Chapter 2
Yorktown, Virginia
Squinting in the brilliant July sunshine, Adam Thornton dismounted from his lathered chestnut stallion and intently scanned the line of passengers peering over the railing of the Charming Nancy.
Thanks to Elias, a Cary slave who had been quartered in the town to watch for the ship’s arrival, word had traveled swiftly to Adam that it had finally arrived earlier that morning at the Yorktown docks.
Elias had also informed him that the vessel had been struck with typhus fever during the ocean crossing, and that no one would be allowed to disembark until the town’s physician had discovered if there was still a threat of disease on board.
Adam had ridden the fifteen miles from Briarwood to Yorktown at a hellish pace, not knowing if Camille Cary, the young heiress he intended to marry, was alive or dead.
“Damn,” he muttered darkly, a hard knot forming in his stomach as his gaze shifted from one passenger to the next.
Several young women were scattered along the railing, but none with honey-gold hair that he could see.
James Cary had boasted many times about his daughter’s fair tresses and sea-green eyes, so Adam had some clue as to her appearance.
He ignored the blatantly appraising glance of one pretty, saucy-eyed wench, a lady’s maid judging from the plainness of her clothing, and, growing more agitated, tethered his heaving stallion to a post.
Adam’s athletic, solidly built frame felt like a tightly coiled spring as he strode with the slightest limp toward a somber-faced group of men standing just beyond the lowered gangplank.
He recognized several neighboring tobacco planters, while the others were local merchants and townsmen who no doubt had goods aboard the large sailing vessel.
“Adam, my boy, hold up!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Adam saw Robert Grymes, another neighbor, descend from an open carriage and rush along the dock to catch up with him. Reluctantly he paused and waited for the portly planter to reach his side.
“Grymes,” he acknowledged, resenting the delay. He was in no mood for conversation. He wanted to see if the other men had any information about the survivors.
“What brings you here this fine morning?” Robert asked jovially, clearly unaware of the Charming Nancy’s plight.
“I would have thought you’d be in the tobo fields tending to Cary’s Finest.” The planter wiped his sweaty face with a silk handkerchief and added in a low aside, “Word has flown that you’ve shipped another handsome crop of sweet-scented to England, eh, Adam?
Quite a tribute to James, I’d say, poor bastard.
By the by, if you ever tire of managing Briarwood, I’d be happy to hire you on at my place.
Just name your price. I’d pay a pretty sum to have a crop master like you supervising my leaf. ”
Adam had to fight the instinct to tell Grymes he’d do far better cultivating turnips in his impoverished soil, but he held his tongue. The last thing he wanted to do right now was discuss tobacco.
“I’ll keep your offer in mind,” he lied, eager to end their discourse. “Excuse me.”
Resuming his powerful strides, he didn’t care if the somewhat affronted planter kept up with him or not. As Adam approached the group gathered near the gangplank, Benjamin Carter, a wealthy town merchant as stout as Robert Grymes, nodded a greeting and stepped aside to admit Adam to their circle.
“I heard about the fever,” Adam said tightly, shooting another glance at the crowded railing, only to be disappointed again. “Has the physician finished his inspection of the ship?”
“Not yet,” answered the heavily jowled older man, his expression grim as he shook his bewigged head.
“Nasty bit of business, this. At least half the passengers lost and two-thirds of the crew, including Captain Keyes. Damn pity. He was an honorable man. Traded with him for years, just like the Carys.”
So the feisty old salt had finally met his end, Adam thought, distressed by this news. He had liked Samuel Keyes, almost as much as he had liked James Cary. He had listened to the two men swap many a tale in front of a roaring fire at Briarwood. Now they were both gone. And Camille?
His every muscle taut, he found it difficult to voice his next question. “Is there a list of surviving passengers? James Cary’s daughter was to be on this ship. Captain Keyes had gone to England to fetch her home.”
“Cary’s daughter, you say?” blustered Robert Grymes, who had joined their group and been listening to their exchange in openmouthed disbelief. “Good God!”
Benjamin Carter’s face was even more grave as he held out a rolled document. “The physician’s aide just brought us their official list. Perhaps you might want to take a look first…”
Adam took the document from the merchant, his breath dammed in his chest as he ignored the apprehensive glances from the silent men surrounding him. He unrolled the stiff paper and read quickly, his eyes drawing like a magnet to one name.
Camille Cary.
A tic flashed across his tightened jaw, and he tried not to show his immense relief.
She was alive. His ambitious plan for revenge was still intact.
“Well?” came Robert Grymes’s demanding query.
“She’s on the list.” Adam’s pronouncement was greeted with a collective exhalation of breath.
“Splendid!” Robert enthused, a smile splitting his round, sunburned face. “I shall extend an invitation this very day for her to share supper with us at her earliest convenience. I’m most eager for Miss Cary to meet Matthew, my eldest son.”
I’ll wager you are, Adam thought dryly, noting the shrewd, speculative gleams in the eyes of several of his companions, whom he knew to have unmarried sons.
As one of the richest heiresses in the Tidewater, Camille was already creating a stir and she hadn’t even set foot on Virginia’s soil.
Yet she had been causing a tumult in his own life since he had learned that the wealthy tobacco planter James Cary had an only daughter being educated in England who would return to the colony one day to be wed.
When his period of indenture had finally ended and he had become a free man, Adam had looked no further than Briarwood for a job.
He had hired on as an overseer five years ago at the age of twenty-four.
Even then he had known that he would somehow marry her, and no one would keep him from it.
Not Matthew Grymes. Not any other planter’s privileged, indolent son with his eye on marrying an heiress.
Not Satan himself. Camille formed the very heart of his plan. He couldn’t enact it without her.
Everything Adam had done since that first day at Briarwood, everything he had become, had been for one reason: revenge.
Not a swift revenge settled by sword or pistol, but a long, tortuous revenge like the slow oozing of blood from a tiny puncture wound.
Until he destroyed Dominick Spencer, the planter who had made his life a horrible nightmare during his eleven years of indenture, the man responsible for the senseless deaths of his parents, he would never be at peace.
Perhaps he would find no peace even then. His body, mind, and heart bore permanent scars from Dominick’s cruel abuse. He would never forgive, or forget.
Just to be standing here among these prosperous merchants and planters, and treated as an equal, had taken years of backbreaking work. He had come a hell of a long way since his days as an indentured servant laboring in the tobacco fields with a hoe in his callused hands.
Within two years as an overseer at Briarwood, he had been elevated to plantation manager and James Cary’s trusted right-hand man, yet that hadn’t been enough for him.
He had worked even harder and become renowned as a crop master, a man possessing superior judgment in the production of tobacco, a man called upon for advice by other planters even though he owned no land himself.
This title had won him respect and entrance into the Tidewater’s highest social circles, but it still wasn’t enough.
Only when he possessed his own plantation would he have the wealth he needed to set into motion his plan for revenge, and he wanted Briarwood, one of the richest and most fertile plantations along the York River.
There was only one way to get it: Camille.
Upon hearing that she had finally been summoned home to Virginia, Adam hadn’t been surprised when James Cary had given him permission to court her; the planter had been pleased that Adam had asked, saying he would wholeheartedly recommend the match to Camille when she arrived.
James had taken a liking to him and had always treated him like a son, having lost his own two young sons many years ago.
Adam had used this affection to his advantage.
He had done everything in his power to prove to the planter that he could be trusted, that he was worthy to be considered as a suitor for his daughter, and as damn good as any other man who might offer for her.
At first, considering his motives, Adam had experienced some guilt for the strong bond that had developed between them, but it had faded in the knowledge that when he owned Briarwood, he would respect and care for the house and land as well as James Cary had and make it prosper as never before.
Adam had allowed himself to grow close to his employer, as close as he had been to anyone since the death of his parents.
Only a few months after Adam had received permission to court Camille, James Cary had been killed in a hunting accident, or so it had been concluded by the county constable. Although Adam had no proof, he believed it was murder. Now he had another score to settle with Dominick Spencer.