Chapter Seven

DILLARD BEACH MYSTERY UPDATE

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Dillard, October, 1678

John and Rebekah met each other often in the days following their first dinner at the cottage. Over the next weeks, by accident or careful design, the lives of both continued to weave and intertwine: once at the docks after a full days work; at the grist mill near Dillard Falls in search of a bag of freshly ground flour, but most often along the shadowed lanes that led from Rebekah’s tiny cottage to the shoreline and oyster beds. First impressions settled into firm faith and belief in the goodness of the other and soon after the oak leaves had turned and fallen before the autumn winds, they became lovers.
One night as they lay in each other’s arms, John broke the quiet.
“Who must I speak with to claim you as my own?”
Rebekah opened her eyes and studied this man whose body had only moments before been a part of her own. “You wish to claim me? Your question is a puzzlement.”
“I only mean to make fast our love. I wish to marry you, Rebekah. To bind our two lives together as one. Is this not your wish as well?”
She sat up and looked at him. The light from the one candle she had placed near the headboard threw soft shadows across her lover’s face.
“It is my wish that we should be together, John. But there is no one from which you need ask permission to bind me to you.” She was annoyed at his question and the annoyance could be heard in her voice. “I have no father living, nor brother or son. No uncle who lords it over me. I am a single woman of means and do not require permission of anyone but myself to bed you or marry you or leave you if that is what I desire.”
“You want to leave me?” he asked, pulling back.
She reached out and touched his face. “That is far from my desire, and you know that well enough. My reason for saying such, is that there is no one but myself you need to ask. If it is my hand you desire,”
“It is!” he interrupted.
“Then you should know, it is my hand to give.” She reached for him then and softly kissed his lips. “I give it to you, gladly,” she whispered.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Together, they slipped beneath the covers to make love and finally, exhausted, sleep until dawn.
The screeching of chickens in the backyard pen woke them the following morning. John was first up, pulling on his breeches as he stumbled towards the cottage door. One look into the yard and he could see the trouble. A fox, his teeth barred, had cornered two hens and was set to kill both birds and would certainly have done so had not John burst from the cottage towards the pen, waving his arms wildly, his screech almost equal to that of the chickens. The fox quickly turned and ran for the trees. Rebekah, now awake and watching from the doorway, laughed at the scene.
“You surely gave that fox a reason to abandon his dinner and run for safety.”
John smiled broadly and pulled his doublet closed against the chilly morning air. “You should take yourself back to the comfort of our bed, Bekah. Stand here long and you will surely freeze. I will start a kettle boiling for tea and then I must be off to the docks. The tide comes mid-morning and I dare not miss it.”