"It's our last chance for prosperity, sir. All else has failed," Briggs responded testily. "I know it and so do you."
Before the governor could reply, Anthony Walrond was joining them.
"Your servant, sir." He touched his plumed hat toward Dalby Bedford, conspicuously ignoring Briggs as he merged into their circle, Jeremy at his heel.
Anthony Walrond was thirty-five and the most accomplished, aristocratic man Katherine had ever met, besides her father. His lean, elegant face was punctuated by an eye-patch, worn with the pride of an epaulette, that came from a sword wound in the bloody royalist defeat at Marston Moor. After he had invested and lost a small fortune in support of the king's failed cause, he had been exiled to Barbados, his ancestral estate sequestrated by Parliament.
She still found herself incredulous that he had, only four weeks earlier, offered marriage. Why, she puzzled, had he proposed the match? He was landed, worldly, and had distinguished himself during the war. She had none of his style and polish. . . .
"Katherine, your most obedient." He bowed lightly, then stood back to examine her affectionately. She was a bit brash, it was true, and a trifle—well, more than a trifle—forward for her sex. But underneath her blunt, seemingly impulsive way he sensed a powerful will. She wasn't afraid to act on her convictions, and the world be damned. So let her ride her mare about the island daylong now if she chose; there was breeding about her that merely wanted some refinement.
"Sir, your servant." Katherine curtsied lightly and repressed a smile. No one knew she had quietly invited Anthony Walrond riding just two weeks earlier. The destination she had picked was a deserted little islet just off the windward coast, where they could be alone. Propriety, she told herself, was all very well, but marrying a man for life was no slight matter. Anthony Walrond, it turned out, had promise of being all she could want.
He reflected on the memory of that afternoon for a moment himself, delighted, then turned back to the governor with as solemn an air as he could manage. "I suppose this island'll soon be more in debt than ever to the Hollanders. I think it's time we started giving English shippers a chance, now that it's likely to be worth their bother."
"Aye, doubtless you'd like that." Briggs flared. "I know you still own a piece of a London trading company. You and that pack of English merchants would be pleased to charge us double the shipping rates the Hollanders do. Damn the lot of you. Those of us who've been here from the start know we should all be on our knees, thankin' heaven for the Dutchmen. The English settlements in the Americas would've starved years ago if it hadn't been for them." He paused to spit onto the sand, just beside Anthony's gleaming boots. "Let English bottoms compete with the Dutchmen, not wave the flag."
"Your servant, Katherine." Jeremy Walrond had moved beside her, touching his plumed hat as he nodded. A cloud of perfume hovered about him, and his dark moustache was waxed to perfection. Though he had just turned twenty, his handsome face was still boyish, with scarcely a hint of sun.