Nicolas, who had been knocked offstride by the clumsy stranger who had blundered into his scabbard and had nearly lost his hat in the process, was not in a mood to be charitable. His hard gaze raked his adversary. A veritable peacock the fellow was, with red satin lining his full slashed green sleeves, expensive Brussels lace at his throat, and frosty point lace edging the white lawn boothose of that leg he was hopping about on. New that lace looked to be—whilst he, Nicolas, was having to rely exclusively on starched and carefully mended old boothose! And this dainty fellow wanted him to give ground? "If ye brush me again,” he warned the stranger in a menacing voice, “I’ll crack that shinbone for ye with my boot!” His blue eyes narrowed and his weight shifted to one foot as he considered taking that route on the instant.
“Have done, young sirs! No need to be brawling!” The stout elderly Dutch innkeeper hurried over as fast as his girth would permit him.
The gentleman in green satin gave Nicolas an angry look, marred by a pair of broken front teeth. The effect was sinister but it seemed not to impress the golden fellow who confronted him. He was tempted to unsheathe the dress sword he carried and slash the golden fellow to pieces here and now for his insolence but he bethought himself in time that this was not Boston, he had no powerful friends in this Dutch town, and the glint in those hard blue eyes no less than the serviceable look of that sword were such as to inspire caution even in such a hothead as himself. He was even a bit glad when the stout innkeeper bustled between them.
“Now, then, gentleman, no harm done,” cried the innkeeper cheerfully. “I’m sure this gentleman who just bumped into you, Mynheer van Rappard, meant you no offense. He is in haste to get him to Wey Gat.” His gaze on Nicolas was bland. “It would seem he has business there with the English patroon.”
Nicolas’s weight shifted abruptly to both feet. He gave Klaus, the innkeeper, a sharp glance. Klaus was in his pay for any information to be gleaned that might help his cause—and Klaus was trying to tell him something.
“Wey Gat, you say?” Nicolas turned a genial smile onto the newcomer.
“I know nothing of Wey Gat,” snapped the green satin fellow, who was still hopping about on one foot, gingerly holding his bruised shin. “I am seeking a bastard named Brett Danforth and this fellow here”—he indicated the innkeeper with a nod of his head— “has told me he lives upriver.” Arthur had been so relieved to have this verified that he had been dashing out to make arrangements to sail upriver, when he had crashed into Nicolas.
“I like your choice of words,” murmured Nicolas, warming to any man who would openly call Brett Danforth a bastard. “Here, have I hurt you?” He was all solicitude now, peering anxiously down at the shinbone he had so lately threatened to break. “Come, the least you can do is to let me make reparations! A tankard of ale? Or do you prefer wine?”
“Well.” Ungraciously. “I have not all that much time, for I must make arrangements with some riverboat to take me upriver.”
“Perhaps I can help you with that. I am well acquainted here, am I not, Klaus?”
Klaus beamed an assent tempered with relief that these two tindery gentlemen had not come to blows in his front door, thereby interfering with the passage of customers coming to drink deep of his stock of wine, bought cheap from the buccaneers.
Nicolas overrode Arthur’s protests and even as he spoke he was shepherding his newfound friend, now limping slightly, to a table in the corner, farthest from the tall-hatted group, all of whom were showing interest in this tableau.
“Sit you down, sir," he said heartily. “I am Nicolas van Rappard. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”
“Arthur Kincaid of Boston,” said the newcomer sulkily, allowing himself to be propelled almost forcibly onto a bench. “And I will take a glass of wine—if any here be drinkable,” he added in a disagreeable voice.
The innkeeper, who had been following along, stiffened upon overhearing that remark but Nicolas grinned and winked at him. “Two glasses of your best port, Klaus,” he said, and as the innkeeper grunted and shuffled away, he turned back to Arthur with a winning smile. “And what quarrel have you with the English patroon, may I ask?”
“I do not know him for a patroon,” declared Arthur in a loud blustering voice, for he remembered only too well how he had been herded along humiliatingly at the point of Danforth’s blade. “1 know him for a poltroon!”
“Brave words,” murmured Nicolas, aware of raised brows and attentive ears among the pipe-smoking gentlemen to whom that remark had carried. “And that sword you carry, I take it, fits your hand well enough that you can back them up?”
It was a bland statement but it brought Arthur up short. “I expect to haul Danforth before a magistrate,” he announced haughtily. “For stealing my property from me.”
His property? For a moment Nicolas, so used to thinking of the property at Windgate as his property—likewise stolen by Danforth, as he liked to think, froze to stillness and his blue gaze turned frosty. But hot on the heels of that thought came the realization that it must be some other property Kincaid was talking about.
“Aye, Danforth’s known for his taking ways,” he agreed affably, as the innkeeper, whose barmaid was off sick, banged two blackjacks and a bottle down. Nicolas poured a generous portion of port into Arthur’s black leather tankard and one for himself before asking, “And what did he steal from you, sir?”
“A woman!”
Nicolas nearly choked on his wine. “The devil you say!” His blue eyes began to sparkle. “Your betrothed, was she?”
“My bondswoman!” Despite his lisp, fury made Arthur’s voice crackle.
“Ah—a bondswoman.” This was not as interesting as Nicolas had hoped. He would have preferred the lady in question to have been aristocratic and—married. Something he could have called merrily to Georgiana’s attention. He sighed and took another drink.
“And he had the gall to marry her!” Arthur’s lisping voice cracked with rage.
Nicolas’s wine went down the wrong way. Choking, he regarded Arthur Kincaid with blue eyes gone round with shock. “He married her, you say?” he gasped as soon as he could manage any words at all.
“Aye!”
“And what would this lady’s name be?”
“Anna Smith is her name and Danforth married her without my permission!”
“Did he now?” Nicolas was fascinated. Was Danforth then a bigamist? Had he married some other woman in Boston? If he had, then Georgiana was not legally tied to him and would turn her back on him as soon as she heard, no doubt! He leaned forward, concentrating on this surprising fellow from Boston. “And when did all this happen?” he asked.
“A few weeks ago in Bermuda.”
Nicolas almost choked again. In Bermuda! But the new bride of Windgate was from Bermuda!
“Faith, he’s a man of parts,” he muttered. “Marrying two Bermuda brides almost simultaneously!”
“I know not what you’re talking about,” said Arthur, vexed “Two Bermuda brides? I know of but one.”
“Well, Danforth has on the premises a Bermuda bride he married right here in New Orange some weeks past.”
“Bah,” said Arthur. “It could not be. He would not have been so bold!”
“Oh, I assure you he did marry her. A number of wealthy burghers were in attendance on that occasion. I don’t doubt one or two of them are in this very room.” He swung his head around to have a look.
Arthur was dumbfounded at this calm assertion. If Danforth had married recently in New Orange, then surely Anna must have died on the voyage! For one could not imagine a spirited wench like Anna countenancing bigamous nuptials! A new thought occurred to him.
“What does she look like?” he asked in an altered voice.
He had come to the right place for a description.
“She is a most lustrous lady,” Nicolas sighed. “Having once seen her, none could possibly mistake her. She has golden hair as fine as spun silk—so silky a man can scarce
resist running his hands through it, and luminous turquoise eyes, and a waist a man could span with his hands—”
“ ’Tis the same,” interrupted Arthur.
“I think not. This lady calls herself Georgiana van Rappard—not Anna Smith.”
Arthur shook his head irritably. “I care not what name she now calls herself. She is Anna Smith of Mirabelle Plantation.”
“Of Mirabelle Plantation, you say? Then assuredly she must be the right one, for this lady claims to be the heiress to Mirabelle.”
Arthur spat out a bitter laugh. “Heiress? She is no heiress! She was a bondswoman’s niece who was taken in and treated as a daughter of the house at Mirabelle, to be sure, but when Jamison died he left the property to his new wife, who has two daughters of her own.”
So regal Georgiana van Rappard was actually Anna Smith, bondswoman. Stunned as he was, Nicolas was still forced to admire the cleverness with which she had fooled him, toyed with him. How she must have been laughing at him! He squirmed at the thought.
“Have you proof,” he murmured, “to back up your claim that Danforth’s wife is your bondswoman?”
“Of course.” Arthur’s hauteur was somewhat marred by his lisp. “I have her Articles of Indenture in my trunk and with her own signature affixed!”
Signed by her! Nicolas made a slight gesture as if to brush away cobwebs. He was having difficulty imagining the elegant mistress of Windgate as anybody’s bondswoman, least of all this arrogant lisping dandy who sat opposite.
He sat back and considered the handsome young man before him. Well dressed he certainly was, and truculent in manner. His story had a kind of wild sincerity... almost the ring of truth. But true or not, it was hard to imagine this strutting popinjay going up against the lean forceful patroon of Wey Gat.
“And how,” he asked bluntly, “do you propose to get her back?”
“I don’t propose to do it myself at all,” said Arthur in a lofty voice. “I merely propose to go upriver and discover if she is still cohabiting with him and, if so, to let the courts deal with the matter.”
“Oh, I can assure you she is still cohabiting,” chuckled Nicolas, enjoying Arthur’s choice of words. He was suddenly engulfed with amusement by a vision of Arthur Kincaid confronting the patroon of Windgate in his upriver lair. “I have recently spoken with the lady.” And at Arthur’s outraged look, he explained, “The lady’s husband is not too fond of me. On a recent visit he was so eager to speed me on my way, he furnished the sloop to help me depart!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am a guest of Danforth’s neighbors, the ten Haers,” elucidated Nicolas. “And I have some litigation pending with the English patroon.”
“Litigation?” demanded a puzzled Arthur.
“Yes—but not half so interesting as yours. Tell me just how you propose to wrest a man’s wife away from him, for I must admit the idea fascinates me.”
“She married without my permission, in the face of my strong opposition—and she has seven years yet to go as my bondswoman!”
“Yes, I realize an indentured servant cannot marry without her master’s permission, but still—the deed is done. You cannot undo it.”
“I can take the girl away with me, for the papers Danforth forced me to sign—”
“Papers?” Nicolas came alert.
“He forced me to sell him the wench. Under duress it was, at the point of a sword! Any court in the land would call it duress!”
“Some might even call it love. Of a desperate nature, of course,” murmured Nicolas, whose good spirits had been entirely restored by this rejuvenating conversation. “Still, he has papers, you say?”
Arthur’s handsome face reddened. “He flung some money at me and forced me to sign a receipt for her and for the horse.”
So Danforth had bought the silver mare too! God’s teeth, what a judge of horseflesh and womanflesh he was! Nicolas was forced to admire him almost as much as Georgiana. Buccaneering ways suited his adventurous nature far better than this litigation he was forced to go through to gain his ends.
“I am surprised that he did not demand the original Articles of Indenture,” he remarked.
“Oh, he did, but I told him that they were not at hand.”
“And he took your word?” Nicolas was astonished.
Arthur flushed again uncomfortably. “I told him I had torn them up in rage that she had run away from me.”
Nicolas inclined his head. “A clever lie,” he agreed.
“ ’Twas then that he made me write it out that I had sold her Articles to him.”
“Perhaps you would be better off to claim the papers you were forced to sign are a forgery,” suggested Nicolas, smiling. “And that you did not sign them at all.”
Arthur gave him a startled glance. “No-o-o, I cannot do that,” he admitted. "They were witnessed by Sue.”
“Sue?”
“My sister-in-law. She and Anna are old friends.” He was about to allude bitterly to the way Sue had helped Anna elude him when Nicolas murmured, “Ah, yes, Sue...I carried Georgiana a letter from Sue recently.”
Arthur's countenance grew livid. Sue’s letter had managed to precede him! It suddenly occurred to him that Sue’s letter must have been entrusted to the captain of the very ship that had brought him and Mattie to Philadelphia, and been handed on by him to some captain who had made a faster voyage! He almost choked with the inequity of it. “Those papers I was forced to write under duress are not valid,” he snarled. “They will not hold, I say!”
Nicolas tried to imagine a Dutch court—even one at odds with the English patroon—ordering the forced breakup of a marriage celebrated with such solemnity in New Orange—and could not. It would never happen, whatever this tense young man thought about it.
“Mynheer,” he said softly. “A word of warning. You step into a hornet’s nest if you go to Windgate—-for that is Danforth's stronghold. He will never let you take her—court order or no.” And at Arthur’s angry ejaculation, he raised a negligent hand. “But I think, mynheer, that there might be a way. Klaus,” he called, “do you have a private dining room available? My friend here and I have some matters to talk over.”
Klaus, the innkeeper, was silent as he ushered the two gentlemen into the one small private dining room his establishment boasted. He would have given his day’s profit to know what they were talking about in there, but after that first loud remark about a “poltroon,” Arthur had kept his voice as low as Nicolas’s and the clay-pipesmoking gentlemen had satisfied their curiosity no more than he. The pair of them talked for a long time in there and came out the best of friends, clapping each other heartily on the back.
Arthur Kincaid signaled the landlord with a regal gesture and took two rooms. “Your best,” he directed haughtily. “For my wife and myself.”
Nicolas’s golden brows elevated. “From the way you spoke about Mistress Anna Smith,” he muttered in surprise as the landlord went out to call someone to make the rooms ready, “I had somehow not imagined that you had brought your wife along.”
“Mattie is still aboard ship,” sighed Arthur. “She has been seasick the whole voyage. And that is another thing I lay at Anna Smith’s door,” he burst out. “She connived to force a distasteful marriage upon me—and then departed!”
Escaped, amended Nicolas silently. He knew nothing about what had transpired between her and Arthur, but he was certain that the beautiful bride of Windgate would never waste herself on such a petulant fellow as this!
“Then we are agreed on our course of action, mynheer?” Nicolas asked smoothly, successfully shielding his true opinion of Arthur. “Granted, ’twill take some contriving and you should bide here in New Orange whilst I look into what’s possible to be done, but if we pool our resources, we might both achieve our goals handily, do you not agree?”
Arthur agreed. He winced, for his boots hurt his feet. “I must to the ship,” he muttered, “to disembark Mattie and get her settled. And then
to buy me a new pair of boots. This cursed pair has worn blisters on my heels.”
“I’ll to the ship with you,” offered his newfound friend. “And I’ll be delighted to take your lady in tow and get her settled at the inn whilst you shop for boots, for the shops will be closing soon.”
“Closing? Oh, yes, I hadn’t noticed the time.” Arthur consulted a large expensive watch that drew an envious glance from Nicolas. “That is, if Mattie won’t be too much trouble?”
It was on the tip of Nicolas’s wicked tongue to say that other men’s wives were always some trouble but—on the whole—worth it, but he had the good sense to keep silent. If Arthur Kincaid wanted to believe that entertaining his young wife would be troublesome to Nicolas—so be it!
Chapter 24
It was with amazement that Nicolas viewed Arthur’s young wife when she stepped off the ship. She saw Arthur and waved. Her face brightened for as time had worn on since he left the ship, she had been half afraid that he had deserted her. In Bermuda that would have pleased her no end, but the captain and crew that had brought them here to this Dutch town were of a sort that made her flesh crawl. Arthur had been weeks making the arrangements and he had been charged a pretty penny for this voyage—he had even been made to pay for the painting of a Dutch name on the ship’s hull. Mattie had had plenty of time on board during a gale-swept voyage to resign herself to the fact that she was, willy-nilly, en route to New Orange, and now in sheer relief she left the vessel to step on this foreign shore with all the exuberance of a schoolgirl on holiday.
Somehow from Arthur’s deprecating tone and inflection when he spoke of his young wife, Nicolas had imagined Mattie to be hideously ugly, ungainly of figure, devoid of grace and charm—at the very least a shrew. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Mattie’s friends would barely have recognized her. Her plump figure seemed to have undergone a sea change—she was almost thin, for she had been so worried back home in Bermuda that she had been unable to eat, and so terrified of Arthur on the voyage aboard the Mary Louise—although he had not dared to lay a finger on her after that first attack on deck—that she had been able to hold nothing down. In Philadelphia Arthur had left her scrupulously alone while he spent his evenings with bawds and chambermaids, and Mattie had had a grand time visiting the elderly Leighton sisters, although she had been shocked by their poverty. They had scrimped for years to make this voyage and their table was so sparsely set, their diet so poor that Mattie had felt ashamed to eat up their food and had done little more than nibble, insisting she was not hungry. Had she had any money of her own, she would certainly have spent it on delicacies for the Leighton sisters, but her mother had sent her off with only the new pink dress and good wishes and Arthur never bothered to give her any allowance. So Mattie starved herself and on departure gave the sisters, who were loath to see her go, her two best petticoats and her best shawl.
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