by Jo Ann Wendt
Is that what she wanted? Did she want to be known as Lord Dove de Mont's whore? Did she want that?
During Black Bartimaeus's waking moments, she sat holding his hand, talking softly to him. He must try to get well, she urged. For as soon as he was well and strong again, she would ask Dove for her indenture. Then she would take Black Bartimaeus to London. They would rent two rooms. They would live in one room, set up her dame school in the other. She would take good care of him. They would make a good life together. They would scrimp and save. As soon as they'd saved enough for ship passage, she would take him home. Home to Amsterdam. Home where they both belonged. Home to Daisy and Samuels, Goody and Cook. A faint squeeze of her hand told her how much he longed for just that.
Worn-out and weary, she was in the scullery mixing up a nourishing posset drink for Black Bartimaeus early one morning, when Janie came running with a letter. Deciding it was from John—Mrs. Phipps had written him the sad news—she broke the red wax seal and eagerly unfolded the letter. Her lips parted in bewilderment. It wasn't from John. She raked a hand through her mussed, neglected hair and read.
Mistress Jericho Jones, the Kitchens, Arleigh Castle The Ninth of this Instant, The Year of our Lord, 1666
It has, by Fortuitous Chance, come to Our attention that the Indenture under which you are Bound shall be served out within the Twelvemonth. I hereby Invite you into Employment at Blackpool Castle as Head Housemaid. It is a pretty post, having under it nine under- housemaids and paying, besides the Goodly sum of Twenty Guineas annual, a silk Gown and a sturdy cloth Cloak with silver buttons granted each Twelvemonth. I await your reply.
Mr. Fox Hazlitt, Esquire Chief Steward Blackpool Castle
She didn't know what to think -She swallowed uneasily, remembering the day John's coach broke down. It was eerie being singled out by a man who didn't even know her. It stirred up the old anxiety of those odd letters that would come now and then in New Amsterdam, wanting to buy her.
Hazlitt. She strained to picture him. A weasel of a man. Quick, darting eyes. She had no trouble picturing the duke. He had been as cold as granite. She felt a prickle.
Without bothering to write a reply, she tore the letter in bits and tossed it into the scullery slop bucket. Shaking her hair, she shook the peculiar offer out of mind. She went back to doing what she wanted to do. Taking care of Black Bartimaeus.
Dove grew vexed. Enough was enough. He was damned fond of Black Bartimaeus, and he was oveijoyed that the old black giant had rallied and was getting well. But Jericho still waited on him hand and foot. Dove couldn't get her attention if he fired a cannon under her tail.
Whose bondslave was she, anyway? What did he have to do, paint his face black and fall down in the middle of the kitchen clutching his heart?
More vexing, the one time he'd managed to corner her in the scullery, hoping for a kiss, she'd pushed him away with a prim request. Please, could she have her indenture release? If he would release her now, she would be forever grateful. She and Black Bartimaeus had made plans. They were going to London. They would hire rooms to live in. She would set herself up teaching dame school. She wanted to leave Arleigh Castle as soon as possible.
The plan had been preposterous. A grubworm and a sick old man fending for themselves in a rough city like London? London would devour them! It had scared him. Angered him. Going deeper, it had hurt him. Hell, she made it plain as the nose on her face that she didn't want to belong to him anymore. Shocked and hurt, he'd lashed back.
"The sooner the better, grubworm! Hell, I'll be tickled pink to be rid of you. It isn't all strawberries-and-cream owning a bondslave, you know. Bondslaves are a damned nuisance, a millstone around the neck. There's food, clothing, shelter to provide. Then there's the ton of money you spend sending the bondslave to school. And when the bondslave doesn't learn anything there, when the bondslave's too stupid to prevent itself being abducted in the dead of winter, then you have to slog through waistdeep snow, freezing your balls off, rescuing it. Hell, yes! Certainly you can have your indenture. Take it. It's a load off my shoulders. I'm glad to be rid of you."
Her eyes had glistened. But she was a stubborn little thing. She didn't shed a tear. 4
"I'm sorry," she'd said wearily, "I cannot stay here at Arleigh Castle, Dove. I just cannot."
Hands draped on hips, he'd winged a glance out the scullery door. How could she say that to him? How could she kiss him the way she'd kissed him and not want to belong to him anymore?
"Fine, go! You want to go? Go. I'll provide a horse. I'll provide a cart, a wagon, a coach, a sled. Hell, I'll provide someone to take you to wherever you want to go, and if you want to go by water, I'll provide a rowing boat. Feel free to go as soon and as fast and as far as you want. With my compliments, grubworm!"
He had the satisfaction of seeing one crystal tear slide down her pretty cheek before he wheeled and stomped out of the scullery. He went to his apartment in a vicious humor, rammed a key into the lock of his mahogany cabinet, grabbed his iron strongbox and rifled through his properties. He found the tattered dog-earred indenture on the bottom. He picked it up. He hadn't glanced at it in years. He'd never read it. It was written in Dutch; he couldn't read Dutch. Holding the soiled shabby scrap in his hand, he felt a tremor. He remembered a dice game. He remembered a homely . ragamuffin with chopped-off red hair, asleep on a tap-house stoop . . .
But, hell! She wanted to be free, didn't she? So be it. He grabbed a quill and viciously rammed it into his silver ink pot. His hand hovered angrily over the document, preparing to sign.
He couldn't. Sighing, he threw the quill down. Ink flew. He sat and propped his chin in his hands. Pansy Eyes. He couldn't send her out into the world just like that. She was such an innocent. The world? A briar patch. It would trip her up before she'd taken two steps. And he would worry.
Besides, what would John say? He'd promised John he would take care of her this summer.
He shot to his feet and tapped the indenture on his thigh. Finally, he went to his bedchamber, to his testered, draped bed, yanked up the silk brocade coverlet, yanked up the mattress and stuffed the indenture under. He sent word down to Jericho. Her indenture was missing. He couldn't find it. But as soon as he found it, she could damn well have it and be gone.
Hurt, he stayed away from the kitchen that day, but awoke the next morning fretting. What if she left Arleigh Castle without waiting for her indenture? What if she just took off and left?
He paced his work closet, worrying. She'd probably head for London. He doubted she would go to John. She was too stubborn to ask for help. The grubworm! He fretted. London was a grand city for a man, chock-full of drinking houses, gaming houses, brothels, theaters, cockpits. There was even a bear-baiting pit in Southwark. A man could count on having an exhilarating time in London. There were a dozen rousing good sword fights on the street every day. But, Pansy Eyes there? He didn't like the idea.
He tried to think how to make her stay. If she had some lengthy task to perform for him . . . if he could count on her sense of obligation. She'd been a pest in New Amsterdam, but a damned loyal pest. Whenever he'd needed anything, she'd been the first of his servants to jump up and run for it.
Pacing, chewing a knuckle, he glanced at his mahogany cabinet. The double doors stood open. He gazed at the neat, tidy, interior. Not a paper out of place. His accounts' steward, Will Hewett, now gone to Yorkshire to be with his sick father, kept his business affairs in perfect order. An idea flickered. Then glimmered bright and humorous. He smiled broadly.
"You sent for me, Lord Dove?" Jericho asked softly, her expression sweet, contrite as she stood in the doorway of his work closet. "Your servant said you needed my help. He said your papers are in a muddle. He said you wish me to sort them and put everything right again."
"Yes." He jerked in sudden spasm, waking to the fact that he'd been staring at her. His heart beat queerly. How damned pretty she was! She wore a fresh blue frock and she'd brushed her lustrous hair long and
loose and straight—at least as straight as the thick ropey curls would permit. "I thought you might do that for me, yes. Not, of course, if Black Bartimaeus needs you. Tend him, by all means. But in your spare hours. If you will?"
"Yes, of course I will," she said loyally. He felt a prick of guilt. He quashed it. Hell, he was doing this for her own good.
"Come in. I'll let you be the judge of what needs to be done, Jericho."
Her vivid dark blue eyes took in the room uneasily before she stepped in. He could see she was shy of being in his personal apartment, in his personal rooms, so he took care to put her at ease by being businesslike. It took some effort. For what he wanted to do was kiss her.
Wide-eyed, looking about as if satyrs might come jumping out of the woodwork in a lord's personal chamber, she gingerly followed him to the mahogany cabinet. When he unlocked it and flung open the doors, papers came tumbling in an avalanche. Ledgers thumped to the floor and lay there, covers bent like broken wings. Papers sailed in every direction, skidding on the polished floor, sailing north, south, east, west. She gasped. Speechless with shock, she stared at the mess on the floor, stared at him, then stared with equal disbelief at the mess in the cabinet. Dove stared too, pleased. He'd done a good job of making a shambles.
"Dear life, Dove!" she said, her shyness gone in shock. "Is this the way your accounts' steward keeps your papers?"
"I guess it is."
"This is a disgrace! To treat important papers so? To keep your account ledgers in such a slovenly manner? Why the man is a scoundrel. He should be horsewhipped. He should be pilloried."
"He should, he should," Dove agreed.
She knelt in the mess, whipped up a stained paper, and sniffed it. "Rum! He drank rum while he worked on your papers. Dove this is unforgiveable." She ranted on like a fishwife, her blue eyes blazing. Dove thoroughly enjoyed it. He enjoyed having a woman indignant on his behalf, standing up for him, taking his part. He'd always liked it. It was a damned pleasant sensation.
Jericho shot a glance at him.
"How can you smile at a time like this?"
He wiped the smile from his face. "I'm not," he said staunchly. "I'm angry as hell."
"Well, you should be," she urged, gathering up an orphaned paper, trying in her feminine way to smooth out the wrinkles. "These poor papers! It will take days to recopy the stained ones, to sort them out, to determine which paper goes with which."
"Weeks probably," Dove offered cheerfully. "Maybe the whole summer. I am thinking of dismissing him. What do you think?"
She looked at him in utter astonishment.
"Dismiss him? I think you should shoot him."
He bit back a smile. But when she glanced at him again, this time sharply, warily, possibly on the edge of suspicion, he knew he'd best not overplay his hand.
"Well, I'll leave and let you work," he said. She didn't even hear him. She was already on hands and knees, beginning to sort.
"Yes," she muttered, absorbed in the task. "I'll start at once ... I'll start right now."
Smiling at her determined, ramrod little back, he left.
Jericho attacked her work with zeal, fueled by indignation. How dare that steward disrespect Dove so! She wanted to kill him. At the least, she wanted to box his ears. But now and then as she worked, a doubt flickered. The kitchen staff was surprised Will Hewett had left Dove's papers in shambles. She put down her pen and frowned. Would Dove be likely to . . . She thrust the suspicion away. Dear life, only an imbecile would! Besides, Dove had shown no sign of having lured her up to his room to kiss her. For two days, he'd left her strictly alone. She'd told herself she was relieved. But the truth was, she was disappointed.
On the third day he lingered. Dressing for riding, in leather breeches, boots, and a linen shirt with sleeves rolled, he casually took a chair on the opposite side of the table and chatted with her as she worked. She felt ridiculously glad of it. And a little uneasy. Their afternoon at the creek had opened a new door for her. Now she knew what a man's body was and how it could stir her. She also knew that what they'd done had not been proper. It had not been decent. She brushed at her flushed cheeks as Dove sat talking to her. She, nervous and agitated. Dove, calm as a house cat.
"Shall I bring my chair around? Sit beside you? Show you precisely how I want that ledger copied?"
"If-if-if you like." She brushed her hot cheeks.
He leaped up at once, brought his chair around and sat next to her. She bent to her ledger, aware of his masculine scent, aware of every golden hair on the tanned wrist that rested on the table. Aware, aware. Each time he showed her where to enter a number, his arm brushed hers.
"Excuse me," he would apologize politely.
"Y-yes." She would swallow thickly.
When a half hour had gone by in this unnerving manner, he suddenly leaned toward her and gave her cheek a soft peck. She jumped. She gazed at him uncertainly. When she made no protest, he leaned toward her again and gave her lips a soft sweet peck. Her lashes fluttered, her breathing stopped, her heart ceased to beat. With the gentlest fingers in the world, he lifted her chin and kissed her again. This time, when the kiss ended, their lips clung.
"Pansy Eyes," he whispered.
"D-Dove? I don't think you should k-k-k-kiss me."
"Why not, beauty?" he whispered, drawing her up from her chair and into his arms. As he kissed her, holding her as if she were as fragile as a new hatched chick, he walked her backwards, kiss by kiss, into his bedchamber.
"Dove, we-we can't do what w-we did in the woods."
"Sweeting, you liked it. So did I."
"That-that-that's not the point. It's not-not decent."
He stopped walking her backwards for a moment and lifted his searching mouth from hers, his brow wrinkling in devilish prickles.
"Well, what can we do, then?"
"O-o-only kiss."
"Only kiss?"
"O-only kiss," she said firmly. She made him cross his heart and promise.
Jericho found her indenture entirely by accident while Dove and Lord Lark were at Whitehall Palace in London, attending to the business of the king's war loan. The endless on-and- off-again war with the Dutch had escalated. There'd been a terrible battle in the North Sea in early June. England had suffered devastating losses, both in ships and in men's lives.
At work in Dove's work closet, she'd gone into Dove's bedchamber to borrow a handkerchief from the nightbox beside his bed. Kneeling there, she glanced and spotted a scrap of paper under the bed. Irked that a housemaid should sweep Dove's room so carelessly, she ducked under the bed, retrieved it, and sat back on her knees to see what she'd retrieved.
The paper was tattered, dog-eared. The writing was in Dutch, but smudged, the ink so faded she had trouble making it out. She held it up so the light from the window would strike it.
Bound into Service one redhaired English infant—
Her heart banged. She jumped up and flew into Dove's work closet. Wrenching open the drawer of the writing table, she rifled it until she found Dove's magnifying glass. She seized it.
English? English? She'd thought herself Dutch!
The blood throbbed so violendy in her temples that it blacked her vision for a moment, blinded her. She drew a deep breath to calm herself.
English. Why hadn't any of her masters bothered to tell her! She'd always assumed Dutch. No one had ever told her different.
Holding the trembling magnifying glass to the faded Dutch script, she read:
Bound into Service one redhaired English Infant. It being Female and having dark blue Eyes and bearing upon its spoilt Skin three Birthmarks, one Mark upon its Breast, one upon its right Wrist, one upon the Nape of its Neck. This Infant shall be bound in Service and shall dutifully Serve its Master for Twenty-One Years from This Instant.
Set down and so decreed on this twentieth day of August in the Year of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, Sixteen Hundred and Forty Six by:
Derrick Vanderzee, Ship Master The
Jericho
The Jericho. A ship. She'd been named for a ship! Why hadn't anyone ever bothered to tell her? Dove couldn't have told her, of course. He didn't read Dutch. But she'd had other masters, Dutch masters. They could have told her.
Her heart pounded in excitement. English, not Dutch. She wasn't Dutch, she was English. A hundred questions whirled in her head. Had she been born in England? Or had she been born on the ship? On the ship probably, else why would they name her for it? But her parents had been English. She pressed the backs of her hands to her hot cheeks to cool them.
In excitement, she read the indenture again. Her heart pounded with the possibilities. Perhaps she could trace her parents, find out who they'd been. If she'd been born aboard The Jericho, then what had happened to them? Had they died, leaving her in the hands of the captain? Or had her parents not wanted her? Had they been superstitious people, frightened of a baby born with witch's hair and with three birthmarks, three duivel marks? She bit her lip, not wanting to think that, rejecting it. Perhaps her mother had been an unmarried girl, caught in forbidden pregnancy. Possibilities darted through her mind like minnows in a creek. Whatever the circumstances, one fact came shining through. She was English. She might even have living relatives in England. She might have family!
Family. The blood in her temples throbbed.
She wished Dove were home! Dove might be able to tell her how to trace her parents. But he wasn't. Taking the indenture, she dashed out of the work closet to find the one person who could be counted on to give her sensible advice.
She found Leonardo d'Orias in the stable, but to her disappointment he was busily engaged with three stable hands, examining a new pony he and Lady de Mont had bought for their little daughter, Ginevra. She couldn't intrude. Curbing her excitement, she waited quietly at the stable door. When several minutes had passed, d'Orias gave the pony's flank an approving slap, turned and came directly to her.