Columbine (4 page)

“Lord, Abraham, you make me out to be a threat to all womankind!”

Welles studied him narrowly, working the pipe-stem in his teeth.

“You know what I mean. You’re too handsome for your own good, you and Jonathan both. The pair of you have the mamas lined up from Falmouth to New Haven, hoping to get a good shot at landing one or the other!”

“It’s not the mothers I fancy, Abraham.”

“Young or old, you leave them all a-sighing and swooning.” Welles shook his head.

“Now I’ve heard Sam Lindsey’s youngest girl has set her cap for you.” ‘ “Constance? Oh, aye, I suppose she has, like her sisters before her.” Kit tried to remember the girl:

yellow hair, or maybe it was red. He’d done no more than dance with her twice at a party last summer, and now the gossip already had them linked.

“A pretty enough little poppet. I’m bringing her the ri bands she begged from London, but if it’s a husband she’s after, she’d best look elsewhere.”

“Pray her father thinks the same.”

“Save your warnings, Abraham. I’m always careful with the maids, no matter how they tempt me.

I’ll be thirty-three years a bachelor come next spring,

and I know well how to keep my neck from that particular noose.”

“Truth is, Kit, you’re married already, to Piton-stead and the mills and trading posts and warehouses and whatever else you’ve built. That’s well and good, I warrant, excepting I don’t know how a sawmill’s going to keep you warm on a january night the way a wife can.”

Kit shrugged.

“The farm and the rest give me back double what I give to them, which can’t be said of most wives. Hester keeps my house and sets the best table in the colony, and the nieces and nephews my sisters seem so fond of producing are children enough for me.” He couldn’t resist grinning wickedly at the older man.

“As for warming my bed, the world’s full of loving, lonely widows.”

Welles snorted.

“You’re bad as your father was before your mother caught him, sneaking around kitchen doors like some old rogue tomcat!”

But Kit only half heard him. Now that England had slipped below the horizon, the little group of passengers was beginning to abandon the post by the rail, and the men and women were carefully feeling their way across the rolling deck to the companionway.

Finally only one woman remained. Although her face was hidden by the hood of her black cloak, Kit knew at once she was different from the others.

She alone looked westward, her gaze intent not on what she was leaving, but on what lay ahead. Her small figure stood braced against the wind as her cloak and skirts swirled about her legs, and there was something oddly touching about how bravely she turned to meet the unknown. One of the daughters, he guessed. No matter what Abraham had promised, she might be worth seeking out. He liked spirited women, and this one, Kit felt sure from her posture alone, would have spirit to spare.

She turned her face upward, to the sky, and the wind caught her hood and whipped it back. Now Kit could see her clearly, her cheeks rosy from the wind and her lips slightly parted, and the way her dark hair, shining with copper streaks in the bright sunlight, swirled around her shoulders. He stared at her there at the rail and swore, violently, under his breath. So this was the reason why Abraham had been so anxious to keep him away from the immigrants.

Immigrants, hell. The woman was a convict.

Dianna remained at the rail long after the others had left. She had spent the first three days of the voyage either retching into a bucket or curled miserably on an ancient, wool-stuffed mattress. But this morning, she had finally begun to become accustomed to the ship’s motion, and the wind and spindrift on her face made her feel almost like herself again. She had never been on the open sea before, and she found the wildness of the ocean and sky exhilarating and limitless. For the first time in her life she felt truly free—free of the past and the present, and free of the responsibilities of being Lady Dianna Grey. Lost in her thoughts, she was oblivious to the curious interest of the seamen working around her, and oblivious, too, to the heated words between the captain and the Prosperity’s owner near the wheel. Not until her fingers and nose were numb from the cold did Dianna reluctantly turn away from the ocean and head back down the companionway.

The space she shared with the other passengers was nothing more than the orlop deck usually reserved for cargo. By hanging quilts and lashing their trunks to the bulkheads, the women had managed to divide the area for the three families travelling together.

“Ah, there now, I told ye the’ wind would bring the color back to your cheeks!” declared Mary Penhallow as Dianna slowly made her way through the clutter toward the older woman. From the first day, Mary had adopted Dianna into her own large family.

She had been the one who held Dianna when she’d been seasick, and dosed her with peppermint oil to ease the quaking in her stomach. Plump and pink-cheeked and always slightly out of breath, Mary reminded Dianna of the nurse she’d had as a baby, and she couldn’t help but warm to her.

But although Dianna’s mattress was now a part of the Penhallows’ circle, she still felt shy around them.

She had no experience with the boisterous give and take of a large family, and she could not quite sort out the six younger children. But the eldest daughter offered no such problems. Eunice Penhallow had latched on to her with the instant devotion of a shy, dreamy fourteen-year-old, who found Dianna just old enough to be fascinating, but not so old as to be lumped among her mother’s friends.

Even now the girl rushed forward eagerly to greet Dianna.

“I’d have stayed with ye, Dianna, but Mam said it weren’t proper to be so long before the’ sailORS.”

“Nay, child, ye put the’ words crossways,” scolded her mother.

“I said ‘twasn’t proper for ye to be ogling the’ sailor-men, not tother way ‘round. Come sit by me, ye silly goose, and leave Dianna to settle herself.”

Eunice tossed her head smugly.

“Nay, Mare, ‘tweren’t no common sailor caught my eye, but Master Sparhawk, what owns this very ship. Isaac says that where we’re bound he owns farms an’ a great manor house an’ acres an’ acres of’ land that jus’ sits fallow, he’s so much of it!”

Dianna whipped around.

“What is the man’s name?”

“Christopher Sparhawk.” EuniCe’s eyes grew dreamy.

“An’ a more comely gentleman never lived!

His smile alone would fetch you, Dianna, an’ the’ span of’ his shoulders, oh, lud!”

“Christopher Sparhawk!” Dianna wailed.

“By all that is holy, how could I land on the same wretched ship with that—that rogue!”

“Ye know the gentleman then, miss?” asked Mary curiously.

“There could be more than one man by the’ name.”

“A great, blond, green-eyed ox who begs you to trust him even as he lies? The worst kind of colonial oaf, so long among the savages that he can hardly speak the Queen’s English?”

“Aye, Master Sparhawk is a large gentleman, and very fair,” answered Mary cautiously.

“But for lying and the’ rest, I cannot say. Captain Welles spoke most winningly of Master Sparhawk as a Christian gentleman?”

“What else could he say when he owes the man his livelihood? A scoundrel of the first order, that’s your fine Master Sparhawk!” Just’ in time, Dianna stopped, in her frustration nearly forgetting that the Penhallows knew nothing of her trial. Angrily she pounded her fists across her knee. Once again she’d been the foolish, trusting innocent. How Sir Henry and Christopher Sparhawk, and likely Captain Welles, too, must have laughed at her naivette!

The boy, Isaac, came clattering down the companionway.

“Dianna Grey yer wanted for’ard

Dianna stood, her hands on her hips.

“Oh, I am, am I? Dare I ask by whom?”

“Master Sparhawk himself, that’s whom,” said the boy scornfully, “an’ you’d best move yer tail, for he be in a righteous temper!”

Mary laid her hand gently on Dianna’s arm.

“Go with the’ lad, miss. Whatever the’ quarrel, yer pride’s not worth the sorrow ye could bring t’ us all if ye cross Master Sparhawk.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll go to lordly Master Sparhawk,” Dianna said as she gathered up her skirts to climb the narrow steps, “though when I’m done, he might well wish I hadn’t.”

Muttering crossly to herself, Dianna followed the boy aft to where the Prosperity’s few cabins were.

Without thinking she ran her palms across her hair to smooth it before she caught herself in the gesture and pulled her hands away. What did she care how she looked before a man like Christopher Sparhawk?

She tipped her head forward and with angry fingers tousled and raffled her hair and then tossed it back, Satisfied that now he wouldn’t think she’d primped for him.

They stopped before a narrow louvered door. Isaac knocked twice, shoved the door open for Dianna and then abandoned her at the doorway. Tentatively she peeked inside. The cabin was much smaller than she expected, low and cramped, and when Christopher Sparhawk rose from the single chair, he seemed to fill it.

Lord, how had she forgotten the man’s size, his height and the breadth of his shoulders? Yet it was more than that that made the tiny space seem smaller:

there was an air about him of strength and confidence that would have filled a ballroom. Although he was dressed like a gentleman, his skin was burnished dark as a common laborer’s, and his hands were worn like workman’s hands, the long, tapered fingers scarred and callused. Instead of a wig, he wore his own hair, dark near his jaw, but streaked to pale gold near the crown. Around his eyes and mouth the sun had etched fine, pale lines that would, she suspected, crinkle with amusement when he laughed.

But there was no laughter in his eyes now.

“So it is you,” he said coldly, with no further greeting.

“Come in, then, and close the door. I don’t want what’s said between us becoming gossip for the seamen’s supper.”

Dianna drew herself up sharply, refusing to be intimidated by his rudeness.

“Why do you wish to see me? So you can laugh or gloat at my change of fortune?

Was that part of the bargain you struck with my uncle? You are a merchant, I’m told, so perhaps such transactions are common to you.” She couldn’t resist letting her gaze sweep past him, around the cabin.

“A merchant, yes, but not a very successful one, if these axe the accommodations you can buy yourself.”

For a long moment Kit stared at her in silence.

She stood as straight and tall as such a diminutive creature could, her whole person radiating the same pride and defiance as she had during her trial. But she was much changed from the elegant lady in the defendant’s box. Her silk bombazine gown was crushed and salt-stained. Gone were the cuffs and collar of Alengn lace, and gone, too, were the dangling ear bobs of pearls and onyx, and the jeweled rings that had decorated half her fingers. The wind off the Channel had brought a rosy color to her cheeks, and her hair was wild and loose, tumbling down over her shoulders and breasts as though she’d just risen from her bed. It was easy now for Kit to recall her as she had been that first night, and the memory of how neatly she’d played him for a fool returned as well.

“Oh, your tongue’s tart enough now, isn’t it, when there’s nothing to be gained by honeyed words,” he said softly.

“The only transaction that’s brought you here is between you and your dear uncle.”

“Why should I believe you? I know Sir Henry paid Captain Welles to take me on board. Why should you be any different?”

“Because I am different.” He remembered how Welles had sputtered and squirmed when confronted about this one special passenger.

“Likely more different than any man you’ve ever known.”

His arrogance infuriated her, all the more since he was right: she hadn’t ever known a man like him.

His features were hard and lean, his nose and cheekbones prominent, and there was none of the indolence about him that Dianna remembered from her father’s friends.

“Do you think I would have willingly come aboard this ship if I’d know you were here, too?”

“Perhaps the shackles and a Bridewell guard colored your choice.” Welles had told him how she’d come stumbling into the cabin, her face white with pain and her ankles torn and bleeding from the irons.

Kit caught himself wondering if the wounds had healed yet, and what the curve of her ankles must be like.

“Either one of us is lying, or else Sir Henry Ashe has played us both for fools.”

“You lied readily enough under oath!”

“I don’t lie, my girl, not under oath, and not for the likes of you.” Kit wanted to grab her by the shoulders, to shake some sense into her foolish, ov-erbred head, but he remembered too well how soft her body was and how it had addled his judgment before. He wouldn’t let it happen again, and he clasped his hands behind his back to be sure.

“I told the court exactly what you told me, that you had killed your uncle.”

“I struck my uncle in my own defense, not to kill him. And I am not your girl.” Dianna forgot her promise to Captain Welles.

“I’m Lady Dianna—” But Kit cut her off.

“You are Dianna Grey, spinster, no more. I understand Welles made that quite clear. Or do you prefer Dianna Grey, wanton?

Dianna Grey, murderess? Dianna Grey, actress?

There, I think that’s the one I like best.”

Dianna winced. His words hurt her so effortlessly. Spinster, wanton, murderess, actress… Dianna thought of the Penhallows, of Mary and Eunice and the children. She would lose their friendship in an instant if they found out about Sir Henry and the trial.

“Captain Welles promised that no one else would know.”

Kit shrugged.

“Why do you care? You’ve broken your part of the agreement by insisting on your title.”

“But I haven’t, not with anyone else, anyway.”

Her dream of a new beginning was crumbling before it had even begun, and all because of one selfish man.

She could sense him watching her with those green eyes, cat’s eyes, waiting for her reaction. What does it matter to him, she wondered desperately. Why should he care?