Read New York - The Novel for Free Online Page B

compensation had been the arrival of little Clara. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, she was now five years old, and looked like an angel. A wonderfully sweet-natured child. Her father adored her.
    As for Quash the slave boy, he was coming along very well. He was about the same age as Jan, and had been allowed to play with him when he was younger. He was very good with Clara, too. But Quash knew his place.
    And watching her husband contentedly reading to his family, Margaretha thought that perhaps her marriage might still become a very happy one, if she could make some small adjustments.
    So after the reading was over and the children had gone to a neighbor’s, and her husband had remarked that he’d need to make another trip upriver soon, she nodded quietly. Then she sprang her trap.
    “I was thinking, Dirk, that it’s time you joined a syndicate.”
    He looked up quickly, then shrugged.
    “Can’t afford it.”
    But she knew he was paying attention.
    Dirk van Dyck had a talent for the fur business. A quarter-century ago, when the West India Company still monopolized the trade of the port, he would have been a more significant figure. But since then, the economy of New Amsterdam had opened up and expanded hugely; and it was the golden circle of leading families—Beekmans, van Rensselaers, van Cortlandts and a score of others—who formed the syndicates to finance the shipping of tobacco, sugar, slaves and other growing commodities. This was where a man could make a fortune. If he had the price of entry.
    “We may have more money than you think,” she said quietly. We: a team, husband and wife. She made it sound as if they shared the money jointly, but they both knew it wasn’t so. When her father had died six months ago, Margaretha had inherited; and under the terms of her prenuptial agreement, her husband had no control over her fortune. Nor had she let him discover how large that fortune was. “I think we could invest a little in a syndicate,” she added.
    “There is risk,” he warned.
    She knew. Some of the largest investors in the colony were rich widows and wives. She had consulted them all.
    “No doubt. But I trust your judgment.” She watched him consider. Had he guessed her plan? Probably. But it was hardly an offer to be refused. He thought, then smiled.
    “My dear wife,” he answered in an affectionate voice, “I am honored by your trust and I will do whatever I can for our family.”
    It had been the richest woman in the colony, a widow who’d just taken her third young husband, who’d given her the advice. “Don’t rule your husband. But arrange the conditions in which he will make his choices.” It would not take long, Margaretha judged, for van Dyck to get a taste for larger transactions. And for the busy social life that went with them. He’d soon be too occupied in New Amsterdam to go running after Indian women in the wilderness. And once he became accustomed to his new life, he’d also be too afraid of her cutting off the funds, even if he were tempted to stray.
    “I shall still need to go upriver,” he remarked.
    “Oh?” She frowned.
    “I can’t abandon the fur business I have. Not yet, anyway. We still need that income, don’t we?”
    She hesitated. Actually, his earnings were useful; and unless she was willing to tell him how much money she really had, his argument was sound. But she saw his game. He was trying to slip off the hook. Damn him.
    Did he have a woman out there in the wilderness? Or several? That Indian child, she was sure, had been his. Strictly speaking, he could be in serious trouble. In his passion for moral order, Stuyvesant had actually made it illegal to have sexual relations with Indians. But whatever her feelings, bringing her husband before the governor’s court was hardly going to solve anything. No, she’d remain calm. Let him wriggle as much as he liked, she could still outwit him. She’d keep him so busy that he wouldn’t have time to go upriver for