AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella Read online

  Damn to hell Adam’s charming soul and damn her susceptibility to that charm.

  * * *

  The innkeeper, busy with late-night revelers, managed only a nod at Adam as he exited the Cock and Bull a quarter of an hour after leaving Evangeline – and after taking an exploratory stroll throughout the tavern.

  Outside, pot-helmeted pikemen were posted at either side of the tavern door. Immediately barring his path, their crossed muskets clanked warningly.

  This he had anticipated. Watching from the upstairs window, he had observed the guards, their breastplates and helmets glinting in the moonlight, and had timed their patrol around the tavern’s perimeter – rather lax and occurring, the best he could determine, erratically.

  “God’s bones, Browning – Wilkes,” he scolded the two young men, his palms brushing aside their barring musket barrels, “surely, you two sods could be sarding willing wenches on St. Knut’s night instead of freezing your arses off here.”

  “General-at-Sea’s orders,” Wilkes grumbled, his breath frosting the midnight air. “You and the lady are not to leave the tavern tonight.”

  “Well, if I am to sard the lady, she demands sheets. Nothing less than Fine Holland sheets, either. Uppity, she is. But to squirrel her hole, I’ll buy the sheets even at 50 shillings per pair. Either of you want to accompany me to the trading post?”

  “Pardon me, my Lord Lieutenant,” Browning piped up in a youth’s high-pitched voice “but the trading post is closed at this hour of night.”

  “Well, by God, it’ll open for me – backed by your two muskets.” He strode past the two. “Come along, my young friends.” He paused and looked back at them. “Or would you prefer to pump the whores inside Cock and Bull?”

  The pair glanced at each other, then Browning said, “Err, we’ll make sure your lady doesn’t escape, sire.”

  The trading post’s shingled roof and solid barred doors offered some protection for life and property – especially, the immense amount of merchandise contained within. Yet its shingled roof and barred doors, and even its windows’ strong shutters, common to most households, would be ineffectual against a mob.

  Of course, he did not represent a mob, so breaking through and disassembling the shutters with his dirk in the quietest manner possible took considerable time.

  From the back of the trading post came the loud, sporadic snorts of old Larss, snoring. No sooner had Adam slid his lengthy frame through the window he had judiciously selected at the far side of the trading post, than, like a weasel, Bonnie Charlie popped in behind him.

  “Well, well, well,” Adam whispered, “If it isn’t one of the Lady Evangeline’s three wise men.”

  “Hmmph” Bonnie Charlie said in disgust, his breath fumed by rum. “Yew’ll have her at the Rocks an hour before dawn?”

  “If I must drag her by her hair, aye.”

  “Yew harm a hair on her head, and I’ll eat yewr heart with chicken gizzards for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “T’would help if you had teeth.” As wood-wise as any Indian, the old geezer was, nonetheless, at the tail end of his years, and Adam had his reservations about how reliable he was. “See to it that you get my horse – and whatever mounts you can steal for yourself and Lady Evangeline – past the guards on duty at the livery stable.”

  “Those musketeer jinglebrains aren’t yewr worry. It’s the militia scout Risingh has summoned. A renegade Mingo, Catamount can track a single pesky mosquito in a swarm of ‘em and is said to be meaner than any trading’ post squaw.”

  So far, Adam felt, his luck had held. Upon his return from the Sovereign and a disgruntled Craven, running into Bonnie Charlie leaving the trading post had been like finding a four-leaf clover. Now, his luck just had to hold long enough to reach the Lenape. “Listen, I need bed linens – and a machete.” He figured he was as good with a machete as Bonnie Charlie would be with the tomahawk.

  “Last I wuz here, I spotted a sickle, ‘long with the knives and hatchets yonder on the wall, back of the counter. And linen’s? Printz Hall’ll be the closest yew’ll get to bed coverings, lest yew’ll settle for a horse blanket.”

  “Get them then,” he said, “the horse blankets and sickle.”

  The scant moonlight seeping through the trading post window fell upon the string of beaded moccasins lined up in front of the counter. His’s mind’s eye recalled Evangeline. She was nigh a quarter the size of him. Her small foot, not much longer than the length of his palm. When he had kissed the arch of her foot, her wide-eyed response of shock had been quickly followed by a half-gasp, half-moan. Her explosive sensuality had astounded them both.

  Within mere seconds, he assembled between the folds of one of the two horse blankets the quintessentials for the journey.

  Parting ways with Bonnie Charlie outside the trading post, he returned to a pacing shrew. Shakespeare knew of a way to tame the shrew. Adam knew only of one way to subjugate her. But that was not what he wanted. Nor she. She wanted explanations.

  She whirled at his entrance. Her eyes, questioned his. Behind those iridescent blue orbs, he perceived suspicion, a certain reticence, and, aye, the charged attraction of an electrical thunder storm. It had been that way between them since first sight.

  He reminded himself that this past year, he had been besieged by many females interested in his recently elevated status. Hell, females had been interested in him from the time he was twelve.

  “You’ll need to catch some sleep now,” he said, setting the bundled collection of trading post items on the bed. “Because rest – and food - will be a luxury from this moment on.”

  “Then you are still committed on heading for the Delaware Nation?”

  He unbuckled his rapier and placed his flintlock pistol and dirk on the shelf. “We are still headed for the Delaware Nation. If you remember, that was the wager you forfeited.”

  Dropping onto the bed’s pathetic mattress, he took her by the hand and drew her down to sit on his lap. Her back was as stiff as a ramrod. She would not look at him. He detected, as when with her before, the lavender scent of her hair and her clothing. She must drape her freshly-washed clothing to dry on a lavender bush.

  “I got us into this mess by not telling you everything, Evangeline. By not telling you that I suspected your identity even before I called at your inn on Christmas Eve. My inquiries in the area for a reliable negotiator with the Lenape sachem provided a description of my memory of you. I had seen you once, at court, and had not forgotten.”

  She slanted him a skeptical glance. “The world is full of blue-eyed, blonde females. And, especially here in New Sweden and New Amsterdam.”

  He grinned. “But few on conversant terms with the Lenape – and even fewer distinguished by the Christmas star on their forehead.” And none with her fire, her pluck, her vulnerability.

  Her eyes narrowed with incredulity. “You saw that – my pox scar -- from a distance at court?”

  “And few with the vibrancy of . . . how did one Danish planter I questioned put it . . . ‘of a feu follet?’ A fire within, as how I recalled you then.”

  He wrapped an arm around her rigid shoulders and pulled her down to incline with him on the mattress. He tucked her resisting head into the cradle of his neck and collarbone. He could feel her warm, shallow breath on his skin and her rapid heartbeat against the side of his ribs. She shivered. The room was drafty, and he reached down to pull one of the scratchy horse blankets up over them.

  “You cannot return to the Virgin Mary Tavern,” he murmured against the tendrils at her temple. “Now that Craven knows you are in the American colonies, he would locate you at your ordinary in no time. I say we meet with the sachem Peminacka. Craven will not be expecting you to strike out west toward the mountains.”

  Frowning, she tilted her head to better look at him, and he could not help but notice the weariness in her eyes, nor be unaware of the inviting sweetness made by the bow of her upper lip. “You will be sealing your fate with mine if you let me
escape Craven.”

  “I will most definitely be persona non grata with Craven.”

  She half sighed. “Even if we could escape.”

  “I have a plan. I admit, our chances are maybe one in ten, but what are your chances if you return to England with Craven?”

  She bit her lower lip, looked away, then she bravely met his eye. “I would be better off taking my chance with you.”

  Which did not say much for him. Once more, he tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder. “Sleep. We’ve only a couple of hours before dawn.”

  Foolishly trusting him, she snuggled her face against his neck and soon slid into sleep. And he relished holding her, thinking how he may not have found his mother or sister, but he had found Evangeline.

  He went over in his mind’s eye his escape plan. Aye, it was a sound one, discounting, of course, the perfidious element of chance.

  Better that she did not know he had lied to her yet again. Their chances of escape, he figured, were more like one in a hundred.

  §§ CHAPTER SEVEN §§

  No particular sound awakened Evangeline, but she was aware of another presence. She judged it must have been close to dawn. Gradually, her drowsy lids opened, her vision refocusing in the dark, and she perceived Adam standing near the foot of the bed – and perceived he must have removed her pattens, garters, and finely knitted stockings sometime during the night.

  “Are you ready to make a run for it?” He did not look up from a bundled horse blanket he was unknotting. He was wearing his russet cloak. To one side of the blanket, he had laid her cloak.

  As always, at his nearness, an instant throb of excitement stirred within her. She pushed upright onto her elbows. “Literally?”

  “Literally,” he confirmed, sitting down beside her. “Quite literally. At least, a great part of our bid for escape will be a mad dash.” Pulling back the blanket, his hand slid along her calf.

  She yelped and bolted to a sitting position. As always, her stomach ached with a queer crimping at his mere touch. “You told me, you weren’t interested in – ”

  “I am always interested, but there are such things as priorities.” His hand captured her evading foot. “Hold still. Where we’re going, these moccasins will be of far more use than those clumsy shoes.”

  With what might have been the tender care of a parent, he fitted a beautifully beaded moccasin on first one foot, then the other. They fitted perfectly. Tugging her from beneath the blanket, he stood her lethargic frame upright. Turning her to face him, he draped her cloak over her shoulders and fastened the frog at her throat.

  “Now listen to me.” His gaze was serious. “If we get separated, you are to head for the Rocks. To the right of them, hidden in the alders, is a canoe. Paddle up the Brandywine to its confluence with Bear Creek. With luck, Bonnie Charlie should be waiting there with a mount for you.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You – Bonnie Charlie? How did you two – ”

  “Time’s a’wasting.” With that, he swooped up the blanket bundle and slung her, blanket and all, over one shoulder. Over the other, he slung his saddlebags.

  Her stomach whooshed with the jounce of each of his long strides that took him from the bedroom and down the hallway. At its far end, he sat her down, but held both her wrists in one hand while with the other he threw back the hall window’s shutters. The greeting cold chilled her almost as much as the thought of what he might be about to do.

  He winked at her and passed her a lengthy end flap of the blanket enfolding her. “Hold tight. I do not want you to break one of those fetching ankles.”

  “What?!”

  But already, he was bundling her out the window. Frigid wind buffeted her body in the stygian darkness. She dangled above the inn’s lawn that sloped behind it down to the South River. Her shoulder banged painfully against the brick wall, and her hold slipped. Grabbing tighter, she looked down. It was a good fifteen-foot drop.

  Terrified, she looked up at him. His reassuring gaze met hers. “When your feet hit the ground, run for the river.”

  Hand over hand, he fed the blanket out the window.

  When the blanket played out, she looked down. She was still suspended a goodly distance above the ground. Scrunching close her eyes, she forced her hands to release their death grip – and dropped. The impact with the ground jarred her teeth and sent her stumbling before she regained her footing. She glanced up in the predawn darkness.

  Pistol drawn, his shadow leaned out over the window. “Run!” he ordered.

  Skirts lifted, she whirled and sprinted down the slope. Her back felt like a broad target. Her heart pounded in her ears with each frantic step. The moccasins did make running easier. No pistol retort assured her she was safe – so far. She heard the slap of the river’s tide against its banks before she saw through the undergrowth its gleam beneath the pale quarter moon.

  Another hundred yards further along, the stone outcropping known as The Rocks formed a natural wharf for Fort Christina. Even at that early hour, merchants and sailors were gradually coming alive. A few schooners bobbed in the harbor – and in the bay floated the huge, dark hulk that could only be Craven’s man-of-war.

  She swung off to the right, toward the alders, upriver of The Rocks – only to hear gunshots. Those spurred her. She floundered on, thrashing through the concealing and combative alders and their underbrush that snagged hungrily at her skirts. Then, in the early morning fog, she located the canoe.

  Closing in on her from behind, she heard the pounding of pursuing footsteps. “Halt!” came a shout farther back.

  Heart thudding, she plowed on through the rushes and waded in. Her freezing, water-weighted skirts and cloak nigh moored her in the knee-deep tidal wash. She both tugged and shoved at the canoe. A shot ran out. She expected its impact. Expected certain death.

  Suddenly, she was scooped off her feet and thrown, landing in the canoe with a hard thud. Another thud vibrated the canoe. She struggled onto her knees in its prow and half twisted to find behind her the bundled blanket and saddlebags – and Adam climbing into its stern.

  At once, he was slicing an oar into the lapping water. His free hand slamming at the center of her shoulders shoved her down again. More shots whizzed by. Beside the canoe, the water erupted too close with yet another ping of a matchlock’s ball.

  Swinging his body’s weight into paddling with deep rhythmic strokes, he sent the canoe speeding into the midst of the swirling river. Dawn’s upstream wind froze her wet clothes to her goose-fleshed body – yet she laughed aloud.

  She turned to see if any soldiers pursued along the riverbank and locked glances with Adam. His expression was one of exhilaration. “Reckless abandon,” he called, without letting up on the powerful thrusts of his paddles, “this is the only way to live life.”

  For what may have been another hour he paddled fiercely against the upriver current. Then, as the eastern sky pinkened, he veered the canoe abruptly into a narrow, dark estuary canopied by primeval pine, cedar, and cypress branches.

  He shot the prow into a bank of rushes. Like a specter, Bonnie Charlie rose from the low-lying morning fog. Adam waded into the water and pulled the canoe ashore, concealing it in a thatch of cattails. She was shivering so violently her knees buckled after she got out of the canoe.

  At once, he caught her against him, one arm braced around her waist. Briskly, his free hand slid beneath her wet cloak to chafe her arms and back. Over her head, he asked Bonnie Charlie, “The horses?”

  “Hitched to a large sycamore up near the river road. But, they’re latherin’ hard. I figure yew got mebbe fifteen minutes most head start on Catamount and five Swedish militiamen.”

  Adam looked down at her. “Up to making another run for it?”

  Her teeth chattering, she asked, “Is th-there any other option?”

  “If there were, I would find it.” His maddening self-assurance was insufferable. But his smile was friendly and natural.

  He swept up the s
addle bags from the canoe and threw them over one wide shoulder. Collecting the blanket bundle, he took her upper arm and propelled her forward. They followed Bonnie Charlie, who was scrambling up the bushy incline toward the road. Within a clump of sycamores waited the sweating horses – only two.

  Bonnie Charlie’s mouth twisted. “I could manage stealin’ only that sorrel mare there from a drunken tavern patron before the militia guards caught sight of me.”

  “She can ride pillion with me,” Adam said, tossing the saddlebag across his gray gelding and handing her the blanket bundle. “You can take the sorrel.”

  “Nope,” Bonnie Charlie said. “Figure, I’d best wait it out here.” He patted the tomahawk at his waist beneath his deer-hide jacket. “Waylay those bastards, if I can.”

  Only then did she notice the sleeve of the jacket was freshly stained. “You have been shot,” she gasped.

  “Just a nick. Now you two git goin’.”

  Adam stared hard at him. Some unspoken message passed between the two. Adam nodded then. He circled her waist and lifted her onto the sorrel’s saddle. “You can ride?”

  “Well enough,” she hedged. Her riding experience had been more astride nags than steeds.

  Quickly, he tied the bundle around the pommel. She cast a worried glance down at Bonnie Charlie. “You will catch up with us?”

  “Aye, Mistress.” He looked to Adam, who was mounting. “Stay on the river road for another twenty-odd miles. Then, where it peters out, there’s a war trail. Strike out through the forest, northwest, straight as the compass arrow for a goodly sixty miles or so.”

  Adam had already nudged the chestnut’s flanks into a canter, and she had to knee her sorrel to draw even. In the murky light, his gaze found hers. “We’re making another run for it, and we won’t be stopping until our mounts are stoved in – because, according to Bonnie Charlie, Catamount won’t be stopping. Are you sure you are up to it?”