So, once again, Eleanor had sent her out to do children’s chores—and to think about what she’d done to her family.
Also, Eleanor wanted to keep Jess from hearing the anger of the people of Warbrooke. The admiral was taking his fury out on the shipmasters. He’d already confiscated two shiploads of goods.
Today Jessica had stolen a few minutes to visit Mrs. Wentworth. The admiral had refused to allow Abigail to be interrogated. “Abby’s told him she’s glad Ethan is gone, that she was made to marry the man, and that she actually prefers older men,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “The old walrus believes every word she says and as long as Ethan stays hidden in the forests, Abby can keep up the charade.”
“At least it’s keeping her skin intact. How is Mr. Wentworth?”
Mrs. Wentworth turned pale.
“It’s that way at my house, too. Oh, no, here comes Alex.”
The two women parted quickly.
Jessica had nearly run to Farrier’s Cove. Eleanor had thought that a day of fishing might clear her head and keep her out of trouble.
“Jessie.”
She spun about on her heel to see the Raider standing in the shadows near the steep bank.
She held her clam shovel out toward him as if it were a weapon. “Don’t you come near me. This is all your fault. If you hadn’t come to Warbrooke, none of this would have happened.”
“Oh?” the Raider asked, lounging against the bank. “You don’t think that by now John Pitman wouldn’t have stolen everything in town?”
“Hallelujah, you’ve replaced Pitman with Admiral Westmoreland. That’s like replacing a naughty boy with the devil.”
“Jessie, you really can’t believe I’m completely to blame. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have been hanged by the British weeks ago. And releasing Ethan had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t planning to try to save those men.”
“That’s what Alex said,” she said with some bitterness in her voice. “He said you wouldn’t interfere.”
“Coward, am I?” the Raider asked, his fine lips slightly smiling.
She turned her attention to the beach, looking for clams’ air holes. “I never thought you were a coward, but rescuing Ethan and the others had to be done.”
“Did it? Abigail couldn’t go without her virile young man for a few months? Ethan couldn’t have stood a little time in the navy?”
“We had to show the admiral that we won’t be taken advantage of. We’re not children of the English. We’re—”
“You’re not using your brain, that’s what. Now the admiral is very angry and he plans to punish Warbrooke any way he can.”
“Brain! What do you know of brains? Alex said—”
“Damn that husband of yours.” He took a few steps closer to her and pulled her into his arms, then kissed her until she felt her body weaken. “Does he make you feel like that? Does he make you cry out in passion?”
“Please leave me alone,” she said, turning her head away. “Please don’t torture me like this.”
“I don’t torture you any more than you torture me,” he said with feeling. “You haunt my every moment, you fill my every—”
She pushed away from him. “Yet you let me marry another man,” she spat at him.
“Not an actual man, but a—”
“You leave Alexander out of this.”
The Raider’s eyes, glittering behind his mask, showed his surprise. “You had me take you home to him. I’m losing you to a rainbow—all color and no substance.”
“Alexander has more substance than you know about. He took on me and the kids. He never loses patience with them, he reads to them, sings to them, bandages their wounds and mine. He gets mad at me when I nearly get killed. He—”
“Does he sleep with you?”
“Heavens no!” she gasped before thinking. “I mean, Alex is my friend.”
The Raider took her arms, his fingers caressing her skin. “But you sound as if you want to sleep with him.”
“Please let me go,” she said pleadingly, not knowing if she could continue resisting. “I’m a married woman.”
“Yes.” His lips were a breath away from hers. “But you’re married to a man who can’t give you what I can. Let me make love to you, Jessie. Let me make you feel like the woman you are. Forget that peacock you married.”
She tried to push away from him. “You’re jealous of Alexander.”
“Of course I am. He has you all day, while I only have you for minutes at a time. How do his kisses compare to mine?”
“Alexander doesn’t kiss me,” she murmured. “Only you do.”
He pulled away from her, his eyes open wide in surprise. “He doesn’t kiss you? But you want to kiss him, don’t you? You want to go to bed with him, don’t you?”
Jess straightened the front of her dress. “You are losing your mind. Alexander is my friend. I’d as soon let Eleanor make love to me. I’d get about as much pleasure from a woman as from Alexander,” she muttered. “Please go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
The Raider stood there, hands at his side, his mouth slightly open, as if he’d heard some horrible news.
Jess looked toward the bank. “Go! Someone’s coming. It may be Alex.”
The Raider seemed to recover himself. “Maybe your husband has been meeting another woman.”
“Now I know your brain is addled. He couldn’t even get a woman to marry him, much less go to bed with him. Go! Or do you want to be caught?”
The Raider was over the side of the bank within seconds.
It was only a deer on the side of the cove, but Jessica was glad that something had made the Raider leave. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to resist him much longer. Just the sight of him made her body start to vibrate. It had been so very long since a man had held her.
She jabbed at a clam hole. A real man, that is, one who was capable of pleasing her body as well as her mind. She felt a little guilty having told the Raider about Alex but she felt torn between the two men. She was physically faithful to both of them. She wasn’t an adulteress and betraying Alex, nor was she sleeping with her husband and thereby betraying the Raider.
“I’m without,” she said aloud. “Without either man.” She jabbed harder at the clam hole.
* * *
“Will you stop shouting at me?” Jessica yelled at Eleanor. “I told you. I haven’t done anything to Alexander. At least not anything new. I took him his food, I even cut it up for him. I don’t know how to be nicer to him. I even told him he looked very nice, that his coat made his cheeks pink and pretty. What else can I do for him?”
“Why is he brooding, then?”
“I don’t know. He won’t talk to me about his health. Do you think he’s in pain?”
“Only what pain you’ve caused him.”
“Me? I haven’t done—”
They were interrupted by the door bursting open and Marianna entering, her face flushed, her eyes alight. “Have you heard? There’s an Italian ship docking and someone said Adam might be on it.”
“Adam?” Jessica gasped.
“Oh yes,” Marianna sighed, her eyes closed in ecstasy for a moment. “My eldest brother. Adam the fighter. Adam the handsome. Adam who has come to save us.”
“The English will burn our town to the ground if anyone else ‘saves’ us,” Eleanor said.
Jessica looked down at her old, worn dress. “I can’t meet Adam looking like this. I wish I had a dress as beautiful as Alex’s red coat. Don’t just stand there, Marianna, your hair is a mess.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She started down the hall.
“Don’t tell Alex you’re dressing up for—” Eleanor called, but Jessica was already gone. “Adam,” she finished and then put her hand to her own head. Perhaps she should have a look at herself before the famous Adam returned.
Jessica opened the door to Alex’s room with eagerness on her face.
Alex shut his book. “What’s happened?
”
“Nothing.” Jess was digging in a trunk in a corner of the room. “Oh, Alex, I wish you’d bought me a red dress like you promised.”
Alex was out of the chair in seconds and grabbed her arms. “Are you meeting the Raider?” he asked, his eyes hard.
“I don’t have time for your jealousy now. Marianna says a ship has come from Italy and Adam might be on it.”
“Adam? My brother Adam?”
“Yes, of course that Adam. Alex, go tell your father.”
“Tell him that Adam the perfect will be here soon?”
She shut the trunk. “Alexander, would you please tell me what is wrong with you? You’ve been biting my head off for days.”
“But that’s the only thing of yours I bite, isn’t it, my chaste little wife?”
Her face softened. “So that’s it. You’re remembering when you were a man. Alex, I swear to you that I won’t sleep with the Raider or Adam or anyone else. There’s no reason for you to be jealous. Have you seen that blue fan that belonged to your mother?”
“You’re wearing satin to meet my brother? You’re going down to the dirty, smelly wharf wearing a satin dress?”
She counted to ten to calm herself. “Alex, you wear satin each and every day. Now, will you help me dress?”
“Like hell I will,” he said and stormed out of the room.
“Men!” Jessica said with contempt and left the room to search for a sister to help her dress.
By the time the ship docked, most of Warbrooke was there to greet the oldest Montgomery son—but he wasn’t on board. The captain had never heard of Adam Montgomery and had no news of him.
As a group, the faces of the crowd fell.
Jessica moved away from Alex three times because she couldn’t bear his jealous mutterings. Of course, she did feel sorry for Alex because his brother would get the attention Alex should have received. No one was going to laugh at Adam. A disappointed Jess watched as the sailors brought twenty-three leather-bound trunks down the gangplank, followed by three maids.
“Perhaps I should go back so my father can cry on my shoulder,” Alex was saying in her ear. “Or maybe you feel like crying.”
Jessica was about to say something to her husband when they heard a woman’s pretty voice call.
“Alexander? Is that you?”
Alex looked past Jess, then his lips curved into a smile of delight. “Sophy,” he whispered.
“Alexander, it is you.”
Jess turned to see a tiny, exquisite, dark-haired woman with a pretty face shaded under a pink, frilled bonnet. She was looking at Alex with anticipation, laughter on her pretty lips.
“Alex, I barely recognized you. Whatever are you doing wearing that wig? And why are standing that way? And that coat—”
She didn’t finish because Alex took her in his arms and kissed her to silence.
That effectively brought the crowd to a halt.
“What a welcome,” Sophy murmured.
“Play along with me. Whatever happens, play along with me,” Alex whispered. He pulled away from her.
Jessica was looking at the two of them with great curiosity. Alex had certainly never kissed her like that. Not that she’d ever wanted him to, but she’d never tried to stop him either.
“Jessica,” Alex said, “this is the Countess Tatalini and, Sophy, this is my wife. Sophy and I knew each other before my fever.”
“Fever? Alex are you ill? Is that why you’re dressed—”
Alex put his arm around her waist and squeezed hard. “I’m no longer ill but I have been. Jess, could you get some of these layabouts to carry the countess’s luggage? You are staying with us, aren’t you?”
“Why, no, I’m on my way to—”
“We won’t hear of it, will we, Jess?”
Jessica didn’t say a word but looked from one to the other.
“Jess?” Alex asked. “We would love to have the countess as our guest, wouldn’t we?”
Jess still didn’t answer but kept looking at the way the countess was curving her body into Alex’s. She didn’t seem to mind at all that he was fat, that he slouched, that the color in his cheeks was probably rouge.
“Jessica,” Alex said in a familiar whine, “you have to help me. I feel my strength going. Could you help with the baggage while the countess supports me?”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Jessica said at last. “And we have plenty of room for you. I’ll get the luggage.”
Alex leaned heavily on Sophy and she didn’t say a word until they were in a room in the Montgomery house. Then she turned on him.
“I demand that you tell me what is going on.” She reached forward and snatched the wig off his head. “I thought for a moment you’d shaved it. Alex, whatever have you gotten yourself into now?”
Smiling, running his hands through his hair, Alex sat down in a chair. “Sophy, you don’t know how good it is to hear that question. You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to hear a woman accuse me of not being what I appear.”
“I’m glad you’re happy.” The countess was tapping her small foot impatiently. “Alex, you may be receiving pleasure, but I am not. I am supposed to be in Boston in two weeks to see my husband and our children. He will be very angry if I am not there.”
“Like the last time, when I climbed out on the balcony?”
Sophy smiled. “In the rain with not a stitch on. And when he was gone you were nowhere to be found. I was frantic. I thought the dogs had you. Instead—”
“A housemaid had. Could I help it if she felt pity for me? And then I had to show her my gratitude. Of course, since I had no clothes on, I fear my gratitude was self-evident.”
“You!” she said but she was laughing. “My husband will never believe what I say if he finds out I’ve been here with you.”
“With me and my wife and a house full of the nosiest people on earth.”
“That wife of yours is a beauty, a little slow perhaps, but what does that matter in a woman? Her beauty is what counts. Is she why you’re dressed like that? Alex, that disgusting thing isn’t actually your belly is it?”
Alex stroked the protuberance fondly. “It’s cotton, a little string, a pistol and knife and not much me.” He glanced at the door as he heard a sound. “It’s Jess.” He grabbed the wig, slammed it on his head in a practiced gesture, then slumped until he was S-shaped.
“In here,” Jess said, directing men in stacking the countess’s many trunks. “I thought you’d put her in your mother’s room.” Jess kept standing there after the trunks were stacked.
“Jessica,” Alex said in a voice of great tiredness, “could you leave us? We are old friends and have so much to talk of. Perhaps you could finish the accounts of four years ago. Or see to Sophy’s maids’ comfort.”
Jess looked from one to the other, then nodded and left the room.
Sophy turned on Alex. “Of all the—! If my husband ever spoke to me that way, I’d remove his ears and his—”
Alex bent and kissed her. “Yes, you would and so would Jess if she thought I was a man.”
“A man? What does she expect from a man if you can’t fulfill it?”
Alex kissed her again. “Sophy, you are making me feel better by the minute. Did you see the way Jessica looked at you? If you don’t have to be in Boston for two weeks, then you have a few days. I’d like to ask a favor of you. I’d like you to stay here and make my wife jealous.”
“You do not try to make a husband or wife jealous, you try to prevent it.”
“But you don’t know the whole story.”
Sophy sat in a chair, arranging her skirts about her. “I’m an excellent listener.”
* * *
“What an absolutely vile, despicable trick, Alexander Montgomery,” Sophy said with passion. “That poor woman has two men after her but she doesn’t have one whole one.”
“She plays her own tricks. She tells the Raider she wishes he’d never come to Warbrooke and then she tells Alex the Raider
is the town’s only hope. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“It sounds to me like she knows exactly. She loves her country, so she helps the Raider; she loves her family, so she marries a man who she thinks can help them, a man who can never make love to her. She took a vow of chastity to save her family. And you have condemned her to this. That poor, poor girl.”
“She was the one who started it. I never meant to play the Raider here, but Jessica laughed at me and made everyone believe I was fat and effeminate.”
“I don’t blame them. You look dreadful. No wonder no woman wanted to marry you.”
“You didn’t believe me.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t long ago that you and I—” She stopped and glared at him. “What is it that you want from this girl?”
Alex took her hands. “Sophy, I love her. Maybe I’ve loved her forever. I know I used to see her following one of my older brothers when she was a child, then I’d play some prank on her. Everything she did enraged me. My mother thought Jessica was wonderful. She constantly told us that Jess was the strength in the Taggert family. I wanted them to know that if I were faced with a similar situation, I’d be the family’s strength. But I was the baby, with a father and two older brothers. Jessica never even looked at me—no matter what I did to get her attention.”
Sophy touched his cheek.
“I can’t tell her I’m the Raider. She’ll do something utterly stupid, I know she will.”
“It seems to me she’s doing that already.” Sophy squinted her eyes at Alex. “What’s your real reason for not telling her you are the Raider?”
Alex smiled and kissed her hands. “I want her to love me. Me, Alexander. I want her to love me for myself, not because I wear a black mask and ride a black horse. Jessica’s love is very important to me and I want to know that it’s mine. I want to know that she’ll love me even when I’m too old to mount a horse. If I end up like my father, I don’t want to think that my beautiful Jessica is going to go running off with the next dashing figure.”
“Alex, you’re asking her to love only half the man.”
“I guess I am, but she did leave the Raider and come to me. Of course she was bleeding and had to get help, but it was better than nothing. But then she told the Raider she’d as soon go to bed with a woman as with me.”
The Raider Page 23