Enemy In The House Read Online Free PDF Page B

little weathervane clad in blue silk and lace.
    China had never lifted a hand, so far as Amity knew, to care for Jamey herself. “But surely you brought servants! Rosa or somebody!”
    “That little fool Rosa wouldn’t come. She said a fortune teller had told her she’d die by drowning.”
    “How long have you been here? Why didn’t you let me know?”
    “Well, actually I’ve been here three days. We stayed at the inn until yesterday when we came on board and the captain made us stay cooped up here all day. He’s pretending to sail for some neutral port and nobody is supposed to know he’s really going to stop first at Jamaica. He told me this is the first ship to the Caribbean in several weeks so of course I expected you. Besides, the captain said you’d be aboard. I didn’t want you to know because I thought you’d send me home.”
    “I would have insisted on your coming if I’d had my wits about me! Jamey, too!”
    “The captain found me a nursemaid. She’s going to Jamaica with us.”
    This time the extent and prudence of China’s activities really astonished Amity. “How on earth did he manage to find a nursemaid?”
    “Well, you see, I’d had Jamey to care for in the coach and at the inn—lud, Amity, I’ve had enough of it. He’s a young wildcat! The captain knew of this maid, she wanted to go to Jamaica, so it was heaven sent.” A reflective look came into China’s pretty face. “She thinks herself too good for her post, I’ll be bound. Still there was nothing else for me to do.”
    “What do you know about her? Is she a redemptioner! Had she a written character?”
    “Oh, the captain assured me she has a good character. She told me who employed her, Loyalists from Georgia who went to England.” China fluffed up the lace of her peignoir. “I don’t care what she is as long as she sees to Jamey.”
    “We can see to Jamey. If you don’t like this nursemaid, we’d better send her ashore.”
    China giggled. “We can’t. We’re sailing.”
    They were sailing. The sense of motion had increased; a definite sway and motion had begun. Bulkheads began to creak. China stopped giggling. “Oh, lud, now the boy will be seasick.”
    Jamey picked up words like a parrot. “Seasick!” he declared. “Now I’m seasick.”
    “Oh, God,” said China.
    “You can’t be seasick,” Amity said firmly. “You don’t even know what that means. Now do you?”
    He considered it, his hazel eyes bright and speculative. “No,” he said finally and disappeared into the berth. China sighed. “You see? You want Hester to go along with us as much as I do.”
    “Hester? Is that all you know about her? Just her name?”
    “Oh, Amity, don’t get yourself into such a fuss. She’s a pair of hands, isn’t she?” Suddenly China’s eyes widened. She pulled her peignoir to a more decorous length, tried to assume a dignified and matronly look and succeeded in looking like a child caught at the jam jar. The cabin door behind Amity had opened and a woman came silently into the room. “This is Hester,” China said in a small voice.
    Dressed like a Quaker, Amity thought, unexpectedly, and looks like a trollop. Hester gave Amity a sliding glance and dropped the barest vestige of a curtsy.
    She wore a brown dress, with stiffly starched white collar and cuffs. The brown dress was so neat and so very trim that it managed to display a rather lush and certainly inviting figure. Her hair was chestnut brown, very thick, but sternly netted in. Her eyes were large, languorous and cast demurely down. She was extremely pretty although there was a certain thickness about her jaw and a kind of lurking smugness in the corners of her full lips. It was curiously both a weak face and a strong one.
    That is unfair, Amity thought. But there were questions somebody had to ask. “Hester, for whom did you work?”
    The maid sketched another curtsy and looked at the floor. “Squire Tooke and his madam, of Carterville.”
    “Were