Mood Indigo

by Parris Afton Bonds

  And it was this Philadelphian society he would infiltrate, posing still as a tutor, this time fleeing British-held Boston. The limp he affected would prevent the indelicate question later of why he had not volunteered for the newly raised Continental Army.

  He reached for the missive on the nightstand. His lids narrowed over pale-blue irises as he carefully reread the messages that were several months old. Jane’s letter had only just reached him from Gage’s headquarters in Boston by way of his own Philadelphian contact—the German baker Ludwig, who specialized in fancy gingerbread and intelligence notes.

  Jane. Jane represented a supreme challenge for a bastard aspiring to possess a titled lady. And she represented revenge.

  Now she was in the colonies. In Virginia. He wanted her as he wanted no other woman, not even her mother. For her mother had been beautiful—but very accessible in her loneliness. And he, an inexperienced youth of sixteen, had merely been infatuated with Lord Wychwood’s wife.

  Lord Wychwood, Robert Lennox, whose infidelities were legend, never expected to return home to find his own wife dallying—and with a sheer youth at that. Lady Lennox took her life with poison the next day.

  Lennox took his revenge immediately. With the influence he wielded through King George, he was able to persuade the monarch to withdraw both the title and the Manor House estate from Lady MacKenzie. These had been reluctantly granted to Terence’s mother by Lord MacKenzie upon their divorce—with the condition she would make no scandal by flaunting her illegitimate son in society. Manor House, awarded then to Lennox, was boarded up, and Terence’s mother returned to live with friends in Scotland.

  Next Lennox struck directly at Terence. At the time Terence was studying British constitutional and international law at the Inns of Court. Suddenly, Terence found that his application at the Inn’s Temple was not renewed.

  Terence joined Her Majesty’s Dragoons. Lennox, too busy in London with both political and amorous affairs, did not suspect that over those next six years Terence was busy also at Wychwood whenever he could get leave, befriending the daughter who suffered the same neglect and loneliness as her mother had. He insidiously capitalized on the homely child’s lack of affection, so that she willingly kept secret his visits to Wychwood.

  But somehow Lennox must have discovered those clandestine visits, for Terence at last found himself posted to the worst hellhole in India.

  Jane was no longer a child but a woman. And seduction was not enough. After his ultimate mission was completed, Terence would claim his rewards. He would take Lennox’s daughter from him—and Manor House, and the Wychwood estates as well. Jane was not as tractable nor weak-willed as her mother. But he would yet bend her— and break her.

  He held Jane’s letter to the candle. Revenge was slow in coming, but it was nearing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Tidewater plantation society of Virginia was for the most part a wealthy, semi-leisure class, a planter aristocracy that was able to devote time to pleasure: to reading, study, philosophy, the arts and writing, as well as to gambling, the fox chase, dancing, drinking, hunting, and social gaiety. And Williamsburg was the political and social metropolis of this plantation gentry.

  Still, for most of the year Williamsburg was a small college town and marketplace. But twice annually, during “public times” when the legislature met and the courts were in session, the planters’ capital sprang to life. The population of two thousand doubled or even trebled. The innkeepers often roused one customer from sleep so that another could take his place. Everyone met everyone.

  Yet that spring session of ’75 held little promise of excitement—or opportunity—for Jane. The first day, a warm May afternoon, she could only think of the handsome red brick house that Ethan had rented from the Tory, John Paradise, as Paradise Lost.

  From the drawing-room window she watched the gilded carriages with their teams of four horses, a trademark of a prosperous planter, rattle along the wide, mile-long Duke of Gloucester Street. With longing for a society denied her, she gazed from behind the wooden Venetian slats upon the planters’ wives. Dressed in fashionable satins and carrying lacy parasols, they sat talking on the stone benches randomly placed along the avenue or strolled with their Negro maidservants under the arching live oaks that bordered the wide esplanade.

  An open carriage drawn by a pair of superb bays rolled to a stop before the house, and Ethan got out. Dressed once more in sober black broadcloth and black yam stockings, he reminded her of the Dark Angel. His height and flaming red hair set him apart from all others on the street.

  In mild surprise she watched as, tricorn tucked beneath his arm, he bent over the hand of the woman still inside the carriage. The woman’s powdered hair was adorned with rose silk ribbons that were repeated on the wide paniered dress of pale-gray jaconet. But it was the woman’s face that captured the attention—one of undoubted beauty with lips that formed a petulantly flirtatious moue.

  Hastily Jane let the Venetian blinds slip into place. She had not yet dusted the house that had been closed up for several months, and Ethan was returning to catch her spying from the window!

  She hurried from the parlor, mentally ticking off her chores that day. The plaid dust covers still needed to be changed, and the heavy brocaded curtain needed to be replaced with light silk gauze against the summer heat. Too, she must not forget the woolen bed curtains that needed to be exchanged for mosquito netting. She just reached the stairs when Ethan opened the door.

  Hand on the dust-filmed black oak bannister, she slowly turned. His black eyes raked over her. Her butternut-dyed dress, bare of paniers and hoops, hung limply on her, her unpowdered hair straggled in wisps from beneath the unbecoming mobcap. What a drab comparison she must make with the anonymous lady in the carriage. Still, Ethan’s expression reflected something other than disgust. Displeasure that she had accomplished so little in setting the house to rights?

  No, that couldn’t be the reason, because they had arrived too late in Williamsburg the night before to do much more than unpack his razor strap, shaving mug, and other personal belongings before retiring. But his mouth had flattened just as it was now when he had passed the horn lamp to her before her bedroom door.

  Later that night, lying on the linenless bed in her thin shift, she had heard him in the opposite bedroom, pacing the floor. Was it the evening heat that had kept him awake? Had his thoughts been wrapped up in the mercantile venture he mentioned he was embarking on? Or had he been dwelling on Susan, who would be coming to Williamsburg with Bram for the Burgesses’ spring session?

  And what kind of thoughts did he give to the maidservant he owned, the maidservant who shared an enforced intimacy with him? She knew he wanted her. And this afforded her no end of delight, for how it must go against his Quaker’s grain to love one woman and lust after another!

  And what of herself? Did she not love one man but lust after this one?

  God help her, for between the two of them coursed the ultimate alchemy.

  She dipped a mocking curtsey. “How can I please you, master?” Why did she feel pushed to provoke him?

  He jammed his hat at her and strode on past. “Bring bread and cheese to the library.”

  “There is no bread and cheese. There is nothing in the pantry.”

  “Oh . . . yes,” he mumbled and absently rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. Pulling the worsted purse from his black waistcoat, he handed her several pounds. “Purchase what is needed at the market.”

  At both Wychwood and the Lennox town house in London, the servants had done all the shopping. And at Mood Hill, Ethan had bartered for whatever staples weren’t raised on the plantation. Jane had never shopped for food and had not the slightest idea what one bought. Still, her lips curled with scorn. “You are not afraid I shall make off with your fortune?”

  “Thee has already cost me a goodly sum, mistress.”

  “I know—fifty pounds, no less. You have reminded me often enough, but I did warn you of your
folly.”

  “Everyone has reminded me,” he muttered, and turned on his heel for the library’s double doors.

  Curtseying to his retreating back, she muttered, “And good cheer to you now.”

  Morosely she repaired to the outside kitchen. Among the assortment of waffle irons, tea caddies, and coffee grinders she found a basket of split oak. Knotting her brown shawl scarf beneath her bosom, she set off in the direction of the market square, the center of every town.

  It was a beautiful, warm spring day, and she felt a frantic liberty as she briskly walked the few blocks to the broad green. Her opportunity to locate Tory sympathizers had arrived more quickly than she could have hoped. Freedom might be as near as the hour! Forgetting her irritation with Ethan, she once again hummed to herself that silly ditty “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  As luck would have it, Saturday was one of the three days for the marketplace, and all the farmers were pouring in from the countryside. Only as she drew near Market Square, which was crowded not only with farmers, hucksters, and shoppers but, alas, mustered militiamen, drilling, did she realize her error. The loyalists of Virginia hardly dared openly expose their political views in so radical a town.

  Finding a Tory sympathizer was going to be more difficult than she supposed.

  Despite her drab dress, which announced her lowly status, she found men doffing their hats or sweeping bows as she passed among them. A well-dressed older man in brown satin and a curly gray peruke fixed her with a quizzing glance that did not hide the prurient gleam in his eye; a farm boy, reeking of hogwash, gazed after her with a love-struck' expression. She knew it did no homage to whatever beauty she might possess; for in that land where women were at a premium had she been as ugly as Medusa it would not have mattered to the men.

  Ignoring the would-be swains, she picked her way through the pushcart vendors selling oysters on the half shell, the briny odor wafted by the day’s heat among the sticky press of shoppers. As she neared the butcher’s shambles and other market booths that offered green and yellow vegetables and luscious ripe fruits, she heard Ethan’s name hummed by those about her. Belatedly she realized she was a part of that subject of discussion.

  “A titled lady, for sure” . . . “Ethan’s Folly” . . . “Escaping a forced marriage, ’tis said” . . . “What a bargain that Quaker struck!” . . . “Living together, no less!”

  A heated blush flagged her cheeks. But she tilted her chin imperiously and marched on toward the dairy area. To have her name bandied about like she was a common slut! She looked over the array of cheeses, the thatched baskets of brown eggs, the quart urns of fresh milk; yet she heeded little, so strong ran her shame. “What have ye, dearie?” asked a farm wife with missing teeth.

  “Nothing from the likes of yer prices!” quipped a woman’s peppery voice behind Jane. “The king’s treasury could take lessons from yew.”

  Startled, Jane turned to find the woman whose daughter had died aboard the Cornwall. “ ’Tis Lizzie,” the little woman said.

  Impulsively Jane leaned over to hug her. Lizzie represented part of that old world—and was a friend in that new world of total strangers. “Odd’s blood, but I remember yew,” Jane said, mimicking the Cockney accent, and stepped back. But she also remembered that Lizzie’s hair had not been threaded with gray as it was now, and fewer lines used to pinch her mouth. Life apparently wasn’t any easier for Lizzie in the colonies. “Are you ’appy, Lizzie?”

  The woman shrugged bony shoulders. “Is anyone? Are you, Meg?”

  Unable to meet the woman’s discerning eye, Jane looked away. “Reasonably so. And Polly? Wot do you know of ’er?”

  Lizzie shook her head sadly. “She was with child but lost the wee one.”

  “Then she found ’erself a ’usband!”

  “Nay, not a ’usband. A brute of a master. She lost the babe when he cudgeled her. And he was the babe’s father, Wainwright was!”

  Wainwright! Jane shivered, realizing how much worse off she could have been. Then, “Lizzie, do you know any Tory families in Williamsburg?”

  Lizzie cackled. “Aye. I work for one—the Widow Grundy. Treats me fair for all her queer ways.”

  “Lizzie!” Jane drew her away from the press of people making purchases. “Could you introduce me to her? It’s important.”

  The little woman eyed her strangely. “She cannot ’elp you, for all that you are a titled lady.”

  “You know?”

  “Everyone knows. But I ’ad it in me ’ead aboard ship even.”

  “And this Widow Grundy—”

  “She be daft, Meg. She receives callers in a coach on ’er back porch. And me and the other servants—why, we ’ave to rock the coach to and fro while she talks with ’er callers. Can you fathom that!”

  “Please—take me to her.”

  The Widow Grundy’s house, a full two stories without dormers in the roof, stood at the shady intersection of Nicholas and North England streets. Nervously Jane paced the drawing room’s worn carpet until Lizzie summoned her. Just as Lizzie had said, Jane was received in a green coach on the wide porch at the rear of the house.

  When Lizzie opened the coach door, the odorous fumes of tobacco reached Jane. Inside an old woman sat on the fine green Moroccan leather seat. “Well, do get in, child. It’s dreadfully cold to these old bones.”

  Lizzie nodded reassuringly, and Jane lifted her skirts to climb inside, ducking her head low. When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw that the old woman’s high- piled powdered hair was diamond-studded. The wrinkled cheeks were heavily rouged, and a beauty patch was pasted on one drooping jowl. Between the painted, funneled lips was a long-stemmed pipe. Jane remembered her now at the auction of the indentured servants.

  The widow rapped Jane’s knees with the pipe. “Don’t gawk like a ninny. You’ve seen people smoking before.” “Aye,” Jane said, thinking to humor the old woman.

  “So you’re Ethan’s Folly.” The old woman’s gaze ran over Jane with a practiced eye. “Good lines. You’ll weather the years well here.”

  “I don’t plan to stay.”

  At that moment the coach began a gentle rocking motion, and Jane grabbed for the window strap.

  The widow drew in on the pipe. “Fool to run away. Many a woman is setting her cap for Ethan Gordon.” Now she knew the woman was crazy. “I have to get to my—my fiancé. I believe he’s with the British troops in Canada. Can you help me get there?”

  A column of exhaled smoke spiraled upward. “Don’t you know, child, that anyone who helps a runaway slave is whipped?”

  Jane’s shoulders sagged. Between the thick smoke in the closed coach and its rocking motion, she thought she would throw up. And the way the old woman eyed her, as if sizing her up—it made her stomach roll even more in a queasy nervousness.

  “I think I can trust you, child,” the widow abruptly pronounced.

  “Trust me?”

  “I’m not as loony as you think.” The widow leaned forward and tapped the pipe against Jane’s knee again. Then she spoke in a low voice. “A Scottish teacher in Westmoreland County wrote a letter to a friend in Scotland describing the scandalous hanging in effigy of Lord North. The letter was published in a Glasgow newspaper. When word about the letter found its way back to Virginia, the schoolmaster was fined and discharged from his job. I—and the network of loyalists I work with—helped him escape into Delaware.”

  Jane’s eyes widened. Smoke exhaled once more in a neat little circle from the old woman’s seamed lips, but Jane forgot her nausea.

  “There are others like him I’ve helped,” the Widow Grundy continued. “And so far I have avoided suspicion through inanities like this coach. And this ridiculous pipe. Though I’ve grown to like the taste of the green weed,” she added with a chuckle.

  The old woman paused to draw another puff, then said, “And I'm sane enough, child, to know that running away is not the answer. You don’t even know for certain where your fiancé might be.”
>
  “If I could get to Boston, I am sure headquarters there could locate him for me.”

  “Fie! Boston isn’t peaceful India where an officer’s wife has her bungalow and servants. Boston is besieged. The people left in that city are tearing up the wharving planks for firewood. Go back to England. Wait for your fiancé there.”

  “No!”

  “Ah! A parent who opposes the match awaits you in the mother country.”

  Jane nodded miserably.

  “Then wait out the war here. In the meantime do what you can for other, not-so-fortunate loyalists in Virginia.” Despair tightened Jane’s clasped hands. She had counted on finding aid in Williamsburg. The widow laid a veined and spotted hand on her interlocked ones. “Help us, child. And I’ll help you.”

  “How? I am almost a prisoner myself,” she added bitterly.

  “We want to find out who the Leper is.”

  She looked up, her brows lifted in bewilderment. “The Leper?”

  “The Leper’s Colony—the rebel intelligence network.” The old woman tapped the bowl of the clay pipe against the door. “The Leper coordinates the various rebel spy rings—including those Committees of Correspondence— that operate between the lower, middle, and upper colonies. The Leper is the mastermind, and we feel he operates out of Virginia—the waist of the colonies. Discover his identity and we crush the most powerful link in the colonies’ rebellion.”

  “But how could I do anything?”

  “Your master is friends with skilled agitators and radicals—rebel leaders like Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and others in their revolutionary regime.”

  “Bah!” Jane scoffed. “Ethan Gordon is radical about nothing! He’s too pious—too self-righteous—to lift a finger in any cause but his own!”