The Fallon Blood, page 5
part #1 of Fallon Series
“And why’s that?”
Rather than answering, Christopher tossed his pipe on the table and rose. “Gentlemen, Mr. Fallon and I must leave you, now.” He pulled Michael up by the arm.
The others barely noticed their going for the argument that had broken out. Words like currency and specie flew back and forth across the table.
“Christopher, why the hurry?”
Byrne kept a slow pace toward the street, and a hand on Michael’s sleeve. He spoke low, beneath the buzz from the tables. “Those lads are eager enough, but they’ve only three brains between the four of them. Some things it’s best not to talk about in front of them.”
Michael sighed. He knew he’d let himself get carried away, but he couldn’t stop yet. Christopher had brought him there deliberately, and he had to know why. “Things such as?”
“There are men in the various colonies, lad, who like to keep up with the news elsewhere. So, they write to one another. I saw a letter from one of them in Boston, John Adams, saying exactly what you said back there, only he was so confounded oratorical about it you had to think three times over every word to puzzle out his meaning.”
“And what does that have to do with me?” He stopped short of asking where Christopher had seen the letter.
“You can’t use a letter like that, or a man like him that wrote it, to explain the ins and outs of things to men like Anslow and Gosnell. You have to have something to grab hold of them, fire them up. That’s why we use slogans and catch phrases like taxation without representation.”
“We?” Michael followed Christopher through the door to the street.
“I saw a young lawyer last year in Virginia, by the name of Patrick Henry. Now he could get you fired up and breathing smoke over the weather on a fine spring day. But we don’t have anybody like him, and lacking that we need someone who can explain what this is all about in language plain enough for those types to understand.”
Michael felt a sinking sensation. “You don’t mean me? What about you? They know you. They’d listen.”
“But I get carried away when I talk about it. The first thing you know I’d be challenging somebody in the crowd to fisticuffs, and devil take the speechifying.
“I just get caught up in the thing. What do you say? How’d you like to stand up and tell people the same things you said back there? No haranguing. Just a plain talk.”
Michael shook his head. How could he explain that he didn’t dare get up in front of a crowd? Being recognized, especially by soldiers, meant being sent back to England to hang. “I’m no talker, man. I’m not a politician.”
“Listen, Michael. I brought you here today because you seemed a handy man for a rough and tumble. But I listened to you, and I watched you think on the move. You could do it.”
“I can’t. I can’t explain why, but I just can’t.”
Christopher sighed. “Think on it, man. It’s important.”
“I’ll think, but I won’t change my mind.”
Christopher gestured as if to say what happened, happened. Michael turned away from him, toward Church Street. But after all, what could it harm? And there he was, arguing Christopher’s side. It could do a great harm. Men under arrest made no fortunes.
Suddenly he realized a squad of redcoats was bearing down on him. He leaped back out of the way, and his back hit something soft. A squeal and thud spun him around. A girl sprawled at his feet, glaring at him, her basket overturned to spill out a dozen small packages. The dust from the passing soldiers settled on his coat as he went to one knee and began gathering her bundles.
“It’s sorrier than I can say that I am, miss. There’s no excuse for failing to see a girl as pretty as yourself.” He set the basket upright and took his first good look at her. She really was pretty, with full lips and merry brown eyes.
Her anger had already gone. She stared at him with her mouth open, running one hand up and down the neck of her well-filled, low-cut blouse. At last she seemed to find her tongue. “It’s all very well, picking up my marketing, but what about me?”
Michael got to his feet and held down a hand to her. She took it in both of hers and pulled herself up. “Maybe I’d better be carrying this basket home for you, lass. No doubt you shouldn’t be lifting any weight for a time after such a nasty spill.”
She dusted her skirts, head down, but her eye took him in from head to toe. “I don’t know that I should be accepting favors from strange gentlemen. It could be dangerous.”
He took hold of her chin and lifted her face. There was a tigerish light in his eyes. “A pretty little sweetmeat like you,” he said softly, “I’m liable to gobble her all up.”
She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s a long walk, sir. All the way up the Bay above Vanderhorst Creek.”
“All the more reason you shouldn’t carry this load.” He held out his arm gallantly. “Shall we go, then?”
Smiling, she dusted off her hands on the back of her skirt and took his arm. For the space of a block she walked well away from him, her fingertips resting on the inside of his arm, maintaining a dignified, frosty silence. He watched, amused, as she slowly drifted closer. When they reached the Bay she was clutching his arm tightly, her breast pressed softly against it. Every time he looked down at her his eye was caught by the shimmering valley between those lightly tanned mounds.
“What work do you do?” she asked as her silence failed as well. “I see you on a ship, somehow. You look—Oh, I don’t know.” She shivered, and the front of her blouse quaked interestingly. “You look like one of those freebooters who carry girls off.”
“Gladly would I carry you off, had I a ship. But I’m only a clerk, as yet, working for Mr. Thomas Carver.”
“A clerk! That’s almost a gentleman.” She felt his arm tighten and looked up. “Did I say something?”
“No,” he said shortly. He lightened his tone. “You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just there are those think it doesn’t make a man any better, being a so-called gentleman.”
She hugged his arm again and giggled. “You sound like my master. He’s always talking about the mechanics, silversmiths and carpenters and the like, and how they’re as good men as the ones who run the colony. He says most of them have better sense.”
“Sounds like a dangerous man,” Michael chuckled. “I’ll wager the Assembly is fond of him, if they know of it. Who is he?”
“Mr. Christopher Gadsden is who he is, and he’s not dangerous, neither.”
The name gave him pause. Of course the Assembly knew of it. Gadsden was in the Assembly, as well as being a reputable merchant and planter. “I just meant it’s a new idea, different from what most people think. New ideas are always dangerous. I never thought of an Assemblyman to talk like that.”
“Well, he does. He says the common people have to have a say in their, their destiny.” She nodded for emphasis. “He says they must have a part in making the laws they live by and the taxes they pay. He says taxation without representation is no better than stealing.”
Michael stopped in the street. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Those words. Taxation without representation. Did he use those words?”
“Why, yes, he did. But what of it?”
“Nothing, lass. Nothing.” Gentlemen who wrote other gentlemen to let them know what was happening. A gentleman who uncharacteristically championed the mechanics. Four men in a tavern, not even mechanics, no craftsmen they, but spouting a phrase as if it was memorized, and that the same phrase used by the gentleman. It was too much for coincidence. “Has Christopher Byrne ever come to visit Mr. Gadsden?”
“Cook would have my hide if I went prating who was visiting the master.”
“It’s no never mind. Come. I’ll carry your basket on home for you.”
She shook her head, suddenly diffident. “There’s no need. It’s only over there.” She pointed to a house much like Carver’s, a single-house it was called.
He brushed some hair back from her cheek. “The dust those soldiers kicked up is all over my coat. Do you think you could brush it off, back in your room?”
She frowned down at the street. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Nor I yours, lass.”
“It’s Mary. Mary Billings.”
“Michael Shane Fallon.”
“Oh, that’s a fine name.” She bit her lip and glanced away, watching him from the corner of her eye.
He ran a finger lightly across the top of her breasts. “Will you let me in, Mary?”
She shivered at the extra meaning in his words. Wordlessly she took his hand, holding it in the small of her back with both of hers, his knuckles just brushing the swell of her buttocks, and led him down the carriage path beside the house to the outbuildings behind. Not till she closed the door to her small room did she let go, and then he pulled her to him, his mouth fastening on hers.
He quickly tugged her blouse loose at the waist and ran his hands up the bare skin of her back. His arms tightened, crushing her against his chest.
She pulled her lips free breathlessly. “Clothes,” she whispered.
In one motion he pulled the blouse up over her head and off. She backed away, one arm covering her bare, firm breasts, then, smiling, let it drop. She spun, skirt flaring slightly, hands busy at her waist. At the second spin the skirt swirled to the floor. In shoes and stockings she flaunted herself at him.
In seconds his clothes joined hers on the floor. He reached for her, but she sank to her haunches out of his grasp. Her hands trailed down after her, across his chest and flanks.
“So hard,” she murmured. “So strong.” She planted a light kiss on each of his thighs, then her mouth fastened on him.
He hissed and jerked at the shock and the sudden warmth of it. His hands tangled in her hair. For only a minute he stood it then pulled her roughly to her feet. “Much more of that,” he said hoarsely, “and there’ll be no need of going on.”
“We can’t have that,” she breathed. She leaned against him, whispering into his chest. “The bed. Please. Hurry.”
He cupped her buttocks and lifted her, carrying her still clutching his shoulders, her head buried beneath his chin. Gently he laid her on the coverlet. She fumbled between them, lifting her heels to rest on his buttocks, and he thrust into her.
“Darling Michael. So good.”
He smiled and kissed her down the line of her chin. She began to sigh, to make low cries deep in her throat as he moved within her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and he kissed the lids. Lovely brown eyes. Violet eyes. No, brown eyes.
Fiercely he ground his mouth down on hers. This was Mary he held in his arms, not Elizabeth. Mary who was grinding her body against his. Mary who dug her fingernails into the muscles of his back. She stiffened against him, screaming into his throat, and he covered her mouth with his as he came, as much to cut off his own cry as hers. Elizabeth!
She stretched, catlike, as he brusquely put on his breeches and sat back on the edge of the bed to do his stockings. “So good,” she said dreamily. His silence reached her, and she touched his arm. “There’s nothing the matter, is there, Michael?”
He reached back to pat her hip. “No, sweetling, there’s nothing wrong. You’re as much pleasure to bed as a man could bear.”
She giggled, content, and rolled back on the bed. “You pleasured me, too. But it’s just as well you’re going.” She twisted around and began rummaging under the corner of the bed for her shoes. “There’s work waiting for me in the kitchens.”
He straightened his stock in a scrap of mirror on the wall, and pulled on his coat. “If you stay like that, it’s me who’ll keep you from it.”
She dimpled and sat up cross-legged on the bed. “Michael? I will see you again, won’t I? I don’t mean to entangle you, but you are as sweet as honey.”
He looked at her sitting there and had to take a deep breath. “I’ll be back. Most certainly. But if I don’t leave now, I may not leave at all.” Blowing her a kiss, he ducked out the door.
There was a bounce to his step as he walked down the path. Elizabeth had managed to creep into his mind even in the arms of another woman, it was true, but he could think of her now, if only for a time, without the gut-wrenching lust that had consumed him since he’d first seen her. It might not be fair to Mary, but he would see her again, and forget Elizabeth in her caress.
5
For two months Michael kept to his way, passing civil words and little else with the mechanics who drank in the common room of Dillon’s, passing warm and often exhausting hours in Mary’s bed. Byrne eased his pressure for Michael to join the movement, whatever it might be, and though Elizabeth’s presence still lit fires in him, she no longer haunted his dreams at night. Or, at least, seldom. Life in Charlestown was becoming familiar; he was beginning to relax into it.
The scent of early May roses was in the air when he slid from Mary’s bed and began to dress in the somber black he had worn as suitable for Sunday. He hadn’t stayed the entire night before this. Briefly he wondered if he had time to return to Church Street for fresh linen before going to the bridge, but decided against it. The sun was already well up, and most honest folk were at work long ago.
Mary sat up with the covers around her breasts and watched him dress with a slight smile of approval for the muscular body disappearing beneath black wool and white lawn. Not until he finished buttoning his waistcoat did she speak.
“Michael?”
“You’re too late, little cabbage,” he said absently, tugging on his coat. “I’m dressed already. Besides, I have work to do, and so do you. It’s Monday morning, and the day is already high.”
“Michael, who is she?”
His fingers, tying the ribbons to hold his hair pulled back, slowed almost to a stop. “She? She who?” His eyes met hers in the piece of mirror, and she looked away with a careless toss of her head.
“It doesn’t matter. I make no claims on you.” She smiled. “Just a lovely tumble and tickle. That’s what we have, and that’s what I want. But I can’t help wondering.”
“About what?”
She tipped her head to one side. “Well, sometimes when we’re together, it’s different. Sometimes you come in like you’re full of lightning bolts.” She laughed suddenly. “It’s what every woman wishes for, then wonders if she’ll survive it when it comes. Only, it’s not me you’re making love to, those times.”
He picked up his cocked hat and twisted it slowly round in his hands, then set it down again and sighed. Had he been so transparent, then? “Do you want to end it?”
“Oh, no.” She bounced out of bed and ran to press against him. “I don’t want to know about her. Honestly I don’t. Do you think I’d risk another hiding if I didn’t want you?” A hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she’d said.
“Another hiding? What are you talking about, Mary?” He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back where he could look at her, but she kept her head down. “Has someone been after you because of me? Answer me. The truth, now.”
She nodded slowly without looking up. “Cook. She saw you leaving one afternoon two weeks ago. Thank God she just thought you’d been visiting. There’s no telling what she’d have done if she’d known what we were really doing.” She stifled a short giggle. “She’d never think of people doing that in the daylight, though.”
“And she beat you for that? Damn it, you’re not a slave. You have rights. Stand up for them.”
She looked up at him then, a wry look on her face. “You and your fine talk of rights. If I tried standing up for my rights, cook would see to it I stood up all year long for not being able to sit down. Besides, beast that you are, you’d likely have enjoyed seeing it. Me, bent over the back of her tall chair with my skirts around my ears, yelping and kicking my heels in the air like a three years’ child, while she wore out my bum with a willow switch.”
He laughed and pulled her against him. “The part about your skirts around your ears I like, but if I want to make you yelp and kick your heels I think I’ll use something other than a switch.” She laughed in her throat, but the smile faded from her face as a serious thought came to him. “Poplet, I’ve no wish to be earning more trouble for you.”
“There’s no need to worry. After the way I blubbered she’s convinced I learned my lesson.”
She snuggled against him contentedly, rubbing her thigh against his. Her fingers began to creep up into his hair. “You’re worth ten times the risk.”
Michael pushed her gently away. “You’re likely late in the kitchens already, and she may be coming to look for you any minute. It’s after eight o’clock.”
“Lord!” She leaped back, eyes wide. “Bloody blue hell!” Whirling, she dove for her clothes, and began scrambling into them, trying to put on all of her petticoats at once. Her voice came muffled through layers of cotton. “Please don’t let anyone see you leaving. Please?” Her head popped out for a quick, pleading look. “Just because I risk a whipping doesn’t mean I want one.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, but she was engrossed in pulling her stockings on, a task that should have been done before the petticoats, and muttering distractedly to herself. Smiling, he let himself out, and left her to her hurry.
Outside the light was beginning to fade despite the morning hour. The sky was ominous, dark purple clouds rolling in from the west across the Ashley River. Grumbling thunder sounded in the distance, but in the garden all was still. In the foreshadowing silence not a leaf stirred, and the smoke from the kitchen chimney rose in a thin reed wisping into nothingness.
The broken oyster shells that paved the drive cracked and snapped beneath Michael’s feet, loudly it seemed to him, but no one came. He walked faster. There was no one to see after all.
He reached the gate and skidded to a halt. A closed carriage stood in front of the house, with slaves swarming round it. The coachman was fastening his buttons with one hand and wiping stray dust off the rig with the other. Three small black stableboys tugged and pulled at the straps and buckles of the harness. The groom, his sweaty face glistening like polished coal, danced around them, alternately screaming that they were doing it all wrong and pushing them aside to do it himself.
Rather than answering, Christopher tossed his pipe on the table and rose. “Gentlemen, Mr. Fallon and I must leave you, now.” He pulled Michael up by the arm.
The others barely noticed their going for the argument that had broken out. Words like currency and specie flew back and forth across the table.
“Christopher, why the hurry?”
Byrne kept a slow pace toward the street, and a hand on Michael’s sleeve. He spoke low, beneath the buzz from the tables. “Those lads are eager enough, but they’ve only three brains between the four of them. Some things it’s best not to talk about in front of them.”
Michael sighed. He knew he’d let himself get carried away, but he couldn’t stop yet. Christopher had brought him there deliberately, and he had to know why. “Things such as?”
“There are men in the various colonies, lad, who like to keep up with the news elsewhere. So, they write to one another. I saw a letter from one of them in Boston, John Adams, saying exactly what you said back there, only he was so confounded oratorical about it you had to think three times over every word to puzzle out his meaning.”
“And what does that have to do with me?” He stopped short of asking where Christopher had seen the letter.
“You can’t use a letter like that, or a man like him that wrote it, to explain the ins and outs of things to men like Anslow and Gosnell. You have to have something to grab hold of them, fire them up. That’s why we use slogans and catch phrases like taxation without representation.”
“We?” Michael followed Christopher through the door to the street.
“I saw a young lawyer last year in Virginia, by the name of Patrick Henry. Now he could get you fired up and breathing smoke over the weather on a fine spring day. But we don’t have anybody like him, and lacking that we need someone who can explain what this is all about in language plain enough for those types to understand.”
Michael felt a sinking sensation. “You don’t mean me? What about you? They know you. They’d listen.”
“But I get carried away when I talk about it. The first thing you know I’d be challenging somebody in the crowd to fisticuffs, and devil take the speechifying.
“I just get caught up in the thing. What do you say? How’d you like to stand up and tell people the same things you said back there? No haranguing. Just a plain talk.”
Michael shook his head. How could he explain that he didn’t dare get up in front of a crowd? Being recognized, especially by soldiers, meant being sent back to England to hang. “I’m no talker, man. I’m not a politician.”
“Listen, Michael. I brought you here today because you seemed a handy man for a rough and tumble. But I listened to you, and I watched you think on the move. You could do it.”
“I can’t. I can’t explain why, but I just can’t.”
Christopher sighed. “Think on it, man. It’s important.”
“I’ll think, but I won’t change my mind.”
Christopher gestured as if to say what happened, happened. Michael turned away from him, toward Church Street. But after all, what could it harm? And there he was, arguing Christopher’s side. It could do a great harm. Men under arrest made no fortunes.
Suddenly he realized a squad of redcoats was bearing down on him. He leaped back out of the way, and his back hit something soft. A squeal and thud spun him around. A girl sprawled at his feet, glaring at him, her basket overturned to spill out a dozen small packages. The dust from the passing soldiers settled on his coat as he went to one knee and began gathering her bundles.
“It’s sorrier than I can say that I am, miss. There’s no excuse for failing to see a girl as pretty as yourself.” He set the basket upright and took his first good look at her. She really was pretty, with full lips and merry brown eyes.
Her anger had already gone. She stared at him with her mouth open, running one hand up and down the neck of her well-filled, low-cut blouse. At last she seemed to find her tongue. “It’s all very well, picking up my marketing, but what about me?”
Michael got to his feet and held down a hand to her. She took it in both of hers and pulled herself up. “Maybe I’d better be carrying this basket home for you, lass. No doubt you shouldn’t be lifting any weight for a time after such a nasty spill.”
She dusted her skirts, head down, but her eye took him in from head to toe. “I don’t know that I should be accepting favors from strange gentlemen. It could be dangerous.”
He took hold of her chin and lifted her face. There was a tigerish light in his eyes. “A pretty little sweetmeat like you,” he said softly, “I’m liable to gobble her all up.”
She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s a long walk, sir. All the way up the Bay above Vanderhorst Creek.”
“All the more reason you shouldn’t carry this load.” He held out his arm gallantly. “Shall we go, then?”
Smiling, she dusted off her hands on the back of her skirt and took his arm. For the space of a block she walked well away from him, her fingertips resting on the inside of his arm, maintaining a dignified, frosty silence. He watched, amused, as she slowly drifted closer. When they reached the Bay she was clutching his arm tightly, her breast pressed softly against it. Every time he looked down at her his eye was caught by the shimmering valley between those lightly tanned mounds.
“What work do you do?” she asked as her silence failed as well. “I see you on a ship, somehow. You look—Oh, I don’t know.” She shivered, and the front of her blouse quaked interestingly. “You look like one of those freebooters who carry girls off.”
“Gladly would I carry you off, had I a ship. But I’m only a clerk, as yet, working for Mr. Thomas Carver.”
“A clerk! That’s almost a gentleman.” She felt his arm tighten and looked up. “Did I say something?”
“No,” he said shortly. He lightened his tone. “You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just there are those think it doesn’t make a man any better, being a so-called gentleman.”
She hugged his arm again and giggled. “You sound like my master. He’s always talking about the mechanics, silversmiths and carpenters and the like, and how they’re as good men as the ones who run the colony. He says most of them have better sense.”
“Sounds like a dangerous man,” Michael chuckled. “I’ll wager the Assembly is fond of him, if they know of it. Who is he?”
“Mr. Christopher Gadsden is who he is, and he’s not dangerous, neither.”
The name gave him pause. Of course the Assembly knew of it. Gadsden was in the Assembly, as well as being a reputable merchant and planter. “I just meant it’s a new idea, different from what most people think. New ideas are always dangerous. I never thought of an Assemblyman to talk like that.”
“Well, he does. He says the common people have to have a say in their, their destiny.” She nodded for emphasis. “He says they must have a part in making the laws they live by and the taxes they pay. He says taxation without representation is no better than stealing.”
Michael stopped in the street. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Those words. Taxation without representation. Did he use those words?”
“Why, yes, he did. But what of it?”
“Nothing, lass. Nothing.” Gentlemen who wrote other gentlemen to let them know what was happening. A gentleman who uncharacteristically championed the mechanics. Four men in a tavern, not even mechanics, no craftsmen they, but spouting a phrase as if it was memorized, and that the same phrase used by the gentleman. It was too much for coincidence. “Has Christopher Byrne ever come to visit Mr. Gadsden?”
“Cook would have my hide if I went prating who was visiting the master.”
“It’s no never mind. Come. I’ll carry your basket on home for you.”
She shook her head, suddenly diffident. “There’s no need. It’s only over there.” She pointed to a house much like Carver’s, a single-house it was called.
He brushed some hair back from her cheek. “The dust those soldiers kicked up is all over my coat. Do you think you could brush it off, back in your room?”
She frowned down at the street. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Nor I yours, lass.”
“It’s Mary. Mary Billings.”
“Michael Shane Fallon.”
“Oh, that’s a fine name.” She bit her lip and glanced away, watching him from the corner of her eye.
He ran a finger lightly across the top of her breasts. “Will you let me in, Mary?”
She shivered at the extra meaning in his words. Wordlessly she took his hand, holding it in the small of her back with both of hers, his knuckles just brushing the swell of her buttocks, and led him down the carriage path beside the house to the outbuildings behind. Not till she closed the door to her small room did she let go, and then he pulled her to him, his mouth fastening on hers.
He quickly tugged her blouse loose at the waist and ran his hands up the bare skin of her back. His arms tightened, crushing her against his chest.
She pulled her lips free breathlessly. “Clothes,” she whispered.
In one motion he pulled the blouse up over her head and off. She backed away, one arm covering her bare, firm breasts, then, smiling, let it drop. She spun, skirt flaring slightly, hands busy at her waist. At the second spin the skirt swirled to the floor. In shoes and stockings she flaunted herself at him.
In seconds his clothes joined hers on the floor. He reached for her, but she sank to her haunches out of his grasp. Her hands trailed down after her, across his chest and flanks.
“So hard,” she murmured. “So strong.” She planted a light kiss on each of his thighs, then her mouth fastened on him.
He hissed and jerked at the shock and the sudden warmth of it. His hands tangled in her hair. For only a minute he stood it then pulled her roughly to her feet. “Much more of that,” he said hoarsely, “and there’ll be no need of going on.”
“We can’t have that,” she breathed. She leaned against him, whispering into his chest. “The bed. Please. Hurry.”
He cupped her buttocks and lifted her, carrying her still clutching his shoulders, her head buried beneath his chin. Gently he laid her on the coverlet. She fumbled between them, lifting her heels to rest on his buttocks, and he thrust into her.
“Darling Michael. So good.”
He smiled and kissed her down the line of her chin. She began to sigh, to make low cries deep in her throat as he moved within her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and he kissed the lids. Lovely brown eyes. Violet eyes. No, brown eyes.
Fiercely he ground his mouth down on hers. This was Mary he held in his arms, not Elizabeth. Mary who was grinding her body against his. Mary who dug her fingernails into the muscles of his back. She stiffened against him, screaming into his throat, and he covered her mouth with his as he came, as much to cut off his own cry as hers. Elizabeth!
She stretched, catlike, as he brusquely put on his breeches and sat back on the edge of the bed to do his stockings. “So good,” she said dreamily. His silence reached her, and she touched his arm. “There’s nothing the matter, is there, Michael?”
He reached back to pat her hip. “No, sweetling, there’s nothing wrong. You’re as much pleasure to bed as a man could bear.”
She giggled, content, and rolled back on the bed. “You pleasured me, too. But it’s just as well you’re going.” She twisted around and began rummaging under the corner of the bed for her shoes. “There’s work waiting for me in the kitchens.”
He straightened his stock in a scrap of mirror on the wall, and pulled on his coat. “If you stay like that, it’s me who’ll keep you from it.”
She dimpled and sat up cross-legged on the bed. “Michael? I will see you again, won’t I? I don’t mean to entangle you, but you are as sweet as honey.”
He looked at her sitting there and had to take a deep breath. “I’ll be back. Most certainly. But if I don’t leave now, I may not leave at all.” Blowing her a kiss, he ducked out the door.
There was a bounce to his step as he walked down the path. Elizabeth had managed to creep into his mind even in the arms of another woman, it was true, but he could think of her now, if only for a time, without the gut-wrenching lust that had consumed him since he’d first seen her. It might not be fair to Mary, but he would see her again, and forget Elizabeth in her caress.
5
For two months Michael kept to his way, passing civil words and little else with the mechanics who drank in the common room of Dillon’s, passing warm and often exhausting hours in Mary’s bed. Byrne eased his pressure for Michael to join the movement, whatever it might be, and though Elizabeth’s presence still lit fires in him, she no longer haunted his dreams at night. Or, at least, seldom. Life in Charlestown was becoming familiar; he was beginning to relax into it.
The scent of early May roses was in the air when he slid from Mary’s bed and began to dress in the somber black he had worn as suitable for Sunday. He hadn’t stayed the entire night before this. Briefly he wondered if he had time to return to Church Street for fresh linen before going to the bridge, but decided against it. The sun was already well up, and most honest folk were at work long ago.
Mary sat up with the covers around her breasts and watched him dress with a slight smile of approval for the muscular body disappearing beneath black wool and white lawn. Not until he finished buttoning his waistcoat did she speak.
“Michael?”
“You’re too late, little cabbage,” he said absently, tugging on his coat. “I’m dressed already. Besides, I have work to do, and so do you. It’s Monday morning, and the day is already high.”
“Michael, who is she?”
His fingers, tying the ribbons to hold his hair pulled back, slowed almost to a stop. “She? She who?” His eyes met hers in the piece of mirror, and she looked away with a careless toss of her head.
“It doesn’t matter. I make no claims on you.” She smiled. “Just a lovely tumble and tickle. That’s what we have, and that’s what I want. But I can’t help wondering.”
“About what?”
She tipped her head to one side. “Well, sometimes when we’re together, it’s different. Sometimes you come in like you’re full of lightning bolts.” She laughed suddenly. “It’s what every woman wishes for, then wonders if she’ll survive it when it comes. Only, it’s not me you’re making love to, those times.”
He picked up his cocked hat and twisted it slowly round in his hands, then set it down again and sighed. Had he been so transparent, then? “Do you want to end it?”
“Oh, no.” She bounced out of bed and ran to press against him. “I don’t want to know about her. Honestly I don’t. Do you think I’d risk another hiding if I didn’t want you?” A hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she’d said.
“Another hiding? What are you talking about, Mary?” He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back where he could look at her, but she kept her head down. “Has someone been after you because of me? Answer me. The truth, now.”
She nodded slowly without looking up. “Cook. She saw you leaving one afternoon two weeks ago. Thank God she just thought you’d been visiting. There’s no telling what she’d have done if she’d known what we were really doing.” She stifled a short giggle. “She’d never think of people doing that in the daylight, though.”
“And she beat you for that? Damn it, you’re not a slave. You have rights. Stand up for them.”
She looked up at him then, a wry look on her face. “You and your fine talk of rights. If I tried standing up for my rights, cook would see to it I stood up all year long for not being able to sit down. Besides, beast that you are, you’d likely have enjoyed seeing it. Me, bent over the back of her tall chair with my skirts around my ears, yelping and kicking my heels in the air like a three years’ child, while she wore out my bum with a willow switch.”
He laughed and pulled her against him. “The part about your skirts around your ears I like, but if I want to make you yelp and kick your heels I think I’ll use something other than a switch.” She laughed in her throat, but the smile faded from her face as a serious thought came to him. “Poplet, I’ve no wish to be earning more trouble for you.”
“There’s no need to worry. After the way I blubbered she’s convinced I learned my lesson.”
She snuggled against him contentedly, rubbing her thigh against his. Her fingers began to creep up into his hair. “You’re worth ten times the risk.”
Michael pushed her gently away. “You’re likely late in the kitchens already, and she may be coming to look for you any minute. It’s after eight o’clock.”
“Lord!” She leaped back, eyes wide. “Bloody blue hell!” Whirling, she dove for her clothes, and began scrambling into them, trying to put on all of her petticoats at once. Her voice came muffled through layers of cotton. “Please don’t let anyone see you leaving. Please?” Her head popped out for a quick, pleading look. “Just because I risk a whipping doesn’t mean I want one.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, but she was engrossed in pulling her stockings on, a task that should have been done before the petticoats, and muttering distractedly to herself. Smiling, he let himself out, and left her to her hurry.
Outside the light was beginning to fade despite the morning hour. The sky was ominous, dark purple clouds rolling in from the west across the Ashley River. Grumbling thunder sounded in the distance, but in the garden all was still. In the foreshadowing silence not a leaf stirred, and the smoke from the kitchen chimney rose in a thin reed wisping into nothingness.
The broken oyster shells that paved the drive cracked and snapped beneath Michael’s feet, loudly it seemed to him, but no one came. He walked faster. There was no one to see after all.
He reached the gate and skidded to a halt. A closed carriage stood in front of the house, with slaves swarming round it. The coachman was fastening his buttons with one hand and wiping stray dust off the rig with the other. Three small black stableboys tugged and pulled at the straps and buckles of the harness. The groom, his sweaty face glistening like polished coal, danced around them, alternately screaming that they were doing it all wrong and pushing them aside to do it himself.
