Ty shoved the trencher and spoon across the table to her. “Please. Help yourself. How do your ribs feel this morning?”
She smiled brightly at him. “Oh, ye’ve magic in yer hands, doctor! They scarce hurt at all anymore.”
She sat, elbows akimbo on the table, and shoveled a heaping spoonful of the salt cod into her mouth, chewed once, swallowed, and shoved in another mouthful. Some of the sauce dribbled down her chin and she wiped it off with the back of her hand.
“So ye truly were drunk last night? Who’d have thought it?” She grinned at him, showing a mouthful of half-masticated cod. Ty’s stomach stirred uncomfortably.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And for God’s sake chew the stuff a few times before you swallow it,” he admonished.
The grin froze on her mouth, then her jaw snapped shut. Furious color flooded in a tide up her neck and over her face, and she swallowed—so hard he saw the movement of it in her throat. The spoon, clutched awkwardly in her fist, trembled slightly.
Then her chin came up. Slowly, she dipped the spoon into the trencher and carefully brought it up to her mouth. Her lips opened into the tiniest slit and she took a dainty piece of fish off the spoon. She chewed it very, very slowly, her eyes fastened on his face, and the silence stretched out long between them.
Christ, Ty thought with a shudder. What have I done? He drummed his fingers on the table. Had he really agreed to take this wretched tavern wench back with him to Merrymeeting to be Nat’s bride and caretaker to those poor, motherless children? Stalwart, plodding Nathaniel Parkes, a man who was psalm reader at the Sabbath-day meeting, a man who had once shyly admitted to Ty that he’d known in the biblical sense only one woman in his life, and that woman was his wife of ten years, a wife dead a bare two months. Ty tried to picture Nat with the girl sitting across from him, a girl who had probably been turning two-shilling tricks since she was thirteen.
He swallowed a sigh. “This grog shop you work in—”
“The Frisky Lyon.” More cream sauce trickled down her chin; she smeared it off with her fingers, then wiped them on her skirt. “Only I don’t work there no more. Not since I poured a noggin of rum all over Jake Steerborn’s head and flattened his fat nose with a tray—all ’cause he got t’ feelin’ a little too frisky.” She laughed, spraying bits of soggy cod all over the table. Ty’s stomach heaved.
“Christ, Delia, you have the manners of a pig!”
“Well, excuse me all over!” she snapped back at him. But her feelings had been hurt, for a moment later she dropped the spoon into the trencher with a clatter and stared down at her lap. Ty cursed himself.
“I’m sorry.” He reached across and touched her hand where it lay on the table. Seeing her hand, so pale and insubstantial against the heavy dark wood, made Ty realize just how thin and frail she was. Jesus, he thought, the chit’s half starved and you’re railing at her about her table manners.
“When was the last time you got a good, decent meal inside of you?”
She shrugged. “Yesterday sometime. I had a collop of cold pork an’ a slice of bread.”
He nudged the trencher of salt cod. “Go on, finish that up. Or would you like something else?”
She shoved it back at him. “I’ve had sufficient, thank ye.”
His lips twitched at the way she said it—I’ve had sufficient, thank ye—as if she’d practiced it for hours in front of a looking glass, hoping someday for the appropriate occasion to use it. He thought of that pugnacious chin of hers that came right up at the slightest provocation. Her pride amused and touched him.
Yes, she had pride, and a strange dignity in spite of her grimy, ragged appearance and her abominable manners. It was because of the pride and dignity inherent in the person of Delia McQuaid that he had picked her out from all the other whores and slatterns and desperate, downtrodden women who had come to him hoping for a chance at three square meals and a roof over their heads in return for slaving on a farm and warming a man’s bed. Her pride … and later seeing the horrifying bruises on her body … had more than convinced him his decision was the right one. His face hardened with renewed anger at the memory. At least if he took her to Merrymeeting he would be saving her from her drunken bastard of a father.
He realized she had been speaking to him. “I beg your pardon?”
“I was askin’ ye what the governor’s assembly was like. I’ll bet ye there was music an’ dancing an’ card playing an’ everything.” She sighed. Her eyes, Ty suddenly noticed, were beautiful—a rich, tawny gold with a starburst of green in the centers. They shone brightly at him. “Oh, what I would give t’ have been there.”
Ty had a sudden mental picture of the likes of Delia McQuaid at a governor’s assembly and couldn’t repress a smile.
She blinked, and the shining look left her eyes. They grew solemn and serious, and Ty found he couldn’t look away. She stared at him for so long and hard that he began to grow uncomfortable. Then she said, “Do ye know ye’ve got a real nice smile? I like yer smile.”
Ty felt strangely flattered. “Thank you.”
“And ye’ve got a damn fine-lookin’ arse, too.”
“Jesus Christ!” Ty cheeks grew hot. He knew he was blushing and his embarrassment fueled his anger. “I realize, wench, that you are hardly a lady, so I can’t expect you to behave like one. Nevertheless, I insist that while in my presence you refrain from using language more suited to a randy sailor. As I said, I am a man of refined tastes and I like to be surrounded by fine things.”
Her face was florid with embarrassment. Nevertheless, Ty saw that rebellious chin jerk up, and he braced himself for the worse.
Then the chin quivered and fell. She looked down, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. “Oh Lord, Ty, I’m so sorry. When my tongue gets t’ flappin’, I forget t’ think. It’s all the time a-gettin’ me into trouble.” She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Ye aren’t going to change yer mind about taking me with ye, are ye?”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said gruffly, feeling like a brute. He shoved the bench away from the table, pushing himself to his feet. “Come on, brat, let’s get out of here.”
He walked across the taproom, heading for the door and not bothering to see if she followed. Delia almost knocked over the table in her haste not to be left behind. She snatched up her grist sack, anchored her hat firmly on her head, and hurried after him.
“Bloody pompous ass,” he heard her muttering beneath her breath. “Him and his re-fined tastes.”
Ty barely stopped himself from laughing out loud.
Delia had never been so excited in her life.
She had taken the ferry once across the river to Charles Town for the fair, and that had been a real adventure. And once with Tom she had ridden in a cart out to Mill Pond for a Sunday picnic supper. But never, never had she done anything so grand as to go riding in an honest-to-God coach.
The coach was painted black and trimmed in silver. It even had a crest painted on the doors, and it was pulled by two pairs of matching coal-black horses. The tall, dark-skinned servant called Jackie, who had come into the Red Dragon to get Ty, had climbed into a box in back, while another servant dressed in the same black and silver livery sat in front to do the driving. She had followed Ty inside the coach and plopped down right next to him on a seat of a leather so fine it was as soft as silk.
Sighing happily, Delia settled back, smoothing down her skirts and trying to assume what she thought was a dignified expression. She admonished herself sternly to remember to act like a proper lady, for she was riding across Boston in a fancy coach to meet Ty’s grandfather.
Ty had been heading for the inn’s front door, Delia close on his heels, when it had opened and a round, dusky-skinned face topped by an enormous yellow periwig had peered around the jamb. An earring made of a shoe buckle dangled from one black ear, swaying gently in the morning breeze, and a pair of big brown eyes searched the hall.
Ty stopped so abruptly that Delia plowe
d into the back of him. He groaned loudly. “Jackie … what the bloody hell are you doing here?”
The big brown eyes fell on Ty and the face broke into a wide grin. The head disappeared a moment, then the door opened wide and a tall man, wearing silver and black livery and a silver slave collar sauntered in.
“Here you is, Massah Tyler. Ah been sent wid the coach t’ fetch you. Your grandfather wants t’ see you and he’s got his mad up. Lawd, yes, he’s mad enuf t’ chew nails.”
“Bloody hell!” Ty had said again.
Delia would have liked to point out to Tyler W. Savitch, M.D., that all his “bloody hells” was hardly language befitting a gentlemen of refinement, but she refrained. There were currents of an almost savage restlessness beneath his hard, controlled exterior. She didn’t know him well enough yet to dare to test the limits of that control.
So now she contented herself instead with rubbing her hands across the smooth seat and breathing deeply of the crisp leathery smell. While the coach rumbled through the traffic of gigs, carts, and sedan chairs, Ty stared out the window, wearing an angry scowl.
Delia couldn’t believe her good fortune that Ty had decided to bring her with him. She knew he hadn’t meant to do so at first. In fact, he had turned around and started to spew orders at her about staying put and out of trouble, when she had seen a wicked gleam suddenly come into his dark blue eyes.
“On the other hand, by God, I think I will bring you with me,” he had said, letting out a short, harsh laugh. “Yes, by God, I believe I will.”
She was glad now she had gone to the trouble to wash herself off at the public well, even though it meant that for privacy’s sake she’d had to get up long before dawn, shivering out in the open as the wind off the cold bay waters had whipped at her body, clad only in its thin shift. Lord, she was probably lucky she hadn’t gotten herself arrested for indecency or given herself an ague and all to please him, though a fat lot of good it had done her for all the notice he’d taken of her new, cleaner self. Instead, he had found fault with the way she ate, likening her to a pig. Her face grew hot at the memory of how she had shamed herself before him, arousing his disgust. I realize that you are hardly a lady, he had said. Oh Lord, how she longed with her whole heart to prove him wrong…
Delia cast a surreptitious glance at his averted face. Last night she had thought him handsome. Now, studying him in bright daylight, she decided he was by far the finest-looking man she had ever seen. He didn’t dress like a physician, however; for he was without the tightly curled wig, black suit, and gold-headed cane that normally denoted members of his profession. Instead, he was well-dressed in silk and snuff-colored mohair breeches, with what looked to be real silver buckles at his knees, and a dark blue coat with a lacy, high-necked stock folded over his linen shirt. The whiteness of the stock set off the stark contrast of his sun-browned face.
He was a man of contrasts, she thought. Such as the way he spoke—so posh and educated one minute and cussing up a blue streak like her da the next. And the perpetual scowl on his mouth that didn’t go at all with the laugh lines around his eyes. He played the part of a gentleman rake, yet he had spoken so gently to his woman last night when they had parted; he had treated her with such respect. Delia knew it was hopeless to wish it, but still she longed for him to treat her so tenderly.
So respectfully.
No sooner had the coach rounded the Town House toward Queen Street when it lumbered to an abrupt halt, nearly dumping Delia onto the floor. She saved herself by grabbing Ty’s leg. The muscle of his thigh was warm and hard beneath her palm and she felt it tense through the thin material of his breeches. She left her hand on his thigh long after she should have—until he stared pointedly at the hand, then at her. Blushing, she removed it, unconsciously balling it into a tight fist on her lap.
Slowly, Delia became aware of shouting and screaming outside, and she leaned out the window to see what the commotion was about. A woman, stripped to the waist and tied to the tail of an ox cart, was being whipped around the Town House square.
The man doing the whipping was going easy on the strokes, but even so the woman’s naked back was criss-crossed with red weals. She had been branded as well, on her shoulder with the letter A. The significance of the brand made Delia think again of the woman who had been with Ty in his rooms last night.
“Seems to me yon whore is gettin’ no worse’n she deserves,” she muttered, loud enough for the man sitting beside her to hear. “A-lyin’ in sin with a man not her husband …”
Ty looked away from the gruesome scene being enacted in the street and met Delia’s accusing eyes. “I know what you’re implying, Delia, and you’re wrong. The woman in question—”
“Priscilla,” Delia put in, just so there’d be no mistake.
“Priscilla,” Ty admitted through gritted teeth, “is a widow. She’s also kind, decent, honest to a fault, and one of the finest people I know. And why shouldn’t she take a lover now and then if she so chooses?”
Delia sniffed. “There’s many a God-fearin’ folk in Boston who would argue with ye about that. An’ what’s more, ye ought t’ marry her, Tyler Savitch, if ye’re going t’ do … do what ye’ve been doin’ with her.”
“If I proposed marriage to Priscilla, she would turn me down flat for she values her freedom as much as I do mine.” He glared at her. “Jesus, why am I justifying myself to the likes of you? The entire matter is none of your damn business!”
Delia said nothing, although her breast rose in indignation at the hypocrisy of his words. Priscilla was a lady, rich and prominent, and therefore above society’s censure no matter what her behavior, whereas a poor girl like herself couldn’t work in a grog shop without being labeled a whore.
Ty had turned away, but he was not done with her, for a moment later his head snapped around and he growled at her some more. “And here’s another thing. If that woman”—and he pointed out the carriage window— “sinned, as you call it, then there was a man helping her to do it. So why isn’t he out there tied to that cart and taking his licks right along with her?”
Delia stared at him in surprise. That was one form of hypocrisy that had never occurred to her before. Yet for him, a man, it had.
She was still ruminating over this strange facet of Ty’s character when the coach turned down Beacon Street and drew up before a manor house set well back on a tree-shaded lot. Only four houses stood on this side of the street, which ran into the base of Beacon Hill, where flags on the signal tower snapped in the wind, a wind that brought with it the cloyingly sweet smell of molasses from the rum-making distilleries on nearby Mill Pond.
The footman opened the carriage door and helped Delia to descend into the street. She looked up in wonder at the enormous mansion built of granite and trimmed with brown sandstone. It was three stories tall with a blue slate mansard roof and row upon row of large sashed windows. The front door was decorated with a frieze and flanked by columns and in the middle of it was a brass lion’s head knocker with a ball in its mouth.
“Oh, Ty, I’ve never clapped sight of a house so grand!” Delia exclaimed. She looked at him with shimmering eyes. “Can I go inside with ye? Please. I promise I’ll act like a proper lady, truly I will.”
He smiled down at her. Then he actually took her arm and linked it through his, just as if she were a real lady, and Delia’s chest swelled with pride.
But he spoiled it all by saying, “I don’t want you acting like a lady, Delia, even if you are capable of such an impossible feat. I want you to be yourself.”
Before Ty could knock, the door was opened by another servant—a woman large enough to stand eye-level with Ty’s six feet. Her stiff apron crackled as she moved, and she had a gigantic turban balanced precariously on her pumpkin-sized head. She, too, wore a silver slave collar, engraved with the name of her owner. Her cheerful grin was so infectious, Delia couldn’t help smiling back at her.
“Mornin’, mistress,” she said, nodding at Delia, wh
ose wide-open eyes were taking in the long wainscoted hall and the sweeping stairway with its elaborately carved balusters and newel posts, “And mornin’ t’ you, Massah Tyler,” she said as she took Delia’s cloak and grist sack, treating them with the same reverence as if the cloak had been made of red silk and the grist sack was a leather satchel. “A fine mornin’, isn’t it? You be findin’ Suh Patrick in his bedchamber, Massah Tyler.”
Sir Patrick. Heaven preserve us, Delia thought, was Ty’s grandfather a bloody lord or something? Suddenly she wished she’d waited outside.
“Thank you, Frailty,” Ty said, and started for the stairs. But Delia held him back by his coat sleeve.
“Yer grandfather’s a lordship?”
Ty’s glance automatically went to an oil portrait hanging above a delicate walnut sideboard that stood along one wall of the hall. Delia realized this must be the old noble gentleman himself. She had never seen a grander-looking personage—nor a meaner-looking one.
“Sir Patrick Graham … but he’s not a lord,” Ty was saying. “In fact, he was born a Scottish crofter’s son. He was knighted by Queen Anne many years ago, after he discovered a sunken Spanish galleon full of treasure off the coast of the Bahamas.” He gave her such a knowing grin that Delia flushed. “He’s a bit of a pompous ass and I’m counting on you to bring him down a peg or two.”
Frailty clucked her tongue and wagged her finger beneath Ty’s nose. “Massah Tyler, you oughta be ’shamed o’ yourself, usin’ this po’ gal t’ get one back at your grandfather. Don’t you let him do it, honey,” she said to Delia.
Delia took another careful look at the portrait of the hook-beaked, stern-lipped old man. He didn’t appear the sort who would take kindly to having a tavern wench come sashaying through the front door of his Beacon Street manor house with a notion to put him in his place.
She swallowed nervously and tugged again at Ty’s sleeve. “What’s your grandfather do now? I mean besides bein’ a knight.”
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