The Maidenhead Read Online Free PDF

pickpocket artist, most likely.” He caught Holloway eyeing him with wary regard and said, "I’ve seen it all."
    "How did you get the nickname Mad Dog?”
    He narrowed his gaze on the felon and decided it would better serve his purpose to tell the man the truth. "I’m quite mad.”
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
    "I am a man of detail,” Richard Radcliff said, taking a pinch of snuff from its box and sniffing it up one nostril. “I am certain I remember your face from somewhere.”
    Modesty dipped a hasty curtsy, and kept her head bowed. "I don’t think the likes of me would mingle in yewr high circle, me lord.”
    “Those bizarre eyes." His gauntleted hand rested suggestively on the ruby hilt of his sheathed rapier. "Something I would not be likely to forget."
    She was tempted to tell him that his own eyes looked like broken glass filled in with red dye but prudently held her tongue. “I'm just a simple farm girl, yewr lordship. From Hertfordshire."
    He didn’t look convinced. "Regardless, you go through with this mutinous scheme of marriage brokering, and I shall see that you pay dearly!"
    Modesty watched the London Company representative stalk away, the spurs of his buff leather boots ringing ominously. Somehow, word had gotten out about her venture.
    It was obvious to Modesty that Radcliff was taking no chances that her machinations might upset his applecart. He likely feared that the London Company might withdraw his representative’s license.
    She had overheard a colonist’s wife say that a company representative was the most important permanent office, since governors, normally appointed to two-year tenures, came and went.
    Therefore, as the Company's representative, Radcliff held a position of political and commercial importance. It was said he had the power to seize all newly arriving bondservants, sources of labor for his plantation.
    In addition, the colonial wife gossiped that he sold imported Company-manufactured goods at two or three times the prices set by the Company investors. Between importing human flesh and exporting tobacco, Modesty figured he must have made himself quite wealthy.
    She was already discovering that there were only two social categories in this far-flung outpost: a person was either free or servant, either an exploiter or a resource. She didn’t intend to become a resource. Since she hadn’t come as a bondservant, she reckoned that as long as the Company got its money for the cost of her contract, Radcliff could do nothing to her.
    Her thoughts flew to Jack. She had barely gotten to speak with him before Radcliff had interrupted. As a bondservant, Jack’s free spirit would wither, especially with a master like that savage, Mad Dog Jones. God help the poor woman that man ever took to wife. Word had it that he lived beyond the colony’s furthermost settlement, that he was a hermit, preferring seclusion.
    That evening. Modesty sat on the church’s oak floor with the other women, who were in various states of undress. Some were still in their petticoats and smocks, while others were already in their night rails. She scanned the circle of expectant faces. Their number had now grown to almost twenty maidens interested in her proposition as a way to better their future.
    They talked among themselves about the colonial men.
    “They are none too happy," Annie said. With her hennaed hair, she was slatternly-looking, but Modesty determined her to be stout of heart in her unflagging spirit and stout of lungs with her deep-chested laugh.
    Rose’s ebony curls bobbed. "Aye, I've heard grumbling aplenty. They want an answer.”
    "So what do we do?" Polly asked. Despite the poor food aboard ship, she had debarked on Virginian soil with rounded arms and a buxom bosom and an easygoing nature. "I would have me own house.” Her full face dimpled with her smile. “And me own man."
    Modesty held up her palms. "I’m coming to that. Yesterday I spied a Scotsman. They call him Duncan Kilbride."
    The young woman with