The Indentured Heart
An Awe-Struck E-Books Preview
Published by Awe-Struck E-Books Copyright ©2003
EBOOK ISBN: 1-58749-328-4, PRINT ISBN: 1-58749-330-6
GENRE: historical romance
AUTHORS: Barbara Raffin
Usual nonsale price is $4.75
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CHAPTER ONE
Spring 1770
Almost too late, Royce Devlin saw the thread-like creature wriggling through the dark liquid in the ladle he lifted toward his lips. With a curse, he flung the inky water onto the deck of the gunship turned merchantman.
Foul! All fouled! First spiders' nest-infested biscuits and he'd stopped eating, now water he could no longer drink.
He stormed past the ventilation gratings in the main deck and vaulted up the ladder onto the forecastle of the pendulous Elizabethan-style vessel. Gripping the railing above the bowsprit that jutted like a finger pointing accusation at the land, he growled his outrage.
"Damn my ill fate! Damn the London court that decreed me guilty! And damn the judge who condemned me into indentureship!"
Eleven years he'd worked his way from cabin boy to first mate. Five more years he'd captained the vessel he'd earned with his own sweat and blood. By end of shipping season last, he'd have had all he needed to buy himself an English estate and attract a quality wife to bear him sons. He'd have proven his success. Then, with one shortsighted edict, the cumbersome English judicial system had stripped him of his property and banished him to his own personal hell.
Paint flaked from the railing beneath the clench of Royce's hands as he faced his immediate future, the God-awful Americas. Half of his life he had labored to escape these coastal waters. Now he was back as penniless as the day he'd first run from them.
The cabin door below the quarterdeck banged open and twittering laughter rang out across the decks. Though Royce had provided the foppish captain a gentleman's company during the duller hours asea, he'd found nothing in the man to respect. Not because the fop had been easily persuaded to gamble with a man who had nothing to bet save his labor against the control of accepting or rejecting offers on his indentureship. Not because the captain liked his drink strong and often. Royce added Captain Smythe to the list of those he damned, because Smythe ill fed his human cargo and refused to freshen their drinking water even after two weeks moored in the Maryland harbor.
Royce eyed the indentured souls languishing on the lower deck. He'd brought them what extras he could off of Smythe's table once the captain was in his cups. Now, watching them, he wondered if he'd only prolonged their misery. They were ill and had been passed over because of it.
Meanwhile, he was healthy and had rejected many a respectable offer. Maybe the free choice he'd won off of Captain Smythe hadn't turned out to be such a privilege after all.
On the lower deck, the captain pressed a hankie to his nostrils as he led his guest past the ripening human cargo. Royce flared his nostrils, inhaling the stench of human refuse rising from the head beneath the bowsprit. The lordly classes hadn't had to reduce him to merchandise for him to learn the common man's reality. Long before the sea offered him an avenue to success, Royce Devlin had known the foulness of bondage.
"Blast me if I'll do the full fourteen year sentence."
He slapped the palms of his hands against the rail above the bowsprit, spun, and paced the forecastle like a caged tiger. Worrying about a handful of unfortunates who hadn't the constitution to see them through life's trials wasn't helping him gain his freedom. He needed off this ship, and he needed a position that would keep him close to the coast. It was his only means of escape. Unless...
Royce paused and lifted his face toward the mouth of the Severn River where it drained into the Chesapeake. A letter would free him. One letter.
"No!" The word tore from deep inside of him like a curse, and he balled his hands into fists at his sides. "No letter. By all that is holy, I swore my independence from her. There are other ways to make myself once again a free man. My own man!"
"Sink me," crowed an urbane, male voice from the lower deck where Royce had last seen the Cockney girl, Sarah. "What's a nubile creature like you doing on a vessel such as this?"
With lethal calm, Royce turned toward the rail separating the forecastle from the lower, open deck. Through the windblown strands of her chocolate brown hair, Sarah puckered back at the stranger beside Captain Smythe. "Waitin' on a man the likes of you no doubt, guv'nor."
Royce scowled at the man paused in front of the girl whose head he'd scrubbed free of lice just the day before. He didn't need the dandy's fine linen breeches nor waistcoat of the most fashionable length to recognize him as the sort who would take undue advantage of a common girl. To recognize him as the same sort who'd charge a man and cost him his hard-earned freedom.
Royce took one measured step away from the seaward rail, his gaze riveted to the dandy leering down the front of Sarah's loose-fitting bodice. Men like that used girls like Sarah then cast them aside when done with them. Men like the one salivating over the womanly assets of an overeager girl considered themselves to be above the law.
Men like him controlled the dais of bewigged judges that had decreed Royce guilty and sentenced him to virtual slavery. The colonies were not without their class system, not as long as there were gentleman planters who emulated England's aristocracy. Royce knew. He'd grown up among their likes.
"I'd make you a good parlor maid, guv'nor, that I would."
"But I've need only of an upstairs maid," purred the planter silkily.
"I've tucked in me share of bed linens," she cooed back.
In one, long stride, Royce brought himself to the rail behind Sarah. He caught the planter's eye, held it with his own unrelenting gaze.
What worse could your system do to me should I find it necessary to lay a hand upon you, Planter?
The dandy stiffened back as though Royce's thought had been etched in his glare, and the man sputtered in the captain's direction, "It seems you've nothing here I can use."
The planter hurried to the side of the ship where his launch was moored. Captain Smythe started after him. The dandy skidded a leg over the rail of the lower deck, waved off Smythe, and dropped out of sight. Sarah threw herself against the rail and cried out, "I'd clean your bedchambers good, I would."
The thump of an oar against the merchantman's wooden hull echoed up off the water. Sarah's voice trailed, "Dustin's dustin'...upstairs or down."
Captain Smythe wheeled about, pursed his thin lips, and jabbed a stubby finger at Royce. "Soul drivers are gonna get you along with the whole sorry lot. And they'll drive you so far inland, Devlin, you'll never again breathe salt air."
Smythe's words didn't threaten. They promised. Royce had crisscrossed too many seas not to recognize when a captain, even one more merchant than seafarer, had grown tired of being anchored in one place.
As the rotund captain disappeared below decks, a shout rang up from the departing launch. "Watch as you go, boy."
A stunted form capped by a sweat-stained hat grabbed the sides of the dory in which he rode as it bobbed wildly in the launch's wake. No seaman, that one, Royce judged.
No boy either, judging by the brackish stream of tobacco juice he spat after the launch and the quality of his curse. "The bloody pox on ya."
The dory smacked into the side of the merchantman below where Sarah stood. She skittered back, to the far side of the open deck. The new arrival dropped over the rail like a shadow. His piggy eyes scanned the open decks.
"Motley bunch," he grumbled to no one in particular. "Told her would be too late. Told her they'd be picked over. Buy slaves, I tell her. No need breakin' no sweat rowin' from ship to ship to look over slaves. They bring them to shore. Black as midnight and simple as sin, can't lose 'em in a crowd. Not like bloody English indentureds what blend in like fleas on a dog."
The hair at the nape of Royce's neck bristled. "Overseer." The word hissed like an oath from his lips. "No better than gaolers. No better than a lying gentleman."
The overseer kicked the foot of an indentured man dozing with his back to the bulwark. The man barely stirred. Curling a lip, the overseer moved on. Halfway along the deck, he hesitated before another squatted with his back to the main mast. He toed the man in the ribs. The man toppled onto his side, his hat popping from his head, exposing open staring eyes.
Royce winced. A woman screamed. A child wailed. The overseer cackled. "Looks to be ya lost another of ya."
Then he scanned the haunted faces worrying over the dead man upon the deck and snorted. "Which of ya's gonna be next, eh?"
"Shut up," bawled a scrawny lad, lunging for the visitor.
Easily, the overseer backhanded the boy aside.
A taller, broader lad balled his fists in front of his face. "You won't put me to the deck so easy, ya little runt!"
The overseer wheeled about. "What'd you call me, boy?"
The youth dropped his fists a bit, cocked his chin, and taunted, "Runt. Runt. Runty little man."
Snickers waffled through the crowd. Royce studied the lad. He had meat on his bones in spite of the ocean crossing, in spite of a bout of the flux. He was also a good head taller than the overseer. He had a chance in a fair fight.
Without raising his fists, the overseer came at the boy. The boy swung. The overseer ducked. Quicker than Royce could shout warning, a metal blade glinted in the man's hand, and he jabbed its thick handle into the boy's belly, doubling the lad over. Turning toward the crowd, the overseer waved the long blade. "Who's next?"
No one answered.
The overseer crowed. "Now which of ya sorry lot am I gonna save from this rotting tub? Which of ya whites what come sellin' yerselves like slaves does Jubal Toombs save today?"
Uneasily the people pressed back against the rail. Toombs strutted before them, his eyes roving, theirs glancing away. He stopped in front of Sarah. His evil gaze flicked from her bosom to her face, as he growled menacingly, "Be it you, sweet thing?"
She shrank from his reaching hand. Toombs caught her by the upper arm and jerked her close. "Yer in no position ta be actin' so high-and-mighty, girly."
"Unhand her," growled Royce.
The overseer started, his grip loosening. Sarah bolted for the higher deck where Royce stood. Craning his neck in Royce's direction, the wretch flipped one corner of his coat aside, displaying the menace of his over-sized knife like a small, cornered cur baring his fangs. "Be you a mate on this tub?"
"What business is it of yours to ask?" Royce demanded, though he already knew why the overseer visited a ship with a cargo of indentured souls.
"'Tis the business of one come to buy."
Sarah clutched Royce's arm. "You can't let him take me!"
"I've no say in the matter, Sarah."
Toombs spread his stubby hands in the air, his thin lips slanting wryly. "Surely yer no part of this cargo?"
Royce didn't answer.
Toombs howled. "Now, how'd a fine gentleman the likes of you get himself indentured?"
Royce remained silent. The laughter died on Toombs' tongue. His glittery gaze shifted from Royce to the clinging Sarah. "She ain't yours."
"I am," Sarah half sobbed, gripping Royce's arm tighter.
Toombs snorted. "You two, a couple?"
"We are," she sputtered. In a lowered voice for Royce's ears, she pleaded, "If 'e thinks I'm alone, Royce, 'e'll buy up me papers. I know 'e will. Please Royce."
Toombs nodded toward shore. "A mate off this ship takin' his leave at the White Horse Inn told me all that's left of this vessel's cargo is singles but for one couple. You sayin' yer the one bound set?"
Royce glanced at the dead man on the main deck in the arms of his weeping widow. Sarah's fingers tightened around Royce's forearm. "Please, Royce."
He shouldn't have scared off her planter. That one would have used her but likely not have abused her. Figuring he owed Sarah, Royce nodded.
Toombs grumbled and slunk off toward the quarterdeck below which were the officers' quarters. If Toombs called up the captain, he'd learn he and Sarah were no couple.
Toombs pounded on the wall of the companionway. Smythe's head and shoulders emerged from the stairwell, the white hankie fluttering beneath his nostrils. Toombs gestured toward the forecastle as he spoke. Smythe glared at Royce when he answered, leaving no doubt that the truth was out.
Sarah's fingers dug into Royce's forearm. She too understood that their lie had failed to save her.
Then, with a final sneer in their direction, Toombs lumbered across the main deck to the rope ladder, climbed over the rail, and dropped out of sight. Sarah let go of Royce and dashed to the port-facing side of the forecastle. "Cap'n Smythe had to have told 'im I was a single. Do you think he refused to sell me papers to so hateful a man, do you Royce?"
Royce joined her at the rail. "I doubt Captain Smythe has that generous a spirit." Not with the soul drivers circling closer daily with their meager lot prices.
For the first time, Royce considered the possibility that Toombs had been looking for a couple, that his and Sarah's charade had invited the very attention they'd meant to avoid. The hair at the nape of Royce's neck prickled as he watched Toombs row away from the merchantman.
***
Megan McCall drummed her fingertips against the edge of the carriage seat. She'd caught scarcely a glimpse of Toombs since he'd climbed aboard the merchantman. And she didn't trust the man any further than she could see him. Damnation. If she hadn't made her own inquiries at the White Horse Inn about available indentureships, Toombs would have had her already packed aboard Peyton's schooner awaiting a proper wind to blow them out of the harbor.
Nor should she have sent Toombs about the shipyards on his own these past days. She should have hired a boy to go about with him. A youth she could have intimidated into truth telling. Then she'd have known if Toombs did his job properly or not.
"Penny wise and pound foolish," she muttered. "And weary of arguing with slackers."
A salty breeze rattled the sleek phaeton and slipped beneath its black hood. Megan lifted her face into the mist and her impatient fingers stilled against the seat cushion. Before her, the topgallant of the merchantman's main mast bobbed against a backdrop of blue sky and spotty, white clouds. In her ears echoed the slap of waves against wooden hull.
Megan inhaled the briny air and, for an instant, Toombs and every other worry plaguing her scattered with the wind. For an instant, she felt the weight of her father's arm once more around her shoulders. She heard his sandpapery voice name the parts of a ship for her as he had since before she could walk.
She even felt the sway of a deck beneath her feet.
Then the dappled gray harnessed to the phaeton stomped and the buggy shook, reminding Megan where she was and why. Anger flared through her. The pleasures of a ship's deck were hers to enjoy no more, not since the sea had taken her father from her.
Not since a man of impeccable lineage had taken everything else.
"By the blood of God, I swear I'll be free of dependence on any man by summer's end."
A small boat slipping from the shadow of the merchantman snagged her attention. Fitting a spyglass to her eye, Megan focused on the approaching dory. Toombs was alone.
Curse that man his dilly-dallying. Given all his complaint about rowing out to the ships, given all the excuses he'd delivered to her instead of an indentured couple, she should have seen sooner that Toombs wasted her time. But she was tired. She was tired of maneuvering her buggy between her cheap waterfront room and the tightfisted Maryland banks. She was tired of depending on an unreliable overseer and overworked maid.
She was tired of her own limitations.
Lowering the spyglass in one hand, Megan smacked the seat cushion beside her hip with the other. The gray horse whinnied.
"Easy, girl. 'Tis myself I'm lashing out at."
The gray shook her head, rattling the harnessing.
"And Toombs," she muttered. "Curse myself for accepting even one of his excuses. Curse him and his tales of indentured contracts already bought up, of sickly or pricey pairs, or of couples who come with a brood of children."
The filly chewed at the bit in her mouth.
"'Tis naught but complaint you hear from me these days, hey my Gray Girl?"
The filly nickered softly.
"Our circumstances will improve. They must!"
Megan refitted the spyglass to her eye and sighted on the couple she'd spotted earlier at the forecastle rail. Toombs couldn't call either of them frail, though the woman was nearly as pale as the man was hale; and her clothes did hang a bit on her frame.
Megan sighed. "Sea crossings do take their toll."
As for dispelling Toombs' brood of children excuse, the wife looked to be well shy of twenty. The two of them couldn't have begot too many offspring yet. How much could a few small children eat anyway?
Perhaps the noise of little ones about Hillhouse would be good for the spirit of the old place. Certainly her own mood could use some lifting.
The breeze caught the loose folds of the man's white shirt, blousing the fabric like a sail from his broad shoulders to his lean waist. Any sons he sired would be strapping, able-bodied lads in a few years. And attract every craftsman's daughter up and down the Chesapeake, if they likewise inherited the thick, auburn hair ruffling about their father's shoulders.
And if they favored the mother? They'd best hope to have gained at least the benefit of their father's straight, Anglican nose. Or did she detect a French influence in the profile he lifted toward the mouth of the bay? By any measure, the wife was not the husband's match.
But in what way? Maturity? There was an apparent age difference.
Many a man married a younger woman, especially if he lived a hard enough life to wear out more than one wife. Not that the man with the auburn hair whipping back from his high, burnished brow showed any sign of hard living. Though the lean muscles detailed by a white shirt plastered against arms and chest by a fickle wind suggested the man was no stranger to physical labor.
Maybe what didn't match-up were their postures. Her shoulders had a common slouch to them. His were square. She sprawled her elbows along the rail and propped her face between her hands, oblivious to how much her immodest bodice exposed. He stood straight. Already, her young body slumped with resignation while his was stiff with an inbred indignation.
Differing economic backgrounds, then, she decided. "No difference now that they've been reduced to the desperate state of indentureship together."
Still, the disparities between the man and woman nagged Megan. They couldn't have been together long. The cut of their clothes didn't match. Her chemise was of a simple, working-class style and made of inexpensive cloth. His seen-better-days, tan breeches embraced muscled thighs as though they'd been tailor made to fit.
"No padding beneath his patched stockings, I'd wager," she murmured wistfully. "I could have well used a man like him."
The slab ladder nailed to the piling near where Megan had parked her buggy creaked. The filly stomped and blew. The rank odor of old sweat curled through Megan's nostrils. Lowering the glass into the black folds of her skirt, she watched Toombs haul himself up onto the wharf.
"Ain't none worth the havin' on that one either, mum," he reported as he righted himself before her.
"What of that pair on the forecastle deck, Mr. Toombs?"
"They ain't for you."
"Has their contract been bought up?"
"No."
"Have they a brood of children I can ill afford to feed?"
"No, but -- "
"Let me guess. They're a pricey pair."
"He'd be a costly one, him bein' a long timer out of Newgate Prison. Fourteen years his sentence."
"Convicts come cheap," she snapped. "It's one of the reasons I've brought us here, Mr. Toombs. Maryland still allows convict indentureships into the colonies."
"But -- "
"Was his a violent crime?"
Toombs' lips twisted, their corners twisting with mean pleasure. Too weary to listen to any nasty tale Toombs would delight in telling, Megan warned, "And don't lie to me this time, Toombs. I'll stay in Maryland for as many days as it takes to find a couple with strong backs. Don't think I won't pass up the free passage of Mr. Lyttle's vessel."
She leaned from the waist toward Toombs. "I can always save myself a coin or two by not buying you passage home."
The sneer faded from Toombs' mouth and he grumbled.
Megan straightened. "Be assured, I will drive you to meet each newly arrived ship myself and wait as I have this morning to make sure you do indeed visit them. So, I ask you again, Mr. Toombs. Was his a violent crime?"
"None that they tell me, mum."
"Fine then," she leveled, ignoring Toombs' contemptuous glare and raising her arm and pointing. "I'll have them!"
***
"Ooooh lawdy," chirped Sarah. "Loo' at that fine buggy. Must be from one o' them grand plantations. Big as castles, I 'ear they are and the servant's livin' grand as the masters. Gor, to have me papers bought up by someone the likes of that."
Royce sighted off the tilt of Sarah's chin. The light carriage was black and hooded, like those physicians drove...or ladies. Beside the phaeton stood Jubal Toombs.
Royce grimaced. As usual, Sarah saw only what she wanted to see. While he saw the raw reality of a black-sleeved arm lifting from beneath the black hood of the phaeton and pointing them out. Royce shivered.
Instinct warned him against accepting the employment of the person who belonged to that arm. There may yet be time for another offer.
Then he caught sight of two familiar men plodding the planks, they too pointing out the merchantman. They'd been aboard a week ago, looking to buy. But individual indentures were still selling well, the captain not yet ready to unload the lot of his human cargo at soul drivers' prices.
But that had been then. The remaining indentureds had since grown more ill with their weariness and the captain restless for a fresh cargo. Royce drew a long breath. Time to be choosy had just run out.
CHAPTER TWO
"Loo' at it," Sarah squealed as Royce handed her up from the flatboat onto the small dock. "Ain't it grand?"
It was his worst nightmare. Beyond the close cropped sprawling lawn, two stories of red brick climbed to a slate-gray shingled roof studded with dormers. Its oversized entrance was flanked by polygonal Corinthian columns and a row of aging tulip trees shaded her like dutiful slaves. It was a plantation house facing the river as those built in the days of bad land roads and good water travel were.
Under his breath Royce damned, "Old plantation. Inherited money."
His empty stomach churned and bile rose into his throat. When Jubal Toombs had packed them from the merchantman into the hold of a West Indies trader, Royce hadn't been fool enough to believe the Caribbean his destination. His luck hadn't turned that far to the good yet. Besides, the phaeton from which a slim, black-sleeved arm had pointed him and Sarah out and altered their destinies had been too temporarily adhered to the open deck to suggest a long trip.
But, loaded onto a flatboat in a Virginia port and poled upriver, inland, Royce had thought his state of ownership couldn't get any worse. Now, staring at the sunlight splintered through treetops across the landscape like cell bars, he realized how badly he'd underestimated his circumstances.
"This way," growled Toombs, trudging off toward the house where a black man in servant livery stood in the gaping entryway.
They followed the butler into the house and down a wide hallway that narrowed past a broad stairway toward a less ostentatious rear entry. Royce focused on the back door, on its high-set window that let in a half-moon promise of sky.
As cargo aboard the merchantman, he'd moved about above decks at will. He'd even slept beneath the stars, relishing his freedom to the fullest after months in a prison cell.
Or rather, he'd lulled himself into a false sense of freedom aboard the ship. They stopped short of the exit with the window arcing like a setting sun, short of escape. The wedge of sky dimmed in the failing light, and the wainscoted walls of the hallway closed on Royce as sure as they were the cold, damp stones of Newgate Prison.
***
Megan McCall looked up from the papers in her lap at the man lounging in the wingback chair opposite her. He was rolling the stem of a tulip glass idly between his forefinger and thumb, broodingly watching the red Port wine swirl within its confines. He preferred Madeira. He'd declared the amber vintage the wine of a true Englishman often enough for Megan to know. But colonial Port was the best her budget would allow these days.
"It's fortunate for me that you returned from London when you did, Peyton," she said. "The Annapolis banks were as tightfisted in dealing with a woman as have been all other Tidewater loan institutions."
Megan's guest looked up at her, his copious lips curling into a smile. "And I'm delighted to find you well enough to traipse from one end of the Tidewater to the other."
"Do I hear censure in your tone?"
"What you hear, m'dear, is concern. After all, we did nearly lose you last summer." He quirked his dark eyebrows up onto his high, powdered brow, a winsome expression that sent many a woman far junior to his forty years swooning.
"A lot you cared," she countered, forcing a light note into her voice in spite of her weariness. "You jaunted off to England and didn't give me another thought."
Peyton Lyttle's manicured eyebrows gathered over the crest of his properly English nose and his full lips puckered to a pout. "Not a day passed that I didn't give thought to you, m'dear. But I couldn't bear staying here and watching you linger as you did."
But, if you'd stayed, you could have helped me.
Megan shoved the thought aside. Peyton had been too frequent a visitor to Hillhouse since long before she came into the world, too good a friend to her mother not to forgive him this one failing. Besides, the Lyttles and the Hills, her mother's kin, had been loyal neighbors since Megan's grandfather and Peyton's father had been lads together. She returned to the papers she'd been reading.
Peyton sniffed. "You'll find all in order, m'dear."
"I'm sure I will," she murmured. "It's just that father always said my faith in a person's word would be my downfall. So, I'm trying to be more diligent about reading what I sign. No aspersions intended against your person, Peyton. I value your friendship every bit as much as Mother did."
She gave her guest a sedate smile. "I do appreciate your allowing me to impose upon that friendship for a loan."
A light rapping at the library door drew Megan's attention from Peyton's cooling smile, and she called out, "Enter."
The door opened on the hand of a simply uniformed, gray headed servant. He hobbled a few steps into the room on arthritically bowed legs, umber eyes peering warmly from amidst crinkled, coffee dark flesh. In an equally tender voice, he crooned, "They's here, Miz Megan."
She glanced in Peyton's direction. "We are through here but for the signing, aren't we?"
He smiled and dipped his chin.
"Show them in, Jep," she directed as she spread the numerous legal documents to be signed over the tea table in front of her.
The butler stepped back into the hall and motioned them through the doorway. Royce crossed the threshold into a room like so many he had visited in his lifetime. But, this time, sound muffled and echoed back at him like he'd just walked into a stone cell rather that a plantation house library.
He stopped short. If he'd had pen and paper at hand, he'd have written the necessary letter to the one person from whom he'd sworn never to beg help.
But he had neither implement.
Toombs nudged him forward. He stumbled away from the doorway toward the bookshelf-lined wall nearest the hall door and faced his immediate future. Focusing on the thick-legged, mahogany writing table in front of a trio of windows in the adjoining wall, he forced himself to breathe more slowly. That sturdy piece of furniture was a man's choice. Perhaps he'd been mistaken about the size of the arm extended from beneath the phaeton hood. Autocratic judges aside, he could deal with another man, even one born a planter.
He caught the glint of brass atop the broad table. Was that a sextant weighting the papers there?
Hope charged through Royce's veins. Had he the good fortune, after all, to have his papers bought up by a man whose interests included the sea?
With renewed hope, he scanned the room. There, upon the mantelpiece of the marble-faced fireplace in the opposite wall perched the model of a fine schooner. Upon the darkly wainscoted wall butted between hallway entrance and butler's pantry door hung a painting of a single-masted, square-rigger rising on the swells of a high sea. And that was definitely a volume of Practical Seamanship on the shelf at his elbow.
If he'd actually stumbled into the employ of another seaman, he could make his new employer realize his value. He'd be piloting one of the man's ships in short time.
Hell and damnation, I'll swab decks if it'll get me off a God-rotting plantation.
He scanned the pair of wingback chairs in front of the marble fireplace and the settee they faced, searching for his new employer. The far chair was empty, the near one angled so that he couldn't see beyond its high back.
A movement amidst the settee's roiling blue and off-white vine pattern caught his eye. He didn't immediately recognize the black cloth as the spread skirt of a woman's gown. He didn't even realize a human being moved the loosely fitted fabric until the wearer straightened back from the tea table and held a sheet of paper toward the nearer of the two high-backed chairs.
But Royce recognized that black sleeved arm right off. He hadn't mistaken the gender of that appendage after all.
The hope careening through his veins faltered. The greatest failure of his life had been his attempt at convincing one particular woman of his true worth.
Quickly, Royce re-evaluated his situation, evaluated the woman before him in widow's weeds. The face turning his way was delicately pale, as though guarded a lifetime from sunlight by shaded gardens, hooded carriages, and frilly parasols.
Plantation bred and born.
He scowled.
But she was young, maybe too young to have yet learned anything more than histrionics or seduction. Nothing more was required of plantation daughters than for them to attract advantageous husbands into the family. Plantation sons, on the other hand, were expected to build dynasties. He knew.
Sons were plantation schooled. The hinges of Royce's jaw clenched.
But he reined in the rancor that subject always evoked in him. He needed a cool head about him if he was going to read how best to handle a diminutive female with lips ripe to the point of bursting. How easily such a mouth could be plucked.
Royce shook off the notion. This was no time for the nether regions of his body to take charge, either.
Though, a sympathetic shoulder offered to a beautiful, young woman to cry upon had its advantages. She'd be in his arms before she knew whose fingers sliced the pins from her lace cap and pulled her closely tucked, raven tresses down about her cheeks. Not that he'd ever used any female for gain before. He'd made it a practice to avoid the husband hunters, leave the innocent or naive intact, and to refuse the desperate.
But, he had never been as desperate himself as he was at this moment. And the widow, dwarfed to the point of frailty by her volumes of black gown and lost against the roiling vine print of the settee, would be no match for a desperate man.
Not that she'd find his use of her disagreeable. He'd traveled too far and learned too much about the secrets of a woman's body to disappoint any. The tiny hands this woman now folded primly together among the dark gathers of her skirt would rake his bare back, urging him between her spread legs. But, could he trade the last piece of himself that he had left with which to barter for freedom? Could he trade away his honor?
Sooty lashes lifted from a pair of eyes the hue of a fathomless sea. She met his gaze and something shifted in those endless depths. A vulnerability deep in the cobalt- rimmed pupils suggested she was as desperate as he.
Then, whatever he'd glimpsed vanished. The thick lashes lowered, and even the eyes were shuttered to him.
Maybe he had seen no more than a reflection of his own despair in the eyes an enigmatic blue hue. Maybe it had been his own urgency, his own spent dignity staring back at him from the haunted depths of the sea-blue eyes. Indeed, if he traded away his honor, he'd lose the only true freedom a man had.
No tricks. He'd argue, cajole, even badger his way through the woman's emotional reasoning if he must. Though, the possibility remained, she may have chosen him for his sea experience. Toombs had demonstrated a decided lack of comfort with water during their transporting.
But, the widow of a seaman, which she must be given the decor of the library, likely had a shipping business that needed someone of skill running it. She had to have bought his papers because of the skills listed among them. Royce's hope swelled.
Then a man rose from beyond the stuffed wing of the nearest high backed chair, and every muscle in Royce's body went rigid. Carelessly, the other man flicked blotting powder from the paper the woman had handed him. Master of his domain. This planter was not just of the class Royce had grown to hate. He was the man he hated. He was the man whose wealth of money, power, and eloquence had condemned Royce into servitude.
Was this some kind of cruel joke? Had he been bought by Peyton Lyttle?
Only shock kept Royce from lunging forward and tearing limb from limb the man touching his lips to the forehead of the woman in black. On some peripheral level where a fragment of reason yet functioned, Royce kept telling himself it was the woman who'd bought his indentureship. The woman, not the man. Not Lyttle.
"Until next time, m'dear," Lyttle murmured, tucking the paper she'd handed him into a satchel with a sheaf of others.
He's leaving. He's not part of this place.
The words circled Royce's skull like an incantation as the planter turned toward the entrance off the main hall, toward the butler, Sarah, Toombs, and Royce. Royce steeled himself for the moment Lyttle would recognize that the man he'd condemned to fourteen years in Newgate had followed him to the colonies. Their eyes would meet, and Lyttle would read Royce's message of hatred.
But Peyton Lyttle strolled past butler, overseer, and indentured pair with but a sniff and the most cursory of glances. Royce's fury turned to incredulity. How could the planter not have recognized him? He'd recognized him readily enough when putting the finger to him, when naming him as captain of a contraband laden vessel.
The door closed behind Peyton Lyttle and a strident, female voice jolted Royce back to the library, to the woman in black. "This is not a couple."
If not for the cobalt vortex of her eyes, Royce wouldn't have recognized the woman on the settee as the same frail female who'd been there before he'd looked away. This woman's narrow shoulders framed the black gown, animated it as she shook the contracts in her hands at Toombs.
"Explain yourself, Mr. Toombs."
Toombs shrugged. "I wouldn't be knowin' what be printed in them papers, bein' as nobody ever learned me ta read." His beady eyes gleamed insolently. "But the girl said they was. And him." Toombs jabbed a filthy thumb at Royce.
"But they are not a married couple," the mistress with a tongue quick as a whip retorted. "Not according to their papers."
Turning her stormy gaze on Royce, she leveled in a tight voice, "I won't have unwed servants sharing a bed under my roof."
"Please, mum," Sarah whimpered. "Don't send us back. We'll be wed."
"We will not," Royce sputtered, stepping forward.
The mistress of the house raised her lean chin toward him. "Here in the colonies, we do not liken to any man dallying with a girl's affections."
"As a gentleman," Royce gnashed through gritted teeth, "I guarantee that I don't dally such."
"She'll send us back, Royce," wailed Sarah. "What'll happen to me?"
Royce winced and conceded on the girl's behalf. "Might not your needs be as well tended by two unmarrieds, madam?"
Eyes as unreadable as a treacherous channel narrowed at him. Didn't she see that Sarah wasn't protesting his denial? The sooty lashes raised at Toombs. "I'm sure your version is that the captain of the merchantman took advantage of you."
"At the mercy of the educated and well off I am."
"User of anyone in possession of a coin is a more apt description of you. Get out of my sight, Toombs. I'll deal further with you later."
Toombs slunk off toward the hall door, his lips curled in a mean smile. Royce squared himself before the mistress of the manor and found her faintly heart-shaped face already tipped at him. Her wide-set, slightly angled, sea-blue eyes flicked from his scuffed shoes to the loose folds of his shirt. He resisted her intimidation and announced curtly, "I have many skills."
She looked up, the hue of her eyes darkening to the shade of an arctic sea. "Have I your word as a gentleman on that, too?"
The hair at the back of Royce's neck prickled. "Mine is a truer heart than most gentlemen you'll ever meet. You'll find my skills well documented in the papers already in your hands."
She pressed her shoulders against the back of the settee without sacrificing any of their authoritative angle. "But I have only one use of you, Mr. Devlin."
To the butler she ordered, "Fetch Jaisy."
To the indentured pair she flatly informed, "This is Hillhouse. You shall address me as Miss McCall."
Sarah bounced on the balls of her feet and snatched up Royce's hand. The butler re-emerged from a corner door next to the fireplace. A tall woman who moved like a cat, all sinewy and lean muscle, followed him. Her head was wrapped in a brightly colored cloth tied in place with an elaborate knot.
She strode past the new arrivals, her cat-slanted amber eyes flicking briefly in their direction. She halted in front of the mistress of Hillhouse and spoke in a low, smokey voice that hummed with the exotic lilt of some southerly island. "You send for me, Miss Megawn?"
"Take the girl. Clean her up and find her a room in the servant's wing."
Sarah squeezed Royce's hand. Their new mistress glanced at their joined hands as she said to the coffee-dark man in servant's livery, "See to his cleaning."
Royce stepped forward, stripping himself free of Sarah, and sputtered, "I am quite capable of cleaning myself, given the proper tools."
The lean chin beneath the budding mouth lifted at him. "So we shall see. Jep, show Mr. Devlin to the prepared room above mine."
"She's keepin' 'im in the main 'ouse?" Sarah snatched at Royce's sleeve, her smile gone.
Their new mistress gave the woman with honey hued skin a dour look. Jaisy snagged Sarah away from Royce and hustled her out the pantry door. The butler motioned for Royce to follow him.
"A moment, Jep."
Both men faced the mistress of Hillhouse. But she looked only at Royce.
"Mr. Devlin, move me to the chair behind the writing table."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm not accustomed to having to repeat myself, Mr. Devlin," she returned icily. "I issue my orders once, and I'd advise you to get into the habit of listening carefully. What I said was, move me to my desk chair."
Royce glanced between the woman and the chair no more than half a dozen steps from where she sat. What game did she play with him? An exercise of power? A means to humble him? He'd escaped the last woman who'd made him jump through imaginary hoops for no good purpose but to exercise her control over him. Maybe he could justify using this female after all.
And what better way to begin than by scooping up the young widow with a flourish and holding her intimately to his chest. But he'd forgotten her diminutive size, how lost he'd thought her to be in the voluminous fabric of her gown.
She fairly flew through the air as he lifted her, her shoulder slamming against his chest. Caught in a moment of surprise, all authority fell from her features. In the diaphanous face paling blue as the veins flowing beneath its skin, Royce glimpsed a girl barely any more than Sarah's own eighteen years and every bit as frightened beneath her bluster.
One more aspect of his mistress Royce became aware of. Megan McCall's legs hung lifelessly over his arm. Even a desperate man could not stoop low enough to use a cripple.
"Save your pity for someone who wants it, Mr. Devlin," she shot, the stern facade slipping back into place. "My only desire, at the moment, is to be placed securely and gently in the chair behind the writing table."
He carried her across the room and set her down in the armchair between the windows and the table as though she was delicate as blown glass. She tossed aside the contracts she'd carried with her, her torpid gaze boring dully up into him. "Now, Mr. Devlin, you know what your duty in this house will be."
"I think you waste your money."
"That's not for you to determine, Mr. Devlin," she remarked. "Not as long as I hold your papers."
Megan waited until the door closed behind the servants before giving in to the tremors she'd kept at bay by sheer will. When she'd looked up and seen the man whose services she'd bought standing in her library, she'd been stunned. He was taller than she'd expected, more commanding. And he'd been staring at her.
At least his initial reaction hadn't been the one she loathed. That one he didn't give her until he lifted her and discovered how damaged she was.
"The saints save me from the pity of a man with the shoulders of Atlas," she muttered.
Why didn't he wear a jacket like a civilized man? All that white shirt draping off his wide shoulders had hurt her eyes as she'd watched him on the deck of the merchantman. That manly bearing and days of wearying travel, of fruitless haggling had distracted her from contracts and netted her nothing more than a pair of indentured servants who were no couple.
She should have made Toombs fetch their papers from the ship for her to read before she'd approved the purchase. She should have seen by the glint in Toombs' eyes that he was up to no good.
She shouldn't have given in to her fatigue.
At least she could trust Peyton to be fair with his contracts. Mother always had. Should she lose the parcel of Hillhouse land she'd jeopardized as collateral on Peyton's loan, she'd be able to regain it when things turned for the good. Peyton had assured her she could.
Too bad she couldn't as easily remedy the error of buying the services of two indentureds who weren't a couple. She'd counted on the bond of matrimony to keep the man focused on his commitments, particularly the legal one of indentureship.
Perhaps something could yet be arranged between the two. The girl had demonstrated an eagerness to marry. What was her name?
Megan edged aside the girl's papers from the man's. "Sarah. Yes, Sarah would like Mr. Devlin's muscled arms around her."
Maybe she already knew the feeling.
Megan scowled. Too bad Mr. Devlin wasn't as inclined toward matrimony.
"So much for safely married."
She pushed the indentured contracts aside and opened the ledger book in front of her. Taking up quill, she added the amount of Peyton's loan to a short list of credits. She sighed, redipped the pen, and added her latest expenditures to an already long column of debt. Things had better turn for the good soon.
A cramp twisted up her leg. Cursing, she dropped the quill, snatched up the wineglass Jepthah had discreetly set down within her easy reach, and drained it in one swallow. She refilled the tulip glass from the decanter he'd likewise moved from tea table to writing table, leaned back in the hard chair, and waited for the numbing relief of the liquor.
"Now that he's back, perhaps Peyton can persuade some of the stodgy, Tidewater gentry to part with a bit of their cash," she muttered in an attempt at distraction, gritting her teeth against the cramp coiling up her right calf. "That is if I live through the night what with housing an unmarried, unkempt convict upstairs of my own bedchamber."
Not that Mr. Devlin needed much more than a change of clothing and a fresh shave to make him presentable. For having been weeks aboard a ship and a former resident of a prison cell, he didn't smell too terribly offensive.
She sipped from the polished edge of the tulip glass, letting her drugged mind wander at will.
She'd need to keep Mr. Devlin close given his duties, she reasoned. Besides, Jaisy was near, just a few quick steps beyond her bedchamber door in her private sitting room where the maid had bedded ever since the accident.
"Jaisy needs the help," Megan murmured, the wine doing its job. "Can't keep dragging her around the countryside with me. Turn the bull work of hauling me about over to the brawny Royce Devlin."
Megan snorted. "But don't expect me to be gulled by your carnal looks, Mr. Devlin, nor your invoked gentleman's code. I learned my lesson about gentlemen's honor the hard way."
Rubbing at the ache in her leg, she wondered what this gentleman's crime was.
Alarmingly, the word that jumped out at her from his contract was pirateering. Curse Toombs and his endless lying. Not a violent crime, he'd said. Curse herself for not making the man ferry those indentured papers back and forth between her and the ship before she'd bought those two.
"And curse Royce Devlin his pirate's black heart. Gentleman, indeed."
CHAPTER THREE
Megan gripped the wood frame of the daybed as Jaisy pushed the slipper onto her foot. She'd survived the night with a black-hearted gentlemen pirate one flight up from her bedchamber. But then, every night was a battle of survival for Megan. Demons worse than a man threatened her night and day.
Jaisy straightened between Megan and the room's single window, the haze of false dawn shimmering around her bright turban. "You look like you have a halo," Megan murmured, already weary and the sun not even up yet.
"Beware dark angels," Jaisy crooned, handing Megan her morning cup of tea.
"Not you. You're my guardian angel."
"Always will be. I swear dat on your mama's grave."
"But, someday, you'll leave."
"Not for as long as you need me."
Therein lies the dilemma, thought Megan. Her troubles bound Jaisy to an impossible pledge. Her errors in judgement. Her mistakes. They made prisoners of everyone upon whom she depended.
Staring past Jaisy into the blank brightness of a dawn-lit window, Megan tonelessly ordered, "Fetch him."
Jaisy's feet pattered up the bare stairs outside Megan's bedchamber, and the dead white light at the window yellowed slightly. When had she last watched a sunrise?
Certainly not this past winter. Not in the last nine months.
Megan winced. Once upon a time, she'd raced her stallion across dew-soaked fields, the sea-salt heavy air stinging her cheeks. They'd charge up the high ground together, she and Cinnabar. On the highest piece of Hillhouse land, they'd pause. Cinnabar would stomp the ground, his hooves clacking against the stone surface. He'd snort smoky blasts of air from his nostrils.
Then, the first rays of golden dawn would broach the tree line and spill over them. Cinnabar's ruddy coat would turn to copper and her air-cooled skin would warm. She loved watching sunrises from up on the...bluff.
Had loved, she reminded herself.
Megan frowned and sipped at the hot, strong contents of the teacup. The brew was a poor substitute for the warmth of sunshine.
Jaisy burst into the room, breathless. "Miss Megawn, he not dere!"
Megan's spine stiffened from the back of the daybed. "Call out Jep and whoever else is still about," she ordered. "Look for him. Find him!"
Megan strained to hear Jaisy race down the stairs and through the halls of the lower floor. Listening wasn't enough. It never was enough.
She glared at the window through which she could see nothing more than the changing shades of dawn among motionless tree limbs. Maybe if she pushed herself up a bit more on the daybed, she could see something.
Cradling the cup and saucer in her lap, she braced her hands against the smooth scrolled frame of the daybed on either side of her hips and pushed. But, one palm slipped off the woodwork, sending her yowling to the floor.
She landed on her hand and hip. Muttering, Megan flexed her hand, testing its mobility. It seemed unscathed.
Which was more than could be said for her pride and her lap. She picked at the damp folds of her skirt and scowled at the teacup tottering to and fro, spewing its contents across the hardwood floor.
Muffled voices rose from below. Feet clumped and padded over the parquet of the Entry Hall. Doors opened and slammed shut, front and back. Then silence. Curling her fingers tightly into the palms of her hands, Megan beat her fists against her useless thighs.
Several minutes later, Jaisy's lilting, "He not at the task of running off, Miss Megawn," turned into a shriek upon the bedchamber's threshold. Jaisy bolted across the room and dropped to her knees beside her unseated mistress.
Megan waved a dismissing hand, grumbling, "If he wasn't running off, then what was he doing outside the house?"
"I was relishing standing on solid ground," answered a deep voice from the doorway. "It's been a long time."
For one fleeting heartbeat, Megan was reminded of her father's commanding presence. Not that any rogue of a pirate could replace Shea McCall. Not that she had even thought...
She glared at Royce Devlin, all shoulders and white, blousing shirt filling her doorway, and tartly retorted, "I know the feeling."
He stepped forward with long, purposeful strides that made Megan start in spite of herself. With the same singular minded movement, Royce Devlin squatted and put his face close to hers. "Too bad your backside isn't as unfamiliar with the floor."
Megan blanched. Royce scooped her up.
"What are you doing?" she all but shrieked.
"My job," he leveled, setting her upon the daybed. "This is my job, isn't it?"
Megan gaped at the man towering over her, hiding her shock behind a crisp tone. "Clean up this mess."
Royce resisted the urge to click his heels together and bow. Being rounded up from the riverbank and squired back into the house and up the stairs like some truant schoolboy by an enslaved lady's maid was more than enough reminder of his humble position.
Besides, he'd glimpsed uncertainty in his mistress' flaring pupils as he'd lifted her off the floor. He knew what it was to be at the mercy of others, the most memorable being a London judge, Newgate gaoler, and another autocratic woman.
He'd run from that female. Then, he'd had no other option left to him. Now, he hadn't even that one -- not legally.
And the Mistress of Hillhouse couldn't run either, literally. He shouldn't blame her for using her acid tongue. She had no other weapon.
He squatted over the spilled tea and mopped. The scent of strong spirits curled his nostrils. Slowly, Royce rose, eyeing his new mistress.
"Is the carriage ready and loaded?" she asked the maid, her words clear, her tone sharp.
"De buggy is at de back door. If it be loaded depends on how dat girl work. Slow to rise and full of complaint she is."
"You'll manage her," the mistress intoned without the least slurring. "I'll be wanting to leave right off."
"But your skirt," protested the maid.
"A little slop of tea is all."
"And your fast-breaking?"
She waved the fussing Jaisy off and lifted her black-sleeved arms at him. "I've papers to pick up in the library. Then you can carry me out to the carriage."
Royce tossed the sodden cloth onto the tea tray beside the cup and saucer. His mistress' eyes were clear, he noted as he bent close and slipped his arms beneath her. Perhaps he was mistaken about the odor of whiskey in her tea.
He straightened, her slight frame tipping easily against his chest. With an unexpected lack of propriety, she slid her fingers along the shoulder seam of his shirt.
"Your shirt is damp," she said, sounding surprised.
"I washed it out last night. It didn't completely dry."
"And you shaved."
"That is what the razor left in my room was for, no?"
"Put me down."
Her unarguable I'm not accustomed to issuing my orders twice of last evening still ringing inside his head, he obeyed without delay and braced himself for whatever verbal tirade she seemed bent on delivering. But she just lifted her chin toward Jaisy.
"Find a dry shirt for Mr. Devlin."
So, the mistress of Hillhouse has a heart after all.
"I can ill afford to have him catching a chill."
Make that, brains enough to protect her investment.
"De Captain's t'ings long packed away."
So he'd guessed right about the owner of the schooner model atop the library fireplace being a seaman, though the knowledge didn't change the facts of his own situation. Long packed away translated into never coming back.
"Then one of the master's," Megan McCall muttered.
The master? If there was a master, why'd he send a crippled chit of a girl cross-colony to purchase a pair of indentures? Why did he leave the discipline of the scurrilous Toombs to a frail of body woman? Why did the mere mention of him set the porcelain cup upon the tray the maid held rattling in its saucer?
"I burned dat man's t'ings and threw de ashes on his grave."
Grave. That explained why Megan McCall acted on her own, but not the maid's animosity. Nor the master's relation to the mistress of Hillhouse.
"Even the shirts in the bottom of my chest?" she asked.
His shirts in her chest? A late mate no doubt.
Jaisy dropped the tray on the dressing table, setting the teacup to rattling on its saucer. She plucked a bleached-linen shirt from a dresser drawer and chucked it at Royce.
The high quality linen slid over his examining fingers, too fine for a man of physical labor. But not too fine for a man of the plantation class. And the captain?
Another male relative, no doubt. Miss McCall, as she'd insisted she be addressed, was too young to have buried two husbands.
"Be quick about changing, Mr. Devlin," the mistress of the manor snapped. "We're running late."
He strode to the side of her canopied bed, tossed down the master's garment, and tugged his shirttails from his pants.
A distinctly female gasp sounded behind him. "What are you doing?"
As he gathered up the hem of his shirt, he pivoted toward Megan McCall. "Changing shirts as you ordered."
"Here? Now?"
"Surely you've seen a man's bare back before."
Her eyes widened.
"You were married, weren't you?"
"Yes, but -- "
"And you are in a hurry, correct?"
"Yes, but -- "
He yanked his shirt over his head, cutting her off once more. But, when the shirt cleared his head, his mistress' stormy eyes were fixed on his naked chest. He might have dismissed her prolonged look as no more than a master's appraisal of the beast just purchased had not the pink tip of Megan McCall's tongue darted out and moistened her parted lips. So maybe she had planted more than her share of men.
He flung his shirt down with such force, it missed the foot of the bed and set the cradle beyond in motion. A cradle? That was an odd piece of furniture for a widow to keep in her bedchamber. Unless the master she mourned was recently enough departed that he'd left an heir brooding in his wife's belly.
Though, she'd been most light when he'd lifted her. He'd felt her bones even through the layers of her petticoats. He eyed her closely. Beneath the stroke of her hand, the mourning gown contoured a flat belly.
And the eyes that had gazed at his physique now stared at the tiny, spindled bed tipping to and fro beneath the lopsided drape of his shirt, a sheen of moisture turning them liquid. There was pain in those eyes, a pain that bunched her sable eyebrows over the bridge of her slim nose and flattened her pouty lips. With sad certainty, he knew no babe would fill that cradle this season, if any.
His fingers closed on the linen shirt, gathering it off the bed. Perhaps she mourned more than a husband.
He threaded the shirt over his head and caught her staring once again at his bare flanks. He shook the garment down over his shoulders. She glanced up into his face, then tipped her chin toward the maid.
"Have some biscuits packed on the side for Mr. Devlin's breakfast."
Royce grunted and muttered under his breath, "Can't have the investment starve to death either."
"Have you a jacket?" she asked him.
"No." He didn't bother to explain how he'd given it to an ailing man who hadn't the benefit of any warming invitations to the captain's cabin.
"The shirt barely fits him," she complained as he wrestled it down his torso. "No jacket will. Air out one of the Captain's for tomorrow."
Raising her arms again, she spouted almost congenially, "Shall we be off, Mr. Devlin?"
But, when he deposited her in the phaeton, she scowled at the floorboards. "The stew for the crew isn't here."
She nodded at a door centered in the low wing reaching toward the stables. "Go hurry that girl along."
As he neared the kitchen entrance, Sarah's voice wailed through the open door. "I'm hurryin' fast as I can. Woulda been done if'n I'd had m'self some 'elp at kneadin' them beaten biscuits. Gor, me arms is achin' an' not a lick o' 'elp off'n that Ester girl. Ordered me about and saved the light jobs fer 'erself, she did. She's the lazy one I tells ya."
On the far side of a mammoth worktable, a honey hued girl built lean like Jaisy tipped a pan full of golden biscuits into a cloth lined basket. She beseeched Jaisy with baleful eyes.
Royce stepped into the room and Sarah's pout curled into a coy smile and she cooed, "Mornin', Royce."
"You keep Miss Megawn waiting," Jaisy snapped. "Get de stew pot."
Sarah rolled her eyes at Royce and sashayed over to one of the smaller fire pits in the massive fireplace filling the end wall, its main pit large enough to accommodate an entire spitted steer. She bent over a soot blackened pot and grinned back at him.
"And you, Mr. Devlawn, will not cause dat girl to dally."
He opened his mouth, to protest, but Jaisy turned from him to the girl packing the biscuits. "Bundle two of dem on de side for Mr. Devlawn's breakfast."
"Yes, mama," answered the girl with her mother's coloring and build but eyes a darker, softer shade of brown.
"And you, girl..." Jaisy wheeled at Sarah and planted her hands on her hips. "...Get dat pot out to the carriage."
"Gor but it's too 'eavy fo' me alone," Sarah puckered.
Padding the metal handle with a rolled towel, Royce hoisted the pot. Sarah beamed up at him. He gave her a wan smile and headed out the door. Sarah scampered after him, the biscuit basket that had been in Ester's care now in Sarah's hands.
"Them biscuits is packed brim full o' bacon chunks." she chirped. "Mighty fine tastin', they is."
"Sounds like you already broke your fast."
Sarah giggled and peeked conspiratorially up at him. "I 'ad m'self a bite from the first batch when that bossy Ester weren't lookin'."
Royce swung the pot up over the phaeton's fender. Sarah's eyes followed the movement. She blanched and backed a step from the carriage, all flirtation falling from lashes and lips.
"Mor-mornin' mum," she stammered. "I didn't see you right off. Excuse me, mum." Sarah bobbing a quick curtsy, shoved the basket into Royce's hands, and fled.
Royce chuckled. "I think she's afraid of you."
"And you, Mr. Devlin, you aren't?"
He looked up into his mistress' steady, blue gaze. "Should I be?"
She leaned forward, bringing her pale face out of the shadow of the phaeton hood. "I hold in my hands the course of your life for the next fourteen years."
Royce's blood ran cold through his veins, but he resisted the resulting shiver. He climbed onto the seat beside the woman who practiced the art of menace almost as well as another woman who'd tried to control him.
Megan glanced from the powerful hands gathering up the reins to the tight lips drawing back as Royce Devlin clucked the horse into motion. She hadn't expected an independent minded man. She'd wanted one accustomed to using his strong back for common labor and already adapted to the demands of a woman. At least she'd hoped a married man would be gentled enough to obey without threat of force. More so, she'd counted on the bonds of responsibility to keep him in line.
But Royce Devlin wasn't married. And he filled the borrowed shirt far too carnally for the sensitivities of any innocent maiden. All that sun-bronzed flesh beneath a veil of close-fitting linen could lead a woman with less on her mind to low thoughts. Good thing she was neither maiden nor innocent.
Too bad he was a man of pride.
"Where are we going?" he asked, his voice almost as tight as his drawn lips.
"Just keep to the main road."
White-knuckled, he guided them past an overgrown lane that angled off between the house and stables. He steered her little gray harness horse along the well-worn loop of dirt past the first pasture. He brooded.
She could tell him the road looping from Hillhouse lead to town. She should. But she was in no mood for idle conversation with a pirate, no matter how gentlemanly he acted.
The shriek of a horse brought her indentured man's head up. Any other morning with Jaisy seated beside her, Megan would have leaned forward and watched Cinnabar charge the split-rail fence. She'd have gloried in his spirited splendor as he raced ahead of the buggy as far as the fenced pasture allowed. And she'd have died a little more knowing she'd never feel his powerful muscles between her thighs again.
This morning, though, she couldn't tear her gaze away from Royce Devlin's face. She couldn't make herself turn away from the silently gasping lips and the rust-colored eyes with their flaring pupils. Royce Devlin looked the way she felt every time she watched the red stallion run.
"That's a fine looking animal," he said, understating the obvious.
"You've a keen sense of horse flesh for a pirate."
The dark pupils in the russet eyes flexed. "I'm no pirate."
So, he wasn't proud of being a pirate. He was a proud gentleman, however, and that was worse.
