JoAnn Wendt

by Beyond the Dawn

  With a laugh of pure relish the man drew out his knife, and the will to survive jolted through her. She twisted violently, throwing herself about like an animal caught in a trap.

  Dennis was dragging himself across the room.

  “Run, Jane,” he gasped, crawling toward her. A musket barrel whipped out, smashing Dennis to the floor.

  The knife came up again, and this time Flavia couldn’t move. The man had her pinned. He jerked her head back by her hair. She screamed, screamed until no more sound would come.

  “Hold it,” directed the ragged-eared one. “His Grace said to kill ‘er. But he didn’t say nothing ‘bout taking our sport with ‘er first. Come on. Bring ‘er. Let’s have a toss in the hay first. After that you kin cut her throat” He grinned.

  They dragged her from the meetinghouse. She fought and screamed, her screams futile echoes. The roughness of their hands, the crude stable smells of the men hit her with terrifying reality. They dragged her toward their horses.

  “Help me,” she screamed at a woman and her daughter, who fled from the feasting table. They ran into a nearby house, banging the door shut in panic. An elderly woman with stiff gray hair poking out from under a starched cap marched out of her house, wielding a musket. Dropping to one knee by her stone well, she took aim at the ruffian who ran toward the horses. The musket cracked, but the shot went wild, and the ragged-ear turned in fury. Running to the woman, he seized the musket, smashed it against the well and kicked the old woman to the ground.

  “No!” Flavia shrieked, sobbing in despair. Could no one help?

  A hoarse cry from behind made her captor pause for a moment. Flavia tried to wrench free, turning. Dennis was pitching toward her, bleeding from the head. He limped, but still he came doggedly.

  Flavia shrieked again as the saw-toothed one leaped back at Dennis, slashing with his knife. The sleeve of Dennis’s coat split open. Flavia screamed at the sudden flash of white linen and the terrifying spurt of blood.

  “Dennis!”

  She tried to twist loose. The brute who’d slashed his knife at Dennis laughed loudly as Dennis continued to stagger toward her.

  “Jane,” he gasped, “run—run—”

  The brute kicked Dennis’s legs out from under him. Dennis crashed in the mudyard, his blood flowing. For good measure, the brute kicked him in the arm that was bleeding.

  “No! No!” she shrieked, twisting and wrenching herself. She fought wildly, fought now for her life as both men dragged her toward the waiting horses. She kicked and slashed out with her teeth, trying to bite the men, her wild struggles making the horses balk and skitter sideways. Angered at her struggles, the ragged-eared one smashed his hand across her face, slapping her into submission. Her face exploded with fire. Her ears rang from the blow, rang so loudly that she wasn’t sure she heard the thunder of horse hooves until one of the brutes cried out in alarm.

  Their hands fell away suddenly, and she ran in terror. A shot rang out, and then she heard the thud of a cudgel striking flesh.

  “Run! Me arm, matey!” squealed one of the brutes. “He’s broke me arm!”

  Flavia ran, ran wildly, ran until shame stopped her. Dennis! Dear God, Dennis bleeding to death! She turned and ran back toward Dennis. The horseman had dismounted. His cudgel swung in fury, and as Flavia ran frantically toward Dennis, running and stumbling over uneven ground, the ruffians fell, mowed down by the swinging cudgel. One of the brutes tried to crawl away, and two Quaker women came running with barn pitchforks. The women thrust the glittering tines toward the man’s throat, and the brute cowered as the women held him at bay. Flavia flew to Dennis, her eyes on the tall dark-haired horseman and his swinging club. When the brutes huddled in a heap, bawling and clutching their wounds, the horseman dropped his club and turned . . .

  Garth turned, his heart hammering in dread of what he might see. Had she been hurt? God, he would kill them! When he’d ridden in and had seen that flash of red hair, that small figure being dragged through the mudyard, he’d gone stark crazy. Now, breath gone, panting, half blinded with anxiety, he looked for her. His eyes flashed over the scene. To his right, at a stone well, an elderly woman was struggling to get up from the ground. A girl rushed out of a house to aid her. Ahead, the yard of the small meetinghouse lay in chaos. A trencher table lay overturned. Cakes and a cider jug lay smashed, the smell of apple cider strong in the air. A man was on the ground, dragging himself to his knees, clamping a hand to a head that spurted blood.

  Flavia?

  Fear half-blinded him. He forced his eyes to focus. He sent his eyes searching. Beyond the meetinghouse, blue silk flashed in the sunlight. His heart gave a gigantic leap as he saw the red hair. Framed against an April blue sky and white cloud puffs that raced in from the Chesapeake, she came flying. She flew toward the mudyard, flew toward the man who knelt bleeding on the ground.

  Garth lunged forward.

  “Flavia!” he shouted.

  At his shout, her head jerked. She pitched forward in her frantic run, stopping, her arms flying out and freezing in mid-air, as if she were a delicate statue, a work of art.

  His steps froze too. Not twenty feet from her, his feet seemed to root into the ground. He couldn’t move. He stared at her, stared in shock, stared in dumb joy.

  “Garth?” she whispered. “Garth?”

  She hovered there, trembling, her trembles growing into violent shaking. Her face went white. She swayed. As she swayed, he leaped forward. Uttering a sharp little cry, she fainted.

  He caught her, caught the sweetness he’d spent years yearning for and crushed it to his chest. God . . . God! The scent of heather. The rabbit-quick beat of her heart. Her small body— so small a man could lose her in his arms.

  Hoarsely, he whispered, “They’ve not hurt you? You’re all right?”

  Ice cold with shock, she seemed not to hear.

  “Garth, is it you? Am I dreaming? Is it really you?” she asked over and over. “Is it you?”

  Like a blind person, her shaking fingers trembled to his face. She touched his mouth, his jaw, his eyes. Her fingers went to his hair, his temple. “Is it you? Is it you?” The coldness of her hands jolted his very soul. He held her, his heart breaking at what she’d endured today and every day since that first encounter on the London quay.

  “It is me. I’m here, Flavia, I’m here. You are safe with me. The duke can do you no more harm... no more harm.”

  She continued to shake, staring up at him, her eyes wide with shock and terror. He drank in every feature of her face, drank it in as a man dying of thirst drinks water when finally he finds it. It came to him with a jolt that she was not the girl he’d loved; she was much more. The sweetness was still there, but it was a different sweetness—one that had survived the searing crucible of suffering. There was strength in the sweet face. The girl was gone. A woman had been born.

  She raised her face to him in new terror.

  “Garth! Oh, my love, you must leave me at once! If the duke finds out, he will try to kill you. Oh, Garth, I should die if you were harmed. I couldn’t bear it. I’ve already lost more than I can bear. I’ve lost our—”

  She caught herself and stood gasping in his arms.

  Garth’s heart wrenched from its mooring.

  “Our son, Flavia?”

  Her white face turned to chalk. Her eyes filled her face.

  “You know that Robert was yours?”

  He tried to smile, but the agony in her face broke his heart.

  “I know,” he whispered, “I know, beloved, I know.”

  Bursting into tears, she buried her face in his chest. “Our son is dead, Garth. He drowned in Germany. I don’t know if it was an accident— or if—if the duke—” She ground her face into his chest. She sobbed, “Garth, our son is dead. He’s dead, dead.”

  It took every ounce of willpower to bite back what he longed to tell her. He knew he mustn’t tell her now. Her small, shaking body was already icy with shock. He feared what might happen.
He cradled her close to his warm, pounding heart, kissing her fragrant hair, whispering endearments as she clung to him.

  The mudyard burst into a flurry of activity. Quaker women in plain Virginia-cloth dresses and white starched caps came running, some with pitchforks to guard the attackers, some with ointments, linen for bandaging, bottles of medicinal brandy. Men on horseback straggled into the yard, gaping at the chaos they found. A flurry of excited voices rang out.

  “Attacked Mistress Brown, they did!”

  “Widow Jordan fired her musket and they—”

  “Rode in out of nowhere!”

  “Fought ‘em barehanded, Mr. Finny did.”

  “Mr. Finny—’twas the bravest thing I ever did see.”

  “Mr. Finny bad wounded.”

  As Garth held Flavia, she jerked her head up.

  “Dennis! I must go to him.”

  She twisted out of his arms, but he caught her.

  “You’re not fit, Flavia. You’ll be no help to Finny; you’ll be a hindrance. Let me handle this.”

  She shook her head vehemently, but he barked at two women and put her in their charge, asking them to take her into a house and give her brandy.

  He strode to Finny. A life at sea had left Garth no stranger to treating wounds. Accidents were a sailor’s lot. Three women had brought a blanket and were encouraging the bleeding man to lie on it.

  “He should not lie down. Help him to sit up,” Garth directed, kneeling to the work ahead of him. “Prop him up. His head will bleed less.”

  “Are you Finny?” he said, when the women had propped him up and helped him sit, leaning against the wall.

  Strong, intelligent eyes lifted to his.

  “Jane? Is Jane all right? Has thee saved her?”

  Garth felt he was looking into a mirror as he looked into Finny’s eyes. The anguish in those eyes was the same Garth had felt twice in his life—first when he’d thought he’d lost Flavia to the smallpox; second, when Mab had told him about “Jane Brown” and Garth had suddenly realized that the duke intended to kill Flavia. So, this Finny loved her, too... loved her more than his own life. Garth swallowed, a humble respect for the young Quaker welling up.

  “She is safe,” he said softly. “But I didn’t save her. You did. If you hadn’t fought, delaying the scum in their evil work, they’d have ridden off with her. By the time I got here she might have been dead.”

  His mouth tightened in revulsion as he visualized what he would have found in the countryside when the scum had finished with Flavia.

  Garth set to work on Finny, directing the women in their efforts to help. He tended the head wound first. Though blood flowed copiously, the wound was no worse than that which the sailor got when a sail boom broke loose and went swinging. Directing the women to find a flat stone, he wrapped the stone in linen and tied it hard against the wound. The arm was next. A superficial slash, but a painful one. He wrapped it after dousing it with stinging brandy. He fashioned a sling. Finny’s painful breathing indicated bruised ribs, if not a cracked one. Working with the women, he opened Finny’s shirt and bound the pale chest with tight lengths of linen.

  “Who are you?” Finny said, gritting his teeth in pain as Garth worked.

  Garth hesitated.

  “McNeil. Captain Garth McNeil.”

  The grave intelligent eyes flashed with sudden anger, the anger gradually dissolving into a look of pain.

  “Enough,” Finny said, taking the last end of the linen strip and tucking it into his rib bindings. With a groan of pain, Finny hove himself to his feet and limped toward a one-horse chaise that stood waiting beyond the mudyard.

  * * * *

  Flavia shook her head at the second offer of brandy. She felt calmer now, and at the same time she felt her nerves would explode in shock and in joy. Garth! Garth! Her heart singing, she snatched at the bodice a young woman held out to her. The women had stripped off her gown and put it to the fluting irons and to the pumice stone to gently rub dirt streaks from the shining

  blue silk. Her skirt was brought and she dove into it, binding it just as the door opened and Garth came in. With a cry of joy, she ran into his arms.

  He caught her, and she reveled in being crushed in his arms, crushed so close to his pounding heart that every breath she drew smelled of him. She couldn’t think beyond this moment. Giddy with joy, she held him tight, weeping, laughing, weeping, constantly asking if he was really here or if she was dreaming.

  “I’m here, Flavia and I will never let you go,” he whispered in a choked voice, his rough warm fingers fumbling toward her tears, as though to stop the flow. “My little love . . . my life . . . ”

  At last, arms still entwined, they made their way out into the sunshine. Flavia blinked against the sudden brightness, then caught her breath as she recognized the quiet figure standing near William Tate’s chaise. Dennis! Waiting for her. In her dazed joy she’d forgotten. Forgotten this was her wedding day. Forgotten the beating Dennis had taken for her sake. She stiffened in Garth’s arms, and his hands reluctantly released her.

  “Go, sweetheart. Speak to him.”

  On wobbly legs, she slowly made her way across the yard. Dennis was being tended by a tall, slender girl with shining chestnut-colored hair. The girl fussed gently with his bandaging, her anxious smiles darting up at his pain-whitened face. Flavia winced. The girl was doing for Dennis what she herself should be doing.

  At her approach, the girl turned, rested her hand on Dennis’s shoulder for a long moment, then ducked her head and slipped away. Flavia’s eyes flew to Dennis. She bit her lip at the bloody head bandage, at the arm cradled uselessly in a sling. A white line of pain outlined his lips, and she sensed the pain was not entirely physical.

  She strove to find words. Kind words. But when she could finally bring herself to look into his eyes, she saw she need say nothing. He understood. He smiled gently.

  “Is it he, Jane? Is he the one who has kept thy heart prisoner all these past years?”

  She longed to soften it. She couldn’t bear his eyes.

  “Yes..”

  The spark of hope flickered out in his eyes. He exhaled painfully, holding his bound ribs. Turning to the chaise, he fumbled to find his hat and put it on. Then he gazed at her intensely, as though absorbing her into himself, memorizing every feature. His gaze moved to the ground. Her wedding bouquet lay scattered there, torn and crushed in the attack. The delicate white bells lay smashed in the dirt. Painfully, Dennis eased down on one knee and fumbled for one green stem with its mutilated but still-fragrant blossom. He stood, tucked the flower into the breast of his coat and painfully eased up into the chaise.

  “I must return the chaise to the Tates.”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  Farewell to thee, Jane. Be happy.”

  “Dennis I was truly fond of you.”

  He smiled ruefully. “But not fond enough.”

  Taking the reins, he clucked gently to the horse and the chaise squeaked forward. With tears in her eyes, she watched him go, watched the chaise grow smaller as it went to meet the low, scudding spring clouds. Watched from the warm shelter of Garth’s arms as he came up behind her.

  * * * *

  “Flavia?”

  “Jane,” she reminded him with a little laugh.

  “Jane, then.” McNeil leaned back in the rocking landau, content and feeling a peace he’d never before known. He’d hired a landau and driver at the port of York. Williamsburg was fast approaching. It was time to tell her.

  “Happy, sweetheart?”

  She twisted in the seat to look him full in the face, her large eager eyes melting into his. “Oh, yes, Garth.” But her eyes were tinged with a sadness she didn’t speak of.

  He’d ached to make love to her that very first night on the Marabelle, as they’d slept in the port of Chestertown. The breezes had hummed through the rigging and water had lapped gently at the hull, faintly rocking the ship. A perfect night for love. But he’d held hims
elf back. Flavia’s nerves were raw, fearful things. Hysteria lurked beneath the surface. One moment she would be laughing joyfully with him; the next, her body would chill to ice, and she would shake in some nameless terror. He’d realized she needed simply to lie in his arms like a trusting child.

  They’d slept little. They’d talked endlessly When he’d asked for an account of her past two years, she’d told him everything, although he suspected she’d dwelt little on her sufferings in order to spare him pain. In turn, he told everything she’d wanted to know about his years since that first meeting on the quay. He’d felt the need to be honest. He confessed to Annette and to Eunice. The only thing he held back was the subject of Trent. She wasn’t ready for that shock.

  They’d not made love until the next day, when the Marabelle had sailed out of Chestertown and was out upon the choppy waters of the Chesapeake. He’d come down to his cabin to find her standing at his washstand, completing her toilette. She was wrapped in toweling, her fiery hair brushed long and loose, a washcloth still dripping from her hand.

  She’d caught her breath as he entered, her eyes lifting to his. His heart had given a violent twist. Dear God, she was lovely! More lovely even than he’d remembered. The childlike eyes had deepened with a new wisdom, a lingering sadness. The curves of her small perfect breasts were no longer girlish but womanly, promising the fullness of a woman’s passion. His loins had ached to have her.

  “Flavia?” he’d whispered in a cracked, husky voice.

  She’d dropped the washcloth. It fell to the floor with a wet plop. Her eyes filled with fearful anticipation.

  “Make love to me, Garth?” she’d whispered. “Right now?”

  Choking on his emotions, groaning with the pain of needing her, he’d held out his arms. She’d flown into them, and he’d stripped away her towel, lifting her off her feet until her lips trembled against his.

  “I want to please you,” she’d whispered. “I want to please you so much that you forget every woman you’ve ever had.”

  He’d kissed her, a slow, searching kiss that brought him the sweet taste of her tongue, the long-remembered moist intimacies.