Authors: Heather Graham
Jassy was glad for Tamsyn, and she offered her gratitude to Jamie that night. “I did nothing, madame,” he told her impatiently, “but advise the man to use skills which we have grave need of here.”
He dismissed her quickly and curtly, and she said no more.
March came blustering in with wind and rain, but by the fifteenth, on the day that Daniel became a month old, it seemed that spring was on its way. It was a beautiful day with a rich promise of warmth and a clear blue sky. The land had never seemed more verdant beyond the palisade. The farmers were preparing for their planting, everything seemed sweetly alive and awakened, and everyone seemed aware that it was almost spring, a season for warmth and laughter and gaiety.
Everyone but Jamie.
There were times when Jassy thought that he hated her, and there were times, too, when she thought that he
had grown completely indifferent to her. He was very quick to anger, and he was almost constantly curt to her. He avoided her, staying out late at night, leaving the house by day.
And still sometimes she caught him watching her with a grave and brooding darkness to his features and his eyes, watching her as if he sought something. If she came to him, he would deny that he stared at her, and impatiently he would leave her.
Puzzled, hurt, and growing very frightened, Jassy watched him in turn. He loved Daniel, she was certain of it. He asked every evening that the child be brought to him, and Jassy would pensively hand her son over to Amy or Charity or Patience so that he could be brought to his father. Daniel did not return until he was squalling to be fed, and needed his mother.
On the fifteenth Jassy determined that she would have her husband back in her bed. She had not lost the least bit of her absorbing interest in her child, but she craved Jamie. She was young and in good health, and she missed him desperately, the way that he held her … the way that he loved her.
She dressed with special care, in a gown with a low-cut bodice and soft lace ruff that spilled over her breasts. She had spent the morning, once Daniel had been fed, washing and drying her hair, and it fell down her back like a cascade of sunshine. Anxiously pinching her cheeks, she sought out Jamie in the great room off the hall.
He and Sir William were involved in the business of charting out an area up the river they wished to map. Charts and quills were strewn over a large table in the center of the room.
The men looked up at her arrival. Sir William was quick to greet her with a smile of admiration and a quick bow. Jamie’s eyes upon her were his only indication that he knew she had come.
“Good day, Sir William,” she said. She looked at her husband. “I see that you are busy.”
“Never so busy that it is not a pleasure for an interruption as beautiful as you, milady,” Sir William said.
“What do you want?” Jamie asked curtly.
Even Sir William stared at him, shocked by his tone of voice. Then it seemed Sir William decided upon a hasty retreat, for he mumbled something about forgetting to see to the late guard. “I will return quickly, milord,” he promised Jamie.
Then Jassy and Jamie were left alone in the space of the large room with a silence resting between them. Jamie stared at her hard, then issued a sound of impatience.
“What, madame, is so important that you must interrupt work and create a scene?”
“Create a scene?” Jassy repeated, her temper flaring.
“And disturb Sir William.”
“Sir William did not seem at all disturbed.”
“Ah, yes, you like compliments and admiration, and that he gives you willingly.”
“Which you do not.”
“I am not accustomed to fawning. Now, what do you want?”
“Neither are you accustomed to common courtesy, so it seems, my most noble lord! And what do I want from you? Nothing, nothing at all from you, but that which I have always craved—my freedom!” She spun around in a fury. She could barely see or hear she was so blinded with her anger and the surge of pain that his coldly spoken words had brought.
He caught her arm, pulling her back. She hated the power in his hold at that moment. She hated the viselike grip he held about her arm, and she hated the way that he towered over her and stared down at her with his eyes so dark and speculative. “Is that what you truly want, milady?”
“What?” she cried.
“Freedom?”
She hesitated, her lips gone dry, her tongue frozen. She ached to cry out, to pitch herself into his arms and let go with a flood of tears. She wanted to tell him the
truth, that freedom from him would be misery. One word from him … a smile … a gentle touch … and she would do so.
She received nothing from him. Just his demanding, hard blue stare and the tense rigor in his muscles. Life had become so ironic, ah, yes, life, always the jest. She had despised him so. And now, when she had come to love him with all the heart and passion and aching need that lay within her, he had come to despise her.
“I have asked you a question, Jassy.”
“I—” she began, but the door burst open, and Sir William came rushing back in.
“She’s come, Jamie! The
Lady Destiny
ventures into the bay and will soon find her dockage in our deep harbor. She has come, ah, at last! Surely it
is
spring!”
Sir William hadn’t seemed to notice the way that Jamie held Jassy, or the tangible tension that had riddled the air.
Jamie released her. “Let’s hurry to greet the
Lady Destiny
, shall we?”
He walked out of the room, leaving Jassy to stare after him, feeling as if he had centered his sword well within her heart.
The pinnace came with supplies, with beautifully created clothing for Daniel, with guns and swords and ammunition, and with company too. Sirs Allen Wethington and Cedric Aherne arrived along with a cartographer, a metalsmith, and wives and children of the established settlers, and with new carpenters and laborers and craftsmen to make their homes within the hundred.
Jassy was pleased with their company.
Sirs Allen and Cedric were to stay in an empty house across the compound, but that was only to sleep. They dined in grand style that night at Lord Cameron’s house, and Jassy was glad to be a hostess, she performed her duties with a fever.
If her husband no longer wanted her, she could prove that other men might.
Lenore and Robert came, and Elizabeth joined them shyly too. There was an abundance of fresh wild turkey
for the meal, brought to them just that morning by a few of the Indians. There were meat pies and berries and corn bread, and the
Lady Destiny
had brought over a supply of coffee—becoming so very popular a drink in Italy now—and the fragile little cups for it so like the set Jamie had in the manor in England. When the meal was over, the men lit pipes, and still the party went on, for even Jamie was eager for news from England, and they were all soon laughing at Sir Allen’s descriptions of the staid court of their dear King James and his Anne of Denmark.
Jassy realized quickly that Jamie had known Allen and Cedric in London; they had shared certain tutors at various times. They were all of an age, Allen reminding her much of Robert, for he was blond and blue-eyed and quick to smile. Cedric was a dashing redhead with a mustache and full beard, a bit of a portly girth, but great shoulders and heavy thighs to match. They were both charming to her, and she was delighted and on fire with the evening. Some sweet devil had entered into her, she knew. She wished, with all her heart, to provoke her husband’s temper. She knew how to do it too. Not quickly, not with some overt action. But slowly. Too deep a smile for one man, too long a laughing touch upon another’s arm. He never could have complained that his tavern wench of a wife did not have the manners of a lady, for she was soft-spoken and charming throughout the evening. She had gained their hearts upon a string, and she knew it.
“We’d heard that you’d run off and married, Jamie,” Allen said. “And if you didn’t find the loveliest demoiselle in all England. Where did he find you, my dear? Locked away in some north county tower? How is it that we missed you?”
Jassy held silent, her heart beating. She looked at Jamie, but he stood by the mantel, his elbow resting upon it, resplendent with dark good looks and subdued finery. His eyes fell upon her and he shrugged. “My wife and I met by sheer chance, gentlemen, upon the road, as it was. She was traveling to her family’s home, conveniently
close to my own. I was able to escort her, and as luck would have it, she came into my arms at precisely the right time.”
Jassy’s eyes fell. She was surprised that he hadn’t denounced her in his present mood. “She is a tavern wench, gentlemen, and I met her in truth when she came to my room as a whore.”
Perhaps appearances meant something to him, after all, she thought bitterly, and she lifted her chin. She rose swiftly to her feet and asked if she might get them something else to drink. She offered Robert Maxwell her most winning smile and refilled his glass with wine.
Charity came down the stairs then, excusing herself, and whispering to Jamie. He stared across the room at Jassy and smiled with a taut satisfaction.
“My dear, I believe that you need to excuse yourself for the evening.” He looked to Sir Cedric. “My son is but a month old today, and still awakens in the eve, wanting his mother.”
The men stood. Sir Allen came to her, taking her hand. “Surely, Jamie, you could have arranged for some assistance for your wife. That you could take her away from us …” His voice faded away with a tone of deep regret.
“But motherhood is quite a talent with my lady, gentlemen. She would have it no other way.
Good night
, my love.”
Motherhood … it was her
only
talent, so it seemed, and Jamie was glad to order her from the party. She was eager to fight him, eager to assure the gentlemen that she would be right back. But then she heard Daniel, snuffling in Patience’s arms up the stairway. Her breasts tingled and she was ashamed that she could forget her son—even in her vengeance against her husband.
She said good night and started up the stairway. Then she could not help but pause and call down to the company, sweetly assuring the men that she would see them on the morrow. Jamie’s eyes touched hers briefly. She had angered him. She had taunted and teased and flirted very carefully, and surely her husband’s friends would lie awake, wondering about her.
And perhaps her husband would come to her.…
He did come, and not twenty minutes later. She lay with Daniel. His tiny fist rested against her breast while he rooted at it. She had not changed but lay with her bodice apart, cradling her son to her.
She started at Jamie’s appearance. He did not knock, he threw open the door to their room. She started and pulled away from the baby, holding her bodice together.
“You might have knocked.” She gasped, stunned.
He stood tall in the doorway, implacable and unyielding. “You forget, madame, I am the
least
courteous man you know. And this is my bedroom, milady. I will never knock upon the door.”
“You sleep across the hall, milord,” she said, her heart thundering.
“I sleep across the hall. I will still enter here whenever I choose.”
Daniel, interrupted from his meal, started to cry. Jamie’s gaze fell upon his son, and he entered into the room, closing the door behind him. “Your son, madame,” he said to her.
“If you have something to say to me, please do so, then I may return to my
talent
of motherhood. Tell me, milord, do you consider it my only talent?”
“You’ve many talents, Jasmine. Feed the babe. I am not leaving.”
She bit her lip, quickly lowering her eyes. She flushed and burned, and heady, potent excitement filled her. She turned her back on him and brought Daniel back to her breast. He would stay. He was angry, but she had brought him back, and he would stay.
But he was silent, silent so long that she spoke herself.
“What an interesting reply you gave your friends about the acquisition of your wife.”
“What would you have had me say, my love? ‘I married a tavern wench. You can see by the way that she whores and flirts about you’?”
“I did nothing of the kind!” Jassy snapped.
He was nearer to her. She had not heard him, but he hovered at her back. He leaned over and touched Daniel’s
cheek, his long, dark finger moving over the softness of the child. Jassy froze. His finger moved onward, stroking over the fullness of her breast. She did not care if they battled. Only that he came to her, that he lay beside her. She cared not if he took her violently, only that he did so.
He drew his hand away. “Take care, madame. I have decided that you may travel back on the
Lady Destiny
, if you so seriously crave your freedom. But while you are here, take care.”
“What?” Jassy gasped.
“You may leave me. I am giving you permission to do so. Daniel stays, though. He is my son and my heir, and he will stay.”
Daniel, the point of discussion, was forgotten. Jassy bolted up, her breasts spilling from her gown, her eyes a tempest. “I will never leave him! He is
my
son! I carried him and I bore him, and he needs me, he needs to nurse—”
“Don’t fret, love. A woman can be hired to provide, I am certain. Good night.”
“No!”
“We will discuss it, madame, in the morning.”
“Jamie—”
“If you are so concerned about Daniel, Jassy, see to him now. He screams again that you should be so careless of his needs. Good night.”
The door closed softly in his wake. Jassy bit hard into the back of her hand to silence the scream that threatened to erupt from her.
Daniel bellowed out loudly.
She swept him into her arms in stark panic. Jamie could not make her go away; she was his wife. He could not take Daniel away from her. He could not, he could not …
“Shush, shush, my little love!” she whispered to the baby. “I am here, I am with you, I love you, I love you so much. I will never leave you, I will never leave … him.”
She lay down with the babe, and in moments his howls faded to the sound of his greedy suckling. Jassy’s eyes
were open in shock. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and then, in time, she turned her head into her pillow to muffle her sobs.