The Maidenhead (10 page)

Mad Dog braced his forearms on his widespread knees. "I also value my solitude."

Clarissa leaned forward, addressing Modesty. “Master Bannock, Rose’s husband, has agreed to be our other burgess.”

“Rose lives in Henrico?”

“Nearby, at Falling Brook. Master Bannock has constructed his sawmill close to the new ironworks."

Modesty raised winged brows. “Bannock's— uh—eloquence is rather limited, is it not?”

"True, the man stutters,” Patrick answered, "but he is sincere and conscientious. With thy training and eloquence, thou would make an excellent representative for us," he said, directing his words to Modesty’s husband. He rose and picked up his hat. "I would like to take back thy acceptance to Henrico with me."

Clarissa stood and walked to the door. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, she felt compelled to back Patrick in his bid for Mad Dog as a Henrico burgess. Then, too, she truly enjoyed Modesty’s company. “We could visit with Polly and Annie and the others in Jamestown during Assembly time, Modesty."

Modesty rose from the stool. “Jamestown could go up in its own smoke for all I—” That big smile of hers appeared suddenly, and she accepted with a surprising alacrity. “Well, of course, I wouldn’t mind seeing Polly and Annie again."

“What dost thou sayeth, Master Jones?" Patrick smiled, and Clarissa thought that mayhap her husband was not so dour after all. "As a burgess, thou could pursue thy own matters of expediency."

Mad Dog stood. “I’ll think upon—"

The door swung open, and a man of medium height entered. Dressed in the thigh-length tunic and knee breeches of a field hand, he had curling wheat-blond locks that fell about his ears and vivid blue eyes. They quickly assessed Clarissa, then his mouth curled in an almost comical smile. "Milady." He doffed his flat cap. When he straightened, his eyes were openly daring.

Clarissa nodded, feeling herself blush. So this was Mad Dog Jones’s new bondservant.

“Holloway?" Mad Dog asked, his harsh gaze leveled on his bondservant.

The man called Holloway relinquished his visual hold of Clarissa and turned to his master. "I came in search of bandaging." He held out his left palm. The fingers were sliced across the middle joints and bleeding. “ Twould seem that I am none too proficient with the scythe yet."

“I’ll take care of it," Modesty said, coming forward.

He started toward Modesty but brushed too close to Clarissa, causing her to drop her gloves. “Here, let me,” she said, thinking of his injured hand, and stooped to collect her gloves at the same time as he did. They bumped again, each laughing.

It was the first time she could remember laughing in months, maybe years. Behind that peasant facade she wanted to believe there existed something fine, noble, and dignified.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Having finished the midday meal, Jack took part of his hour’s respite on his bed of hay in the barn’s loft and admired the ruby brooch he had pilfered. His dexterity, he reflected with wry amusement, might be said to be inborn. His mother had been a prostitute who had taught him to rob guests with whom she had just lain.

He had tried to give up thieving. Run off to sea, he had. But even as a deckhand, he tended to fancy valuables other than his own. A delight in the captain's gold sword hilt inlaid with rubies had resulted in a forced flight through the back streets of Santo Domingo.

"Jack Holloway!"

He looked over at the ladder just in time to see Modesty emerge from the loft’s trapdoor and charge toward him. "Scurvy thief! Unscrupulous scoundrel! Shifty cur! I could wrap a horseshoe around yewr neck!”

He got up his arms just in time to ward off a blow from her fist. “Whoa there! Modesty. My love. Wait. Give me a ch—”

A left punch walloped his cheekbone, and his head snapped to one side. “I saw yew cop the brooch.”

“My hand, you’re hurting—”

"Afore I’m finished with yew," she panted, "that hand is going to be the only thing that feels good on yewr miserable body, Jack Holloway.” Blindly, he grabbed at her flailing fists. He latched onto one and jerked her down beside him. Her knee shot up, and he dodged so that it just barely missed its target. It took several seconds of tussling before he could pin her beneath him. "Since when did you qualify for sainthood?”

Those marvelously mismatched eyes glared up at him. He could almost hear her teeth grinding. "Is yewr noggin filled with pea soup? Wot do yew think will happen when Clarissa finds her brooch is missing? A hue and cry will be sent up—and, wot with the felony charge, I'll be the likely suspect!"

"Now, now, Modesty." He flashed her one of his appealing smiles. “For all Clarissa will know, the brooch could have fallen off during the trip here or back.”

"Lady Clarissa to yew." Her eyes narrowed. “Or have yew already copped a familiar feel from her?”

“She’s too hoity-toity to bugger, for my taste."

“Jack Holloway, yewr taste in women is most catholic. Any of them and all of them.”

He had to chuckle. "That is one of the things I find fascinating about you. You are not only clever, but not likely to be shocked even by the most outrageous sallies."

He was slightly surprised to realize that he really meant what he was saying. Modesty was not a regular beauty, not even really pretty. Her looks caught a man off guard because they depended on wit and expression rather than on bone structure. A painter could never truly capture her sparkle and vitality that came from her confidence and determination.

With a celerity of movement, she rolled from beneath him and sat up. “Yew be a bloody fool.” She began plucking bits of straw from her calico gown. "Yew laugh when others fret. Yew remain at ease when most men shout out their rage. Yew’ll swing from the gallows sure as a leper has lesions."

“I intend to sell me life dearly.”

“Count yewrself lucky Mad Dog bought your indenture papers. Most planters want to get all the work they can from their bondservants, since they can keep them but a few years."

"Lucky? With luck I can put away enough booty, such as this brooch here, to get me passage to Hispaniola and rig up my own brig and buccaneers.”

"So the sea calls yew back once more. Yew’ll never settle down, will yew, Jack?”

"Never. And neither will you." With his poor bandaged hand, he took her hand and held it against his heart.

Her mouth crimped. “Cut the drama, Jack. But 'tis true, I have no plans to settle down, either. Not here, at least. Not alone with a man so skilled with the knife as Mad Dog.”

He abandoned his effort. "Freebooting, Modesty, living off only your next heartbeat and a song in your soul, that is what gives a dull life flavor."

"An interesting philosophy,” drawled a male voice.

Both he and Modesty jumped. At the sight of Mad Dog, his crossed arms propped atop the ladder’s top rung, Modesty jerked her hand from Jack's grasp. "I—I came up to—to rebandage Jack’s hand." She drew a roll of linen strips from her skirt’s placket hole.

How much had Mad Dog overheard? Jack wondered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Modesty dipped her homemade brush into the tin cup of turpentine, then dabbed the bristles into the dollop of blue-green paint on the rotten piece of hickory plank. She had to make short, rapid strokes just below the crock’s stoneware rim, because her self-made paint tended to dry too quickly.

Then, too, her strokes were hurried because there was yet the lard to be rendered and soap to be made from it. Fortunately, old Juana had appeared yesterday like some leprechaun to shuck the com, and just as mysteriously vanished. Like the river, she carried gossip gleaned from her roamings up and down the valley.

This was the best time of day for Modesty to desert drudgery and escape into enchantment for an hour. Mad Dog and Jack had eaten their midday meal after Clarissa and her husband had departed, so she did not have to worry about the two men returning until late from the fields they were clearing of stumps.

If Jack returned at all. Her vivid imagination could just envision his handsome body, now tanned by the hot summer sun and muscle-honed by the strenuous labor, hewn into quarters by Mad Dog's axe. After finding her today with Jack in the barn loft. Mad Dog could have easily gone on another killing spree. However, he had merely informed Jack that work was waiting.

But that fulminating glance . . . She could well imagine what fate awaited her when Mad Dog returned this evening.

No, she didn’t want to. She knew all too well that her husband hadn’t come by his name because his mother had experienced a flight of fancy at his birth.

She attributed her bizarre fascination with him to his rich, melodious voice. At night, it made it all too easy for her to forget the wild man she lay with. It caressed her, beguiled her, excited her. And then his body took over, and she was lost. At least, her body was. Her mind— well, she was still in possession of it.

And it was busy formulating plans for leaving this pisshole of a country come General Assembly time next July. Reverend Dartmouth’s suggestion had provided the means for her to get to Jamestown. Now, she just had to find a way to buy passage back to England.

By the time she set foot on English soil, more than a year would have passed. If she were careful, used an alias, she could avoid apprehension. Alas, her circumstances would not be as lucrative as when Jack had been her employer. Still, with her skill with the brush and pen, she could find a way to make ends meet.

She brushed another stroke onto the butter chum. A shadow fell across her improvised pallet. Her scalp prickled. Indians occasionally appeared without warning, padding across the open field like gray wolves in single file. Sometimes they even strolled into the cabin, uninvited. They would dip a finger into Mad Dog’s inkwell, give the grinding mill an experimental turn, or peer into the wavy looking glass.

Once, Arahathee had entered the cabin without warning. Like today, she had been furtively painting and had jumped more from guilt than surprise. She knew Mad Dog considered the Monacans valuable allies. As a peace offering, she had quickly sketched a rough character of the half-naked top-knotted warrior. He had seemed genuinely pleased.

As she glanced over her shoulder now, she almost wished that this latest visitor were an Indian. Musket in hand, Mad Dog had entered the room as silently as the deer from whose skin his moccasins were made. His eyes were as chilly and gray as the Thames in winter.

He stood so close, she could smell his woodsy scent. He reached toward her, and she shrank from his powerful hand, but he merely plucked a piece of straw stuck in her coif.

She stared at the straw, then up at his unyielding expression. “’Twas not wot yew think."

"How do you know what I think?"

She swallowed. "Jack and me, we go back a long time."

"Partners in crime?" He crossed to the hearth to take up the scourer for cleaning his musket barrel and screwed it into its ramrod. “As long as both of you understand your prior partnership is not to continue. In any form. Have I made myself clear?"

The way he rammed the rod in and out of his musket barrel made her nervous. He never took his eyes off her. How could anyone withstand that unwavering glare? It snared people.

One time when she had been picking huckleberries, she had espied him through the trees. He was standing still as a rock. Curious, she had crept closer through the underbrush. Motionless, he had let squirrels mistake him for a stump and play about his feet. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he had snared one of them for dinner that evening. He was a man of frighteningly infinite patience.

"Aye," she said at last, grudgingly. "Yew have made yewrself clear.”

He settled a heavily muscled thigh on the board table’s edge and laid his musket and ramrod on the bench. He tapped a knuckle against the empty crock, making a hollow thudding sound. "You were preparing to make butter?"

"Yew’re bearbaiting me." She jammed her brush into the mug she used to hold her other brushes and palette knife. “Go ahead. Strap me to the dunking stool for neglecting me duties. Or better, mayhap, slit me throat."

He picked up one of her brushes and ran a testing finger through its bristly tip. "You made these?"

"Aye. From bristles from our hogs.”

He put the brush down. "And the paint?”

"I crushed the green clay along the riverbank and mixed it with the oil from our ground flax seeds."

"Innovative, are you not?” He picked up the butter crock to examine her work. "You have a steady hand. But what in God’s name is this design?

"A fairy ring.” She compressed her lips, awaiting the next sharp sting of his words.

Instead, his voice seemed filled with sincere interest. “Tell me about it.”

She eyed him warily. Surely he was baiting her again. “About wot?”

He looked as if he had lost his patience. "About the fairy ring. Why the faces, wench?"

"Modesty.” This time, she was the one without patience. "A fairy ring is a circle found in fields where fairies have been dancing. I happen to like to paint their faces into the ring." Elves, gnomes, brownies, pixies, nymphs, leprechauns and banshees, trolls, even Beelzebub himself. Hadn’t she married him incarnate?