“You sound jealous.”
“Ridiculous.” She flounced over, her back to Juliet. “Onontio and his band proved crueler in their crimes, atrocities and outrages than what my father preached in his sermons. Men savages, what is the difference? Every single one of them is the scourge of nature, much like rats, fleas, lice or the plague. I’ll never trust any man again.”
Juliet sighed. “You are referring to Baron Bearsted who represented the worst kind of betrayal. Your young heart was tricked by a deviant man who lied, promising an impressionable girl a life way beyond her strictures, and—promising marriage when he already had a wife. He seduced you with sweet words and luxuries to gain a son who he’d keep, and then threw you out.”
“My trust was forever broken. The lies Baron Bearsted cast were enough to cement disbelief in any truth expressed by any man.”
“In time, you will heal your skepticism, Mary. There are good men out there. Haven’t Joshua and Two Eagles shown us sacrifice and protection when we needed it the most? Are they not good men?”
Soon, Mary’s soft snores came from the side of her. Juliet threw back the fur and walked to the river. Tired as she was she could not sleep. Joshua drew out of the shadows and startled her.
“I thought you’d be asleep.”
He pulled her to sit by him on a fallen tree. “We can rest here, and you can unload on me or not say a word. Sometimes the silence of the night is enough.”
He knew what was bothering her.
An owl hooted, and an animal scrambled beneath the bushes. He scooted closer, his knee touching hers.
Was it the darkness, or the gentleness in his voice that prompted her to acknowledge her shame?
“Form early on, I absorbed loneliness and scorn. I should have died instead of my mother. My father may not have ever come out and said it, but his actions betrayed his bitterness toward me.”
“Go on,” he encouraged, but his voice hardened. Then he spoke more temperately, and she shoved away the self-protective caution she hid behind.
“My father loved my Irish mother deeply and never forgave me for her death. He refused to have anything to do with me. Forbidden to be in his presence, I was hidden in the kitchen to take my meals with the servants. As a child of four summers, I played in the stables. My father appeared with his paramour. The woman laughed at me, asking where I had come from. My father told her I was the stablemaster’s daughter. As young as I was, I understood the flagrant rejection and cried in the haymow the whole day.
“Do you know how it feels to thirst for a father’s love, and no matter what you do to try and please him it is all completely for naught because he couldn’t abide the sight of me.
“The worst of it was when my father placed me in the care of his sister. My matronly aunt was quick to remind me I caused the death of my mother, and my father had to hide me because of my abominable red hair. The same red hair reminding everyone of the misfortune of my birth and that I should have been drowned.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I’m sorry.She was sorry, too, but that didn’t change the facts. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
Chapter Thirteen
During the night, Joshua took turns with Two Eagles keeping watch. The women were still asleep and not made for hardship and the elements. Especially Lady Faulkner. He was still reeling over how a gently-reared woman had come to be a slave in the Colonies, and the cruelty committed by her father.
“It’s time to wake, Lady Faulkner.” He stroked her soft cheek, pinkened by the sun. She did not heed his voice and snuggled closer to him. He rather liked her sighs and the way she had thrown her arm over his chest.
He lay back again, thinking of her extraordinary story. The men in her life had not seen fit to protect her and she had suffered gravely. With certainty, her father had left her scarred, and her uncle, as a senior family member should have arranged to have her live in her ancestral home, not let her live alone in a cottage, plying a common trade to survive. He’d like to have called the bastard out.
He hoped the cousin he was taking her to at Fort Oswego would take her under his guardianship, but he had reservations. Before the siege of Boston, and before hostilities had risen to a fevered pitch between England and the Colonies, he had chanced upon meeting Colonel Thomas Faulkner.
The opinionated colonel was a fourth son of an earl with no prospects other than serving His Majesty and possessing a rabid and sworn allegiance to his cause. He had distinguished himself in theSeven Years Warbut if truth be known, it was by his underling’s resourcefulness and savvy that had won the day while Faulkner lay inebriated in his tent.
Appointed by Lord North to assist in enforcing the Intolerable Acts upon the people of Boston, Colonel Thomas Faulkner listened to no advice, asked no questions, and painfully meted out unfair justice to colonials.
Faulkner’s policies had extended to the Thorne family of Boston. Joshua’s sister, Abigail had married the famous American privateer, Captain Jacob Thorne. Under the Articles of Impressment, British soldiers had taken up residence in the Thorne home. One officer maintained a keen eye for Rachel Thorne, Jacob’s cousin. When she thwarted his advances, he had attacked her, killed her younger brother, Thomas, who had attempted to stop the rape.
Every single misdeed perpetrated by the British officer was swept under the rug with Captain Jacob Thorne accused of the heinous crimes and to be hanged. Colonel Thomas Faulkner had served as judge and jury on the case, refusing to entertain the truth. Fortunately, with the help of friends, Thorne had escaped his execution, taking up privateering.
Mary’s story, just as devastating, had affected his normally impassive friend. Two Eagles had been taken with Mary from the first time he’d laid eyes on her and had pushed as hard as Joshua to get to Onontio’s village. Joshua smiled. His friend had fallen hard for the vicar’s spoiled daughter. When Ojistah had spoken her vision of Two Eagles and Mary, Joshua dismissed the uniting of an unlikely pair. Now he wasn’t so sure.
There was not a crack of a twig to signal Two Eagles behind him. Without looking, he knew the warrior gazed at the sleeping Mary.
“Kind of pointless to fight for what you want when what you want scorns you,” whispered Joshua in the Haudenosaunee tongue.
