So, once again, Eleanor had sent her out to do children’s chores—and to think about what she’d done to her family.
Also, Eleanor wanted to keep Jess from hearing the anger of the people of Warbrooke. The admiral was taking his fury out on the shipmasters. He’d already confiscated two shiploads of goods.
Today Jessica had stolen a few minutes to visit Mrs. Wentworth. The admiral had refused to allow Abigail to be interrogated. “Abby’s told him she’s glad Ethan is gone, that she was made to marry the man, and that she actually prefers older men,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “The old walrus believes every word she says and as long as Ethan stays hidden in the forests, Abby can keep up the charade.”
“At least it’s keeping her skin intact. How is Mr. Wentworth?”
Mrs. Wentworth turned pale.
“It’s that way at my house, too. Oh, no, here comes Alex.”
The two women parted quickly.
Jessica had nearly run to Farrier’s Cove. Eleanor had thought that a day of fishing might clear her head and keep her out of trouble.
“Jessie.”
She spun about on her heel to see the Raider standing in the shadows near the steep bank.
She held her clam shovel out toward him as if it were a weapon. “Don’t you come near me. This is all your fault. If you hadn’t come to Warbrooke, none of this would have happened.”
“Oh?” the Raider asked, lounging against the bank. “You don’t think that by now John Pitman wouldn’t have stolen everything in town?”
“Hallelujah, you’ve replaced Pitman with Admiral Westmoreland. That’s like replacing a naughty boy with the devil.”
“Jessie, you really can’t believe I’m completely to blame. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have been hanged by the British weeks ago. And releasing Ethan had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t planning to try to save those men.”
“That’s what Alex said,” she said with some bitterness in her voice. “He said you wouldn’t interfere.”
“Coward, am I?” the Raider asked, his fine lips slightly smiling.
She turned her attention to the beach, looking for clams’ air holes. “I never thought you were a coward, but rescuing Ethan and the others had to be done.”
“Did it? Abigail couldn’t go without her virile young man for a few months? Ethan couldn’t have stood a little time in the navy?”
“We had to show the admiral that we won’t be taken advantage of. We’re not children of the English. We’re—”
“You’re not using your brain, that’s what. Now the admiral is very angry and he plans to punish Warbrooke any way he can.”
“Brain! What do you know of brains? Alex said—”
“Damn that husband of yours.” He took a few steps closer to her and pulled her into his arms, then kissed her until she felt her body weaken. “Does he make you feel like that? Does he make you cry out in passion?”
“Please leave me alone,” she said, turning her head away. “Please don’t torture me like this.”
“I don’t torture you any more than you torture me,” he said with feeling. “You haunt my every moment, you fill my every—”
She pushed away from him. “Yet you let me marry another man,” she spat at him.
“Not an actual man, but a—”
“You leave Alexander out of this.”
The Raider’s eyes, glittering behind his mask, showed his surprise. “You had me take you home to him. I’m losing you to a rainbow—all color and no substance.”
“Alexander has more substance than you know about. He took on me and the kids. He never loses patience with them, he reads to them, sings to them, bandages their wounds and mine. He gets mad at me when I nearly get killed. He—”
“Does he sleep with you?”