Authors: Heather Graham
He set her down before him. “Milady?” He indicated the house. She held tight to her cloak and preceded him up a stone path. The door opened before she reached it. A plump, middle-aged lady bowed to her quickly, then offered her a cheerful smile, then nearly fell back upon herself with another courtly bow.
“Amy Lawton, my dear,” Jamie said behind her, and she didn’t know if the wry tone of his voice was for her, or for their very respectful servant. “She will be in charge of the household, and, I’m sure, eagerly awaits whatever commands you might have.”
“Oh, yes, milady.”
Jassy took her hand. “Amy, I am glad to have you, and as I know nothing about living here at all, I will be grateful for your guidance.”
Amy flushed with pleasure. Someone giggled behind her, and Jassy was introduced to the two young maids, Charity and Patience. A youth, bobbing and nervously twirling his flat cap in his hands, stepped forward next. He was Simm Tyler, the groom. Jassy gave him a smile and asked him if he would be especially good to her little horse Mary, for the mare had not liked the crossing one bit. The young man, with freckles and ears too big for his slender face, promised that he would see to the poor creature.
The last of the servants was Jonathan Hayes. Jamie introduced him as their cook, and she looked at him with special interest, for she never forgot that she had been apprenticed to Master John for just such a position. He was a very skinny man for one who spent his time in the kitchen, but he had nice, warm eyes, sunk into the near cadaverous hollows of his face, and Jassy decided that she liked him very much. There were others about. Men arrived, bearing supplies from the ship.
They smiled to her: they bobbed to her with respect. She liked them all very much.
It was Virginia that she did not like. It was the wilderness, the savage threat of the forest beyond them.
“My dear, you had best release Jonathan and the girls to their duties,” Jamie said, his hands upon her shoulders. “We’ve guests coming along shortly, as weary as you are yourself from the voyage, no doubt.”
“Of course,” Jassy murmured.
Jamie started to take her cloak. She pulled it back around her, wrapping it tight. She heard his teeth grate, and she whirled from him defensively. “Milord, I am still chilled.”
“Then we shall stoke the fire,” Jamie said. He left her, walking down the hallway to the huge brick hearth that burned halfway down the length of the room.
“Ah, milady, I shall pour you some warm mead with a good shot of cinnamon in it. ’Tis warming, it is!” Amy Lawton assured her. She urged Jassy into a chair by the hearth while she sent Charity Hume to the kitchen for the mead. Seconds later a crude mug was in her hand, and Amy was telling her with pride that it had been crafted there, in the hundred, in their own kiln.
She sipped the mead and gasped, for it was potent, but it was good, and after the trip she felt that she could drink many, many cups of Mrs. Lawton’s mead. She looked up and saw Jamie where he stood by the mantel, one elbow resting upon it, his eyes pensive but giving away nothing in his thoughts. Even as he looked at her they heard a commotion in the front and knew that the others had arrived in the wagon. Amy Lawton smoothed her skirts and hurried to the door. In seconds they were all filing into the house, Robert and Lenore and Elizabeth, and behind them, Tamsyn and Molly and Kathryn, and then Captain Hornby and Sir William Tybalt. “Oh, how quaint, how crude!” Lenore proclaimed.
Jamie smiled indulgently at her, and Jassy wondered what his response would have been had she uttered the statement.
“We’re very proud of this house,” Jamie told her.
“Oh, dear, you mean it goes downhill from here?”
“I’m afraid we have a one-room hovel,” Robert said ruefully, “and for that, my love, we must be grateful.”
“You’ve no hovel. Robert. I’m afraid that the two of
you are guests in this house for now. I was not sure that I could convince you to come, and so your house is not yet built. But we shall get our carpenters working upon it immediately, and it will not take long. Now, drinks all about, I think. Amy, Patience, if you will. Whiskey for the gentlemen, I think, and more mead for the ladies.”
“Me, too, milord, I’m hoping!” Molly piped in, and Jamie laughed, in good humor again. “You, too, Molly. And Kathryn. And Tamsyn. Be assured, today you’ve no duties but to acquaint yourselves with your new home.”
Jassy watched him covertly. He was good with servants, she thought, with men—and with women. With servants he was gentle, with his peers he was knowledgeable and determined, and with women he was not gentle, but there was something about his dark good looks and very indifference that seemed to seduce them all. Molly was taken with him, as was Kathryn. Lenore had once admitted her fascination with him. And Jassy, herself, had learned the heady lesson that he had promised—she never forgot him, not ever. He entered into her dreams, he touched her by the coolness of dawn, and by the darkness of the night, ever in her imagination.
“Jamie, I do love it!” Elizabeth cried with sudden enthusiasm. They all stared at her. She flushed, then came to sit beside Jassy. “Oh, did you see the colors in the trees! Fall is coming, and the forest is lush now in yellow and green, and I can imagine that in a number of weeks it will be radiant with red and orange … it is so raw, a beginning. Like a Garden of Eden!”
“Serpents stalked the Garden of Eden,” Jassy reminded her.
Captain Hornby laughed gruffly, then once again there was a certain amount of commotion, for their traveling trunks and the new four-poster bed that had been specially purchased in London had arrived, though in a number of pieces. Again Jassy was struck by not only the respect but also the affection with which these people viewed her husband, and how eagerly and cheerfully they served. The men who had come to lift and carry bobbed to her with real pleasure, and if they cast her a
sly glance here and there and grinned to one another, they still did so with such good humor that it was difficult to be offended. She wondered if Jamie had seen the glances, and turning to look at him, she found his eyes upon her. He had. But the way that he stared at her disturbed her, for it was not with the lust she had expected but with some deeper emotion, and she realized that once again she had disappointed him heartily.
She tossed her head. To the devil with him! She despised this place, and longed to go home. She did not want to have her child in this savage wilderness. Still, tears stung her eyes, and she wondered why, and then she knew that she wanted him to look at her with pride, and with respect, and with … tenderness.
“When things are set, milady, we will see that our guests are comfortably settled, then we shall gather once again for supper,” Jamie said.
Time passed with them all together, but for Jassy, things were set too quickly. Captain Hornby said he would return to his ship, and Sir William had business to attend to as well. The workers finished with the upstairs, and departed. Amy quickly showed Kathryn, Mary, and Tamsyn to their rooms in the servants’ wing, and Charity led Lenore and Robert and Elizabeth up the beautifully carved and polished stairway to their rooms at the left of the second floor, while Patience brought Jassy to the suite of rooms she would share with her husband.
Alone, at last, she stared down at the desk and then at the bookcases, and she saw that her husband had brought many of his fine leather-bound books to his new home. There were candles in copper holders upon the mantel, brick in these rooms too. There was a screen, and behind it she discovered a washstand and pitcher and bowl and the chamber pot. A huge armoire was in the corner of the room, and her traveling trunks were aligned at the foot of the bed, by the window, and near the door. There was also a beautiful dressing table beside the bed, and then there was the bed itself.
It seemed very large, and was grander even than the
one in Jamie’s room at the manor in England. Four simple, straight posts held up heavy draperies, secured by loops at every post. It was piled high with pillows and covered in a tapestry-woven blanket. She walked over to it, gingerly placed her hand upon the down mattress, and discovered that it was very soft. She knew Jamie had ordered it in England, that men had worked quickly to assemble it for her comfort.
“It is much like the one that King James once sent to Powhatan, the gift of a king to a king. I hope you like it.”
Jassy spun around. Jamie had silently entered the room and stood with his back to the door, leaning against it. His dark eyes fell broodingly upon her, and still she had little clue to his thoughts.
“It’s—fine.”
“Is it?” He walked on into the room, his arms crossed over his chest, circling her but not touching her. She felt him with every breath of her, and she wondered that he did not touch her, for they had been so long apart that they were nearly strangers, and yet it was as if the flesh and blood of her had lived in wait to know his touch again.
“It is the finest of all the colony, madame. As is this house. I believe it is even grander than the house in which the Jamestown governor resides. Alas—it still is not grand enough for the scullery maid from the Crossroads.”
She stiffened as if he had slapped her. “If you are disappointed in me, then it is your own fault, milord. I did not wish to wed you, and I made it amply clear that I had no desire to come here.”
“Then why did you come?”
Suddenly he was closer. His hands were on her shoulders, and his fingers bit into her arms ruthlessly. She cried out softly and tried to free herself, and he shook her so that her head fell back and her eyes met his.
“Why?”
“Because you commanded that I must!”
“You are a talented woman, in many ways. You could
have eluded my men, if not me, and I was traveling an ocean.”
“You said that you would come for me and that I—”
“Ah, but it would have taken me months to realize that you did not come, and months to retrieve you. And perhaps by that time I would have decided that you were not worth the bother. So why did you come?”
His eyes were fire and his touch was steel, and she was desperate to escape him. She twisted to bite his hand, and he hissed out in surprise. then suddenly he lifted her and sent her flying onto the mattress of the beautiful new bed. He joined her there, catching her shoulders again.
“Let me go! I shall scream!”
“Enjoy yourself.”
“We’ve guests in the house.”
“Then let them wonder if you are screaming from pleasure or pain; this is my room in my house, and you are my wife.” For a moment she thought that he meant to lean over her, to kiss her with the same savage passion that glittered in his eyes. She felt the heat of his body, cast beside hers, and breathed in the subtle, seductive male scent of him. She was dizzy again, filled with a aching rush that left her trembling. It was wrong, and it had to be shameful, for they were such bitter enemies, but she wanted him desperately. She wanted even the anger, so long as it came with the explosion of passion. She wanted his hands against her bare flesh, his lips burning into her, and the flame of his body warming hers.
His fingers bit tightly into her shoulders again. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, for she had to fight him, and fight this place, this wilderness. He held her so tightly, his breath came in raw and ragged anger, and everything about his hard body seemed vital and alive, streaked with lightning. The very room seemed alive with it, with combustible sparks, with tension that ripped the air between them. He would touch her, he
would take her, and she could fight no more, for she could not …
“Answer me!” He shook her again.
“No! No! I have answered you! I mean that I want you to let me go!” Her eyes, wide and sapphire blue and sparkling with the hint of tears behind them, met the savage indigo of his. “Let me go home.”
“Your true home is in the gutter, milady.”
“An
English
gutter, milord, and I believe that I should prefer it!”
“Bitch!” he swore suddenly. And then, to her astonishment, he was gone.
He left her, and she was cold and alone in the beautiful new bed that might have been made for a king, encompassed in her royal-blue cloak. Bereft, she moved her fingers over the bed and cried softly. She hadn’t even told him about the baby. She hadn’t told anyone, because she did not want the baby to exist. She did not want her baby to be born in the primitive wilds.
She did not want to be so alone. So terribly alone. She had her sisters … she had Molly and Kathryn and Tamsyn. But she did not have Jamie, and she was alone, hurt, and frightened. If even the passion had left them, then there was nothing remaining at all, except for a bleak life of bitter hatred.
She curled her fingers into a fist, for she still longed to touch him. She wanted to run her fingers over the strong lines of his face and down to the slope of his shoulder. She wanted to see him prowling naked and supremely confident and graceful again, and she wanted his arms around her, safe and secure. She wondered if he would come back. He did not. She closed her eyes in misery, and she still felt as if she experienced the rocking of the ship. She closed her eyes and slept.
In the end he did return. She felt him shaking her shoulders and calling to her, as if from some great distance. She was so exhausted, and so very weary. She tried to awaken and she tried to smile, to show him that she was glad to see him.
But he tossed her over curtly and spoke with blunt,
commanding words. “Get up. Dinner is being served, and you have many guests. Wear something very grand—we would show our friends and family and the people that we can have elegance here in the wilderness.” He pulled open her various trunks and began pulling clothing out and tossing it upon the bed “Get up!”
She didn’t move; she was exhausted. He grasped both her hands and dragged her to her feet and tugged upon the tie to her blue cloak. It fell to the floor, and she instinctively touched her stomach. No one could tell, as yet. She could feel the hard swelling in her stomach and the fullness of her breasts, but no one else had fathomed her secret, except for Molly, perhaps, and Molly wasn’t telling. But Jassy didn’t want Jamie touching her this way. If he had come to her gently, or even with passion, she could have coped. But she would not have him discover it so.