SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

The Sea Witch ran with the wind, sails filling fat and straining hard against their rigging. By nightfall she would be standing in to Boston Town, dropping her big iron anchor over-side between Bird Island and Scarlett's Wharf. Her crew would be rowing ashore in the longboats, to moisten their throats with rum in the Long Wharf taverns, or in the grog shops along Ship Street. An air of expectancy washed across the Sea Witch, from the men who swarmed from bitts to mast tops overhead, to the ship's cook at the larboard scuppers dumping refuse from his kitchen into the free-board wash. 

That same expectancy made Betty Aintree tremble almost uncontrollably as she crouched in the darkness of the rope locker. Her ears strained to hear the slightest footfall on the door planks, the faintest sigh of breath in the air around her. That big first mate—the man with the abnormally wide shoulders and the black patch over an empty eye socket—was somewhere out there, waiting. 

Betty smiled wryly. Ever since she'd left the Foundling Hospital back in London, she'd had trouble with men. Her hands clenched into fists in the blackness and she thought, Ah, let them do their damnedest! If I can't out-think animals like that Marty Higgins, it'll serve me right if he gets his paws on me. 

It was Marty Higgins who'd sheltered her after she fled from Captain Cunningham on the fog-wet cobbles of Thames Street; Marty Higgins who'd taken her purse of gold as passage money, then tricked her into joining the ranks of indentured servants in the stinking hold, two decks below. 

Less than ten minutes ago he had come below deck for her, with a message that the captain would see her in his office. She had known it was a trick, the minute he laid his good right eye on her, and been fiercely contemptuous of her gullibility. In the stillness of the orlop deck, his hands had closed on her and dragged her sideways toward a recessed doorway. 

"Easy now, lass!” he had panted in her ear. 

Betty chuckled to herself. Easy! He found he had a wildcat on his hands, he had! She hadn't half cut his cheeks with my nails, had she? Or fetched him one on his shin with the toe of her slipper! A girl had to be able to claw and kick a little these days, if she wanted to get on in the world. 

Get on in the world! Ah, that was a laugh, it was. How far could a London orphan go if all she owned was the thin dress on her back, and a fierce, wild hunger to find some handhold on life that would let her get out of this hand-to-mouth existence? 

She stiffened suddenly, crouching even lower among the coiled ropes. Through a slit in the door planking she could see the loose white breeches of the mate as he paused less than a foot from the little storage bin. Would he enter? Would he dare stand his ground when she let loose the scream she could feel building inside her? From what she had seen of the Irishman, he would more than dare it. And those other animals, his crew, would only laugh and wait in line for their share of the goodies. 

Less than a month ago, she had known this same feeling of helplessness, and of being forced by some unrelenting fate into the same sick fear that rode her now. London was no Buckingham House rose-bed to an orphan girl newly turned out of the Foundling Hospital because she was too old to stay there any longer. A girl sixteen was a woman, these days. She could earn her own living, one way or the other. 

Betty dared not breathe. After a moment the white breeches moved, and she could hear footfalls as Marty Higgins moved on. 

Weakly, she leaned against the locker wall. Her thoughts slid back to the girl she had been a month ago in the fog of Thames Street, hungry, wet and cold. Ah, she'd been afraid then, too. Deadly afraid! Frightened almost out of whatever wits she owned ... 

The fog came rolling in thick gray puffs across the East India docks, where they lay sprawled beside the massive bulk of London Bridge, to put a bright wet sheen on the cobblestones of Thames Street. Houses, whose overhangs and leaded windows had survived the great fire of more than a century before, were dark and silent at this hour of the early spring night. Only the gurgling of the river waters against the dock pilings and the rattling wheels of an occasional mail coach on its way out of town broke the stillness of this early spring night of 1773; until, beyond the bridge, the great bells of St. Magnus Martyr began their clanging roll. 

She was hungry. Mother of God, how hungry! Two days and nights without eating, and walking, walking, walking all the time. Sleeping on the wooden bench of the hackney coach stand just off St. Michael's Lane; waking when the coaches swayed to a halt, their iron curtains rattling, to pick up their passengers. 

The drunken soldier loomed like the answer to a prayer before her eyes, half hidden as he was by the thick white puffs of fog. Betty forced her lips into a saucy smile. Hands on hips, she sauntered toward him, letting her haunches sway. 

"Got thruppence for a hungry working girl, soldier boy?” 

His face was a twisted mask of desire under the tall black leather peak of his uniform cap that showed him to be a foot soldier of the 37th Regiment. His thick voice cajoled, even as his palm sampled the flesh that her thin, worn dress did so little to hide. 

"Curse me if you bean't a pretty one, dearie. The kind I likes. Firm and kind of hard. Not loose and saggy like the trulls of St. Giles' stews." 

"You've a flattering tongue, soldier. Is your money as outspoken?” 

His grin was a fixed, wooden thing that belied the hungry lust in his eyes. He reached for her, but Betty twisted aside, gently mocking. 

"Ah, now don't go rushing things, my lad. Sweet and gentle does it with Betty. Let's see your coins!” 

"Never mind the money, lass. I'll pay you well, my word on't!" 

Desperation made her shrewd. "No thruppence, no dalliance!" 

He cursed and dragged her in against him, bending his head to her lips. His whiskied breath and hard grip roused some instinct that had been sleeping inside her. Her hands came up under his chin and forced his face away.

“Not so fast, soldier! I asked if you had any money?"

Time stopped as he grinned down at her. "Spent all my money, sweetling. But Ned'll give you what's better nor money, believe me" 

Relief flooded her, and now she realized what an effort of will it had been to approach this lout in the first place. With a toss of her hip, she moved off into the fog. But the soldier was not put off so easily. He came after her, shouting thickly. Now she could detect the anger in his voice, and it roused a terror in her. 

The girls in the Foundling Hospital had whispered of this dead woman or that, found occasionally in a London gutter, savagely slashed and cut. The lucky ones, they assured each other, were the dead ones. The big soldier had a knife in his belt. He sounded angry enough to use it on her. 

Fright powered her feet. She ran lightly, skirt to her knees. Where an overhead oil lamp formed a right angle with its jutting iron crane against the brick wall of the corner building, she skidded, turning on the paved walk. Now she was on Fish Street, moving north toward Bishopsgate. 

Mother of God! she thought fearfully. Please let the fog hide me. I can't go through with it—even if I die of an empty belly. 

She did not see the other man until she went careening into him, crying out in panic, thinking him the drunken soldier. His hands were strangely gentle as they caught at her to prevent a fall. The man was smiling down into her wide, dark eyes. He was very handsome, though quite a few years older than herself. 

"God's love,” he said gently. "What's the haste? Is the constable after you to take you to Bridewell?” 

He wore the scarlet uniform jacket and white waistcoat of an officer in the army that was even now massing to sail for America, to quell some riotous citizens in His Majesty's colonial town of Boston. He smelled of tobacco and wine, but there was a rough understanding about him that made her sense that she had found an ally. 

She shook her head so that her thick black hair swirled in the fog, and managed a smile. "No, your honor. Only a a soldier." 

"Oh, that,” he laughed. “We'll send him packing, shall we, if he finds you?" 

“Yes, milord. If you'll be so kind.” 

They waited, his arm still around her, holding her against him. From Bishopsgate Street there came the sound of laughter, distant and unreal; late revelers at some tavern like the Bull and Mouth. The fog enveloped them in a casual intimacy and forged a little bond between them. 

The girl felt faint. For the first time in three days she had something other than a cobblestone bed or a brick wall against which to lean her starving body. Her head fell forward slowly, as if heavy with sleep. It touched the officer on the gold lace and blue velvet facings of his uniform jacket. She started back but his hand was behind her head and it was gentle, pushing her cheek forward until she could rest it again on his chest. Her knees trembled with weakness. 

“What's your name, little one?” he asked.

“Betty, milord. Just Betty." 

"Something tells me more than panic bothers you, eh? When's the last time you tasted hot food?” 

"Hot food? I–I don't know. Three days ago I bought a crust of bread and a slice of beef with a penny I found in the gutter below the old Blackfriars Bridge.” 

The man cursed softly. "I'm bound for the Bleeding Hare Inn' to take part in a little celebration. Officers leaving for the crown colonies, you know, saying farewell to friends. There'll be soups and venison, fowl, and fruit tarts. I'm inviting you now to come with me, and be my guest." 

Colonel Sir Lawrence Hennessey was in an expansive mood. The touch of this girl against him was arousing a protective instinct he'd not felt since—damme! It must be twenty years now since his mother had died in Dublin Town, where his father was stationed as Provost Marshal. His mother had been everything to him. He'd seen his bluff, red-faced father only rarely. When gentle Lady Ariadne Hennessey died, her son almost died with her. He would have, too, except for the fact that his father packed him off to military school. 

The rest of his life was a succession of regimental orders and commissions. He'd been with Sir Hector Munro when he won his smashing victory at Buxar against Shujar-ud-Dowlah in India. After Warren Hastings had been made Governor of Bengal, he was named his aide. Now with trouble threatening on the other side of the Atlantic, he'd been ordered back to England to await developments. 

"Come along with me, Betty. I'll not take no for an answer!” he said firmly. 

She moved step for step with him through the foggy night, thankful for the clasp of his strong arm at her waist now the accumulated days and nights of starving were blurring her vision and putting a quiver in her limbs. 

"Have you no parents? No mother or father?” he asked. 

"No, milord. When I was a babe, someone left me on the door-sill of the Foundling Hospital.” 

“Ah!” He knew the high walls of that institution and its bleak, large buildings with the central square and posted road. "You'll have been farmed out, of course? In the work gangs?” 

"Taught to sew I was, after I'd served an apprenticeship at scrubbing. I worked from six in the morning until the candles were lighted at nine." 

A great yellow rectangle of light was ahead of them, where the bowed windows of the Bleeding Hare Inn threw lamp lighted brightness into the fog. As the door swung open to an entering woman, a roar of laughter boomed, then died as the door latched shut. 

Colonel Hennessey reached for the big iron handle and pulled the windowed door wide, standing aside to let the girl precede him. She flashed him a grateful look from under her long black lashes. Her hand holding her swinging skirt, she slid into warmth and noise and the intoxicating smell of roasting foods. 

The colonel put a hand to the small of her back, urging her forward. "Be at your ease, Bet. You'll soon have some of that food inside your pretty middle, and a glass of wine, too, if you want it.” 

Betty fumbled for his fingers, squeezing them, casting side-wise glances at the dark, smoke-stained beams of the tavern, seeing the great stone hearth with its roaring red fire and its pot crane holding black iron cooking vessels that steamed and bubbled merrily in her ears. There were men around her, men clad in the uniform of His Britannic Majesty, George III-red uniform jackets and buff breeches with white waistcoats and white stockings. Here and there, a high officer wore blue velvet and gold lace on his coat front. 

The colonel was bringing her to a flight of stairs built against the wall, urging her feet to its treads, whispering reassurance as the faces of the diners turned toward her. 

"We'll eat above stairs, Bet. There are rooms there where the officers play at dice or piquet, and otherwise entertain themselves, in privacy."

They could hear the hilarity up above as they ascended the balustered stairs, muted a little by the closed doors that formed tiny recesses off the upper corridor. Betty was aware that her heart was pounding excitedly. A feeling of adventure was in her, a sense of recklessness that bid her take what came her way this night without question, even with a sort of eagerness. 

A door opened and a young man in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards came out into the hall, a bulging sack of coins in his hand. He threw the purse high and caught it, then glanced back into the room he had just left. 

"My night and my luck, Cunningham!” he shouted, cheeks red with rich Spanish port and hot triumph. 

The door darkened as a second man came and stood over the sill. He was big and heavy-set, his wide shoulders almost bursting from his scarlet jacket. His hands were at his sides, fingers opening and closing against the black fury that darkened his face. Glittering black eyes and a thin mouth, together with the veins bulging at throat and temple, marked him for a man of ungovernable temper. Then, slowly, his face seemed to smooth out and he was smiling somewhat grimly, trying to nod with good manners. 

"Your night, Marsters. I know you'll spend the gold for better purpose than I would myself.” 

"At least," the younger man laughed, "I'll have more fun with it!” 

Captain Cunningham nodded shortly, and swung the door shut behind him. 

For the first time the young officer noticed Betty and Colonel Hennessey at the top of the stair. His eyes opened wide and he grinned and jerked his head at the closed door. “Always a bad loser, William Cunningham. Last time I'll play with him, I think. Man frightens me." 

With another laugh he went clattering down the wide, paneled stair. 

Betty shrank back against the colonel and looked up wonderingly into his face. As if to reassure her, he said, “They've been playing cards inside. Happens all the time. One man plunges too deep and can't afford the sum he loses. So he also loses his temper. Makes everyone uncomfortable. Never was much for cards or the dice, myself.” 

She found herself remembering the bulging look of the velvet purse that had held the golden guineas and shivered. If all a person had to do to win such wealth was learn to play with cards and throw two little squares of dice, why then, she'd learn the knack! She could think of no easier way of making money—and making money was an important philosophy of her life. 

His hand at her back urged her along the corridor toward an open doorway and a room set with a small dining table covered with a snowy cloth, a wide, comfortable chaise lounge, and a few ladder-back chairs. The windowed doors on the far wall opened to a paneled gallery that ran the length of the square, inner courtyard. 

She wandered to the table and stared down at its cleanliness, smelling the freshness of its laundering with an almost sensual relish. Then she turned to the oaken fireplace and ran quivering fingertips across the smooth, worn wood. Her eyes caught the gold brocade of the lounge and she sat on its edge, resting her weight gingerly. She was like a child with a new toy, afraid to touch it lest it burst in her hands like a pricked soap bubble; yet relishing the moment of anticipation and delight, skimming the surface of her pleasure with questing fingertips as if to reassure herself of reality. 

Colonel Hennessey turned from the door, where he had been calling for a waiter, to smile down at her. 

"You like what you see, my dear?”. 

"Oh, yes. Yes! I've never seen anything like this. Never! It's beautiful!” 

He let his eyes rove the room, mentally comparing it with the town house and with the marble magnificence of the Palladian country mansion he owned. As an inn it was clean enough, but nothing over which to become profuse with praise. The George at Salisbury on the North Road, halfway between York and London, for instance, or even the Green Dragon in this same Bishopsgate Street, were ever so much more elaborate. But he was pleased that she regarded it with something of awe in her dark eyes. 

The waiter at the door interrupted him. 

Betty listened, filled with a sense of unreality, as the colonel ordered. "The potage and venison, with bisque de lait and a poultry pie." His eyes regarded the staring Betty as he added, "And a bottle of your finest wine." 

He was coming back to her now and the waiter was closing the door softly. Betty began to wonder just how she was going to pay for this meal. Common sense told her that the man expected caresses and kisses; and she argued, against the frightened thudding of her heart, that earlier this night she had been ready to offer herself for a three-pence-piece with which to buy bread and a bit of pork to allay the pain in her stomach. Why should she scruple now to pleasure a man who was putting himself to so much trouble over her? 

He stood with his hands together behind his back, teetering a little on his toes, smiling. If she could forget the fact that he was more than twice as old as she was herself, the moment might be an agreeable one. He did make a fine figure of a man, even at his age. She guessed him for his late thirties; actually, he was ten years older. His waist was lean and his shoulders wide, and the legs that the taut white breeches of his uniform revealed were hard and muscular. A sprinkle of gray dappled the black of his hair at the temples. 

"Well, now," he said softly. "After you've taken inventory of me, what do you think?" 

Betty went red, then deadly pale. "Milord,” she whispered, "I meant no offense. I was just thinking what a handsome man you are, and so kind, and what—what—" 

His laughter rang into the air, rich and honest.

“What I was going to make you do to earn your supper?” 

She bit her full lower lip and let her head hang. What a clod he must think her, blundering and stammering! Her nostrils quivered, smelling warm, rich food. Food that would be inside her in a little while. She sat comfortable, and the fire in the oaken hearth was putting the magic of its warmth in her blood. 

Betty tilted her chin and looked at him through slitted eyes. She saw his eyes widen where they took in the rent at her shoulder that disclosed the soft white flesh beneath. Her skirt was across her knees so that when he dropped his eyes he could see the shapeliness of her calves and slim white ankles. 

She said softly, "Aye, milord, I'm willing to pay for for all this." 

"Ah? And how, may I ask? Have you any money hidden away inside that torn gown?” 

"No, milord," she whispered, aware that he was teasing her. "Nothing but myself." 

He widened his eyes in mock surprise, enjoying her discomfiture. "What? Not even a petticoat? Or a bit of sackcloth for bloomers? I've seen some sackcloth underwear, with the trademark still stamped on their weave, believe me.” 

Betty stared at him as he walked to the fireplace and spread his hands to the heat of the blazing logs. What ailed the man? Or was his forbearance the act of a gentleman? She was only too well aware of the fact that she had no acquaintance with gentlemen. But from the tales that had sifted through the halls of the Hospital from older girls who had gone out to service in their homes, they were more wicked than their poorer brothers. 

Before she could speak, the waiter came through the door, wheeling a small table-cart laden with covered dishes. Betty half rose, staring, as the scent of the soup and meat and steaming vegetables came to her. 

Colonel Hennessey turned from the hearth to wave away the waiter and came himself to remove the snowy napkins from the pewter covers.' He set them aside and lifted plates and platters to the table. 

"Come along, Bet. This is what you need, isn't it?" 

She ran and seated herself, reaching for spoon and bread at the same time. The food and its smell made her forget every other thing. The soup was thick, creamy, laden with the sharp spice of leeks. The-bread was crisp and warm, freshly baked. Her eyes ran over the platter of sliced venison dark with raisin sauce, and the bits of roast chicken garnished by asparagus. 

Then the soup was gone and she was reaching for the thick red meat with a fork, unaware of the fact that the colonel was not eating at all but opening a tall, slim bottle of Rhenish wine, smiling down at her. He poured the wine and took the opposite chair, sipping slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. She was such a pretty thing, with her dark eyes and that thick black hair cascading down around her shoulders. His eyes studied the thin, worn dress, noting how her breasts thrust solidly against the cheap Paduasoy of the bodice. Her waist was slim, and what he had seen of her legs made him realize that her figure was very enticing. The colonel sighed. 

When she was done with her meal, licking off each greasy finger and sighing softly, he rose to his feet. 

"All done? Everything satisfactory?" he asked gently. 

She nodded, breathless. Now it was coming, the moment of her repayment. And yet, strangely, he made no move toward her. He went to the chaise where his cloak lay and lifted it, swinging it around his shoulders. He set his tricorne hat firmly on his head. He turned, staring at her, and smiled affectionately. 

"Relax, girl. I'm no whiskey-fuddled foot soldier to demand flesh for my silver. God's love, if I'd sunk so low as that, I'd do away with myself. I've enjoyed the evening, believe me. It isn't often I get a chance to play fairy godmother to a pretty girl.” 

Betty opened her lips and closed them. "But I thought—that is, I'm willing to do whatever you say. I'm no ingrate." 

He bowed slightly. "I appreciate the fact, and take pleasure in knowing I haven't dined a street girl. No, all I ask is that you have a kindly thought for a lonely man. Call it a whim, and let it go at that.” 

She rose to her feet and he held the door open for her. No man had ever treated Betty Aintree like this. It made her feel important. This is the way men like him treat the women of their own class, she thought—with courtesy and respect. The brief taste of that solicitude roused a hunger for its continuance. 

Also Available in a NEW Edition RePrint Paperback