Читать книгу The Bonny Bride - Deborah Hale - Страница 9

“Where can they be? They should be here by now.” For the tenth time in half an hour, Jenny Lennox turned from the quay of Kirkcudbright’s small harbor. Her anxious eye scanned the slate-roofed buildings of the town, searching for some sign of her traveling companions.

“Wist, wist ye now.” Jenny tried to calm herself. “I ken they’ll be here soon enough. Mr. Walker never believed in getting anywhere too soon, and his wife isn’t a hustler, either.”

Indeed, it was a running joke in Dalbeattie that the family should change their surname to Plodder. Still, on this of all days, couldn’t they have come a few minutes early?

“They should be here by now,” she insisted yet again, as though her words were an incantation to conjure the tardy Walkers out of thin air. “The tide’s coming in fast. We’ll have to board before long.”

Salty Atlantic waters swelled into the mouth of the River Nith, covering Kirkcudbright’s muddy tidal flats. A hundred and fifty years earlier, Covenanter girls no older than Jenny had been tied to stakes and drowned by the inexorable Solway tides as punishment for their religious beliefs. To this day the gulls grieved those martyred souls, wheeling and diving in the clear June sky. Their shrill keening struck a mournful counterpoint to the bass dirge of the sea.

Not I, thought Jenny, as she watched a boom of timber being floated ashore from one of the ships moored out in the channel. I’ll not be martyred—tied to some bleak upland croft and slowly drowned by a life of drudgery. From the time she could hold a broom, Jenny had taken on the work of a grown woman. Toiling side by side with her mother, she’d cooked, cleaned, spun, churned, washed and mended. Not to mention minding the ever-increasing tribe of boys her parents had bred in their high box bed. Since her mother’s death, full responsibility for the Lennox household had fallen on Jenny’s slight shoulders. Today might be her only chance to escape.

The lighter barges were already beginning to ferry cargo out to the barque St. Bride. Word had come ashore that her master meant to weigh anchor when the tide shifted, roughly two hours hence. In two hours Jenny would be on her way to the New Brunswick colony and a new, better life. If only the Walkers would hurry up and get here!

She peered up the street again. Where could they be? A huge knot clenched in Jenny’s stomach, as indigestible as her stepmother’s oatmeal porritch. It had been many hours since she’d worried down a bowlful and taken tearful leave of her brothers. The older ones had masked their moist eyes with manly gruffness. Warning her not to fall into the ocean during the crossing, they’d begged her to write often—forgetting she didn’t know how.

Wee Malcolm had clung to her skirts wailing fit to wake the dead, until manhandled into the cottage by their stepmother. If only she could have taken him with her, the babby she’d cared for like a mother ever since her own mother’s death. Sinking down onto her new brass-bound cedar trunk, Jenny bit her lips together hard between her teeth. If the Walkers didn’t soon come, she feared she might start bawling herself, pleading with her father to take her home again.

Unwelcome tears were just forming in Jenny’s eyes when she spotted a familiar figure among the Kirkcudbright townsfolk. It was not Mag Walker, a big sowdy woman who outweighed her husband by nearly two stone. Rather a slender girl, wearing a gay bonnet and fashionable traveling outfit.

“Kirstie!” Jenny hailed her friend as she dodged through the crowd on the quayside. “Ye’re a sight for sore eyes,” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me ye’ve come all the way from Dalbeattie just to see me off?”

Kirsten Robertson was as close a friend as Jenny had made during her hardworking, restricted youth. Though her prosperous father owned Dalbeattie’s granite quarry, Kirstie was not one to put on fine airs. One day, many years back, the Robertsons’ housekeeper had brought the child along on her routine visit to buy eggs from Jenny’s mother. After the two little girls struck up an acquaintance, Kirstie insisted on coming every time. When she got older, she took over the chore herself. Jenny had always looked forward to Kirstie’s visits. They were practically her only chance to hear about school and town and the wide world beyond the Lennox farm.

“Jenny! Is it today ye’re off?” Kirstie looked pleasantly astonished to meet her friend this far from home and so dressed up. “I’ve been the fortnight with my auntie in Dumfries. I didn’t reckon ye were away for a while yet. What a bit of luck I got here to see ye off.”

“What are ye doing in Kirkcudbright, then?” Jenny asked.

Blue as the day’s clear sky, Kirstie Robertson’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Papa drove Harris Chisholm over to catch his boat, and he made me come along. It fretted Papa something fierce when Mr. Chisholm took it into his head to emigrate. He doesn’t suppose he’ll ever find as good a manager again.”

Hearing the name Harris Chisholm made Jenny’s mouth pucker as though she’d just bitten into a crab apple. She’d often encountered Dalbeattie’s most notorious misogynist at kirk. On those occasions, he’d acknowledged her with a frosty bow and thinly veiled contempt.

“Maybe yer pa was hoping ye’d make a match with Mr. Chisholm so he wouldn’t go away,” Jenny teased her friend. A rich man’s daughter, and a very pretty one, Kirstie had her pick of suitors. However, she showed no interest in settling down anytime soon.

“Harris Chisholm!” Kirstie gave an exasperated chuckle. “Oh, he’d not be so bad if he didn’t always fix me with that lairdly stare of his. It’s plain he thinks I’m a fickle wee dolt.”

Jenny joined in her friend’s laughter. She felt strangely lightened by the knowledge that Harris Chisholm was equally uncivil to lassies far richer and better educated than she.

“Did ye happen to pass Lowell and Mag Walker on the road?” Jenny asked. “I’m to travel with them and I’m getting a mite worried they’ll not make it in time.”

Kirstie Robertson’s blithe little face took on an unwontedly sober cast. “The Lowell Walkers. Haven’t ye heard? Lowell was harnessing that foul-tempered bay of his this morning when the wretched beast up and kicked him in the leg. Broke it in three places below the knee, I heard. Poor Mag is fretted he might lose it. They’ll not be sailing today, if ever.”

“Oh.” Jenny could feel the blood draining from her face. There was no hope of persuading her father to let her make the Atlantic crossing on her own. Her brother, Ross, was second mate on the brig Bunessan. He frequently wrote home lurid tales of the shiftless degenerates who made up his crew. Before Alexander Lennox would suffer his daughter to board the St. Bride, unchaperoned, he would sell himself into indentured servitude to repay her passage money.

She should have known this was too good to be true, Jenny chided herself. It had all worked out far too easily and smoothly—until now. When Roderick Douglas had written home for a bride, the other eligible lassies in Dalbeattie had been reluctant to accept. Some felt nervous of crossing the cold, wide ocean. Others could not abide the notion of parting with their families. Jenny had jumped at the chance to wed a man she’d once adored from afar. A man who was now a prosperous shipbuilder, able to give her the refined, affluent life she craved. Why had she let herself hope for something so miraculous, only to see her dream wreck on the shoals of reality?

Setting her mouth in a resolute line, Jenny squared her shoulders. It would take more than Lowell Walker’s bad-tempered horse and her father’s strict Presbyterian propriety to keep her from her bright destiny. She would find her way to Roderick Douglas even if it meant swimming the North Atlantic!

Kirstie slipped a comforting arm around Jenny’s shoulder. “There must be someone else who’d offer to keep an eye on ye. Folks are awful good about that kind of thing. Let’s go find the agent who booked yer passage and ask him to point out the other passengers to us. There might be a family going who’d be glad of some help with their wee ones.”

Letting Kirstie lead her toward the agent, Jenny barely heard her friend’s optimistic chatter. The man shook his head regretfully when Kirstie asked about other female passengers. Mag Walker and Jenny Lennox were the only women booked aboard the St. Bride.

The agent read off the names of the other half-dozen passengers. “Gregor McKinnon, Donald Beattie, Lowell Walker, George Irving, Gavin Tweedie and Harris Chisholm.”

Fairly dancing at Jenny’s elbow, Kirstie thanked the man for his time.

“That’s a mercy,” she whispered. “For a minute I feared we were out of luck. I’ll ask Mr. Chisholm to keep an eye on ye during the crossing. Then we can just present it to yer pa like it’s all settled. Mr. Chisholm may be a man and he does have a queer way about him. Still, when all’s said and done he’s Dalbeattie born and goes to kirk every Sunday. I ken he’s the best ye can do at short notice.”

As though summoned by the deprecating remarks of his employer’s daughter, Harris Chisholm suddenly appeared, head and shoulders towering above the harborside throng. Jenny would have recognized him anywhere by his shock of auburn hair. His long, lean face might have been handsome but for the striation of scars along his jawline and his perpetual expression of cool disdain. Evidently on the lookout for Kirsten, he strode toward the girls.

Giving her friend’s hand a reassuring squeeze, Kirstie muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “Let me do the asking. I’ve yet to meet the man I couldn’t talk ’round.”

“Thank ye, Kirstie, but I’ll speak to Mr. Chisholm myself.” Jenny held her head high and tried to swallow the lump of dismay in her throat. Wasn’t it just like life, to play this kind of cruel joke? Placing the power over her whole future into the hands of a man who despised her.

It took Harris a moment to recognize the well-dressed young lady standing beside his employer’s daughter. He wished Old Mr. Robertson hadn’t insisted on bringing Kirsten along. Harris had the uncomfortable conviction that, behind her twinkling blue eyes, the irrepressible creature was laughing at him.

As he steeled himself to speak to the ladies, Miss Robertson’s companion looked up at him. It was a gaze of singular scrutiny, as though he, Harris Chisholm, was the only man of consequence in the world. Never had he beheld or imagined a woman as lovely as Jenny Lennox looked at that moment.

He’d only ever seen her in a work dress and apron, or in her severe Presbyterian Sunday best. Today she wore a traveling gown and a matching pelisse of royal-blue. Trimmed with paler blue ribbons, her deep-brimmed straw bonnet served to focus his eyes upon her face.

The classic regularity of her features put him in mind of several white marble sculptures he’d seen in Edinburgh. How much more alluring such a visage looked in living color. Her skin had a luminous quality compounded of roses and cream. The pert delicacy of her upper lip contrasted bewitchingly with her full, almost pouty, lower lip. The warm red of ripe strawberries, together they made an eminently kissable combination. It was her gaze that held Harris transfixed, though. Whether by some fortunate reflection from her blue dress or the azure sky, her wide gray eyes had taken on a striking violet cast.

“Might I have a word with ye, Mr. Chisholm?” Her voice held more than a hint of asperity. Harris realized that, while he’d been gaping at her with such blatant admiration, Jenny Lennox had been speaking to him. Lost in the contemplation of her beauty, he hadn’t heard a word.

“What’s that?” Harris strove to compose his expression into proper gravity. “Ye’re a ways from home today, Miss Lennox.”

“I am,” she replied, “and mean to go farther. I have a great favor to ask of ye, Mr. Chisholm.”

So that was it. She wanted something. Why else would such a bonny lass look at him with anything less than aversion? He should be accustomed to it by now. Women always brought out the worst in him. Pretty young women like Jenny Lennox in particular. He’d grown up on a lonely hill croft north of Dalbeattie, with no one but his father and grandfather for company. Women were as foreign to him as creatures from another star. The only females of his intimate acquaintance lived in the pages of Walter Scott’s novels—Flora MacIvor, Diana Vernon, and Ivanhoe’s Rowena.

In dreams nurtured by Scott’s epic romances, Harris had often imagined how sweet it might be to have a woman look at him tenderly, speak to him lovingly. When instead the lassies drew back in fright—or worse, pity—it hurt him. Out of his pain and anger he spoke coldly, or sharply.

That only made matters worse. He’d be much better off living in a place with as few women as possible, and those few safely married to other men. New Brunswick, a northern frontier colony across the Atlantic, would fill the bill perfectly. Without the distraction of pretty girls to fuel his hopeless fantasies, he could channel his abilities into the quest to make something of himself.

Harris felt his brows draw together and his face harden into a stern, intractable mask. Jenny Lennox appeared to sense his antagonism. Staring deep into his eyes, she willed him to look at her, to hear her out, and to grant whatever she might ask.

“It’s like this, Mr. Chisholm—I’m going to Miramichi, New Brunswick, on the St. Bride, same as ye are. Have ye heard I’m to wed Roderick Douglas?”

Refusing to let her draw him into a two-way conversation, Harris gave a stony nod.

“I meant to travel with the Lowell Walkers. Now I hear tell Mr. Walker has suffered an accident and they won’t be sailing with us after all. My father will never let me board that boat if I don’t have somebody he trusts to look out for me. There’re no other women passengers on the St. Bride and ye’re the only man aboard I’ve any acquaintance with. I need ye to promise my pa ye’ll see me safe to Miramichi.”

She paused to gulp down a breath. Harris detected a slight tremor in the ribbons of her bonnet.

“I…” The word came out in an adolescent squeak. Clearing his throat, Harris tried again, consciously modulating his voice to its accustomed deep baritone register. “It wouldn’t be fitting.”

Privately he bristled at the insult. What was he—some eunuch to be entrusted with protecting a woman from the lascivious attentions of the real men on board the St. Bride? Because Miss Lennox wanted as little as possible to do with him didn’t make him immune to her charms.

“Why not just wait and take a later boat?”

“Because…” A husky note in her voice portended tears.

Harris wanted to throw back his head and howl with vexation. As if women hadn’t enough other advantages in the age-old struggle between the sexes! The creatures could dissolve into tears at the drop of a hat, reducing a man to quivering mush.

“Because I’ve paid my passage money already,” she said. “I don’t expect the agent will want to hand it back again, just because Pa objects to my traveling alone.”

“Surely yer…intended, Mr. Douglas, can spare a few coins more for another passage.” A somewhat less positive note crept into Harris’s voice.

“Even if he would pay again, by the time I send word, I’ll have lost three months. I ken Mr. Douglas would like to wed soon. It’ll be less trouble to find himself another lass.”

Harris stood there grim and silent. Roderick Douglas would be a fool not to wait for a rare bride like this one.

“So that’s how it stands, Mr. Chisholm.” She summed up her case. “Either I sail on the St. Bride today, to be the wife of a rich man, or I go off to London to be a scullery maid in some rich man’s kitchen.”

Having uttered so dire an ultimatum, her lips unexpectedly twitched into a teasing grin. “Did ye ever fancy yerself as a fairy godfather?”

Part of Harris wanted very much to oblige her, but another part protested. Jenny Lennox embodied everything he hoped to flee. It made no sense to take him with her. “Well…”

Perhaps sensing his indecision, she brought all her powers of persuasion to bear. “Roderick Douglas is a man of influence in Miramichi. I expect he’ll be grateful to ye for helping me out. Whatever ye want—money, a job…anything. Ye’ll have only to ask and I swear I’ll do all in my power to grant it.”

She cast him a look of desperate sincerity, as though making a pact with the devil. Stung by the implied comparison, Harris opened his mouth to refuse once and for all. Then Jenny Lennox reached out and took his hand.

“Please?”

Her touch was so soft and warm. Harris could not find it in his heart to deny Roderick Douglas the chance to feel it. Perhaps he’d follow Douglas’s lead, Harris thought—make his fortune in the colonies, then send home for a bride.

“Aye. I’ll do it,” he agreed at last, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll see ye safe to Miramichi.”

Jenny swayed slightly on her feet. For a moment Harris feared she might faint from surprise and relief. He gripped her hand to steady her. Returning his firm hold, she pumped his hand in a vigorous shake to seal their agreement.

“It’s a bargain, then. I swear I’ll be no bother to ye.”

For an instant Harris did fancy the role of fairy godfather. How often in a lifetime was one given the power to grant another person’s dearest wish? There was something rather edifying about the prospect.

“If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never be able to thank ye enough.” With those words, she lavished upon Harris a smile of such sweet esteem that he felt entirely repaid for whatever the undertaking might cost him.

The St. Bride eased out of Kirkcudbright Bay on the ebbing tide. Her passengers clustered at the taffrail to catch a final glimpse of the homeland they never expected to see again. Acutely aware of being the only woman on board, Jenny stood apart from the male passengers. She waved her handkerchief in a last farewell to her father and Kirstie.

The barque’s timbers creaked. Pulleys squealed as sailors adjusted the rigging. When the wind began to fill them, the sails flapped like giant sheets on a clothesline. Above all these noises rose the deep voice of the first mate. He bellowed instructions to his crew for the disposition of various booms, spars and sails. Several inexperienced sailors looked as puzzled as Jenny by this nautical cant. Others might have understood the orders, but appeared too overcome with the aftereffects of drink to accomplish much.

Remembering the bold, speculative stares that had greeted her arrival on the St. Bride, Jenny suddenly appreciated her father’s concern for her safety. Aware of the substantial presence of Harris Chisholm looming protectively behind her, she moved closer to him. God bless his perpetual scowl and the facial scars that gave him such an air of danger. With her fierce-looking escort, Jenny knew she was safe from anything worse than a few impudent stares.

After the barque rounded Little Ross, most of the passengers abandoned the top deck to the fresh winds off Solway Firth. Harris and Jenny lingered at the taffrail after the others had gone below decks.

“Are ye wishing ye’d waited for another boat, after all?” Harris squinted in the direction of the western horizon.

The question came a little too close to reading her mind for Jenny’s comfort. She replied with more conviction than she felt. “That was not an option, if ye’ll recall. I’m glad to be on my way to New Brunswick, and I thank ye again for making that possible. I trust ye’ll be able to look out for me.”

Her words made Harris abruptly aware of the grave responsibility he’d undertaken. “I want to make certain we’re clear on terms,” he growled. “Ye’ll not leave yer cabin for any reason unless I’m with ye. Ye’re not to let anyone in. Is that understood?”

Jenny nodded readily.

“Good.” He headed for the companionway that led to the lower decks. “We ought to find our cabins, settle in and get a bite of supper. I don’t like the looks of that sky. Unless I miss my guess, we’re in for heavy weather before we clear Ireland.”

“Just give me a minute, will ye?” Jenny begged. “Before today I’ve never been more than twenty miles from home. This is my first time on a boat.”

“Very well.” Harris tried not to let it come out as a sigh. “One minute.”

Some intuition told him to keep his eyes off her, but they refused to obey.

Untying the ribbons of her bonnet, Jenny slipped it off. Deftly she extracted several pins from her hair. It fell to her waist in rippling chestnut waves, while shorter wisps curled softly around her face. Turning into the wind, she closed her eyes as the fresh breeze billowed her hair out behind her. She looked like the carved figurehead of St. Bride on the prow of the barque—magically, gloriously come to life.

Harris did not doubt his ability to protect Jenny Lennox from any other man aboard. But was he capable of protecting his own heart from being painfully ravished by her?