02 - Borrowed Dreams

  Borrowed Dreams

  (Book 1 of Dream Trilogy)

  by

  May McGoldrick

  ISBN: 0451207971

  Copyright © 2011 by Nikoo K. and James A. McGoldrick

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher: May McGoldrick Books, PO Box 665, Watertown, CT 06795.

  First Published by NAL, an imprint of Dutton Signet,

  a division of Penguin Books, USA, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Complete Book List as of 2011

  Writing as May McGoldrick:

  DREAMS OF DESTINY

  CAPTURED DREAMS

  BORROWED DREAMS

  THE REBEL

  TESS AND THE HIGHLANDER

  THE PROMISE

  THE FIREBRAND

  THE ENCHANTRESS

  THE DREAMER

  FLAME

  THE INTENDED

  BEAUTY OF THE MIST

  HEART OF GOLD

  ANGEL OF SKYE

  THISTLE AND THE ROSE

  Writing as Nicole Cody & May McGoldrick

  LOVE AND MAYHEM (Arsenic and Old Armor)

  Writing as Jan Coffey:

  THE BLIND EYE

  THE PUPPET MASTER

  THE DEADLIEST STRAIN

  THE PROJECT

  SILENT WATERS

  FIVE IN A ROW

  TROPICAL KISS

  FOURTH VICTIM

  TRIPLE THREAT

  TWICE BURNED

  TRUST ME ONCE

  CHAPTER 1

  London

  January 1772

  “We are going in the wrong direction!”

  Instead of turning west at the ancient Temple Bar, the carriage had turned east on Fleet Street, and the driver was now whipping his team through the busy traffic going into the City. The lawyer raised the head of his cane to the roof of the carriage to get the attention of the driver, but the touch of Millicent’s gloved hand on his sleeve made him stop.

  “He is gong where he was directed, Sir Oliver. There is an urgent matter I need to see to at the wharves.”

  “At the wharves? But…but we are already somewhat pressed for time for your appointment, m’lady.”

  “This shall not take very long.”

  He sank back against the seat, somewhat relieved. “Since we have a little time then, perhaps I could ask you a few questions about the secretive nature of this meeting we have been summoned to attend this morning.”

  “Please, Sir Oliver,” Millicent pleaded quietly. “Can your questions wait until after my business at the wharves? I am afraid my mind is rather distracted right now.”

  All his questions withered on the man’s tongue as Lady Wentworth turned her face toward the window and the passing street scene. A short time later the carriage passed by St. Paul’s Cathedral and began wending its way down through a rough and odorous area in the direction of the Thames. By the time they crossed Fish Street, with its derelict sheds and warehouses, the lawyer could restrain himself no longer.

  “Would you at least tell me the nature of this business at the wharves, m’lady?”

  “We are going to an auction.”

  Oliver Birch looked out the window at the milling crowds of workmen and pickpockets and whores. “M’lady, I hope you intend to stay in the carriage and that you will allow me to instruct one of the grooms to obtain what you are looking for.”

  “I am sorry, sir, but it is essential that I see to this myself.”

  The lawyer grasped the side of the rocking carriage as the driver turned into the courtyard of a tumbledown wreck of a building on Brooke’s Wharf. Outside the window, an odd mix of well-dressed gentlemen and shabby merchants and seamen stood in attendance on an auction that, from the looks of things, was already well under way.

  “At least give me the details of what you intend to do here, Lady Wentworth.” Birch climbed out of the carriage first. Despite the biting wind off the Thames, the smells of the place—combined with the stink of the river’s edge—were appalling.

  “I read about the auction in the Gazette this morning. They are selling off the estate of a deceased physician by the name of Dombey. The ruined man moved back from Jamaica last month.” She pulled the hood up on her woolen cloak and accepted his hand as she stepped out. “Before he was put in debtor’s prison, he succumbed to ill health some ten days ago.”

  Birch had to hurry to keep up with Millicent as she pushed her way through the crowd to the front row. “And what, may I ask, in Dr. Dombey’s estate is of interest to you?”

  She didn’t answer, and the lawyer found his client’s gray eyes searching anxiously past the personal articles that were laid out on a makeshift platform. “I hope I am not too late.”

  The lawyer did not ask any more questions as Millicent’s attention turned sharply toward the set of wide doors that led into the building. The bailiff was dragging out a frail-looking African woman wrapped in a tattered blanket and wearing only a dirty shift under it. A crate was placed on the platform, and the old woman—her neck and hands and feet in shackles—was pushed roughly onto i/p>

  Birch closed his eyes for a moment to control his disgust at this evidence of the barbaric and dishonorable trade that continued to curse the nation.

  “Lookee, gennelmen. This here slave was Dr. Dombey’s personal maid,” the auctioneer shouted. “She’s the only Negro the medical bloke carried back with him from Jamaica. Aye, sure, she’s a rum thing with her wrinkled face. And she’s of an age to rival Methuselah. But gennelmen, she’s said to be a weritable African queen, she is, and bright as crystal, they tell me. So e’en though she’s worth a good thirty pounds, what say we start the bidding of at…at a pound.”

  There was loud jeering and laughter from the group.

  “Look, now, gennelmen. ‘Ow about ten shillings then?” the auctioneer announced over the roar of the crowd. “She’s good teeth, she has.” He pulled opened the woman’s mouth roughly. There were crusts of blood on the chapped lips. “Ten shillings? Who’ll start the bidding at ten shillings?”

  “What bloody good is she?” somebody shouted.

  “Five, gennelmen. Who’ll start us at five?”

  “The woman is nothing more than a refuse slave,” another responded. “If we were in Port Royal, she’d be left to die on the wharf.”

  Birch glanced worriedly at Millicent and found a look of pain etched on her face. Tears were glimmering on the edges of her eyelids.

  “This is no place for you to be, m’lady,” he whispered quietly. “It is not right for you to be witnessing this. Whatever you came for must be already gone.”

  “The advertisement said she was a fine African lass.” A middle-aged clerk, sneering from his place at the edge of the platform, threw a crumpled Gazette at the old woman. “Why, she’s too old to even be good for—”

  “Five pounds,” Millicent called out.

  Every eye in the place turned to her, and silence gripped the throng. Even the auctioneer seemed lost for words for a moment. Birch saw the woman’s wrinkled eyelids open a fraction and stare at Millicent.

  “Aye, yer ladyship. Yer bid is in fer—”

  “Six pounds.” A second bid from someone deep in the crowd silenced the auctioneer again. All heads in unison turned to the back of the auction yard.

  “Seven,” Millicent responded.

  “Eight.”

  On the platform the man’s face broke out into a grin as the crowds
parted, showing a nattily dressed clerk holding up a rolled newspaper. “Why, I see Mr. Hyde’s clerk is in attendance. Thank ye fer yer bid, Harry.”

  “Ten pounds,” Millicent said with great vehemence.

  Birch scanned the number of carriages in the yard, wondering from which one of them Jasper Hyde was issuing his commands. A large plantation owner in the West Indies and supposedly a good friend to the late Squire Wentworth, the Englishman had wasted no time in taking over all of the squire’s properties in the Caribbean after his death in payment for debts Wentworth had owed him. And if that were not enough, since arriving in England, Mr. Hyde had positioned himself as Lady Wentworth’s chief nemesis, buying up the rest of the bills of exchannd promissory notes the squire had left behind.

  “Twenty.”

  There was a loud gasp of disbelief and the crowd began to shift uncomfortably.

  “Thirty.”

  The lawyer turned to Millicent. “He is playing with you, m’lady,” he said quietly. “I do not believe it would be wise—”

  “Fifty pounds,” the clerk called without a trace of emotion.

  A group of sailors near the edge of the platform turned and scoffed loudly at the clerk for pushing up the price.

  “I cannot let him do this. Dr. Dombey and this woman spent a great deal of time on Wentworth’s plantations in Jamaica. From the stories I’ve heard from Jonah and some of the others at Melbury Hall, she became a person of some importance to them.” She nodded to the auctioneer. “Sixty pounds.”

  Birch watched Jasper Hyde’s clerk appear to squirm a little. The man turned and looked toward the line of carriages. The rolled newspaper rose in the air before the caller could repeat the last bid. “Seventy.”

  The rumbling in the crowd became more pronounced. There were sharp comments to the effect that he should let the woman have the slave. A couple of the sailors edged threateningly toward the clerk, muttering derisive obscenities.

  “This is all a sick game to Mr. Hyde,” Millicent whispered, turning away from the platform. “There are many stories of his brutality on the plantations. The stories about what he did after taking possession of my husband’s land and slaves are even worse. He is answerable to no one and has no regard for what few laws are observed there. This woman has witnessed it all, though. He will hurt her. Kill her, perhaps.” Her hands fisted. “Sir Oliver, I owe this to my people after all the suffering Wentworth caused. I cannot in good conscience turn my back when I can save this one. Not when I have failed all those others that Hyde took.”

  “That it, yer ladyship?” the auctioneer asked. “Yer giving in?”

  “Eighty,” she replied, her voice quavering.

  “You cannot afford this, m’lady,” Birch put in firmly but quietly. “Think of the promissory notes Hyde still holds from your husband. You’ve extended the date of repayment once. But they will all come due next month, and you are personally liable, to the extent of every last thing you own. And this includes Melbury Hall. You just cannot add more fuel to his fire.”

  “One hundred pounds.” The clerk’s shout was instantly swallowed up by a loud response from the crowd. Birch watched the man take a few nervous steps toward the carriages as the same angry sailors moved closer to him.

  “One ten, milady?” the auctioneer, grinning excitedly, called out from the platform.

  “You cannot save every one, Millicent,” Birch whispered sharply. When first asked by the Earl and the Countess of Stanmore to represent Lady Wentworth in her legal affairs a year ago, he’d also been informed of the woman’s great compassion for the Africans whom her late husband had held as slaves. But his expectations had not come close to the fervor he’d witnessed since then.

  “I know that, Sir Oliver.”

  “For all we know, he might already own this woman. In the same way that he has been acquiring all of the late squire’s notes, he may have done the same with Dombey. This may just be Jasper Hyde’s way of draining the last of your available funds.”

  As his words sank in, Millicent’s shoulders sagged. Wiping a tear from her face, she turned and started pushing her way toward the carriage. Halfway out of the yard, though, she swung around and raised a hand.

  “One hundred ten.”

  A round of exclamations erupted from the crowd. Gradually, people parted until she was facing the pale-faced clerk across the mud and dirt of the yard. Having already retreated to back edge of the crowd, the man shook his head at the auctioneer and looked back at Millicent.

  “Lady Wentworth can have her Negro at the price of a hundred ten pounds.”

  The mocking tones of the man, accompanied by his sneer, caused the sailors to lose the last of their restraint, and two took off after him. The clerk turned and bolted from the yard. Watching him run, Birch felt the urge to go after the clerk himself. There was no doubt in the lawyer’s mind that this ordeal had been arranged. In a moment, the sailors returned empty-handed.

  She laid her hand gently on his arm. “Regardless of Mr. Hyde’s actions, I had to save this woman’s life, Sir Oliver.”

  Millicent Gregory Wentworth could not be considered a great beauty, nor could her sense of style be called au courant by the standards of London’s ton. But what she lacked in those areas—and in the false pride so fashionable of late—she made up in dignity and humanity. And all of this despite a lifetime of oppression and bad luck.

  Birch nodded respectfully to his client. “Why not wait in the carriage, m’lady. I would be happy to take care of the details here.”

  A small writing desk was being handed up and placed exactly where the slave woman had stood a moment earlier. Millicent watched several members of the crowd edge forward for a better look at the piece of furniture. They were far more interested in this item than in the human being who was auctioned off before it. Only the competition of the bidding had attracted their attention. She turned to watch the woman being led across the yard, with Sir Oliver trailing behind.

  Appalled by the entire proceeding, Millicent pushed her way through the crowd to the carriage.

  “She will be brought to my office this afternoon,” Birch said as soon as he had climbed in some time later. “And, since you do not wish to have her delivered to your sister’s home, I will arrange for a place for her to stay until you are ready to leave for Melbury Hall.”

  “Thank you. We shall be leaving tomorrow morning,” Millicent replied.

  “Rest assured, m’lady, everything shall be handled with the utmost discretion.”

  “I know it will,” she said quietly, looking out the small window of the carriage at the door of the shed where the old woman had been taken. Millicent couldn’t help but worry about how much more pain these horrible people would inflict on her before she was delivered to the lawyou do not fice that afternoon.

  As they rode along in silence through the city, she thought of the money she’d just spent. A hundred ten pounds was equivalent to seven months worth of salaries of all twenty servants she employed at Melbury Hall, not counting the field hands. It was true that the purchase of the black woman would cut deeply into her rapidly diminishing funds. And she wasn’t even considering the money that she needed to pay Jasper Hyde next month. Millicent rubbed her fingers over a dull ache in her temple and tried to think only of how much good it would do, bringing this woman back to Hertfordshire.

  “Lady Wentworth,” the lawyer said finally, breaking the silence as they drew near their destination, “we cannot put off discussing your appointment with the Dowager Countess Aytoun any longer. I am still completely in the dark concerning why we are going there.”

  “That makes two of us, Sir Oliver,” she replied tiredly. “Her note summoning—or rather, inviting me—to meet with her arrived three days ago at Melbury Hall, and her groom stayed until I sent her an answer. I was to arrive at the Earl of Aytoun’s town house in Hanover Square today at eleven this morning with my attorney. Nothing more was said.”

  “This sounds very abrupt. Do you know th
e countess?”

  Millicent shook her head. “I do not. But then again, a year ago I didn’t know Mr. Jasper Hyde, either. Nor the other half-dozen creditors who have endeavored to come after me from every quarter since Wentworth’s death.” She pulled the cloak tighter around herself. “One thing I’ve learned this past year and a half is that there is no hiding from those to whom my husband owed money. I have to face them—one by one—and try to make some reasonable arrangement to pay them back.”

  “You know that I admire you greatly in your efforts, but we both know you are encumbered almost beyond the point of recovery already.” He paused. “You have some very generous friends, Lady Wentworth. If you would allow me to reveal to them just a hint of your hardship—”

  “No, sir,” she said sharply. “I find no shame in being poor. But I find great dishonor in begging. Please, I do not care to hear any more.”

  “As you wish, m’lady.”

  Millicent nodded gratefully at her lawyer. Sir Oliver had already served her well, and she trusted that he would honor her request.

  “To set your mind a little at ease, though,” he continued, “you should know that the Dowager Countess Aytoun is socially situated far differently than Mr. Hyde, or your late husband. She is a woman of great wealth, but she is rumored to be exceedingly…well, careful with her money. Some say she is so tightfisted that her own servants must struggle to receive their wages. In short, I cannot see her lending any money to Squire Wentworth.”

  “I am relieved to hear that. I should have known that with your attention to detail we would not be walking into this meeting totally unprepared. What else have you learned about her, Sir Oliver?”

  “She is Lady Archibald Pennington, Countess of Aytoun. Her given name is Beatrice. She’s been a widow for over five years. She is Scottish by birth, with the blood of Highlanders in her veins. She comes from an ancient family, and she married well besides.”