The Dutch Girl (21 page)

She had danced with men before, but it had been nothing like this. She had never been so aware of the warmth of the hands that grasped hers or the pressure of a palm at the small of her back as he led her down, down, down the line and around to the end once more. Her heart beat in time with the music and her feet felt light as air even as they met the packed ground over and over, and she did not want it to end.

This
was what dancing was for.

It struck her all at once that she had been living vicariously, observing life secondhand, ever since the night she fled Harenwyck. She liked teaching; she took pride in the academy and enjoyed the company of Mrs.
Peterson and Miss Demarest, but she had hidden behind the school like a shield. Spinster teachers did not flirt or gossip or dance. Not like this. So many mornings she had stood outside the parlor door listening to the girls breathily recounting their adventures from the night before: the public dances, the private kisses, the letters and love tokens exchanged.

She had consoled herself that theirs were the pleasures of youth, that it was natural that girls should live so vibrantly at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and fitting that she should live so quietly, passions subdued and suppressed, at thirty-two.

It did not feel fitting now. Age, it came to her in a flash, was not the difference between Anna and her students. The difference was desire. For too long Anna had been afraid to want anything. Something had changed when she had entered the gates of Harenwyck. Something long dormant had woken in her. She would not lie to herself and pretend that it was only her reunion with Gerrit. Or that Andries Van Haren's thinly veiled desire did not move her. It did. More than she cared to admit.

The dance ended and the musicians broke to drink their beer and eat their
olykoecken
, and the patroon led Anna out of the barn into the cool night air.

Her hand rested on the velvet sleeve of his jacket. She could feel the warmth of him and inhale the sandalwood scent of his skin. In the light of the bonfire she could see that his eyes were ablaze with the same excitement she felt. He led her past the fire, past the tables where the tenants were eating, drinking, and singing,
and into the enclosure where the herbs were grown for the house. It was fenced on all four sides, and there was a trellised arbor at one end with a seat where the maids picked and spun wool on hot days. Andries brushed the bench clean and drew her down to it.

“There is nothing like dancing to stimulate the appetite,” he said. His eyes were in shadow, but she could feel the intensity of his gaze like the warmth of a fire. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, traveled up her neck, framed her face, and tilted her head back like a chalice. His mouth covered hers with practiced—and all too effective—artistry. Warm and wet. Gentle and teasing. Heady and rich.

This was nothing like her childhood explorations with Gerrit, clumsy, thrilling, sweet. This was seduction, the skillful application of hands and lips and tongue—and when he lifted her suddenly to straddle him, of adult passions, honestly acknowledged. He ached where she ached, at least bodily, and he knew how to soothe them both. He gathered great handfuls of her skirts.

“I can't,” she said. She wanted to, of course, because he knew exactly how to touch her.

“Shush. Let me do this for you. I expect nothing in return.”

His hands were beneath her petticoats, drifting up her thighs. She arrested them through the layers of silk. “No.”

“With my mouth, then. You'll like that,” he promised.

“Oh God.” She was certain she would. His nimble fingers had found the thatch of curls between her thighs. It was so tempting to allow this clever, beautiful man to minister to her body, but her soul belonged to his brother, and always would.

“I am sorry,” she said, “but I cannot do this.”

His knuckles brushed her slickness and she shivered with the pleasure of it. “But you want to,” he said. “I can feel it.”

There was a fierceness in his voice that was more than lust. She looked into his eyes and her heart broke for him. He was the patroon of Harenwyck, lord of two hundred thousand acres, but he was just like her. He had not wanted anything—not in the ways that mattered—for a very long time, and then it had been a woman forbidden to him by the laws of God and man.

“The girls—” she began, but he forestalled her.

“Are safe with Mrs. Buys. She will take them for the night. If you will not let me make love to you amidst rose petals and mint, we could go back to the house. Alone. The servants will not return until morning.”

He had tried to strike a casual tone, as though the answer did not matter greatly to him—as though it would be the same if they stayed another hour and danced and ate
olykoecken
and he took another turn at the
stile—but she caught the hopeful tension in his voice that told her it meant more to him than that.

If she had not met Gerrit again on the road to Harenwyck, she would have gone with him. Certainly the Widow would have. Probably Angela Ferrers would have maneuvered him into bed sooner.

I wonder whether I'm meant to seduce you, or you're meant to reform me.
Anna did not know what Kate Grey had intended when she compelled her to Harenwyck. Perhaps Kate Grey had not known herself. What Anna knew was that she
liked
Andries, even if she did not wholly embrace his vision for the estate. She liked him enough that she could not bring herself to play the Widow's games. And she did not want to hurt him, this man who had everything and nothing at the same time.

She pushed his hands away, and he made no effort to stop her as she slid from his lap and smoothed her petticoats. “I think I will stay a little while longer, Mr. Van Haren,” she said, “and have a pair of
klompen
made. They will make a wonderful souvenir of my adventures in the highlands when I return to New York.”

He did nothing to hide his disappointment but bore it manfully and well, and that made her like him even more. He stood up and bowed to her—the patroon of Harenwyck bowing to Bram Hoppe's daughter—and said, “I'll take my leave, then, and have a bath and a glass of brandy in peace for once.”

Then he kissed her hand, and she knew that she
would
have gone with him, elated from the dance, were she still not in love, after all this time, with his brother.

She watched Andries Van Haren go, threading his way carefully through the crowd with a word for each man he knew. Nothing could set him further apart from his father than what she had just witnessed, nor convince her more that his feud with Gerrit was not entirely about the estate. Neither Van Haren wanted to hold the patroonship in the tyrannical grip that old Cornelis had exercised.

Both brothers wanted reform—and they were both willing to hold the lives of Harenwyck's tenants hostage to gain possession of the whole estate. A fractured patroonship was of no use to the British, or to Kate Grey and the Rebels. Andries was right in some ways. Harenwyck did not need a Robin Hood, but better schools and better roads would not change the injustice on which the estate had been founded. Between them, Gerrit and Andries were going to tear the patroonship apart and lay waste to countless lives in the process.

Only compromise could avert that outcome, because a peaceful division of the land could render the estate far less appetizing to the armies hungrily circling it. The Americans and British each wanted a strong ally, beholden to them, at Harenwyck, authorizing and supporting a military garrison at Harenhoeck. If Gerrit and Andries were to reconcile, were to strike a bargain,
neither
would welcome soldiers onto the estate, and forcing the issue by arms—whether Rebel or government—
would not only threaten unrest, but risk the enmity of all the patroons in the valley.

Only Anna was in a position to broker such a bargain. To put the independence of two thousand families ahead of that of a nation—and herself. Because if she brought Andries and Gerrit together to divide the estate, Kate Grey and the Rebels would expose her, and the law would take its course.

To have any chance of success, she must discover proof of her growing suspicions about Sophia Van Haren. If such proof existed—and, knowing young women like Gerrit's late wife from her years of teaching, Anna was almost certain it did—it would be at the old manor house. Mrs. Buys, all unawares, had given Anna a clue. She ought to go there now, while everyone was at the cider pressing, but she did not relish exploring that mournful house with its table of
doed koecks
in the dark. And the dancing
had
given her an appetite, the sort she had thought she would never have again after New York, but she did not hunger for Andries Van Haren. It was his brother she wanted, and always would.

It was easy to find the
klompen
maker. He had set himself up in front of the old brick shed opposite the meat roasters. Anna remembered him from her childhood. He had been old then, and he did not seem very much older now in his blue apron with his long-fingered hands. He sat upon a rough-hewn stool beside his workbench with his feet upon a chopping block, finishing the decoration on a pair of infant's clogs. There was a tub of
soaked wood beside him, chunks of maple, birch and ash too short to make good lumber and heaped almost as tall as Anna. Beneath the bench was a row of finished
klompen
lined up in pairs from largest to smallest.

“Vil je een par klompen, mevrouw?”

She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from responding in the same language. For a moment she felt the presence of her father behind her, urging her forward. He'd brought her to the
klompen
maker for a new pair of shoes every fall and insisted they be painted, even though she would outgrow them in a year.

“I'd like a pair of clogs, please,” she said, shaking off the memory and pointing to the smaller pairs at the carpenter's feet.

He shook his head and switched to English. “Those will not fit you.”

Anna was fairly certain she could fit into one of the finished sets, but if the
klompen
maker was willing to cut a pair just for her, there was nothing she would rather do than watch. His skills had fascinated her as a child, and she could remember looking on for more than an hour as he shaped the wood like butter, pair after pair.

He chose a block of maple first and contemplated it, turning it this way and that. Then he shook his head and set it aside. He selected a piece of ash next, but this was not to his liking either. The pile was completely rearranged by the time he found the block he was looking for, a pale slab of soaked birch, and set it deliberately on the packed earth in front of him. “There.” He pointed to the block. “Stand, please.”

Anna took her shoes off and stood upon the block while the
klompen
maker traced her feet with a pencil. “Sit,” he ordered, pointing to the stool he had just vacated.

She sat. He placed her block upon the stump and chopped. His ax moved up and down like a kitchen knife and within minutes he had shaped the block into the rough form of two clogs.

He moved to the bench and took up his drawknife, the handle worn and smooth, the long blade sharp as a razor. In his hands the wood seemed soft as fruit. He peeled each
klomp
like an apple, pale curls of birch falling softly to the ground like dogwood blossoms, until he had two pointed toes and two neat heels. His spoon drill scooped out the insides as fast as one of Mrs. Buys' pumpkins, and in less time than it took Anna to eat her second
olykoeck
he presented her with two shoes, the tops decorated with carved lappets and buckles.

She stepped into the
klompen
and wondered how something newly made could feel so familiar. The insoles were pale and pristine now but gradually they would darken with the print of her heels and toes and become indistinguishable from the last pair her father had bought her. “Thank you,” she said. Mr. Ten Broeck had given her a purse for expenses. She fished in it for a coin, but the
klompen
maker shook his head.

“I will not take money from Bram Hoppe's daughter.”

For a second she was gripped by fear, but there was no one nearby to hear, and in the quiet the enormity of it
hit her. There were still people here who had loved her father.

“I remember you,” she said.

The
klompen
maker smiled. “Then that is payment enough. You'll find him in the usual place.” He did not have to say who
he
was. And she knew their usual place.

The church had been one of the first structures built at Harenwyck. It was almost as old as the stone arch, but not nearly so old as the blockhouse. The walls were local fieldstone, the windows were picked out in white paint, the shingle roof sloped down and tilted up in a shape as familiar as the back of Anna's hand.

Gerrit was leaning against the stone wall at the back, looking up at the stars, when she came around the corner, and it was difficult to believe that after visiting this place in her dreams for so many years she was finally back. His coffee hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck, and the tail snaked over his shoulder in a lazy wave. He wore a suit of soft homespun linen the color of molasses. With his hat pulled down he would have been able to pass unseen among the crowd at the cider pressing.

“Did you enjoy
dancing
with my brother?” Apparently he
had
been there.

“Yes,” she said honestly. “I have never danced like that, with a real partner. Only dancing masters and students.”

“The irony is that I
never
wanted to be patroon—until I saw you dancing with Andries tonight, the tenants bowing and curtsying to you, and all I could think was: that should be me, with you on my arm. And then
when I saw him lead you to the arbor, I thought, one well-aimed shot and I will be patroon. He has no heir but me.”