The Maidenhead Read Online Free Page B

a bone.
    “Good teeth and skin," Modesty heard remarked about herself. Then another in a baggy brown tradesman suit replied, “But flat as a bed slat. Give me a pair of strong hands—’’
    “—and a pair of melons to match,” another man finished with a bawdy gesture and a purely masculine snort.
    Modesty knew she had not Polly’s ample bosom, and as for strong hands ... she glanced down at her slender hands, hands that had done little besides wash an ale tankard or wield a paintbrush.
    For her part, she measured the men who passed by and found them wanting. Never would there be one as handsome as Jack. Nor as fascinating. Nor as much a scoundrel.
    If she had calculated correctly, she figured that with a commission from each arranged marriage she could buy back her marriage contract from the Virginia Company. An acre here, a couple of swine there—why, in time she could return to London to live out the rest of her life in security.
    However, it was not for herself she needed to study the men but for the women for whom she had agreed to negotiate marriage contracts. She felt obligated to obtain the best terms for each of them.
    She surveyed young men, middle-aged ones, tall ones and short ones. Spindly ones and squat ones. Here was a man who bore the mark of childhood smallpox upon his cheeks; there was one who limped.
    But it was the expressions and gestures she studied closely. The man who punched the palm of one hand with the fist of the other—a browbeater. The one with a thin mouth—definitely a stingy soul.
    The man in a simple snuff-brown suit who rubbed his palms—here was an opportunistic sort. A young man with his head ducked could be timorous ... or hiding something maybe even he didn't want to face. The downturned lines around one man's mouth indicated a cantankerous spirit.
    Lechery glinted in another’s eyes. One man’s eyebrows that curved upward bespoke possible humor.
    She interviewed a bumptious shipwright, an impertinent glassblower, and a cooper who wiped his nose on his sleeve.
    Then a man who had a face like a cliff, the somber gaze of an ascetic, and a libertine’s sensuous mouth introduced himself as Reverend Patrick Dartmouth from the tiny upriver settlement of Henrico. His rangy frame was clothed in black broadcloth with a puritan’s white bibbed collar, and a black hat with a high crown topped his head.
    At the sight of the gold buckle that adorned his hat, she had to repress a smirk. For all their piety, these Anglican parsons with their puritan streak lived with gusto. She shuddered, thinking that the exacting hand of the Anglican Church stretched across even 3,000 miles of water.
    “Greetings, mistress." He removed his hat, and sandy hair fell across his forehead. "I hope thou finds Jamestown to thy liking.”
    She shrugged. “Neither Jamestown nor its men.”
    His full mouth curved gently. "Ahhh, then. I shall have to seek a wife elsewhere."
    She regretted her harsh words. She had not thought a man of the cloth would be buying a wife. "Come to me on the morrow, good sir. I shall have a perfect wife for yew."
    Plenty of men yet thronged the marketplace. The day was only half gone, and another day was left to make selections. The determined males were like rutting bucks and were beginning to press Modesty and the still-unattached women for answers.
    "Modesty!"
    She turned. It couldn’t be. Jack Holloway. A scraggly beard hid his handsome face. He started toward her in a shuffle and came up short. She noticed then the chains that bound his ankles—and bound him to the man-beast next to him.
    Jack managed to make a jaunty bow and flash her that familiar droll smile. “Modesty, my dear, let me present you to the gentleman whose fluid eloquence convinced the rabid governor of Jamestown that I shouldn’t be broken on the wheel for the theft of his purse—Mad Dog Jones, my master."
    Modesty’s gaze shifted to the long-haired savage who could have been anywhere between thirty and