Fortune's Bride
Page 1
“COME HERE, WOMAN.”
Caroline’s pulse quickened. She folded her arms over her chest and smiled. “No.”
She squealed as he leaped off the bed, grabbed her, and threw her over his shoulder. Before she could catch her breath, Garrett was astride her, pinning her thrashing arms to the mattress.
“Do you yield, woman?” Garrett demanded.
“Never.” She joined his game eagerly. “No torture can make me yield.”
“We shall see about that,” he murmured. “I am a master at putting disobedient wives in their place.” He kissed the corners of her mouth.
“Mercy,” she whispered.
“No mercy.”
He cupped her breast in his strong hand, and she gave herself over to the magic of their true wedding night.
Books by Judith E. French
MOONFEATHER
HIGHLAND MOON
MOON DANCER
SHAWNEE MOON
FORTUNE’S MISTRESS
FORTUNE’S FLAME
FORTUNE’S BRIDE
SUNDANCER’S WOMAN
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
FORTUNE’S BRIDE
JUDITH E. FRENCH
eKensington
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
“COME HERE, WOMAN.”
Also by
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
SUNDANCER’S WOMAN
Copyright Page
For my mother,
Mildred Emma Faulkner Bennett,
who believes that the virtues are
Godliness, cleanliness, and reading
“. . . Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph . . .”
—THOMAS PAINE
Chapter 1
Fortune’s Gift Plantation
Maryland’s Eastern Shore
December 1777
“Marry you?” Caroline Steele’s cinnamon-brown eyes narrowed with contempt. “I’d sooner wed with a red Indian.” She stiffened and her naturally husky voice rang with gentle authority. “And take your boots off my father’s desk. This isn’t a stable.”
Captain Bruce Talbot’s pocked face flushed an angry red as he pushed back in the chair, put his feet on the floor, and poured himself another glass of port from the Irish crystal decanter. “Unfortunately, cousin,” he said sarcastically, “your marrying a savage would do the family very little good.”
Caroline’s nose wrinkled in distaste. Bruce’s red coat was tossed carelessly over a chair; his rumpled white linen shirt showed sweat stains under the arms, and the lace stock at his throat bore traces of the pork gravy Cook had served at dinner. His waistcoat was missing a silver button, and even his scarlet sash seemed the worse for wear. His Majesty must be desperate, she thought, if he was forced to accept an officer such as this in his Light Dragoons.
She didn’t miss the slight tremble in Bruce’s hand or the bloodred drops that splashed on the polished walnut desk. “You’re a drunken pig,” she said. “How dare you order me about in my own home? And what lunacy causes you to believe that I’d dine at the same table with you—let alone become your wife?”
One blow from his fist dashed the goblet against the brick hearth. “Damn you, Caroline!” he roared. “You forget your place. I’m here as a representative of the crown. And you are in danger of being declared a rebel and imprisoned for high treason.”
She bit back the retort that rose to her lips and forced a wry smile. “I am a loyal Englishwoman. No one can say differently.” Strange, she thought, how much Bruce looked like her brother Reed and Papa. All Papa’s strengths distorted . . . the fair Talbot complexion marred by disease, the bright blue eyes muddied by drink and loose living. As Papa had looked, she corrected as the familiar pain knifed through her. Over three years had passed since her father’s death. And nearly a year since her husband . . .
Bruce’s tirade brought her back to the present.
“Not so loyal. We both know how and where your dear husband met his end.”
“Do we?” She returned his bloodshot gaze squarely. “Wesley drowned. An accident.”
“He was a traitor. Killed aboard a rebel privateer.”
“Untrue. The Reverend Miles Clark of Lewes bore witness to Wesley’s accidental death during a storm on the Delaware Bay.”
“And what was he doing at Lewes?” Bruce demanded. “His body was washed ashore with other dead rebels.”
“A false accusation, unfairly cast upon an upstanding man who is unable to defend himself against your lies.”
“I’ll prove it, Caroline,” he threatened. “I’ll prove it, and I’ll strip you of everything you possess.”
“Unless, of course . . .” She hesitated, judging the extent of his inebriation. She wouldn’t put it beyond Bruce to attempt to strike her if he were drunk enough. After what he’d done to Amanda . . . “If I accept your offer, you’ll drop these ridiculous charges against my dead husband.”
“Naturally.” He rose to his feet and swayed slightly. “I’m thinking of the family name. If Fortune’s Gift is confiscated by the crown, you stand to lose a—”
“A king’s ransom—as well you know,” she lashed back. “Since you took it upon yourself to have yourself appointed my guardian after Wesley’s death.”
“It was the least I could do,” he said. “You were distraught. A woman alone . . . in no condition to administer the finances of your father’s estate. Our fathers were brothers, after all. Something should have come to me when Uncle John passed on.”
Caroline swallowed the oath that rose in her throat. Wesley’s death had come as a shock, but not so great a one that she couldn’t manage her own affairs. Bruce had lied and bribed the authorities to get control of her money. “Fortune’s Gift came from my mother’s family, Bruce, as well you know,” she said between clenched teeth. “Whatever my father added to my inheritance, he gained through his own wit and hard work. Fortune’s Gift is mine. Even Wesley knew that.”
“Yours until you take a husband, cousin.” His slack mouth turned up in a smile. “Until we are wed.”
She drew her silk wrapper more tightly around her and tried to reach the boy she had once played with as a child. “How could you expect me to come to your bed as a loving wife? Do you think I could ever forget that you raped my sister here in this very house?”
“Amanda is a nigra,” he said harshly. “None of your pretty words make her skin any whiter.”
“Born black, perhaps, but raised by my parents as a daughter in this house. As a sister to Reed and me. She’s a free woman, Bruce, not a slave for you to use as your whore.”
“Hardly a little nun, your pet nigra. She didn’t get that high-yellow pickaninny of hers in church, now, did she?”
Caroline’s hands curled into tight balls as she fought to
keep her infamous Talbot temper under control. “She has a name, Bruce,” she said quietly. “Her name is Amanda. And don’t ever call baby Jeremy by that word again.”
“I’ve always wondered if she was Uncle John’s by-blow, but she’s dark-skinned to be half and half. Is she my cousin too, Caroline? Sometimes, they say, they turn out dark, if one parent is as black as coal.”
“You have a filthy mind. But then, you always did. No, she isn’t Papa’s natural daughter. He was in England that year; he didn’t come home to Maryland until two months before Amanda was born. You know where Amanda came from as well as I do. We heard the story often enough when we were children. Papa picked her up out of a rowboat in the river. Just like baby Moses, he always said.”
Bruce scoffed. “Moses or not, she was a good lay.”
Caroline’s fingers itched to slap his arrogant face. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Leave her alone, I warn you. You touch her again, and that British uniform won’t save you. I’ll shoot you myself, just as I shot that mad dog last summer.”
“Save your hysterics for someone who will listen,” he said, reaching out and taking hold of a lock of her unbound hair. “Red as a fox,” he murmured. “I’ve always fancied to wake up and find a fox-haired woman in my bed.”
She jerked free of his loathsome touch, and he laughed. “Bastard,” she cried.
“You will marry me, little cousin. One way or another. And you’ll learn to curb that foul temper of yours. Once I’m master of Fortune’s Gift, you’ll—”
The dull boom of an explosion shattered the night. Stunned, Bruce stared at Caroline. “It sounded as though it came from the river,” she said, going to a window and peering out into the darkness. A red ball of light flared in the distance. “Is that your powder magazine?”
For a few seconds, there was utter silence, then hounds began to bay furiously. Shouts rang out. A man’s gruff voice barked an order. Suddenly, Caroline heard what could only be a musket shot, followed by the pounding of horse’s hooves on the frozen lawn. Another Brown Bess roared, just outside the window.
“Son of a bitch!” Bruce swore. He grabbed his coat and jammed an arm into the sleeve as he rushed out of the plantation office and collided with a young orderly.
“Captain Talbot, sir!” the soldier cried. “Come quick! Someone’s fired the powder store!”
Bruce shouted back at Caroline, “Go to your room and stay there. I’ll deal with you later.”
“We’ll see who will deal with whom,” she murmured after her cousin’s retreating back. She grimaced and glanced around the disorderly room. Only the library wall lined with the precious volumes collected by her parents and grandparents seemed neat. The rest of the office was a shambles. Official dispatches were heaped on the desk and tables; maps of the Chesapeake and Philadelphia were tacked to the paneled walls. Pewter mugs and a dirty plate holding a half-eaten pork chop stood on a mahogany sideboard. The room smelled of rum, tobacco, and sweat.
As she started for the doorway, she noticed a pair of Bruce’s tall, black boots standing on the hearth waiting to be cleaned and polished. Expensive boots they were, too, of Spanish leather, she supposed. Or perhaps they were Hessian. Everything German was the fashion now. She glanced down the hall to make certain she was alone, and edged the boots closer to the fire. With any luck at all, they’d be scorched beyond repair before the orderly smelled the burning leather. “We’ll see who gets the best of whom, cousin,” she said with satisfaction. “I’d burn Fortune’s Gift to the ground before I’d let you be master in this house.”
Feeling somewhat better, she left the room and walked quickly to the servants’ staircase and up the stairs. Dressed as she was in her nightgown and robe she didn’t want to meet any of the occupying English soldiers. She had been making ready for bed when Bruce had sent his orderly to summon her to Papa’s office. Even though she’d answered his command without waiting to dress, she’d taken the trouble to strap a razor-sharp dagger to her waist. After what Bruce had done to Amanda, she would take no chances with him.
Her Grandfather Kincaid had given her the knife and its accompanying leather sheath on her eighth birthday. A Scottish skean, he’d called it. “Even a great lady must be able to defend herself against enemies,” he’d said with a wink. Her father had insisted she would cut off a finger with the antique weapon, but she never had. Grandfather had taught her the finer points of knife fighting and throwing a blade, and he’d made her practice in the hot Maryland sun for more hours than she wanted to remember—with not only a knife, but also a light rapier.
“This is foolishness,” her father had said. “Caroline is a Talbot. Talbot men take care of their women.”
“Aye,” Grandfather had agreed. “That may be so, John, but ye ken the bairn comes from a long line of warrior lassies. And I’d nay wish to have her grandmother say I’d neglected her education.”
Dear Grandfather . . . How she missed his weatherworn face. If he were only here, she thought, he’d make short work of Bruce and his dragoons. But he and her beloved Grandmother Bess were lying side by side in the brick-walled family cemetery. They’d died within hours of each other when she was seventeen.
Caroline sighed and entered Amanda’s unoccupied room on the second floor and looked out a window. Mounted troops were searching the gardens with torches. She smiled. Evidently, whoever had blown up the powder magazine hadn’t been caught yet. She hoped he had a fast horse. Fortune’s Gift was crawling with British soldiers.
Major Whitehead had made the plantation the headquarters for his detachment of Light Dragoons. He had been away for several weeks; she didn’t know where. If he had been here, Bruce wouldn’t have dared to behave so boorishly in her father’s office. Major Whitehead might be an English officer and the enemy, but he, at least, was a gentleman.
She had managed well enough with Major Whitehead until her cousin had been assigned to his staff. The major had treated her with the respect due her station, and since his sexual preferences were definitely male, he’d left her and the women of her household in peace. Now, Amanda and Jeremy were forced into hiding in servants’ row. Even Caroline didn’t know who had given them shelter this night. Since Amanda’s rape, they had moved from cabin to cabin to keep Bruce from knowing where they were.
She looked around Amanda’s shadowy room and couldn’t keep a lump from rising in her throat. Jeremy’s rocking horse stood near a window; his toys were piled in his empty cradle. The house seemed empty without his cooing baby laughter and his sweet smell. “Because of you,” she murmured, thinking of her foul cousin. “But it won’t stay like this, I promise. I’ll bring you home, Jeremy. I’ll bring you both home.”
Patting the lump under her dressing gown to make certain her knife was still in place, she returned to the dark hallway and made her way to her own bedchamber. She turned the knob and pushed open the door, hesitating for a moment, certain she had left a candle burning on the table beside her tall poster bed.
Caroline froze, listening with her ears, but most of all, listening with her inner senses. Her instincts had never failed her yet, and she had come to depend on her own special gifts for knowing what would happen before it actually occurred. She waited, but no current of fear stirred within her breast. Reassured, she entered the room.
And walked straight into something solid.
A sob of fright burst from her lips. “Oh!” she cried. She stopped, momentarily lost in her own bedroom. Her heart raced, numbness spread through her body, and for an instant she wanted to turn and run. Then, when she realized that she’d heard nothing and that no one human or ghostly had grabbed her, she reached out hesitantly with a trembling hand and touched the back of a chair.
She uttered a nervous giggle. “Damn me for a cowardly jade,” she burst out.
Her next thought was: What was the chair doing in front of the door? “If Toby’s been rearranging my things again, I’ll have his ears on a platter,” she murmured, feeling the chair to be certain
it was her own familiar cane-back seat.
It was indeed, the very chair she’d toppled off when she was four and cut such a slice in her forehead that Grandmother had had to sew it up with silk thread. Caroline still had the tiny scar. “X marks the treasure,” Grandmother had said. Caroline had taken pride in not crying when the wound was stitched up, and her grandfather had bought her a new hound puppy, the best one in Wesley’s father’s kennel.
She began to take normal breaths again, feeling foolish. She took a step toward the bed table and trod upon a cat. The cat let out a yowl and fled toward the open door. Caroline gasped. I must still need a full-time nanny, she thought, shamed by her silly fears. Gathering her courage, she started across the room again.
Without warning, someone clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She screamed like an Iroquois captive at a torture stake, but only muffled sounds escaped her assailant’s iron grip.
Caroline exploded into a fury of flying fists, thrusting knees, and sharp teeth. She was not tall for a woman, but she had ridden every day since she was a babe, and her muscles were strong from swimming in the river and climbing trees. Terror and tenacity made her a formidable foe.
The man in black was as unyielding as a wall of solid oak. Her furious blows wrung gasps of pain from the specter, but he never loosened his cruel embrace.
Then she twisted and slammed her hipbone into his. He buckled and fell to the floor, carrying her down with him and knocking the breath out of her with his weight.
“Caroline! Caroline!” he hissed into her ear. “I won’t hurt you. It’s Garrett.” Cautiously, he removed his hand from her mouth. “For the love of God, Caroline, don’t scream. You’ll see us both dead.”
Stunned, she struggled to get air into her lungs. Garrett? Who the hell was Garrett? She sucked in a deep breath and opened her mouth to scream again.