“I shouldn’t have. Peter, André had us followed to the cottage. He knows what you did to Lytton, and about my father’s presence behind your lines. He will destroy you if I do not give you up.”
She’d never observed him in such a confined space. He was all coiled emotion and violent passion held in check, but he didn’t move until she did.
She realized at once that it was a mistake. She sought his arms, desperate for comfort, but his hands on her waist were not gentle. He backed her into the crate behind her, and lifted her to sit on its edge. He gathered her skirts into a froth about her hips. “I’m not afraid of John André.”
But Kate was. Afraid for herself, afraid for Peter. She braced her palms against his chest. “Don’t.”
They were frozen like that, his hands beneath her skirts, hers on his shoulders, when the tavern door at the top of the stairs swung open and disgorged two men dressed in white, carrying canvas sacks. They pulled the door shut behind them and made it almost to the bottom of the stairs before they realized they were not alone. They stopped on the bottom step, the older man shielding the boy behind him.
Tremayne stepped in front of Kate, but not before she got a good look at them: soldiers, from their snowy stocks and gaiters, but the man in the lead was portly, balding, and red-faced, and would never see forty again, while the boy was wide-eyed, carrot-topped, and scarcely fifteen. And their coats were not white. They were red, like Peter’s, but turned inside out to show the cotton lining.
Tremayne was so close to her that she could feel the change in him, the way his body tensed and his center of gravity shifted when he took a second, smaller, but more calculated step in front of her to draw his sword. It echoed like a bell in the brick-roofed chamber.
The boy said something thick with consonants in a language she did not understand, but his fear was plain in his high-pitched voice and wide, panicked eyes.
Before the older man could answer, Tremayne spoke. “The boy has the right of it, Sergeant. You should go back to your barracks now.”
“Who are they?” Kate asked. She could not place the language, though she knew she had heard it before.
“Deserters,” spat Tremayne, “from the Royal Irish.” He was vibrating with anger. And something else she didn’t recognize.
The older man didn’t flinch. His drew a pistol from his bundle and curled his lips into a nasty smile. “You have a bit of the Gaelic, to be sure, my lord. All the better for slapping down them that speaks it. But I’m afraid we can’t oblige you. There’s a boat waiting for us at the end of this tunnel.”
“I cannot let you pass.”
“But you will, my lord. Because I know something the boy here doesn’t. That fancy piece you’re about to tup doesn’t belong to you. Better to let us meet the boat that’s waiting than bear tales back to them that might be interested.”
Caide. The threat chilled Kate to the bone. The man thought he was dealing with simple cuckoldry.
“Where will you go?” she asked the sneering sergeant.
He seemed surprised to hear her speak, then shrugged and answered her. “The boy was never cut out for a soldier. He has family in Lancaster who will take him. It’s the farmer’s life for him. Me, I favor a billet with the Continentals.”
“I’m sure you do,” Tremayne scoffed. “For long enough to collect the shilling. A man who will desert from one flag will desert from another.”
But Kate was already fishing through her pockets for the bag of coins her father had given her at Orchard Valley. She’d never needed pocket money since becoming the Widow’s acolyte. She did not need it now. She tossed the bag high into the air and the rogue caught it, suspicion writ large over his coarse features.
“And what would this be for?” he asked.
Kate placed her hand on Tremayne’s sword arm. “To speed you on your way,” she said, praying Tremayne would lower his blade.
“Kate,” warned Tremayne, never taking his eyes off the sergeant, “you cannot trust men like these.”
“They are better out of the city than in,” she said. “Lower your sword.”
Tremayne shrugged. “Just as soon as he lowers his pistol.”
The sound of the pistol being uncocked was as loud as a gunshot. Tremayne lowered his blade. The stocky sergeant sketched Kate a mocking bow as he passed close to her in the narrow hall, tugging the goggling boy along after him. They were lost quickly in the shadows at the far end of the tunnel, but a wash of cool air and the smell of the river told her that they had found the exit.
Tremayne was still standing over her. She saw the pulse beating at his throat. His sword lay unsheathed on the crate beside her. She felt strange. Hot and restless. She reached for him. “Peter, I…” She didn’t know how to describe it.
His hands rested lightly on her thighs. Her skirts were still drawn up over her knees, but he made no move to lift them. “It’s the threat of violence,” he said thickly. “The nearness of death.”
She saw now that his hands were trembling. She touched him through his breeches.
“Don’t,” he said. His jaw was clenched.
She ignored him. The buttons popped free between her fingers. His flap fell open, and he sprang thick and heavy into her waiting hand.
“You won’t like it. Not like this,” he warned.
But she did.
* * *
Kate exited the cellar ahead of Tremayne on shaky legs. She’d done her best to repair her appearance, but she knew she looked like she’d been ravished, so she waited for the Shippens in the dark of their carriage. Peggy breezed in sometime later without noticing Kate’s dishabille, but Mrs. Shippen ran an assessing eye over her, and pursed her lips in distaste. No doubt she attributed Kate’s dishevelment to Bayard Caide. She thanked God for her fiancé’s louche reputation.
Peggy’s chatter on the ride home had a single theme: John André. Captain André was reopening the theater. Captain André was planning a ball. Captain André was building sleds for pleasure outings in the Neck. And while Peggy’s mother might be an indifferent chaperone, she was not a foolish woman. On the subject of John André, Mrs. Shippen was strategically silent. Canny city Quakers like the Shippens didn’t fraternize with soldiers so their daughters could marry lowly captains without name or fortune.
Listening to Peggy prattle on as the hot bricks on the floor of the carriage cooled and the chill night air crept in, Kate felt her chest tighten until she could barely breathe. Washington had told her to consider carefully what she might be giving up to become the Widow’s eyes and ears in Philadelphia. And she had considered. She’d considered that she would never see Tremayne again, and yet she could not imagine another man to suit her.
By the time the Shippen carriage deposited Kate at the Valby residence, she craved the solitude of her room, and took the stairs two at a time.
But her room wasn’t empty when she reached it.
“Kindly close the drapes and light a candle or two. I’m tired of sitting in the dark,” Angela Ferrers said. She sat in a shadowed corner, well away from the windows. Her appearance tonight was as surprising as ever. She was not the Quaker Widow of Orchard Valley, or the wiry groom of the Valby stables, or the oyster monger of Du Simitière’s museum. And she was certainly not the exquisitely turned-out lady who had tried, and failed, to seduce Peter Tremayne. This woman was a bourgeoise, a comfortable merchant’s wife, to judge by the richly figured velvet of her gown, too heavy to carry off its ruffled style, which ought to droop elegantly at the wrists and hem, but instead added bulk to her slim frame. It was a calculated lapse in taste, designed to relegate her firmly to the background of any gathering. And it would work. Amidst the overdressed burghers of Philadelphia tonight, Kate would never have given her a second glance.
“I thought we weren’t to meet again in person, Angela.” Kate found a hot coal in the firebox. The candle flared, then became a pinpoint of light in the deeper dark as the drapes fell closed.
“I had no ch
oice but to come. You and André’s watchdogs disappeared for an entire night.”
Kate felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She had not mentioned those events in her last dispatch, in the masked letter she’d deposited, two days ago, in the dead drop at the Haymarket. “Are you also having me watched?”
“Of course. Where did you go?”
“On a private errand.”
“You can expect no privacy. You are a spy. You watch and are watched in turn.”
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Where I went is no one’s business but my own.”
“It is if you are working for John André.”
The suggestion stunned Kate for a moment. It was almost laughable, if it weren’t so plausible. André had attempted to recruit her. To a jaded spy like the Widow, who clothed herself daily in lies, mistrust and suspicion came naturally. And Kate had fed it unwittingly.
“I’m not working for André,” Kate said carefully. “I spent the night with Peter Tremayne.”
The Widow rose and stalked to the cold hearth. She crossed her arms, leaned against the mantel, and took a deep breath. “At Grey Farm I said you were either very clever, or very stupid. Facts begin to weigh toward the latter. Bayard Caide might be besotted enough with you to forgive a great deal, but not, I think, that.”
“There is more to this tension between Peter and Bay than the fact that they are closer cousins than society thinks. What aren’t you telling me?”
“You’re right. There is more. Their family tree is gnarled like an oak, and only a fool would place herself between those two men.”
“Tell me what they are to each other and allow me to decide for myself.”
“If you knew the truth, you wouldn’t be able to conceal your knowledge from Bayard Caide. Believe me when I say that you are better off not knowing, and that you must give up Tremayne.”
Kate knelt at the hearth and used a penknife to loosen a brick in the fireplace. She withdrew a sheet of paper and held it out to the Widow. “As you gave up Carl Donop?”
Angela Ferrers made no move to take the letter. “What foolishness is this?”
“The count wrote to you on his deathbed.”
Angela Ferrers accepted the folded missive from Kate’s hand and carried it to the candle. Kate thought she meant to read it, but the Widow held the folded paper to the flame.
“No!” Kate snatched it, the corner just beginning to burn, and threw it on the hearth. She dropped to her knees and smothered it with the loose brick.
The edges were singed but the message remained intact. Kate rose from the floor, brushed the soot from her skirts, and held out the letter once more. “You were loved by a man who was willing to die for you. Who did die for you.” Kate laid the letter on the table between them.
The Widow made no move to touch it. “I advise you against following my example. Don’t take up with a man who will die for you. Find one who will kill for you instead.” But after a moment, Angela Ferrers reached out to finger the singed edge of the letter. “I cannot leave here with this,” she said. “It is too dangerous.”
It took a moment for her meaning to penetrate. The Widow wanted to read the letter here and now, but alone. Kate picked up the water jug from the washstand and went out of the room. She wondered, not for the first time, if anything touched Angela Ferrers, if the woman had any feelings at all, and decided that given tonight’s display, the answer was a resounding no.
When she returned from the kitchen pump with fresh water, a chill wind met her at the door. The sash was up. The shutters were thrown back. Moonlight slanted into the room.
Angela Ferrers stood in the open window for anyone to see. She wore her fur-trimmed mantle, the hood casting her face in shadows. Kate could see nothing of her expression, but the Widow’s hands were visible resting on the sill, white and trembling.
“Where did you get it?” the Widow asked.
She meant the letter, now ashes on the hearth.
“From Peter Tremayne.”
Kate caught only a glimpse of the Widow’s face as she passed on her way out of the darkened room, but it was enough to tell her how very wrong she had been.
* * *
It was the patter on the stairs that woke him. He was up and wrapped in his banyan before the reverend’s bony sister knocked on his door.
Tremayne’s first thought was of attack. The Rebels had crept up on Trenton last year in the dead of night, in the bone-rattling cold, and on Christmas Eve no less.
“There’s a woman downstairs.” Not an attack then. The reverend’s sister stood barefoot in the corridor wrapped in a patchwork quilt. She had exceedingly large feet for a woman, he noted, recalling Kate’s perfect proportions.
It must be her downstairs. Kate. He knew no other woman in Philadelphia who would seek him out in the middle of the night.
His room beyond the bed curtains was chill, the hall outside even more so, but the reverend’s sister hesitated there, her message delivered, and Tremayne knew what she must be thinking.
“I’ll be down in a moment. Thank you,” he said. He dressed hastily, wishing there was a glass in his room. He was afraid for Kate, of course. Nothing but disaster, most likely in the form of imminent arrest, would bring her to his door at this hour. But he was also relieved. The crisis was come. There might yet be time to spirit her away. If not, he would intercede for her. No one liked to hang pretty young women. Howe had a soft spot for her. And no one would be surprised if a rich lord saved her from the gallows to install her in his bed. It was the way of the world.
She was waiting in the reverend’s tiny parlor, but he knew before she threw the hood of her furred cloak back that it was not Kate. Even in the bulky velvet gown, the Widow was taller and more slender than Kate, boyish almost. He could think of only one reason why she might be here. “What has happened to Kate?”
“Nothing, my lord. She’s safely tucked in bed, though it would please me immeasurably if in future you refrained from joining her there.”
“Are you warning me off?”
The Widow looked suddenly older than he remembered, and bone-weary. She took a seat in the carved chair by the fire—a relic of one of the reverend’s Pilgrim progenitors—and it creaked beneath even her slight weight. “We both know I’m a hypocrite, Major Tremayne. But Kate would be safer if she would do as I advise, rather than as I have done.”
“I will not give her up,” he said flatly. “Is that all you have come for?”
“No.” She reached into her cloak. He recognized the folded paper and the bold, flowing hand, though not the scorch mark that now marred it. “You were with him at the end. Tell me.”
After what the woman had done to him, he did not think he could possibly pity her. If she had cried, he would not have. But Angela Ferrers sat perfectly still in the ancient chair. It would have given away her slightest motion with a plaintive creak. And he did pity her.
There was no sound in the room but his voice, and faintly, from the hall, the irregular tick of the battered case clock.
She listened to it all. Donop’s delight in the Ferguson, his admiration of the Widow’s skills with a rifle and her seat on a horse, his determination to take Fort Mercer, to regain his honor, the details of his terrible wound, and his deepest regret upon dying: that he would never see his beloved again.
Tremayne wanted to offer some words of comfort, but he could find none, and he was very close to an unseemly display of emotion himself. The Widow clearly did not permit herself the luxury of weeping, and he rather doubted she had much patience for the shedding of manly tears. So he swallowed the lump in his throat and ignored the tight feeling behind his eyes, which was as much for what he feared he was doing to Kate as for what had befallen Carl Donop and the Widow, and made the only safe gesture left to him: he stood up and offered her his hand.
She never took it. The sound of booted feet outside the window froze her for only a second, then she was up and scanning the room for exits.
<
br /> There was only one, and before she could reach it, the front and back doors of the house were battered open by the carbine butts of a squad of dragoons.
The parlor door opened, Captain André strolled in smiling, and the Widow adopted a pose of murderous rage and smacked Tremayne hard across the face. “You told me you loved me, Peter. That you would marry me. That you would take care of me. All to lure me into a trap.”
Tremayne was stunned. André looked intrigued. And General Howe—following the little Huguenot in with the expression of a pleased parent on a school visit, studiously ignoring the shabbiness of the house and furnishings—looked delighted.
“Well done, Major.” Howe clapped his hands and darted quick glances around the room. “Clap her in irons, Captain André, and then we must have a glass of brandy.”
“Yes, very well done, but I’m afraid the celebrations must wait, General. We need the names of the Widow’s confederates before they are alerted to her capture.”
Howe nodded, willfully ignoring the nastier implications of André’s statement. “By all means. Let’s have done with it.”
“Not here, I think,” André said, inclining his head toward the reverend’s sister, and the reverend himself, who was blinking sleepily in the doorway.
“She is entitled to a trial,” Tremayne said.
“Perhaps. If she were an Englishwoman. Are you?” André inquired of the Widow.
She said nothing. André smiled, and Tremayne realized with certainty that John André, like Donop, was privy to some secret intelligence, knew who the Widow really was, and would not say. And neither, it was clear, would she, even if her rank or the circumstances of her birth could save her from torture and imprisonment, or entitle her to a trial by a jury of her peers.
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