The Raider (Montgomery/Taggert 9)

“Now and then Jessica can be an idiot. Why doesn’t she see that I am—”

The men continued with the lament of all men.

* * *

Eleanor tried to prepare dinner on the same table where Jessica was doing her accounts.

“Would you be more careful with that?” Jess snapped when Eleanor splashed batter on a precious piece of paper. “I don’t think old man Clymer will like cornmeal on his ledger.”

“He won’t care what’s on it. All he wants is an excuse to see you. He’s only pretending that his hand is injured. Yesterday I saw him using an axe.”

“Whatever the reason, we can use the leather from his tannery. The children need shoes for winter.”

Eleanor kept stirring the batter in the big wooden bowl. “Jess, have you seen Alexander lately?”

“Not in about a week,” she replied, adding numbers in her head.

“You didn’t have a quarrel, did you?”

Jess looked at her sister as if she’d lost her mind. “What are you talking about? What would we quarrel about?”

Eleanor poured the batter into a cast-iron spider by the tiny fireplace. “I don’t know. You two seemed to be such good friends for a while and now you never see him. You aren’t laughing at him again, are you?”

Jess gritted her teeth. “No, I didn’t laugh at him. I didn’t shake my finger at him. I didn’t jump around a corner and yell ‘boo’ at him either. You ought to know why I haven’t seen him or anyone else.” She glared at Eleanor over the table. After she’d been taken prisoner for helping the Raider escape and Alex had obtained her release, Jessica had been given a

blistering lecture by Sayer Montgomery, with Eleanor sitting nearby and crying juicily into half a dozen of her employer’s clean handkerchiefs. It had been bad enough that Jessica had been banished to the forest the day George Greene was to be whipped, but when she’d returned with her dress torn and a bruise on her throat, Eleanor had been nearly hysterical. Jess had lied about her dress, but Eleanor had seen through it and Jess had given herself away by blushing when the Raider’s name was mentioned.

Now, a week after the raid, Jess was still more or less housebound. She hadn’t been on her boat, she hadn’t been in town. Instead, she’d been left with the full care of all seven children. As if that weren’t enough to drive her out of her mind, old man Clymer had asked her to balance the accounts of his leather-tanning business in exchange for several tanned hides.

So for a week Jess had recorded sales (Clymer was two years behind in his bookwork), pulled a child away from the fire, added a column of figures, prevented one child from killing another, re-added the column, yelled at Nathaniel to stop tormenting his sister and go dig clams, re-added the column, then swatted Sam because he was pulling the cat’s tail, then…On and on for seven whole days.

And now Eleanor was asking her if perhaps she’d angered Alexander. “I haven’t angered anyone. I have been the perfect young lady. I have dipped candles, I have washed clothes, I have washed faces and bottoms. I have—”

“And you have avoided the customs officer. You know the man suspects you, Jessica. Only Mr. Montgomery—”

“Yes, I know,” Jess sighed. “I am very grateful. I really am glad of all he’s done and I am very sorry I ever was such a fool as to help the Raider.” She caught her sister’s eye. “Any news yet?”

“There are reward handbills posted everywhere. Mr. Pitman means to have this Raider of yours.”

“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.