Columbine (21 page)

“Don’t go a-tryin’ her patience, Robillard,” warned Hester.

“Her temper’s short as the’ rest o’her.”

“Fah, and what of my patience, eh?” With a flourish Robillard released Hester and shoved her away.

Rubbing her wrists, Hester quickly ran to safety behind Dianna, and Robillard snorted with disgust.

“You do not care that I bring to you a message for your master?”

“Master Sparhawk’s not here,” said Dianna sharply.

“And did I not know at already, ma petite?” he said, sneering.

“My message is both for him and from him.”

Hastily Dianna lowered the gun.

“A message from him? she asked eagerly.

“You have seen him then, and he is well?”

Slowly Robillard smiled. So she was the woman, after all. She was not as beautiful as he’d expected, but beneath the coarse clothing, she was pleasingly rounded, and her lips were full enough to welcome a man’s kisses. And she was at least part French: that alone would make her more desirable than the other English spinsters he’d seen. In fact, the more he studied her, the more he understood why Sparhawk had refused the squaw. Mon Dieu, why shouldn’t he, with such a little delight waiting at home?

His smile widened to a leer, and he ran his tongue along his lower lip.

“When Sparhawk was at my house, he was well enough. But that was long ago, maybe a fortnight. I thought he would be home by now, eh?”

He watched the fear flutter across Dianna’s face and his last doubt about her disappeared. How he wished he could see Sparhawk’s face when he learned the Indians had taken his mistress!

“When he comes, tell him I have found the warriors who hold the English women, and they will be returned as soon as he pays the ransom.”

He stepped forward, meaning to take the gun from her, but Dianna snapped it back to her shoulder, flushing at her own carelessness. Where were her wits to let this man toy with her? Likely everything he said was lies anyway.

“Why should he pay any ransom to you?”

Robillard’s smile twisted to a sneer.

“You give him my message, ma chbre, and that will be enough.

He doesn’t need a woman to make his decisions for him, eh?”

“If you’ve nothing more to say, then get out now,” said Dianna irritably.

“Though I’ve almost decided to shoot you now and save Kit the trouble.”

“I’m going, mademoiselle, I’m going.” Slowly Robillard retrieved his hat from the floor where it had fallen and inched his way toward the door.

“You be a good girl and give my message to Sparhawk. If he wishes to see the women alive, he pays me the ransom.”

Dianna followed his movements with the gun as he left the house and climbed onto the horse he’d tied near the well out front, not lowering the weapon until he had ridden from sight. Only then did she realize how tense she’d been and how her arms ached from holding the heavy musket. Sighing, she let her shoulders sag and rubbed her wrists.

“I don’t believe he knows anything at all about the Barnards, do you, Hester?” she asked wearily.

For a long moment Hester didn’t answer, standing in thoughtful silence beside Dianna with her arms crossed over her chest as she stared after Robillard.

“You an’ Kit,” she said at last, and clicked her tongue.

“Why didn’t I see it coming?”

An, where dye be headin’ this day, eh, Annie?”

Asa asked Dianna as she and Mercy swept out two large baskets they’d found in the barn.

“Ye know I don’t want ye two rangin’ far.”

“No farther than the apple orchard at Plumstead,” said Dianna, frowning at Mercy behind Asa’s back.

If the girl didn’t stop her nervous giggling, Asa was sure to suspect something unusual was planned, and harmless as Dianna judged a picnic to be, she wasn’t sure Asa wouldn’t forbid them to go.

“We’re going to gather the early windfalls so I can make my pies for tomorrow.”

“Pies for tomorrow? What pies be those?”

“For the supper after training day,” explained Dianna for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“You promised you’d take us.”

Asa sighed.

“Aye, I warrant I did. Though training day’s likely far more serious this year than you might be expectin’. If the’ tads have any conscience, they’ll spend more time lea ming their drills an’ less chasin’ maids. I warrant that Captain Tyler will see they’re worked proper, better’n when Colonel Sparhawk be here. He be too gentle by half wit’ the’ men, that one.

Too eager t’get to the’ women an’ spirits his self

Asa lit his pipe, puffing as the spark took, and looked closely at Dianna.

“There not be some lad ye favor in the village, eh? Mind ye be bound time for seven years, an’ I’ll not have ye spoken for ‘ill your time be done. Ten guineas be too dear a sum t’toss away for naught.”

“Nay, there’s no one in Wickhamton,” said Dianna with carefully chosen words. How could any other man compete with Kit?

“I wish to go for Mercy’s sake. She sees too little of children her own age.”

“Aye, there be no arm t’that,” Asa agreed, reaching for his hat.

“I’ve business o’my own in Wickhamton this day, but I’ll take ye back on the morn, as ye asked. Are ye certain ye will be safe enough without me here today?”

“Oh, Grandfer, you go on your business, an’ Dianna an’ I will go on ours,” said Mercy airily. Asa harmmphed, but kissed the girl indulgently before leaving.

Dianna finished packing a third basket with food and cider for theft supper. She liked planning little surprises and outings like this one for MercY, just as her own father had done for her long ago. Lord knows it seemed to Dianna that Mercy had done precious few things for the pleasure of them alone. Even now the girl was dancing with excitement by the door, the little cat, Lily, jostling in her arms.

Dianna slung the basket with the food over one arm, handed the empty ones to Mercy and then pulled her musket out from its hiding place behind the cupboard. She often wondered which would upset

Asa more: that she had the gun at all, or that it had come from the Sparhawks’ collection. But after this summer, nothing Asa could say would dissuade her from keeping it now, and she never left the house without it.

There was a crispness to the day that hinted at autumn, and already the topmost leaves of the maples and oaks were beginning to change color. The apple trees were heavy with fruit, the branches bowed beneath the weight, and the fragrance of apples was sweet in the ak. While Lily chased and pounced on every whirling leaf and imaginary mouse, Dianna and Mercy soon filled their baskets. They would come back again next week to help the field men and women harvest the bulk of the crop, and in return, Dianna would receive a share of the apples to press for cider or dry for winter cooking.

“May we eat now, Dianna?” begged Mercy.

“I

think this be the perfect spot, and Lily is near to starving.”

Dianna glanced down doubtfully at the little cat, already grown plump from all the milk and scraps Mercy managed to send her pet’s way. ““Tis early, but if Lily deems it time to dine, then I shall not be the one to deny her.”

“So this be truly what lords an’ ladies do in London?”

asked Mercy excitedly as Dianna spread a homespun cloth on the grass and began to unpack the food.

“They’d rather take their meals under a tree than in a fine dining hall?”

“Even the finest dining hall can grow tiresome replied Dianna with mock seriousness.

“Of course, we should have let the footmen bring the hampers, and have the dishes arranged before we arrived. The musicians would be waiting, too, to play for us while we ate, and then, after perhaps only a half-dozen dishes—for we are being quite informal—we might sing ourselves and dance on the grass with our beaux.”

The more she had told Mercy about her past, the less real it had become, the people and places she’d grown up knowing reduced to a kind of fairy tale.

And what was most curious, when she thought about it, was that she was far more content in her tiny shingled house, making do for herself, than she ever would have been in a grand home in London with a score of servants. If only Kit would come back, she thought longingly, then quickly amended her thoughts. When Kit co meg back… “What kind of’ shoes do ladies wear for dancing?”

prompted Mercy eagerly.

“Slippers made of calf-skin so fine that one night of dancing will wear them to pieces,” said Dianna grandly.

“All over embroidered with silk-thread flowers and tiny silver stars, and perhaps they’ll fasten with buckles set with paste brilliants that sparkle like diamonds when you kick your feet high in the air?

As she listened, Mercy’s eyes sparkled like the paste brilliants, and Dianna thought with pleasure of how much the girl had changed these past months.

Then suddenly Mercy’s face twisted into a stern grimace.

“Grandfer says dancing’s wicked,” she said, sounding uncannily like Asa.

“He says it be wicked sport, born of’ idleness.”

Dianna hesitated. She did not like to scoff at what Mercy had been taught by Asa, but faith, what harm could possibly come of music and dancing?

“When the day’s tasks are done,” she said cautiously, “then I don’t see the wickedness in dancing.”

Mercy pressed her cheek against Lily’s fur and glanced impishly up at Dianna.

“Then if you teach me how, ‘twill just be another secret best kept from Grandfer.”

Dianna gasped, then laughed. With both hands she caught the girl by the waist and twirled her around and around, their skirts and aprons flying in a giddy circle around their bare legs.

“Oh, Mercy, you shouldn’t say such things!

“Tis disrespectful and—” It was the flicker of movement that caught Dianna’s eye, the tall figure easing among the shadows in the trees. Swiftly she shoved Mercy behind her and grabbed for the musket beside the basket.

She shook her head to clear it as she raised the gun, cursing the silly spinning game that had left her dizzy, the trees before her eyes still careening wildly.

Blast, she knew the man had to be there somewhere!

“I’m not afraid of you!” she called out defiantly, her heart pounding.

Dianna felt Mercy’s fingers tightening in her skirts behind her, and she hoped the girl could not sense her own very real fear. The musket held but a single bullet. She had only seen the one man and prayed he was alone. She would have just one shot to kill him if she had to.

“Come out and show yourself or I’ll shoot, see if I don’t!” she called again, and this time she heard the desperation in her voice. :

At last the trees had stopped spinning. She could make out a fringed hunting shirt, the glint of a rifle barrel as the man moved. He was very tall, broad shouldered, and he was walking toward them, daring her, it seemed, to shoot. She swallowed hard and cocked the dog-latch.

“Isn’t this a fine welcome home!” exclaimed Kit as he stepped into the sunlight.

“I didn’t dream I’d find the women-folk here as mad with blood-lust as any Abenaki brave!”

Simultaneously Dianna and Mercy cried his name, but it was Dianna who reached him first, flinging her arms around him as if she’d never let go.

“Oh, Kit, praise God you’re back! I feared so that you were gone, lost—” “And so you hoped to finish the task when I returned?”

he teased. So many elegant speeches he’d rehearsed for this moment, and here he was, instead, taunting her as though she were one of his sisters.

But it still seemed impossibly right to have her in his arms again. At once he forgot how fired he was, forgot the desolation he’d seen and the sorrow he’d heard and how many miles he’d travelled to be here with her again.

Dianna drew back indignantly.

“I might have killed you!”

“Not the way you were weaving, likely to trip over your own feet. I’d swear you’d brought hard cider in that jug, my lady, and had your share of it, too.”

“Nay, Kit, it’s not like that,” said Mercy seriously.

Serf-consciously Dianna and Kit separated, though Kit kept hold of her hand. He had to reassure himself that this was real and not another dream.

“Dianna and I are having a—” She stumbled over the foreign words “—having a ‘fate sham-pader/” “A what?” asked Kit.

“A fte champtre,” answered Dianna, delighting in the incredulous look on Kit’s face. Despite the dark beard that hid half his face, she thought he had grown even more handsome, his hair streaked with pale gold and his skin tanned as dark as Attawan’s.

She guessed that, wherever he had gone, he must have met with success to be looking so happy.

“A

country feast, a picnic. Not everything French is evil, you know.”

“Aye, Kit, it be something that all the lords and ladies do in Paris,” explained Mercy, pleased to prove her new knowledge to Kit.

“They eat outside instead of’ in.”

“Then you mean to say Attawan and I have spent the last six weeks having these ftes, and we didn’t even know it?” He twined his fingers around Dianna’s marveling both at the delicacy of her hand and at the new calluses that marked her palm.

Mercy frowned and folded her arms across her narrow chest.

“Nay, Kit, you’re jesting now. Afte needs dancing an’ music an’ gentlemen t’be our beaux.” She sighed dramatically.

“But since you’re here now, I warrant you must be our beau, else you’ll have naught of our food.”

“I warrant I must, since it’s your food I’m after.”

Kit’s eyes met Dianna’s over the girl’s head. He grinned, and Dianna felt herself melt.

“Among other things. And besides,” he said to Dianna, “by my reckoning, you owe me for a certain stewed chicken.

Most savory it was, as I recall, before you seized it from my own table and carried it off.”

““Twas not for myself, as well you know,” she answered staunchly, but unable to keep the smile from her lips.

“I took it for others who were a great deal more hungry than you were.”

“A claim you’d be hard pressed to make this day.” He sat cross-legged on the grass and began exploring the contents of the supper basket. Gingerly he lifted out the meat pie, sniffing the fluted crust with such a look of intense expectation that Dianna laughed out loud. In the short time since she’d known Kit, there had been precious little time for laughter, and it was good to feel the tension and worry slip away.