Rebel Enchantress (44 page)

“You haven’t been through a war, so you can’t know what it does to people. It creates fear in everyone, it separates them from their neighbors, it forces them to hate their enemies even if they loved them the week before. Jane will never set foot on Maple Hill, if she dies from not doing it. Reuben would turn her out of the house if she did. They hate you, Nathan, you and all the others who’ve been squeezing them for years, the merchants who let them fight for the land and the rights they’re now trying to take away. You don’t seem to understand. If war comes, they’ll shoot at you, and they’ll shoot to kill.”

“Doesn’t anything I’ve done since I got here mean anything?”

“You’ve helped too few, and there are so many.”

“So as long as I own Maple Hill, there’s nothing I can do to change their minds about me?”

“There might be something, but I don’t know what it is.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Where we were in the beginning. On opposite sides.”

Nathan grabbed Delilah by the shoulders. He had to do something to make her see, to make her understand what she was saying.

“Reuben can come, too. He doesn’t owe anyone any money. It’s not his fight any longer.”

Delilah took Nathan’s face in her hands and kissed him gently. “I think it’s wonderful you love me enough to lie to yourself, but if you could hear what you’re saying, you’d blush with shame. You don’t believe a word of that. You’re just saying anything you think might change my mind. But you know it isn’t that simple. Reuben can’t change any more than you can.”

“Then leave them all if they won’t come”

“Would you desert your family if they were in danger?” Nathan shook his head.

“Well I can’t desert mine.”

“But they’re wrong, Delilah. And their blindness is going to cost us our happiness.”

“Would you desert your family just because they were mistaken?”

Nathan knew he hadn’t deserted Priscilla or Serena even though he disliked both of them, but he was more interested in future happiness now than in naked truth. “This has nothing to do with what I might have done. This is now. The choice you make will determine both our futures.”

“Don’t make me choose, Nathan. I can’t, not now. I Love you. I’m sure I always will. If I don’t marry you, I’ll be miserably unhappy the rest of my life. If I desert Reuben and Jane right now, 1’ll despise myself until my dying day. I can live with unhappiness. I can’t live with hating myself.”

Nathan racked his brain for an argument which could change her mind, but just then Reuben and Captain Daniel Shays rode into the clearing. The major reason for her inability to marry him stood before him.

Chapter Twenty-three

Nathan hoped they would go into the house. He didn’t want a confrontation, but the moment Reuben saw him, his face became twisted with fury and he came toward them at a run. Daniel Shays was right behind him.

“What are you doing here?” Reuben grabbed Nathan by the coat collar. “I ought to kill you for what you did to Delilah.”

Nathan knocked Reuben’s hands from his coat.

“I’ve told you a dozen times it was Lucius and Noah,” Delilah said, trying to step between the two men. “Besides, he came to tell me Hector confessed.”

Nathan moved Delilah to one side. “I also came to invite your family to stay at Maple Hill. If fighting breaks out, they may not be safe here.”

“Why would you do a thing like that?” Reuben asked.

“Because I don’t want to see Delilah hurt,” Nathan said, deciding it was time to put his cards on the table. “Since she seems determined not to leave your wife’s side while you’re away, I decided the best thing to do was invite them all to stay at Maple Hill.”

“Why are you so concerned about Delilah?” Reuben demanded She’s done working for you.”

“I love Delilah. I’ve asked her to marry me.”

Delilah turned white, Captain Shays’s jaw dropped, and Reuben exploded in fury.

With a bellow of rage, he threw himself at Nathan. Delilah cried out, expecting to see Nathan battered and broken under Reuben’s furious rush, but she could hardly believe her eyes. The result was extraordinary. Reuben lay on the ground while Nathan remained on his feet, looking barely ruffled.

“Being English may be a curse in your eyes, but it has one advantage,” he said, breathing a little more heavily than usual. “I was taught a very scientific method of wrestling and boxing. If you don’t want more of the same, you’ll curb your temper and listen to me.”

“I’ll listen to you when hell freezes over,” Reuben said, charging to his feet. Delilah jumped between them, but Nathan quickly set her aside. Reuben came barreling in again. Nathan didn’t escape unscathed this time, but the results were the same.

Undeterred, Reuben climbed to his feet, prepared to charge Nathan again.

“That’s enough, Reuben,” Jane said. Unnoticed, she had walked up behind them. “You’ve made your point, but so has he.”

“I can’t allow him to talk about my sister that way.”

“His words can’t hurt your sister, but his fists can hurt you.”

Turning fiery red with chagrin, Reuben was about to rush in again when Delilah stepped in front of him.

“Don’t you dare. I’m not a Lucy Porter to be fought over.”

“You want people to know what he said about you?”

“He said he loved me, that he wanted to marry me. What’s so wrong with that?” demanded Delilah.

“Him?”

“Surely you expect Englishmen to fall in love,” she snapped. “They must. There’re so many of them they have to keep sending the extras to Massachusetts.”

“But he’s—”

“You say one word about people owing him money and I’ll scream. He only sold up Uriah Douglas because I told him to. Uriah is a lazy liar. Nathan would never have gotten a cent of his money.”

Reuben looked at his sister as if she were a stranger.

“He’s got dozens of people working for him, and you know it, so let’s have an end to this continual wrangling about debts. If you want to fight because of what people owe Noah Hubbard and his like, go ahead, but leave Nathan out of it.”

“Delilah, what’s come over you?”

“Sitting for hours over his books, trying to think of ways for people to pay what they owe. Going over figures to see if it was working”

“You helped him?”

“I accused him of wanting money no matter how he had to get it. He challenged me to help him. And you’ll find people like Isaac Yates are glad I did.”

“Aye, Isaac never misses a chance to sing your praises; Shays said.

“Then why don’t you listen?” Nathan asked. “If Isaac and the others can work something out, maybe the rest of them can as well.”

“Not every merchant is willing to give the farmers a chance,” Shays said. “For most it’s easier just to take what they have and sell it. It’s those men we want to stop. We don’t want a war. We just want to keep our homes”

“Then disband your army before General Lincoln gets here. Go to Boston, speak to the members of the General Court, explain what you need; Nathan advised.

“We’re poor men, Mr. Trent. We can’t afford the cost of travel or lodging for the time it takes to seek out so many’

“It only takes a few men. Surely you can raise the money among you.”

“Mr. Trent, some men in Springfield haven’t seen silver coin in two or three years. Will the Boston innkeepers accept a piglet or a goose in payment? Noah Hubbard won’t”

“Then talk to the merchants. Bring force to bear on them if you must. Noah Hubbard will back down. The man is a coward.”

“Maybe, but if we disarm one Noah Hubbard, a hundred more will appear in his place. You see, the Boston merchants are being driven to the edge of ruin by the London merchants. Since the war they’ve demanded coin for everything they ship to us.”

“Not every merchant demands coin’

“Possibly not, but there aren’t enough who don’t to make a difference. Our people are desperate. To them this is the only way.”

“You’ll lose everything you’ve gained if you try to fight General Lincoln,” Nathan warned. “Bowdoin has convinced the legislature you mean to overthrow the government. If you force them, they’ll raise the full might of Massachusetts to crush you. ”

“We can’t stop now,” Reuben said. “They’ve finally started to pay us some attention.”

“Delilah, can you make your brother see that kind of attention could get him and his friends killed?”

“The time for talking passed long ago,” Shays said. “We held town meetings and country conventions. We sent petitions and emissaries. They’ve all been ignored.”

“Then vote them out of office.”

“We mean to, but if we don’t get some relief now, many of us won’t have anything left by the time elections come around.”

Nathan gave up. “You won’t come?” he said to Delilah.

“You know I can’t.”

“The offer to your family still stands.”

“None of my kin will ever set foot on Maple Hill,” Reuben stated.

“Even though you must be the most pigheaded, stubborn, blind, obstinate, obtuse, bigoted man of my acquaintance, I intend that one of your kin will be my wife, Nathan stated with savage energy. “And she surely
shall
set foot on Maple Hill.”

Then before Reuben could recover from that verbal assault, Nathan pulled Delilah into his arms, gave her a swift but thorough kissing, and strode off toward his horse.

Reuben, recovered from his shock, started after him, but was stopped in his tracks by Delilah’s words.

“You step one foot after him, Reuben Stowbridge, you so much as touch him, and I’ll marry him this afternoon in the middle of Springfield Square.”

Reuben spun about, unable to believe either the words or the voice could belong to his sister.

“You must have a fever to talk like that,” he said, unable to account for it any other way.

“Why should I be the one who has a fever? I’m not going about putting muskets into the hands of every idiot in the countryside. I’m not going from town to town scaring honest citizens half out of their wits and getting the governor so mad he’s raised an army to send after us. I don’t attack everybody who’s English when my own grandfather was London born, Fm not getting ready to leave a wife due to deliver and so worried she’s having early pains.

“No, Reuben, I’m just a woman who has to stay behind and work the farm and feed the children and fight off any soldiers who might want to help themselves to your produce—or your women. Fm just one of the females who will be left to grieve when a husband or son or brother doesn’t come home and she’s left to struggle on alone.

“I must be a dumb woman, too, because I can’t have any thoughts of my own. I can’t have any opinion on the war. I can’t even be expected to understand what I’m told. I certainly can’t be allowed to question anything you decide to do—I can’t even make up my mind when I’m in love: Surely even anyone as stupid as a woman would know she couldn’t possibly be in love with an Englishman, particularly a rich Englishman.”

The enormity of the unfairness of her situation almost caused Delilah to break down, but she fought back the tears.

“Well, I do love an Englishman. I love him more than anything else in the world. I think I always will. He wants me to marry him. He’s willing to take my family in even though they make no effort to disguise their hatred for him, though they attack him at every opportunity. He wants to love me, to take care of me, tq protect me from harm, want, hurt—to make me happy. He
wants
to do all this for me, Reuben. Not for anybody else. Just for me. And do you know what I told him?”

No one dared make a sound.

“I told him I couldn’t marry him. I told him there are too many things between us for us to ever be happy. I sent him away. And do you know what’s keeping us apart? You, Reuben. Your hate and your friends’ hate and our neighbors’ hate and Shays’s hate. Everybody’s hate. And Jane and the boys, your love, my love, your loyalty—all good things, all wonderful things, but all turned to evil because they’re tinged with hate.”

“Delilah, you can’t—”

“So when you describe your heroic battles, the way you showed the government what it meant to have Reuben Stowbridge mad at them, you remember who stayed home and you remember what it cost me. Because I’ll never forget, Reuben. And I’ll never forgive you for it.”

Delilah burst into tears and ran into the house.

Jane rolled from side to side, moaning, clutching her stomach.

“All she wants is Reuben,” said Polly. “If he doesn’t come, I’m afraid she’s going to lose the baby.”

“You can’t lose a baby just from worry.”

“You wouldn’t think so, not a healthy woman like Jane, but there was many who did during the war. Peggy Wilkins for one and Betty Stout for another. Of course Betty didn’t take to the bed until after she heard her Will was dead, but she was feeling poorly before that.”

They were all worried. General Shepard had fired on the regulators when they’d tried to capture the Springfield arsenal. Only four men had died, but their deaths brought home the stark realities of war, all too recent in their memories.

“I don’t know where Reuben is.”

“Mama said they fled north to Pelham.”