“I can cook, iron, sew, clean. I could even help take care of your uncle.” Odd. What could she have said to cause him to look relieved? “I’m really quite good with sick people.” The speculative look reappeared. She had hit a soft spot there.
“We are rather shorthanded as it turns out, but I’m not sure you are the right person.”
The word “please” almost escaped Delilah’s lips, but she held it back. “Reuben’s got two little boys with Jane swelling up for another come spring. If he loses those oxen, hell lose the farm.”
She could tell he was undecided now. The expression on his face was set, like a mask kept firmly in place, but his eyes gave him away. He couldn’t keep the interest out of his gaze.
“Reuben’s a good farmer, and Jane’s very frugal, but it’s the taxes. They’ve gotten worse every year since the war. Last year Reuben had to borrow money. He was sure he could pay it back this spring, but farm prices are too low.”
“I can’t speak for my uncle… .”
He was softening. She couldn’t let up.
“Do you know what it’s like to look into the eyes of hungry children and know you have nothing else to give them? Of course you don't, not living as you do in this great big house, but I do. They don’t ask questions. At least not with words. Only their eyes ask. Their eyes tear me apart. I can’t go back there knowing I failed.”
She was aware that he didn’t know how to refuse her. She had him cornered. Just a little bit more.
“I couldn’t face Reuben either. He took me in after Mother died and our farm went for debt. He’s never begrudged me a mouthful, even when he sees his own children hungry. Neither does Jane. Could you watch your children go wanting while someone ate their fill?”
“No, but then I don’t imagine you would eat at all unless they made you.”
Delilah blushed furiously. The only time she had fought with Reuben was the time he had found her trying to give her food to the children.
“What makes you say that?”
“You are the kind of young woman who would deny herself to help others.”
“I am not.” From anybody else, that would have been a compliment. Why didn’t it seem so from him?
“Then why are you here? Did Reuben send you? Does Jane know you hold back food for your nephews? Anyone can tell you haven’t been eating enough.”
“What you imagine is quite beside the point—and impertinent.”
He accepted her censure with a nod.
“Are you certain your brother can’t repay the loan?”
“The tax collector demands coin, but we haven’t seen any gold or silver in years. The merchants give only credit. That’s why Reuben had to borrow from your uncle.”
“But if I let you work off your debt, what will the other people say?”
“Do many people owe you money?” She didn’t mean to sound impertinent, just curious.
“They owe my uncle. No one owes me anything, but that’s not the issue. I can’t allow debtors to work off their debts. I couldn’t possibly find jobs for hundreds of people.”
“Good God! Do that many people owe your uncle money?”
Nathan looked as if he wanted to say something rude and final, but he must have changed his mind. “We need coin, too. The government doesn’t want goods or services from my uncle either.”
Then it’s good business to give me the position,” Delilah said, trying to bring him back to the purpose of her visit. “Anyone else would want to be paid in coin. I only want Reuben to have his oxen.”
“Have you thought of how long it would take you to work off forty shillings?”
Delilah swallowed. “Would it be very long?”
“About four months.”
Four months! She had thought in terms of weeks, not months. She tried not to think of being in the same house with Nathan for such a long time, but she was unsuccessful. She might be able to pretend his presence had no affect on her for an hour, but how could she stand to look at him in those breeches for four months! The shocking thoughts popping into her head made her breathless.
Still she didn’t have any choice. Regardless of how witless he made her feel, she couldn’t turn her back on Reuben.
“That’s only about two shillings a week. I’m worth more than that.”
“Not when I can get a grown woman for two and a half?”
“I’m a grown woman.”
“You’re no more man a young woman at best, and I doubt your brother knows you’re here. Furthermore, I don’t know if my aunt will take you on.”
“If you’re the heir, you ought to be making the decisions.”
“That’s an opinion not shared by anyone else in this household.”
He looked angry with himself. Delilah could tell he hadn’t meant to say anything that personal.
“I’m newly arrived, and my aunt has been running my uncle’s house for years.”
Delilah could see her advantage melting away. His sympathy for her plight seemed to be fading.
“You may not find anybody else who wants me job” Delilah said, thinking quickly. “People around here don’t like your uncle. They won’t work for him, not if they can do anything else. Considering all the men the Redcoats killed in the war, and you being fresh from London, people are more likely to spit on you than work for you.”
Nathan flushed.
She hadn’t said mat to hurt his feelings, but she had to have the job.
“If that’s so, why would you work for me?”
She might as well be honest. “Because I have no choice.”
“Have your brother and sister-in-law given their permission?”
“There was no point in asking before I had the position.”
“I couldn’t take you without it.”
“Then you will take me on?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she thought he was trying to decide whether she was suitable. But me look in his eyes told her he was thinking of something else.
“I think we ought to have a trial period, and you must have your brothers permission.”
“I meant to tell him as soon as I got home,” she said. “It only made sense to talk to Mr. Buel first.”
“And you found me instead.”
Relief made her careless of her words. “I near’bout swallowed my tongue.”
“Was I that much of a surprise?”
“What do you think, with me expecting your uncle or your aunt to come to the door? Instead you showed up looking like I don’t know what.”
“I take it I was a disappointment.”
“Oh, no.” She corrected herself. “I mean, yes. I thought at first they’d hired you to help out and wouldn’t have a place for me.”
“There’s not much difference,” Nathan muttered.
Again he looked irritated with himself. He might be as much of a stranger in this house as she was. That made her feel a little less nervous. And a little curious.
Nathan stood up. “I’ll have someone take you back. Sorry, I forgot. My aunt and cousin have the buggy. It will have to be the cart.”
“I can walk,” Delilah said, rising to her feet. “It’s not much more than five miles”
“I may be a Redcoat,” he said, anger momentarily flashing in his eyes, “but I don’t force females to walk home. Finish your tea.”
He disappeared, leaving Delilah alone to assimilate the shock of finding that rather than working for a grasping, cruel, ugly old man, she was going to be in daily contact with the best-looking man she had ever seen.
But she was a levelheaded girl. Nothing ever fazed her for long, and she didn’t doubt she would have herself completely under control soon. Working for Nathan Trent, or living in the same house with him, wasn’t going to upset her.
And he seemed to be interested in her. The speculative look never left his eyes for long. He had been swayed by her story, and everybody knew sympathy often preceded a warmer feeling.
Stop this! What honorable int
erest can a man of his station have in the likes of you, a yeoman farmer’s daughter? If he was interested, it had to be only physically, without regard for her as a person.
And he was an Englishman. That alone ought to make her dislike him, make her hate being his servant. She had been only eight when that famous declaration was written in Philadelphia, but she remembered the fighting, the men who never came home; she remembered her father dying of his wounds. She couldn’t forget. She wouldn’t forgive.
Chapter Two
With a muttered oath, Nathan pushed away the papers he had been studying. He rested his elbows on the desk, head in his hands, his slim fingers digging into thick, blond-brown hair. With a second muttered oath, he lurched up from the high-backed armchair and walked over to the window, his lower lip wedged between his teem.
He barely noticed the beauty of the manicured lawn as it fell away to the water’s edge or the luxuriant foliage of maples, elms, and willows that shaded the grass or leaned out over the slow-moving waters of the Connecticut River. He was only vaguely aware of the lavish display of color in the formal rose garden, the carefully tended beds of dahlias, canna, and tuberoses, or the less controlled growth of morning glory and trumpet vines. Even though the open window let in the soft, late summer breeze, on it the fragrance of freshly scythed grass, he was aware primarily of the unfolding disaster on his uncle’s desk.
The door behind him opened. He turned. Serena Noyes, a tall, thin, faded woman with bad skin and a penchant for choosing colors accentuating her pallor, stood squarely in the doorway. Her long, bony fingers clutched the handkerchief with which she habitually dabbed at angry eyes, eyes Nathan had never seen produce a single tear. Skin cobwebbed with fine wrinkles, wisps of escaping dull-brown hair streaked with gray, and a surfeit of lace in her cap, around her bosom, and at her cuffs made her appear fragile. Her sharp, penetrating voice gave a different impression.
“Have you finished going over the accounts?” Not even her tone could hide her fear.
Nathan nodded.
“Well, are we ruined?”
“We have very little cash,” Nathan replied with a weary sigh, “but Uncle Ezra is wealthy enough to support a dozen people.”
“God be praised,” Serena cried and collapsed onto a high-backed settle liberally furnished with gold brocade cushions. “Ever since I found the cash box empty, I’ve suffered the most awful nightmares. Ezra never tells me anything.”
“You can relax now.”
“Relax?” Serena responded, the anxiety in her voice replaced by bitterness. “You’re the one who’s rich.”
“You’ll always have a home here.”
Serena sat forward and glared at him without any trace of family affection or liking. “But I don’t want to live here.”
“I’m sure if you spoke to Uncle Ezra, he would provide you with a sufficient allowance to—”
“How? Him lying like the dead!”
“The doctor says he could recover his wits any day.”
“That doctor wouldn’t know weak lungs from loose bowels,” Serena mapped angrily. “I think Ezra’s brains are addled. If he ever does wake up, he’ll be a complete idiot. We’ll be ruined.
“You don’t know anything about making money. He should have left Maple Hill to me,” she continued when Nathan remained silent. “I’m his sister. I’m the one who’s lived with him, taken care of him. What are you but a Redcoat? It’s a shame you never joined the army. Someone might have shot you.”
A hot flood of anger jolted Nathan. “Why don’t you shoot me, Aunt Serena? You could tell the sheriff I was a burglar come all the way from London to steal the cash box. I’m sure these patriotic, law-abiding colonials wouldn’t disbelieve you.”
“Don’t mock me, Nathan Trent,” she hissed angrily. “There’re times when I’m angry enough to shoot you both. I could run this place better than either of you.”
“I can learn.”
“What’s there to learn? Those people owe us thousands of pounds. Make them pay or take everything you can.”
Nathan started to tell his aunt about Delilah, about how there might be another way, but changed his mind. He didn’t want to share Delilah with her. Up until now his only identity in Springfield was as an extension of Ezra and Serena. But with Delilah, Serena and Ezra were his aunt and uncle.
He was surprised to find he didn’t want to share anything else about Delilah either. He pointed to the papers scattered on his uncle’s desk. “Uncle Ezra’s done that rather often already. It can’t make him very well liked around here.”
“Liked?” Serena repeated, incredulous. “Ezra never cared whether anybody liked him or not. Why should he? People only came around when they needed money.”
“But what’s the point of taking more cows and wagons and bedsteads? Do you know we have a dozen butter churns?”
“If they can’t pay, Ezra takes what they have. If they don’t have anything, he puts them in jail.”
They’d come closer to settling up if they could earn a living. We have no use for those churns. I can’t even sell what we have without a court order.”
“I suppose you’d let those shiftless farmers keep owing money?”
“No,” Nathan said, thinking of what had happened to his family, “but they need their livestock and farm equipment. We need cash. As things stand, nobody is getting what he wants.”
“You sound like Sam Adams,” Serena said with a derisive laugh. “That kind of talk was all right before the war, but it won’t do now.”
Nathan bit his tongue. There was no point in trying to explain anything to his aunt. She wouldn’t understand because she didn’t want to. He walked over to the window.
“I’m going to fight you for Maple Hill,” Serena said after a slight hesitation, “Ezra couldn’t have been in his right mind when he made that will. I’m sure I’ll win if I take it to the General Session. They’d never decide in favor of a Tory.”
Nathan’s anger boiled over. He was tired of being treated as an outcast. He swept his fingers through his hair before turning on his heel to face his aunt. “If you so much as speak to a living soul about challenging the will, you’ll leave the house with no more than the clothes on your back.”
Serena blanched. “You wouldn’t dare. I have my rights … You can’t threaten me. This isn’t England where you precious lords can do anything you please.”
“I’m not a lord, and I have no more freedom than you, but I will not be robbed.”
This should be mine,” Serena said, flinging out her arm. Her gesture took in the whole library, its oak-paneled walls, its shelves filled with leather-covered books, its furniture crafted with skill and tended with care. “You have no right to it.”
“As long as Uncle Ezra is alive, it’s neither mine nor yours,” Nathan said. “We would make better use of our time if we turned our minds to solving this tangle.”
“There’s nothing to solve. They borrowed money from your uncle. When the time is up, they pay it back or we take something of theirs in exchange. Can you do that?”
Nathan thought of the hundreds of colonists whose unpaid debts had ruined his father and caused him to commit suicide. He also thought of his mother, broken in spirit and frail of mind, living out her last years with a hired companion. He tried to stamp down his thirst for revenge; he attempted to choke down the feeling of satisfaction at knowing these people now suffered as he had suffered; he endeavored to remember he didn’t want to be like Uncle Ezra or Aunt Serena.
He tried, but he failed.
“Yes,” he said, feeling ashamed of the tremor of satisfaction that skittered along his spine.
“Good. Still, it’s a good idea to send the sheriff. They’ll try to talk you out of it. That awful bully Reuben Stowbridge might even threaten you.”
Nathan remembered the shame of hearing his own father beg the sheriff to spare their home, to leave his wife a few of her favorite possessions. He remembered even more clearly the cold refusal, th
e methodical carting away of everything that could be moved, dismantled, or ripped up.
I’ll go,” Nathan said, his eyes as cold as his aunt’s.
“Don’t be so thick headed,” Delilah snapped. “Do you think I want to work for Nathan Trent?”
Ezra Buel had died three days after she’d visited Maple Hill. Reuben was furious that she would even have considered working for the old man, but he was adamantly opposed to her working for Nathan Trent.
Delilah faced her brother and sister-in-law across the table, her hands on her hips, an expression of fierce determination molding her features into the look of a woman much older than her nineteen years—she hoped.
“I won’t let you be a servant to anybody, especially not to a damned Englishman,” Reuben shouted.
There’s no use kicking against what can’t be helped,” Jane told her husband philosophically. “The young man can’t be worse than his uncle.”
“I won’t have it,” Reuben repeated mulishly.
“You didn’t object when I helped Mary Nunn,” Delilah interjected.
“Mary is a God-fearing woman, even if I can’t say as much for Bradley Nunn,” Reuben said. “But I wouldn’t trust any female in the same house as a damned Redcoat.”
“Serena Noyes and her daughter live with him,” Delilah pointed out. “That should be sufficient protection.”
“No!” Reuben shouted.
“Then tell the how you plan to run this farm without a yoke of oxen?” Delilah demanded, her patience growing thin. Didn’t Reuben see she couldn’t stand around and watch him lose everything he had because of his stubborn pride?
“The sheriff is going to be here first thing in the morning. What are you going to do when it comes time for spring planting—put Jane in harness?”
Reuben tried to protest, but Delilah swept on.
“And what are you going to do when you lose everything you’ve got? Tell me that, Reuben Stowbridge, because you will lose it if you can’t carry flax to market or haul lumber or plant spring crops. It won’t do your boys a particle of good to starve just so I can avoid the shame of working as a servant. And what about the baby?”
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