Mood Indigo (15 page)

And what kind of thou
ghts did he give to the maidservant he owned, the maidservant who shared an enforced intimacy with him? She knew he wanted her. And this afforded her no end of delight, for how it must go against his Quaker’s grain to love one woman and lust after another!

And what of herself? Did she not love one man but lust after this one?

God help her, for between the two of them coursed the ultimate alchemy.

She dipped a mocking curtsey. “How can I please you, master?” Why did she feel pushed to provoke him?

He jammed his hat at her and strode on past. “Bring bread and cheese to the library.”

“There is no bread and cheese. There is nothing in the pantry.”

“Oh . . . yes,” he mumbled and absently rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. Pulling the worsted purse from his black waistcoat, he handed her several pounds. “Purchase what is needed at the market.”

At both Wychwood a
nd the Lennox town house in London, the servants had done all the shopping. And at Mood Hill, Ethan had bartered for whatever staples weren’t raised on the plantation. Jane had never shopped for food and had not the slightest idea what one bought. Still, her lips curled with scorn. “You are not afraid I shall make off with your fortune?”

“Th
ee has already cost me a goodly sum, mistress.”

“I know—fifty pounds, no less. You have reminded me often enough, but I did warn you of your folly.”

“Everyone has reminded me,” he muttered, and turned on his heel for the library’s double doors.

Curtseying to his retreating back, she muttered, “And good cheer to you now.”

Morosely she repaired to the outside kitchen. Among the assortment of waffle irons, tea caddies, and coffee grinders she found a basket of split oak. Knotting her brown shawl scarf beneath her bosom, she set off in the direction of the market square, the center of every town.

It was a beautiful, warm
spring day, and she felt a frantic liberty as she briskly walked the few blocks to the broad green. Her opportunity to locate Tory sympathizers had arrived more quickly than she could have hoped. Freedom might be as near as the hour! Forgetting her irritation with Ethan, she once again hummed to herself that silly ditty “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

As luck would have it, Saturday was one of the three days for the marketplace, and all the farmers were pouring in from the countryside. Only as she drew near Market Square, which was crowd
ed not only with farmers, hucksters, and shoppers but, alas, mustered militiamen, drilling, did she realize her error. The loyalists of Virginia hardly dared openly expose their political views in so radical a town.

Finding a Tory sympa
thizer was going to be more difficult than she supposed.

Despite her drab dress, which announced her lowly status, she found men doffing their hats or sweeping bows as she passed among them. A well-dressed older man in brown satin and a curly gr
ay peruke fixed her with a quizzing glance that did not hide the prurient gleam in his eye; a farm boy, reeking of hogwash, gazed after her with a love-struck' expression. She knew it did no homage to whatever beauty she might possess; for in that land where women were at a premium had she been as ugly as Medusa it would not have mattered to the men.

Ignoring the would-be swains, she picked her way through the pushcart vendors selling oysters on the half shell, the briny odor wafted by the day’s heat among the sticky press of shoppers. As she neared the butcher’s shambles and other market booths that offered green and yellow vegetables and luscious ripe fruits, she heard Ethan’s name hummed by those about her. Belatedly she realized she was a part of that subject of discussion.

“A titled lady, for sure” . . . “Ethan’s Folly” . . . “Escaping a forced marriage, ’tis said” . . . “What a bargain that Quaker struck!” . . . “Living together, no less!”

A heated blush flagged her cheeks. But she tilted her chin imperiously and marched on toward the dairy area. To have her name bandied about like she was a common slut! She looked over the array of cheeses, the thatched baskets of brown eggs, the quart urns of fresh milk; yet she heeded little, so strong ran her shame. “What have ye, dearie?” asked a farm wife with missing teeth.

“Nothing from the likes of yer prices!” quipped a woman’s peppery voice behind Jane. “The king’s treasury could take lessons from yew.”

Startled, Jane turned to find the woman whose daughter had died aboard the Cornwall. “ ’Tis Lizzie,” the little woman said.

Impulsively Jane leaned over to hug her. Lizzie represented part of that old world—and was a friend in that new world of total strangers. “Odd’s blood, but I remember yew,” Jane said, mimicking the Cockney accent, and stepped back. But she also remembered that Lizzie’s hair had not been threaded with gray as it was now, and fewer lines used to pinch her mouth. Life apparently wasn’t any easier for Lizzie in the colonies. “Are you ’appy, Lizzie?”

The woman shrugged bony shoulders. “Is anyone? Are you, Meg?”

Unable to meet the woman’s discerning eye, Jane looked away. “Reasonably so. And Polly? Wot do you know of ’er?”

Lizzie shook her head sadly. “She was with child but lost the wee one.”

“Then she found ’erself a ’usband!”

“Nay, not a ’usband. A brute of a master. She lost the babe when he cudgeled her. And he was the babe’s father, Wainwright was!”

Wainwright! Jane shivered, realizing how much worse off she could have been. Then, “Lizzie, do you know any Tory families in Williamsburg?”

Lizzie cackled. “Aye. I work for one—the Widow Grundy. Treats me fair for all her queer ways.”

“Lizzie!” Jane drew her away from the press of people making purchases. “Could you introduce me to her? It’s important.”

The little woman eyed her strangely. “She cannot ’elp you, for all that you are a titled lady.”

“You know?”

“Everyone knows. But I ’ad it in me ’ead aboard ship
even.”

“And this Widow Grundy—”

“She be daft, Meg. She receives callers in a coach on ’er back porch. And me and the other servants—why, we ’ave to rock the coach to and fro while she talks with ’er callers. Can you fathom that!”

“Please—take me to her.”

The Widow Grundy’s house, a full two stories without dormers in the roof, stood at the shady intersection of Nicholas and North England streets. Nervously Jane paced the drawing room’s worn carpet until Lizzie summoned her. Just as Lizzie had said, Jane was received in a green coach on the wide porch at the rear of the house.

When Lizzie opened the coach door, the odorous fumes of tobacco reached Jane. Inside an old woman sat on the fine green Moroccan leather seat. “Well, do get in, child. It’s dreadfully cold to these old bones.”

Lizzie nodded reassuringly, and Jane lifted her skirts to climb inside, ducking her head low. When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw that the old woman’s high- piled powdered hair was diamond-studded. The wrinkled cheeks were heavily rouged, and a beauty patch was pasted on one drooping jowl. Between the painted, funneled lips was a long-stemmed pipe. Jane remembered her now at the auction of the indentured servants.

The widow rapped Jane’s knees with the pipe. “Don’t gawk like a ninny. You’ve seen people smoking before.” “Aye,” Jane said, thinking to humor the old woman.

“So you’re Ethan’s Folly.” The old woman’s gaze ran over Jane with a practiced eye. “Good lines. You’ll weather the years well here.”

“I don’t plan to stay.”

At that moment the coach began a gentle rocking motion, and Jane grabbed for the window strap.

The widow drew in on the pipe. “Fool to run away. Many a woman is setting her cap for Ethan Gordon.” Now she knew the woman was crazy. “I have to get to my—my fianc
é. I believe he’s with the British troops in Canada. Can you help me get there?”

A column of exhaled smoke spiraled upward. “Don’t you know, child, that anyone who helps a runaway slave is whipped?”

Jane’s shoulders sagged. Between the thick smoke in the closed coach and its rocking motion, she thought she would throw up. And the way the old woman eyed her, as if sizing her up—it made her stomach roll even more in a queasy nervousness.

“I think I can trust you, child,” the widow abruptly pronounced.

“Trust me?”

“I’m not as loony as you think.” The widow leaned forward and tapped the pipe against Jane’s knee again. Then she spoke in a low voice. “A Scottish teacher in Westmoreland County wro
te a letter to a friend in Scotland describing the scandalous hanging in effigy of Lord North. The letter was published in a Glasgow newspaper. When word about the letter found its way back to Virginia, the schoolmaster was fined and discharged from his job. I—and the network of loyalists I work with—helped him escape into Delaware.”

Jane’s eyes widened. Smoke exhaled once more in a neat little circle from the old woman’s seamed lips, but Jane forgot her nausea.

“There are others like him I’ve helped,” the Widow Grundy continued. “And so far I have avoided suspicion through inanities like this coach. And this ridiculous pipe. Though I’ve grown to like the taste of the green weed,” she added with a chuckle.

The old woman paused to draw another puff, then said, “And I'm sane enough, child, to know that running away is not the answer. You don’t even know for certain where your fianc
é might be.”

“If I could get to Boston, I am sure headquarters there could locate him for me.”

“Fie! Boston isn’t peaceful India where an officer’s wife has her bungalow and servants. Boston is besieged. The people left in that city are tearing up the wharving planks for firewood. Go back to England. Wait for your fiancé there.”

“No!”

“Ah! A parent who opposes the match awaits you in the mother country.”

Jane nodded miserably.

“Then wait out the war here. In the meantime do what you can for other, not-so-fortunate loyalists in Virginia.” Despair tightened Jane’s clasped hands. She had counted on finding aid in Williamsburg. The widow laid a veined and spotted hand on her interlocked ones. “Help us, child. And I’ll help you.”

“How? I am almost a
prisoner myself,” she added bitterly.

“We want to find out who the Leper is.”

She looked up, her brows lifted in bewilderment. “The Leper?”

“The Leper’s Colony—the rebel intelligence network.” The old woman tapped the bowl of the clay pipe against the door. “The Leper coordinates the various rebel spy rings—including those Committees of Correspondence— that operate between the lower, middle, and upper colonies. The Leper is the mastermind, and we feel he operates out of Virginia—th
e waist of the colonies. Discover his identity and we crush the most powerful link in the colonies’ rebellion.”

“But how could I do anything?”

“Your master is friends with skilled agitators and radicals—rebel leaders like Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and others in their revolutionary regime.”

“Bah!” Jane scoffed. “Ethan Gordon is radical about nothing! He’s too pious—too self-righteous—to lift a finger in any cause but his own!”

“We know that. But he does move in those political circles occasionally. You might overhear something. Listen. Watch. Think, gal—your fiancé’s life might depend on what you learn!”

Jane drew a deep breath. To lose Terence—how could she go on through life? “If I find the Leper—you’ll find my
fiancé for me?”

The old woman drooped a wrinkled lid in a wink. “Agreed.” She leaned forward and opened the coach’s door. “Pay a visit to Lizzie here, child, if you have any information.”

Only half consoled, Jane left. When she arrived back at Paradise Lost, she realized she had forgotten the marketing she was supposed to do. She turned in the hall to make the trek again to Market Square, only to find that Ethan loomed in the library’s doorway. His normally placid expression was rigid with anger, the burn on his cheek almost scarlet. “Thy purchases?”

She swallowed. “I forgot.”

He advanced on her. “Shall I beat thee for thy transgression?”

She remembered Lizzie’s
story of Polly suffering Wainwright’s brutal beatings. She took an involuntary step backward but was blocked by the solid wooden door. “You would not!”

“I am sorely tempted, mistress.” His large fingers wrapped about her upper arm, and he pulled her over to the parlor window, drawing back the Venetian slats an inch or so. Dust flurried in the shafts of sunlight. “Look, there, across the avenue.”

She obeyed, seeing nothing out of the ordinary to account for Ethan’s altered behavior. But she was aware of the way he dwarfed her, making her feel vulnerable—and strangely feminine. The knuckles of the hand that gripped her upper arm were pressed against the outside of her breast, and suddenly the room seemed stifling. She managed to swallow. “I see carriages and people strolling.” “The man by the nearest live oak—does thee not re-member him?”

She stared. Beneath the black tricorn the man’s face was narrow and pointed—like a fox’s. “The man who bid against you for me,” she recalled with a shudder.

“Uriah Wainwright—head of the Committee for Safety.”