“You do seem a bit befuddled, Mrs. Stebbens said. “You sure you’re feeling all right?”
“How can anybody be feeling right with Mrs. Noyes put out of the house,” Lester complained, “and Miss Priscilla running about like a weasel robbed of its dinner. Here, Tommy, watch where you’re going, or you’ll end up in the wood box with the kindling.”
Lester took his precious serving dish to the pantry, and Tommy went out to split more wood for the breakfast cooking.
“If you ask me, he should have thrown her out long ago,” Mrs. Stebbens said. “If he hadn’t come home when he did, I was about to quit. Not that it would make any difference, you being able to cook better than me anyway.”
“You could take over the sewing, and I could do the cooking,” suggested Delilah.
“Never in your life. Mr. Nathan wouldn’t give up your serving him.” Delilah blushed, which Mrs. Stebbens didn’t miss. “I swear that man would eat sawdust and not know any better as long as you served it to him. Is he going to ask you to marry him?”
“I … he …”
“Don’t you let him go making any indecent propositions, not that I think he would, him being nutty on you like he is, but you never can tell about them English gentlemen. They don’t act like regular folks.”
“He’s asked me,” Delilah admitted reluctantly, “but there’s so much to consider.”
“Now don’t you go letting other people’s carryings-on keep you from looking out for yourself,” Mrs. Stebbens advised. “If he wants to throw himself at you, along with this house and all his money, who are you to tell him he’d be better of with some Boston socialite with corn-silk hair and pale blue eyes? No reason you shouldn’t have it.”
“It’s not his money I’m thinking of.”
“Considering what he’s got stuffed in them breeches, I should think not,” Mrs. Stebbens said with a wicked chuckle. “But you can’t stay in bed all the time. When you get up, it’s nice to be able to put on silks and have somebody else do the cooking and cleaning.”
“He said he’d give me a month to make up my mind.”
“Don’t you take no month. Men are terrible about changing their minds. Just like children, they are. They see something new and they got to have it. Don’t matter they got something better back home.”
“I wouldn’t want a husband like that.”
“Lord help us, child, they can’t help it. They don’t mean to be so wishy-washy, it’s just how they’re made. Why do you think us womenfolk have any control over them at all? It’s because deep down they know they’re foolish creatures. Oh, they wouldn’t tell you for the life of them, but they listens. I know they do. There’s not a man in the state, no matter how stupid, who will listen to a word a woman has to say about the law or how to run his business. But you show me one, even that nasty Silas Bennett, who doesn’t listen to what his wife has to say when it comes to things having to do with family and community.”
Delilah doubted Nathan could be counted among that number, but she decided against trying to convince Mrs. Stebbens. “I still don’t know. He’s so different from us.”
“He’s a man, ain’t he?”
“Certainly.”
“Then he’s like every other, man. The good Lord didn’t make them deep, just full of sin and so nice looking in breeches even old prunes like Mrs. Porter can’t help noticing your Nathan.”
“Don’t call him my Nathan. He may say he dotes on me and would give me the world if he could, but he always seems to end up doing things his way.”
“It’s all that conniving bitch’s fault,” Serena said to Priscilla as they walked up to the house two nights later. “She’s the one who’s put him up to it.”
“I don’t know,” Priscilla answered. “I don’t say she wouldn’t like to marry him. It would hardly seem possible for anyone that poor to refuse anybody as rich as Nathan, even if he was ugly as sin, which you have to admit Nathan is not.”
“I always thought he wore those breeches just to get women to do things they oughtn’t,” her mother complained. “Thank God I’m beyond the age of being attracted to things like that, but I don’t know why you can’t like him. He would be the ideal husband for you, and marrying him would be the perfect solution to our problems. Maple Hill should be mine, but if I can’t have it, I’d rather see it belong to you.”
“You’ve got to understand that Maple Hill belongs to Nathan, regardless of whether I marry him or not. It’s not ours, Mother, and it’s never going to be. Put it out of your mind.”
“I can’t;” Serena agonized. “It’s so unfair. I deserve it. I earned it. That man did nothing.”
“Except be a man. To Uncle Ezra, that was all that was important.”
“Bastards, both of them,” Serena cursed. “And he’s stupid. He’ll lose everything.”
“I don’t know about that,” Priscilla hedged. “I thought so at first, or at least I thought he was so pigheadedly English he wouldn’t see what was in front of his face, but I don’t think that anymore. And now he’s got Delilah helping him.”
“What does she know? She’s only looking for a chance to entrap him.”
“Maybe, but since she’s been working with him, he’s got more than a dozen people, whole families in some cases, working for him.”
“I have no patience with this foolish sentiment about helping the poor help themselves” Serena snapped. “I say if they owe a debt, get your money any way you have to.”
Serena was so angry, her sense of injury so strong, she continued berating Nathan without noticing Priscilla’s altered expression or realizing that she got no response to her accusations.
“I just hope that girl doesn’t show her face in the drawing room. I doubt I shall be able to control myself.”
Priscilla rounded on her mother with a ferocity even Serena’s mantle of self-imposed martyrdom couldn’t ignore. “You’ll control yourself tonight—and all the rest of the time.”
“I will not sit by silently while that girl insinuates herself into my house,” Serena stated, outraged.
Priscilla turned her mother toward her before she could ascend the steps. “You’ll keep your mouth closed no matter what she does, if I have to gag you myself.’
“Are you mad. You can’t mean to let Nathan—”
“When are you going to realize that neither of us has any power over what Nathan decides to do” Priscilla’s voice had lost only a fraction of its seductive breathiness, but it displayed a sharp cutting edge. “He can marry Delilah, Lucy Porter, even Mrs. Stebbens if he wants, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“But as long as I live in this house—”
“You don’t live in this house anymore, and you’re not likely to ever again unless you realize we’re here only as long as he allows us to remain”
“That’s insufferable. I don’t see why I should be expected to tolerate it.”
“I don’t see how you can call it tolerating,” declared Priscilla, thoroughly exasperated by her mother’s inability to face reality. “He’s willing to give you a place to live, food, servants to care for you. All he asks is that you recognize the fact it’s his house, his money, his servants.”
“If only Ezra hadn’t left him everything.”
“Will you forget about Uncle Ezra,” Priscilla practically screamed. “He’s dead. Nothing can be changed.”
“I’ll do the best I can, but I can’t promise—”
“Do you ever want another drop of brandy?” Priscilla had stopped trying to reason with her mother.
“W-what do you mean by that extremely impertinent remark?” Serena stammered, trying unsuccessfully to retain her dignity.
“If you do anything, speak so much as one word, to keep Nathan from letting us move back into that house, I’ll see that not another drop passes your lips.”
Priscilla stormed into the hall, leaving a greatly astonished Serena to follow in her wake.
Nathan heard the hoofbeats long bef
ore the first riders burst from the woods. By the time they reached the house, nearly all those at Maple Hill had paused at their various tasks. So many riders had never ridden up to the house at a gallop. Something terrible must have happened.
“They knew our men were coming,” Lucius Clarke told Nathan only minutes later. “They were warned.”
“How do you know?” Nathan asked. “It wasn’t hard to guess we meant to stop them from closing the court.”
“It wasn’t that,” Asa Warner said. “It was how it was all managed,”.
“They led our men on a wild-goose chase,” Noah Hubbard explained. “They drew us off in all directions while the main body gathered in Worcester. By the time we realized what was happening, there were too many of them.”
“I tell you, someone warned Shays,” Noah insisted, “and that someone lives in this house.”
Stunned silence. Lucius and the others may have had their suspicions, but no one had been ready to place the blame on anybody at Maple Hill.
“Do you suspect me?” Nathan asked.
“Good God, no.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know, precisely” Noah admitted, “but you got the place swarming with regulators or their sympathizers” Noah pointed directly at Delilah as she bore a tray of mugs into the room. “Her brother is one of the ringleaders.”
“If it will make you feel any better, Miss Stowbridge hasn’t left Maple Hill since she arrived.”
“It makes no difference,” Noah said, taking the silence behind him to be support. “She has the run of the house. She can gather the information and send it out with her brother.”
“Reuben hasn’t been here in weeks,” Delilah said. “You can ask any of the men.”
“Isaac Yates and his boy are in and out of this place like it belonged to them. Don’t tell me you don’t see them.”
“I won’t, since you’re obviously unwilling to believe anything I say,” Delilah snapped.
The men might not credit her words, but they were impressed with her demeanor. She didn’t look like a woman with something to hide. She exuded the confidence of complete innocence.
“Miss Stowbridge is no spy,” Nathan said. “Nor is anyone else at Maple Hill. No one comes here without a specific purpose.”
“But how do you know someone ain’t also spying?” Noah insisted.
“I don’t suppose I can,” Nathan replied, “but no one comes up to the house except to see me. Since none of these folk are ever here when we meet, it’s impossible for them to learn anything.”
Noah’s gaze shifted to Delilah.
“Foreseeing such a situation as this, I have made it a point to see that Miss Stowbridge couldn’t possibly have access to any information,” Nathan stated coolly.
“It’s got to be coming from this house,” Noah insisted.
“Surely you can’t mean you suspect Priscilla or myself,” stated Serena. She had come into the room just after Delilah.
“Certainly not, Mrs. Noyes,” Lucius said. “Nobody was more relentless than your uncle in taking what was owed him.”
“Shays’s information comes from here. I know it,” Noah insisted. “I say you send her back to her brother. Then if the leaks stop, we’ll know who it was.”
“And if they don’t?”
“I say they will.”
“You may not have noticed, but I’m not in the least bit interested in what you say,” Nathan said in the same quiet, deadly voice Delilah had come to be wary of. “I consider your accusations offensive, your reasoning idiotic, and your integrity roughly equivalent to that of an egg-stealing snake’s. Now if you don’t leave my house immediately, I’ll throw you out.”
An unexpected step forward accompanied the threat, and Noah involuntarily jumped back. Several men laughed at this show of cowardice, and that broke the tension.
Noah looked around him with malice in his eyes. “I’ll prove it’s you,” he said to Delilah as he retreated toward the door.
“You’ll have a difficult time proving what exists only in your mind,” Nathan said. “Now, if you’re finished …”
“I’m going, but I’ll be back.”
“Miss Stowbridge, would you show him out?” Nathan grinned maliciously at the rage which suffused Noah’s countenance when Delilah opened the door for him. He grinned even more broadly when he heard the front door slam.
“Now, gentlemen,” Nathan said, turning back to the others, “I want to say two things. First, I will state on my honor that no one I have brought to Maple Hill has ever stolen information for me regulators. I have even refrained from sharing information with my aunt and cousin.”
There was a polite murmur of approval.
“However, since some doubt does exist in your minds, I suggest you neither hold your discussions as to your next move at Maple Hill nor invite me to be a party to them. Then if information is passed, you can be certain it didn’t come from Maple Hill.”
“There’s no secret about what we plan to do next,” Asa Warner said. “The next court sitting is at—”
Nathan held up his hand. “You’re welcome to enjoy my hospitality as long as you wish, but not a word about your plans.”
Much to everyone’s surprise, once prohibited from discussing the insurrection, those gathered had an enjoyable time drinking Nathan’s ale and talking about ordinary concerns which had been pushed aside. When the last of the men left, nearly an hour later, all were in a better humor.
“You didn’t want them to tell you what they were going to do because you wanted no part of it,” Delilah whispered as she cleared away the last of the mugs.
“I daresay you’re right,” Serena said, coming up in time to overhear. “He’s shown all along he doesn’t have the backbone to do what’s necessary. Instead he coddles those lazy good-for-nothings and encourages them to continue being lax.”
“On the contrary, he’s encouraging them to be productive,” Delilah contradicted her. “For every dollar Isaac Yates makes for himself, he makes two for Nathan. Now Isaac has hired two people who owe Nathan money, and Emma Wheaton is offering work to any woman who can spin top grade flax yarn,” Delilah added.
“I"ve earned more from Delilah’s ideas than Lucius or Noah have gained by confiscation,” Nathan disclosed.
“It won’t do you any good in the end,” Serena stated. “None of our people trust you, and I hear the farmers think you’re only giving them work so you can get information.”
“Mother,” Priscilla hissed, “this is none of your concern.”
“I’m not saying this for my benefit,” Serena said piously. “I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t recommend to Nathan most strongly that Miss Stowbridge return to her home. If she must meddle in his affairs, I don’t see why she can’t do it from there.”
“Delilah’s not leaving Maple Hill because I don’t want her to.”
“It’s all fine and good to stand up for principle, Nathan, but what’s the good of insisting that she isn’t spying when nobody believes you? You would save her and yourself a lot of trouble if—”
“I love Delilah. I have asked her to marry me.”
Priscilla looked only mildly surprised, but Serena appeared to have been turned to stone. For a few moments she sat immobile and stared at Nathan out of wide eyes.
“You couldn’t possibly be guilty of such insanity,” she finally managed to say.
“The only insanity I’m guilty of is thinking for all of one hour that Priscilla might make me a good wife. We would have soon come to hate each other.”
“But Priscilla adores you. She always has.”
“I’ve never liked Nathan, not even for one day,” Priscilla said. “I would not have married him.”
“But you said you would. And I saw you making up to him all the time.”
“Uncle Ezra treated you better when I made up to him,” Priscilla explained. “I figured it would work on Nathan as well.”
“But-”
“
I lied to you, Mother,” Priscilla said in exasperation. “You wouldn’t listen to anything I said, so I lied.”
Serena looked crushed. “When will the wedding take place?”
“There isn’t going to be a wedding, Mrs. Noyes,” Delilah said. “I haven’t agreed to marry him.”
“You haven’t agreed! Why you stupid girl! Do you think you’ll ever again have a chance to marry such a rich husband?”
Nathan chuckled at his aunt’s unexpected reaction.
“I haven’t given up. I’ve given her until Christmas to change her mind.”
“And then?”
“I’ll kidnap her and marry her anyway.”
“You really turned him down?” Priscilla asked, unable to believe what she had heard.
“With Reuben hating Nathan and your mother hating me, the community not trusting an Englishman, the regulators setting everybody against their neighbors, and the differences between our stations, what else could I do?”
“You’re a more intelligent girl than I thought,” Serena said, grasping at the only hope she saw. “It takes a noble person to give up a man for his own good.”
“I’m not giving him up,” Delilah said. “I don’t think I could ever do that.”
“None of those things matter,” Nathan said, speaking to Delilah rather than his aunt and cousin. “You’ll have your month, but after that you’re going to be mine.”
“But—”
“If Maple Hill and all those debts stand in my way, I’ll give it away. I won’t let anything as stupid as a house stand between us.”
“Are you insane?” Serena shrieked.
“You’d do that for me?” Delilah asked, moved beyond words.
“Do you know what that would mean to me?” Serena demanded.
“I told you I wouldn’t let you go,” Nathan said to Delilah as he ignored Serena entirely. “Besides, I’ve already been poor. I’m not afraid of it.”
“Where would I go? How would I live?” Serena inquired, frantic. “And there’s Priscilla to think of. How would she ever find a husband?”
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