by Jo Ann Wendt
Dove swung his head and watched. The latch dipped awkwardly up and down. The door inched open. A black nose and scruffy muzzle pushed into the room, a frayed, chewed tether-rope dragging.
Dove put down his pen and glowered at the intruder. "Did she teach you that trick, you ugly, one-eyed, flea-bitten, miserable, godawful hound? Or did you learn it by yourself?"
Knowing a cold welcome when he heard one, the dog slunk in, hightailed it to the child's chair, crawled under, and lay there, his wary eye trained on Dove.
"Shit," Dove said, and returned to his letter. When he finished it a few minutes later, ending with a cranky demand to go privateering against Cromwell's fleet, he sealed it and rose. He would carry the corncrake to the kitchen. Daisy doubtless had a pallet ready.
He took one step and stopped in his tracks as a growl menaced. Hackles stiff as spikes, the enormous dog half- rose, teeth bared, guarding the child, daring Dove to move.
Dove's heart began to pound. Sweat broke out on his forehead, gushed cold and clammy in his arm pits. He obediently froze. Dizzy, he reached out and steadied himself against his writing table. Blood, there'd been so much blood. His father's blood spurting, dogs snarling and tearing and howling . . .
He shook his head to clear it, his heart banging like a three- year-old's. "Jericho," he whispered shakily, fearing to rile the dog with loud talk. "Jericho?"
But she was dead to the world. If he shouted to the crew downstairs, the dog would likely spring. It was unmanly as hell to fear dogs, and the shame of it made him flush with anger, even as he stood there trembling. He glanced at the wall where his swords hung. On the table before him lay the dagger he used to pare his quills. But his hands were shaking too badly to use any of them.
Unsteady, sick, dizzy, he reclaimed his seat. He sat there, treed like a possum, his heart ticking faster than a babe's. It was a twenty-minute eternity before John's footsteps sounded on the stairs and he finally looked in. John's mild brown eyes took in the scene, and his face spread in a grin.
"Get him out of here," Dove snapped, courage resurging.
"And if you ever dare say a word about this to anyone, I swear I'll pound you to pulp!"
With difficulty, John reined in his grin. "Mum's the word, milord."
Then, to Dove's deepening disgust, John stooped and whistled softly. The stupid moose crawled out from under the chair, went bounding to John and happily licked his face.
Chapter Five
A brilliant spring morning had descended upon Manhattan by the time Dove swung out of his house and headed for the fort. The wind was fresh, the canal sparkled, the sky overhead was a dome of sunny blue, and his mood was uglier than a warthog's.
John, the lousy traitor, had refused to do the dirty work. He'd refused to take the grubworm and sell her. Now, Dove was obliged to do it. Striding along with black thoughts, he stopped under a wild plum tree in a shower of falling blossoms and spun around in the lane.
"Hustle!" he shouted.
A hundred feet to the rear, she stubbornly continued to trudge at her own pace. Her stupid dog trotted behind. "An appealing child," Mrs. Phipps had said. Appealing? As appealing as a plague. She might've fooled Mrs. Phipps, but she hadn't fooled Dove. Underneath those pansy eyes she was tough as a turnip. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide.
Dove drew a frustrated breath. He didn't know how to handle her. He didn't know how to make her behave. He'd never dealt with a child before. Much less a girl-child. He couldn't wallop her. It wasn't seemly.
He strode to the bridge, sat on the stile, and waited for her to catch up. She took her own sweet time. He felt like bounc- ing her on her head. He watched a canoe go by. It was heaped with furs. Riding low in the water, it glided toward the fort, paddled by two sleek, oiled Mohawks whose heads were plucked bald, save for a long hair tuft. Their heavy clam shell and lead-bullet earrings stretched their earlobes almost to the shoulder. The earrings clicked rhythmically as they glided by. When the brat finally stood before him—stubborn, sullen—he sighed.
"All right, grubworm, let's hear it. Spill."
"I-I th-think you're mean."
"Mean!" He sat back, genuinely surprised. "Mean? Why, there's not a mean bone in my body. Let me tell you, brat, I've been called a lot of things, but mean isn't one of them." He drew a frustrated breath. "Hell's bells! I went to a peck of trouble for you yesterday. To save you from that rum- swilling master of yours. The same damned master, I shall point out, who gave you that whopping bruise on your cheek. Holy Mary, aren't you the least bit grateful?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I want-want s-somebody to keep me. For-forever."
Dove's conscience twinged. He hastily looked away. When he'd carried her down to her sleeping pallet last night, it had startled him to discover that a child could weigh less than a sack of chicken bones. It had bothered him that a little girl whose bones were as delicate as wren's wings should be saddled to an indenture. But, hell! He couldn't save the whole world. He'd do well to save his own neck. He'd do well to keep dancing two steps ahead of Cromwell's axeman. He glanced at her.
"Why in hell pick on me? Why are you so set on staying in my house? Do you like me for a master that much? Is that it?"
"I-I like Daisy."
"You like Daisy." ♦ "And-and I like Mrs. Ph-Phipps."
"You like Mrs. Phipps."
"And-and S-Samuels and Black-Black Bartimaeus and Goody and Cook. And J-John." She gave "J-John" special emphasis. As if he were a frigging saint. It vexed Dove that he hadn't even made her list. He glanced at her.
"Stop that," he ordered sharply. She was digging at the dirt with her toe. She stopped, but not before giving the dirt one more gouge. Holy Hannah! No wonder the brat had had more masters than a centipede has legs.
He tried reasoning with her. "Look. It's not that I don't like you. Hell, I like you fine. You're not half as terrible as most children. You've got spunk. Hell, you've got nerve! I like that. But I cannot keep a little girl. I'm only eighteen, for God's sake. I can't saddle myself with a child. According to England's child-indenture law, I would be obliged to keep you until you turn twenty-one. I can't do that. I don't want to do that. I'm sorry." There was a long empty silence. "Thank you for the arrowheads."
"Y-you're w-welcome," she responded softly.
He wished she hadn't said that. He truly wished she hadn't. Drenched in guilt, he lunged to his feet. "Let's get this over with, eh? The sooner the better. Believe it, I'm not enjoying this any more than you are. So hustle. This is ship-day. A good day to find you a decent master." Taking her by her skinny neck, he hurried her across the bridge and down the lane.
Just then, a movement upstream caught Dove's eye. Out in front of the Verplanck house, Hildegarde Verplanck was being helped into her rowing boat. A black slave took the oars, and a Dutch West India Company soldier, her guard, climbed in at the stern. Hildy! Dove sprang back to the bridge, loped to the middle of it, and waited, his smile eager.
"Mrs. Verplanck, good morning," he called, as the boat came spurting sedately down the canal, plowing a path through the sunny sparkling water.
Hildy glanced up with delight. "Lord Dove, goeden mor- gen."
The black, to whom Dove had slipped many a coin, stopped rowing and stabbed an oar into the canal bank to hold the boat against the mild tug of the current.
"A beautiful day to go boating, Mrs. Verplanck!"
"7a, Lord Dove, most beautiful." She lifted flirty eyes to him. Hildy was the prettiest woman in New Amsterdam and knew it.. She was a trifle vain, but Dove liked her. She had a wild streak. So did he. They were suited.
"Where are you off to? May I inquire?"
"7a, my lord." She blushed slightly. His attention always flustered her. But she took pride in it, too. He was a lord, a feather in her cap. She pointed at the woodsy little island in the East River, a few hundred yards away. "We go to dig wild violets. I fancy a bed of violets in my yard, come next spring."
"A
violet bed! What a coincidence. That's exactly what I planned to do today. Might I join you?" He added hastily, "You and your servants? I could help you dig."
"Well ..." The furtive glance she threw at her house spoke volumes. Lard-bucket Verplanck obviously had issued his bride orders: stay away from Lord Dove.
Ignored, feeling cross, Jericho stood on the canal bank with Pax and sullenly watched Dove make a fool of himself over the lady in the boat. Mrs. Verplanck. It was the ugliest name she'd ever heard. Uglier even than "Marguerite." And what was so wonderful about butter-colored hair? Nothing!
"I won't ride out in your boat. I'll row out and join you later," Dove was suggesting to the lady, a silly smile on his face. "First, I've a trifling matter to deal with at the fort."
The lady glanced warily at her house, but agreed, and Dove's smile grew even sillier.
A trifling matter! Jericho gouged at the ground with her toe, dislodged a dirt clump and flipped it over the edge. It went cascading down the bank. Most of it hit the water with sharp, musical pings. But some of it landed in Mrs. Ver- planck's blue linen lap. She glanced up, startled. Dove glanced too.
"Stop that!" he ordered. Jericho stopped, but went on working the dirt with her toes. Ignoring her, overlooking her as if she were no more important than a worm, Dove went on flirting with the lady in his silly, smiley way.
Jericho thought, I don't care. I don't care!
Dove felt guilty as sin, consigning the grubworm to the bondslave sutler. He couldn't even look her in the eye. But, hell! He couldn't keep a skinny little ugly-duckling corncrake.
His friends would laugh. He would be the joke of every tap house in New Amsterdam.
Besides. Hildy was waiting, and Dove had the feeling this was going to be his red-letter day. Today, he and Hildy wouldn't just kiss. Today, they'd go all the way to the stars!
So he left the fort without a backward look and sprinted all the way home to get his rowing boat. Ten minutes later, he beached the boat on the pebbly shore and sprang breathless through the pines, following the sound of voices. Hildy, the soldier, and the Negro were on their knees in a patch of purple flowers, trowels in hand, digging. Hildy wore lacy gardening gloves.
She looked up with a mischievous smile. "Lord Dove."
"Mrs. Verplanck. What a surprise to find that you and I share a favorite flower. The violet!"
"Indeed, Lord Dove. Fancy you being a lover of violets." Her blue eyes teased, and Dove faltered a little. Blue eyes, pansy eyes. The grubworm, sitting slumped on the auction platform, upset and mad as a wet hen. He pushed the image away.
Hildy sparkled up at him. "Did you get rid of that terrible child?"
Dove winced. "She wasn't so terrible."
"No?" Hildy giggled. "You are too large-hearted by far, Lord Dove. I would not put up with a bondslave like that."
He smiled to rid himself of the guilt that came washing in, then enthusiastically crouched and took the trowel from her hand.
"Allow me."
"My lord, I am honored." The polite talk was for the sake of her servants. Not that they were fooled. Behind her back, the Negro grinned, anticipating his coin. The soldier rolled his eyes. Dove shot them a stern look and began to dig. If Hildy wanted to preserve her reputation, it was her right.
Unaware, Hildy giggled. "That is a weed, Lord Dove."
"Is it?" Dove looked at it mystified, then smiled at her. "I have an idea! We could dig twice as many violets, Mrs. Verplanck, if you and I dig here while your servants stroll to the far end of the island and dig there "
"That is true, Lord Dove."
Hildy flushed and grew breathless. The last time they'd kissed in Dieter Ten Boom's dark, windowless fur shed, she'd let him unlace her bodice. Hildy jumped to her feet and turned with a whirl of her skirts to haughtily dispatch her servants. When they'd gone trudging away, she whirled back to him.
"Well, Lord Dove."
"Well, Mrs. Verplanck."
"Violets, indeed," she said with a playful nervous laugh. 4 'I wager, Lord Dove, you do not know a violet from a tulip.'' j
"Oh, but I do." He smiled and leaned against the trunk of an oak tree. "I also know a passably pretty woman from a beautiful one. And you, Hildy, are a beautiful one. Standing there with the sunlight dappling your hair and your gown, you are as stunning as a fairy princess."
4'Pretty words," she scoffed, but in a breathy way that told him she got no pretty words from the pompous tub of lard she was married to.
"Pretty is as pretty does, Hildegarde. Come here, and I will prove my words."
Her breath caught. A lovely flush rose on her throat.
"And how—how will you do that?"
"Come and see."
"Lord Dove—Lord Dove, we had best dig plants." She was having second thoughts. She wasn't a bad girl. She was just a bold young girl who hungered for romance.
"Come? Come and see? Allow me to show you?"
She wavered. Then, her hesitant, light footfalls softly snapped the pine needle carpet. As she came into his arms, her heart pounding, the fragrance of pine and violets enveloped the two of them.
"I will show you like this," he whispered, kissing her with exquisite gentleness, brushing her flushed, warm cheek with his lips, kissing her brow, her nose, her fluttering eyelids. "Like this, Hildy, and like this . . . and like this ..."
They were lying in a bed of violets en dishabille, half undressed, half-dressed, kissing, petting, hearts pounding in a wild prelude, when a queer thing happened. A hair's breadth from making his conquest, Dove looked down and saw not Hildy's love-drugged blue eyes, but vivid, angry, pansy blue ones.
He drew back, jolted. His passion fizzled as effectively as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him. That which had been a firm, hard commitment—wilted.
Hildegrade looked up, stunned. "What happened?"
"You won't believe this."
She rose up, her breasts slick from his kisses.
"Lord Dove, what's wrong?"
"I have to go."
"Go? Now?" She uttered a breathy little laugh. "Lord Dove, you tease. You are not serious."
"Alas," he said, fastening his codpiece, "I'm serious as hell. It's a matter of a grubworm."
She jerked up, sitting bolt upright, clutching her gown to her breasts. "You have worms? Mijn God!"
"Not worms, Hildy, one worm. Only one." Swiftly he kissed her shocked mouth, grabbed the rest of his clothes and hauled them on.
"Lord Dove! What are you talking about?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow."
"No, you shan't, you shall tell me now. This moment!"
"Hildy, I'm sony."
He hauled on his last boot, jumped up, and hit the ground running, sprinting down the mossy river bank and into the pebble strewn mud. He'd forgotten his hat, but he didn't go back for it. The keel of his boat crunched over pebbles and rocks as he shoved it into the water and jumped in.
"Lord Dove!"
"Hildy, I'll be back—"
"Do not bother!" Hildegarde shouted, her vanity injured, her anger ringing through the woods. "Do not ever come near me again, Lord Dove. Do you hear? Do you hear? Never again!"
Hot and sweaty from rowing like a galley slave, Dove abandoned the boat at Dieter Ten Boom's tap house and ran the rest of the way to the fort.
It was ship-day, and everyone in New Amsterdam crowded into the fort to buy. The fort was in chaos. The noise deafened. Housewives bargained shrilly. Dutch West India Company officers argued loudly about newly arrived consignments of wine, candles, linen, spices—even chamber pots. Mohawk
sachems gabbled among themselves and childishly gave a fortune in furs for cheap bead necklaces. Newly arrived livestock mooed and baahed and clucked and bleated, vying with all this noise. Dove's foot slid in sheep manure. He swore.
Grub worm, you'd better be worth this!
He pushed his way on. But when he reached the auction platform his heart sank to his feet. He was too late. The auction was over
. No bondslaves remained on the platform. Instead, casks of Madeira and untidy piles of tradegoods heaped the sagging platform, arranged to catch the buyer's eye.
He felt a queer inner sting. As if he'd lost a minor but favorite possession, one he'd scarcely noticed while he owned it, but sorely missed when suddenly it was gone.
He swallowed. Well, she was gone, and that was that. It wasn't his way to entertain regrets. Hell, life was full of regrets! It was full of missteps, wrong turns! You couldn't brood about every damn one of them.
Just then, something caught his eye up on the platform. A movement in the shadow of a wine cask. He shaded his eyes in the sunlight. Red hair. A freckled face. Jericho. Unwanted, unsold, she sat on the platform, arms wrapped around knees. Her dog slept at her feet. When she spotted him, her eyes grew bigger than pansies.
He was so relieved, he almost smiled. But that would be a mistake. If he was going to keep her, she would have to learn her place. So he glared. She flinched, but continued to stare with those scared, hopeful, vivid eyes.
"Get over here," he said crossly.
She was at the edge of the platform in a shot, scared, blinking. Her dog scrambled forward, too. Dove gave him a withering look, then turned his attention on the brat. It was damned difficult to growl into eyes that were the exact color of June bluebells, but he gave it a try.
"All right, grubworm. Let's get a few things straight, eh?"
"Y-y-yes, Dove." She nodded nervously.
"This may be news to you, but / am the master and you are the bondslave. If I tell you to sit, stand, drop dead, or roll over, you will do it. Without backtalk. Understood?"
She nodded, eyes huge. "Y-yes, Dove."
"You will not sulk, you will not make me wait for you— ever!—and y0u will not kick dirt into ladies' boats just because you're jealous. Is that clear?"
"Y-yes, Dove," she whispered, nodding.
For a moment, Dove shut his eyes and held his hand to his forehead, foreseeing the headache she was going to be, foreseeing year after year of a grubworm kicking dirt at the ladies he wanted to make love to. Holy Mary, he'd have to keep her a decade! He would be an old man—nearly thirty, for God's sake—before he could hope to be rid of her. He opened his eyes a wary slit, hoping she'd somehow vanished, disappeared, vaporized, gone up in smoke. But she was still there, still nodding, her eyes huge and dark and sweet. He sighed in disgust.