The Raider Read online

  “Not mine!” Jessica said. “Not mine at all! I merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door stopped her. It took her a moment to make her way through the children who’d run to the door, but she opened it to see Alexander standing there, resplendent in pink twilled silk. His wig of powdered curls was tied loosely at the nape of his neck with a pink satin bow. In his hands was a carved wooden chest. He patted a child’s head while he greeted Eleanor, then looked at his hand that had touched the child.

  Eleanor handed him a damp cloth. “Good evening, Alexander. What brings you out on this fine evening?”

  “I wonder if I might talk to Jessica?” he said rather shyly. “Outside. I mean, I thought we might walk down to the mill.”

  “Sam! Stop that. I don’t know, I need to work on these ledgers,” Jess said. “Is it important?”

  “She’ll be right there,” Eleanor said, pushing Alex out the door and taking the wet cloth from him. “Jessica,” she said sternly, “take my cloak and go with him.”

  “There’s too much danger for me to leave the house, but a Montgomery arrives and suddenly I’m safe. Who’ll protect me from the hummingbirds that attack that coat of his?”

  “Jessica…” Eleanor warned. “Go! He’s been courting young women all week.”

  Jess’s eyes widened. “And you think I’m next? Oh heavens, Nathaniel, go get me a bucket of war paint, Master Alex is on the hunt.”

  Eleanor just stood there, glaring at her sister.

  “All right, I’ll go. Nate, if you hear me call, come get me.”

  “And the hummingbirds?” Molly said.

  Eleanor pushed Jess, wearing her sailing garb, out the door without a cloak. “Be nice to him,” she whispered before closing the door.

  “Hello, Alexander, been working?” Jess asked, smiling at him as they began to walk. She would have been glad to see him—anything for a diversion—if she hadn’t been so anxious to get Clymer’s accounts done.

  “I hear you’ve been seeing Mr. Clymer this week,” Alex said, clutching a wooden chest that was propped on his protruding belly.

  “More than I wanted to. He says he hurt his hand and can’t do his accounts. Four times a day he finds a reason to visit me.”

  “Has he asked you to marry him yet?” Alex asked.

  “I’d put it at every twelve minutes. The last time he did, Sam wet on his leg. Ol’ fish-face Clymer didn’t move a muscle, just stood there and waited for my answer.”

  “Which was?”

  “ ‘No thank you, Mr. Clymer, but it was very kind of you to ask.’ Same as it has been for years.”

  “Why don’t you marry him? He’s rich and he could give you and Eleanor and the kids a nice place to live, nice clothes, all the things women want.”

  “Not all women. Eleanor and I made a vow after our parents died that we’d only marry if we wanted to, and we’d wait for the right men. We won’t settle for second-best.”

  “And Clymer is second?”

  She stopped walking and looked at him. “Alex, what is this all about? And what have you got in that box? Eleanor says you’ve been courting this week. Has something gone wrong?”

  “Could we sit down? These shoes pinch my feet,” he said honestly. He sat on a flat rock just off the road. “Truthfully, Jess, I came to you for advice. My father wants me to get married.” He was watching her face intently for expressions of emotion.

  “And?” Jess asked. She sat on the grass near him, a weed in her teeth. “There are lots of women around here. None of them to your liking?”

  “A few. Cynthia Coffin is awfully pretty.”

  “She sure is, and she bakes great bread. Your father would like her. So, did you ask her?” She didn’t see the look of disgust on Alex’s face.

  “I haven’t asked anyone yet. I’m just searching. The Coffins loved the idea of me for a son-in-law.”

  “Mr. Coffin would love to get his hands on your father’s wharf space. He probably thinks you’re incompetent as well as…” She stopped and gave him a quick look up and down. “New coat?”

  His face brightened around a steely look in his eyes. “Like it?”

  “Alex, why don’t you—”

  “And Ellen Makepeace invited me to supper,” Alex said, cutting her off.

  “Ellen is a sneak. I wouldn’t marry her if I were you.”

  Alex’s jaw clenched. “Cathryn Wheatbury didn’t seem interested in me at all.”

  Jess yawned. “That’s because she’s in love with Ethan Ledbetter. But then so are a lot of women. Ethan’s going to give you some trouble. You have the money and the Montgomery name, but then Ethan has…” She smiled.

  “Ethan has what?”

  “Looks, charm, intelligence. He’s very much a gentleman. The last time he was on the Mary Catherine we—”

  “On the Mary Catherine! What were you doing alone with him?” Alex demanded.

  Jessica sat up and looked at him in surprise. “Now don’t you go ordering me around, too. I’ve had more than my share from both your father and my sister. It so happens that Ethan came to buy some haddock—and he came with his mother. Ethan had to carry the fish for her.”

  Alex relaxed his body. “It’s a wonder he could lift them.”

  “With those arms?” Jess said, smiling dreamily in memory. “That man could carry the hindquarters of a whale home. You know, Alex,” she said, sitting up straight, “a couple of times it’s crossed my mind that maybe Ethan is the Raider. They’re built alike, both tall, strong, both very good-looking, and I doubt that Ethan’s afraid of anything. Only last year he—”

  Alex was sitting upright on the rock, his back as rigid as a sword blade. “How do you know what the Raider looks like? The last time I saw you, you were saying you hated him.”

  “I do, but that doesn’t make me blind. Ethan has the strength to swing on a rope like the Raider did.”

  “So do half the sailors on the dock. Maybe any one of them could be this Raider you seem to think so highly of.”

  “That I…” She looked at him in the fading light. “Alex, are you jealous?”

  “Of the Raider?” he gasped.

  “No, of Ethan. A lot of young women in town watch Ethan wherever he goes. You have to understand that when you court a woman, you may be competing with Ethan and, well, Ethan doesn’t…I mean he’s…” She was trying to be tactful but it was difficult. She looked pointedly at Alex’s belly and hair.

  For a moment Alex glared at her, then he lowered his eyes. “I want to tell you something, Jessica, something I’ve told no one else in Warbrooke, not even my father…Only my body servant, Nicholas, knows this. You see, after the ship I was on went down off the coast of Italy, I had a fever, a very high fever. I nearly died.”

  He looked at her through his lashes. “As a result of my illness, some of the muscles of my body were affected.” He put his hand on his stomach. “You see, because of the fever, I can’t lose weight. I can’t control the muscles, they were too weakened.”

  Jess couldn’t speak for a moment. Waves of guilt washed over her as she remembered all the times she’d laughed at him. “And your hair?” she asked.

  “My hair? Oh yes, I lost that, too. The wigs cover my bald scalp.”

  “Alex,” she whispered, “I’m really sorry. I had no idea. I guess your illness made you weak, too. That’s why you can’t ride or work or even walk very well.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But your clothes,” she said. “Perhaps if you wore—”

  “It’s the only thing I have left,” he said. “Take away my silk clothes and all you have is a fat, bald, weak-muscled former sailor.”

  “I…I guess so. Alex, I’m so sorry. If only those idiot women knew.”

  “Women?”

  “The ones you’re trying to get to marry you. If they knew, surely one of them wouldn’t mind being a nurse rather than a wife. Have you tried N