The Dutch Girl

by Donna Thorland

  Viewed through glass windows flanked by velvet curtains, the landscape looked almost painted, like the backdrops at the theater—save for the presence of the horsemen. Tarleton’s cavalry rode ahead, alongside, and behind the coach. Their green coats and bearskin helmets blended into the forest. Anna could see why this unit was so famed for horsemanship. They maintained their distance from the carriage and intervals one from another with precision and seemed to glide along the rutted road, while the carriage pitched and dove over every stone and furrow. Even with the jolting, though, it was idyllic, and difficult to imagine that bandits lurked around the bend.

  “Are the roads really so dangerous?” she asked Ten Broeck, as Tarleton cantered past them for the second time that hour to confer with his scouts. She’d heard, of course, about bands of cattle thieves and gangs of armed loyalists on the roads.

  “The ‘Cowboys’ and ‘Skinners’ are mostly interested in forage. You won’t see a beast out to pasture within a mile of the road from here to Harenwyck. But they turn their hand to robbery readily enough when the opportunity presents itself.”

  And opportunity sat at her feet in an ironbound box.

  “I had heard,” she said carefully, “that the patroon favors the Rebels; and yet, Howe has given him a troop of horses to protect his gold.”

  “The patroon has thus far resisted local pressure to take the Rebel oath, and the British know he cannot make a public statement of loyalty to the King without risking the retribution of his neighbors. General Clinton asks for private assurances that the patroon is on the side of government. And the Rebels and their Committee of Safety ask for similar assurances. It is a damnably delicate business, miss.”

  He smiled at his own choice of words. “And ‘business,’ in part at least, it is. The patroon must sell his beef and butter somewhere. At present, the Continentals are not paying for their provisions in hard currency. The British are. The Rebels tolerate this trade because it funds the patroon’s militia, buys powder and shot, and pays the men to defend the estate, and they hold out hope that the patroonship will go over to their side. Clinton knows that buying supplies from Harenwyck in hard cash is funding a militia that could be turned against him, but he has twenty thousand mouths to feed and must get his provisions where he can. For now, as long as the patroon sells his beef and butter and flour in New York, General Clinton will see that his gold gets to Harenwyck.”

  Ten Broeck said it with confidence, but Anna had her doubts. Her neighbors in New York had tried to maintain that same tricky balance at the beginning of the war. Avoiding oaths if they could, taking them and then breaking them as the city changed hands. Whatever it took to survive. But sometimes it wasn’t enough, as she had seen close hand.

  The Americans had arrested her dancing master, Mr. Sodi, and thrown him in the sugarhouse on suspicion of spying for the British. The British had let him out, but then decided that he might have agreed to spy for the Americans while he was in their custody, and arrested him again. It had played merry hell with the school’s dancing lessons until Anna could get him released. It had taken three days of visiting well-connected parents, trying to find the right string to secure Mr. Sodi’s freedom. For several months afterward he would flinch every time there was a knock upon the door, sure that someone was coming to imprison him again.

  It sounded to Anna as though the situation at Harenwyck was, if anything, more precarious than in New York.

  Their coach stopped at an inn a little after noon to rest the horses, and Anna was glad for the opportunity to stretch her legs. Even with Tarleton’s careful packing, she found it difficult to be comfortable for long in the confined space. Ten Broeck ordered a hot meal for himself and the King’s soldiers, but Anna wasn’t really hungry. She asked the innkeeper if it was safe to walk on the path behind the house, and he assured her that it was. Anna followed the trail past the outbuildings and down to a pleasant little brook. The woods there were so like the ones where she had grown up that she could close her eyes and almost imagine herself a child again.

  It was an illusion. She was traveling into danger, not the security of childhood. She had played in woods like these, and sat by a brook like this, and even kissed a boy under trees like this.

  Even after everything she had experienced after leaving Harenwyck, it was still difficult for her to believe that Gerrit had been the villain her mother made him out to be. Their kisses had been thrilling, and mutual. She’d felt her heart race, her pulse quicken, her head become light as air, but there had been nothing taken, or surrendered, in those exchanges. It had been a shared coming together, like two kittens butting heads with their eyes closed. Perhaps it was only possible in adolescence, before their paths diverged so sharply into the roles expected of them, that men and women could meet as equals. She had never had the opportunity to learn for herself.

  Being back in the woods of her childhood revived that memory, restored the details that had faded over time: the texture of birch bark, the babble of running water, the perfume of the forest. But Gerrit Van Haren was no more welcome here than she, be he heir to Harenwyck or no. And reminiscence was a tricky beast; with it came the other parts of her past she wished she could forget. Anna resolved to eschew nostalgia and be on her guard. But the hazard she met on the path back to the inn was not the kind she had prepared herself for.

  The colonel was walking down to meet her. For a moment she thought that she had tarried too long, that the meal was finished and he was impatient to be on the road again, but her timepiece and his appearance told her otherwise. Only a quarter of an hour had passed. He had removed his crested helmet, washed his face, and combed his thick auburn hair.

  And sought her out now, alone on the path, when he might have spoken to her in the company of Mr. Ten Broeck anytime that morning, or during their arrival at the inn. He was handsome, well-spoken, well connected, and well respected, but that did not make him safe. Safe men weren’t, as a rule, whispered about in finishing school parlors.

  “I thought you might enjoy some company on your amble, Miss Winters,” he said. In the light filtered through the canopy of leaves above their heads, his brown eyes seemed almost black.

  She was conscious all at once of how well he blended into the forest in his dark green jacket and brown breeches. Like a predator. Going deeper into the woods with him seemed like a very bad idea. “I was just returning to the inn, actually.”

  “Then permit me to escort you.” She felt a ripple of unease when he offered her his arm. It was the wrong gesture to make to a lady one barely knew. In public, in view of Mr. Ten Broeck, it might have been courteous. Alone on the path, out of earshot of the inn, it bordered on effrontery, and placed her in an impossible position. If she refused, she risked giving offense. It would be as provoking as a slap to the face. It would suggest that she questioned his motives, which she did. Which was why he shouldn’t have offered his arm at all.

  The Widow had made her own way through the world and must have encountered dangerous situations—dangerous men—like this all the time. When in doubt, play the scene through as though it is of your own making. Anna took her advice, and Tarleton’s arm, and prayed she knew what she was doing.

  “How long will you stay at Harenwyck, Miss Winters?” He placed his hand over hers, which she did not like at all. With each step he pulled her a little closer until they were hip to hip. It was entirely too familiar for the shallow depth of their acquaintance. The Widow had taught her how to extricate herself from physical danger, but Anna was unpracticed in the far trickier art of evading this kind of subtle encroachment.

  “It is difficult to say how long I will be,” she said truthfully. “Much depends on what sort of curriculum the patroon has in mind for his nieces, and of course how quickly the misses Van Haren progress.”

  “Then allow me to tender a piece of practical advice: charge the patroon by the day, and dearly, and we’ll have you back i
n New York before the month is out.”

  It was an invitation to flirt. She ignored it. “Is Harenwyck so grim, then?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance. She doubted that many young women declined an opportunity to flirt with him. “Harenwyck is a pleasant enough countryseat,” he said. “The new house is very English and very modern. The patroon is another matter. You will find these rural Dutch even more boorish than their city counterparts, and their entertainments and diversions rustic at best. They think a cider pressing the highest sort of social occasion and account their greasy oil cakes a great delicacy.”

  He did not know she was Dutch, of course. He did not know that she had eaten hot olykoecken, her lips and gown frosted with sugar, her fingers sticky, standing next to the bubbling pot, while the cider that leavened the dough was pressed on the great granite stone. It was like drinking in pure autumn, the perfume of apples and wood smoke and frying oil.

  “The Dutch are notoriously mean,” continued Tarleton, oblivious to the offense he gave, “but that parsimony may work to your advantage—if you are eager for a swift return to New York, where I might call on you.”

  She did not in fact like that idea at all.

  “I am certain that the patroon will expect at least a complete sampler from each girl,” she said, “if not other accomplished works from his nieces before I depart Harenwyck, and that will likely keep me in the Hudson Highlands at least into the new year.”

  “Teaching the patroon’s nieces embroidery will be like throwing pearls before swine. They are sure to marry some country cousin with a desirable mill or sandpit or some such thing, who will not care a whit whether his wife can embroider an angling lady scene on a fire screen or not.”

  “You know a remarkable amount about the current taste in schoolgirl embroidery, Colonel Tarleton,” she said. She did not altogether disguise the suspicion in her voice.

  To her surprise he laughed. “I assure you that is not because I have been fishing among your young charges.”

  “No?”

  “No. Though surely no man could blame me if I had.”

  Their fathers might, thought Anna.

  “Some of your young misses,” continued Tarleton, “are decidedly saucy pieces, and wise in the ways of the world beyond their years. Impossible to avoid, I’m bound, with so many lambs all in one fold.” There were some men, Anna had long ago realized, who could not conceive of a gathering of unrelated women in any other context than the one with which they were most familiar: a brothel. It said more about those men, she believed, than about the essential nature of female education.

  “It is my sister,” continued Tarleton, “who writes to me about the fashion in stitchery. She is tutored at home, of course”—of course—“but she debates a choice of motif for her silk picture with the seriousness Parliament reserves for taxes.”

  “And how do you answer her?”

  “That any man who cares more about the quality of her stitchery than the quality of her conversation isn’t worth her time or effort.”

  She had been starting to dislike him, intensely, but it was impossible to despise a man who took his sister’s part, no matter how unenlightened he might be on the subject of females outside his own family.

  “What?” he prompted. “Aren’t you going to lecture me on the importance of feminine accomplishments?”

  “I expect that your sister already has, so I will spare you the lesson.”

  “I’m certain there are other things you could teach me.”

  Banastre Tarleton, the brother, and Banastre Tarleton, the man, she decided, were tolerable, even engaging. Banastre Tarleton, the seducer, was a decidedly unsavory character.

  When she did not take the bait he said, “I expect to be sent south in the new year, but if you are able to return before then, you could write to me, and I could come up with some pretext to visit Harenwyck and escort you home. It would not be so very difficult to arrange. There’s always unrest in the highlands and the territory is so vast that cavalry is the only answer. We could make it a very pleasant journey, you and I, and I could cover any expenses you might incur.”

  It was a proposition, and nicely done considering his aims, with no open vulgarity, and only an oblique reference to money changing hands. It had been a long time since she had received such an offer, and never one so delicately phrased.

  That was because her new profession rarely placed her in proximity to men like this. Anna spent most of her days surrounded by women. The gentlemen she did meet were fathers in the company of their wives and daughters. Such men were always on their best behavior. The tradesmen and artisans she dealt with valued her custom and would never risk losing her business.

  Tarleton, though, was neither a parent nor a tradesman. He saw her as a demimondaine, a woman on the fringe of polite society. Because she sold her services as a teacher, he assumed that she sold herself as well. That made it all too likely that he would take her refusal personally. She wished they were closer to the inn.

  “It is a very flattering offer, Colonel,” she said carefully, “but my livelihood in the city relies upon my reputation as a snaggletoothed dragon.”

  “And you conceive that I might play a swording Saint George to your toothy dragon.”

  “I think that is rather the point.”

  He smiled now, a wide, knowing grin, and she realized she had made an error. He mistook her frankness for another form of coquetry, or indeed for mere haggling. “The Hudson Highlands are not New York, Miss Winters. I know an establishment nearby that is both comfortable and discreet.”

  She had to make her answer plain. “I am sorry, but I am not in a position to accept,” she said.

  He stopped on the path and because her arm was entwined with his she was forced to stop as well. “I enjoy games,” he said. “I truly do. But not coyness. Not in a grown woman. It is unseemly and unflattering.”

  “I am sorry if I gave you a false impression, Colonel, but I’m not the sort of woman who conducts casual liaisons.”

  “But I know that you are. Your young ladies are very well-informed on a variety of subjects not usually taught in finishing schools.”

  Her stomach lurched. Anna knew she had taken a risk explaining the dangers of intercourse, of disease, and pregnancy—and how to avoid them—to Mary Phillips. It was the lecture the Widow had given her, more or less. Anna had deliberated for weeks about whether to have such a talk with Mary, but after four months with the girl under her roof—one narrowly averted disaster after another—she had decided that it would be unforgivable to let the girl go on without a full understanding of the dangers she courted. And because Anna was a realist and could remember the temptations of youth, she had given her the resources to avoid them.

  She had carefully considered the danger to the school if Mary Phillips tattled, but never the danger to herself in the form of men like this one.

  “There is time enough for a short lesson,” he suggested, pulling off her cap and brushing her lower lip with his thumb.

  For a second she froze, incapacitated by memory. Sound dwindled, her vision dimmed, and the world narrowed to the space between them. There was not enough of it, not nearly enough. She stepped back, felt rough bark impress its pattern on her shoulders through the cotton of her gown. She stepped to the right and met Tarleton’s arm, like a boom gate barring her path. She darted left and he moved to block her with his body, bringing them into closer contact than she could tolerate.

  He laughed. It was a game to him, a hunt, and her feelings mattered as much as those of a fox. “I must get back to the inn,” she said.

  “In a little while,” he said.

  She tried to push him away. He captured her right hand in his. She struggled, but he was stronger and it took an act of will to stop herself from fighting him, to soften and melt as the Widow had taught her.

  This was
the difficult part. Every fiber of her being screamed to push him away, but safety lay in pulling him close. Men are, as a rule, bigger, and generally they are stronger, at least physically. That does not mean you must play the victim. It means you must learn to use their size against them, as a wrestler might.

  Anna slid one hand to Tarleton’s collar and took hold of his lapel. She grasped his sleeve with the other, stepped in close . . . then turned, dropped, and threw him over her shoulder.

  Then she took off running.

  She wished then that she had not worn the dainty kid slippers, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She could hear Tarleton crashing through the underbrush after her. She knew better than to look back.

  When she reached the rear of the inn she smoothed her skirts and hurried on to the bustling taproom, where she found Mr. Ten Broeck making an end of his meal, and promptly sat down beside him.

  “Your walk has put color in your cheeks,” said Ten Broeck cheerfully.

  “Yes,” agreed Anna. It had probably put another shade of red in Tarleton’s complexion. She brought her breathing back under control, grateful now for the Widow’s lessons—which had often seemed tedious and painful at the time—and that practicing at dancing with her charges had gifted her a reasonable stock of wind and speed.

  Ten Broeck frowned now. “But you have lost your pretty cap.”

  “Have I? It must have gotten snagged on a tree branch.”

  It was a terrible lie, and Ten Broeck’s pursed lips told her that he did not believe it, but he did not press her, and she knew better than to tell the true tale herself. Such incidents so seldom had repercussions for the men who instigated them, but always cast a shadow over the women who related them.

  Tarleton came in a few minutes later and called for a glass of ale. From across the room he flashed her an unpleasant smile that warned her he wasn’t done with her just yet. She slid her chair closer to Mr. Ten Broeck, and he tried to ply her with pudding, but the thought of food did not appeal.