The Turncoat

by Thorland, Donna

  She waited until the galleys shoved off, because the Widow had taught her that lies are most successful when they contained a grain of truth, then ran to the Presbyterian Church, where Bay had stabled her horse. She was out of breath and in a hurry and desperately needed to get to the Neck, because she was one of the Ladies of the Blended Rose, and had missed her boat.

  They believed her, of course. She was wearing one of the scandalous costumes after all, and no well-bred lady, not even Caide’s lady, would run around in such a thing in broad daylight to no purpose. Her acting, she realized later, did not have to be of the first quality, because the quantity of calf and bosom on display guaranteed that the grooms and stable hands were not looking at her face.

  She was astride in a matter of minutes, mounted on the horse Bay had bought her, seated in the saddle he’d had made for her, using, with purpose if not with skill, the dainty black leather whip.

  Her destination was north of the city, on the road to Valley Forge, but she could not ride in that direction. Not yet. She was supposed to be going south to the Mischianza. So for a while, she did. It was easy to pass the sentries on the main roads below the city, because so many people were attempting to do so: caterers and carters and brewers and drapers all hurrying last-minute goods to the party. She was a last-minute good as well, and threw saucy comments back at guards who winked and complimented and wished her luck arriving at the Wharton Mansion in time for the joust.

  Then, when she reached a quiet stretch of road with no one to witness, she turned her horse down a narrow lane, barely a cow path, overgrown with new spring grass and wildflowers, and cut across to a smaller, less-traveled road, and began heading north. It took her an hour to get clear of the city, and then the trouble started.

  The first sentries, posted by Howe to keep messengers from alerting Washington to the attack, swallowed whole her story about rushing to the Mischianza, and politely pointed her in the right direction, back the way she had come. She cut across country again to avoid them, and got a few miles farther north, when she encountered another line of pickets. They were equally polite but much more firm, and assigned a gawking young ensign to escort her back down the road.

  He was much taken with her, and difficult to shake, but eventually he was persuaded to leave her. She cut across country again and found her way to the farm where she had been assured by the Lorings that a change of horse waited, but she knew her luck would run out sometime soon. She said a silent prayer of thanks that she had memorized the route, and carried no maps or documents, because if she was taken, she would be searched. And soldiers would fall on the little farmhouse with the wide red porch and the sky blue ceiling where the tan-faced boy sat peeling apples.

  The boy was no more than twelve, she guessed, and growing bored with a responsibility that had seemed awesome in November, palled by January, and appeared entirely ludicrous now that it was May and the hated British were leaving anyway.

  But the skinny boy knew at once who and what she was. Ladies in nearly transparent dresses silvered with spangles were not a common sight hereabouts. Especially not beautiful ones, with elaborately piled hair that matched the silken sheen of their chestnut mare.

  He stood up and dropped his apple, but not his knife, because this was a dangerous business in which even pretty ladies still needed passwords.

  She spoke it. And he ran. Straight into the barn. He emerged so quickly that she knew the horse must have been kept ready at all hours. Exercised, no doubt, regularly, because it would be ridden fast. Bored or not, the boy and his family had not shirked their part in this.

  And if she failed them, if she did not warn Washington, these people would suffer for it, the way Milly and Andréw had suffered. If Howe destroyed the Continental Army, if the British were allowed free rein here, reprisals would be inevitable, and there would be nothing to keep the dragoons from their door in the middle of the night.

  It was the work of a few minutes to change saddles, and as Kate watched the boy, she weighed her chances of reaching the King’s Arms. They were not good. Still, it was one thing to risk her own life, another to risk that of a child. Yet these were the kinds of decisions the Widow must have made all the time.

  Then the Dutch door on the porch opened and a man strode out, lean, hard, and sun-browned, his features stamped with the same imprint as the boy’s. His father. But he was not in awe of her costume or her beauty. “Where is the Widow?” he asked.

  “Dead,” Kate replied. And she was a poor substitute, she knew. “Howe is moving against Valley Forge tonight.”

  “The roads are crawling with dragoons,” he said. “Do you have a pistol?”

  She was a terrible shot, but she did have a pistol, the muff-size gun the Lorings had provided her. He held his hand out, and she retrieved the tiny pistol from her saddlebag. He held out his hand again, and she passed him the ball and the powder horn. He loaded it, primed it, and placed it in her trembling hand.

  She knew she would not be able to fire it.

  She tucked it in her saddle and strode into the barn, where the boy had gone to brush down the horse Caide had given her. She gave the boy a ruby, fat as a pigeon’s egg, from around her throat, and a message that would, if it reached the right ears at Valley Forge, wake a sleeping army. She watched him set off running across country, then returned to her mount to face the opprobrium of his father.

  He said nothing. Merely gave her a leg up into her saddle. But as she turned her new mount toward the road, he spoke. “The boy has a better chance cutting across country on foot than you do on the road, whether or not you make good use of the pistol.”

  Night was coming on fast when she passed the last of her memorized landmarks: a wooden bridge crossing a small stream built beside a rock as tall and wide as her horse. The King’s Arms lay three miles up the road.

  The galleys would have docked at the Wharton Mansion by now. When the joust was finished, in a few short hours, her deception would be revealed. There was no going back. She would never see Peter Tremayne again. But he would be safe. She had sent him the letters that would buy his freedom from hanging and André’s blackmail.

  Another mile passed, and then she saw them, a line of red and silver glinting in the moonlight strung out across the road. No ordinary picket, then. Joshua Loring had been right. André knew of the rendezvous at the King’s Arms. Her only chance now was to do as the Widow would have done: shoot her way past them and ride on to Valley Forge.

  She drew out the pistol, wondered if it was better to shoot straight into the middle of their ranks and scatter the five horsemen, or aim for their flank and try to skirt them at the side of the road. Angela Ferrers would have known.

  And the Widow would have crouched low over her horse and fired, even when she recognized the man who commanded them.

  Kate slowed, then stopped, the dragoons less than twenty feet in front of her.

  “Miss Grey, please lower the pistol,” said Phillip Lytton, with a gravity he had not possessed at Grey Farm. She wished then he had a weapon in his hands. She might be able to shoot him. The rest of the dragoons were armed, four carbines leveled at her breast.

  “Tell your men to lower their guns and stand aside, Mr. Lytton,” she replied. “Or I will shoot you down.”

  His mount pranced. Even if Lytton had learned to hide his nerves, his horse could sense them. But he was no longer the boy he’d been a year ago. “Shooting me will serve nothing, Miss Grey. You cannot outrun four well-mounted men. And we have orders to take you alive. The charges you face are serious enough without adding murder to them.”

  She heard a burst of hysterical laughter and realized that it came from her. “We both know I will not face any sort of charges, Mr. Lytton, because I will not be tried. All in all, I think I should prefer a bullet.”

  Phillip Lytton went rigid. “I spent five months a prisoner in your father’s custody, Miss Grey. I have dined at his table. I give you my word as a gentleman that you will not be mistrea
ted.”

  He wasn’t lying. He meant every word he said. And because of it, she couldn’t shoot him.

  She lowered her pistol. He walked his horse forward and took it from her, along with the reins of her mount.

  “Mr. Lytton,” she said, as he led her horse toward the lights of the King’s Arms. “Whatever happens to me tonight, please don’t ever tell my father the details.”

  “I gave you my word, Miss Grey. Though you are a spy and a traitor, I promise you will not be molested. Your fate is for a court to decide. More than this I cannot say.”

  Still, she knew there would be no trial.

  The King’s Arms reared up on their left, a three-story stone, cross-shaped house with two projecting wings and a great walled yard. She could hear music and men and horses on the other side of the wall. The yard was bustling with dragoons. An entire troop in buff and scarlet. There was some regular custom as well, but the locals sat in quiet groups in the shadows, while the soldiers gambled and drank in raucous abandon. Lytton led her past the elderly innkeeper, who looked white and drawn, up the stairs and down a long hallway. It was quieter here, the sounds of the common room muffled.

  He reached the last door at the end of the corridor and scratched before entering. Then he opened the door and led her in.

  Her heart stopped when she saw the man standing in the window. His back was to her. Moonlight limned his silhouette, and in the silvery light all was shades of black and gray. And she thought: Tremayne. Then he turned and dispelled the illusion. She struggled to breathe. And her heart started again with a single, painful stroke.

  “Hello, Kate.” It was her fiancé. Bayard Caide.

  * * *

  Peter Tremayne swam upstream through the dancers in the vast, temporary banqueting hall. A hundred mirrors, borrowed, and in some cases stolen, no doubt, from the householders of Philadelphia, gave back the light of a thousand candles. The air was perfumed with flowers and beeswax and costly scent, and every surface was painted to look like something it was not. Plaster painted to look like marble, pasteboard painted to look like mahogany, and cloth painted to look like blue, cotton-clouded sky.

  It was a carpentry simulacrum of his world. The merchants of Philadelphia playing at being English aristocrats. And the English gentlemen playing at being chivalric heroes. Everyone pretending to be something they were not. Except for one girl, who was not here, because she was no longer playing at being anything but herself.

  His progress was halted when the fireworks began, and the orchestra put down their instruments, and the tide of dancers turned in his direction and flowed out onto the lawn, leaving him a path to the end of the hall where Captain André sat with one particular Lady of the Blended Rose drying a tear-streaked face.

  “I thought you would be happy to see me,” Peggy Shippen murmured. André murmured something soothing in return.

  Tremayne didn’t bow or offer any kind of greeting. “A word with you.”

  Long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes looked up at him with more sympathy than they had mustered for the teary girl. “In private, I think,” replied André.

  The Shippen girl pouted miserably and André chucked her on the chin. A brotherly gesture, or something one might do to a favorite dog. Tremayne did not know why it disturbed him so.

  There was a room, or a closet really, at the end of the hall, lit by sconces too utilitarian for the ballroom, and piled with bunting and building supplies and broken chairs. Painted double doors, most likely “borrowed” from someone’s home in town, divided it from the ballroom. André gestured for Tremayne to precede him in, closed the doors, twitched the skirts of his black coat behind him and sat, gracefully, on the only unbroken chair.

  Tremayne remained standing. “We had an agreement.”

  “In which I kept my part,” replied André smoothly. “Please don’t mistake me for a twopenny villain. I do nothing without a purpose. There are twelve thousand men marching through the dark for Valley Forge. Honest soldiers in scarlet coats who do not disguise their business. Balance them—and the Crown’s will—against the life of one girl, who is, I must remind you, a spy.”

  “And you are a spymaster.”

  “But like Anubis, the weigher of hearts, I am not obliged to place my own upon the scales. She was a fool to make the attempt. Brave, but a fool. We captured her several hours ago.”

  Tremayne’s worst nightmare, come to pass. “She is an English woman. She deserves a trial.”

  “You would bring her back here just to see her hang?”

  “I would use every ounce of influence and my entire fortune to see that she did not. What have you done with her?”

  André regarded him with something akin to pity. “I will not tell you, my lord, because while your political support might advance my career, your disgrace could destroy it. And if you follow Kate Grey, there is only one end for you. On the gallows. The king will have little love for the man who put you there, so I find that I am obligated to save you from yourself.”

  Tremayne drew the packet of letters out of his pocket and handed them to André. “In exchange for Kate.”

  He had not seen them before, that much was obvious. André swallowed, and it was the first unconscious thing Tremayne had ever seen the man do. Brushing his finger over the careful slanted script was the second. The gesture was imbued with all the sensuality that had been absent when he touched Peggy Shippen.

  André wanted the letters. Not to burn. Though he would have to.

  “Where can I find her?”

  André looked up at him. “She is by now with Bayard Caide.” He said it with the same intonation as if the words had been “She is dead.”

  “Where?”

  “He may have already killed her.”

  “Bay is many things, but he is not a murderer.”

  “The Merry Widow might beg to differ, if Caide had not opened her throat.”

  “You and I both know Angela Ferrers goaded him into doing it, to save Kate.”

  André still held the letters lightly, reluctant to take full possession. “Consider carefully, Lord Sancreed. Miss Grey has been gone more than twelve hours. You will not be arriving in the nick of time like the hero of some tawdry stage play. If nothing else, he has had her by now. She will not be the same girl you knew.”

  It was true, and Tremayne knew it. Was prepared for it. But he was not prepared for what André said next. “Colonel Caide has always been bent on self-destruction, but I did not expect to find you so ready to reenact your parents’ tragedy.”

  The music struck back up then, and the doors shook under some invisible onslaught. When Tremayne did not reply, André slipped the letters into the breast pocket of his waistcoat. “I beg you to consider some other way I might pay you for these letters.”

  The doors burst open, revealing a glittering tableau. The ensigns had been running races across the dance floor, with a drunken embellishment: skating the final few yards on the gilded wooden shields of the Knights of the Burning Mountain. Two of them had overshot the finish line, broken through the doors, and fetched up at Tremayne’s feet.

  He experienced it all with the dreamlike slowness of a ballet. The bright-eyed women in their towering hair and shimmering silk, pouring a starting line of sugar across the dance floor. The young men taking their places for the next meet. The slipping and sliding as they ran and dove onto their improvised sleds. The casual lewdness at the fringes of the crowd, promising more direct encounters in the dwindling hours.

  And John André, standing at his shoulder, speaking in his ear like a coryphaeus. “If you leave tonight, my lord, I will not be able to keep your name out of it. You will lose everything. Title, lands, and fortune. There will be no turning back.”

  * * *

  Phillip Lytton laid her pistol and her dainty black whip on the baize-covered table and retreated to stand beside the door, blocking her escape.

  Bayard Caide rose from his seat and strolled to the table. He picked up the pistol a
nd removed the flint and emptied the pan. With care, he slid the ramrod down the muzzle and fished out the ball. Then he set the harmless weapon down and brushed his fingertips over the whip with the same care he reserved for his paints and his brushes, and his adored fiancée. “Thank you, Mr. Lytton,” he said, his eyes finally searching out Kate’s, and holding them. “You may go.”

  “I gave Miss Grey my word,” said Phillip Lytton unwisely, “that she would not be mistreated.”

  A smile quirked the corner of Bayard Caide’s mouth, and for a moment he looked more than ever like Peter Tremayne. She willed herself not to flinch.

  “And I gave you an order, Mr. Lytton.” His eyes didn’t leave Kate’s. “Now kindly shut the door and leave us.”

  “She needs a chaperone,” insisted Lytton. “One of the barmaids, or the innkeeper’s—”

  “That will do, Mr. Lytton.”

  Lytton stood hesitating in the doorway.

  “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Lytton.” She hoped that would pass for absolution. She did not want to be on anyone’s conscience but her own.

  “I am sorry,” the young officer replied. He retreated from the room but did not close the door, and she heard Caide sigh behind her. He crossed to the door and shut it himself, then turned to face her.

  He looked tired. And dangerous. “I don’t even know what to call you,” he said. “Are you Kate, or are you Lydia?”

  She didn’t know. “My name is Katherine Lydia Grey.”

  “Who were you for Peter?”

  “Kate. I was always Kate for him.”

  He leaned back against the door and thrust his hands into his hair. “I began this day thinking the end was in sight. That we would take Valley Forge, and the war would be done. That you and I would marry. Then André came to me this morning and told me you planned to run away with Peter. But if you did not, if you made a run for the Rebel lines to warn Washington, I must deal with you. I scarcely knew which outcome was more desirable, or deserved.”