The Maidenhead Read Online Free

full, she said, “The Company has paid for our transportation, and ye can bet your bones it’s going to demand its pound of flesh."
    Modesty quenched her thirst from a leather noggin of ale shared by all of them. “As long as 'tis not me own flesh."
    Another Company wife, Mistress Pierce, was a wiry woman who appeared to be forty or more with hair as white as her widow's cap. She claimed she had married a captain in the military and had lived at Jamestown over ten years now. Her husband had died, but she had over sixty acres to sustain her.
    “Planted with com, wheat, and peas, they be. None of this tobacco that offers naught for the belly.
    “Ye must ask your suitor how many acres he has cleared. Does his house have a floor? And how many rooms? Any livestock? Cattle? Swine? A man with a horse—aye, even a slow-footed saddle horse—well, he will be a goodly catch.”
    “Unless he be a drunkard,” the raw-boned Annie retorted to Mistress Pierce’s advice. “Had meself a lout of a husband who took delight in his cups. Then he would get mean.”
    Modesty closed a prison door on the memory of her stepfather and his penchant for taking the strap to her. Yes, better she find an old man too helpless to lift a cup—or a strap.
    “Ye mean ye’re already married?" the moonfaced Polly asked.
    With a deep-throated chuckle, Annie cast the circle of women a broad wink. "Me husband died of a fall, he did. Courts didn’t believe me story, though."
    At last, the goodwives retired to their own homes, and Modesty and her companions settled down to sleep on their pallets spread on the white pine flooring. Modesty was restless. A solitary candle burned low on the church altar, but it wasn’t the flickering light that disturbed her. At first it was the utter quiet, broken only by the acrid sputtering of the tallow candle.
    Then it was the noisy night sounds of birds, of giant frogs that Mistress Pierce had called bullfrogs, crickets clicking, and a caterwauling that the old goodwife had attributed to pumas.
    Rose touched her shoulder. “Modesty, are ye awake?"
    "Nay. Of course I am.”
    "I’m scared. About the morrow. I would that I 'ad a man court me out of love. Not necessity.”
    “Love is for fools. Get yewrself an unambitious soldier, Rose. He has a pension. If yew be lucky, he'll get killed, and yew can collect it and return to lovely London to marry a man who isn’t a pauper and raise yewr child civilized-like."
    "Oh, ye can’t mean that about marrying a soldier in ’opes ’e’ll die,” the olive-skinned woman said. “Ye sound so serious when ye joke, Modesty."
    “ Tis a Rose of Sharon ye are," she muttered and rolled over onto her side, hoping to fall asleep.
    Clarissa’s mellow voice intervened. "What if a maid does not find someone pleasing to her? What then?"
    "Out of several hundred men ye could not find a single man to please ye?” Annie scoffed.  “Ye must be daft."
    Modesty rolled onto on her back, her hands clasped behind her head, as she stared up into the darkened rafters. "The trick is to find a husband who will dance to yewr tune."
    Clarissa sat erect, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. "There has to be a way out!" Her smoky contralto voice had the plaintive cry of a caged bird.
    Modesty studied Clarissa’s profile. The young woman of quality had violet eyes that immediately attracted one’s attention. Modesty's dealings with London’s seamier underside had taught her to read people. The hint of willfulness about Clarissa’s mouth suggested that she was accustomed to having her way. Of all the women only she had come with a trunk of the finest clothes and accessories, like those of a trousseau.
    "Yew are escaping a marriage not to yewr liking, aren’t yew?" Modesty asked, hazarding a guess. Doubtless to a tottering rich old gent, just the kind of marriage she herself sought.
    Clarissa’s small, oval chin nodded in affirmation.
    Too bad she couldn’t change places with Clarissa,