‘That is unlikely, Miss Bartlett, as we sail at dawn. Indeed, I should have taken my leave before now.’
She looked pensive, but allowed him to say his goodbyes without comment. Then she announced, ‘I shall just walk Captain McGann to the gate, Father. Why do you not retire?’
‘Retire?’ Josiah barked. ‘And leave you outside with …’
‘With Captain McGann,’ she said firmly. ‘I am sure I have nothing to fear from footpads when in his company.’ She went into the hall, picked up her pelisse, and looked at him. He held it for her, and she came against him for a moment as the cloak was secured.
‘There is really no need for you to come outside, Miss Bartlett,’ he said, opening the door. ‘March nights can be chilly,’ While the blood pounded in his veins. She smelt as beautiful as she looked and her touch had been magic. But to think of her meant also thinking of the cacique’s daughter, and then was he plunged into the deepest of emotional conflicts.
‘I wish to come outside. Fresh air clears the brain after a heavy meal.’ She stepped past him and walked down the path; it was a moonless night with some cloud cover, and very dark. ‘Once you called me Elizabeth, or sought to do so,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I would like you to do so again.’
‘It will be my pleasure.’
‘Will you return to New York?’
‘If business brings me hither, why, yes.’
‘Will it do so?’
‘That I cannot say. But it is likely.’
‘Then I shall look forward to entertaining you again. Be sure you do not forget to inform me of your arrival.’
He frowned at her. ‘Are you certain that would be wise, Elizabeth?’
She gazed at him, taking a deep breath. That he was attracted to her she was certain. Just as she knew he was like every dream she had ever had, come true, at least physically. Easy to say she did not know him. She had known and liked a boy. This was very much a man. But he was the only man she had ever known who had ever attracted her in the slightest. And he knew that, even if for some reason of his own he feared the possible consequences. If she let him leave now, without some more definite concept of their joint future, she might never see him again.
‘May I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you married, Captain McGann?’
‘No.’ His frown was deepening. ‘Betrothed? There was a sweetheart in Ireland, as I recall.’
‘I am not betrothed,’ Harry said.
‘Neither am I.’ Another deep breath. But she would not abandon her determination now. ‘I have never found a man to love. Perhaps because I have always had an image of the man I wished to love. Thus I have been a slave to memory, perhaps uncertain. Would you not now do me the favour either of setting me free, or imprisoning me forever?’
He stared at her. ‘I do not think you understand what you ask,’ he said. ‘I am not the man for you.’
‘Why do you say that? Once you thought you were.’
‘A great deal has happened since then,’ he reminded her.
She smiled. ‘You mean you have taken a republican position on politics. Father spoke to me of it. I am sure we are sufficiently civilised to differ in certain directions, without necessarily quarrelling.’
‘I was not thinking of politics,’ he said. ‘My hands are stained. And with more than blood.’
‘Then let me either stain mine as well, or wash yours clean. It matters naught to me which it is to be.’
They gazed into each other’s eyes.
‘Or leave me an utterly shamed woman,’ she whispered.
She was in his arms. She recalled the suddenness, the violence of his movements as a boy. Now they were more knowledgeable, but she knew that the violence was being carefully suppressed. Her mouth was already open, her tongue seeking his. His hands closed on her shoulder blades and slid down her back. They closed on her buttocks, finding their way through the thick folds of material, and then released her as if burnt.
‘I shall not scream,’ she said. ‘This time.’
‘You must think me a monster. I am a monster.’
She still stood against him, and could feel him. He was a monster. But a monster who wanted to possess. ‘I love you, Harry McGann.’
‘After six years?’
‘No. Throughout six years. You see? I am totally shameless. Have you no love for me at all?’
‘Oh, Elizabeth …’ She was held close again, and again his hands slid hungrily over her body, while he held her so tightly she thought her corset would burst, and his mouth slipped from hers to kiss the top of her breasts while she tugged loose the strings of her bodice. His tongue touched a nipple, and she shivered with passion. Here was what she had wanted all of her life. But only from him.
Again he released her. ‘This is madness. In a moment I will have your maidenhead.’
‘Harry …’ she tugged her bodice apart to expose both breasts, while her other hand was scooping her skirts to her waist. At that moment she was consumed with a passion she had never known she possessed, a strange mixture of memory of Father and desire for this man, of memory of them together in the stream outside Tramore and in the noisome hold of the Spirit of the West.
‘No,’ he said fiercely, catching her wrists. ‘You are a lady. You must go to your marriage bed intact.’
‘Is that not merely a matter of degree, between us?’
Once again the gazed at each other. ‘Are you sure?’ he said at last.
‘I am sure, Harry McGann. Do you suppose I would have acted as I have done if I were not sure? I lost you once, and counted you gone forever. Yesterday you came back to me. I shall not let you go again, unless you yourself tell me that is what you wish.’
‘I could never tell you that. But Elizabeth, dear Liz, I have lived with savages. I am a savage. I will distress you and perhaps even hurt you. Certain it is I will disgust you …’ She smiled and kissed him. ‘You think too little of my sex. Or at least, this representative of it. Did you wish to tear me into a hundred little pieces with the fury of your love, I would still die smiling. Take me now, or take me when we are wed. Only make that soon.’
‘When we are wed. But your father …’
‘Will present no obstacle. I promise you. Harry … I do not want to wait. There are too many slips between a cup and a lip, and were I to go to my grave without ever having shared your bed, I would count my life a misery.’ He kissed her, and held her tightly against him. ‘I am not about to die, my love. Listen. I must return to Norfolk. Tomorrow. Liz … I will arrange with Paul Jones for leave of absence, and return here, privately, within the month. Then can we wed. If you will come with me to Norfolk.’
‘I will come with you to the ends of the earth, Harry McGann. I ask only to be your wife.’
*
‘Marriage? You? To that utter scoundrel?’ shouted Josiah Bartlett.
‘He is the only man I have ever considered marrying, Father,’ Elizabeth said. She had deliberately waited twenty-four hours before telling him; the Carolina Wind was now some twelve hours out of the port.
‘Ha! You are perversity personified, Miss. Do you not know him for what he is? A mutineer, and a villain, undoubtedly with more than one death on his conscience …’
‘He has confessed that to me, Father.’
‘And a taint of piracy? You did not know that, did you? But there is more than a hint in the air that he and his precious Mr Jones have been involved in some very peculiar goings-on in the West Indies. Quite apart from smuggling. I speak nothing of that.’
‘He has confessed to me also that he has lived an irregular life. But these are irregular times. And now he would appear to be wholly respectable. Besides …’
‘Wholly respectable? The man is a self confessed republican. What do you say to that, eh?’
‘Many a man, especially one with hot blood in his veins, professes points of view which should be taken theoretically rather than practically, Father,’ El
izabeth said. ‘I doubt Harry’s republicanism will stand up to any very serious test.’
‘And when it is? When those madmen of Massachusetts fire on a King’s soldier, as they are constantly threatening to do?’
‘They will undoubtedly be hanged, as is their due.’
‘Will you say as much of your husband, when he runs off to join them?’
‘You are being fanciful, Father,’ she said severely. ‘Harry is a sailor, not a farmer with a rifle by his door. I do not in any event believe that anyone apart, as you say, from the odd madman, would ever fire upon the King’s soldiers, no matter what threats may be issued from time to time. But whatever happens, it cannot possibly affect my Harry. And I was going to say, besides, I love him, and I know he loves me. There is an end to the matter. We shall be wed, when he returns, next month. And I would beg you to be sensible and give your blessing to the affair, or you will lose me entirely. I am twenty-two years of age, and am quite prepared to walk through that door and not return, although, Father, dear Father, it would grieve me sorely to have to do so.’ She held his hand as she saw him preparing to surrender to that most terrible threat. ‘While, if you should be sensible, do you not see the opportunities that lie ahead? The Jones Company and the Bartlett Company, working together? Perhaps even united in one vast trading concern? We would control more than half of all the trade in the Colonies. There are only the Hopkins brothers to stand against us, and we would outship even them.’ She kissed his cheek as she watched his expression changing from anger to contemplation; there was nothing her father liked so much to contemplate, as profit.
*
Marriage, to Elizabeth Bartlett. Could any man’s, even John Paul Jones’, fortunes have suddenly taken on a more upward rise? As Jones himself recognised. ‘Elizabeth Bartlett!’ he cried when he heard the news. ‘Why, she is a rare beauty, and an heiress of importance, I have heard it said. Besieged by half the men in New York, and yielding to none ere now.’ Then he frowned. ‘You know her father is a rank Tory?’
‘I have know Josiah for a long time,’ Harry said. ‘It was his warrant from which you rescued me, six years ago.’
‘By God! How the wheel turns.’
‘So you will understand that we have a long history of mutual disagreement, already logged. Elizabeth has agreed to marry me in full understanding of that relationship.’
‘Then she is clearly a woman of character, and your union will be blessed. As for sneaking back into New York like a thief, that is preposterous. You will take the Carolina Wind, and bring your bride to Norfolk in triumph.’
‘I may be gone a while,’ Harry told him. Paul slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Take all the while you wish. Just come back to me. With your bride.’
With his bride. Marriage, to Elizabeth Bartlett. Did he know what he was doing? Oh, indeed he knew that. He had never desired any woman more. He had never so wanted a woman from the day of their very first meeting, when he had scooped her from the stream outside Tramore. But more important, did he understand what he had let himself in for, what he had let her in for? There had very nearly been a catastrophe that March night in her father’s garden. She had been so excited she would have lain before him on the grass, and he had very nearly agreed to her wishes, while himself too consumed with passion to know what he was about. That must never happen again, nor need it. Their marriage would have to be a very controlled relationship, at least on his part, and what more could he ask, then to be given possession of that magnificent body, to be handled with the utmost care. That was anyway what a well bred woman sought from marriage, he had always understood, together with the desirable concomitants of motherhood and security and position. Passion and breeding did not go together, not the sort of passion he had known. Thus it would be regretted, and by them both, on reflection. When a man truly sought to release his passions, he went to a brothel.
But he had not been to a brothel in five years. Then marriage to Elizabeth might release him to do so, and if they thought of him as a monster in a brothel, well it was a man’s privilege to act the monster to a whore. She got paid for it.
But how his heart pounded as the ship approached Sandy Hook.
‘Now there’s a strange thing, Captain,’ remarked Mr Tobias, studying the two sails which were approaching them. ‘We are not an hour out of New York, and those are the third and fourth ships we have seen, making south. Do you suppose there is some pestilence in the port?’
‘Pray God there not be,’ Harry said. ‘But you mean to stand on?’
‘Indeed I do, Mr Tobias. If necessary, I will have Miss Bartlett on board in the hour and we can leave again. But I do mean to fetch her, plague or no plague. Anyway …’ he pointed to the north. ‘There is another vessel standing south, and she is certainly not out of New York. Indeed, she would appear to be making for the port. And that is a large vessel, from her canvas. No doubt it is coincidence that those others were all sailing the same direction.’ But he climbed into the shrouds the better to see what was happening in the port as the Carolina Wind brought up to anchor. There was certainly an unusual degree of activity in the harbour, and this despite the fact that there were hardly more than half the usual number of ships to be seen. But the waterfront was crowded, with men engaged in eager debate. Certain it was they did not look as if they were suffering from the plague.
The gig was put down, and rowed to the nearest dock. Harry ran up the steps and straightway encountered Mr Moultrie. ‘Harry McGann, by all that’s holy,’ the merchant shouted. ‘You’re here with messages?’
‘Why, no, Mr Moultrie,’ Harry replied. ‘I am here to be married.’
‘Bless my soul! I had forgot. To Elizabeth Bartlett? Yes, Indeed. You will have to change your plans.’
‘Change my plans?’ Harry cried. ‘What can have happened to make me change my plans?’
‘Have you not heard? There has been a battle in Massachusetts.’
‘A battle?’
‘A pitched fight, Captain McGann. Between the lobsterbacks and the people of Lexington and Concord. No, that is entirely wrong: the people of Massachusetts. The minutemen were called out from all around, to prevent the soldiers from seizing ammunition stored at Concord, as I understand it. They opened fire, and the lobsters replied, but they were defeated and forced to retreat, back into Boston. With severe casualties, it is said.’
‘My God,’ Harry said. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Not five days ago. The news reached us yesterday.’
‘Then you have no idea what has happened since?’
‘I can tell you what has almost certainly happened since. The British are penned into Boston by an entire country under arms. The rumour is that they are awaiting reinforcements. For our part, the news has been sent to the Congress, which still sits at Philadelphia, as you know, and they have issued a call for men from all the colonies. This is a revolution, McGann. We mean to settle the matter once and for all.’
Harry gazed at him. ‘How has New York responded?’
‘Well …’ Moultrie gave a little shrug. ‘Most people are still catching their breaths, I guess. Some of us are determined to stand by the Congress, as you know. Others are determined the other way.’
‘Like Josiah Bartlett?’
‘He is at present numbered amongst our opponents, yes. We hope to persuade them all to throw in their lots with us, given time, and so represent a united front.’
‘While the garrison does what?’
‘The garrison waits and watches. They have received no orders, poor devils, and as we have as yet committed no overt act, why, as I say, they wait and watch. They have no wish to provoke a fight here as well unless forced to it. On the other hand, there is a rumour that there is a frigate on its way here now, no doubt to frighten us into surrender. Well, we shall cross that bridge when we come to it.’
‘It may be here sooner than you think,’ Harry told him, thinking of the large ship he had seen outside the harbour.
‘Le
t them come,’ Moultrie asserted. ‘It will no doubt help the waverers to make up their minds. But you, McGann. Congress needs men. Sailormen as much as soldiers. And those with experience of command more than anything.’
‘Yes,’ Harry said thoughtfully. ‘I have some thinking to do.’
‘You have some deciding to do, you mean. Now is no time for reflection. And how a man chooses today will affect his entire life. What of Paul Jones? Will he not throw in his lot with the Colonies?’
Harry scratched his head. But there could be no doubt about what Paul Jones would do. ‘Aye,’ he said.
‘And you?’
‘Where Paul Jones goes, there will I follow.’
‘Good man, McGann. Good man.’ Moultrie shook his hand. ‘And Miss Bartlett?’
‘She will necessarily follow me,’ Harry told him. ‘As she is my betrothed, and today will become my bride if we have to forgo banns. We can be legally married in Norfolk. Now I must make haste, Moultrie. I will wish God’s speed to the people of New York.’
‘Aye,’ the merchant said. ‘And the same to you. Make haste, Harry McGann. And may you truly find everything as you wish it to be.’
CHAPTER 7 – New York, Philadelphia and the Bahamas, 1775-76
Heart pounding, Harry took leave of Moultrie and ran up the street. His way took him past the Inn, and as before, O’Hare was there to watch him, although on this occasion the black-bearded man made no comment. No doubt he was considering his own position in the light of these new circumstances. Circumstances which had been spoken of often enough during the past twelve months, but which few people had ever envisaged could truly come to pass.
He hurried up the garden path, leaving the gate open, and banged on the door. It was opened by Elizabeth herself. ‘Oh, Harry, it is so good to see you. I have been so worried. There is so much talk about the country being at the mercy of armed villains …’
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