The Indian Maiden by Edith Layton Read Free Book Online Page B

of tar and a few feathers to speed her on her way.
    Oh damnation, Miss Hamilton thought, as one warm tear fled her hot, embarrassed keeping, she hadn’t meant a word she’d spoken and wished she’d cut her tongue off instead of spouting them. She didn’t even like Napoleon. And she wasn’t sure he’d offered help to her country, she’d only been sixteen, after all, at the time, but doubtless if he had, it was out of mischief. And neither did she blame Britain for the onset of the hostilities, since Grandfather had been a rabid Federalist who’d disliked President Madison almost as much as the war which had cut into his shipping and export business. He and his friends never called it anything but “Mr. Madison’s War” anyway.
    And lord, she thought forlornly, turning her face into her pillow, he’d be disappointed in her if he’d heard her tonight. Never for voicing her opinion, if it only had been her opinion—but it wasn’t. It had only been that she’d been acutely aware of the fact that she was different, and since she’d arrived she’d been searching for insult in every comment addressed to her. And, at that, she remembered wretchedly, the comment hadn’t even been meant for her.
    That young dunderhead Lord Greyville had been brangling with the earl and she had taken him up on it. Then she’d proceeded to insult everyone in the room, including poor Will, who’d been trying so hard to impress his English lady. And all because she’d feared mockery. And partially, perhaps, she thought, stung by sudden guilt, because she wanted so badly to go home.
    She longed for home with such acuteness that each sunset she dreaded facing the pillow she drowned in secret tears each night. But it wasn’t because of the English, or the war. The war was over; however reluctantly it had been fought by the Federalists, or willingly waged by the War Hawks, it was done. And since no one had won, and no one had lost, it was better forgotten.
    And how could she dislike the English? Their every spoken word reminded her of the one person in the world she adored, her grandfather. He had those same musical arched accents, as did so many of his friends. A great many persons she knew at home from his generation had originally come from the old world, and most of them still had their accents intact. In truth, what she’d heard since she’d come here sounded more like what she had grown up with in Grandfather’s house than what she heard regularly in many quarters of New York, since half the city was immigrant and spoke in the dialects of a dozen lands. Hearing her hosts and their guests in conversation reminded her of long evenings at home when she’d been a girl, sleepily listening to adult conversation spoken in accents she’d come to associate with safety, wisdom, and love.
    And no matter what her hosts might have privately thought of her, they’d been unfailingly polite. It wasn’t their fault she’d been foisted on them anymore than it was that she didn’t wish to marry any of them.
    Faith turned in her bed, seeking a more easeful position. But as it wasn’t her body but her heart and conscience that troubled her; there was no way she could arrange herself so as to be comfortable with herself. She was almost one and twenty, and unwed. Though she was content with that statistic, Grandfather was not. He’d known she didn’t wish to marry as her mother had done; he understood she didn’t seek a husband at all, indeed, he’d seen her turn up her nose at all the worthy young men who’d called upon her at his home. But still, though she thought he knew her as well as any being on earth could, he couldn’t accept that this was her desire and not her dire fate. He’d believed it a lack in the young men, not in herself. He’d begged her to come to this, his England, thinking, no doubt, that if the long sea voyage didn’t change her mind about his favorite, Will, then one of those glib young blades he remembered from