Mistress Firebrand

by Donna Thorland

  Severin had chosen an end seat so as to be able to make a quick exit with Jenny as soon as he spied her. He turned toward the aisle to avoid a prostitute making her way toward him, but the determined little tart anticipated his move, pretended to trip so she could land in his lap.

  He caught her and before he could set the harlot on her feet, irritation turned to shock, because the handful of doxy in his grasp proved to be no doxy at all, but Jennifer Leighton. And she was playing her part to perfection. Her gown—very nicely fitted to bosom and backside—was threadbare silk in a huge plum damask pattern twenty years out-of-date, pinned over a gaudy pearl-crusted stomacher of an even older vintage. She was wearing paint, expertly applied, lips ruby red and cheeks blooming roses, and her hair was powdered gray to complement the gown. If he had not wanted to kill her right at this moment, he would have found the impersonation both amusing and impressive . . . and not a little stirring.

  She grasped his shoulders for balance—when she had never truly lost hers—and whispered in his ear like a harlot promising pleasures. Even though her words were anything but seductive, his body responded to the press of her curves against his flesh.

  “What are you doing here, Devere?”

  “Taking you home,” he said.

  “I can’t leave yet.” She tried to slide out of his arms, but he held her fast and spoke quietly in her ear.

  “André knows that ‘Cornelia’ is here tonight. He has a troop of dragoons closing in even now to capture him. And a torturer named Dyson standing by to interrogate him—to interrogate you—before you hang in the morning.”

  Nineteen

  Severin Devere was not a man given to exaggeration. Jenny knew that. The fact that he was here, tense and coiled with fear—fear for her—meant that the danger was very real. But that did not make it any easier to leave.

  The actor declaiming the prologue already had the greater part of the audience in his spell. In another moment Jenny would hear the opening lines of the first act spoken aloud, see her clandestine work brought to life.

  “A few minutes more,” Jenny said. “Just one scene. It may be my only chance to see it staged.”

  “There will be other nights, other plays,” said Devere. “To which we will not be inviting dragoons.”

  Devere rose and urged her toward the entrance. Jenny took one last look at the stage, heard the final line of her prologue, and felt the applause wash over her. It, and her own short brush with triumph, were cut short by a scream, followed hard by a shout.

  The crowd surged around them. Dragoons in scarlet burst through the door. The spectators in the scaffolding panicked, and the structure swayed left, then right, and then with dreamlike slowness began to collapse.

  “This way,” said Severin, turning her roughly around and forcing a path through the crush of people.

  She heard the roar of the scaffolding folding in on itself behind them. “There’s no way out behind the stage,” she said.

  He ignored her, dragging her past the makeshift platform and drawing his sword. He slashed at the canvas covering the nave window, two quick cuts, and then he had leapt onto the sooty stone sill and was reaching for her. She hitched her skirts to follow, their escape hidden by the barrels and the palettes and painted sail that had been hung to serve as a backdrop.

  They emerged in a sad little walled cemetery: tents pitched now over worn tombstones, a woman sleeping with her infant curled to her breast and her head atop a child’s burial marker. There was only one way out, a garden gate that opened on a fetid alley. Devere led her out through the graves, all the while looking back at the church for signs of pursuit. Nothing behind them, for the moment, but sound and fury.

  The alleyway was long and dark and stretched ahead of them unbroken for fifty feet, the charred brick walls of roofless warehouses rising two jagged stories on both sides. At the end where the alley met another passage, a man was standing with his head pressed to the wall. Moonlight glinted off his silver buttons and frosted his fine wig and the lace on his coat. As they drew near Jenny could hear him moaning, and for a second she thought he might be injured—until she saw the shape kneeling at his feet: a woman, shoulders and head pressed to the brick, servicing him with her mouth.

  Devere maneuvered them around the harlot and her patron, and Jenny saw that the alley led in only one direction: back to Lumber Street, where chaos reigned. Dragoons were lining up the students—with brutal efficiency—forcing them to kneel at bayonet point.

  “We must go back,” said Devere, “and try to hide in the cemetery, or scale the opposite wall.”

  The wall had not looked scalable. Shouting erupted from that direction and Jenny heard boots flying over cobbles and the unmistakable jangle of bayonets and cartridge boxes.

  Devere heard it too. He spared a quick glance at the couple in the alley and then turned to survey the violence in Lumber Street. They could not possibly escape in that direction, and now there was no retreat.

  “Trust me,” he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the chaos. He stopped abruptly ten yards short of the alley opening. He threw back his cloak to expose his scarlet regimentals, pushed Jenny up roughly against the wall, bricks biting into her back. He tossed up her petticoats. The sooty hem smacked her face. Coarse wool scraped her bare knees, and then—without overture or preliminaries—he entered her.

  She was too shocked to cry out at the sudden invasion. It pinched and chafed and her eyes watered and she was caught there, mouth open, gasping like a fish on a hook. The dragoons crashed around the corner, and the harlot on her knees gagged and cried out, and the man snarled. Jenny tried—uselessly—to push Devere away, but he had her fast in his grip.

  “Who goes there?” came a young voice, barely broken but surly with new authority.

  Torchlight burned away the darkness, and Jenny could see Devere’s face, a mask of boredom and callous indifference. His eyes were cold, his lips curled into a smirk, his body held away from her so that they only joined where it served his pleasure.

  A performance. She knew it, but her body’s reaction to him was all too real. It warmed to him, to this, with a liquid loosening that, in truth, shocked her even more than his initial penetration.

  Devere felt it too, she felt certain—growling huskily as she slid down the length of him until she was well and truly impaled. When he turned his face to the boy in the bearskin helmet, she did not know if Devere’s anger was feigned or real, but his voice dripped disdain and promised retribution. “I am a little busy, just at present, for introductions, cornet.”

  The young officer’s eyes found the epaulet on Devere’s shoulder, heavy with bullion, and took in the fine gold lacings on his coat.

  “I am very sorry, sir,” he said. He took a step back, then stopped and looked at Jenny.

  Her heart pounded in her ears. The slickness between their bodies increased, and she was exquisitely conscious of Devere’s member, thick and stirring, within her. Fear, apparently, worked its own devices on the body.

  “I regret the interruption,” said the cornet, screwing up his courage, “but I must ask. That is, General Howe has been quite explicit. We are not to interfere with the locals. That is, I am obliged to ask if the lady is willing.”

  “If there were a lady in this alley, perhaps you would be obliged to ask, but there is not,” said Devere.

  The young officer was very near to giving up, but he persisted. “Madam,” he said, at the risk, no doubt, if Devere was what he seemed, of his career, “are you quite well?”

  “I am. Yes,” she managed to gasp out, not certain if she was anything of the kind.

  The ensign’s expression was dubious, but he was in no position to do anything gallant, so he said, “Very well, then. Good night, sir.”

  He retreated back up the alleyway toward the church, and she was alone with Severin Devere.

  H
e pressed his forehead to hers. “We must wait until they are gone.” He was standing absolutely still now, his whole body trembling with the effort of it. She took his face in her hands and lifted it, brushed her lips against his.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  His hips flexed involuntarily. She licked his mouth, her tongue tasting salt. His hips moved again. His eyes met hers. “Jenny,” he warned.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  He didn’t.

  * * *

  Devere obliged her. They ended in a tangle of limbs and garments, of silk and cotton and wool snagged on the brick of the alley and snarled in the pearls crusted on her stomacher and bunched around the weapons that hung at his waist.

  They stood like that, foreheads pressed together, hearts still racing, for a long moment, and then he realized what they had done.

  “I am sorry,” he said, sounding louder than he’d intended. Quiet had fallen all around them, only a few drunks moaning and, here and there, a woman sobbing in the aftermath of the raid.

  “You have nothing to apologize for. I wanted that. Insisted upon it, if I recall correctly.”

  “I was imprudent,” said Severin. “We used no sheaths. There could be consequences.”

  “They seem remote at the moment,” said Jenny. The flush on her cheeks and the dazed smile on her lips appealed deeply to his masculine pride, but there was more at stake here.

  “You are safe from Venus’ curses with me,” he said. “I have always been careful. This, in truth, is my first lapse. If you fell pregnant, we would marry.” It sounded grudging. He had not intended it to. He tried again. “I mean to say we ought to marry, generally, and be done with potting sheds and dank alleys.”

  “I rather enjoyed the potting shed,” she said, the smile still playing around her lips.

  “So did I. All the more reason we should marry. We are well matched, Jenny, in so many ways. And there is nothing to stop us making a life together, one of our choosing, if we leave tonight, and quickly. Frances understands. She is already packing.”

  “I wish,” said Jenny, “that I could say it did not require a troop of dragoons to convince me, but evidently it did. You are right, and I am ready to go.”

  He felt a wave—almost physical—of relief. They had cheated the dragoons and John André, and they were going to escape. In two days’ time, they would be in Lebanon, safe, with his family.

  They picked their way cautiously back to John Street, hand in hand, though Devere kept his other at his sword hilt the whole way. When they reached the house, Jenny looked up at the lighted windows and said, “Do you imagine we will ever be able to come back?”

  “Of course,” he lied.

  “Where will we go now?”

  “I have family in Connecticut. They will welcome you.”

  “And Aunt Frances?”

  “Will be more than welcome as well. And you may write to your heart’s content there.”

  Inside they found Frances burning papers.

  “I have laid a choice of things out for you on your bed,” said the Divine Fanny, with the practicality of a Roman matron. “Along with a satchel. I believe Mr. Devere would tell you to pack only what you think you can carry and burn anything that might be incriminating in the event we should be caught.”

  “Though I’m meant to have offered it myself, that is very sound advice,” remarked Devere. “Where is Fairchild?”

  “He was called away to the Battery,” said Fanny. “For the best, I think. He might have tried to stop me, or been mad enough to want to come with us. I have written him a farewell. We should make haste to leave before he receives it and comes charging back here.”

  She didn’t tell him she was leaving. The news, lightly spoken, somehow made Severin as sad as it did relieved.

  “I will get my things,” said Jenny.

  Devere followed her up the stairs. The last time he had visited the house he had not ventured above the second floor. Indeed, he’d been given opium, a tour of the John Street basement, and the beating of his life, but he could not fault Frances Leighton for loyalty to her friends—or Jenny for loyalty to this woman who had rescued her from a life of domestic business, shut away from the world’s acquaintance.

  The woman he loved wasted no time gathering her belongings. She pried up a board in the floor and removed a sheaf of papers.

  “Works in progress,” she explained. “I shall put them on the fire downstairs.”

  “Give them to me. I will carry them,” he said, “and destroy them if needs must.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t endanger you or Aunt Frances by traveling with these. I will start afresh in Connecticut.”

  There was no vanity in her either. The clothes she packed were practical and suitable for traveling. He had only a few minutes to take in the narrow room that was so intimately hers—a circumstance he regretted, but there would be other rooms. Rooms that they would make their own together.

  The tiny garret’s windows were open to the night air, and a street away he could hear booted feet on cobbles and the jingle of spurs, moving fast. It was the habit of a lifetime to keep careful track of his surroundings, to be always alive to opportunities and alert to danger. In a moment the sounds would fade into the distance, or boots and spurs would clash louder with approach, and arrival. Breath held, he listened and—breaking another habit of mind—allowed himself a silent prayer.

  It went unheard, or perhaps this was its answer. The footfalls grew louder; the spurs were joined by raised voices; there were shouts in the street and the sound, unmistakable, of the door being broken down.

  * * *

  It was louder than a stage effect, the thunderclap of the door exploding below, the thud of feet on the stairs, and yet it all felt curiously like a bit of theater to Jenny when Aunt Frances’ voice drifted up the stairs: musical and aristocratic, as though she had been expecting a troop of dragoons, and was simply delighted to see them.

  Devere looked calm. That reassured her. Somewhat.

  “The papers,” he said.

  He was right. She dropped to her knees and stuffed them back beneath the floorboards.

  “Everything will be all right, Jenny,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she nodded and smoothed the little woven rug and then her skirts back into place.

  Just in time. A bearskin hat came into view on the stairs, and then the dragoon who wore it—a tall, raw-boned man who had to hunch his shoulders on the narrow landing—offered Severin a cursory salute and led them downstairs.

  The little parlor door was open. The furnishings seemed small with so many men crowded into the room. Two dragoons flanked each window, and John André stood just inside the threshold.

  Jenny had not been able to see it before—the ruthless intelligencer behind the charming dilettante—but she could see it now. André had abandoned his martial finery, all the bullion and silver lace, for a field uniform of rugged wool and tough linen, but it was more than a matter of dress. It was the way he held himself, like an actor who has just come offstage and only a moment before shed the part he had been playing.

  Aunt Frances was seated in her frayed easy chair, draped in blue silk turquerie and striking the attitude for which she was so famous: the Divine Fanny as Tragic Muse. Astonishingly, she looked smug. As though the troop of dragoons investing her home did not worry her in the least. Jenny did not think that her aunt could divert Captain André as she had the young Continental at the John Street doors—by fainting—but a slender hope took root in her heart that Aunt Frances had some trick up her sleeve.

  John André appeared surprised by Fanny’s poise. “In truth,” he said, “I did not expect such a gracious welcome from a friend of the Widow.”

  “That is because you are so very young,” replied Frances Leighton, “and can only imagine a limited number of outcomes for this in
terview. How old are you? Twenty-three?”

  “Twenty-five,” he said, scrutinizing her. The condescension chafed him. Jenny could see that much.

  “Get out, André,” said Severin Devere. “And take your damned dragoons with you. There’s no proof that Frances Leighton is even acquainted with the Widow.”

  “No,” said André smoothly. “There is no compelling proof. What of it? That is why men like you and I exist. To act where the evidence would never hold up in a court of law. Former royal mistresses, of course, are a delicate matter, though, and I could not rely on Mr. Hallam’s information alone.”

  “Bobby wants the John Street back,” said Jenny. “He would say anything to secure it.”

  “Indeed,” replied André, looking at Jenny and taking in her dishabille, the ancient pearl-crusted stomacher, the brick-stained silk of her petticoats. His smirk told her that he knew exactly what she had been doing an hour ago. “That is why I could not act on his testimony. I needed additional confirmation, and Colonel Devere provided it tonight, when he raced here after our dinner.” He turned to Aunt Fanny. “If it is any consolation in what is about to happen, I am a great admirer of your gifts.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but did not stir from her chair. Fanny wore the calm smile of a medieval effigy. Jenny wondered at—and took heart from—her immaculate composure. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Captain,” drawled Frances Leighton, “but there is nothing you can do now that will induce me to speak of my friend. I am quite beyond your reach.”

  Jenny felt Devere stiffen beside her, but she did not know why.

  André’s expression darkened. He crossed the room and stood in front of Aunt Frances’ little card table. There was a blue glass vial on the polished surface that Jenny had not noticed before. The captain reached for it, then stopped himself. He plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it twice around his hand before gingerly picking up the tiny bottle. He sniffed it cautiously, then set it back on the table, staring at Frances Leighton with a mixture of profound disappointment and admiration.