Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(95)
Sorrow muted her voice to an almost intimate whisper, and the listeners inclined their heads or leaned forward, as if fearful of missing a single word that lilted from her lips. “Aye, and three of me brethren were taken prisoners there, as well.”
She paused, then her tone echoed the funeral dirges of old. “We Highlanders ken the painful aftermath of unsuccessful revolutions . . . our lives and property forfeited at both the battles of Fifteen and Forty-five. Perforce, after the Battle of Culloden we were obliged to sign the Oath of Allegiance to George III. We canna go against our word. Still, if we canna be of service to the American cause, me mam pleads let us not be of injury to it.”
Her impassioned gaze alighted on first one face, then another, and her voice assumed the staccato notes of a fiddle, catching the listeners by surprise. “Although we have suffered defeats before and suffered a bloody defeat at Widow Moore’s Creek only weeks ago, we Scots, the backbone of North Carolina loyalism, will never surrender our right to freedom.”
From among the throng, a cheer went up and steel blades with iron basket hilts and shagreen grips swished the air. “King George and broadswords!”
He circumvented the crowd and met her as she descended the plank steps with untutored grace, her forest-green skirts carefully raised, revealing a glimpse of green mules and sheer white stockings. As inordinately tall as he was, the top of her fiery tresses nevertheless cleared his shoulder. “You will surrender.”
Her head jerked upward. Brilliant eyes met his with a puzzled stare. “What?”
“You are not like them. Not the kind to ride the fence. Your mother may believe temperance is wise. But you do not. Temperance is not your nature. Yet, you will surrender.”
Her head tilted, so that she could peer up at him from the brim of her engagingly angled hat. Her thickly lashed lids narrowed. “Who are ye?”
“Jacob Dare. Of the Dare Plantation in Kinsfolk Landing.”
Her dismissive gaze absorbed his long, lank raven locks, unpowdered and unclubbed. Then her eyes drifted lower, to his thigh-length, coarse muslin shirt, tightly belted. Next, they inventoried his pipe tomahawk, knife sheathed in deerskin holster, and Doune pistol, all secured at his waist. Lastly her gaze leisurely inventoried his skintight, travel-stained buckskin breeches and worn wrappers secured by deer sinew, both below the knees and at the ankles, above his moccasins.
Obviously, his attire did not elevate him in her opinion, because the maddening twitch of her lips told him she did not find him or his statement of any worth. Her steady eyes met his once more with a calculated indifference. “I dunna know ye.”
His amusement palled. For an awful fleeting moment, he was once more at Fort Dobbs. He was once more Colonel Martin Dare’s skinny and half-naked, half-breed bastard. Then, he shifted his long rifle and his stance and gave her an easy smile. “Tis no matter. Marry me, you will.”
At that, she shook her head of glorious red hair and chuckled. A soft trill that came from deep inside and was as lovely, he thought, as the cardinal’s in spring. Then, purposefully her trivializing stare once again appraised his wiry, sparingly built physique. “Ye have as much chance of winning me for a wife as ye would at winning the toss of the caber.”
“Then I challenge you for the right to court you should I win the caber toss.”
She grinned out right, and dimples appeared miraculously beneath her full cheekbones. “Ye are no match for our brawny Scots lads. A mon such as ye with nothing but hank and bone to him might as well petition the wee people for a pot of gold.”
“Do you accept or not?”
With a toss of her strong chin, she said, “So done.”
He pivoted away, but she called out after him, “Mind ye now, should ye come a courtin’, I would laugh ye out – “
He continued on, crossing back to Fergus, waiting patiently beneath the sycamore shade. “What do you know about caber tossing?”
The Scotsman’s hooded lids managed to widen. “Yewr jestin’, tell me true?”
*
Almost two hours later, he and Fergus made their way to a meadow adjacent to the Bluff Presbyterian Church, where a dozen or so men were already lined up at one end. On either side, a crowd had gathered to cheer, jeer, and place bets.
At once, Jacob’s gaze arrowed straight to the statuesque young woman. Where she stood seemed washed by sunlight. She had removed her hat, and the sunlight burnished her hair with the colors of metals forged by heat. Copper, gold, bronze, cinnabar – and even the rust that could dominate those other metals.
She was talking to a man of equal height, despite her high curved heels. His fair-colored natural hair was clubbed. Her smile, the tilt of her head, her body inclined slightly toward his broad one, all these told Jacob she was favorably disposed to the handsomely attired gentleman.
Removing his mustard-colored linen coat, the man passed it along with his tricorn to her. Like most upper-class Tidewater planters, his suits had obviously been ordered custom-made to his measurements in London. Suits such as he wore had to have been specified cut from expensive fabrics, embellished with imported buttons, and made without lining to stave off inordinate perspiration caused by the colony’s humidity.
He said something that brought a transforming smile to her face. With that, he blew her a playful kiss and then set off in the direction of the caber-tossing arena. The way he sauntered, never glancing down, told Jacob this solidly built man was supremely confident that the ground, and the world, would always rise up to meet him.