The Dollmaker's Daughter, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
A Devotional Moment
Thank you
You Can Help!
God Can Help!
Free eBook Offer
The Dollmaker’s Daughter
Izzy James
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
The Dollmaker’s Daughter
COPYRIGHT 2021 by Elizabeth C. Hull
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Pelican Ventures, LLC except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. eBook editions are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. eBooks may not be re-sold, copied or given to other people. If you would like to share an eBook edition, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Contact Information: titleadmin@pelicanbookgroup.com
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version(R), NIV(R), Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations, marked KJV are taken from the King James translation, public domain. Scripture quotations marked DR, are taken from the Douay Rheims translation, public domain.
Scripture texts marked NAB are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition Copyright 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Cover Art by Nicola Martinez
White Rose Publishing, a division of Pelican Ventures, LLC
www.pelicanbookgroup.com PO Box 1738 *Aztec, NM * 87410
White Rose Publishing Circle and Rosebud logo is a trademark of Pelican Ventures, LLC
Publishing History
First White Rose Edition, 2021
123456789
Electronic Edition ISBN 978-1-5223-0347-3
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
This one is for Caleb
"All you gotta do is..."
1
February 1776
Miller’s Ordinary, just outside of Williamsburg, Virginia Colony
“Well, Miss Archer, it has been a long time,” The grinning innkeeper bellowed loud enough to be heard in the yard. He rubbed his meaty hands together.
Amity cast quick glance into the main parlor. A cold rivulet slipped from her sodden cloak into her shoe. Yes, all the guests had taken note of his announcement of Amity’s arrival. All went back to what they were doing when she caught their eye, except a tableful of men in hunting shirts dyed the same shade of indigo. They did not avert their gazes when she noticed them; rather she had the distinct impression she that they were assessing her as one might look over a new dog. An involuntary shiver ran down her shoulders.
Lucy, her maid, took a step closer.
Amity suppressed the chill, straightened her back, and turned to her host.
“Is your father with the carriage?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Burwell. My father was detained and will arrive tomorrow.”
A puzzled look passed through his features before his smile returned. “Well, your rooms are ready.” He waved a large hand toward a slender girl. “Mary, show Miss Archer to her room.”
Amity said her thanks and followed Mary up a windowless flight of stairs to the second floor. Lucy followed them.
One dormer of six window lights cast watery shadows across a wooden framed bed. A cheery fire in the grate forced gloom into the corners of the small room.
“Mary, who are those men in the blue shirts in the chamber?”
Mary’s blue eyes widened. “Shirtmen. They are riflemen come from Norfolk to protect us from the British.”
Amity stiffened. “They are not here, are they?”
“The British? No, ma’am. The shirtmen just burned what was left of Norfolk. I heard them say they was waiting for orders.”
“Thank you, Mary.” Amity handed the girl a coin.
Mary bobbed a curtsey and left the room.
Amity shrugged out of her wet cloak to let the warmth melt her near frozen limbs. What she needed was a hot cup of coffee.
Lucy took Amity's cloak, a look of alarm in her large brown eyes. “Miss Amity, I don’t like the looks them shirtmen was giving you down there. No one would mess with you if Mr. Reed was here.”
Amity rolled her eyes. “We don’t need Mr. Reed right now, what we need is a hot cup of coffee and something to eat.”
Lucy huffed and turned to hang the cloak on a peg next to the door. She placed her own on the next peg.
A pang of guilt slashed through Amity. “I don’t like the looks of those men either, hopefully they will leave soon. With my father and I here there cannot be room enough for all of them to stay.”
Lucy’s posture relaxed.
“And I am not leaving the ordinary. We will stay right here until Father comes. Except we have to go down to get something to eat. I could not possibly wait for them to carry up a tray. Are you not famished?”
Lucy nodded her agreement.
Amity’s guilt assuaged, which left her empty stomach in charge.
They’d left immediately after breakfast. Twenty miles of frozen rain and mud ruts wore a body out. She needed to eat.
“Don’tcho be down there too long, Miss Amity.”
“I will not. You go get something from the kitchen.”
Amity peered out into the hallway before she stepped out of the room. Surely, no one would dare mess with her in a respectable establishment like Mr. Burwell’s. While she’d shuddered at the innkeeper’s announcement of her presence when she’d first arrived, it was precisely because she was known that she should feel safe. In fact, his little announcement might prove to be Providence at work.
Despite minor trepidation, giddiness shook her feet. So this was what it felt like to be out on one’s own. Throughout her twenty-five years, a sibling was always an elbow’s distance away. She’d never spent the night alone away from home. Amity placed one gloved hand on the wall to keep from flying down the narrow staircase. Except for a thin rope of guilt yanking her back she could get quite used to this feeling of unfettered access to her wishes. The desire to wander and the guilt twined around each other deep in her soul. She couldn’t explain the rambling temper. The guilt was more easily defined.
Her parents were good people. They’d always been kind and generous, some claimed overindulgent, with her and her siblings. How could she leave them to follow her own desires when the result would be stomach-aching worry over her? The inability to resolve the issue had left her stagnant. Waiting for she didn’t know what.
Mr. Burwell met her at the foot of the stairs and showed her to a private parlor directly off the main room. Before long, a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of ham, fresh bread, and butter filled the table. Voices from the public chamber buzzed in the background.
This one night near Williamsburg on her own was almost too tempting. Her first opportunity to experience real life as it came. To fill her books with real happenings and real places instead of imaginings based on Lady Peabody’s adventures in the courts of Europe and beyond. How far was it to the mountains? She had some money. The King’s Highway would carry her a good bit of the distance in a carriage. Horseback from there. Assuming she could get a horse outside of Alexandria.
“Serve’s ’em right. Tories the lot.” A loud male voice floated into her reverie. “Burning’s too good for ’em” The following general murmur seemed to agree with the outspoken man.
By her counting, it was the third time Norfolk had been burned. The first two happened before her brother, Field’s, wedding on the sixth of January. Not that she’d been able to attend. Too dangerous to travel her mother said. According to her father, they were all to stay home for the duration of the war. Except for him, of course, he would travel to participate in the Committee. She stopped short of a thankful prayer for the commotion that had caused him to delay his departure. If the chariot had not been fully loaded, she may have had to wait for him to settle the disturbance with his foreman.
Well, it just showed that older people were over cautious. She’d made it almost to Williamsburg without any trouble whatsoever. She wasn’t a schoolgirl after all; she’d recently turned twenty-five. And just when was she allowed to consider herself a woman?
“He just finished what he started, is all.” A craggy voice rose above the others.
Amity craned her neck to see the speaker. What she saw was a sooty wall. Surely, i
Amity slid back out of the main chamber and into the far corner of her chair once Simon Morgan entered the ordinary. Her heart thudded against full lungs.
He glanced about the room before taking a seat facing away from where she sat in the deep shadow of age-darkened pine walls.
He could ruin everything. Well, she wasn’t really running to the mountains anyway. Her mother would worry. Her father would blame himself. No. She would meet up with her father tomorrow and together they would travel to Aunty Clementine’s exactly as planned.
But that didn’t mean she had to endure Simon’s company. If his usual ability to disregard the world while focusing on the book before him wasn’t impaired by the laughter and conversation filling the tavern, she should be able to slip past him and make it up the stairs unnoticed.
Simon once again surveyed the full room after Mary took his order.
Amity willed herself to be invisible.
No doubt, her parents hoped she’d meet a suitable man in Williamsburg and settle down, but it wouldn’t happen. She’d loved before and it came to naught. No. She would chronicle her travels. Once she gained a certain age, it wouldn’t be scandalous. And why should it be? Master Phillips had made it clear that Virginia’s manners were far less than he’d found in England. And so it should be. America would be a new nation free of nonsensical dictates. Amity would be an independent lady. A travel writer like Lady Peabody.
Amity pulled back once more when the door banged open to admit another young man. Boots scraped across the floor as he made his way to the bar. He ordered peach brandy.
From her seat, Amity could only glimpse his profile. Different from any man she’d ever seen, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was tall, fine boned, dark hair pulled back in a queue, a hawk nose. He appeared loosely put together, not unlike Simon. Although Simon’s looseness disarmed people, made them feel welcome. This man’s fluidity recalled a cornered viper she’d seen in the barn at home—appropriating the space around him should he need to strike, or perhaps escape. A dark gaze captured her own.
Heat raced up her throat. Amity looked away quickly. When she dared to look up again he’d turned his back to her. “Good.”
He seemed to be watching Simon and his dinner companion. Amity settled back into her chair. Perhaps she should stay a little bit longer. To say Simon misread people was an understatement. While it was an admirable quality to have never met a stranger, it was not always wise.
2
The smell of Norfolk burning stained the inside of Simon’s nose. Throughout the wet ride toward Williamsburg, he couldn’t escape the acrid fumes of the last of the buildings sacrificed in the name of independence. It was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t help wondering what would happen to the people and the businesses they’d forged, some nearly a hundred years old.
Every part of his world swirled in turmoil. Hester insisted on staying with their aunt and uncle in Kemp’s Landing instead of coming home with him to Maple Bridge where she would be safer. He couldn’t find a way to like it, but Hester was a grown woman with a mind of her own. He couldn’t control her any more than he could control Woodford and Howe’s efforts to protect Norfolk.
Drizzle drowned the glow of twilight from the window where Simon stared at the steam rising from his cup of chocolate in Miller’s Ordinary. The innkeeper’s daughter placed a candle on the table next to his open book. The girl took the time to smile at him while she brought flame to wick. Simon nodded his thanks and looked down at the open page. He’d been on the same page for three days.
Images of his friend’s wedding played across his mind. A jubilant Field couldn’t keep his gaze off his new wife, Delany, resplendent in a silver gown. Field had been jubilant. And seeing Field always reminded Simon of Amity. Their features were similar, the same brown hair that glowed red in the sun, but Amity’s eyes were the color of a storm on the bay. Would Amity be jubilant on her wedding day? Sharing secret smiles with her husband that she thought no one else would see? He hoped he’d never see it.
“Mind if I join ye?” A full tankard sloshed on to the table. Simon snatched his book from the running puddle. Above him stood a barrel-chested man. Blue eyes glowed from a weather-wrinkled face.
“Captain John McCabe.” The man reached a dirty hand across the table.
A welcome diversion for thoughts sliding in the wrong direction, Simon shook the man’s hand warmly. The next hour passed quickly as Simon listened to the story of Captain McCabe’s latest voyage across the Atlantic.
“Our Tom was a sorry lad. Coming home after his education,” the captain leaned in, “he told me how he’d found how to get anything he ever wanted, so he was coming home.”
“Everything he ever wanted?” Simon hoped his smile didn’t drip with the cynicism he felt, the memory of soft storm-colored eyes twinkled at him.
“Sure. That’s what he told me and then he showed me this.” The Captain pulled from his pocket a medallion of clear green stone. It spun like a coin and came to rest across from Simon. Could this be a gemstone? It was the largest he’d ever seen, spanning nearly three of his fingers. The room was too dim to make out the carving in the center. The candlelight reflected off its polished surface like dark window glass.
A little arc of excitement sparked to life in a remote memory of Simon’s brain and shivered down his spine. “Is this what I think it is? May I?”
McCabe shrugged.
Simon reached for the stone. Cool and smooth to the touch, the hatch-like carvings were barely perceptible under his thumb though they did not appear worn.
“What do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure, but there are legends about ancient stones.”
“This couldn’t be one of them stones. My cousin Tom didn’t travel in them kinda circles. It’s nothing but a piece of junk he picked up somewhere,” he laughed, “but Tom’d believe just about anything you told him. Some scoundrel told him a fanciful tale, and he believed it. Gave all his money, poor sod.”
A cool disappointment breezed through Simon. “You’re probably right. I mean what are the odds that a regular person would come across something like that when people have been looking for it for centuries?” Even as he said it, the possibility niggled. Excitement deepened.
The captain took a long swig from his cup. “And regular he was and no mistake. And all the money he had would have been a couple of pounds. Now I’ve got to take his things to his mother. It’s a visit I would avoid if it were possible. You have family?”
“My mother and father passed away a few years ago.”
“No wife?”
“I have a sister.”
The captain grimaced. “Maybe I should give you this stone. Our Tom believed it would do him some good, maybe it will do for ye.”
Simon reluctantly laid the stone back in the center of the table. “You should keep it or give it to his mother. Perhaps it will bring you all you ever wanted.”
“I’ve got what I want, lad.” A knowing smile wrinkled his face. “My wife is waiting for me at home with four boys. And what Tom’s mother will want no rock can do.”
Simon nodded his agreement. No stone would give him what he wanted either. Although if it were the right stone it could add significantly to his knowledge of electricity. There was nothing to be lost in giving it a try. “I’ll buy your dinner in exchange for the stone.”
McCabe smiled, “You, too?”
“I don’t think it will get me everything I want, but I do think it would make an interesting scientific experiment.”
“Whatever you say, me lad.” McCabe stood on unsteady legs and tossed the stone to Simon. “I’ll be on me way.”
Simon nodded to the Captain. Smooth and cool to the touch, the stone slipped into his pocket without a catch. He closed his book, turned toward the stairwell and his room. From his right, in a corner of the room a shout of “huzzah” and the clink of raised goblets grabbed his notice. Near the bar, a young man knocked sideways through the thinning crowd as he pushed his way out of the Ordinary. When Simon looked forward again, he found a pair of stormy eyes. “What are you doing here?” He put his hand in his pocket. Was the stone warm? No, it wasn’t possible. Was it? No, it must be warming due to the heat of embarrassment.
