The Patriot Bride (2 page)

Hannah had stayed as long as she could – long enough for her mother to die in her arms, gasping for breathe from the consumption. She desperately wanted to take her two younger sisters with her, but she couldn’t afford passage for the three of them, so she decided to go on ahead, lest her father get wind of her plans.

She thought about her sisters nearly every waking moment, wondering how they were faring. Their father had gotten wilder after Momma died, staying out even longer than he had and drinking non stop. Hannah had told Mary, who was ten and the next oldest, that if their Father stayed away for any longer than a day, she was to take little Priscilla and hightail it over to their aunt’s across town. Kindly old Aunt Polly would take them in, Hannah had no doubt.

She’d been here, living on the outskirts of Boston for almost a year, as a widow. She’d known that people would accept her as a widow sooner than a single female traveling alone, so she’d invented a husband, becoming Mistress Cooper instead of Miss.

In those long years, she’d had but one letter from Mary that told of their Father’s further decline and mentioned that she and Priscilla were going to take her advice and go to their Aunt’s shortly. Though the cottage she lived in was owned by the woman she worked for as a seamstress and it wasn’t nearly big enough for three people, Hannah ached to bring them to her. She was scrimping and saving every tuppence and shilling she earned, and, if things continued as they were, it would be another six months or so before she was able to send the money for their passage.

Wolf watched her as she wandered about the tiny room, sweeping a gnarly broom uselessly over the dirt floor. Despite the dilapidated appearance of her little hovel, and beyond that which was on the floor, there wasn’t a spec of dust or dirty anywhere. It was tiny, but it was scrupulously clean. Along one wall was a large stone fireplace, from which hung a smallish black kettle that simmered something that made his mouth water with the scent of onions and bay leaf. One corner had a small, rough table, and the other a rope bed with a feather mattress.

There was a tiny china figurine on the mantle, as well as more books than he’d seen in one place since he was at home in his own library – everything from several volumes of Shakespeare and Chaucer to one of the more scandalous authors that really should not have even been in her possession, in his opinion.

“You read?” he asked, unable to quite control his amazement. Most of the ladies of quality that he knew didn’t take the time to read, although they were certainly taught to by the various tutors their wealthy fathers hired for them – but their mothers were busily whispering to them that it was not something one did for entertainment, but merely to avoid the cane. And it didn’t help one to appear any too smart when trying to catch a husband, which was, after all, the entire reason for a young girl’s existence.

Wolf’s mouth twisted at the thought. He should have been married by now himself, and he knew his mother and uncle were hard at work on arranging that, but he’d never really had the time to woo and win a woman. He’d barely been back to his estates in the past ten years, despite the long distance needling from his mother about not paying attention to his heritage. Wolf felt that his career in His Majesty’s service spoke volumes about himself, and he never bothered to explain himself to much of anyone.

Hannah eyed him distrustfully from across the room where she was fussing with the spare bedclothes. “Yes, I do,” she answered, rather defiantly. Her father had never missed an opportunity to berate her for her intelligence, and her desire to read and learn more than he thought was necessary. Her Mother was at least somewhat gentle about her reproaches. Father had felt no such compunction.

She tried to cross to his side of the room, to the fireplace he was standing in front of in order to check and stir the meager dinner she had boiling in the kettle, but the closer she got the bigger he got. The cottage was so small that wherever she looked, there he was, standing therein all his glowering, unnerving glory. Even with his hat off, he was just enormous – a veritable mountain of a man – and she decided to be cowardly and veered away from him at the last minute, then berated herself as she fiddled with the chipped vase with two wilted wildflowers that served as decoration for the tiny table.

He didn’t say anything else, just stood there like an angry lump, staring at her. She really didn’t think he had any right to be there, but what was she to do against a man his size? Hannah figured that she probably had to put up with him this evening, but tomorrow she would make sure that her rifle was more at the ready, and he’d find himself staring down its muzzle if he tried to get in here again.

Finally, she’d gathered up enough courage to stand before him and glower right back at him. “If you expect to have anything edible this evening, Sir, I suggest that you move aside, unless you’re also an expert in tending to venison stew.”

The only part of Wolf that moved at her order was his eyebrow, which rose nearly into his hairline. Few people in this world would dare to address him so, and even fewer of those were women. Actually, only one was a woman – his mother, and even then it would have had to have been a matter of life or death since he’d come into the title and taken firm control of her runaway purse strings.

Yet here was this little strip of a girl, with probably less than twenty years to her credit, obviously of no social rank whatsoever, taking him to task for standing in front of her kettle. No matter that she was right, and he moved away immediately, if not quickly. He was amazed at her spunk - her downright Colonial spunk, with no appreciation or deference whatsoever for her betters.

He watched avidly as she bent and stirred the pot vigorously, then reached up without looking to grab a crude wooden bowl, ladled some out, then moved to sit at the table and begin to devour it with delicate greed. She was obviously doing her best to be discourteous and ignore him entirely.

So Wolf proceeded to be discourteous to her, removing his uniform coat without asking, hanging it off one of the pegs in the wall next to the door, where her tattered cloak already resided.

Despite his noble birth, Wolf had been on enough campaigns and had spent enough time well away from the reaches of what society considered civil surroundings that he was quite comfortable serving himself. As a matter of fact, much to his mother’s disgust, the older he got, the less patience he had with the trappings of his existence as a member of the landed gentry. Recent years had brought him to the New World. He’d fought in the French and Indian war, and had spent some time in the beautiful area around Quebec, as well as the Ohio valley and Fort Frederick on Lake Champlain. It was God’s own country, full of incredible promise for any man brave enough to seize it and defend it against all comers.

Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to leave his commission – which was up in about eighteen months anyway, and just ride west, completely ignoring the King’s command that no Englishman was to venture past the Mississippi.

But here he was, watching this tiny woman ignore him completely, as if nothing was amiss. He grabbed the other wooden bowl off the mantle and served himself some of the stew, not paying much attention to what he was dishing up until he found himself across the small, wobbly table from her. She staunchly refused to look up at him, her eyes never leaving the enthralling contents of her bowl.

Suddenly hungry from the wonderful aroma that drifted to his nostrils, Wolf took a big spoonful, and wasn’t disappointed. The broth was just right thick and hot and full of flavor, slipping down his throat and warming him from the inside out. He bit down on a tender potato chunk, a small onion, and some carrot, but no venison whatsoever, not in the entire bowl. “This is venison stew?” he asked doubtfully, cleaning his bowl nonetheless.

“Yes,” came the reluctant answer.

“I don’t see any venison in it.”

Hannah got up from the table, using a small bucket of water to rinse and wash her bowl and spoon, placing them back on the mantle to dry. “There isn’t. It’s venison stock. If you’d like meat in your stew, I suggest you go hunting. I can’t afford to buy it.”

Wolf made a note to stop by a butcher tomorrow before he called formation and send an order of meats to her cabin, and leaned on the table as he got up, noting the irritating wobble and reaching down to see if there was something he could quickly do to fix it. What he found were several pieces of parchment stuffed beneath the shorter leg.

He opened the carefully folded papers, and read them while she puttered nervously about the cabin. They were all inflammatory treatise against the Governor of Massachusetts and even the King himself, citing a lot of pure rubbish about taxation without representation and how the Colonies were being treated unfairly and punitively in regards to trade arrangements and having to provide room and board for the King’s troops at their own expense.

Wolf threw the pamphlets onto the table, adding fixing the table to his list of things to do to make this place a little more habitable. “I see you side with the rabble rousers in town,” he commented lightly, watching her with narrowed eyes.

Hannah was folding the bare blanket she kept at the food of her small bed, but his low, accusatory voice stopped her in the act for a long moment, then she reassumed her nervous straightening, knowing those piercing black eyes were watching her every move she made, and trying to come to grips with the fact that it didn’t look like he was going to go anywhere. He apparently had every intention of just blithely moving in with her, right or wrong.

And of course, as an officer in His Majesty’s Army, he felt he was well within his rights.

Grabbing a firm hold on her gumption, Hannah turned to face him, her legs quivering beneath her skirts and against the bed frame. “You aren’t really going to stay here, are you? I’m sure there are plenty of places - ”

That bushy dark eyebrow rose nearly to his hairline, but he didn’t seem to be angry – quite - just firm and unyielding, and obviously not much interested in explaining himself to the likes of her. “Not that are in quite this strategic a spot. And yes, I fully intend to quarter myself here, Mistress Cooper.”

Something about the way he said her name put Hannah on alert. He said it as if he didn’t believe it – whether it was the married part or the surname part, she didn’t much care. She was already wary around him – how could she not be? A small woman alone in her house with a huge man who was not her husband.

In a voice much shakier than she would have liked, Hannah asked as she kept her hands busy worrying a handkerchief, “And have you no care for my reputation whatsoever?”

To her complete horror, this question motivated him to stand and walk silently over to her. Overwhelmed by his presence, she found herself sitting on the edge of the bed and craning her head to see him.

“No, Mistress Cooper,” he accented her last name in a tone that left absolutely no doubt that he questioned its status, “I have no care for the reputation of a woman who runs away rather than fulfilling her obligations, and who assumes a false identity, lying to everyone who has befriended her in this small town.”

Hannah’s open mouth went completely dry. The man in front of her, the huge, physically imposing man who had barged his way into her little house by virtue of his brute strength and his uniform, was the man her father had contracted for her to marry!

Chapter Two

Hannah continued to stare up at him wide eyed – her jaw gaping in a very unladylike manner, until he had the audacity to reach down with the edge of a curved finger and tip it closed. “You obviously didn’t think I’d come after you, Mrs. Preston,” he said in a deceptively casual tone as he took a seat much too close to her. “But then, you don’t know me very well.”

She immediately tried to get up, only to find his hand on her arm was more than enough to prevent her from moving. Daring to glare and praying he couldn’t feel the way she was shaking, she answered bravely, “No, I don’t. And I’m not Mrs. Preston, thank you very much.”

“Ah, but you are, my dear, you are.” At her distinctly puzzled look, he explained, “My Mother, who is a good natured meddler but a meddler none the less, having secured my admittedly casual permission to find me a mate decided to take matters into her own hands when she found out that you weren’t going to go through with it, and had us married by proxy.” Without releasing her arm, he reached into his vest pocket and produced a folded piece of parchment that looked a lot like what she’d been using to steady her table, which he dropped into her lap.

When she reached for it, he did let her go, although he inched forwards a bit as if in compensation. Hannah bit her lip as she reviewed the document, which seemed to be in order, as far as she could tell, not that she really knew much about marriage contracts one way or the other. But that most certainly was her father’s bold signature at the bottom of the page, and some sort of wax seal was affixed beneath her supposed husband’s signature, as the Duke of Northumberland.

What she did know is that she couldn’t be married to this man – she couldn’t! She’d left her homeland to avoid just this situation – she’d come to this hard, rough land and eked out an existence that she found very pleasing, despite its sparseness. She didn’t want to be married, she thought vehemently, daring to give the burly man beside her a glance, especially not to him!

When Hannah would have gotten up, feeling overwhelmed by his nearness and needing to put some distance between them, he easily stopped her – not in a hurtful way, but in a firm manner that left no doubt at all that he was the one in control. “Stay still. You’re not going anywhere.”

Swallowing hard, Hannah tried desperately not to give in to the stark fear he was inspiring, but that only flared a thousand fold when he twisted just right, tugging on her arm, and positioning her beneath him on the bed. She’d never been this close to a male in her life that wasn’t an old man, such as her father or one of his pub crawling drinking mates, whose pungent scents and general lack of any sort of personal care did not encourage closeness, regardless.