the land between the James and York rivers in 1646, two years after the events depicted in this novel.