Columbine (12 page)

He had rescued her from rape and from fire, yet she had kept her heart safe from him. He had called her names, assumed the worst about her past, while she had learned things about his that had shocked her and she had tried not to care. He had kissed her and caressed her, and she had held her emotions at bay.

But now, with only a shared smile over a silly, showy prank, he could claim her heart, and she knew she had lost it forever.

“How did ye know that ye could rid us o’that old Constance Lindsey so easy?” asked Mercy the next morning as she and Diasma walked to Plumstead.

“I tried an’ tried t’make her leave Kit be, an’ she only called me names an’ wouldn’t go.”

Dianna tried to hide her surprise. This was the most the girl had ever said to her, and she was almost afraid to reply for fear that Mercy would withdraw again.

“I didn’t think she would be so angry as that, but I couldn’t bear to hear what she did to that lovely song.”

Mercy laughed gleefully.

“Ye shamed her fight, ye did, an’ before Kit, too, with him sayin’ how beautiful ye sing an’ how ugly she did it!”

“I don’t remember him saying it quite like that,” Dianna replied, but she was laughing, too.

“He be fight, though, ye do sing beautiful.” The girl looked shyly up at Dianna.

“I’ve never heard anything like it. Like angels, it was.”

“Thank you,” said Dianna softly, moved, and when this time she reached to take Mercy’s hand, the little girl did not pull it away.

“My father loved music, and he saw to it that I had the best teachers. We sang often together.”

Mercy’s wooden clogs kicked along through the dead leaves.

“He be dead, your father. Kit told me I should be kind to ye, on account of’ ye being’ an orphan, too, like me.”

That surprised Dianna, too.

“Sometimes I still cannot believe my father is dead. You must miss your parents very much, too.”

“Aye, I do.” Mercy sighed.

“But having Kit helps. He an’ Father were closer’n brothers. He’d keep me at Plumstead if it weren’t for Grandfer.”

She lowered her voice confidentially.

“Kit wept at Father’s funeral sermon. He didn’t think I saw him, but he did.”

“Kit is very fond of you, Mercy,” said Dianna carefully, wishing the girl’s new confidences involved something other than her father, whoever he was.

“But your grandfather loves you, too, even—” She stopped suddenly, and listened. They were on the low side of a small hill crowned by a rocky outcropping, and though the new leaves of the trees and scrub brush around them hid little, Dianna was certain she’d heard something from beyond the hill. She stood perfectly still, straining to hear the noise again.

Mercy continued shuffling through the leaves.

“Oh, Dianna, ‘tis only a rabbit or squirrel—” But Dianna caught her and pulled her back, her hand across her lips as she shook her head fiercely.

There was the sound again: footsteps, a pair of footsteps, just beyond their sight. She had no idea whether the stranger was friendly or not, and her imagination pictured a man like Robillard or one of the rough traders she’d seen with Asa and Jeremiah.

All she knew for sure was that she was a small, vulnerable woman, alone and unarmed, with a child.

Quickly she led Mercy to the rocky hilltop, cursing the noise that her own feet made. She pressed close to the flat, grey stones and, her heart pounding, inched up until she could just peek over the top. She gasped and froze, unable to move from fear.

The man below was watching her calmly. He was tall and lean, his prominent cheekbones peppered with smallpox scars, and his skin was a rich coppery brown. He wore a blanket wrapped over his shoulders like a cloak, a breech cloth, patched elks king leggings and little else beyond a collection of beaded necklaces. More beads were woven into his blue-black hair, and tied around his shoulders and waist were several lumpy packages and bundles. In his raised hand, ready to throw, was a tomahawk.

Dianna’s nails dug into the rock. Oh, dear God, it’s an Indian, a red savage …. Mercy crawled up the rock beside her and looked over the edge. Too late Dianna grabbed for her as the girl bounded over the rocks, slipping and hopping down the hill toward the Indian. Horrified, Dianna stumbled after her, dreading the awful moment when the tomahawk would strike the child.

But instead, a wide grin split the Indian’s face, and, lowering his tomahawk, he tucked it back into the sash at his waist.

“Torn Wing’s daughter, yes?”

he said amiably in English.

“You’ve grown, little one.”

Mercy was nearly dancing with excitement.

“Kit’s back, Attawan!”

“Mercy!” Dianna caught the child by her shoulders and pulled her protectively close. Although the man had put away his weapon, she was still frightened by his wild, haft-naked appearance, and she remembered every story she’d ever heard about what Indians did to hapless settlers.

“This is Attawan, Dianna,” explained Mercy.

“He’s a Pocumtuck, and he’s a friend of Kit’s.”

“It seems the whole colony is a friend of Kit’s.”” Dianna ducked her head quickly, unsure how one responded to an Indian. She began backing away, pulling Mercy with her, and rattled on nervously.

“In truth, he’s likely waiting for us now, Mercy, wondering where we are, mayhap even coming to look for us. Farewell, umm, Master Attawan.”

But Attawan only nodded solemnly as he tugged his blanket into place.

“He is a good friend to have, mistress,” he called after them.

“A very good friend.”

As the miller droned on with his list of grievances, Kit hoped his own expression showed the proper mixture of sternness and concern. He only heard every tenth word of the man’s endless litany, and even that took more concentration than he wanted to spare. It seemed that every moment since he’d returned, he’d been listening to some complaint or another, and he’d often wondered how Plumstead and his other concerns had managed to run at all in the months he’d been away. That things might have slipped while Jonathan had been in charge was understandable;

he had, after all, been recuperating, and he didn’t share Kit’s interests under the best of circumstances.

But what stunned Kit was that, since he’d returned, he himself rankled under the responsibilities.

He had no patience with his tenants or their problems, little interest in the profits of his mills and less in Wickhamton affairs.

It had taken him less than a week to discover why:

Dianna Grey. Somehow he’d become bewitched by the woman, and in a way that was beyond his experience.

He wished he could take Jonathan’s advice to just bed her and be done with it. But he couldn’t.

She was the servant of one of his tenants, and by extension, one of his own, as well, until her indenture ran out. She wasn’t some tavern wench he could leave behind with a handful of coins. And, of course, there still remained all the reasons he hadn’t taken her during their voyage.

But even those objections seemed to fade each time he saw her. She never played the coquette with him, and unlike every, other woman he knew, she seemed little enough impressed by his position. He could have bought and sold her blasted blue-blood father ten times over, and she herself now belonged to a rootless old trappe, yet she still found him beneath her notice. And the worst part of it was that he wanted her to notice him. He liked to be around her because she always surprised him. He smiled when he thought of how effortlessly she had been able to send Constance scurrying back to New London.

Lord, and her voice–he’d never heard a voice that breathtakingly beautiful before, and he wondered what it would take to make her sing again, and for him alone this time.

“Nay, Master Sparhawk, I don’t see the’ mirth in millstones worn almost flat,” said the miller, sounding a bit wounded.

“If ye can’t bring the stone dresser up from Saybrook, well then, I can’t answer for the’ spring wheat.”

“You’ll have your stone dresser, Morgan, and within the fortnight,” said Kit quickly. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have the gossips whispering how he’d lost his wits in London.

“You were right to bring it to my attention, and I know you’ll be ready when that spring wheat comes in.”

Kit left the man preening happily, and soon was on Thunder’s back and heading toward Plumstead. It was still early afternoon. Today he would be sure to reach home before Dianna and Mercy left.

“I’m not certain we should be here, Mercy,” said Dianna uneasily as the girl led her into Plumstead’s parlor chamber. The room was seldom used, the door kept shut, and like most of the house, Dianna had never seen it. The lavishness of the furnishings surprised her: although the furniture was in the old style of King Charles, dark walnut and oak with heavy turnings and carving and cane seats on the chairs, it had all obviously come from first-rate cabinetmakers in London. The window hangings were dark green velvet, as were the chair cushions, and a bright-patterned Turkey carpet lay across the polished pine floorboards. A tall chest, lacquered in red and black chinoiserie, dominated one wall, and along the mantelpiece sat a row of polished silver chargers. But it was to a small table near one of the diamond-paned windows that Mercy drew Dianna to as she pointed to a long, flat box elaborately inlaid with wood and pearl veneers.

“Jonathan said this be for music-making,” she told Dianna, resting one hand reverently on the top.

“Mayhap ye know how t’make it sing.”

Dianna pulled the tasseled stool from beneath the table, sat and carefully opened the hinged top of the box.

“It’s a virginal, Mercy,” she explained as the girl crowded over her ann to peer at the black and white keys. Carefully Dianna fingered a chord, and Mercy gasped at the ringing sounds of the plucked strings. The instrument was sadly out of tune, but after months of no music at all, the little instrument brought an unexpected joy to Dianna. With growing confidence, her fingers danced lightly over the keyboard, and she began to sing softly as she accompanied herself. This time she sang not to outdo another but to please only herself, and the song she chose was “Greensleeves,” the old ballad somehow suiting the melancholy sound of the virginal. Spellbound, Mercy settled on the floor beside her, her knees tucked up and her mouth open with rapt admiration.

Both were’s lost in the music’s magic that neither heard Kit’s boots in the hall, nor did they notice him standing in the doorway to listen, too.

The music brought back a hundred images fresh to Kit, memories of his childhood, of his brother and sisters tumbled around on the floor before the fire while theft mother played and the winter wind howled outside. He saw again the look on his father’s face as he turned the pages of his mother’s music and the way he would kiss her on the forehead when she was done.

“No one has touched that since my lady mother’s death,” he said when Dianna was finished. Still haft-lost in his own memories, his voice was oddly uneven with emotion.

Startled, Dianna hurriedly shut the instrument and shoved back the stool to rise.

“Forgive me, I did not know.” ‘

“Nay, do not stop, I pray! It’s not for sentiment that the thing’s been stilled, but for the lack of a player.” He smiled, a sad smile that struck deep into Dianna’s grief for her own lost parents.

“My sisters had neither the gift nor the patience, and so it has sat idle. Waiting, I dare to say, for you.”

Dianna’s cheeks brightened at the unexpected compliment. She was a servant, he was a wealthy man, and it was not right for him to say pretty nonsense to her. But to see him there, smiling like that, she could forgive him anything, and once again she felt the power of his undeniable attraction to her. He was dressed simply, a coarse worsted vest unbuttoned over a linen shirt, open at the throat and the sleeves rolled up, and she caught herself staring, fascinated, at the curling dark hairs on his bare forearms and chest. He came closer, mindless of the dust his boots left on the carpet, and Dianna sank back onto the stool, not to play again, but from fear her legs would not hold her.

“You won’t play more?” he asked with a surprising wistfulness, and Dianna shook her head, doubting now that she could fumble through the simplest piece.

“Then you force me to talk, Lady Dianna, to fill the space between us.” He leaned against one of the arm chairs, his long legs crossed before him, and wondered why, for the first time, he had called her by her title without sarcasm.

“At least Constance would wish me to speak to you.”

Guilt made Dianna’s words rush over one another.

“Oh, Kit, I don’t know what the devil made me act so! She meant to please you, that was all, and I had no right to shame her for that, especially if she is your betrothed.”

Kit snorted, and Dianna then noticed the teasing spark in his green eyes, the same one that had been there when she’d bettered Constance.

“She has no more claim to that title than the spotted sow in the sty, and, now that I consider it, her singing belongs in the barnyard, as well.”

“Aye, Dianna made the’ ninny turn tail an’ run, didn’t she, Kit?” piped up Mercy, and the way that Kit cocked one eyebrow told Dianna that he, like she herself, had entirely forgotten the little girl’s presence.

She waited, expecting him to decide whether Mercy would remain as an unwitting chaperone or be sent from the room. But that eyebrow cocked a fraction higher, and she realized he was leaving the decision to her instead. That eyebrow, and all it implied, irritated Dianna. A man’s comely face was no reason for letting herself be intimidated. She could quite easily stay in the room alone with him, and, her composure returning, she would prove it to him, too.

“Mercy, please go to Hester. Kit and I must talk alone for a few moments, and then you and I shall go home for dinner.” The girl began to protest, but one stern look from Kit was enough to send her reluctantly away.

With a swiftness that startled Dianna, Kit shifted from the armchair to her own bench. Serf-consciously she tugged her skirts away from him and he chuckled. The bench was small enough that she could not escape his thigh pressing against hers, but she refused to amuse him more by moving again.