The Dutch Girl (14 page)

And
she
had risked herself tonight trying to protect him. He winced now at how cruel he had been to her at the Halve Maen after she tried to warn him about André. A prim schoolteacher calling him naive had been an insult to his manhood. Annatje Hoppe warning him about the fate of revolutionaries . . . he had been Agamemnon ignoring Cassandra.

He owed her an apology. He owed her more than that. And he wanted to know where she had been all this time, and why in God's name she had come back to Harenwyck . . . and if kissing her was as thrilling as it had been when he was seventeen. Because nothing had ever been so thrilling since.

Pieter was right about the danger—both to his ambition to reclaim Harenwyck and to Annatje herself—but Gerrit could not just walk away from her. He would talk to Jan. The man had not known Annatje. And even if he had been devoted to his uncle—or moved by his aunt's and mother's grief—he must have known that Vim
Dijkstra had been a violent bully on behalf of the old patroon. Gerrit would make Jan see that whatever had really taken place that night—and they had only ever known half the story, because Annatje had disappeared—his own father, the late patroon, was the one at fault. That the girl was not a cold-blooded murderess.

He would
make
Jan understand.

By the time Pieter returned with a basket and a bottle, Gerrit was the only one left downstairs.

Pieter handed him the basket. “The girl's not going to fit inside.”

“The basket isn't for the girl.”

“Whatever you say,
baas
.”

Pieter had gone upstairs wearing one pistol. He had come back down with three. “We're after a cat, Pieter, not a lion. And it will be morning before my brother knows his carriage is missing.”

“It's not your brother I'm worried about,
baas
. I took a head count when I went upstairs.”

Gerrit knew what he was going to say before he said it. There was only one man whose absence mattered after Gerrit's indiscretion at the farm.

“Everyone came back from Edwaert's. Everyone except Jan.”

Dawn was coloring the sky by the time Anna and Andries Van Haren reached the new house. She had nodded off once in his arms, and the young patroon had shaken her ungently awake, evidently unwilling to have an unconscious woman drool on his shoulder.

The new house was far grander than Mr. Ten Broeck had let on. He had told her it was modern and well lit, with good windows. It was much more than that. It was the largest house Anna had ever seen, built of red sandstone, trimmed in sparkling granite, four stories tall and nine windows across with a pillared portico entrance atop a granite stair and two massive wings projecting out the back.

The patroon slid from his horse and helped Anna down. He took her basket first, quite sensibly, as though assisting women sodden with dew who had spent the
night in the woods was an expected—if somewhat distasteful—chore, and then helped her to the ground with the same impersonal touch he had used all night. The short grass was almost as wet as her skirts.

He made no effort to conceal the fact that he was trying to have as little physical contact with her as possible. Gerrit had implied that his brother brought courtesans from New York. Anna wondered if he displayed the same disdain for common people with them. If so, she hoped they charged him double.

No one came to take his horse, which she found odd.
No one knows he was out
, Angela Ferrers would have surmised. Just at that moment, though, Anna did not care whether Andries Van Haren had been communing with nature in the woods or with King George at Buckingham House. She wanted a meal and washing water and a bed.

A plaintive mew reminded her that Scrappy also had wants.

“Your basket appears to have become upset with you,” said the patroon.

“That would be my kitten. She needs a sandbox, rather urgently, I suspect.” Anna was not actually certain that Scrappy knew how to use a sandbox, but that doubt was unlikely to make the kitten a welcome guest in the patroon's home.

He made no comment about the kitten.

The patroon tied his horse to the railings and knocked on the kitchen door below the granite stairs. It did not open at once, but finally a bleary-eyed kitchen
boy in wool socks and a long shirt appeared, and then things moved almost too quickly for Anna to keep track.

The boy was told to rouse the housekeeper, the groom, and the steward, in that order. The housekeeper, who was also, apparently, the head cook, appeared in her bedgown and received her instructions. Miss Winters was to have a hot meal, washing water, a change of clothes, and a bed made up. And a sandbox for her cat. This necessitated two maids being sent for, who goggled at Anna's state and asked, in Dutch, if the witch in the woods had gotten her.

The patroon's expression quieted them immediately, but their reaction still sent a chill down Anna's spine. She forced herself to stare quizzically at them as though she did not understand the language and let the cook, Mrs. Buys, shush them back to their work. Mrs. Buys had very good English, and spoke to Anna in the kind of running patter that soothed children and small animals and—just at that moment—exhausted schoolteachers.

“We'll have your breakfast up in a jiffy. My girls bank a good fire, and the coals are always hot and ready to go of a morning.” She proved her point by digging a scoop of glowing embers out of the pile against the fireback and layering them first with fatwood kindling and then with a small split log. It was hot enough to cook in less than ten minutes, and the chimneys were so new and so modern that there was hardly any smoke. The kitchen began to fill with delicious smells as the rest of the fires were lit.

The meal set before Anna was fit for the upstairs
table, and Anna's fears that she would be treated as a servant here evaporated. There was half a chicken swimming in butter with parsley, a bowl of green peas dotted with bacon and crunchy
koolsla
with poppy seeds. It was better food and more of it than she had ever sat down to in her years living on the patroonship, but it was not what she wanted.

A fine English lady would not ask for such a thing, but at that moment, after all she had been through, Anna did not care. “May I have some of the porridge, please?” It was bubbling in a big pot hanging on a crane over the fire, and the aroma of sweet corn and butter and brown sugar made her mouth water.

Mrs. Buys did not seem to know that genteel schoolteachers should not eat porridge. “I prefer it myself, even though the patroon doesn't stint on meat for his servants' meals.” She smiled and bustled and filled a porringer for Anna, and then one for herself. She shaved a tablespoon of extra sugar off the cone for each one, and Anna had to stop herself from digging in before Mrs. Buys was done stirring.

It was the best thing Anna had ever tasted.

Scrappy did not know what to make of her sandbox, and, watching her throw sand all over the immaculate kitchen floor, Anna's heart sank. Mrs. Buys just tutted and sent the maids for another scoop from the sandpit, watching Scrappy roll around in the material she was supposed to use to answer the call of nature.

“She doesn't like being able to dig down to the
bottom of the box,” explained Mrs. Buys. “Did you bring her all the way from New York?”

“No. Our carriage almost ran over her in the road and we could not find her mother.” It was very near the truth.

Mrs. Buys was right. A second generous scoop of sand did the trick, and Anna was able to put Scrappy in a fresh—thank goodness—basket and follow one of the maids, a flower-faced girl whom the cook called Tryntje, to her room.

It was not in the attic. It was on the second floor, at the back of the house, with easy access to both the back and main stairs.

“The young misses are in the front, through that door,” explained Tryntje. She said it apologetically, but Anna was just happy not to be relegated to an attic. She had hoped simply for a room she could stand up in. She had been given a room finer than her bedchamber in New York. The ceiling was so high that the bed's finials did not even come close to touching it. The bed frame itself was mahogany with carved posts and a fretwork tester dressed in blue and white chintz. The entire chamber was carpeted in a pleasing pattern of gray, green, and blue blocks, and the fireplace was surrounded by a full wall of paneling painted cornflower. It was a thoroughly
English
room. The only concession to Dutch taste was the tiled fireplace—but these were popular enough in English homes as well.

“There's water in the jug,” the maid was saying as she bustled about the room opening the bed-curtains
and laying brushes and soap out on the dresser. “The clothes are mine and Mrs. Buys'. The patroon said to apologize—there are no ladies in the house to borrow something better from.”

No ladies in the house.
“What about the girls' mother?”

Tryntje stopped bustling for a moment. She arranged the brushes on the dresser, lining them up left to right, largest to smallest. Then she picked them up and did it again, reversing their order. Anna recognized this for what it was: a delaying maneuver.

“Does she not live at the manor?” prompted Anna.

Tryntje gave up on the brushes and began fussing with the clothes. “Mrs. Buys would not like me gossiping. Now, this is my best shift and that's Mrs. Buys' Sunday gown.”

And that was the subject closed. Anna didn't blame Tryntje. Jobs were hard to come by on the patroonship. A maid's salary would be a lifeline for a tenant family if there came a bad harvest. Positions at the house had been sought after even in Anna's day, when the old patroon had been well-known to corner maids in empty rooms. Even so, they were good positions, and Anna would not be the cause of Tryntje losing hers.

Anna turned her attention to the clothes on the bed. The chemise was fine cotton, but so old that it was transparent as glass around the elbows and knees. The gown was good silk but had obviously been remade. The large damask pattern was thirty years out-of-date, and the shoulders had most likely been reshaped with remnants of old robings. It was the best they had, and they were
giving it to her. And the maid was embarrassed because their best was old and worn. Anna did not know what to say. She was not Gerrit. She had not been born with the best of everything and only later discovered that others did not have as much. She
was
one of those others—one of these people. She had nicer things now, but inside she had not changed.

“They're as pretty as anything I had in my baggage,” she said. “Thank you, Tryntje. I'll be sure to return them as soon as my gown is laundered.”

The maid's weak smile told Anna that laundering, or even mending, was unlikely to save her gown. She didn't care. The room was warm and dry and the linens on the bed looked smooth and cool, and she was almost falling asleep on her feet. She thanked Tryntje again for the water, declined her offer to heat it in the kettle, and then for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, Anna was alone.

She stripped off her clothes, washed in the tepid water provided, put on Tryntje's shift, and climbed onto the bed. Scrappy seemed content to curl up on the carpet. Anna thought briefly about bringing the kitten up on the bed to sleep with her, but the drop to the ground was too far for such a tiny animal, and Scrappy had spent enough time trapped in the basket. She could have the run of the room.

Anna had already learned a great many things that Kate Grey and her Rebel friends would wish to know. There was probably paper and ink in the desk by the window, but she had not decided just yet how much to
tell them. Gerrit's involvement changed everything. She probably ought to write some of what she had gleaned in a letter to Mrs. Peterson, but her heart was slowing down and the feather pillow beneath her cheek was soft, and she was too tired even to draw the bed-curtains.

It was midafternoon by the time she woke. She had slept through the whole morning and a good part of the day with the sun streaming in on her face, bed-curtains still wide-open. Someone—Tryntje, probably—had come and gone, leaving behind a pot of tea, a bowl of sugar, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of porridge wrapped in towels to keep it warm. Someone had also brought a small sandbox for Scrappy and a chicken leg that was already more than half gone.

The kitten herself had clawed her way onto the upholstered chair by the fire and was sleeping contentedly on a cushion. Anna did not feel too bad about the snags on the arms. Her kitten might have spoiled the patroon's chair, but the patroon's feud with his brother had cost Anna her best clothes, her favorite loom, her paint box, her atlas, and her prized book of engravings. Not to mention her lockpicks, her knives, and the very fine muff pistol the Widow had given her. Anna did not, however, begrudge Scrappy her ruined sewing basket. The cat had at least made use of it, as opposed to flinging it from a moving carriage.

Anna ate. Scrappy got up and worried her chicken leg and then went to sleep again atop it, looking forlorn.
Probably missing her mother and siblings.

The Van Harens were home wreckers to a man.

Anna made the best of the gown she had been given, folding back the excess fabric and pinning it closed over her stays. The silk was a rich shade of orange, like fiery autumn leaves, and Anna felt fortunate that it could be made to fit as well as flatter.

Her clothing, in reality, was the least of her problems. She had lost all of her school equipment. The Van Haren girls could not embroider a sampler out of thin air. Farm-dyed wool was not a reasonable substitute for silk thread, and linen thread was of no use at all. She had a great deal of work to do.

Last night she had come up the back stairs and seen little of the house. This morning she went down the front stairs. They were massive and branched upon a landing where family portraits hung amidst a display of weaponry. The halberds and harquebuses, Anna supposed, served the same purpose as the coat of arms: to lend an air of legitimacy to an estate earned not on the battlefield but in counting houses. Anna doubted that the display convinced the Wappinger Indians, who had been trying to reclaim their land for the last century, first from the Dutch and now through the English courts. The colonists
had
resorted to arms to defend their land over the years—from the natives, from the French, and even from their neighbors in Massachusetts—but Anna could not help but wonder how many of the pikes and hackbutts and muskets ranged along the wall had actually been wielded by Van Harens.

The portraits at the top of the double staircase were
the oldest, all of gentlemen with wide-brimmed hats and ladies with dinner-plate ruffs. As Anna descended, the fashions became lighter and more modern but the faces that looked out from the frames changed little. The Van Harens were a distinctive-looking family. The first patroon might have been a merchant, but he'd had a long, aristocratic face with laughing blue eyes and thick blond hair, and he had bequeathed these—along with two hundred thousand acres on the Hudson—to his heirs.

The last patroon had a place of honor at the foot of the stairs. He had chosen to be painted with his favorite hunting dog, a long, lean hound, as black and fearsome as the wolf on the family arms. Cornelis could have been no more than forty when the portrait was done, and there was a loose grace to his pose that had been lost to age by the time Anna knew him. He stood beside a tree, a long fowling rifle in one hand, the old manor house in the background. Like all the bygone Van Harens the old patroon had been tall and slender and blond.

All the Van Harens except Gerrit, whose coffee hair and eyes set him apart from the rest of his family. Anna supposed he took after his mother, although she could not remember what Cornelis' wife had looked like—only an impression of rustling petticoats and silk shoes—and hers was not among the family portraits in the hall. Gerrit's likeness must have been painted after he returned from Leiden, for he looked older than when Anna had known him, but not as mature as he looked now. The picture was very fine—its subject strikingly
handsome, though some quality of physiognomy or pose gave the younger Gerrit a serious, brooding aspect, worlds removed from the easy grace, and almost palpable sense of
entitlement
, reflected in his father's portrait.