Jack Belter had abruptly dismounted and muttered that Nicolas van Rappard was waiting for her at his bouwerie, that she could ride there behind him on his horse if she chose, and to meet him behind the stables if she wanted to go. In her excitement Linnet had promptly choked on her last bite of olykoek and been unable to reply. But Jack Belter had taken her reply for granted. He had brushed on by the gasping, choking girl with the purple face and entered the kitchen, saying in a surly voice that he was out of maple sugar and had come to borrow some, for a man needed sweetening on his hot cakes these cold mornings.
When she got her breath back, Linnet had made a quick excuse to Georgiana, who was so busy with cook making final decisions on the sweetmeats for the party that she had hardly noticed the girl’s leaving. Snatching up her cloak and hood and pulling on her mittens. Linnet had stolen out to the stables and ridden away behind Jack on the big gray horse.
Her heart was beating wildly as she rode, and she was almost afraid to think. Her patroon (for in her romantic imagination that was how she characterized Nicolas) had not forgotten her after all. Twice thwarted in his attempts to see her (for now she innocently believed that the last two times Nicolas had stopped by Windgate it had really been to see her), he was trying again. And he had made sure this time, by sending big Jack Belter to fetch her.
Linnet’s heart sang. Nicolas van Rappard of the golden beard and the wicked smile had come upriver again—to see her! And of course he would expect—Linnet’s breath came short in the cold air and her cheeks flamed even though no one could see—a warm welcome. And would have one, she thought ecstatically, glad beyond measure that she had only this morning put on all fresh underthings. And taken a bath last night despite cook’s gloomy warning that she would catch her death.
All the things she had ever heard tavern maids say about being bedded by gentlemen raced through her mind as the gray horse skidded and floundered through soft places in the snow. And Belter cursed as low branches switched his face, and jerked the horse’s head up, cruelly sawing on the reins.
Let’s see, there had been demure little Dora, who was a great favorite with sailors and who’d sighed and said if she could have a gentleman to her bed just once, she’d die happy! And blowsy Lou, who’d said dryly that men were all alike—some just dressed better. And frowning Tippie, who’d said the only gentlemen she knew were the kind who got you pregnant—and then left for the colonies!
Nicolas, Linnet told herself righteously, was not like that. Not like that at all.
A red fox dashed across their path and the gray horse reared up, nearly unseating Jack. Linnet clutched Jack Belter’s iron-hard middle for dear life and screeched as she almost fell off. The fox streaked off into the low brush, leaving dainty tracks across the snow as Jack Belter bellowed, “Damme, wench, hang on!”
Linnet clung the tighter, shivering in the cold, glad that Jack Belter’s bouwerie was but a short ride away—although it might have been in the far reaches of the Adirondacks for all they ever saw of Jack. She flexed her cold fingers in their green woolen mittens and reminded herself that there’d been lots of weather colder than this in Yorkshire, and it hadn’t stopped her from going out skating on frozen ponds and rivers of the North Riding.
A gentleman... she had a gentleman waiting for her! Something her grandmother had once said to her came back to her and she smiled. Her grandmother had been a wicked old lady, not local—she had hailed from London. In her cups she had claimed to have been the fourteen-year-old mistress of the earl of Essex and to have fled London when Queen Elizabeth I (she always called her vengefully “the old Queen”) had him beheaded. “And had it not been for that one great slash on the chopping block, you’d have been born a lady!” she had wailed once, on a drunken crying jag, to Linnet.
The child had loved her stories. Listening, Linnet could almost hear the sighing of the ax as it severed the head of the luckless earl.
“Remember now,” her grandmother had urged her tipsily. “Remember what I told you, Linnet, if you ever meet a gentleman.” She had wagged a gnarled finger at Linnet and her toothless face had split into a waggish smile, for Gramma was terribly old and only drank, so Mamma said, because her old bones ached so. “Remember to tell him how near you were to being born a lady!”
“Would he really have married you, Gramma?” demanded Linnet, enthralled. “The earl?”
“Who knows?” hiccupped Gramma. “Who knows?” She thought about that, owlishly. “Well—of course he would. Eventually. For he said I had the best legs and the best—” She checked herself, realizing belatedly that she was speaking to a child. “But if you ever get a chance to have you a gentleman, Linnet, my girl,” she finished roguishly, “Take it! Mayhap he’ll carry you away to a palace the way Essex might have done me if ‘the old Queen’ hadn’t cut his hair for him!” She subsided into a drunken resentful mutter.
But curled up beside Gramma’s coarse linsey-woolsey skirts, the child dreamed. A gentleman—oh, yes, she would grow up and have herself a gentleman! That was for sure!
But the chances for Linnet to garner herself a gentleman in the North Riding had seemed slim indeed. Indeed, all her family had marveled at Linnet’s good luck when she had caught the eye of the son of a well-to do dairy farmer whose meadows sloped down to the River Swale. “Have a good life, Linnet,” her once carefree but now workworn and shattered mother had whispered on her deathbed but two days after the betrothal had been celebrated. “I’m glad you’re marrying well—you won’t have to work so hard as I have.”
And Linnet’s tears had watered her grave right up to the time they froze on her face when her father cast her out.
Now as she clung to Jack Belter’s firm middle while the horse’s hooves pounded the snowy earth, Linnet’s young face with its cold red nose hardened. She would take Gramma’s advice, she would have herself a gentleman! And that gentleman would be Nicolas van Rappard!
Chapter 27
The gray horse missed its footing, staggered and almost lost his riders. Belter was cursing in earnest now, a steady stream of invective. It came to Linnet suddenly that she was riding away with a man she had scarcely ever said two words to—and no one at Windgate knew she had gone away with him. True, he had said Nicolas was waiting for her but—suppose he wasn’t? Suppose it was a trick? Suppose it was only Jack Belter who was waiting? Waiting to get his hands on her in the privacy of his isolated little farmhouse?
Linnet’s eyes widened in fright. In vain she reminded herself that Jack Belter’s bouwerie really wasn’t such an isolated place after all. His land stretched right along the Hudson and his low Dutch farmhouse was a lot closer to the water than was the frowning mansion of Windgate. Boats would come by, people would come by—Jack would never dare. And besides, who was to say that someone hadn’t seen her slip away? Now she hoped fervently that someone had.
She was not only cold, she had frightened herself weak with her fancies by the time the big, black-bearded man drew up in his own front yard, said tersely, “He’s waiting inside for you,” let her off and went away to feed and stable his winded animal.
Standing in the snow by the front door, Linnet hesitated, about to take flight. Still... Jack’s manner had been reassuringly gruff and if he’d been kidnapping her, wouldn’t he have tried to lull her fears and make her feel safe?
Of course! Her courage restored, Linnet, with her skirts held well up from the snow, picked her way carefully toward the house. Her breath was coming short and fast in expectation and she was wearing her brightest smile when the door swung open—for their approach had been noted from inside—and Nicolas himself, looking jaunty as ever, stood facing her.
The smile froze on Linnet’s face, wavered and was gone.
Nicolas was wearing red. Around his broad shoulders was draped—a scarlet cloak. Red. All Linnet’s distrust of gentlemen in scarlet came back to her in a bright wave and she almost turned and ran.
Nicolas, seeing her wild expression, came forward laughing
. He was tossing the cloak aside as he came.
“I was catching forty winks while Belter went to fetch you,” he said, reaching out to take Linnet’s mittened hand. Debonair as always, he led her through the divided Dutch door into the single large room that constituted the cottage. “This will warm your bones,” he said conversationally, seizing a tankard and filling it with hot rum. He held it out to her. “Faith, your nose is red as a cherry in this cold! Come over here by the hearth, Linnet. You’re shivering so—you must be near frozen. Have you no warmer cloak than that?”
Linnet’s whirling world settled down. This was Nicolas, her “patroon”—and he looked his charming self again now that he had discarded the red cloak. For a moment there she had seen him as a red devil, bringing disaster down upon her.
“ ’Tis my only cloak,” admitted Linnet breathlessly, taking the leathern tankard in her cold mittened fingers and letting the hot liquid cascade down her throat. “But my dress is warm. ’Tis flannel.”
“Drink some more,” he urged. “ ’Twill warm you.”
Linnet drank some more, pulled off her mittens and looked around her.
A Dutch family had occupied this place before Belter and there were still evidences of their occupation in the beehive oven used for making bread, which was set into the side wall of the big stone fireplace, and in the battered gumwood kas that sat forlornly against one wall, but Linnet could see that it had been a long time since this room had known a woman’s touch. Everywhere were evidences of neglect. A big straw broom stood in the corner but ashes from Belter’s long clay pipe were scattered helter-skelter about the packed-earth floor. The hearth—on which a fire was burning merrily—had ashes piled up around it. The curtains hung in forlorn tatters in the gray winter light and in one corner stood a cupboard with sagging broken hinges. Belter’s clothes and some pots and pans hung from nails driven at random into the walls and a large slop jar reposed conspicuously beside the cupboard.
She half expected to be pounced upon and plumped immediately into the big featherbed, which was the only really comfortable piece of furniture in Belter’s bleak farmhouse—indeed she would have made no objection had Nicolas seized her at once. But instead her “patroon” took her cloak with some ceremony, got her seated on a wooden bench at the hearth and insisted she prop her cold feet up on the battered iron hearth rail. Once she was settled he dropped onto a bench opposite her, lounging at his ease.
It was like being courted, she told herself rapturously. Nicolas was treating her like—a lady!
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I can offer you some hutspot. I’m afraid it’s all there is in the house to eat except some tough cold venison; there was some rood kool but I just finished it off.”
Linnet didn’t care for rood kool anyway—spiced red cabbage had never appealed to her. But like everyone else at Windgate she was very fond of hutspot, which was a delicious dish of carrots, onions and potatoes cooked together.
No, thank you. I had a bowl of erwten and some olykoeks just before I left.” She cast a doubtful glance at the jumble of pewter dishes piled unwashed on the rude wooden table in the center of the room.
Nicolas followed the direction of her gaze and laughed. “Oh, it’s all right.” he said easily. “I brought the hutspot and the rood kool both up from Haerwyck with me. Belter’s a good enough cook when it comes to wild game”—he indicated with a nod the long spit for turning meat above the hearth—“but there his domestic talents cease. Jack needs a wife.”
Linnet hitched up her skirts a little so the fire could warm her cold, striped-stockinged legs. She let her hood fall back and shook out her red hair so that it was displayed to advantage.
“I doubt any girl would marry a man who looked so fierce,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“That’s what I told him. ‘Shave off that beard. Jack,’ I said. ‘It makes you look a demon!’ ”
They both laughed. Linnet drank some more rum and Nicolas went on making small talk, feeling his way, for he must ease into his subject carefully. Linnet, never guessing his purpose in inviting her here, was utterly charmed that her “patroon” should take so much time to court her. She looked at his long relaxed figure lounging there in tawny velvets and felt her heart pound.
“When the river freezes over, I could skate up here often,” she told Nicolas eagerly. “If—if you could meet me, sir?”
“Nothing would please me more than to see more of you, Linnet.”
She blushed with pleasure. “ ’Twould be no trouble for me to skate here and back,” she added wistfully. “I’m from Yorkshire, you know, where we have lots of ice.”
“Are you?” asked Nicolas absently, drumming his fingers. He wanted information and he was still trying to formulate a plan. Best to let the girl talk, he told himself. Then, when he launched into questions, it would all seem more natural. “You could skate all the way up to this bouwerie, you say?”
“Oh, easy, sir! I won a pair of earbobs, I did, for skating at the frost fair!”
Nicolas felt boredom stealing over him. The fire’s warmth was making him relax. He repressed a yawn. “You can do figure eights, then, I take it?”
“Oh, yes—and more. I can take great leaps and turn in the air and whirl around and skate backwards and twirl like a top. I once took a flying leap over four barrels!”
“And did not land on your head, I take it?” Nicolas was impressed. “So you dance on ice, Linnet?”
Proudly, Linnet bobbed her auburn head and let Nicolas pour more hot rum into her tankard. “1 skate like a bird, they say.” Her voice was growing a little slurred.
Nicolas frowned. He would have to be careful not to get the girl drunk. Questions might be asked about where she got the liquor. But a plan was forming in his mind, a plan that might work—if Linnet could be talked into it.
“Well, you are an accomplished wench,” he said, leaning back and toying with his drink. He smiled into her eyes. She gave him back a dizzy look.
Warm now and with her tongue loosened by the hot rum, Linnet responded easily to Nicolas’s smooth flow of questions. He wanted to know what Windgate’s bride had brought with her from Bermuda and listened intently as Linnet faithfully described the few belongings that had arrived with Georgiana.
“The great candlesticks...” he mused, frowning, when Linnet mentioned them. They were a puzzle to him. Surely Georgiana would not have had the temerity to steal them? Were they then a gift from Brett Danforth, who sought to establish for his bride a credible past? “Were there any papers that you can remember?” he shot at her. “A packet of papers perhaps?” He was thinking of the letter from Elise, whose existence Georgiana had blurted out.
Linnet’s reddish brows furrowed. “Only the packet she keeps hidden in the big wardrobe beneath her clothes.”
So there was a packet! What secrets might it not reveal? With difficulty Nicolas managed not to show the surge of excitement that swept through his big frame.
“Why do you want to know, sir?” Linnet was asking him in a troubled voice.
Nicolas shrugged his tawny shoulders. “I am as curious as a cat, Linnet. ’Tis something you will learn about me when you come to know me better.” His voice stroked her, lulled her. ‘ ‘And what does this packet contain?”
When she came to know him better. ... To Linnet’s blurred mind that sounded like a promise.
“I—I do not read, sir,” she admitted.
“Good,” he said bluntly. “I do not care overmuch for learned women.”
Linnet, who had not been expecting that answer, dimpled. Basking now in the glow of the lean Dutchman’s approbation, she was eager to provide more information. “But there is a parchment in it that she takes out and reads sometimes and looks sad. And there’s a leather-bound book in the packet too.”
“A book?” asked Nicolas sharply. “What kind of book?”
“ ’Tis handwrit and I’ve seen her cry when she reads it, but always she tucks it away when I come into the room.
She does not know I know where she hides it, but I have seen her put the packet away when she did not know I was watching. I think it might be something her mother had writ, sir, because I once saw her get up from reading the little book and go downstairs and stand for a long time looking at her mother’s portrait.”
“A journal,” mused Nicolas. “Imogene van Rappard's journal! Faith, I’d give a deal to know what it says!” He turned his wicked smile on Linnet, stripping her with his eyes, and watched her melt. “D’you think you could borrow it for me without the mistress knowing?”
Linnet recoiled. “Oh, sir, I couldn’t!”
“Ah, now, why couldn’t you?” wheedled Nicolas. “I don’t want to keep it—I want to borrow it only and none would be the wiser. Why, you could lift it for me and slip the packet to me at the ball and I’d read it and return it to you—she’d never know you did it.”
Linnet gave him a frightened look. “Suppose someone caught me? And anyway, ’tis wrong—oh, no, sir, I couldn’t do that, not even for you.”
Nicolas leaned over and caressed her arm. His voice was very coaxing. “I only tell you this because you are so important to me,” he said—and felt that arm quiver. “The courts are going to decide my claim of ownership to Windgate and—”
“But I thought—I mean my lady said—”
“That I had given up my claim? Never!” He laughed and let her arm slide away from him as he leaned back expansively. He had never looked more handsome. “And I’m sure the courts will decide justly Linnet.”
Rich Radiant Love Page 38