“Please, Janie, it isn’t so bad, really. The doctor said we wouldn’t be bothered by the men since I’m married to Mr. Armstrong, and I know they won’t hurt you. I’m sure it can be annulled once we get to America.”
“Me!” Janie said angrily. “I should have known those scum would threaten you with me. And you don’t even know me!” She put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder. “Whatever you want from Clay—an annulment, whatever—I’ll see that you get it. I am going to give him a piece of my mind like he’s never heard before. I swear that he’s going to make everything up to you—all the wasted time you’ve spent going back and forth across the ocean, the money you saved for the dress shop, and—” Suddenly, she stopped in midsentence and gazed amusedly at the trunks along the wall.
Nicole started to sit up. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Janie’s broad face broke into a grin of pure devilment. “ ‘Buy the best, Janie,’ he said to me. There he was, standing on the dock, looking at it like he does everything, as if he owned it, and he was telling me to buy the very best.”
“What are you talking about?”
Janie looked as if she were in a trance, staring at the trunks as if mesmerized. She took a step toward them. “He said nothing was too good for his wife,” Janie said as the smile on her face deepened. “Oh, Clayton Armstrong, you are going to pay dearly for this.”
Nicole swung her legs over the side of the bed and stared at Janie in puzzlement. Whatever was she talking about?
As Janie began to unfasten the ropes that held the trunks to the wall, she kept talking. “Clay gave me a bag of gold and told me to buy the very best fabrics available, the most expensive trims. He said that I could help his wife make dresses on the long journey,” she chuckled. “The furs could be worked by a furrier in America.”
“Furs?” Nicole remembered the letter. “Janie, those fabrics are for Bianca, not me. We couldn’t make them up for me; they would never fit her.”
“I have no intention of making clothes for some woman I’ve never seen,” she said, struggling with a knot. “Clay said the clothes were for his wife, and as far as I know, you’re the only one he has.”
“No! It isn’t right. I couldn’t take something meant for someone else.”
Janie reached under the pillow of the top bunk and withdrew a large ring of keys. “This is for me, not you. Just once, I’d like to see something Clayton couldn’t buy or have just for the asking. He has every girl and woman in Virginia making fools of themselves over him, yet he has to pick some woman in England who I ain’t sure even wants him.” As she unlocked a trunk and carefully raised the flat lid, she smiled down at the contents.
Nicole couldn’t help being curious. She walked beside Janie and looked down into the trunk, gasping at the loveliness there. It had been years since she’d seen silk and she’d never seen silk of such quality.
“The English are afraid of what they call the lower classes, so they pretend they’re part of them. In America, everybody’s equal. If you can afford to have pretty things, you don’t have to be afraid to wear them.” She withdrew a shimmering, delicate length of sapphire blue silk, twisted it around one of Nicole’s shoulders, drew it down her back, and tied it loosely about her waist. “What do you think of that?”
Holding it to the light for a moment, Nicole rubbed it against her cheek and moved her body so she could feel it on her bare arms. It was a sensual, sinful pleasure.
Janie was opening another trunk. “And how about this for a sash?” She withdrew a wide satin ribbon of midnight blue and wrapped it around Nicole’s waist. The whole trunk seemed to be full of ribbons and sashes.
Another trunk was opened. “A shawl, my lady?” she laughed, and before Nicole could speak she withdrew at least a dozen shawls—paisley from Scotland, cashmere from England, cotton from India, lace from Chantilly.
Nicole was gasping at the abundance and the beauty while Janie unlocked trunk after trunk. There were velvets, lawns, percales, soft wools, mohair, swans-down, shalloon, prunella, tammy, tulle, organdy, crepe, the delicate French laces.
Somewhere in the midst of all the lush wealth Janie was flinging about, Nicole started laughing. It was all too much. As she sat down on the bed and Janie started tossing the fabrics on top of her, both women started laughing, wrapping scarlets and turquoises, greens and pinks, around themselves. It was a silly, hilarious time.
“But you haven’t seen the best yet,” Janie laughed as she pulled long pieces of pink tulle and black Normandy lace off her head. Almost reverently, she opened a large trunk at the back of the pile and lifted an enormous fur muff from the trunk. “Know what fur that is?” she asked as she placed it in Nicole’s lap.
Nicole buried her face in the long, deep fur, ignoring the six colors of silk wrapped around her arm and the transparent India gauze across her throat. There was only one fur that rich, that dark—so deep, so thick you could almost drown in it. “Sable,” she said quietly, reverently.
“Yes,” Janie agreed. “Sable.”
Holding the muff, Nicole looked about her. The little room was full of colors that flashed or cried, shouted or lay still in sulky sexuality, all seeming to be alive and breathing. Nicole wanted to roll in them and hug them to her. There had been no beauty in her life since she had left her parents’ chateau.
“Well, where do you want to start?”
Nicole looked at Janie and burst out laughing. “With all of it!” she laughed, hugging the muff to her and kicking six ostrich feathers into the air.
While she removed a chiffon shawl from around her legs, Janie lifted some magazines from a trunk. “Heidledoff’s Gallery of Fashion,” she said. “Just choose your weapon, dear Mrs. Armstrong, and I shall show you my trunk of steel—pins and needles, that is.”
“Oh, Janie, really, I can’t.” Her voice held no conviction as she rubbed the sable muff along her arm, thinking she just might sleep with it.
“I’m not listening to another word. Now, if you think you can spare one arm out of that thing, let’s put these back and get started. After all, we only have a month or so.”
Chapter 3
IT WAS EARLY AUGUST OF 1794 WHEN THE SLEEK LITTLE packet arrived in the Virginia harbor. Both Janie and Nicole hung over the starboard rail, looking with awe toward the dock that pressed against the dense forest’s edge, feeling as if they’d been freed from prison. For the last week of the voyage, they’d talked of nothing but food—fresh food. They spoke of vegetables and fruit, all the many plants that would be ripening soon, and how they planned to eat some of everything, all of it topped with fresh cream and butter. Blackberries were what Janie wanted most, while Nicole just wanted to see green living things growing from the sweet-smelling earth.
They’d spent the long days of confinement sewing, and there were very few of the luscious fabrics that hadn’t been made into a garment for either Janie or Nicole. Now, Nicole wore a frock of muslin embroidered with tiny violets, with a row of violet ribbon around the hem. Entwined in her hair was more violet ribbon. Her arms were bare, and she thoroughly enjoyed the warmth of the setting sun on her arms.
The women had talked while they sewed. Nicole had been the listener, refusing to tell anyone about the time when her parents had been taken and, worse, when her grandfather had been torn from her. She told Janie about her childhood in her family’s chateau, making the palace seem like an ordinary country house, and she told of the year she and her grandfather had spent with the miller’s family. Janie laughed when Nicole spoke quite technically about the quality of stone-ground grain.
But most of the talking had been done by Janie. She told of her own childhood on a poor little farm a few miles from Arundel Hall, as Clayton’s house was called. She was ten when Clay was born, and she talked of giving the boy piggyback rides. Janie had been in her late teens during the American Revolution. Her father, like so many Virginia farmers, had planted all his fields in tobacco. When the English market was closed, he went bankrup
t. For several years, he and Janie had lived in Philadelphia, a place Janie hated. When her father had died, she returned to the place she’d always considered home—Virginia.
She said that on her return she had found Arundel Hall greatly changed. Clay’s mother and father had died of cholera several years before. Clay’s older brother James had married Elizabeth Stratton, the daughter of the overseer of the Armstrong plantation. Then, while Clay was in England, James and Elizabeth had both been killed in a tragic accident.
The little boy Janie had known was gone. In his place was an arrogant, demanding young man who was a demon for work. While one plantation after another in Virginia went bankrupt, Arundel Hall thrived and grew.
“Look,” Nicole said and pointed out at the water. “Isn’t that the captain?” The heavyset man sat in a little rowboat with one of the sailors working the oars.
“I think he’s going to that other ship.”
Several yards away from the packet was an enormous frigate, its sides bulging with two rows of cannons. There were many men carrying bundles up and down a wide gangplank. As the women watched, the captain stepped out onto the dock, several minutes ahead of the packet, which was still slowly maneuvering itself into the harbor. The captain climbed the steep gangplank and stepped onto the frigate’s deck, walking toward the aft end of the ship.
The women were quite a distance away, and the men on deck looked small. “That’s Clay!” Janie suddenly yelled.
Nicole looked in wonder at the man the captain was speaking to, but he looked like all the other men from this distance. “How can you tell?”
Janie laughed. She was so glad to be home. “Once you know Clay, you’ll understand,” she said, turning away abruptly and leaving Nicole alone.
Straining her eyes to see the man who was her husband, Nicole nervously twisted the wedding band on her left hand.
“Here,” Janie said and thrust a spyglass into her hand. “Take a good look.”
Even through the glass, the men were small, but she could feel the presence of the man talking to the captain. He had one foot on a bale of cotton, the other on the deck. He leaned forward, his forearms on his bent knee. Even bending, he was taller than the captain. He wore snug trousers of light brown and black leather boots to his knees. His waist was circled by a three-inch-wide black leather belt. His shirt was gathered just past the shoulders, open at the throat, and the sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing brown forearms. She couldn’t tell much about his face at that distance, but his brown hair was loosely pulled back and tied behind his neck.
Putting the glass down, she turned to Janie.
“Oh no you don’t,” Janie said. “I’ve seen that expression too many times. Just because a man is big and handsome is no reason for you to give in to him. He’s gonna be awful mad when he finds out what happened, and if you don’t stand up to him, he’ll blame all of it on you.”
Nicole smiled at her friend, her eyes dancing. “You certainly never mentioned that he was big and handsome,” she teased.
“I never said he was ugly either. Now, I want you to go back to the cabin and wait because, if I know Clay, he’ll be here in minutes. I want to get to him first and explain just what that scoundrel of a captain did. Now scoot!”
Obeying her friend, Nicole returned to the dark little cabin, feeling almost nostalgic about leaving it. She and Janie had become quite close in the last forty days.
Her eyes had just adjusted to the dim light when suddenly the cabin door swung open. A man who was unmistakably Clayton Armstrong burst into the room, his broad shoulders filling the space until Nicole felt as if she were standing in a closet with him.
Clay didn’t wait long enough to give his eyes time to adjust. He saw only the outline of his wife. One long arm shot out and pulled her to him.
Nicole started to protest, but then his mouth found hers and she couldn’t protest. His mouth was clean-tasting, strong, demanding yet gentle, but she made a weak attempt to push away from him. His arms about her tightened, and he lifted her so that her toes were barely touching the floor, his chest hard against her womanly softness. She could feel her heart beginning to pound.
The only time she’d been kissed like this was by Frank, the first mate, but there was no comparison! He turned his head, moved his hand to hold the back of her head, making her feel as if she were fainting, drowning. Her arms went about his neck and pulled him closer to her. His breath was on her cheek.
As he moved from her mouth to her cheek, she felt his teeth on her earlobe, and her knees turned to water. His tongue touched the cord in her neck.
Quickly, his arm swept under her knees, lifting her off the floor and wrapping her body around his. Dazed, Nicole was aware only that she wanted more and more of him as she turned her head back, offering her lips to him again.
He kissed her hungrily, and she returned his passion. When he moved to the bed, holding her body next to him, it seemed natural. She wanted only to touch him, to keep him near her. He pulled her down on the bed with him, his lips never leaving hers, throwing one strong, heavy leg across hers, his hand running up and down her bare arm. When he touched her breast through her clothes, she moaned and arched her body toward his.
“Bianca,” he whispered in her ear. “Sweet, sweet Bianca.”
Nicole did not come to her senses suddenly; her passion was too strong for that. Only slowly did she become aware of where she was, who she was—and who she was not.
“Please,” she said, one hand pushing against his chest, but her voice was weak and strained.
“It’s all right, love,” he said, his voice deep and clear, his breath warm against her cheek. His hair was against her face, smelling of the earth she so longed to touch again. Momentarily, she closed her eyes.
“I’ve waited so long for you, my love,” he said. “Months, years, centuries. Now we will be together always.”
The words were what made Nicole awaken. They were intimate words of love meant for another woman. She could believe that the caresses that had made her mind go blank were hers, but those words belonged to another.
“Clay,” she said quietly.
“Yes, love,” he answered as he kissed the soft skin around her ear. His big, strong body was beside her, half on top of her. Somehow, she felt as if she’d been waiting for this all her life. It seemed so natural to pull him closer to her, and it flashed through her mind that she should let him find out the truth in the morning. Instantly, she discarded the idea as selfish.
“Clay, I am not Bianca. I am Nicole.” She hesitated about telling him she was his wife.
For a moment he kept kissing her, but his head jerked up, and she felt his body stiffen as he stared at her in the darkness. In one movement, he was out of the low bunk bed. One minute he was in Nicole’s arms, and the next they were empty. She dreaded the next few minutes.
He seemed to be familiar with the cabin, or one like it, because he knew where he would find a candle, and the little room quickly blazed with light.
Blinking rapidly as she sat up, Nicole had her first good look at her husband. Janie had been right about his arrogance. She could see it in his face. His hair was lighter than she’d thought, the rich brown of it streaked with sunlight. Heavy brows shaded dark eyes above a large, chiseled nose that thrust over his mouth, which she knew to be soft but was now drawn into a tight, angry line. His jaw was strong and hard, the muscles working.
“All right, just who the hell are you, and where is my wife?” he demanded.
Nicole’s head was still foggy. He seemed to be able to turn their passion off rather quickly, but not so Nicole. “There has been a terrible mistake. You see—”
“I see someone else in my wife’s cabin, that’s what.” He held the candle aloft and looked at the trunks along the wall. “Those are Armstrong property, I believe.”
“Yes, they are. If you would let me, I can explain. Bianca and I were together when—”
“Is she here? You’re saying yo
u traveled with her?”
It was difficult to explain when he would not let her finish even a sentence. “Bianca is not here. She did not come with me. If you would listen, I—”
Setting the candle down on the cabinet, he moved closer, towering over her, legs wide apart, hands on his hips. “She didn’t come with you! What the hell is that supposed to mean? I just paid the captain of this ship for performing a proxy marriage and for transporting my wife to America. Now I want to know where she is!”
Nicole also stood up. It didn’t daunt her that her head reached only to the top of his shoulder or that the tiny cabin pressed them close together, but now they were more like enemies than lovers. “I have been trying to explain, but your complete lack of manners prevents any communication; therefore—”
“I want an explanation, not a school teacher’s lecture!”
Nicole was becoming angry. “You rude, boorish—! All right, I’ll explain. I am your wife. That is, if you are Clayton Armstrong. I have no idea, since your rudeness precludes any form of conversation.”
Clay took a step toward her. “You are not my Bianca.”
“I am happy to say I am not. How in the world she could agree to marry an insufferable—” She stopped, not wanting to get angry. She’d had more than a month to adjust to being Mrs. Clayton Armstrong, but he’d boarded the ship expecting Bianca and had gotten a stranger instead.
“Mr. Armstrong, I’m sorry about all this. I really can explain.”
He backed away from her, sitting down on a trunk. “How did you find out that the captain hadn’t seen Bianca?” he asked quietly.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I’m quite sure you do. You must have heard somehow that he didn’t know her, so you decided to substitute yourself for Bianca. What did you think, that one woman was as good as another? I’ll say one thing, you certainly know how to greet a man. Did you think you’d make me forget my Bianca by substituting your lovely little body for hers?”