Free Black Heather by Virginia Coffman

me without intending to be more than friendly.
    “Come, love. Here’s to your bonny dark eyes!” boasted one of the huge, grinning workmen as he took a swallow of some heavy brown spirits and smacked his lips. It was like seeing a huge pink cavern open up before me and then become sealed again, and I felt myself more and more uneasy. I knew their good intentions, b u t when they pressed upon me their own partially full goblets and mugs, commanding me to “drink and take the chill off,” I knew I must get out of here rapidly. However much I might observe in such a place, I must not drink any of the piratical potions. There would be no explaining that to Father!
    “If you please, I must go. Please let me by.”
    Teasingly, the men closed ranks as Patrick laughed at my plight, not understanding my lack of experience in such places.
    “Jassy, where’s a warming pan for our pretty captive?” he called to the red-haired woman, who turned her back to us, then, a minute later, faced us, leaning over the taprail with a smoking mug. I could see that I should get nowhere by opposition, so I took the mug and made a furtive attempt to edge around the chief barriers to my departure. But there was more joking, in which I saw that the red-haired tavern mistress did not join.
    I was growing more uneasy by the minute and tried to keep tight rein upon my nerves, for I knew that panic, a shameful emotion to me, would only precipitate gossip and might perhaps reflect upon my hostess, Mrs. Sedley, as well.
    The crowd was milling about in such a way, and the room was so thick with smoke and steam and the smell of heated spices, that I had not yet looked behind me to see if there was an easier way to leave through the back of the room. I was envisioning disaster but not physically, for I suspected that at their worst these men and the scattering of females were only teasing, raising their own spirits before the long, hard working day ahead. But the gossip about this whole episode would make my presence impossible in Maidenmoor, not to mention what it would do to the opinion of me held by Mrs. Sedley, who would certainly pour out the whole story to Mama in a letter. Sir Nicholas Everett had said she was the busiest gossip in the riding.
    Sir Nicholas! I shuddered to think how I should sink even lower in his haughty dark eyes. The thought of his cutting disapproval was so intense as to be painful, for I did not like to sink that low in anyone’s opinion, even that of the surly, authoritative aristocrat.
    I turned, holding the untouched mug crushed against my bosom, and tried to see over the broad, black-clad shoulders of my noisy gallants. It was as if my fear of disgrace in the eyes of Mrs. Sedley or Sir Nicholas had magically conjured up the worst of my fears; for the man himself was gazing down at me, having quietly made way through the crowd, apparently after witnessing my humiliation, which I was sure he had enjoyed.
    “If you have finished your rumfustian, we are awaited elsewhere, I believe. Come.”
    With a meekness that astonished myself and would have astonished Papa. I gave the mug into his waiting fingers and he set it back in the red- h aired woman’s hand, lifting it over the heads of those men and women in the way. The red-haired woman said quite audibly, “Ah! So that’s the way of it!”
    I did not like this insinuation, and I held back almost instinctively at Sir Nicholas’s typical attitude of command, especially since it appeared that Patrick Kelleher had seen my difficulty at last and was cuffing villagers out of the way in the friendliest manner to reach me.
    “So you’ll be favoring His Worship, me dear. That’s the doing of the old dragon, as you’ll find. And more. What’s said of me may be true of our squire.”
    I assumed this was his tasteless form of a joke, but Sir Nicholas ignored it and reached for my arm.
    “Don’t be tiresome. Come along, Kathleen.”
    I had not given him leave to use my first