“Was that what I was supposed to do?” she asked him.
He bellowed a laugh, then gripped her shoulder with one big hand. “That was exactly what you were supposed to do. Now I’ve business to attend to with your captain. I’ll come by your room after I’ve finished.”
Alice stood clutching the feathers and watching as Gunn and Ishani turned and walked away.
“Lady, that’s some deal you just struck!”
“What?” Alice turned to find a bewhiskered trapper grinning at her with a gape-toothed smile.
“There ain’t many a woman would agree to that kind of bargain.”
She shook her head, frowning at the man. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
His eyes went wide for a moment, then he squinted hard at her and leaned closer. “Well, I’ll be damned! You mean you don’t know about them feathers you’re holding?”
Alice shrugged. “An offering of friendship, I assume.”
“Well, lady, you assume wrong. Them three feathers stands for you, Gunn, and Princess Ishani. Her giving them means she goes along with the deal. You accepting them means you got no objections, neither.”
“Objections to what?” she demanded, feeling the hair prickle a warning at the back of her neck.
“Everybody knows Princess Ishani’s Gunn’s woman, but they ain’t likely to marry, her people hating us Britishers like they do. She knows that, and so she’s agreed to let him have a wife of his own kind—you.”
Alice felt suddenly warm all over and happy through and through. She smiled at the grizzled old man and pressed his hand. “That’s wonderful. Thank you for explaining things to me. I suppose since Mr. Gunn and I are to be married, Ishani will soon return to her own people.”
The trapper pursed his lips and shook his head. “It don’t work that way, Lady Alice. She’s still in on the deal, see? Gunn’ll keep both of you—his wife
and
his Indian gal.”
“Oh, no! I’d never agree to anything like…”
“But you just done it,” he insisted. “You swore on the feathers in front of all these witnesses. You got to now.”
The three feathers slipped from Alice’s fingers and fluttered to the ground about her feet. “No!” she gasped. “Oh, no!”
She turned and fled back to her room.
“Bolt the door!” she cried, hurrying past a surprised Pegeen. “Don’t let anyone in, especially not Christopher Gunn.”
“But, Lady Alice—”
“No
buts
, Pegeen, just do as you’re told.”
Ishani stayed close to Gunn the whole time they were at the fort. She was highly sensitive to the hungry stares of the other men. She knew, too, that most of them considered Abenaki women fair game. Without Gunn close to protect her, she would have met an undesirable fate by now. These white men confounded her. It was as if they lived by their manhood alone. They could do without food, without drink, without shelter but they could not be content without women. All Abenaki knew of this craving of theirs. Because of it, more than one of their forts had fallen into Indian hands. The ploy, old and tired as it was, of sending Abenaki women to the gates begging for food never failed. The Indian women were not starving, but the white men always were. So the gates opened. And the soldiers were always surprised by the attack that followed.
Even in the infirmary the strange, fever-bright eyes of the sick and wounded followed her every move. She hung close to Gunn, keeping her own eyes downcast.
Soon they would leave, he had promised. She was glad. Only one thing concerned her: Would the white woman go with them? Gunn had assured Ishani that she would not. But she had seen the way the woman looked at Gunn. Her pale eyes spoke with the same hunger she had seen in those of the men so often. She had promised on the three feathers, but if the woman came, could she keep her promise?
Ishani thought about it all day. Sharing Gunn, she decided, would be better than not having him at all, but she couldn’t understand his thinking. He acted as if he didn’t want her for his woman. But how could that be? He always smiled at her and talked to her when he came to camp to meet with the Frenchman. He even brought her presents from time to time—a shiny shell, a pretty pebble, or a bird’s empty nest. Any Abenaki brave who treated her so sweetly would do so only because he wanted her for his own. She guessed that Gunn had not asked for her, knowing her father would never let her wed an Englishman, that she was promised already to the powerful savage Scarappi, whom she feared with all her heart. So Ishani had simply made the decision on her own. If her sister could marry the Frenchman, Ishani could have Gunn.
“Hargrave, can you hear me?” Gunn leaned over the feverish captain. “Listen to me. This is important.”
“Gunn, is that you?” The captain blinked several times, trying to clear his blurred vision. His mouth was dry, as if it had been stuffed with cannon wadding. His chest and head ached. The last thing he wanted was to talk to anyone, especially Christopher Gunn.
“It’s about Lady Alice,” Gunn went on.
Hargrave roused slightly at the sound of her name. He’d had the oddest dream last night. She’d been with him. She’d kissed him. He’d wanted so desperately to pull her down to his cot and make love to her. But before he’d been able to gather his strength, she was gone. He could still taste her mouth on his. Most of his fevered dreams were not so pleasant.
“Lady Alice… yes, what about her?” he managed.
“Do you intend to marry her?” Gunn demanded.
A wry smile twisted the captain’s lips. Didn’t he wish!
“Well, what about it? Do you?” Gunn insisted.
“Marry her in a minute,” Hargrave said, trying to raise his head. The effort cost him dearly, and he fell back. “She won’t have me.”
Gunn frowned at the man. He must be delirious. Gunn had seen her steal in here last night. He’d witnessed their intimacies. “What do you mean, man?”
“She came all this way to marry you. Told me so on the ship.” His strength was fading fast.
“Why me? You could take her back to England, give her a fine life.” Every word twisted like a knife in Gunn’s guts, but he had to be sure he was doing the right thing.
“I could,” Hargrave answered weakly. “Yes, I’d like to.”
“Well, then, why don’t you?”
“She turned me down.” He roused a bit and lifted his head. “Look at me, Gunn. Which of us would you choose? I’m nearly as old as old Lord Geoffrey.”
The man exaggerated. He was perhaps forty, Gunn figured. Gunn himself would soon be thirty-five.
“Age has nothing to do with it,” he told the captain. “Does she love you?”
Hargrave managed a weak laugh. “She doesn’t even like me. She’s determined to marry you, Gunn, you bastard!”
Gunn still was not convinced. “She kissed you last night. I saw her.”
The captain’s eyes closed and his tongue came out to glide over his dry lips. “Did she?”
“You mean you didn’t know?”
“Thought I was dreaming… too good to be real.”
“Well, dammit, man, it was real! You still say she wants me? Then why was she in here kissing you?”
Hargrave, in spite of his pain, chuckled. “If you’re trying to get rid of her, I’ll take her. Just let me rest a bit.”
“No, dammit! You’re going to stay awake and talk to me.”
Jonathan Hargrave’s eyes closed. The confrontation had obviously exhausted him. The captain had told Gunn what he wanted to hear. Now guilt stabbed Gunn for the trick he’d played on Alice. What must she be thinking right now? Would she ever understand and forgive him when he tried to explain why he’d done such a thing?
Gunn meant to go directly to Alice’s room after leaving the infirmary, but the afternoon shadows grew long before he took any action. He could not summon the courage to go to her and beg her pardon. By now someone must have told her the meaning of the three feathers, and she would refuse even to see him. He couldn’t blame her, actually—he had only himself to blame.
The hours ticked by slowly for Alice. At first, she cowered behind her locked door, dreading Gunn’s forceful knock. How could she live up to such a bargain? The truth was plain and simple: She could not. The very idea of sharing her husband with another woman went against everything she believed in. She had refused to take a lover while she was Lord Geoffrey’s wife; she could not abide the thought of her husband having someone else.
As the afternoon shadows went from dove-gray to purple, Alice’s resolve began to waver. This wasn’t England after all. This was a new land with new laws. What did she know of savages and their customs?
She tried to think what it might be like sharing Gunn with Ishani. What would he require of the two of them? Would he bed them both at once or on alternating nights? Would he expect her to know all about how to love a man? After all, she’d been married before. She sighed disconsolately. Her husband had been old and infirm. Wouldn’t Gunn realize that? She thought back to her wedding and recalled her strange first night as a bride.
After the near-riot following her mother’s hanging, the lord had whisked her away in his carriage. She could still remember the numbing cold, the rain that turned the road into a gray river, the hopeless ache in her heart. She had allowed Lord Balfour free rein with her life because she was incapable of going on alone.
They rode all night. By dawn her whole body felt pounded and bruised, but that mattered little. She was so physically and emotionally exhausted that nothing seemed to matter. At the end of that interminable night, they arrived at Lord Balfour’s Scottish manor just as the purple-rose light of dawn was touching the world.
She remembered his words: “There now, child, you’re safe here. Haggerty will see you up to your bed.”
Haggerty, a grizzled old skeleton of a woman, took charge of Alice from that moment on. The lord’s housekeeper saw that the exhausted girl was bathed, clothed in a warm linen gown, fed broth, cheese, and bread, then tucked into a feather bed that might have comfortably slept six weary travelers.
That whole day passed without Alice ever knowing that it had even come. Near dusk Haggerty shook her awake. “’Tis time, child. Your lord awaits.”
The chamber where Alice had slept was cavernous, with impenetrable shadows in its corners. Tall, leaded-glass windows stared down like startled eyes as Haggerty undressed her. A fire roared in the grate and torches sputtered in their iron sconces along the stone walls, but neither did much to alleviate the chill or the gloom.
“You’re to be the bride of Balfour Manor by nightfall,” Haggerty told her. “And a lovely young thing, at that. A bit scrawny, but I’ll see to your fattening soon enough.”
Three serving women scurried in bearing wedding gown, slippers, and veil. The garments looked old and fragile, discolored through years of waiting.
“Lord Balfour wants you to wear these for him. ’Tis a great honor, child. His first wife, God rest her, had the gown made in France by the nuns who would have been her sisters had she not chosen otherwise. My poor lord always blamed himself for her death, saying that had he not taken her from God, she would have lived out her full life. But Honora instead chose the man she loved. She died trying to give him a son. The wee bairn followed his dear mother to the grave within hours.”
“How long ago was that?” Alice asked.
“Near forty years come spring,” old Haggerty answered wistfully.
“He never married again?”
“Nay, child. Not until this very night. You’ll be a great comfort to him in his old age. You remind me much of his Honora—small and fragile as she was. Almost as young as yourself. Be good to him, child.”
An hour later, dressed in Honora’s wedding finery, Alice arrived at the abbey nearby where she would exchange vows with a man old enough to be her grandfather. She remembered the chill of the evening, the wind moaning through the tall rafters of the church, the smell of beeswax candles and burning peat. Far down the aisle, she saw her groom—tall, gaunt, ghostly-looking—through her antique veil.
Only the servants bore witness to the union as the parson intoned the solemn ritual. At the end of the ceremony, when Alice tilted up her chin to receive her husband’s first kiss, her lips met only the chill of the air.
“Come, child,” Lord Balfour said, “it’s cold in this place. We’ll go home.”
A great feast awaited the bride and groom. But there was no intimacy about the festivities. Lord and Lady Balfour sat at opposite ends of the long banquet table while silent servants passed back and forth with great platters of food and decanters of wine. Near midnight, Lord Balfour announced, “’Tis time.”
Once more Alice found herself alone with old Haggerty in her cavernous chamber. Again, she was bathed, perfumed, and powdered. Her antique bridal finery was exchanged for a night shift of creamy silk, adorned with lace and bows.
“You needn’t worry, Lady Alice,” Haggerty assured her. “He’s a gentle man, your husband. He’ll bring you no pain, naught but joy, I vow. Do his bidding without question or fear. This is a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”
Alice sighed as she recalled Haggerty’s parting words. The old servant had left her then, first tucking her into the huge bed to await her groom. Moments later Lord Balfour arrived to claim his bride.
She could remember still her nervousness as he approached the bed. She knew little of what transpired between men and women. Her mother had warned her that kissing and touching could bring no good to a girl before marriage. She had promised to tell Alice all the mysteries of love before she wed. But her mother was gone forever, and with her any wisdom or comfort she might have given Alice. Whatever awaited her tonight, she knew it was all part of God’s plan. Her mother had said that much. Still, the uncertainty of it frightened her. Wasn’t love supposed to play a role in marriage? Yet, how could she know of love at her age? She tensed as her husband came close to the bed.
Instead of crawling in beside her, he drew up a chair and took her cold, trembling hand in his.
“There now, Alice, you mustn’t be frightened. You’ve no cause on my account. Were your dear mother here, she might offer me some restorative potion or a drink of strong herbs. But, alas…” His words trailed off and he cast his eyes down. Then gathering his courage he continued. “Were I a younger man, I would gladly do my duty by you, child. What a joy and a pleasure that would be. You’re a wondrously handsome young woman, Alice. There’s many a man who would gladly change places with me tonight. I wish for your sake one of them were here. But there are only the two of us. Husband and wife in the eyes of man and God, and, my dear, I’m afraid that is the only way we will ever be wed.”