Mattie looked bewildered. She opened her mouth and closed again. But she was about to trot obediently to her cabin when the captain’s booming voice again intervened. “The lady will stay on deck if she chooses,” he directed. “And so will you, sir, until your temper has cooled.”
Arthur looked as if he were going to be sick, and Mattie shrank away from him. Several women left their husbands’ sides to rally round and, despite her aching jaw, she was soon drawn into conversation. A pair of spinsters, the Leighton sisters, homeward bound for Philadelphia after a vacation visiting a married sister in Jamaica, joined the group.
“The wind has fallen off. Do you suppose we will be becalmed?” asked one of them.
“I hope so,” said Mattie fervently before she thought, and both sisters gave her commiserating looks.
Poor little bride, those sympathetic looks said. At least she is under the captain’s protection now—but anything could happen to her when they reach Philadelphia. They were attracted to Mattie the way they were attracted to lost cats. She was the talk of the ship and there was much behind-hand talk of “rescuing” her—idle chatter for the most part; Mattie was but a shipboard diversion for most of the ladies, to be forgotten even as the ship docked.
Not so with the sisters Leighton, who knew a lost kitten when they saw one. Before two days were up, when the ship lay becalmed on a glassy ocean, mirror bright, they had formed a Plan. It was Sarah Leighton who suggested tentatively to Mattie that Arthur might have trouble finding a ship in Philadelphia willing to take him to New Orange.
“Arthur now insists we are not going to New Orange, but to Boston,” mumbled Mattie miserably. “I do not know where we are going.”
“Perhaps he needs time to make up his mind,” suggested Penitence consolingly. “When he has had time to think about it, surely enemy territory will offer little attraction!”
It offered the attraction of lustrous Anna Smith, but Mattie was too humiliated to tell these kindly ladies about that.
“Yes,” echoed Sarah, “and accommodations are very scarce in Philadelphia. I doubt me he will be able to find a room.”
Mattie gave the elder Leighton sister a gloomy look. She was wondering if Captain Rodman could be persuaded to take her back to Bermuda with him—if indeed he was voyaging back to Bermuda!
“It might be best, my dear, for you to stay with us while your husband makes up his mind and finds a ship for you to leave on,” suggested Sarah. “Our cottage is very small indeed, but there is a trundle bed in our bedroom that could be pulled out—there would only be room for you, of course, but your husband would have no trouble finding shared accommodations in one of the inns catering to travelers. I’m told the men all pile in together, sometimes three or four to a bed—sometimes they even sleep by the fire in the common room.”
Mattie looked up alertly. She was being offered refuge from Arthur, at least for a while! “I would be afraid to mention it to him,” she said slowly. “But perhaps if one of you ladies would suggest it, he might take kindly to the offer.”
The Leighton sisters exchanged triumphant glances. Their offer, if accepted, would give that young hothead a chance to simmer down and to realize that it was ridiculous to drag his little bride to enemy-held New Orange in times like these!
It was Penitence who brought word of Arthur’s assent to Mattie. “He was a bit surly about it,” she admitted. “But I really thought that on the whole he was relieved when I pointed out to him how crowded were the inns.”
Mattie, who had been living under a cloud, afraid to eat, almost afraid to speak when alone in the cabin with Arthur, brightened. Arthur was to her a man of mysterious moods and rages, but perhaps her own admonitions had borne fruit, perhaps Arthur had realized at last the madness of pursuing Brett Danforth’s bride into Dutch-held territory. Perhaps he had struck her only out of frustration, perhaps they were really going to Boston after all—and perhaps Arthur, living temporarily away from her in Philadelphia while he sought passage, would change, soften. Did not the heroes of the romances she read do that? Her young brow furrowed as she tried to remember which ones had.
But Mattie was wrong about Arthur’s reason for allowing her to stay with the Leighton sisters while he put up at an inn. It had occurred to Arthur that by doing so he could temporarily free himself from the shackles of marriage. At the inn he could noise it around that he was single—and rich. Then if there was a handsome piece of womanflesh about, he would have the better chance or seducing her, for he could fall back on promises of marriage to lure her to bed if all else failed—and in that Mattie would have her uses after all, for at the last minute he could always present her as a barrier to keeping his promises. He was already married! It was a potent defense!
He told Penitence that of course his destination was Boston—Mattie had misunderstood him, as she so often did—that was why he became irritated with her. And Penitence duly conveyed that cheerful information to Mattie who looked doubtful, and then hopeful—and then finally accepted it as true.
But if Mattie believed she was going directly to Boston, she was living in a fool’s paradise—Arthur intended to journey to Boston via New Orange even if he had to hire horses and struggle up the coast. And he meant to drag Mattie with him, for he could make use of her there in ways, that made his hard eyes glitter, just thinking about it.
Mattie would have fainted if she had guessed the uses for her that Arthur had in mind.
BOOK II
Georgiana
A toast to our island beauty
Adrift on a ship of sighs,
For a man could read fathoms and fathoms
In Anna’s turquoise eyes!
Part One
The Counterfeit Heiress
The curtain now is ripped aside,
The tragic past’s dark veil.
Now she knows why he married her—
And why his plan must fail!
New Orange, New Netherland,
1673
Chapter 4
Northward over brilliant seas swept the Dame Fortune. It was a fast voyage for the winds were favorable throughout. But not so fast that Anna did not have time to tell Brett everything about her short life, from her childhood in the beachside hut with her mysterious aunt, Eliza Smith, through the idyllic interval as “daughter of the house” at Mirabelle and all the subsequent troubles that had beset her. He listened intently and held her close, stroked her hair, and if she grew too pensive, remembering, teased her into a laughing excitement that swept all the cobwebs of the past away—and made love to her.
But although Anna, deep in his arms, sometimes asked him muffled questions, he sidestepped them all. He never told her anything about himself.
Anna told herself she did not care. She had a whole lifetime to learn about this man’s past, and meantime she was exploring with him all the splendors of love.
By day she found time to comfort Floss, her lovely silver mare, for Floss was bewildered by life on shipboard, and nervous. It was only Anna’s soothing voice, Anna’s soft loving touch on that silver mane and sleek quivering body that could quiet the excitable Arabian mare.
“I wish I’d brought Coral along,” sighed Anna one day.
Brett, who at that moment was lying half across Anna in the bunk with his mouth just then about to nuzzle a pink nipple that peeked at him from her night rail, lifted his head. And then a dark eyebrow. Quizzically.
“Who?”
“Coral. My cat.” She ran her fingers combingly through the dark hair that fell down over his face and spilled over her breast like heavy silk.
“Oh. You’ll find another. There are plenty of cats at Windgate.” His voice was lost as his lips found their originally intended goal.
“Not like Coral,” said Anna staunchly. She shivered as Brett’s stroking tongue tingled her nipple to hardness. “Coral is beautiful and fluffy—with the daintiest paws.”
“Your paws are dainty too,” he muttered, turning his attention to her othe
r nipple.
Anna tried unsuccessfully to ignore him. “She has the softest blue green eyes!”
“So have you!” He ran a questing hand down her leg and caused her to catch her breath.
Anna felt a gurgle of laughter well up in her. “You’re outrageous! We’re talking about my cat." She wriggled, for Brett’s playful assaults were causing little tremors of feeling to cascade through her body. “She has a lovely waving tail and—”
“Well, we must investigate the similarity!”
“Brett!” Anna was laughing but her palm was fitted over his naked left chest in a mock effort to hold him off. Beneath the sheets their legs skirmished joyously. “Coral is—special,” she managed to gasp.
With his strong fingers elapsed firmly around her slender squirming hips, Brett lifted his lips enough to say, "Then if Coral is so special, why didn’t you bring her along? You brought your horse!”
Anna felt his long leg slide by and gave a playful lurch to avoid for the moment his masculine hardness. She was fast learning that anticipation worked wonders. “I suppose,” she admitted in a gasping uneven voice, “it was because I was afraid to go back to Mirabelle—after stealing the clothes.”
That brought him upright, his grasp on her soft hips suddenly released. His gray eyes were very level.
Looking into that suddenly grave face, Anna was glad she had not added “and the candlesticks,” as she had been about to. “Sue promised to come and get Coral and take her to Waite Hall and take care of her,” she volunteered in an attempt to divert him. But he was not to be diverted.
“Clothes?” he demanded frostily. “Tell me what clothes you stole!”
“Well, the clothes were mine,” she hastened to assure him. “Had been mine, anyway. All things Papa Jamison had bought me. Bernice—I told you about Papa Jamison’s new wife who took everything from me after he had his stroke and couldn’t stop her—was altering all my clothes to fit her two daughters. But I managed to snatch a dress to be married in—and two chemises and a yellow satin petticoat and two pairs of slippers. Otherwise,” she added plaintively, “I’d have had to be married in homespun and torn lace!”
Above her that long body relaxed. Brett wouldn’t have liked being married to a thief. At times he had—fleetingly—considered being married to a wanton, for Erica Hulft at her best was an entrancing wench, not lightly to be put aside—but a thief would have been too much.
He smiled down at the girl he had married in such haste. A lovely thing she was, lying there with her bright hair spread out gloriously around her piquant face. A pulse beat rapidly at the base of her white throat and her turquoise eyes were wide and sparkling and riveted to his. His gaze roved up and down her naked form, enchantingly displayed before him. She looked so young, so vulnerable lying there, with her lovely face—indeed her whole body—flushing rosily at his calm inspection. Lovely and untouched and innocent—and perhaps going to be hurt.
But not yet! Today and tomorrow he could shield her from that hurt—perhaps for many tomorrows. He sank slowly back upon her yielding softness, pressed a gentle kiss upon her softly parted expectant lips, and gathered her into his arms with such a fierce tenderness that Anna was shaken by it. Shaken and made starry-eyed by the love, the passion, the burning desire that transmitted itself to her thrillingly, wordlessly, as Brett swept her along with him on a bright wild river of desire, to deposit her at last on the golden shores of fulfillment and content.
For Anna, locked in her bridegroom’s embraces, this long voyage north on the Dame Fortune was a dream of love—a delightful dream from which she waked abruptly when the ship docked in New Orange and she saw the rectangular fort and the big windmill that dominated the landscape and the whole panorama of the crowded Dutch town spread out before her.
“To think,” she murmured, “that such a short time ago it was, English! I am afraid I will forget and call it New York.”
“Do not do so,” Brett cautioned her. “For I am considered a probable traitor already. Any small spark might ignite a fire which could blow Windgate and all my holdings right out from under me.”
Anna knew that Windgate was the name of his estate on the Hudson. “I will be careful,” she promised. “Is wampum really the coinage here?” She felt curious about a land where strings of beads could pass for money.
“For small transactions only. This is a busy market town and there is not enough coin to go around. Barter is as common as paying for goods in coin.”
“It will be fun to browse in the shops, for you tell me goods come here from everywhere—even the Far East.”
“Aye, the East India merchantmen.”
“I will buy me a rug from China!” she laughed.
“There are several already at Windgate,” he told her.
Anna opened her eyes in surprise. Rugs from China were rare and nearly priceless. She had been but joking when she had said she would purchase one.
To her surprise, Brett did not take rooms for them at an inn. Instead he told her his fast river sloop was waiting for them. Scarce had they unloaded Floss—and Anna insisted on seeing to that herself, for she did not want the dainty mare to be frightened by strangers—than they were both hurried directly on board the River Witch, where a big Dutchman swept her a delighted bow and said in a deep baritone, “Welkom aan boord!” But Anna had little time to respond to his greeting, for the crew were already loading on their baggage and Brett was motioning to her impatiently, asking her what items she would like brought to their cabin.
“Are we then to go immediately upriver?” asked Anna, when the luggage had been stowed where she wanted it. Her voice was wistful, for she had hoped to give Floss a chance to try her “land legs” and for herself she had wanted to explore New Orange. She could see that it was far larger than St. George and wonderfully different with its clusters of huddled yellow brick houses that sported steep step gables and interesting weathervanes. The town, she had noticed, had a fascinating jumble of shops, and streets where Brett told her canals had once run when the Dutch ruled it before. On her way to the sloop she had heard the languages of many nations spoken and observed with delight some tall buckskinned Indians mingling with the crowd.
“No, not immediately, but we will make our home on board the sloop. Its accommodations are more comfortable than those at the inn.”
“Oh, I’m glad we aren’t leaving right away!” Anna turned a bright face to him, tossed her hat on the bunk and ran her fingers through her hair luxuriously. “Wait till I comb my hair and you can take me sightseeing!”
“Not today. I am going ashore and I will send back a cobbler with a selection of slippers and shoes. You will need shoes and pattens and boots, for the winters are cold at Windgate.”
“Oh, but can’t that wait until tomorrow?”
He shook his head. “I will also be bringing a seamstress who will speak only Dutch—you will have to let me translate.”
“A seamstress? Oh, you mean for the clothes you brought to Bermuda to woo your unknown bride?” Anna laughed. “That can wait until we reach Windgate. Surely there will be some woman who sews tolerably well who can alter them there.”
“There are several in my employ who sew better than tolerably well.”
“Well, then?”
“The alterations I speak of must be done at once. I realize the gown is both too wide in the waist and perhaps also too long—you will have noticed that dresses are worn rather short here among the sophisticated Dutch.”
Anna had indeed noticed a far greater display of ankle in New Orange than was generally on view in St. George. “What alterations need to be done in such a hurry?” she wondered.
For answer Brett strode across the room and opened a small, brass-fitted trunk that had been waiting for them in the cabin when their luggage was brought in.
She had assumed it contained Brett’s clothing, which he wore when making the journey up and down the river.
He held up a gown and Anna came forward, marveling.
It was of elaborate white satin brocade, stiff with embroidery and garnished with seed pearls, the whole of it overlaid by sheer white lace, almost tissue thin. She could see a petticoat of shimmering white silk lying in the chest.
“There is also a chemise,” he told her. “The finest I could procure in New Orange. But for shoes and stockings and gloves, I had no idea of the size. I will send the cobbler around and you will choose—whatever else you select—a pair of white satin slippers that will fit you, whilst I pick up some white silk stockings and white kid gloves. You will love the gloves of New Orange, for the Dutch pride themselves on wearing beautiful gloves. I promise to bring you the most elaborate pair of white gloves I can find—oh, and wear these in your hair.” He took something from his doublet. “The Dutch are extravagant when it comes to dress; they will appreciate them.” He handed her some little gold brilliants to wear in her hair.
Anna, who had been so taken aback that she had not spoken, now found her voice. “But—but this is a wedding gown, Brett,” she protested. “And we—”
“Are already married, you are about to say?”
“Yes.”
“But we will be wed again, no later than this afternoon if I can make the arrangements.”
“Married? Again!”
“A Dutch wedding this time—we have spoken our vows under the English flag, now we will do the same beneath Dutch colors.”
“I do not understand, Brett.”
He shrugged. “We live under Dutch law here.” And when Anna still looked mystified, he elaborated. “I wish all to know this is a legal marriage. Having another ceremony here in New Orange will proclaim it.”
A legal marriage? But that made no sense. People got married wherever they chose—they did not repeat the ceremony when they changed locations! Unless... unless Brett had had other loves— indeed he had mentioned one! Perhaps some other woman had lived here as “wife” to the “English patroon.”...
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