“HAVE YOU COME HERE TO SEE IF MY MARRIAGE PROPOSAL STILL REMAINS OPEN?” JAMIE ASKED AS HE WALKED AROUND HER, SMILING.
She couldn’t go through with it. She hated the way he scorned her with his simple words.
“I thought so,” he continued. “Now let me guess. You awoke in the middle of the night with the sudden vision that you were deeply and desperately in love with me, and you could hardly bear another night without me. No? Let’s try again. You woke up with the startling realization that you would never get such an offer again. That you would be a lady, a very rich lady, if you married me.”
“Yes!” Jassy cried vehemently. “I never pretended to love you … I never pretended to like you!”
“But you are determined now that you will marry me. A man whom you hate.”
“I don’t always hate you.” Then she emitted an impatient oath. “Why offer, then? You have no love for me.”
“I, at least, want you.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the canopied bed and he cast her upon it. He clutched the canopy rod and stared down upon her. “This is my bed, mistress. If you go through with this, you will join me here. Nightly. Are you still willing to marry me?”
The image of the dirty attic room and the death’s-head rose before her. “Yes,” she said coldly.
He laughed then and pulled her up. “You are a whore!”
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
666 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10103
Copyright © 1989 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81576-7
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
I
The Crossroads Inn
England
Winter, the Year of Our Lord 1621
The Reign of His Royal Majesty, King James I
While the cold wind whistled and raged, threatening to tear asunder the rafters of the tiny attic bedchamber, Jassy clenched her hands into fists at her sides. She didn’t feel the cold as she stared down at the frail beauty on the bed cocooned in threadbare blankets. The woman drew in a rattling breath, and suddenly Jassy became aware of her surroundings, the unpainted rafters that barely held the walls together, the smut from the candles, the ancient trunk at the foot of the bed holding their few belongings, the cold that ever seeped in upon them. Jassy swallowed and her jaw locked tightly as tears pricked her eyes.
She’ll not die like this! she swore to herself. I’ll not let her! I shall beg, borrow, or steal, but so help me God, I shall not let her die like this!
But even as Jassy silently made her vows, old Tamsyn was staring at her sadly, shaking his head just slightly, in a way not meant to be seen, and certainly not understood. But Jassy understood the motion all too well; Tamsyn had already given up all hope on Linnet Dupré.
“Quinine, girl. Quinine might help to ease her misery some, but that be all I can tell you.”
Tears welled anew in her eyes; she could not allow them to fall. Impatiently she brushed her small, work-roughened hands across her temple, raising her chin.
Tamsyn was wrong, she assured herself. He had to be wrong. What was Tamsyn but another beaten-down drunk to have found his livelihood with the rest of them at the Crossroads Inn? He claimed to have once been a physician who had even studied long ago at Oxford, but perhaps that was a lie. A lie like the dreams he had spun for her of a new day to come, of distant lands and faraway places, exotic voyages and emerald seas.
Her mother was dying. She had no time for dreams, and she dared not fall prey to despair.
“Quinine,” Jassy said briskly.
“Quinine,” Tamsyn repeated. “But ye may as well wish for the moon, Jassy, lass. The cost of a dose …”
His words trailed away, and Jassy gnawed bitterly into her lower lip. The cost for anything was dear when her mother’s wages at the inn came to no more than one gold coin and a bolt of cloth a year.
And when she was paid nothing herself, as well. Nothing, since she apprenticed to the cook and her endeavors would not be considered worthy of coin until she had completed five years of service.
She lowered her head suddenly, whispering in desperation, “I can beg Master John—”
“Save your breath, girl,” Tamsyn warned her. “Master John will give you naught.”
And she knew that he was right. The customers ate great platters of meat with rich gravy, they drank tankards of ale and imported French wines. Master John was quick to buy a round of drinks, generous to all his customers.
To his servants he was mean and cheap.
And, Jassy thought was a little sigh, they had stayed, anyway, knowing that he was stingy and even cruel at times. They had stayed, for Linnet had always been fragile, not cut out to work, and only here, where they could share this little attic hovel and Jassy could do the majority of her mother’s work could they hope to survive.
A slight whimpering sound came from the bed. Jassy rushed to her mother’s side, kneeling down beside her, grasping her frail hand in her own. Her tears almost spilled then. Linnet did not appear real at all, but as some fairy queen. Even now she was fine and beautiful—now, when death lay a claim upon her. Nay, not death! Jassy swore. She would be hanged before she would see her mother die here, beautiful, beautiful Linnet, never intended for such a life in such a horrid, squalid place.
Linnet’s eyes opened, glazed with fever, all the more beautiful for that glaze. They were truly violet eyes, not blue, not gray, but deep, beautiful violet. A violet as lovely as the gold of her hair and the parchment-pale, but perfect, oval of her face.
A face not old in years but made to appear so by years of care and struggle.
“Mama!” Jassy gripped her hand warmly. “I am here!”
Then panic struck her, for Linnet did not recognize her. She spoke to the past, to people no longer present. “Is that you, Malden? Tell Sheffield that the curtain must be held, for I am feeling poorly, and that twit of a girl is no understudy to take on the role of Lady Macbeth!”
Again tears burned beneath Jassy’s lids, and dark despair seized hold of her. Linnet, she saw, was losing her slender grip upon reality, upon life. She reverted quickly to days gone by. To a tender past, a far grander place than the present. For Linnet Dupré had not always been cast into such a lowly state in life—nay, she had most oft been cast as a princess or an heiress. She had reigned as a queen, a queen in the London theatrical community. She had traveled to Paris and Rome; she had been welcomed and applauded throughout the Christian world.
In those days she had been courted by dukes and earls, by nobility and grandeur.
Somewhere among t
hat grandeur she had produced Jassy.
And for many, many years Jassy had lived in grandeur too. Her mother had housed a multitude of servants—and treated them kindly! There had been Remington to answer the bell and look after the house; old Mary to cook; Sally Frampton from nearby Waverly to bathe her mother in rich lotions and dress her hair in the latest styles. There had been Brother Anthony to teach Jassy French and Latin, Miss Nellie to teach her to dance, and Herr Hofinger to teach her all about the world at large, the oceans and the rivers, the Romans and the Gauls. He, too, had filled her head with fantasy; stories about the explorer, Columbus; about the New World, the Colonies, the Americas and the Indians. He had told her tales about the Spaniards and the great defeat of the Armada, and how the English still met and tangled with the Spaniards on the sea, claiming pieces of the New World. And he had told her stories about the great houses and mansions and castles within England, and in her dreams she had been swept off her feet by a golden knight and taken to a glorious castle to reign evermore as its mistress. In those dreams Linnet would never be exhausted or overburdened. She would sit at ease and elegantly pour tea from a silver server, and she would be dressed in silk and velvet and fur.
That had all been a dream, in a far distant and different life.
There had come that long dry spell when Linnet had not been able to obtain a role in the theater. And Linnet had never bothered with her own finances, so she was in complete shock and distress to learn that not only did she not have the money to take a smaller house, but also was so far in debt that the gaping jaws of Newgate Prison awaited her eagerly as her fate.
Some godsend fell upon them then; miraculously a mysterious “donor” kept them discreetly from distress.
Linnet knew what had occurred; she would not tell Jassy, as Jassy was but a nine-year-old child.
But by the age of ten, Jassy understood servants’ gossip. They all whispered about the Duke of Somerfield having “done something fair” for her mother at long last.
And then they stared at her, and through little George, the cook’s son, she learned that she was “illy-gitmit” and that everyone thought that the duke, who had had “illy-cit” relations with her mother, should have surely pulled them out of trouble long before.
Such rumors were lovely dreams to Jassy at first; she imagined that her father would be a great, handsome man in his prime; that one day she should appear in his great hall and that he would instantly think her beautiful and accomplished and love and adore her above all his legitimate offspring. Then he, of course, could introduce her to the handsome golden knight who would sweep her away to her own castle.
It wasn’t to be. At the little kitchen breakfast table they could then afford, Linnet jumped up one morning, screamed, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
Jassy rushed to help her, as did Mary. Mary muttered, wondering what could have caused such a thing. But Jassy then picked up the paper, being able to read as Mary could not, and quickly perused the page, learning then that the duke had been killed most ingloriously in an outlawed duel.
There was no one to pay the rent on the small house. One by one the servants went. Then the house went, and then the very last of their precious hoard of gold coins and pounds sterling. Linnet could not find work in the London theater again—the duke’s vicious duchess was busy seeing that no establishment would have her.
Jassy quickly realized that they must find work. In time Linnet knew, too, that menial work would be their hope of survival, Newgate awaiting any man or woman who did not meet their obligations.
She also discovered that she was singularly talentless when it came to working for a living, and in the end she was forced to become the scullery maid at the inn, work totally unsuited to her lovely, fragile form.
Master John hired them on only because Jassy was twelve by then, in the peak of health, easily able to work the full fourteen-hour day that her mother could not.
Jassy was jerked back to the present as Linnet moved fretfully on the bed, speaking again.
“Tell them—tell them that the curtain must be held,” Linnet whispered softly. The glaze left her eyes and she frowned, then soft tears fell from her eyes to her cheeks.
“Jassy … Jassy, Jasmine. ’Twas he who named you, for he loved the scent of Jasmine. You were beautiful, too, a babe like a flower, a blossom … so very sweet. And I did have such dreams! He loved us. He did love us. You were to be a lady, loved and coveted. And still … your hands. Oh, Jassy! What have I done to you? To leave you here in this awful place …”
“Nay, Mother, nay! I am fine, and I shall get you well, and we …” She paused, a lie coming to her from nowhere. “Mother, we shall get out of here as soon as you are well. I have heard from my half sister, one of the duke’s children, and we are to travel to his estates. Her—her mother has died, and she is anxious to make reparation. We shall live in splendor, I swear it, Mother, only first you must get well.” She had sworn out a lie. Would God understand such a thing? Would he forgive her? Her heart hardened, for she could not care. God had deserted her. He had left her to survive on her own, and that she must do. Linnet, though, would be horrified, for her belief in her religion was great.
But Linnet hadn’t even heard the quickly spoken and desperate lie. “Ah, yes! None has ever done Juliet with such poise and innocence! That is what the critics said; that is what I shall do again.”
She stared straight at Jassy, releasing her hand with a flourish. “Go now! Tell them that the curtain shall be held!”
The door to the attic loft suddenly swung open.
“Tamsyn!”
Master John stood in the doorway, seeming to bark out his man’s name. “ ’Tis docked pay you’ll get, me man!” he continued. “I need two kegs in the taproom, and I need them now! Jassy, if she’s not up and working by morning, it’s out on your arses, you are. The two of you.”
Suddenly a great laugh bellowed from him, and he bowed to her. “My lady!”
He sent a curt blow reeling against Tamsyn’s head. “Hurry, man, hurry! The coach has just come in from Norwood! And you—my lady attic rat,” he told Jassy sternly, “had best get down to serve tonight.”
“I can serve no one! I must care for her!”
Jassy quickly regretted her temper—she needed to placate Master John. She stood quickly, lowering her eyes and facing him. “In fact, Master John, I meant to come to you for help! I am desperate, sir, for coin. My mother needs quinine and—”
She broke off, for he had come before her, raising her chin with his finger so that her eyes met his. He smiled, and she saw his blackened teeth and felt overwhelmed by his foul breath.
“I’ve told you before, girl, if you want extra coin from me, you know how to earn it.”
The room seemed to spin, and she actually feared that she would throw up her meager dinner if he came any nearer.
She knew what he meant. She thought that she knew a good deal about the private things that went on between men and women. Molly, who worked the taps, engaged in affairs quite frequently. With a cheery wink she had often told Jassy that it was a hideous business with the man grunting and panting and placing, well … part of his person into, well … parts of her person. It all sounded quite horrid, and made Jassy flinch.
“Ah, with a young and ’andsome one it ain’t so bad. In fact, there’s some what thinks ’tis heaven! But mark my words, lass, it’s a lot of sweat and pumping. And if it were with one who was a lout, well, I think as like I’d prefer death, I do!”
Molly had her standards.
But she continued to see the “ ’andsome ones”; she was very fond of the money that could be had that way.
Jassy gritted her teeth and kept her eyes lowered. Her mother was dying. Linnet was everything that she had in this world. Everything.
She stiffened her back. She would do anything to keep her mother alive.
And one day, one day! she vowed, she would kill Master John!
“John!”
/> The shrill cry came up from below, and Master John seemed to shrink before them. He was afraid of his goodwife, as well he should be, for she was two hundred pounds if she was a single one, and she worked quite well with a rolling pin when she was in a temper.
“Alas, girl! No coin have I this night!” he mumbled suddenly, and turned. He looked at Tamsyn and decided the man needed another blow to the head, and then he departed, wrinkling his nose at the attic odor.
Tamsyn caught his head and jumped to his feet. He was a little man, slim, graying, but strong in his wiry fashion. He caught Jassy’s shoulders.
“Jassy, for the love of God! Don’t ever, ever think of such a thing! Your mother will d—” He stopped. That her mother would die soon no matter what was what he meant. He had no doubt that Linnet was dying, and that there was very little if any hope at all that she could survive more than another day. But he hadn’t the heart to say it so bluntly. “Jassy, your mother would rather die than have you give yourself to such a stinking oaf!”
Tears dampened her lashes and threatened to spill to her cheeks. She looked at Tamsyn, and he shuddered, for what the girl did not know was that even here, even in rags and squalor, she was twice the beauty that Linnet had ever been. She had the same fine, fragile features and more, for her beauty went deeper than anything that could be seen or touched. Hers was a fighting spirit, one that rebelliously challenged and dared from the depths of her eyes. Eyes that tilted just slightly at the corners, intriguing and exotic. Eyes that were so clear and deep and crystal a blue that they might have been violet. And they were framed by lashes so thick and dark, they might have been fashioned against the rose and cream of her young complexion by an artist with India ink.
“I must—I will do something!” she swore, shaking away his touch. She straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine, so regally.
Tamsyn swallowed, wishing he had not, long ago, come to be such a worthless drunk that he had lost all in life except for a rather worthless instinct to survive.
“I’ve got to get down, girl. Bathe her face, talk to her, be with her. When she sleeps comfortable, get down to work before mean old John sets you both out in the street!”