“Let the men fight,” he said angrily. “This is not a place for women and children.”
“Poor Mrs. Wentworth is sitting out there in the stocks merely because she was protecting the covers on her furniture and you say we women aren’t involved in this? Release my arm, I have to see to my family.”
“You won’t have any family left if you keep antagonizing the admiral,” he called after her. “Damn the Raider!” he said under his breath and when Marianna walked into the room, he thought, damn her too because she’d married Pitman and started it all.
“What a look, Alexander,” Marianna said. “Have I done something?”
He swallowed his anger. “You can help me find some dresses for Jessica Taggert.”
Marianna opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. “I’m afraid to hear what that young woman has gotten herself into now. Come along to Mother’s room and talk to me while we search for things Jessica can wear.”
It was hours later that Alex was on his way to his bed and his father called to him. Immediately, Alex’s spine stiffened. It seemed he could forgive everyone for believing his disguise—except his father. The way the man had greeted him when he’d returned home, so coolly, still made Alex angry when he thought of it. What was it Jessica had said? Something about Kit and Adam being the “best” sons.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Alex asked stiffly from the doorway. At least, his voice was stiff. Whenever he saw his father, he exaggerated the languid laziness of his body that he affected.
“Did I hear Jessica’s voice raised in anger?”
“You did.” Alex yawned, allowing the lace at his sleeve to flutter. “She was angry because I did not agree that the Raider is our savior.”
“You don’t agree that he’s helping the town?”
Alex bent his knees so he could see himself in the mirror across his father’s bedroom. He adjusted a curl on his shoulder. “I think the man is merely stirring up trouble. If he didn’t appear, perhaps the admiral would go back to England.”
“You told Jessica this?”
Alex looked at his father. “Of course. Shouldn’t I have?”
“Everyone has his opinion. By the way, did she find you the afternoon she was thrashing through the weeds?”
Alex didn’t allow his surprise to show. “She came the next morning. Was there anything else? I am quite tired after my recent illness.”
“Go,” Sayer said with a grimace. “Go get your sleep.”
Alex’s fists were clenched at his sides as he went down the corridor to his bedroom.
* * *
Jessica was still angry at Eleanor the next morning as she gathered her nets and started toward town. She’d left her clam shovel at the Montgomery house and, besides, Eleanor had insisted she go to Marianna and thank her for the four dresses she’d sent last night.
“That woman is getting altogether above herself,” Jess muttered, referring to her older sister. Eleanor had wasted precious early morning moments fussing with Jessica’s hair, tying her corset and worrying over how her sister looked.
“How am I to fish wearing these skirts?” Jess had wailed.
“You can’t fish if you’re in jail,” Eleanor had said. “And that’s where you’ll be if you don’t obey the admiral.”
So now she was dressed up like a dressmaker’s doll and on her way to the Montgomery house.
She was so angry that she didn’t see what was happening around her. One man, on horseback, was so taken aback by the sight of her that he ran his horse into a carriage. The carriage horses shied, but the driver couldn’t control them because his attention was focused on the beautiful Jessica Taggert. His horses leaped, and the driver fell forward and landed in a horse trough. The carriage horses panicked and began running with old Mrs. Duncan inside screaming—but no one paid her any attention. Two men, gaping at Jessica, walked into a woman carrying six dozen eggs. The eggs fell, some broke, some started rolling. A man carrying a cage of geese and watching Jess, slipped on three of the eggs. The geese ran out of the cage and under the blacksmith’s legs. The blacksmith dropped a hot horseshoe—he was watching Jess and not paying attention to what he was doing—the horseshoe grazed the leg of a horse and the horse kicked out the side of the building, which felled a post that was supporting an anvil, which hit another post. The building collapsed just as the blacksmith and the horse escaped.
Unfortunately, the admiral, standing next to Alexander at the top of the hill, saw it all.
Alex’s eyes were full of tears from suppressed laughter by the time Jessica reached them.
“I came to thank you for the dresses,” Jessica said belligerently, not looking at the admiral.
The admiral looked down the hill at the chaos: men and women yelling, animals screaming, everyone running about, then looked down at Jessica. His face turned red.
He raised his finger to point at her. “Married!” he roared. “Married in a fortnight and heaven help the man.” He stormed past her, went down the hill and began to shout orders to try to organize the chaos.