“Dis offer . . . I haf t’ought about—” he began.
Brien raised a hand to cut him off, establishing her control of the pace. “Please let us order first. I am famished. Let us eat, then we shall talk.”
Brien managed to be polite through the courses of excellent food, even as the revolting Van Zandt mauled huge servings of beef and downed quantities of food and wine. Between courses, he boasted of his adventures, relating some gruesomely detailed accounts of battles during the war. She was soon ruing her tactic of insisting they eat first.
When they were served coffee after the final course, she nodded to Silas, who raised the topic of the sale.
“I trust you have reevaluated the properties,” she inserted.
“
Ja.
I haf done much t’inking.” He wiped greasy fingers on his vest and watched her keenly as he delivered his proposal. “Und I offer eighteen t’ousand.”
She was careful not to overreact. “Certainly that is fair for the goods and stores. Now on to the warehouse. What will you offer for it?”
“No.” His shaking head sent reverberations through his fleshy jowls. “Eighteen for all of it.”
“Currently we have merchandise and commodities that are worth twice that figure.” She struggled for every ounce of composure she could muster. “As you well know, we cannot collect outstanding debts, due to the vindictive assembly’s action. If we will not give the goods to our customers, what makes you think we will give them to you?”
“I t’ink on it. Maybee we meet again—jus’ you und me.” He gazed evenly at Silas and tossed his head to indicate Dyso.
“Sometimes . . . two agree better dan t’ree or four.” The implication was clear. Silas had been right; the man would demand more for his money than honest goods and property.
“Really, Van Zandt,” Silas sputtered. “To insist on seeing Lady Brien alone—”
She pushed back her chair and rose. “Good evening, sir.”
Van Zandt pushed up with surprising speed and grabbed her wrist across the table.
Dyso was instantly at her side, his face murderous. Van Zandt released her and cowered back as Dyso reached for him. Brien managed to restrain him as Silas stepped between the men with his hands extended. “Please”—he struggled to keep his words quiet—“I’m certain Mr. Van Zandt meant no harm.”
More than anything else in the world, Brien wanted to let Dyso teach Van Zandt a lesson, but she pulled his arm and motioned to him to do nothing further. Their abrupt movements had created a stir in the room.
“Please sit, madame.” Van Zandt seemed unsettled by the reaction his movements had unleashed. “Ve vill discuss more, eh?”
Brien felt the tide of advantage turning in her favor. “We will not. If you should wish to make a suitable offer—say, twenty-eight thousand—then you may transmit it to me through my agent, Mr. Hastings. Good evening.”
She turned from the red-faced Van Zandt and walked with great dignity to the door. She didn’t see Van Zandt’s muttering or the fist he shook at her back. But Dyso, who seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, caught it. He paused to look back into the dining room as Silas opened the door for Brien. His eyes darkened, becoming like chips of black flint.
Eighteen
IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS, Brien settled into a strange, dichotomous existence.
By day she was the perfect guest, dividing her time between the warehouse with Silas and the house with Helen. During her days with Silas she met a wide variety of Boston’s tradesmen and shopkeepers and began to see that the troubles that affected Weston Trading were a part of a larger financial morass. The other business owners seemed to believe that once a constitution was in place and the new government began to issue a single coinage, things would improve. On her days with Helen, she enjoyed helping with the children and the new baby, and learned a great deal that had been omitted from her education as a woman. She grew to enjoy reading to the children, giving them their lessons, chaperoning their play in the garden . . . holding the new baby to give Helen a respite.
A week after the birth, Helen was up and about and insisting on inviting a few friends for tea. The women represented a range of ages, stages of life, and political affiliations, but universally they welcomed Brien into their midst . . . chatting, exchanging stories, and making arrangements for entertaining and visiting. She couldn’t help contrasting these experiences with those when she had entertained in London, where her class, rank, and marital status had marked her as a prime target for gossip and speculation. With quiet pleasure she authenticated Aaron’s view that this place was indeed special—liberating in ways she hadn’t expected.
Then there were the nights. She slept with French windows open and the covers thrown back and still had difficulty sleeping.
Flashes of heat erupted through her sleep to send her bolt upright in bed, with her hair damp against her neck and her nightdress clinging to her. Again and again an auburn-haired lover came to her in her dreams, teasing, tempting, tantalizing her. Sometimes she awakened furious, other times she awakened tingling with excitement or aching with longing. More alarming, she sometimes awakened feeling a curious weight against her arm and breast . . .
as if she had been cradling . . .
The heat and longing of her nighttime struggles began to insert themselves into her daytime existence in the form of incessant thoughts of Aaron Durham. Where was he? Was he standing somewhere at that moment with his legs braced and his arms folded over his broad chest, running his finger over his lip in contemplation? Was some other woman enjoying his irresistible laugh, relishing the twinkle in his unusual eyes, and sighing with contentment in the gentle strength of his embrace? Were those handsome lips burning paths down some other woman’s— When would she see him again?
Strangely, the business that had brought her almost halfway around the world seemed less urgent now. A week passed without a word from Van Zandt and she was strangely unaffected. She had adopted an outlook that insisted all would work out for the best. Gratefully, she recalled and heeded her father’s advice that time often untangled problems too complex or overwhelming for mere humans to solve.
Then one morning, as Brien sat reading one of Boston’s newspapers, Helen’s housekeeper appeared at the parlor door with a puzzled look on her face.
“There’s a woman come to the back door . . . says she has a word for you, ma’am.”
A slender young woman in a simple blue dress stood just inside the kitchen. At the sound of footsteps, she turned and Brien was astonished into speechlessness.
“My lady!” the young woman exclaimed, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Ella!” Brien held her arms out to her former servant.
For a long moment the highborn lady and young woman in servant’s garb shocked the kitchen staff with their long, tearful embrace. When Brien pulled back to look at her friend, she glimpsed the cook’s puzzlement and realized that the kitchen staff had stopped work and was staring at them. She quickly pulled Ella through the house and up the stairs. Once in the privacy of her room, she grasped her friend’s hands and held them out from her sides, examining every inch of her.
“You haven’t changed a bit!” Brien pulled her to a chair beside the tea table and sat down facing her friend, savoring the moment. “How did you get here? How did you find me?”
“My employer spoke of a lady come from England t’ do business, an’ when I ’eard yer name I was shocked. Oh, my lady, ye look so beautiful I can scarce believe my eyes.” The former maid’s eyes shone with moisture. “They say yer a widow now.”
“So you’ve heard that much.” Brien sighed under the burden of returning memories. “He died not long after that argument in my room. I fell ill that same night, after I put you to bed. I was feverish for a time and don’t recall much except that there was a fire. Oh, Ella, I’ve pressed our solicitors hard for almost two years for word of you. It seemed you had vanished from the face of the earth. Tell me what happened to you.”
Ella poured forth a story of betrayal, greed, hardship, and unexpected benevolence. Her papers had finally been bought by a kindly merchant of Boston who found her working in a waterfront tavern. He had proved to be a fair master and she had been made housekeeper, a position she had always coveted.
Brien shook her head in amazement.
“Of course we’ll buy back your papers, now that I’ve found you.
And we’ll set you up in a shop of your own—or a small inn—or whatever you fancy!”
Her enthusiasm and unbridled generosity made Ella squirm. “Oh, no, my lady.” She shook her head. “I owe th’ man a great debt.
Besides, I’m ’appy now in my new master’s ’ouse and I’m not anxious t’ leave.”
In the time since her rescue from the tavern, Ella had seen firsthand the worth of the man who had bought her freedom. She had witnessed his effect on others and the evenhandedness with which he treated all.
Puzzled by Ella’s reluctance to accept compensation for the trials she had suffered, Brien continued, “But you must let me do something for you. You’ve suffered much on my account and I cannot live with myself knowing you’re in bondage when money would set you free. Ella, you must let me!”
Ella smiled sheepishly. “Well, I guess I could allow for a bit o’
’elp. It’s just that—I know ye ’ave another maid now an’ I feel beholden t’ my new master . . .”
Brien, seeing her friend in a noble light, picked it up with a teasing lilt. “So, you’re reluctant to leave your new master, eh?
And just how good has he been to you, Ella?”
Ella’s blush revealed her confusion in a way that validated Brien’s assumptions. “So, that’s it!”
“Not exactly
’im.
” Ella squirmed anew. “But there’s someone in
’is ’ouse.” It wasn’t altogether a lie. There was a handsome fellow who came often to do business with Captain Durham. And he had cast a lingering eye on the new housekeeper.
“Then you must take the money for your papers and, by all means, stay on in your new master’s house. What is his name?”
Desperate, Ella chose the last one on her thoughts. “George.
Anthony George.”
Brien went to a chest and threw it open, pulling from beneath a stack of garments a leather pouch that contained folding notes and a goodly sum in gold.
“There.” She put the pouch in Ella’s hands. “Just more than a thousand.”
“Aghhh!” Ella nearly strangled. “More than enough!”
“You will give this to your Mister George and bid him to see you a free woman again?”
“Yes.” Ella’s eyes were moist as she threw her arms around Brien. “I’ll be ever grateful.”
A knock came at the door and Helen breezed into the room with the baby in her arms.
“Brien, my dear, I do so hate to ask—” She halted the moment she spotted Ella and realized she had intruded on something private. “I had no idea you had a guest.”
“Helen, this is Ella Jenkins, who used to work for me. It happens that she now lives and works in Boston.”
“Pleased to meet you.” With a distracted smile, Helen turned back to Brien. “I’ll find someone else to—”
“Did you want me to take him?” Brien rose and held out her arms for the baby.
“Well”—Helen gave Ella an apologetic glance—“Henry has gotten into another scrape and I’ve got to see the neighbors and sort it out.”
“I’ll watch the little one.” Brien took the baby and shooed Helen off to see about her eldest son. When she returned to Ella and settled once more, there was a glow about her.
“Well, I never.” Ella looked from her to the baby and back.
“Never what?” Brien frowned.
“Expected t’ see ye volunteerin’ t’ mind a babe.” She watched the way Brien traced a down cheek with her finger. “Much less cuddlin’ one.”
Brien’s smile contained new and utterly uncontrollable feminine emotions. “There are probably a number of things about me now that would surprise you.” She began to tell Ella about her life since Raoul’s death, about her shocking reunion with Aaron Durham, about her social life in London, and about her tumultuous trip across the ocean.
“So th’ bloke ye married thought th’ vows was good, too, then.”
Ella’s spirits drooped noticeably. “I’m so sorry, my lady. I can’t think what went wrong. If there was anythin’ I could do—”
“You needn’t apologize,” Brien said, glancing down at the baby that was beginning to stir in her arms. “It has all worked out for the best. If the vows had been valid, I would be a married woman right now. And if Aaron Durham took it into his stubborn head to press his nuptial rights, what recourse would I have?” She gave a somewhat forced shiver. “Can you imagine? Me, married? With a whole houseful of children?”
She looked down, gave the baby an exaggerated smile, and made a cooing sound.
Ella blinked. “Lord knows, ye’d want no part o’ that,” the former maid said, watching her. “Bein’ shackled t’ a man’s bed . . .
havin’ t’ bear ’is children. It’d be downright intolerable.”
JUST PAST DINNER that evening, Ella entered the dining room of the house she now managed for Aaron Durham. He sat alone, savoring a glass of claret and looking over the drawings for his latest ship design. She planted herself before him, and when he raised a questioning gaze, she pulled a leather purse from her apron and placed it in his hands.
“I saw my lady today. She bade me give this t’ me new master—t’ see me a free woman.” The grin on her face matched his as he realized that for things to happen so, his housekeeper must have kept his confidence.
Then he recognized the worn leather pouch in his hand and threw back his head with a resounding laugh. When he sobered, he turned again to Ella’s bemused frown.
“Twice paid with the same money. Shall I make the same vow?”
Nineteen
DRESSED FOR BED that evening, Brien paced her room. The sweet night air wafted in through the open windows and set her mind buzzing with the events of the past two weeks. They would soon baptize the babe “Brian” for her and “Lawrence” for her father. Her father would at last have a namesake, even though a friend had been the one to supply it.
Why couldn’t she be like other women . . . content to bear children and do stitchery and tend social ties? But she wasn’t like other women and in her deepest heart she knew that wishing wouldn’t make it so. There was an independence in her and a strong will that wouldn’t let her yield control to anyone. There was a curiosity, a yen for learning in her that wouldn’t be stifled.