Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction

by Robert J. Begiebing

  He was hardly aware what he was doing, but the impulse to hold her to him overwhelmed him suddenly. He pulled her against him, and she did not resist. Nor did she encourage him. They just stood there against one another, helpless in a futile half-embrace.

  He could not release her either. And she did not withdraw. The gentle intimacy of her body against his made him languorous. This intimacy was not what he had intended, not yet, though he could not have said what he intended. Her hands came up to his arms, as if to steady herself and, perhaps, reassure him that she shared his desperation—that in fact the desperation was more properly hers. At the same time she looked up at him, and in his continuing confusion he kissed her mouth. She offered a hint of response and he found himself suddenly aroused, an arousal driving away all sensations of languor. Yet his tenderness toward her remained.

  She backed away one step, as if she sensed the depth of his arousal and did not wish to encourage his passion or awaken her own.

  “Rebecca,” he finally said. “I refuse to withdraw my offer, however foolish and romantic it is. I wish to be your protector, your companion. . . .” He ran out of words.

  “We had better say good night, sir.” She weighed his expression. “I’ll consider well what you’ve said. Please don’t think me ungrateful.”

  Chapter 32

  “Do YOU KNOW Mrs. Johnston, in Charleston?” Sanborn asked Smibert the next morning. They were seated at a coffeehouse, enjoying their morning chocolate.

  “Henrietta Dering Johnston? The Irish woman? Yes. She is wife to the rector of Saint Phillips.” He pondered a moment. “What have you in mind?”

  “I’m not entirely sure myself. I wondered if you might provide yet another letter of introduction.” Sanborn smiled and took courage from the old master’s kindly eyes. “You recall Rebecca’s story, as I told you yesterday?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, sir, I think the best solution is for us, together you see, to remove ourselves entirely from New England. I find I wish to protect her from the destruction her guardians are contemplating—nay, winging to its conclusion.”

  “I see.” He thought a moment. “You are deeply ensnared, Sanborn. But it is understandable, and, considering the risks, you are magnanimous.”

  “That is not for me to say. But as an accomplished face painter herself, Mrs. Johnston is one who ought to countenance Rebecca. Charleston, Antigua—who knows where we may end up? Far away, is all. I’m sure we shall have to remove farther than Charleston. I wondered if Mrs. Johnston would put us up for a day or two, upon making our escape, as it were, from Boston as soon as possible. We’ll need to collect ourselves to make necessary arrangements. Her guardians expect us, or me at the least, by week’s end. In Portsmouth. We would need some initial, secret destination, you see. And Charleston would put us out of immediate reach.”

  “Not for long, I’d wager. But would you ask me to incriminate myself in this . . . decampment, or even, surely in their view, abduction?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir. We would be able to keep you out of it if I were to approach Mrs. Johnston myself, merely traveling as friends of yours who have asked for advice and assistance. After all, no one knows that I enlightened you as to Rebecca’s case.” He assessed Smibert’s mood. “I would not for anything ask you to place yourself at risk. We have a confidence between us, and I give you my word it shall go no further.”

  “The post ship returns in two or three days, I believe, but you’d require something more immediate.” Smibert thought a moment. “I think the only hope for you, Sanborn, is to book passage and go, if you are so determined. What I will do is provide you a letter of introduction. Then you can appeal to her yourself. As travelers, bound for the Indies, or whatever story you wish. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t show you a proper hospitality. After all, she need know nothing more than that you are conducting Miss Wentworth to some place of her merchant father’s interests. Or what have you.”

  “Thank you, sir. I can ask no more of you. I had better purchase some final things from your shop, as well,” Sanborn said. “Rebecca has some colors now, and I’ve carried some minimal equipment with me, but not enough to make our way for long.”

  They returned to Smibert’s Colour Shop where, pleading his financial instability for the moment, Sanborn bargained with some effect.

  Rebecca considered his proposal during the night. She told him that it was a tempting offer, but she was full of foreboding. “I leap from the lip of one abyss only to throw myself into another,” she had said just before departure. Yet neither could she formulate any other plan to put them beyond the powerful reach of Colonel Browne. All she could say was that once having chosen flight they must flee utterly. Their planning and committing to throw their lives together, furthermore, had the effect of bringing them closer still, into a kind of mutual dependency and absorption, as if, for the moment, the world around them were receding, becoming ever more distant or dreamlike.

  He booked passage for them on the next boat for Charleston, South Carolina, and Rebecca and Sanborn soon found themselves in fair weather aboard ship. The plans they had made during their final hours in Boston were to work their way south to the Indies. The more he thought about it, the more Sanborn liked the prospects of the West Indies—living and painting among the wealthy planters, government officials, and shipmasters.

  He was particularly interested in assessing Antigua, for he knew the family of an old school friend who had settled on the island, and he supposed he might be introduced to the better sort of patrons. There were, however, two difficulties: Would they be more secure by assuming other identities, avoiding all potential connections with their past? And then there was the question of money. There had been no time, nor would there have been an inconspicuous method, to turn over some of his assets in Portsmouth and elsewhere in New Hampshire. The Brownes and the Wentworths, among others, surely would have learned of his fiscal preparations for flight.

  Moreover, the indifferent world kept sending little shock waves in their direction. After booking their passage, Sanborn began to understand fully how low their funds had become. Since there was no time to secure a commission in Boston, he placed his hopes on the merciful kindness of Mrs. Johnston, in South Carolina. Sanborn could not allow himself to contemplate the less amiable turns of Fate, for that would have thrown him into a paralysis of indecision and inaction. So it became necessary, in the very face of uncertainty, for Rebecca and Sanborn to turn ever more to one another.

  The night before their departure, Sanborn returned to her room rather than to his bed. He found her under the covers brooding, he assumed, upon their imminent and no doubt irreversible flight. She made as if to rise and greet him more properly, but he asked her to remain as she was.

  “I’m staying but a moment,” he said, not entirely sure he meant it. “I wanted to confirm your state of mind, Rebecca. To see whether your resolution is as firm as my own.”

  She looked up at him, seeming to compose herself under the bedclothes. “I see no alternative, as we have spoken. I’m determined to remain resolute.”

  He moved to stand beside her. Her face, her eyes particularly, appeared determined. He felt encouraged himself.

  She placed one arm outside the covers and then reached her hand toward him. He took her hand and bent over the bed, his other hand stabilizing his leaning body on the bedpost. He looked directly at her and said calmly, more calm than he felt, “Are you quite sure, Rebecca?”

  “I am resolved, Mr. Sanborn. But if I do not act soon on my resolution, I fear delay and failure of my liberty. The time for dithering is past. I’m prepared to leave on the morrow.”

  “I mean to give you your liberty, Rebecca. And perhaps my own into the bargain.”

  She looked at him, as if unsure how he meant it. He did not stop to explain himself for he was uncertain of the full implications of his own words. She squeezed his hand as if to indicate the bond of their headlong gamble. He would later recall t
he moment: the sensation of dreaming, of fanciful helplessness mingled with desire, as he let himself go slowly toward her until her hand came up, as if to guide him, and he found himself lying full length beside her. Then they were holding one another, without passion yet, but with assurance for the desperate trust they were placing in one another, a trust assured by the very proximity of their bodies and by gestures of fully awakened tenderness.

  Neither one fell asleep completely. Sometime in the night Sanborn arose, removed his clothing—save his shirt—and slid under the covers, as if, he thought almost to his amusement, they were two bumpkins tarrying for a night of courtly bundling. She greeted him warmly, easily, her hands immediately under his shirt and along his waist and back, relying, perhaps, on sheer virginal instinct to guide her touch.

  Then, finally, she caressed him into an urgency he could no longer restrain. He flung wide the bed covers and threw up the skirts of her linen nightgown, exposing secret blonde curls that moistened as he dallied along Astarte’s bud and stem. She began to move in a slow rhythm against his circular touch—light at first, growing steadily firmer.

  “Oh,” she said. But it was not really “Oh.” It was some other word he had never heard her say before, close to Oh but becoming part of her breathing—a slow synchronous rhythm of her body and breath, and the sound like Oh but not Oh repeated and repeated on the out-breath.

  Somehow he restrained himself just long enough to be certain she was ready, and then entered her tentatively while her breathing sound still rose with her body. She uttered a sharp little cry and bit into his shoulder.

  But like some schoolboy stricken helpless by his sudden good fortune, he was soon unable to check himself against all the familiar aches and tugs and pulls accelerating madly and he called out to her against her own breathing and lifting and released without any further possibility whatsoever of self-control.

  Her own movement continued awhile longer, emptying him now with sweet, delicious constrictions. But she soon subsided as well and they merely embraced one another, saying nothing for a long time, until he pulled away and sat up on the bed to hold his head in his hands. She watched him for several minutes. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.

  “It is the wrong time, Daniel, our time of desperation.” She forced him to look at her to be sure he was really listening. “But after all this time we’re fully together now all the same.”

  He didn’t know how to respond. All he could think to say was precisely what he was thinking. “I’m sure, yes, we have sealed our doom. Still, we have sealed it with love.”

  “Do you believe it is really so, Daniel?”

  “I’ve loved you, I suppose, for years—”

  “I had thought, once or twice, you might have.” She waited for him to respond but he didn’t. “Then ‘tis sweet to doom oneself after all,” she added, almost as if she were speaking to herself in the room alone.

  He stood up to dress. She watched him, again with a hint of playfulness in her eyes that unaccountably disturbed him.

  “We may be doomed, Rebecca, but we are fully together nonetheless. You are right about that. Maybe we can strike out and gain a week’s, a month’s, a year’s ‘liberty,’ as you put it.”

  “I’m glad it’s so.” She pulled the covers back over her.

  He looked toward the single window in her chamber. “A hint of daylight, if I’m not mistaken. You better rise and prepare yourself as well. The captain awaits us on the tide. The hour is near.”

  He left her to wash and pack a few final things in her bag. He went to his common room and picked up his own bag, and then quietly made his way out and down into the kitchen where the host’s table stood. A single serving girl was stoking the fire back to life, as if in her sleep, and arranging pots and kettles on a trammel.

  She did not seem interested in acknowledging him in any way at that hour. So as he waited for Rebecca to descend, he glumly recalled the contents of an epistle he had written and then torn up.

  My Dearest Gingher,

  It has become necessary for me to extend my sojourn in Boston with travel by sea on business—a wonderful opportunity for fine commissions. I cannot say when I might return, but I have arranged in a separate missive to my old business associate Mr. Hart to see to your financial welfare out of the proceeds of certain investments. His understanding is that you are a particular longtime companion whose security I am most anxious to insure. As a man of the world, he understands such things—which are, after all, sufficiently commonplace—and I have no apprehension as to his friendship and loyalty to me. He should be calling on you soon, and as he is a man of discretion and independent wealth, you need fear nothing as to his reliability in executing my request.

  My intention is to return to you as soon as practicable, but please don’t trouble yourself with any watchfulness or concern over the dangers of sea voyage. You shall be looked after, and know that you travel in my heart wherever these prospects of patronage may carry me.

  God willing, we shall renew our lessons some day. Yet as I have said, you progress so well that surely you will improve on your own for the time being. Please know that you hold my deepest affections and fondest memories. I shall write when I can. But for now, I bid you adieu, even as I seek my greater fortune, a beneficence you, too, I promise, shall one day enjoy.

  It wouldn’t work. He would expose himself and Rebecca and their desperate plans for flight. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mr. Hart’s goodwill and friendship, but when a powerful man’s stepdaughter did not return he could not count on an associate’s silence. Browne and Hart were old friends and had waged mercantile war together over the years against their mutual enemies. No more could he count on silence had he asked for Hart to turn some of his, Sanborn’s, assets over to cash and send the money along to a future address in Charleston or New York. It was tempting, but after much thought and internal debate, he decided such pleas would place them in too much jeopardy.

  He felt rotten over all the necessities—the duplicities and betrayals—to which he now found himself enslaved, but there was no help for it. He put the letter out of his mind and began to count the money left in his pocketbook. It shamed him. He would have to find work in Charleston, or somewhere, even to clear passage to the Indies. Perhaps now he and Rebecca could work together, exercising their individual gifts to mutual profit. But she would have to learn a new, tasteful manner of painting, one ambitious patrons would approve and desire.

  And there was, of course, no time now to reap any fruit from Rebecca’s Dr. Watts. Mr. Fleet, on Sanborn’s return, had given a range of options, from his own woodcuts to local engravers and printmakers. Sanborn and Fleet had agreed to put the illustrative matter out to bid to see what would be required. Fleet opined that they might expect 500 to 800 copies to be subscribed for initially, if he could control the costs. But all that would take more time than Sanborn now had: time for bids to come in, for preparation and distribution of the publisher’s prospectus, and longer still for subscribers to respond and for the production process to run its course. There was to be no relief from Dr. Watts, not yet anyway.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs—Rebecca, no doubt. He decided to tell her nothing about the sorry contents of his pocketbook.

  Chapter 33

  THEIR SEA PASSAGE, however, was not propitious. Doubts started after an elderly man in rather disorderly dress approached them.

  “How seems the weather to you, sir?” he inquired of Sanborn, and then added, with the offering of his hand, “Doctor Benjamin Warren, of Philadelphia.”

  “Fine enough,” Sanborn said. “Does it not seem so to you, Dr. Warren?”

  “To the eye, perhaps,” the old man said in a flat voice and shook his head doubtfully. His head indeed was comical despite the gravity of his countenance. He wore two conspicuous carbuncles upon his face and, from beneath his well-worn hat, a wig that had become all straightened and yellowish at the extremities, exposed, no doubt, to years of sun
, moon, and rain. “I overheard the captain saying to his mate that there was no remedy for it but he had failed to procure a conjurer.”

  “That is but sailorly superstition, sir, surely.”

  “Nonetheless, even to men of investment and science, to sail without a horoscope of the journey is foolhardy.”

  “You believe so?”

  “Every waterman in Britain and the colonies believes so, sir. But I fear our captain capitulates to expediency.”

  “Perhaps this once,” Sanborn said. He looked about at the sky again. “It seems a pleasant enough day for sailing, nonetheless, Dr. Warren.”

  “We have little choice but to cast our lots with what seems.”

  “There would be time still to disembark, sir, if that would set your mind at ease.”

  The old doctor looked at him. “There is time. Yes—time.” He turned away and they did not cross his path again on deck.

  A day out of Boston, storm clouds began to appear on the southeastern horizon, as if a great deluge were blowing up out of the tropics. The captain warned the few passengers to prepare for a treacherous gale, and then began ordering his seamen about. Sanborn and Rebecca left the still-sunny deck and secured themselves below, choosing her own tiny quarters in which to ride out the storm together. From below, in an apparent calm, they were unaware of the storm’s development, and its full force hit them suddenly. They held one another in the sickening motion and in the clamor of furious waters against the hull and bulwark.

  So, Sanborn thought, this was how it would end after all. He felt a frightening inevitability about their doom, as he had called it, though the doom he had referred to was not likely to have been going straight to the bottom in a gale.

  It was a long second day, riding on an angry sea in the hold of a ship. When the fury abated, sometime before dawn the following morning, the captain called everyone on the still-wind-battered deck and announced that they had taken on water from some undetermined damage, perhaps more extensive than they knew. They had been blown east and then southeast out to sea. They were now limping back to the coast, he said, and the safest harbor in their approach would be New York. They would be putting in for an indefinite period of time for inspection and repairs.