“I guess you could always tell Abigail,” Jessica said, smiling maliciously. “I’m sure the Raider slips into her bedchamber at night.”
“Are you jealous?” Alex raised one eyebrow.
“Of a sneak thief? The Raider is no better than a highwayman. If he had any courage, he’d stand up and denounce Pitman.”
And hang for it, Alex thought. “So you have no idea how the Raider heard of Ben Sampson’s smuggling tea in?”
“Everyone in town knew about Ben and the tea. Even Abigail had heard of it.” She put her mug down and leaned forward. Her eyes were bright and the color in her cheeks heightened.
Alex began to sweat again.
“What if we start passing this information around? What if we tell a few people that the Golden Hind is delivering money to Pitman from the sale of Josiah’s ship? If the rumor starts at the wharf, maybe Pitman will think it came from a sailor of His Majesty’s ship.”
Alex sipped his rum and thought that maybe there was more than one Taggert who had some brains.
* * *
Jessica stayed on deck even when the sailors from the Golden Hind made lewd remarks to her. They’d been out to sea for months and the sight of so pretty a woman on the little relic docked next to them was more than their imaginations could handle. Usually, Jess took precautions and stayed away from newly arrived ships, but last evening she had made every effort to put her little ship next to the big one. It loomed over her like some fat old lady, the leering eyes of the sailors like rats at her beltline. Jess did her best to ignore them.
After Alex’s visit yesterday morning, they’d separated and started casually spreading their rumors about Pitman’s money arriving on the Hind. It hadn’t taken many tellings to irritate the people. The money was from the sale of a ship belonging to one of their own and they directed their anger at the newly arrived English sailors. Already, four fights had started and three men were in the stocks in the town square.
After starting the rumors, Jessica had sailed out of the harbor and gone shrimping. She’d trawled close to the northeastern shore where she could see the arrival of the Golden Hind, and all afternoon she’d cast and recast her net—and waited. She wasn’t sure what she planned to do, but if the Raider appeared and he needed help, she planned to help him.
A couple of times her mind rebelled at the idea of helping the man who’d so publicly humiliated her, but her desire to repay Pitman made her forget her own personal anger. If the American people didn’t start protesting the English treatment, there wouldn’t be any end to their tyranny.
The hold was half-full of squiggling shrimp before the Golden Hind had arrived and Jessica had tried her best to act nonchalant as she pushed her way into the harbor and tied up next to the big ship. She’d no more than dropped her sails before Nathaniel was there to catch her rope and tie her ship next to the square-rigger.
Nate scurried up the rope Jess tossed over the side. “You’re out late. Eleanor made me wait for you.”
Jess didn’t answer him but started watching the activity on the English ship as best she could considering her much lower position.
“Gor…” Nate said, looking at the amount of shrimp in the hold.
“Get the other kids and bag it, then take it around and sell it,” Jess snapped.
Nathaniel gave her a shrewd look. The boy saw much too much for someone of his few years.
“Don’t give me any trouble, just do it!” Jess was annoyed because she couldn’t see what was happening on the Golden Hind.
She stayed on board her stinking ship all night. When Eleanor came to the dock, Jessica barely answered her questions about why she wasn’t coming home. She slept very little, not allowing herself to go downstairs to the relative luxury of her berth, instead staying on deck, leaning against the side of the ship, a bailing pin nearby in case one of the sailors decided to do what all of them threatened.
At dawn she rose, stiff, a kink in her back, and heard the soft whinny of a horse nearby. Hanging over the side of her ship, she looked below to see a saddled horse ready and waiting.
She came fully awake. The horse had streaks of gray on its coat, but nothing could hide the sleek lines and the nervous prancing of the animal. It was the Raider’s horse.
A head appeared on the other side of the Mary Catherine. It was George Greene, Josiah’s oldest son, an angry young man of twenty-six who’d been cheated of his inheritance.
Jessica turned to him.
“You saw it, too,” George said softly, then louder, “I hear you have shrimp to sell, Mistress Jessica.” His eyes told her that they were being watched.
“Aye, George, that I do. Let me get you a bag.” Jess tore down the steps below and pulled out a burlap bag, stuffed a length of frayed rope inside and ran back up the stairs. “Will that be enough?” She stepped close to George. “Do you know anything?”
“Nothing. Father is afraid to hope. He wants Pitman dead.”
“I’d like to sail under her,” came a voice from above them.
“You’d better go,” Jess whispered. “I wish you enjoyment of the shrimp,” she said for the sailor’s benefit.
“I’ll stay with his horse. He may need me.”
Jess nodded and turned away.
Suddenly, above them came a shout and then the sounds of unfamiliar ruckus.
“It’s him!” George said and the hope in his voice was what would usually be reserved for the second coming.
“Go to his horse,” Jess commanded. “He may need help.” She ran up the short ladder to the upper deck, put her foot in the rigging as if to climb but never got the chance.
From the high ship rail of the Golden Hind, the Raider swung down on a rope tied to the top of the mainmast. The sunlight flashing off this man, a bound chest under his left arm, effectively stopped all movement in the vicinity.
For a moment everything seemed to stop moving. The tall Raider lithely swung across the ship, slipped down the rope and came to land in front of Jessica on the upper deck.
His eyes caught hers.
“You got the money,” she breathed, her eyes happy and alive.
He caught her to him with one strong arm and kissed her half-open mouth.
Jessica was too startled to be able to move away from him, but stood there while he kissed her. But when he pulled away from her as quickly as he’d come to her, she no longer thought of why they were there. She was aware only that this stranger had dared to kiss her. She drew back her hand to strike him, but he caught her wrist and boldly kissed her palm. “Good morning, Mistress Jessica,” he said, his lips smiling in a knowing way.
The next minute he was gone, heading toward the rope slung over the side of the ship.
But she had no precious time to waste on anger. She had to help the Raider escape. If the Golden Hind’s sailors were dumbfounded, her captain was not. Jess could hear orders being shouted and above her was movement as four men prepared to board her ship.
She wasn’t fool enough to try to stop His Majesty’s sailors, but perhaps she could delay them. She grabbed a coil of rope at her feet, rope as big around as her arm, and tossed an end to George who’d reboarded at the first sound of excitement. The Raider disappeared over the side of the ship.
Four sailors came scurrying across the deck of Jessica’s ship, close on the heels of the Raider.
George pulled his end of the rope, Jess half-hitched hers to the railing and all four sailors went sprawling just as they heard the sound of hoofbeats on the wharf.
“Take them!” she heard the captain shout from the ship above them and the next moment rough hands eagerly clutched her body. The men grinned when their hands brushed against her breasts and buttocks.
She was pulled off her ship, onto the wharf and across the gangplank of the Golden Hind, then shoved to her knees before the English captain, with George beside her.
The captain, a short, heavyset man in his fifties, looked down his nose at her. “So this is how the ladies dress i
n the Colonies?” he sneered. “Take them below.”
Jess was separated from George and thrown into a filthy little room in the hold of the ship. There were two inches of slimy water on the floor and she was sure the room had once been a repository for pig manure.
Within five minutes, she felt as if she had always been in this dank, dark place. She couldn’t move without kicking up the sediment on the hold floor. There was no bench to sit on, no way to get out of the filth.
She stood there, the water quickly seeping through the leather of her boots, and waited. She didn’t regret helping the Raider but now she thought of the consequences of her actions.
Hours later, when the door to the cell was opened, Jessica was prepared to meet a hangman.
Instead, standing on deck was Alexander, resplendent in yellow satin, the sunlight hitting his big belly and reflecting into her eyes. She put her hand up against the glare.
She couldn’t see Alexander very well, but she could feel his anger all around her.
“Come!” was all he commanded, in a low, seething voice.
“I—” Jess began, but he shoved her shoulder and pushed her toward the gangplank.
Jess tried to keep her head up as she passed the crowd that had gathered on both sides of the wharf.
Alex climbed onto a wagon seat without so much as looking at Jessica. As she weakly climbed up beside him, he flicked the reins to the horses and they started down the street.
“What are you so mad about?” she shouted over the noise of the wagon, but he didn’t answer her.
He drove her across a dirt road to the back of the forest, then up a hill. She knew there was a spring nearby.
“Get down,” he commanded when he’d stopped.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” she answered.
Alex, fighting his way around his belly, walked to her side of the wagon. “I had to bribe your way out of a hangman’s noose, that’s what. You were playing with the English navy when you helped the Raider. That captain planned to use you and George as examples and hang you. He figured that’d stop the Raider.”
“Oh,” Jessica said, getting down. “I thought they might want to do that. Why are we here?”
Alex calmed his voice. “Eleanor sent you clean clothes and there’s soap and towels. You smell worse than you did before you went into that cell.” He put his handkerchief to his nose. “And Eleanor thought you should stay out of sight for a few days.”
“Why didn’t she come with you?” Jess picked up the bundle from the back of the wagon.
“It seems she had a little collision with a bucket of washwater. I think she told Nick something to the effect that he wasn’t too good to do some washing. I believe Nick thought otherwise.”
Jessica gaped at him. “So that overgrown boy tossed dirty water on my sister?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“I’ll give him a piece of my mind,” she said, getting back on the wagon.
Alex caught her arm. “Eleanor has already told him what she thought of him and I’m sure he need not hear anymore. The problem now is you. You badly need a bath.”
Reluctantly, Jessica followed him up the hill to the spring and its little pool.
Alex seated himself, his back to Jessica, while she began to disrobe. She couldn’t see the way the sweat began trickling down his neck or how clammy his palms grew. “Tell me what happened,” he said, managing to make his voice sound somewhat normal.
As unemotionally as she could, Jessica began to tell how she’d spent yesterday shrimping and watching for the Golden Hind. Only part of her mind was on her story, the other part was wondering why Eleanor had sent this man with instructions to take her to bathe. In other circumstances it would have been unthinkable to remove her clothing with a man nearby—but to her, Alexander Montgomery was so far removed from being a man that it seemed quite natural. Now, if instead that awful Raider were here…
“Go on,” Alex prompted, wiping his palms on a relatively dry patch of grass. “What happened after the Raider appeared?”
Jessica soaped her toes. “I hate that man! I hate him! There I was, risking my neck to save his and once again he makes a fool of me.”
“I heard that he kissed you.”
“If you can call it that. He tried to anyway. And after what I’d done for him. My arms are sore from hauling shrimp nets and he treats me like that. I ought to have snatched the mask from his face and shown everyone who he was. He deserved that.”
“But you didn’t,” Alex said quietly. “Instead, you threw a rope and stopped the pursuit of the king’s men. He wouldn’t have escaped if it hadn’t been for you.”
“And look how he repays me. I didn’t do it for him, I can assure you. I did it for Josiah Greene.”
“Did you hear that the Raider gave the money to Josiah? And Josiah left town immediately.”
“With George?”
“No.” Alex hesitated. “Tomorrow George is to be given twenty lashes with a lead-tipped cat-o’-nine-tails.”
Jess didn’t breathe for a moment. “That could kill him,” she whispered. Quickly, she began to rinse the soap from her hair. “Alex, we have to do something to help him.”
“No, ‘we’ don’t and especially not you. You already have a black mark against you after today. Whatever you do, Jess, you can’t help the Raider again.”
“Don’t worry, the only help he’ll get from me is to lead him up the hangman’s steps.”
“Really angry at him, are you? Did you ever think that maybe he thought his kiss was a way to say ‘thank you’?”
“No,” Jess said, moving to stand before him, tying the front of her dress. It was a faded, worn, green cotton and the ties were fragile with age. The dress had belonged to her mother, then to Eleanor before Jess acquired it. “I think he believes himself to be what every woman wants.”
She sat down in front of him and began to use a wooden comb Alex had brought to pull the tangles from her hair.
“And he’s not what you want? Here, turn around and let me do that. You won’t have any hair left in a minute.” Alex began to gently comb her long hair.
“Most certainly not.” She leaned her head back, enjoying the feel of his combing.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a home and kids of your own, Jess?”
“And who’ll marry a Taggert? All the men are afraid they’ll have to raise Nathaniel. You know what this town needs?” She turned to look at him. “Adam. Or Kit. Yes, Kit could do it.”
“My brothers?” Alex asked, aghast. “What exactly do you think my brothers could do?”
“Save us. I mean, save the town. They wouldn’t allow Pitman to run the Montgomery house. They’d throw him out on his ear.”
“And risk the wrath of the king?” Alex was incredulous.
“They’d find a way around it. Somehow they’d manage to save Warbrooke, free your sister and get rid of Pitman. There are other customs officers, you know.”
Alex leaned back against the grass, picked a daisy and held it to his nose. “So, you think my brothers could do all that?” He used the flower to conceal the way his mouth was tightening.
“Adam or Kit could, I’m sure. When I was a little girl, I used to…”
“What?” Alex asked lazily.
Jess smiled dreamily. “I used to imagine being married to Adam. He was always such a handsome man, so proud, so intelligent—and he had eyes like an eagle’s. You don’t know where he is now, do you?”
“Hell,” he said, then added quickly, “I’m sorry, I pricked my finger. The last I heard, Adam was on his way to Cathay and Kit was fighting in a war somewhere.”
“I don’t guess Marianna’s letters requesting help will reach them then.”
“No, I’m the only one who’s coming.”
“Oh,” Jess said, suddenly realizing how she must be making Alex feel. He didn’t seem able to help the way he was. “Alex, have you ever thought of getting some exercise? Maybe if you helped me h
aul shrimp for a few days, maybe you’d lose some weight.”
Alexander shuddered delicately. “No, thank you. Are you ready to leave? It’s getting chilly here.”
“We haven’t talked about what we’re going to do about George.”
“There’s nothing we can do. George will heal. I had to put some money in that captain’s hands to keep him from hanging George. Better to lose a little skin from his back than to lose his life. Tomorrow you’re to remain home during the flogging.” He gave her a sideways look. “Maybe the Raider will save George.”
She snorted. “And who will save the Raider? He’s incompetent at best. His arrogance is going to get someone killed.”
Maybe me, Alex thought.
Chapter Six
ALEXANDER looked about him cautiously. It had been difficult rescuing George Greene from under the whip. Nicholas had helped by setting up his servants at the back of the crowd and, just as Alex, dressed as the Raider, was ready to ride from his hiding place, Nick gave the order to fire. In the ensuing confusion, Alex was able to gallop through the people, pull George into the saddle behind him and escape unharmed. It’d taken him a lot longer to escape the English soldiers, but they didn’t know the area and it had been a child’s game of hide-and-seek to evade them.
Josiah Greene was waiting at the edge of the forest with horses and passage on a ship traveling south. “I knew you’d come,” Josiah said. “I knew you’d not let my boy be whipped for saving you.”
Alex was a little disconcerted that Josiah had so easily predicted the Raider’s actions and where he would enter the forest, because if Josiah guessed, perhaps next time an army would be waiting for him. Without speaking, the Raider released George and disappeared into the trees.
It was amazing how soon he’d become a symbol of hope to these people, Alex thought. Already, they were depending on the Raider to save them from any injustices. All except Jessica Taggert, that is.
Adam could save the town, Alex thought, remembering Jessica’s words. Or Kit could. Have you ever thought of losing weight, Alex? He’d like to show her just exactly how much he weighed. Eleanor sent him out with clean clothes for Jessica and orders to see that she bathed. Neither of those women seemed to have any idea he was a man. Jessica disrobed when he was standing but a few feet away from her. And that time he had held her by the legs so she could reach that rotten old net of hers! That time he hadn’t thought he was going to live through it.