Defiantly, the man dismounted and sauntered toward Kit.
“You have no power over me, Sparhawk.
Your Anglais laws mean nothing, just as your Anglais borders and your Anglais treaties mean nothing, either. You are the interlopers, the intruders, here merely by the whim of Nouveau France, and when she wishes to be rid of you, she will.”
Every muscle in Kit’s body tensed. He hated Robillard’ hated him with a passion that had been handed down from his father.
“This land belongs to us, and to England, Robillard, and there’s an end to it.”
Robillard laughed, his velvet-covered belly shaking.
“You talk bold, but you know the truth. Someday I will own your land, Sparhawk. I have offered you a fair price for it, and like your father, you were too stupide to agree. So I will try other ways, eh? I will take it fora belle France, and see you mewling Anglais at last gone from my woods.”
The Frenchman was close enough that Kit could smell the burgundy on his breath, but he was not so foolish as to judge the man drunk.
“I don’t discuss business on the Sabbath, Robillard, with you or any man. If you have anything to say to me other than your customary empty threats, you may call on me tomorrow at Plumstead. But now, you will leave
“N W
Wickhamton.” Kit’s eyes narrowed, of , Robillard. I want you gone now.”
As he spoke, Jonathan had come to stand beside Kit, and Dianna wondered how the Frenchman could dare to face both Sparhawk brothers. The tension in the air was palpable; the rest of the congregation stood frozen, watching. She knew that neither Kit nor Jonathan was armed; she had seen the long rifles they always carded left in the back of the church. Robillard, too, had left his gun on his saddle. But she still had a sick feeling that something very bad was about to happen.
She wasn’t wrong.
“Fah, Sparhawk, you insult me!” Robillard spat in the dirt before Kit.
“Which should frighten me more, eh? Your imbdcile warnings or your crippled brother?” With both hands he began to scratch his belly, or so it seemed to Dianna. But in that instant Kit was on him, knocking the Frenchman onto his back and pinning him with the length of his own body. The blade of Robillard’s knife glittered as it slid harmlessly from his open hand across the packed dirt. A murmur of exclamations swept around the others as Jonathan bent to collect it.
It was the other knife that held Dianna’s attention, the one Kit held poised across the Frenchman’s throat. The blade was long, the hilt carved from horn, and the ease and swiftness with which Kit handled it shocked her. His eyes were hard, his mouth a grim slash, and Dianna realized how ruthless a man had to be to survive in this land. If he’d had to, Kit would have slit Robillard’s throat. And what was worse was knowing that the Frenchman would have done the same.
Slowly Dianna let her fingers uncurl and release the apron she’d clutched into a knot, and she followed the others back into the church as Jonathan and Kit shoved Robillard toward his horse. In England, gentlemen did not scuffle in the dirt. Disputes were not settled with knives. But everything was different here. Civility was a luxury, hesitation a weakness that invited death.
Oh, Lord, how was she going to survive in such a place?
“I would’ve gone if I’d known there was going t’be a fight,” said Asa sadly as Dianna cleaned the plates from their supper. Mercy was already in bed in the loft, asleep, worn out after the day’s excitement.
“Kit’ sa rare man with a knife, an’ Robillard’s cunning enough t’make it a good match. I’m sorry t’miss it.”
“Even if you’d been there, you might have missed it all if you’d bunked an eye. It was over that fast. I don’t understand why they had to fight at all.”
Asa snorted.
“Ye don’t waste words with a scoundrel like Robillard. FrenChies like him, don’t understand’ em Annie. He’s been a thorn in the’ side of the’ Sparhawks for twenty years, always a-yammerin’ about English land belongin’ to the’ priests an’ the King of’ France instead. Kit treated him no worsen he deserved.”
“Perhaps. But he might have picked a better place and time to do it.” Dianna was still unsettled by the fight and didn’t wish to discuss it again. She gave the table one last pass with the towel, and then sat across from Asa, her hands clasped before her.
“Asa, I don’t know what Captain Welles told you about me,” she began.
“You needed someone to watch over Mercy and chose me, and I’m grateful.
But I’m not exactly what you wanted. For one, I can’t cook.”
Sucking on his pipe with his head angled back, Asa studied her through half-closed eyes.
“Supper tonight was fine. More’n fine.”
“I didn’t make it. Hester Holcomb did.” Dianna smiled ruefully.
“Hester has offered to teach me cooking and such, things I need to know to be useful to you and Mercy. But I’ll have to go to Plumstead, and I’ll have to take Mercy with me.”
Asa merely listened, watching her through the tobacco haze.
“I know you don’t like Kit Sparhawk, but I’ll be there to watch Mercy,” Dianna plunged onward, from his silence expecting him to say no.
“And it will only be until I can make do on my own.”
Still considering, Asa nodded slowly before answering.
“Hester be a good woman. She’ll learn ye well. The pair of’ ye will keep the’ lass safe enough.”
He pushed back the chair, stretching his arms over his head with a cracking in his joints.
“An’ truth be, Jeremiah an’ I be headin’ upriver for a fortnight in the morning. Knowin’ Mercy an’ ye be wit’ Hester will keep me from won’yin’. But ye bring her back here at night, mind? This be her home, an’ I don’t want Kit puttin’ other ideas in her head.”
Dianna nodded.
“Asa, there is one other thing.”
“I’m not a-worryin’ you’ll burn down the’ house, if that be it,” he said mildly.
“Nay, not that.” Dianna blushed, and looked down at her hands.
“I want to know about Kit and Mercy. I heard what you told him about replacing the one that was lost. Mercy is wary of me and she doesn’t believe that I want to be her friend. If you know something about her that might help me—” Asa rose abruptly.
“There’s nothin’ ye need to know, girl,” he said sharply, “Don’t ask questions about the’ dead that can only hurt them that still live, mind. There’s things that happened long past that be better forgotten.”
A little gust of cold night air blew down the chimney, and for a moment the fire flared more brightly.
Slowly Dianna lowered her head to her hands and stared into the flames. Like it or not, she had her answer.
During her first week working beside Hester at Plumstead, Dianna found it easy enough to keep Mercy away from Kit, for not once did they see him.
He was always gone before they arrived: meeting with the grist miller about the grind for the winter wheat or with the saw miller about the pine planking he was shipping to Barbados; overseeing the plowing of the outer fields or the grafting in the orchards; or conferring with the other officers of the Wickhamton trainband about defenses for the outermost farms. After seven months away from home, explained Hester, there was much that demanded Kit’s attention. And, she added with a wink, much to keep him out of the path of Constance Lindsey.
But on Friday, Constance intercepted him at last by the river warehouse, and reluctantly he had given over the day to riding with her. It was late afternoon before the pair returned to Plumstead. Constance’s trilling laughter caught Dianna’s ear as she peeled turnips in the kitchen, and she paused to watch them walking through the yard, Constance’s arm looped familiarly through Kit’s as they led their horses to the trough Hester followed Dianna’s glance and harmmphed.
“She may think she’s caught him, but there’s narya chance Kit will be pulled along like the’ horse.”
“She’s very beautiful,” said Dianna wistfully.
Constance wore a lavender riding habit closely tailored to display her figure, and a matching tricorn hat tipped artfully over one eye.
“An’ very stupid, t’come chasing after Kit this way.” For emphasis Hester gave an extra whack with her cleaver.
“Don’t know why Kit didn’t send her back downriver with Jonathan on Tuesday.”
“Jonathan’s gone?” Dianna asked with surprise.
She had assumed he was still at Plumstead, merely making himself as scarce as his brother.
“Only the’ chance t’bedevil poor Kit with that woman brought him back. He’s been landlocked too long with that bad leg to stay away from the Prosperity more’n he must. So he’s the brother you fancy, eh? Nay, don’t be shy about it. Every lass in the valley takes to one or tother of ‘em. Though I’d warrant that jade out there cares more for the fortune than the man, more fool she!”
“Are the Sparhawks wealthy?” asked Dianna, glad to divert Hester’s attention from her own feelings and the fact that she’d guessed quite wrongly about the brothers.
“Aye, they own enough of the’ land in these parts t’start their own country, if they’d a mind. An’ with Jonathan’s trading an’ the’ mills an’ shops that Kit’s begun, along with the’ tenants, why, they’d make their grandfather, the’ one that come over with Gov’ner Winthrop, prouder’n daylight if he’d lived t’see it.”
It was hard for Dianna to comprehend that the Sparhawks could be so prosperous and yet still wish to work so hard. In England no gentlemen ever worked if he could help it. Even her Uncle, with his shipping firm, spent more time at the gaming table than in his counting house. And there was her own poor, dear father, for whom making money was as much a mystery as alchemy. But then she looked down to the turnip in her hands and smiled wryly to herself. In England no lady would do such scullery work herself, either.
“But if one o’them don’t take a wife soon,” continued Hester, shaking her head, “an’ get a son or two, then th’ whole thing will get carved among th’ sisters Oh, not that they aren’t good girls, Bess an’ Grace an’ Amy, but th’ land would pass to their husbands an’ away from the’ Sparhawks. I don’t want t’see that day, nay, I don’t.”
Dianna thought of Mercy, and wondered if Kit would acknowledge her openly if she’d been a boy.
Surely Hester, who treated the Sparhawks like the family she didn’t have, must know the truth. Yet it seemed odd to Dianna that she could speak so freely of Kit and children if she did.
Hester poured water over the vegetables already in the kettle, then handed the empty bucket to Dianna.
“Here, lass, be a lamb, an’ fetch this full for me.”
Even empty, the oak bucket was heavy and Dianna carried it, swinging before her, with both hands. The well was around the front of the house, but as she came ‘round the corner, she stopped at the sound of Constance’s voice. She and Kit were sitting on the benches before the front door, and Dianna was reluctant to interrupt. She was trying to think of an excuse that Hester would accept if she retreated without the water when Constance began to sing.
Or at least Dianna guessed that was what the other woman’s yowling was intended to be. She barely recognized the song, an old ballad with a new setting that had been quite popular at court two years ago.
As Constance’s off-key rendition wandered farther and farther away from the melody, Dianna’s smile grew wider. She didn’t have blue eyes like Constance or a lavender riding habit, but her singing voice was pure gold. She waited until Constance had come to the sorry end of the song, and then began it herself as she nonchalantly rounded the corner of the house and walked toward the well, ignoring the two on the bench.
Lowering the well’s bucket on the sweep, she let her voice expand with the bittersweet minor notes, the tale of a shepherdess’s lost love. As the notes floated into the warm spring air, she forgot her task and her intended audience, too, and lost herself in the pleasure of the music. When the song was done she smiled contentedly to herself until Kit’s applause startled her back to the present. With a little gasp of surprise she spun around and immediately locked eyes with the furious Constance.
“Where might a wench like you have learned that song?” she demanded angrily.
“Indeed, the music was just brought to me personally on the Prosperity.”
From the corner of her eye Dianna saw that Kit was trying not to laugh, one hand over his mouth, and she did not dare look directly at him for fear of giggling herself.
“Aye, madam, the music might have been brought on the Prosperity by Master Sparhawk,” Dianna said, her silvery eyes glinting mischievously, “but then, I was, too.”
“But that air is in the very latest fashion at court!”
Constance sputtered.
Dianna shrugged.
“Two seasons ago, at the very least. I was in attendance when it was introduced at Lord Rathburn’s Twelfth Night masque.”
Constance looked down her nose scornfully.
“Of all the impudence! Truly, Kit, you must have the baggage whipped for such lies! However could a common Wickhamton serving girl like you be at Lord Rathbum’s entertainments?”
“The twists of fortune,” explained Kit, “fortune both good and bad, and nothing more. Would you say otherwise, Dianna?”
At last, over Constance’s shoulder, he caught Dianna’s eye and winked wickedly. His grin was wide and easy, warm with the pleasure of a shared moment. His smile reached his eyes, too, which crinkled in the corners, and for the first time Dianna felt the full force of his masculine charm. But there was more. For the first time, too, she saw admiration in his eyes and respect for her. Could one song have done so much, she wondered breathlessly?
“So it’s Dianna, is it?” Constance demanded suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at Kit.
“I won’t linger here any longer, Christopher, now that I see how things truly are, nor will I remain to be treated so insolently by this—this creature whom you refuse to discipline.” She gathered her skirts with both hands to leave, though hesitating as if she expected him to beg her to stay.
But Kit only smiled past her to Dianna.
“You can’t deny she sings a great deal better than you do, Constance,” There was an unspoken invitation in his grin, something that made Dianna’s heart race and her blood turn sweet and slow as honey. Foolishly she smiled back, oblivious to everything but the pull of those green cat’s eyes.