A Wild Yearning, page 6
"Well, don't stand there hovering in the doorway like a blamed fool," Sir Patrick scolded. "I've still got some things to say to you and, by God, for once you're going to listen."
The old man stomped the length of the room, the robe flapping around his thin legs. At the fireplace, he turned, his hands locked behind him, his shoulders thrown back, and then his eyes fell on Delia. "Good God. Who's the wench?"
"I'm taking her to Merrymeeting with me," Ty said, a mischievous smile on his face as he pulled a reluctant Delia into the room.
"Be damned you are!" the old man exclaimed, aghast.
Delia jerked her arm from Ty's grasp. She cast her eyes demurely downward and dropped into a wobbly curtsy. "How do ye do, yer lordship."
"Eh? Oh... it's a pleasure, mistress. A pleasure." Sir Patrick stared at her, and his eyebrows soared all the way up into his wig as he took in the sight of her ragged clothes and bare feet. But he said, "She's pretty, Ty. Right pretty."
Delia straightened and slid a triumphant glance in Ty's direction. He frowned at her.
Sir Patrick waved a thin, heavily-veined hand at a brocade chair. "Do sit down, mistress. Where's your manners, Ty? There's some hot mulled ale on the table over there. Bring some to the poor gel. Can't you see she's shivering from the morning chill?"
Ty cast Delia another scowl, but he went across the room to a tea table and poured a tankard of ale. As soon as Ty's back was turned the old man winked at Delia, and she had to bite her lip to keep from giggling. If Ty had planned to use her presence to bait his grandfather, it wasn't working.
"He does things to provoke me," he said to Delia as if he'd read her mind. "Don't think I don't know it. I sent him to Edinburgh University to read law and he came back with a degree in medicine instead. All done to irritate me."
Ty laughed. "Really, Sir Patrick, you flatter yourself if you think I arrange my life just to irritate you."
"What did you come around here this morning for, if it wasn't to irritate me?"
Ty turned from the table and bowed mockingly. "You commanded me, sir."
"Hunh! And why did you bother coming to Boston at all if you never meant to stay above a week—besides coming back to irritate me, aye, and turn up your nose at all the things I'm trying to do for you."
Ty shoved the tankard of ale into Delia's hands.
"Why, thank ye, Dr. Savitch," she said sweetly.
He lowered his voice and growled at her, "What happened to that blatting tongue of yours, brat?"
Delia gave him a demure smile and took a dainty, most ladylike sip of the ale. She would show Tyler Savitch she could behave like a proper lady if she put her mind to it.
"I came to Boston for the purpose of searching out a woman ornery enough to be a wife," Ty told his grandfather, grinning provokingly at Delia.
Sir Patrick's brows soared up again and his fierce gray eyes fastened onto Delia's blushing face, but he made no comment.
"Also, I've come to hire a preacher for the settlement. And I had heard about this new smallpox inoculation of Cotton Mather's," Ty went on amicably. "I wanted to see for myself the results of his experiments."
Sir Patrick snorted. "I don't hold with these inoculations. We mustn't interfere with God's handiwork. If God wishes to visit a man with smallpox, He must have His way."
"You'd feel differently if the disease came calling on you. The epidemic hasn't reached The Maine yet, and I'm hoping to convince the folks of Merrymeeting and the other settle—"
"Merrymeeting, bah!" The old man thumped his slippered foot on the floor. "Even the name of it sounds like a fool's paradise. That useless medical degree wasn't the only thing you acquired in Edinburgh. You picked up a taste for expensive things and even more expensive women. I can't picture you freezing your arse off in one of those miserable log houses during the winter and with no one to keep you warm at night but a squaw—" Sir Patrick cut himself off, his eyes straying to Delia. She smiled so sweetly at him, he blinked.
But Ty was oblivious of this exchange. He threw himself down into the chair opposite Delia's. Even then he couldn't stay still, crossing his legs to swing one foot back and forth, tapping his fingers on the chair arm. "I've managed to live quite happily there for two years now," he said. "And if you're worried about my expensive tastes, I'm the only physician from Wells to Port Royal and I'm well-compensated for my services."
"Well-compensated, are you? Ha!" Sir Patrick flapped his hand. "Do you live like this in that godforsaken settlement, eh? Answer me that."
Ty pushed himself back to his feet. "I don't want to live like this. Especially if the price is human bondage and misery."
Sir Patrick's eyes followed his grandson as he paced the room, and Delia detected a note of desperation behind their glazed hardness. "Now you listen to me, Ty. I've let you sow your wild oats and I've given you a chance to get this fascination with the wilderness out of your system. But I'm not getting any younger, so you're going to stop all this foolishness this very day and you're going to take over the running of the company. I need you. You're all I've got and you owe me, boy."
Ty jerked around, his face dark and tight with anger. "I owe you nothing. Christ, what in God's great world makes you think I would agree to set one foot in Graham Shipping?" he bellowed at the old man. "Why can't you understand? I abominate what you do."
Sir Patrick's head flung up and his hard, gray eyes blazed. "You dare to criticize me! You were nothing more than a naked, heathen savage when I found you that day ten years ago." He turned and flung out his arms, appealing to a wide-eyed Delia. "Why, he was no better than a slave himself!"
Ty's jaw clamped shut and he spoke through his teeth. "That's a lie and you know it. You had to force me back into your world. I had a family and a life and—"
"Aye, aye, right decent folk they were," Sir Patrick said, sarcasm oozing from his voice, and he spoke to Delia as if she were the one he had to convince. "Barely sixteen he was when I found him, and already he'd lifted his share of scalps. They had taken him captive, a boy of six, and made him one of them, made him into a bloody savage, and killed... killed..."
Sudden tears filled Sir Patrick's eyes, and he turned to look at the portrait above his head. It was of a delicate, ephemeral-looking young woman standing with her hand on the back of a chair as if she needed its weight to anchor her to the ground. She had hair so fair it looked almost silver and eyes the deep blue of the sea at dusk.
Ty's eyes, an identical blue, had gone to the portrait as well, and Delia saw the anger leave him. He sighed wearily and pushed his hand through the front of his hair. "I've told you and told you. They didn't kill her. She died in childbirth."
"After she had been raped and impregnated by one of your Abenaki savages!"
"He was her husband."
"Her husband was murdered!"
Sir Patrick came up to stand before Ty. They must have been the same height once, Delia thought, before age had stooped the older man. He stood nose to nose to his grandson now, trying to stare Ty down. But Ty's eyes met those of his grandfather's and held them steadily.
"How can you bear to go back there and live where it all happened?" Sir Patrick said, the pleading plain in his voice. "Where they are?"
Delia saw the movement of Ty's throat as he swallowed. "The Sagadahoc is my home. And I'm going back."
The old man blinked, and a tear fell from his eye to roll slowly down his cheek. "I thought I'd made an Englishman of you. I educated you, taught you how to dress and speak properly, but I never could touch your heart. Nay, at heart you're still one of them. You're still an Abenaki savage."
"I don't know... I don't know what I am anymore," Ty said, his voice strained, and in his eyes Delia saw the agony of a tormented soul.
But his grandfather was too hurt and too angry to see it.
"Get out," he said, his voice low and harsh. "Go back there then, to your precious Abenaki wilderness. I never want to set eyes on you again."
A hundred questions danced on the tip of Delia's tongue as they were driven in the coach back to the Red Dragon—most having to do with savage, scalping Indians and their proximity to Merrymeeting Settlement. But there was such a forbidding look on Ty's face, she didn't dare voice even one of them.
At the inn, Ty jumped from the coach, leaving her to fend for herself. He disappeared inside and she thought about following, but she hadn't been asked, so she went down the street a ways, to the haberdashery shop next door, and leaned against the brick wall to wait for him. A few moments later she saw the ostler go around to the nearby livery stable and come back with a frisky Narragansett pacer and another sturdier horse equipped with a pack saddle. She knew Ty was preparing to leave. She shivered and drew her thin, ragged cloak around her, although it wasn't cold.
The front door to the Red Dragon opened wide and the porter emerged, staggering under three heavily-loaded haversacks, which he proceeded to tie onto the pack horse. A few moments later, Ty came out.
Delia barely recognized him. He had changed from his fine gentleman's clothes into a pair of worn buckskin breeches and a hunting shirt made of heavy linen dyed a butternut brown, with long fringes around the shoulders and down the sleeves. He carried his flintlock in one hand and from a beaded Indian strap across his chest hung a powder flask, a shot pouch, and an Indian ax. Only the costly fitted boots were reminiscent of his earlier elegance.
He looked tough and dangerous, his face hard and frightening. Certainly he seemed the sort of man who could live happily in the wilderness, even among the savages. Delia thought that if his grandfather had seen Ty looking as he did now, he would have realized how hopeless were his expectations.
Ty shoved the rifle into the saddle holster. He gathered up the lead of the pack horse and swung onto the pacer's back, digging his heels into the horse's side. It took Delia a moment to realize he was leaving without her.
She snatched up the grist sack at her feet and ran into the street after him. "Ty, wait! Wait for me!"
He whirled his horse around, and she saw by the look on his face that he had completely forgotten her.
"Delia..." His face softened and he even managed a smile. Leaning over, he held out his hand to her. "We'll have to pick up a horse for you later. For now we'll ride double."
Delia didn't move. She stood in the middle of the street, staring up at him. She wished he hadn't forgotten her. How could he have forgotten her? But then, what was she to him except a minor irritation, a package to be delivered and then dismissed from his mind?
"Come on, Delia," Ty said, impatient. "The reverend and his wife have been waiting for us at the Common for over an hour."
She approached the horse warily. "I don't know how to ride."
"Well, I haven't time to teach you!" he snapped. "Here, give me your arm, put your right foot on top of mine, and throw your left leg over his rump."
He tied her grist sack to the front of his saddle, then hauled on her arm, and she went flying up in the air to land with a hard jar, straddling the horse's rump. Its hide felt scratchy beneath her bare legs and her petticoat had been pulled clear up to her knees, but Delia had little time to think of that before Ty urged the horse into a fast trot. The sudden movement threw her against his broad back. She swallowed a nervous cry and wrapped her arms tight around his waist. Lacing her hands across the hard slab of his stomach, she pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade.
It didn't take long to make their way to the Common. Delia was just beginning to enjoy the wonder of being so close to Ty, close enough to feel his warmth, to hear his heart beat, when they turned onto Common Street and there, stretching before them, was a wide, muddy pasture dotted with grazing cows. At the very edge of the field waited an ox-drawn cart loaded with chests and furniture. A woman sat on the seat while a man paced at the team's heads, peering anxiously down the street Ty lifted his hand in greeting as they trotted up. He slid from his horse, causing Delia to tumble down after him, and he had to grab her arm to prevent her from sprawling in the dirt at his feet.
"Reverend Hooker," Ty said with a smile, releasing Delia to reach out and shake the young man's hand. "I'm sorry I'm late."
The Reverend Hooker was in his early twenties, with a thin, aesthetic face that seemed befitting to his profession. He was dressed in a plain dark broadcloth suit and a wide-brimmed hat with a low round crown. Even his stock was black.
He answered Ty's smile, then his solemn hazel eyes flickered over Delia. He smiled at her as well, a smile that slowly faded as he took in her bedraggled appearance.
"I'm Delia," she said. "I guess we all must be going to the Merrymeeting Settlement together."
The reverend looked taken aback. "Er, uh, I'm Caleb," he said, wiping his hand nervously against his leg. Then he cleared his throat and turned back to Ty, and when he spoke again it was in a preacher's voice, low and rhythmic. "I'm just glad you're here. We were starting to worry." He turned to the woman seated in the wagon. "Dr. Savitch, may I present to you my wife Elizabeth."
Delia looked with frank curiosity at the young minister's wife. Her neck was long and delicately bowed, like an egret's, her skin as white as fresh milk. Her nose and eyes were child-like but in perfect proportion above a small mouth that curled up on the ends like the petal of an iris. She, too, was dressed all in black, except for a white, undecorated bib over her bodice and a touch of white showing at the turned-back cuffs of her long sleeves. A calash covered most of her head, except for a few inches in the front where her hair showed pale, pale blond. In her lap she clutched a Bible bound in calfskin with a gilded clasp.
"Lizzie, this is the good doctor I was telling you about," the Reverend Caleb Hooker was saying, and the affection he felt for his wife showed in the gentle inflection of his voice. "The man who's going to take us to the Merrymeeting Settlement. And this is, uh, Delia."
The girl's gray eyes, as solemn and still as a dawn sky, glanced at them briefly before falling back down to the Bible in her lap. "I'm pleased to meet you, Dr. Savitch," she said in a soft, melodic voice.
Ty said nothing. It was this awkward silence that caused Delia to look from the young woman back to Ty... and at the expression on his face, Delia thought her heart would surely break.
For Tyler Savitch was staring up at the minister's wife with warm admiration in his eyes.
Chapter 4
They took a flatboat ferry across the Charles River, sharing it with a stack of rum kegs and a herd of bleating goats. Elizabeth Hooker, fearful of either the river, the goats, or both, clung to the cart and shut her eyes. Ty hovered around her, looking manly and protective.
The sight of them together, the friendly admiration in Ty's eyes, was so painful to Delia that she wondered if she could bear it. How greedy is the human heart, she thought. Only last night it had been enough for her to be near him, to see his face. But already she wanted more. She wanted what she could never have.
Delia decided she could endure it more easily if she didn't have to see them together, so she went to the stern of the boat and watched the landmarks of her past slip away from her—the steeples of Boston's many meetinghouses sticking like thistles into the sky, the wharves jutting into the harbor, the sun reflecting off the copper roof of the lighthouse on Beacon Island, dazzling her eyes. She told herself she wasn't sorry to be leaving; it was only the bright sun that was making her blink away tears.
Oh, Da...
Her da must have passed out in a grog shop somewhere because he hadn't been asleep on his tick when she went home last night. She hadn't been able to tell him goodbye, but it was probably for the best. He'd be drunk for a day or two anyway, and he'd only have come after her with his fists.
But when he sobered up later he would miss her. Like as not he wouldn't even remember her taking a clout at him with that piece of wood. He would search the waterfront for her, worry about her, and then figure out that she was gone for good, because he wasn't stupid, her da, leastways not when he was sober. And then he'd cry, because there was never one like her da for crying when he got to feeling sorry for himself.
Shame and guilt overwhelmed Delia. She promised herself she would have someone help her write a letter once she got to Merrymeeting, to tell him she was all right. At least then he wouldn't worry. Poor Da... Who would care for him now that she was gone?
And who would he use his fists on now when the drink got the best of him?
She shut her eyes, and her father's face came into her mind. But it was not her da as she'd last seen him—his eyes glittering with rage, his lips pulled back in a snarl. It was a dim memory of him on a day when he had seemed a god to her, so towering and strong to her little girl's eyes. They had stood on the end of the Long Wharf, just she and her da, as he pointed out the ships in the harbor to her. She could remember the strength of his large hand enveloping hers as they looked at the ships, the mysterious ships. She'd felt a scary excitement, thinking how wide and grand the world seemed. But mixed with that excitement was a warm feeling of security that her da was right there beside her to take care of her. She had looked up at him and he had smiled and said, "I love you, little puss..."
But then her ma had died. And the god had turned into a monster.
"Do you have family in the Merrymeeting Settlement?"
Delia turned and looked into the Reverend Caleb Hooker's thin face. He was smiling, and she noticed for the first time that his front teeth overlapped a bit. She liked that about him; it made him seem less saintly.
"I'm goin' to Merrymeeting t' be wed to a widower an' be a mother t' his two daughters," she replied, returning his smile.
"I see," he said, though he didn't sound at all as if he did.
Spoken so baldly, it sounded incredible to Delia's own ears.
She reminded herself that it was a new life she was going to. A new life and respectability.
