“You haven’t yet heard the worst of it.” Captain Rowse, no doubt relieved at the prospect of soon being rid of his unwanted burden, was grimly amused. “Miss Wetherby owes me for her passage. She has spent the better part of the voyage assuring me that her brother-in-law will pay her shot.”
“How can that be?” Daniel sounded appalled.
“The young—lady—boarded late and beguiled my first mate into accepting a piece of jewelry instead of hard cash for her fare. The gems turned out to be paste. ’Twas her misfortune that we had a jeweler aboard, or we’d never have known of the deception till
we tried to get our money out of them. Which was her plan all along, I’ve little doubt.”
“I’ve told you and told you: I’d no notion of that! The brooch was my mother’s. I thought it real.” The outburst escaped before Caroline could stop it. Her eyes blazed with indignation at Captain Rowse; then she caught herself, forcing the passion from her face and her manner and sheathing herself once again in a facade of ice. She held her head high as she faced Daniel Mathieson’s baffled uncertainty and Captain Rowse’s patent disbelief.
“How much?” There was a hollow ring to Daniel’s question. At Captain Rowse’s answer his eyes widened, and he gave a low whistle. “Matt won’t like that.”
“So I guessed. But what’s to do? I suppose I could take her before the magistrates.…”
“No. No.” Daniel shook his head. “If she is in truth some relation to Matt …”
“Would you kindly stop talking about me as if I weren’t here, and take me to my sister? I’m certain that she, at least, will be glad to see me.” Caroline wasn’t nearly as confident as she sounded, but no one save herself could know about the queasiness of her stomach or the nervous dampness of her palms.
A helpless expression crossed Daniel’s face. He and Captain Rowse exchanged glances, and the captain shrugged.
“Were I you, I’d let Matt sort it out.”
“Aye.” Clearly coming to a decision, he nodded and reached for Caroline’s basket. “You’d best come along
with me, miss. I’m brother to Matt—Ephraim, that is. Though he doesn’t care overmuch for the name.”
“I’ll carry my own basket, thank you,” she said coolly. “If you would be so good, you may see to my trunks.”
“Her trunks?” Daniel asked as Caroline moved away from them, head high.
“Three of ’em,” Captain Rowse answered with a crooked grin, indicating the baggage that his men had piled nearby. “Hoity-toity thing, ain’t she? Wonder what Matt will make of her?”
Daniel shook his head, and reached down to shoulder a trunk, “He won’t be any too pleased, I can tell you that.”
2
T
he dirt road on which Caroline trod behind Daniel and Captain Rowse led through the center of the cluster of buildings that she had seen from the boat. On closer inspection she saw that they were indeed small dwellings made of clapboards that had not yet had time to weather. Yellowed squares of paper, or perhaps hide, covered the windows. Smoke rose from nearly every chimney. Young children under the care of a harassed-looking older sister scampered from one house to another, giggling as they took in the passing trio and the strangeness of Caroline’s garb. A homespun-clad woman with a baby on her hip, her hair modestly concealed beneath a white linen cap, waved to them from her stoop, her expression openly curious.
“Morning, Mary!” Daniel called, lifting a hand to the woman.
“Goodwife Mathieson!” Captain Rowse echoed, touching his hat. The surname led Caroline to assume that the young woman was also some connection of her sister’s. A sister-in-law, perhaps? She was thankful when Daniel did not stop but continued to set a brisk pace toward the outskirts of the village.
As she walked, she found that the houses surrounded, in somewhat haphazard fashion, a grassy
field that she took for the town common. A large, rectangular building with real glass in the windows had been erected in its center. From the four-sided steeple on the top and the little cemetery that lay to its left, Caroline decided that it must be the church. A black-robed, white-wigged dominie emerged to stand at the head of the steps, confirming her guess.
He watched them, unsmiling, although his hand lifted in response to Daniel’s greeting.
“Reverend Master Miller looks like he’s had a taste of something sour today,” Captain Rowse remarked when they were well out of earshot.
Daniel grunted. “He and Matt had a falling-out, and he’s not overly fond of any of us as a result. Considers Matt ungodly.”
Captain Rowse grinned. “I doubt he says that to Matt’s face.”
Daniel shook his head. “His folly doesn’t stretch to complete lunacy. Though doubtless he’ll come nosying around in a day or two to find out about
her.
”
A jerk of his head indicated Caroline. Her shoulders stiffened at what she sensed was the slighting nature of the reference, but she said nothing. In truth, as they drew steadily closer to their destination she was growing more apprehensive by the minute. Certainly she was too nervous to relish quarreling with her escorts. Would Elizabeth welcome her? If she did not, then what was to become of her? Lifting her chin high, Caroline refused to allow herself to speculate.
Once they left the common behind, there was little to see but wide, stumpy fields hacked out of the virgin forest that rose, dark and cool-looking, perhaps a mile
away on either side of the road. In civilized England the countryside had been neat and tidy, the norm being grassy meadows and well-cultivated farms bordered by low stone walls or tidy hedgerows. But this—this was rampant wilderness. The surprise of discovering that the wooden shacks were houses was nothing to the astonishment she felt upon realizing that the square with its tiny community of church and boxlike dwellings was Saybrook.
All
of Saybrook. Except for outlying farms, there was no more to the town.
They met a man in a leather jerkin leading a limping horse toward the village. Daniel and Captain Rowse exchanged greetings with him but didn’t stop to talk, although from the stranger’s interested glance at Caroline he was obviously curious as to her identity. Again Caroline was grateful for her escorts’ reticence. In her bright scarlet plumage, which would not have been thought worthy of so much as a second glance at home, she felt as conspicuous as a cardinal amid a flock of sparrows. She barely managed to control the impulse to pull her hood closer about her face. But her pride would not allow her to hide.
“This way.” Daniel, who was slightly in the lead with a trunk balanced on each shoulder, turned off the road to stride down a footpath that led toward the woods. Captain Rowse, carrying the third trunk on his shoulder, followed. Caroline, after one appalled glance told her where the path led, also realized that she had no choice. She trailed after them, clutching the basket closer as she picked her way along the narrow trail.
Gloomy shadows enveloped her as she took her first tentative steps into the forest; the trees were huge,
their foliage entwined like laced fingers overhead to block out the sun. Cool vines reached out to brush her skin; the very air seemed alive with twittering birds and calling animals. But the men were striding briskly ahead. Already they were nearly out of sight. Plucking up her courage—she had not come so far and dared so much to be put off by a mere woods, no matter how daunting she might find it—she hurried after them. Neither man bothered to hold branches out of her way, so Caroline, with one and sometimes both hands holding the basket, ducked and dodged the overhanging limbs as best she could. A supple sapling sprang back in Captain Rowse’s wake to strike her face; with a little cry she clapped a hand to her stinging cheek and glared after the offender, who marched on, oblivious. Then he disappeared around a bend in the path, and she was alone. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as she contemplated the various types of beasts that might at that very moment be watching her hungrily from the undergrowth. Did they have bears in Connecticut Colony, or wolves? Looking around her, she shivered. Catching her skirts up over one arm to free her feet, she almost ran after the men.
During her lifetime she had, with her father, traveled from town to town over the length and breadth of England, and not often in the lap of luxury, either. But her father had earned his living by the turn of a card or the fall of a pair of dice, and such a profession by its very nature was largely carried out within the environs of civilization. She had much experience of town life, and little practical knowledge of farms or the countryside. This wild, primitive place was totally beyond her
ken. Caroline felt her skin crawl as she glanced at the shadowy woodland around her. The conviction that she had been a fool to come had been festering inside her for weeks. Never had it been stronger than it was at this moment. But what other choice had she had? She’d been destitute, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. The only alternative had been to turn whore, and that she would not do.
Daniel had paused at the edge of a clearing. Captain Rowse was just catching up to him as Caroline, remembering her modesty, dropped her skirts and emerged from the trees behind them.
“Here we are. We’ll just leave these here”—Daniel lowered the trunks to the ground with obvious relief—“until Matt decides what’s best to do.”
“That’s sensible.” Captain Rowse spoke approvingly and set the trunk he’d been carrying down beside the other two. From their unwillingness to tote the heavy load any farther, it was clear to Caroline that they feared they might soon be lugging it back the way they had come. Her stomach churned again; they didn’t think she was welcome, and they might well be right. But surely Elizabeth, her own sister, would want her. Although they hadn’t set eyes on each other since Caroline had been a child of seven—could it really be fifteen years?
Caroline stopped a pace or so behind the men, surreptitiously straightening her hood and brushing her skirt free of the leaves and twigs that clung to it. Her first view of her destination was at an angle to encompass house, outbuildings, and the surrounding land, and was at least partly reassuring. The town dwellings
had been little more than shacks. This establishment looked both comfortable and prosperous.
The house was two stories tall, with long, narrow windows of leaded glass and a massive front door. The upper story overhung the lower in a design most likely intended to provide shelter from bad weather for the rooms below. It also seemed meant to serve as a lookout and would undoubtedly be a strategic place from which to shoot should the need arise, which, in such an unsettled land, it probably did all too often. The whole house was built of rough-hewn logs, with huge chimneys of native stone rising on both sides. Behind the house was a barn with fencing to contain a number of cows and horses. A small, shirt-sleeved boy fed chickens in the barnyard, and beyond him two men could be seen laboring in the nearest of the vast fields that had been carved out of the forest. On one side of the house a youth stirred a steaming kettle that had been suspended over a fire. A large black-and-white mongrel lay at his feet; it sprang up, barking madly, as it caught sight of Daniel, Captain Rowse, and Caroline.
“That’s Matt in yonder field.” Lifting a hand in greeting to the boy stirring the kettle, Daniel started off again with Caroline and Captain Rowse following. The boy waved back while the dog bounded toward them.
“Mind your manners, Raleigh,” Daniel scolded the dog in an indulgent tone as it darted, growling ferociously, toward Captain Rowse’s legs. The captain pushed it away with his booted foot, his expression completely unperturbed, as if he were well used to being
attacked by a dog the size of a small pony. The beast, thwarted, galloped around the three of them, barking all the while. Then, to Caroline’s horror, it turned its attention to her.
She had never had any dealings with dogs, and this particular specimen, besides being enormous, seemed possessed of an extraordinary number of sharp and glistening teeth. All of which it bared at her in a taunting doggy grin before it charged.
“Oh!” Despite her best efforts at aplomb, she could not hold back a squeal.
“ ’Twould be a pity if you were afraid of dogs,” Daniel observed, sounding mildly amused as she clutched her basket closer and whirled, presenting her back to the dreadful beast.
“Wouldn’t it?” In the normal way of things, her voice was soft, well modulated, quite melodious, in fact. More than once she had been complimented on its beauty. But in her effort to remain nonchalant as the animal caught and worried the edge of her cloak, her tone might best have been described as shrill.
Neither man made the slightest move to rescue her. Indeed, both grinned widely as they observed the unequal struggle. When the monster next sank its teeth into her flesh, would they still watch so merrily, she wondered, and came to the conclusion that they probably would. Gritting her teeth, trying to keep the lid on both her growing temper and her escalating panic, Caroline yanked cautiously at her cloak. The dog held on. The hem ripped, the dog tugged harder—and then the unthinkable happened. The flimsy catch that fastened her basket gave way as it had threatened to do
all morning, the lid lifted, and out popped a furry black head. Caroline saw, knew what was about to happen, and sought to cram the cat safely back inside, but she was too late. Millicent took only an instant to assess the situation. With a yowl she bounded over the side and away.
“What on earth …?” If there was any more to Daniel’s exclamation, Caroline didn’t hear it. After no more than a heartbeat’s worth of frozen surprise, Raleigh let go of the cloak to tear after the streaking cat. Frenzied barking mixed with Caroline’s shriek as her pet just managed to elude the dog’s teeth. Abandoning all thoughts of dignity and personal safety, Caroline dropped the basket, picked up her skirts, and sped to the rescue. But Millicent clearly had no intention of waiting for succor. She fled under the barnyard fence while Raleigh, no more than a few paces behind, leaped over it.
“Millicent! Stop!”
The cat paid no heed to her scream. Squawking chickens scattered as the animals zigzagged wildly through their midst. The boy who’d been feeding them dropped his pan of meal as Millicent darted between his legs; Raleigh swerved just in time to avoid knocking the windmilling child down. Undeterred by the near collision, the dog continued to pursue his prey with earsplitting intensity. With a shout the boy joined the chase.