The Dutch Girl by Thorland Donna

Author:Thorland, Donna [Thorland, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-12T12:53:25+00:00

Eleven

If she had been just an object to be taken, only a prize to be won, he would have watched until she was naked in her shift, but Annatje Hoppe had never been that to him. He could vividly remember how close they had come to consummating their love in the barn, all those years ago, lying in the hay, clothes loosened, full of breathless anticipation.

He had stopped because he was not his father; even if she had wanted him as badly as he had wanted her, all the risk, all the consequences were hers to bear. Like the maids who—once their bellies swelled enough to show—were never seen again at the manor house. He had not wanted that for her. Never that.

Annatje was special. He had known that even then. And, young fool that he had been, he had said as much to his father.

“What are you doing here?” She did not look pleased to see him. Not displeased, necessarily, but the unpinning had come to a decided halt. She stood frozen with one hand in the air like one of those statues of classical goddesses, all sublime grace and arrested motion.

“I could ask you the same question. This, after all, is my house, while you—you, Annatje Hoppe, are supposed to be dead.” He took a step closer, and she did not move away. That seemed a good sign.

“My death was a necessary fiction. Yours is an all too likely reality. Gerrit, your brother has the militia out hunting for you as we speak. If you are caught, you could hang.”

“You tried to warn me at the Halve Maen, and I dismissed you. I’m sorry for that. I thought you were insulting my intelligence. You weren’t. There are few women who know the consequences of the hand I’m playing better than Bram Hoppe’s daughter.”

“Please tell me that you didn’t come here just to apologize.”

She was the most sensible woman in the world and somehow also the most foolish. “Annatje, this is me, and this is you. That is why I’m here.”

He closed the space between them. She didn’t move, and that seemed a very good sign, but now he was at a loss. Because he was afraid that if he touched her she would evaporate like the mist. He had already touched her last night, of course, but he had not known then she was Annatje. They had ridden for miles together. He knew that she was real—yet he was still somehow afraid to believe it.

She was not a phantom, not mist. She came lightly into his arms as though she had never left them, had always been there, and in some ways she had. He had known other women and even married one, but none had ever seemed as real to him. He and Annatje fit together, then and now, like puzzle pieces. She tilted her head back, and he kissed her, soft and warm and startlingly erotic and wet.

She broke away just when he wanted to pull

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