The Maidenhead (17 page)

“Can you deny that 'tis good, this passion that links us?”

“’Tis unnatural," she whispered.

"’Tis as if we are obsessed." There was no other way to explain such an unlikely coupling as his with this low-born woman. He didn’t give her a chance to speak but cupped her small face in his hands and buried his tongue between her lips.

She made a soft noise that seemed to him to be half sigh, half whimper.

He tore off her coif and pushed his fingers through her soft curls. By now he was past all restraint. He caught her shoulders and pressed her sideways until she lay beneath him. The scent of fresh, damp soil filled his nostrils. And her scent. Sweet, light.

Her arms slipped up around his shoulders. She broke loose from his rapacious kiss. Her breathing was raspy. "Can you deny that yew love me?”

He raised his head. "Love you?"

Her mouth twisted. Her eyes were bleak. "I can see that the thought has never crossed yewr mind."

“No," he said bluntly.

Her body squirmed beneath his. "Let me up.”

“No. Wait." He anchored her wrists against the earth. "You’re not given to foolish sentiment, are you?" He heard the doubt that had crept into his own voice. "Surely you are not in—”

"Nothing has changed, has it?” she said in a tone as harsh as lye. "So, am I still allowed to leave when we get to Jamestown?”

She deserved honesty. "Things have changed. I want a son from you.”

Her breath hissed. "Wot?"

He rolled off her and onto his back. He flung a forearm across his forehead, stared sightlessly up at the mocking moon. '"Tis my second chance at righting a grievous wrong. I will not let this opportunity slip through my fingers.”

She tried to push herself upright, but his right leg still pinned her to the ground. She half twisted toward him. Those oddly colored eyes blazed. “Yew would breed me as yew would yewr—yewr heifer?”

He moved away to sit up, his legs spread and his arms braced on his knees. He massaged the bridge of his nose, letting his fingers follow the flare of his brows to knead his throbbing temples. "I want another son."

“No wonder they call yew Mad Do—another? Another son?"

“Aye.” He buried his face in his palms. His ragged voice was muffled. "My son would have been nineteen this year. The same age I was when he was born.”

"He died in the birthing?"

"No.” He raised his head. His hands knotted together, he stared like a blind man into the nightmare of the past. "Christopher was six years old when he died."

"I am sorry," she said softly. "It seems so unfair when wee ones die, before they even have a chance to live."

He went on, knowing that he must talk. After thirteen years, he had to uncage his monster. "I was the youngest ever to be appointed to the Star Chamber. It consisted of men from the King’s Council, a group of royal advisers. I was arrogant with my privilege and my power. Careless of the feelings of others, including my wife and Christopher. I had no time for them. I was busy consolidating my influence at the Court of King James, as was my rival, Richard Radcliff.”

Her skirts rustled as she drew near him on her knees. “So that is where yew know the man."

He glanced down at her piquant face. "What do you know of the Star Chamber?”

She visibly shuddered. "It passes judgment without trial by jury. It uses torture to obtain confessions.”

"Aye. The court is so named because it holds unregulated, secret meetings in the Star Chamber of Westminster Palace to try persons too powerful to be brought before the ordinary, common-law courts. King James used the Star Chamber to crush opposition to his policies.

"It came about that William Lilbum, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, was a devout puritan and wrote a seditious article attacking stage plays and actors in general. At the time, the queen was taking part in a rehearsal for a ballet, so an attack upon the Crown was implied. Everyone involved was arrested, from Lilbum himself to the paper’s publisher to the people involved in distributing the article.

“It so happened that the Star Chamber was sitting during this incident. Radcliff offered up a perfunctory plea in behalf of the charged. I was surprised he accepted the thankless task, because it certainly wasn’t one that would gain him additional favor with James.

“I saw the opening and immediately took up the opposition, determined to demonstrate my eloquence, my skill, my unswerving loyalty to the Crown. I demanded that everyone involved in the matter be executed that very day.

“‘Everyone?’ Radcliff had inquired."

He stopped. The image of Radcliff s guileless half smile would haunt him all of his life. Now the smile personified had intruded into his colonial sanctuary.

"I should have sensed that something was amiss," he continued at last. "Radcliff acceded too easily to me. But my mania for power overrode my intuition. 'Everyone,' I replied. And in so doing I ordered my own son's death."

He heard her quick inhalation.

"You see, I had taken Christopher and his nursemaid with me to Westminster Palace that day." He paused, then forced himself to dredge up every ugly detail. "My wife and I had argued earlier that morning about the lack of attention I gave our son and her. Her carping annoyed me, and I refused to take her with me but brought him along. When I was summoned to the Star Chamber, I left him and the nursemaid in the Strangers’ Gallery to witness another debate."

He paused, then said in a quiet voice, his words spaced by pain, "Somehow my son gained possession of one of the pamphlets. A palace guard caught him with it and arrested him."

"But he was just a child!" she protested.

He shrugged. His shoulders felt so heavy. “Children have their ears shorn off or their nostrils slit for stealing something as petty as a potato."

"I know,” she said bitterly.

“When I returned to the Strangers’ Gallery for Christopher, the hysterical nursemaid told me what had happened. I went at once to find my son, but he had already been taken to the Palace Yard and hanged."

"And that is when yew went mad," she murmured.

“Aye.”

“Do you think that Radcliff was responsible for yewr son possessing the pamphlet?"

"I never had the time to find out. I had to flee England." He grunted. “Regardless, I was the one who ordered my son’s death, not Radcliff.”

"But yew didn’t knowingly do it!"

"Does age or relationship make a difference? With careless cruelty, I condemned the guilty and the innocent. My son happened to be among the latter. Afterwards, I truly didn’t care any more one way or the other about blame or responsibility or honor or power. I simply didn’t care about anything."

Or at least he had thought so . . . until he had seen Radcliff again at Jamestown.

In the silence came the soft murmuring of water running through the springhouse troughs. After a moment, Modesty said, "Then—if yew are already married—we can’t be.”

He heard the hope in her voice and took perverse delight in dashing it. "We can still enjoy the great comfort we derive from being married to each other," he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm. "My wife committed suicide that same day upon learning of Christopher’s death. She drank poisoned wine."

He was irritated with himself that he had suffered a momentary weakness and revealed his soul’s torment to this wench he had taken for a wife. He came to his feet and stared down at her coldly. "Now you know. So give me a son and I’ll give you a divorce."

She sprang up, her hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes glittered with scorn. "No wonder yewr wife preferred suicide. But if I thought we had to stay married, I’d put poison in yewr wine!"

"If I thought we had to stay married, I would drink it."

Chapter Fifteen

Beneath the noonday sun, the curling hair on Mad Dog’s bare chest was damp with sweat. He was cutting thatch for roofing and then binding the bundles with hemp cord. His well-honed body moved with a modicum of effort.

Modesty closed her eyes and shook her head to clear it of his tantalizing image. She wanted to hate him for using her, for teaching her the addictive pleasures of his lovemaking. She grumbled at her lot, but she had to admit he gave her care, safety, fairness, and bravery.

And she had to admit that the love consuming her with such an intensity was an agony. No, worse. It was a happiness that mocked her with its elusive fulfillment. If only she could make her mind a blank, her body rigid and unyielding whenever he came to take her unto him.

Since last night, when he revealed his appalling past to her, he had not approached her, had not even come to bed. She knew he was still wrestling with the demons of his memory.

Just as she knew he would nevertheless come to her before the week was out . . . and before her fertile period was over.

With a forlorn sigh, she opened her eyes and espied through the river birches a ship gliding into view. She had learned from Mad Dog that great fleets of tobacco ships sailed each year down through the rivers and creeks of Virginia to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to head out through the capes for England, returning a few months later with all kinds of manufactured goods—the latest books, gowns, silver bowls, stockings, carpenter’s tools, and farm implements.

But this ship was familiar. It was the
Maidenhead
. Mad Dog was already striding down the hill to the pier. He passed through the wharf-house to wait at the end of the dock for the long- awaited vessel to put in.

Wiping her paint-wet fingers on her apron, Modesty started down the oystershell path and emerged from the cool shade of the wharfhouse to join Mad Dog on the dock as he watched, his hands planted low on his hips. Aboard deck, sailors were scurrying to shouted commands to lower sails and anchor.

Within minutes, Jack was striding down the gangplank. For just a moment, she had the keen sense of being back in London at the alehouse and Jack swaggering in, bedecked in fine clothes, his feathered hat tucked under one arm. His starched ruff was dazzling white against his suntanned face, his curling locks unevenly streaked with varying shades of gold by the relentless sun.

Over a year had passed since his capture at the Bridewell Dock Grog Shop, and her infatuation for Jack had been replaced by a consuming love for Mad Dog that was like a strange and sublime fire.

By the time she reached the caravel, the two men were deep in conversation. A third man had joined them. He was slender, and a scattering of freckles adorned what would have been a pleasant face were it not for a welted scar rippling across the right cheekbone. He wore canvas trousers and a sleeveless leather jerkin.

Jack broke off and swept her up in his arms, oblivious to Mad Dog’s presence. “Modesty,” he rejoiced, "I thought of you a hundred times!"

Uncomfortable under Mad Dog’s speculative gaze, she wriggled free. “Once for each time yew lifted a purse?"

His expression one of affronted innocence, he held up his palms. “Not once, by my troth. For the first time, I have been selling myself, my word, my integrity.”

She almost laughed, but she could see he was quite serious.

‘"Tis true," the scarred man put in. “Jack here saved me arse even."

“My first mate," Jack said, introducing the man. “Elias Johnson. And what he isn’t telling you is that I won him off Radcliff in a game of cards."

“Yew cheated,” she asserted.

"I told you, I’m a changed man. I found out that I could not give up the role as planter representative, though verily I wanted to bolt several times. But there was a yoke of responsibility that attached itself to me like a tick each time a planter entrusted me with his crops.”

"I am glad you did not bolt,” Mad Dog said drily, "or else I would have had to take time off from planting to hunt you down. And hunt you down I would."

“On my honor, I behaved." He paused, then flashed her that roguish grin that Modesty knew had captured many a female heart. "Well, that’s not entirely true. I did feel compelled to relieve a certain gentleman of his gold-buckled hat band."

This time she did laugh. "I am comforted. I would have been sorely distressed to think a sense of decency corrupted yewr great gift.”

"As I would yours,” Mad Dog told her. He draped a possessive arm across her shoulders. "Shall we show our planters’ representative samples of your great gift?”

She sobered. "If me forgeries don’t pass muster in England, ’tis yewr head, Jack.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and said in a bantering voice, “I’m mighty attached to it.” Laughing, almost as if in camaraderie, the four strolled along the wharf and back up the shell path toward the cabin. Even stolid-looking Juana displayed her stained-toothed grin for Jack and trotted out a keg of the potent peach brandy.

Mad Dog tugged on a full-bodied shirt with sleeves gathered at the wrists. Then he settled onto the low stool and lit his pipe. The wreath of smoke concealed the expression in his winter-gray eyes, but she knew he was watching her and Jack. Speculating about the depth of their relationship, was he now?

Pleasure that she could make Mad Dog jealous exhilarated her. She laughed more, talked more, and mildly flirted with her old friend as well as his first mate. After a while, she flung her quiet husband a measuring glance.

He looked unimpressed.

A frisson of fear traveled down her spine. She had always felt somewhat smug about her skill at distracting a dupe. Beautiful she might not be, but boring she never would be. Or so she had thought.

Had she overestimated her asset? If it wasn’t jealousy that had flickered in Mad Dog’s eyes, what was it? She reviewed the conversation of the night before, and with a sickening feeling realized that it wasn’t love but merely proprietary interest that he had professed.

"Well, Modesty,” Jack was saying, “are you going to show me your handicrafts?"

Setting aside her noggin of brandy, she drew the rolled sheaths of parchment from the double chest and unfurled them on the board table. "What do yew think, Jack? Yew are the master of make believe. Will they do?"

He quaffed the last of his brandy before putting down his own noggin to better view her work. With narrowed eyes, he scanned the documents, then said, "If you can duplicate Radcliff’s signature onto these, then, aye. We should be able to bring down the mighty man. At the most, I’d say nine months."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Nine months,” Mad Dog whispered with arrogant male assurance. His breath tickled her ear and made her tingle all over. His hands held her wrist against the wharfhouse plank walls. "Nine months from tonight and you bear my child.”

She felt as if her heart were galloping. Her senses were extraordinarily acute: the wall’s rough cedar planking abrading the back of her hands, the moldy scent of green dampness, the slap of the water against the pilings, the dance of rain pelting the cypress shingles. And now the taste of his mouth, his tongue leisurely exploring her lips, her teeth, her tongue.

She pushed away. “Yew are so sure?" she rasped, her voice all but drowned out by a clap of summer thunder.

They had walked Jack and Elias back to the caravel after dinner, bidding the two men good night when the rain had started. As they turned to leave, her hurried steps had thudded against the wharf boarding. Mad Dog's command to “Wait” had stopped her heart as well as her steps.

He aligned his hands on either side of her face. His eyes were silver stars against the dense darkness of the wharfhouse. “Aye, I am sure. As I’ve never been before. Can you not feel the white-hot heat between us? Our passion is as fierce as the summer electrical storm. Tonight you will conceive my son."

She wanted to feel his mouth possessing hers again in a kiss that dominated all her thoughts and feelings, so that she would not remember that this was not love, only lust.

But instead he tore off her coif and buried his face in the soft cloud of new hair that drifted loose about her face. At the same time, he grasped her skirts and pushed them up around her hips.

Her hands, released from their human manacles, fumbled feverishly at his breeches’ buttons. Hot and hard, his erection pressed against her belly. Her hands cupped his massive organ, and she went on her knees. She had never experienced this urgency, this need of him before. Mayhaps he was right. Tonight was meant for his filling her with his seed.

"No," he said hoarsely as her mouth explored his length. He pressed her on down onto a bed of coiling hemp and began kissing her everywhere. He seemed out of control. Her neck, her cheek, the rising mound of one breast—they all felt the heat of his torrid kisses.

Yet it was with gradual love play that he sheathed himself inside her folds of wet, soft velvet.

She groaned with pleasure, and he clapped a hand over her mouth. She had forgotten the nightwatch aboard the Maidenhead, anchored only yards away.

Then his taking of her, so fierce, so furious, altered its tempo. This was unexpected, uncharacteristic of their volcanic passion. His lips returned to lavish silken kisses over her cheeks, her temples, her chin. He stroked her damp hair back from her face. "Sash, slowly, my accomplished adventuress."

"Why? Why this . . . this tenderness?”

His dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. "Why, simply because I want my son conceived in tenderness."

With that, he began a concentrated control of his movements in and out of her. She could feel his total focus on her body. The result was an ever-expanding awareness of the two of them moving in a cooperative unison that brought a much more explosive ecstasy.

The prolonged pleasure was unsustainable. Her fingers curled, her legs stiffened, she arched into him. His mouth absorbed her outcry. Afterwards, she could not look at him but kept her eyes closed.

He kissed away the inexplicable tears that seeped from beneath her closed lids. '"Tis all right," he said, holding her against his length and stroking her reassuringly, as a man would a wild mare he is trying to induce into captivity.

It was more than all right. It was like dying and going to heaven. But she wasn’t going to tell him that if he didn’t know. Instead she said, "If I am indeed carrying yewr child now, then I have a right to know yewr real name."

He grunted, tried to move away, but she held fast to him. "A son shouldn’t have a father named Mad Dog,” she said, running her fingers over his beard-stubbled jaw.

"Inigo.”

"Wot?”

"You heard me,” he growled. "Inigo. Inigo Jones.”

Her peel of full-throated laughter was irrepressible.