The Maidenhead Read Online Free PDF Page B

considerable charms to match her considerable girth nodded enthusiastically. "Aye, he be a shopkeeper. Do ye think ye could bargain for a looking glass?"
    "Yew’re bargaining with the devil himself when yew bargain with a Scotsman, but I'll haggle a looking glass for yew."
    Modesty switched her attention to Clarissa, who clasped and unclasped her aristocratic hands. Her whole person breathed seduction. "Did yew find a man to suit yew?"
    Clarissa shook her head, her chin tilted haughtily. "I can’t go through with this."
    "Yew’d rather marry the old fart yewr parents have arranged for yewr husband?"
    She shook her head again, this time more vigorously, and her golden lovelocks tumbled about her shoulders. “No,” she said in a frayed voice. “No, never.”
    Modesty thought for a minute, then said what had been on her mind. "Since marry yew must, methinks that the Reverend Dartmouth would make a right goodly husband.”
    "We talked briefly this morning. The Church sent him over as a missionary last year. But he seems so"—she rolled her violet eyes—"so colorless."
    "True, the parson has a puritan streak. Still, I think he’d be the most willing of the men to abide by an agreement between yew to ... uh ... forgo carnal knowledge."
    Clarissa’s brows, like her lashes, darker than her hair, rose in outright skepticism. “Forever? I doubt that.”
    Modesty's wide mouth expanded into a big grin. “Who said anything about forever? Dartmouth's a man of the cloth, isn’t he? Isn’t a divorce granted if the faith of one partner lapses? Should down the road he discover he has a pagan for a wife, he will grant yew a divorce quicker than this,” she said with a snap of her fingers.
    All sorts of conflicting thoughts had to be going on behind those violet eyes, but at last Clarissa acceded to her suggestion. "Should he call on me tomorrow with an offer—’’
    "Oh, he’ll call upon yew.” It was inconceivable to Modesty that any man wouldn’t want Clarissa. If she had to, she would put a bug in the good reverend’s ear. "Send him round to me anon."
    Modesty then glanced at Rose. "Yew found someone?”
    "Aye, Walter Bannock, the sawyer from a settlement upriver. He’s balding and he stutters, but he has two children who need a mother. They’re adorable little mites."
    “But what about him?” Annie asked. “What does he have to offer yew?"
    Rose looked abashed. “Well, he’s been here ten years now, so he seems the solid sort. And”—her swarthy skin actually flushed—“he has agreed to take me as ... as I am, with child and all.”
    How generous of him, Modesty wanted to say. Through discreet inquiry, she had learned that for each person a colonist brought to Virginia, whether it be indentured servant or freeman, the colonist received fifty acres headright. For Rose, the widower Bannock would receive one hundred acres, double his due. "Wot do yew want me to ask in exchange for yewr hand, then?"
    Rose wrinkled her tiny, upturned nose. "Well... a spinning wheel. With me experience in carding, I could bring in an extra tuppence here and there."
    "Oh, how jolly!" Clarissa said with a cynical twist to her rosebud lips. “More work."
    “Methinks a milk cow would serve me well,” Annie said. “And the three acres.”
    "Yew’ve picked yewrself a husband?” Modesty asked.
    Annie screwed up her mouth in consideration. “He would have to be an elf of a man who would not be lifting his hand to me or else I shall box his ears."
    "Then tomorrow I shall send yew a man I think will be to yewr liking. James Harwell."
    Modesty listened and made mental notes as the priggish Elizabeth, Jane who bit her nails to the quick, and the other remaining women put forth their requests.
    Aye, it looked to Modesty that she was setting out on a profitable venture. She could not remember feeling so much optimism.
    By the ninth hour of the next morning, Jamestown was bursting with men at its fort’s gates. Barges and canoes slapped