by Henke, Shirl
“Doan you be worryin' ‘bout the mastah. I'll fatten him right 'nough now we got him home.”
Madelyne forbore to say that it was unlikely Quintin could safely stay at the Hill even if he wished to, which she very much doubted. She took the tray, laden with food and a cool pitcher of ale, and climbed the stairs with it, heading for his room. She heard the sounds of splashing, then silence by the time she opened the door.
Quintin lay with his head back against the rim of the tub, dozing. He had shaved off his beard and washed his hair. She studied his profile in the soft evening light. Just looking at his wet, muscular body made her breath catch. To break the spell, she walked briskly from the dressing room door to a small side table in his bedroom and deposited the tray.
Quintin awakened instantly and looked up at her, watching as she laid out the food. “Among all your other new duties, I didn't expect you to act as a kitchen servant.”
“How gracious of you to exempt me,” she said tightly as she uncovered the food. She could hear sounds of his washing,but refused to look at him.
“In the interest of preserving Mrs. Ogilve's carefully beeswaxed floor, would you hand me that towel?” he asked, feigning a nonchalance he was far from feeling. Quintin watched as she seized the towel, walked briskly into the closet, and approached the tub.
He was standing dripping wet in the center of a braided rag rug. Her eyes traveled down his body before she thrust the towel at him,but he could see the battle she waged not to look further. A slow smile spread across his face. It was not a nice one.
Madelyne realized she was staring at him in spite of her resolve. She could feel her pulse thrumming frantically and her knees turning to water. I will not show him this terrible weakness! But she could tell by the mocking, bitter smile on his face that she already had. Then, as he took the towel and began to dry himself, she noticed him wince slightly when he rubbed an angry red scar, newly healing on his left arm.
Before she could stop herself, her hand reached out to touch it. “You've been shot.”
“It's happened more than once. But I've been lucky. Nothing broken or gone poisonous.”
“But it could. So could this,” she replied, as her fingers lightly grazed another raw nick on his chest. She was rewarded when his breath caught. A small smile quivered on her lips as she said, “These need tending. I'll fetch my medicines. Are there any other places that I should see to?” The moment the words escaped her lips she turned crimson.
Quintin realized her gaffe and his own maddening response to her. He wrapped the towel around his hips and walked barefoot over to his bed, where he stretched out casually. “I'll await your inspection when you bring your medicines.”
Odious, arrogant lout! Madelyne stormed through the adjacent door to her room and summoned Nell, who quickly fetched her small leather pouch filled with ointments, tinctures, and herbals. She steadied herself by leaning on the door frame and taking a deep breath before she reentered his room and approached the bed. Forcing herself to act as dispassionately as she did when treating sick or injured servants, Madelyne rubbed ointment on the reddish weal of scar tissue, then turned her attention to the cut on his chest. Actually it was more of a rip. “How did you get this? It looks so ragged.”
”A New Jersey loyalist with a bayonet was rather intent on skewering me. His musket caught on a vine just in time to deflect his arm.”
Madelyne shuddered. “You must've faced death a hundred times this past year.” She applied a stinging vinegar to cleanse the wound, then worked in a daub of ointment.
“Tis practically healed,” he said dismissively, shoving the bag of medicines from her side. He took her hand in his with a muttered oath and pulled her roughly into his arms. Before his lips could swoop down to claim hers, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly, as desperate to receive the harsh, punishing kiss as he was to give it. After a moment of savaging her mouth, he raised his head and said in a hoarse voice, “What black witchery is it between us, Madelyne, that neither of us can deny it?”
“Please, Quint, for tonight, let there be no war, no past, nothing but this.” She ran her tongue along his jawline, then up to touch his ear. Her fingernails lightly raked his bare chest, paying particular attention to the hard male nipples.
He began working the laces of her bodice free. When they refused to yield quickly enough, he tore the thin cotton drawstrings from their eyelets and pulled the garment from her, leaving only her thin chemise. Her breasts, engorged from nursing, strained against the sheer lawn. His hands cupped them,thumbs rubbing the tips, which quickly hardened. She moaned and pushed them against his massaging palms. Quintin pulled the drawstring at her neck and roughly shoved the undergarment down her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides.
Staring at her,he held her, panting, immobilized, for several seconds as their eyes met. Then he lowered his head and teased each breast with his tongue and lips, moving from one to the other, feeling her writhe beneath his caresses. He knelt, straddling her, and yanked the towel free from his hips. Madelyne's eyes at once fastened on his rigid staff. He was ready for her, and as his hands roughly pulled up her petticoats and grazed her thighs, she was ready for him.
Struggling, she tore her chemise, working her arms free so she could reach up to clasp his shoulders as he positioned himself between her legs. She pulled him down to her, feeling him slide inside the wet, welcoming heat of her body. Wrapping her legs securely about his hips, Madelyne gloried in the old familiar sensations as they claimed her. She thought she heard him murmur her name, but through the haze of passion she only knew for certain that she cried out his.
How sweet, how wondrous this joining, all pleasure and oblivion, no remembrance of the ways they had wounded each other, the harsh words they had exchanged. But after such long abstinence, they spent themselves all too soon. The swiftness and rough, searing ecstasy of the culmination left them both too exhausted to move. Madelyne held him fast and he did not try to withdraw from her. She ran her fingers through his tangled hair, still damp from his bath.
Quintin felt her caress, felt her soft, beautiful little body beckon him, and again he grew hard. The need was too powerful to resist in spite of his best resolve. Like a rutting stag, he took her yet again. All the long months without the comforts of a woman's body should have explained his hunger, but as he slowed the pace and savored the exquisite way they fit together, he knew it was more than mere abstinence.
He had never sated his lust with the slatternly, diseased camp followers whom the partisans met from time to time, but on a few rare occasions he had been sent to Georgetown and Williamsburg on secret assignments. The women there were clean, attractive, and more than willing, but none of them could have ever filled this aching hunger. This was homecoming, pain and glory all bound together. He was helpless to resist and it frightened him.
Madelyne felt the delicious heat building again, then finally, when she thought she'd go mad with the pleasure, her release came, slower, in a crescendo of rising, prolonged waves that left her so utterly breathless that she felt faint. Through the haze she felt Quintin's last swift, shuddering strokes as he joined her.
But this time, he rolled away from her, up and off the bed. Reaching for the clothes Toby had laid out, he began to dress.
She watched him in stunned silence for a moment, then realized the strumpet she must look with her skirts rucked above her hips, her stockings still on, her chemise hanging torn from her body. As she smoothed down her petticoats and pulled the remnants of her shift together, she asked, “Is this how it's always to be for us, Quint? Swift passion, then silence...regret?”
His eyes never met hers as he pulled on his boots. “Regret? Yes, Madelyne, I have regrets. But it's far too late for me to change anything.” He shrugged wearily and headed for the door.
“You could change everything if you wanted to—if you'd let go of your past and believe what we just shared was—”
“What we just shared
was animal lust,” he snapped back, his eyes raking her disheveled appearance. “Damned if I know what it is about you—oh, the hell with it all!” He spun on his heel and left the room without a backward glance.
Madelyne sat on the bed, numb with pain. Then, hearing James cry, she stood up and made her way to the dressing room where she seized a robe from a peg on the wall. Quickly donning it, she rushed into the nursery to attend her son.
As he stalked angrily down the stairs, Quintin could still see the look of anguish on her face. “Let go of the past—as if it'll ever let go of me,” he whispered to himself as he opened the library door, heading for the stock of liquor Robert always kept there. Although his stomach growled, he could not eat. He wanted a drink.
Robert Blackthorne had heard the servants' excited whispering when he retired to his room after dinner. The young master had returned home to see his son. He wondered if Quintin believed the boy was his. After spending the past year with Madelyne, Robert was reasonably certain it was. The foolish chit was obviously besotted with her husband. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. The damned traitor!
He could not sleep, and the tumbler of brandy at his bedside was empty. He reached for the bell pull, then stopped. He felt restless, in need of a walk. “Be damned if I’ll hide in my room while he walks about the Hill a free man.”
Robert put on his robe and opened the door. When the boy who was assigned to see to him in the night stood up obediently, he shooed the child away and slowly walked down the hall. By the time he had descended the stairs and reached the library door, his breathing was labored. God, how he despised being an invalid!
Quintin heard the door open and saw the dim flicker of a candle. He had been sitting in the darkness, sipping his brandy and brooding. When he recognized Robert, he stood up, raising his glass in a mock salute. “To the new heir of Blackthorne Hill.”
“You traitorous mongrel! You have no right to be here. If I had the strength, I'd ride to Savannah and fetch the soldiers to see you hanged!”
“Good to see you again, too, Father,” Quintin said with a shrug, turning his back to stare out the window.
Robert felt the red rage begin to build, just as it had every time Quintin had defied him since childhood. Now he was such a worthless used-up old man that the young bastard could simply mock him and turn his back. It was not to be endured. He walked to the hearth and seized a poker.
“You'll not dismiss me like some stable lackey! As if you haven't brought enough disgrace on the Blackthorne name by your very existence, now you betray your king and country like the bastard you are. I'll whip you the same as I did when you were a boy.”
Robert came at Quintin with the poker raised, his whole body shaking with every step. It was all he could do to hold the heavy iron bar aloft as he staggered across the large room. Quintin could see the icy pallor of death on his skin, smell it in his sweat. He reached out one arm and knocked the poker from Robert's hand, sending it flying with a loud clatter.
“Your days of beating me are over, old man,” he said with icy deliberation. ”I may be a bastard, but I've done my duty for Blackthorne Hill, just as you did. Now that I've seen my heir, I'll leave you to rot in your own bile.”
Madelyne heard the sound of angry voices coming from the library. Still holding James,she raced down the stairs to the open door, where she saw Robert collapsed against a tall-backed chair by the window. Quintin stalked toward her. Barring his way she said, “You can't leave him like this, Quint. You may never see him alive again.”
“Damn you, get out of my way. I've had enough of you all.”
Hearing her soft declaration over the roaring in his ears; Robert straightened his spine, clawing the back of the chair to do so. “It is my devoutest wish never to see him alive again. Let him go back to his outlaws and die with them.”
He glared at Madelyne with glassy eyes and laughed, a dry rasping sound. “So beautiful and Madonna-like, just as Anne was. Is she as faithless? We are both of us cursed by an obsession with our wives.” He saw Quintin's back go rigid, but the younger man did not turn to face the older. “You say you've done your duty for Blackthorne Hill just as I did. Does it mean you think young James here is a bastard also? What say you to that, madam?”
Madelyne clutched her son protectively and met his gaze unflinchingly. ”I told you when I conceived that this was Quint's baby. You can both choose to believe whatever pleases you—and be damned to you!” She turned and walked to the hall stairs without a backward glance.
By the time she was at the top of the steps, she heard Quintin's horse galloping away. She summoned two young houseboys and sent them to fetch Master Robert to bed once he had drunk his fill. Only the look of unconditional love in little James's eyes, the warm feel of his body in her arms, kept her sane. ”I shall live for you, little one. You'll not have a life fouled by their hate.”
* * * *
Madelyne spent the following months working each day until she was ready to drop with exhaustion. Blackthorne Hill was preparing for the coming winter. She tried to think of her absent husband and the acrimony of their parting as little as possible. Running a huge plantation helped. As the days of September grew shorter, her hours of toil grew longer.
Those days were filled with treating sick slaves and hearing reports from their overseers about the harvesting of cash crops and foods grown to sustain the hundreds of souls on the Hill. She ordered the slaughter of hogs and cattle, then inspected the smokehouses full of hams and great slabs of side meat and checked the barrels filled with salted beef.
By night she pored over household account books, deciding where purchases could be cut and various items made at the Hill. The battle for Mrs. Ogilve's ledgers had been a formidable one, but with Quintin gone and Robert so ill that even the hard-faced overseers answered now to the mistress, the housekeeper was forced to give over her books.
Sitting one night by the light of a branched candlestick, she rubbed her eyes tiredly and scanned a page of purchases—clothing and foodstuffs for the residents of the big house. Listed were a number of items she had never inventoried, such as twenty bolts of fine linen for sheets and dozens of boxes of expensive spices—ginger, nutmegs, and cloves. She made a note to discuss the matter with Nell and Delphine when she had time.
By the end of September, the plantation received word of further reversals for the loyalist cause in the war, and Madelyne forgot the irregularities of the account books. The great British fleet under Admiral Graves was fought to a standstill by the American's French ally, Admiral de Grasse, off the capes of Virginia. The last vestige of British naval power in the southern theater sailed back to New York, leaving General Cornwallis surrounded by the encroaching French and American forces of Rochambeau and Washington. Even the dashing, if overly brutal British dragoon, Banastre Tarleton, had sailed for home. Madelyne thought of the rebel militia taking over Blackthorne Hill and decided to resume practice with the .30-caliber Jaeger rifle that Andrew had given her.
As September gave way to October, British shipping of seemingly inexhaustible luxury items began to shrink because of French fleets in southern waters. With fine spermaceti candles no longer available, Madelyne ordered the dipping of bay-berry candles, even for the dining room table. So far Dr. Witherspoon had been able to obtain cinchona bark, but Robert's fevers now waxed and waned in spite of it.
“I'm responsible for all these hundreds of people, and so ill equipped for the task,” she murmured aloud as she trudged from the dairy up the hill to the big house. Again Madelyne cursed Quintin's rebel allegiance which had led him to fight so far from home. Yet if the Americans did win—something she'd considered unthinkable a scant year ago—at least his outlaw exploits might save his birthright.
In this time of privation, Madelyne's greatest joy was her son. That warm October afternoon, her flagging spirits were cheered when she saw Andrew's distinctive chestnut gelding being led by a stableboy for a rubdown.
Although the u
navoidable rift between Andrew and Barbara had widened, Madelyne still treasured the friendship of both and relied on their frequent visits to keep her abreast of news in the city. Then she noticed Serena Fallowfield's dainty white mare outside the stable door, and her heart sank.
“I'm a mess, and she'll not hesitate to embarrass both Andrew and me by saying so.”
By the time she reached the back door of the big house, she could hear Serena's voice carrying down the long hall from the front parlor. ”I don't know how poor old Robert's kept this place running if all your reports about his failing health are true, Andrew. After all, Quintin has deserted his family for his traitor's cause.”
“My husband may not be here to run the Hill, but I am. Good afternoon, Serena,” she said, nodding briskly to the odious woman, then turning to smile warmly at Andrew. “It's been far too long since your last visit. Ill have Delphine fix us a lovely luncheon, and then you may regale me with the latest gossip from Savannah.”
“Your friend Lady Caruthers is the talk of the town,” Serena purred. “It seems she's spurned her brother's dear friend—quite a catch, too. A viscount no less. And Weymouth owns a fortune in Monty's gambling notes.”
“Hush, Serena. What's between gentlemen regarding their gaming debts is best not mentioned by ladies.” Andrew's voice was laced with annoyance. He smiled apologetically at Madelyne and said, “When I said I was coming to visit you, my cousin here insisted on coming along to see how Uncle Robert is doing.”
Madelyne could feel Serena's eyes on her wrinkled, muddy petticoats and sweat-soaked bodice. Her hair hung in a single unruly plait without even the benefit of a cap. “Please forgive my appearance, but since I'm the only able-bodied Blackthorne on the plantation, I must see to the outdoor and indoor activities. Make yourselves comfortable in the parlor while I change.”