JoAnn Wendt (15 page)

Edward Fitz-William, Esq.

Wig Maker, Kent County”

Poor young man, thought Flavia with a sigh as she finished reading and put the paper down.

“Read it again, Jane,” Mrs. Byng directed, leaning forward in her veranda chair to swish a rag at a cluster of flies that gathered on her empty rum toddy cup.

“And attend to what you’re reading, missy. On Market Day you must keep your eyes peeled for runaways. I shouldn’t take it amiss to get myself forty shillings for no work but looking.”

Flavia’s stomach lurched in disgust, but she complied with the order and read the boy’s description once more. When she finished, Mrs. Byng granted her a rare, peevish smile.

“I don’t wonder but what I might give
you
a shilling or two of the reward, Jane, if you’ll but keep your eyes peeled and fly to the jailer if you spy the runaway.”

Flavia’s eyes flashed with anger. Quickly she looked down at the gazette to hide her hot feelings. Fly to the jailer, indeed! Rather she would fly to the young man and warn him to run.

“Jane! Are you
listening?”

She jumped as Mrs. Byng’s fan rapped her shoulder.

“I’m
hearing
you, ma’am,” she said sarcastically.

Mrs. Byng’s weak eye twitched. Sensing that she may have been insulted, but unable to put her finger on the insult, she smoothed her own ruffled feathers by attacking.

“Where is your mobcap, chit? Put it on at once. Attire yourself decent.”

Flavia looked up in genuine surprise. “The day is so hot. I’m cooler without the cap.”

Mrs. Byng gave her a baleful look.

“Your red hair is an affront to Nature, Jane. Only a Jezebel or a wanton slut has hair the color of yours.”

Flavia’s cheeks heated in anger.

“It is the hair God was pleased to give me!”

“Yes! And He gave it to you that decent folk could easily spot a wanton and be warned. In like manner, He gave red hair to Jezebel and to Eve. The Reverend Mr. Byng says it is so.”

It was infuriating, but Flavia bit back the words she wanted to hurl at the stupid woman. There was no argument to be offered for “Mr. Byng says it is so.” She studied her hands in her lap, refusing Mrs. Byng the satisfaction of knowing she had upset her. But Mrs. Byng found her composure incensing.

“Oh, yes, girl. Mr. Byng discerns a wanton spirit in you. He warned me of it. Mr. Byng intends to keep a close watch on you, missy.”

Flavia flushed in anger. A close watch? During the past weeks
Mr. Byng’s eyes had followed her every movement. At times she felt stripped naked by his eyes. And she was uncomfortably aware that the last time she’d bathed in the creek someone had spied from the bushes. She’d heard furtive slaps, as though someone battled biting insects. That night
Mr. Byng had come to supper with his face mottled with red chigger bites.

“You are wasting my time, Jane,” Mrs. Byng said. “Read on in the gazette. Read the rest of the bondslave subscriptions. And mind the details. On Market Day you are to keep your eyes peeled for runaways.”

Flavia sighed and picked up the gazette. She began to read with deliberate slowness. Detestable as the subscriptions were, they gave respite from garden work.

She read,
“Runaway from the Mistress of Spencer House, a genteel Williamsburg lodging place, an English Servant Woman called Mab Col—”

Her voice stuck in her throat. For several seconds she couldn’t breathe. Fear pounded in her breast.

Mrs. Byng turned sly eyes upon her.

“Do you know this bondwoman, Jane?” she asked with feigned pleasantness,

Flavia blinked. She drew a steadying breath.

“No,” she said firmly. “No.”

Willing herself to be calm, she rushed on with the reading. She mustn’t arouse Mrs. Byng’s suspicions. For what if Mab traveled north, counting on Flavia to hide her? In the eight months since they’d parted, they’d exchanged letters only once. Postal fees were too dear to permit more. But Mab’s one letter, crudely written, had hinted at escape.

Burying her face in the gazette, Flavia read on aloud. She knew she must read every word as it stood because Mr. Byng often read the same material aloud in the evening. Where profit was concerned. Mistress Byng stayed alert. If
Mrs. Byng suspected deception, she would watch Flavia carefully and Flavia would find herself powerless to help Mab.

In a deliberately bored manner she read:

“—an English Servant Woman called Mab Collins. Said bondslave is about twenty-three years of Age, a tall, pridey woman having insolent eyes and hair of no special coloring. She hath a tart mouth and Thieving ways. When she run away, clothed herself in her mistress’s black Allopeen Cloak with Silver buttons. It is supposed she will endeavor to pass for one Mary Percy, having Stolen Mary Percy’s Indenture papers with a Discharge thereon.”

Flavia paused for breath. Sending up a quick fervent prayer of Godspeed to Mab, she rushed to the finish:

“Whoever takes up Mab Collins and Secures her so that her Mistress may have her again, shall receive, besides what the Law allows, Four Pistoles if taken in Virginia, Six if taken in Maryland and Eight if taken in New-York, to be paid by,

Mrs. Eliza Spencer

Spencer House for Genteel Gentlemen and their Ladies,

Williamsburg”

When Flavia fell silent, Mrs. Byng stood up in thoughtful concentration.

“Six
pistoles, Jane. A Spanish pistole holds its value far better than shillings.” She frowned. “Keep your eyes peeled, Jane. You hear?”

Flavia looked away, hiding the fearful excitement that danced in her eyes.

“Oh, I shall, ma’am,” she promised. “You may count on it.”

Chapter 10

Garth McNeil’s footfalls echoed with hollow resonance as he hurried up the spiraling uneven stone steps of the German castle keep. The keep was the last remaining tower of what once had been Castle Bladensburg. Here each feudal Germanic lord of Bladensburg had sought to “keep” his lady and his children safe in times of siege. Encircled by its own small moat, the keep had once been the center of a proud castle. Now it looked down upon tumbled ruins, and its moat was a shallow ditch overgrown with scruffy trees and choked with wild honeysuckle vines.

McNeil vaulted up the steps, ignoring the gloomy stone alcoves where, in olden times, frightened ladies had clutched their children as they peered out of the narrow archers’ slits to watch the terrible battles unfold.

McNeil reached the top of the keep and stepped out into the sunshine, leaving gloom behind. A square scalloped wall circled the top of the keep, and from here a marching army could have been seen at ten miles’ distance. But an ancient medieval army was not what McNeil was interested in. He was here to absorb the lay of the land, the layout of Bladensburg, the German estate belonging to the duke of Tewksbury.

He prowled the wall. Below lay sprawling ruins where wild flowers grew upon stone outcroppings. Peacocks roosted upon ruins, and their peculiar shrieks echoed off the stones and out over the river that ran past Bladensburg. A hundred yards north of the keep there began a formal garden, terraces that marched up to an imposing three-story villa. McNeil looked at it with distaste. The duke of Tewksbury’s German bastion.

He went to the north side of the keep and studied the densely forested countryside. The Rhine River snaked through the land, rushing north, rushing toward the lowlands of Holland, rushing toward Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, the
Caroline
waited, prepared, ready to sail at a moment’s notice.

He paced the windy tower, studying river and rolling countryside, planning . . .

“It is a lovely view, isn’t it, Captain McNeil?”

McNeil started. Jerking around he found Eunice Wetherby smiling up at him. Miss Wetherby was a plain young woman with a pert, birdlike face and hen-like, fussy ways. Her young but spinsterish bosom rose and fell breathlessly as though she’d found the climb to the top of the keep taxing. As he looked at her, she smiled eagerly. Then, perhaps fearing her smile had betrayed too much eagerness, she reined it in to controlled, ladylike dimensions.

McNeil smiled back.

“The view is
very
lovely,” he said pointedly, looking at her and not the view.

She reddened at the possibilities underlying his words, ducked her head and turned away slightly, pretending to study a fishing boat that was passing by out on the river.
Her manner corroborated what McNeil suspected: Eunice Wetherby fancied herself in love with him.

He scowled in irritation. ‘It didn’t fit his plans to have Lord Wetherby’s cousin following him about like a devoted puppy. She could be a danger. Unknowingly, she could scuttle his mission, sabotage his careful plans. And those plans had been long in the making.

His scowl deepened as he forced Lord Wetherby and Eunice from his mind and concentrated upon his mission. The past months had been intense. The coming months would be more so.

It had begun in May, three days after the governor’s royal birthday ball in Williamsburg. Abandoning a furious Annette with no more adequate explanation than “Keep my bed warm, Baroness,” he’d sailed out of Norfolk. He’d caught the prevailing westerly winds and loosed the
Caroline
to run before them. Like a mistress flying to her lover, the
Caroline
flew toward England.

Matching the loosed madness of the
Caroline,
McNeil’s own thoughts and passions had rioted. Wildly, he had vowed to confront the duke and demand his son. This foolishness he likely would’ve committed had the
Caroline
magically leaped between Norfolk and England in a day. And it would have meant the death of his son he realized after he’d finally cooled down.

For the duke of Tewksbury had struck him as a ruthless man. If the duke should suspect that Tewksbury blood didn’t flow in the baby’s veins, the duke would not hesitate to kill him. God! McNeil was stupefied at the thought of what he might have brought upon his and Flavia’s son by rash action. No, he must
never
confront the duke. He must
never
endanger the baby’s life.

From an extreme of rash foolhardiness he’d swung to meekness. For a time, he had meekly planned only to try to catch a glimpse of his son. Simply a hasty glance through a nursery window. Then, so be it. But he yearned to lay eyes on the boy, yearned to look and absorb the boy into his heart, keep him there in the center of himself where he guarded memories of Flavia.

He was almost inured to the unhappy idea of contenting himself with just seeing the boy when he’d awakened one night in a cold sweat, in bondage to a new and infinitely more chilling thought: he had learned of the existence of his son by piecing bits together. A chance remark by Annette had been the catalyst, the spark that exploded those bits and caused them to reassemble in his mind in new, meaningful shapes. Suppose the duke had a similar experience someday? Suppose His Grace put the bits and pieces together. What would the duke do? Would the duke hesitate to have the child murdered? McNeil knew the duke would not hesitate for an instant.

The horror of the thought choked him day and night. With desperate urgency, he knew what he must do. To save the boy, he must steal him.

Cool-headed at last and as much the master of himself as he was master of the
Caroline,
he had carefully made his plans. Three weeks out of Norfolk, the wind-favored ship penetrated English waters. A few days more and the
Caroline
dropped anchor at Plymouth.

From Plymouth, Garth sent Tom Jenkins, his trusted first mate, to London to make discreet inquiries: Was the colonial Captain Garth McNeil still wanted by authorities on charges of stealing a jade piece from Tewksbury Hall?

Jenkins brought back the answer. No. Not only no, but all charges had been dismissed as an unfortunate administrative error. The error had been laid to a steward of the duke, and the erring steward had been discharged.

“The bastard!” Garth had snarled to Jenkins. “His Grace wants everything swept under the rug and forgotten. Why?”

Jenkins had smiled his solemn, intelligent smile.

“I pursued that question in a discreet way, sir. And very handy was the fifty pounds sterling you sent with me. I greased a few palms, loosened a few tongues w’rum.”

“Well?”

“I got nothing certain, Captain. A tad of information here, a tad there. But tads add up, don’t they?”

“And?”

“And it looks like His Grace planted the jade on the
Caroline
for an interesting reason. He wanted all eyes on the
Caroline
while a certain other ship sailed out of London without no port authorities botherin’ her. His Grace chose the
Caroline
because you was the only shipmaster at the ball that night. When that certain other ship sailed out safe, His Grace dropped the charges, sayin’ that the jade found on the
Caroline
was
not
his.”

McNeil had ruminated long on the information. What in hell?

“What ship was His Grace protecting? And why? Smuggling?”

Jenkins had shrugged.

“No tellin’, sir. Maybe smuggling. Or not. There was a dozen ships in and out at that time—the
Cluny,
the
Aberdeen,
the
Bountiful Lady,
a Dutch ship called the
Schilaack . . . ”
Jenkins had gone on naming them. Then he’d tossed in a tidbit of gossip: not six weeks after the death of his wife, His Grace had wed his late wife’s sister, Valentina, and made her his new duchess.

As the days went on, Jenkins’s theory of why Tewksbury dropped charges had satisfied Garth less and less. It was too simple. He had chewed at the mystery. Gradually, his puzzlement had chilled to new apprehension. Suppose, as sweet Flavia had lain in her death agony, dying of smallpox, she’d let slip the truth about her son. Supposing the duke
knew
he’d been cuckolded and was merely biding his time to strike against the boy?

McNeil had gone numb with fear. The child was helpless, a potential pawn in a vicious and deadly game.