Whispers from the Shadows

by Roseanna M. White

  Jack’s cry of “Grandmama?” came at the exact moment a knock shook the front door.

  Gwyneth rose even as Rosie did. “Would you fetch Jack? I daresay it is a neighbor, perhaps one with news.”

  Rosie nodded and headed for the stairs while Gwyneth walked to the front door. She paused when she spotted the musket resting beside it. Thad had left strict instructions, so she picked it up before wrenching the door open. Another shell struck, but this time she didn’t so much as flinch. This time, it seemed somehow fitting.

  At the sight of the handsome man on the porch, her fingers whitened around the gun she gripped so hard. Darting a frantic gaze beyond him, she didn’t spot her uncle anywhere. And she didn’t know if that was cause for relief or alarm. “What are you doing here?”

  Sir Arthur doffed his hat and bowed, his somber face giving her no answers. “Our ship departs on tomorrow’s tide. Am I not permitted a farewell?”

  “Of course. Farewell, Sir Arthur.” She swung the door shut.

  It caught on the boot he had wedged in the frame, and his sigh sounded exasperated. “Really, Gwyneth, do I not deserve a mere five-minute audience?” He pushed the door open again and stuck his face in, looking, now, more like the man who had caught her eye on that first turn through Hyde Park, with his golden curls falling over his forehead and that boyish grin in place.

  But that didn’t change that it was the wrong grin, the wrong man for the here and now. She didn’t go so far as to point the weapon at his chest, but she raised it enough to make certain he saw it. “’Tisn’t a good time, sir.”

  “’Tis the only time I have. Please, Gwyneth. I want to give you a letter I found. From your mother to your father.”

  The thought of something in her mother’s hand…but she shook her head and leaned on the door. Not enough to hurt him, but to make her point. “How would you have such a thing?”

  “It was in your father’s study. I found it when I was looking for some clue as to where you might be.”

  He had rummaged through Papa’s things, in Papa’s study? Now she pressed harder on the door. “Then hand it to me and be on your way.”

  “Please.” The word barely made it past his clenched teeth, and his eyes reflected pain. His attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace. “Much as it offends my pride to have to ask for it outright, I need to rest for a few minutes. I have ridden at a breakneck pace through a rather treacherous twenty miles, and my old injury has flared up. I need a soft seat for just a few minutes so I might stretch it out. And a glass of water. I beg you.”

  She considered telling him to help himself to a porch step, but when he tried and failed at controlling a wince, compassion won out. With a heavy sigh, she lowered the musket and opened the door. “Five minutes, and I will tell you now that I am not alone.”

  “Of course you are not.” He limped his way in, and she shut the door quietly behind him. Turned, jumped, and cursed her own stupidity when he tugged the gun away from her. She made a lunge for it, but the pistol in his hands stopped her cold. “You have here still the slave woman and the boy. I suggest you tell her to take him to the kitchen for a snack, my dear.”

  Tears stung her eyes when she considered the or what of the situation. Never would she have thought Sir Arthur capable of harming a woman or a child, but the dark glint in his eyes shouted that she knew him very little. Dear Lord, protect us. Protect Rosie and Jack, and protect me. If Thad learns of this…

  Her heart ached. She nodded when he waved the pistol at the ceiling and went to the base of the stairs. “Rosie, would you take Jack to the kitchen for a few minutes?”

  “I sure will,” the woman called back, sounding that particular kind of happy that Jack always brought.

  “Good. Now, a private audience, if you please.”

  She gave him a wide berth as she passed him, keeping her hands fisted in the fabric of her dress lest he see her trembling, and led him toward the drawing room. “Where is my uncle?”

  “He will be along shortly.” Cold metal touched her neck and then trailed down to her shoulder, sending a shiver the rest of the way down her spine. “You are looking lovelier than ever, Gwyneth. I hadn’t the chance to say so the other week.”

  She stepped away from the gun barrel once she was inside the drawing room and closed the door behind them so Jack wouldn’t wander in. And she prayed her eyes shot fire enough to burn him. “It must be the glow of love.”

  With the Lane musket slung over his shoulder by its strap, Sir Arthur grunted and held out a piece of paper. When she lifted her brows, he waved it. “The letter. I did not fabricate it, and I have no use for it. I took it for the sole purpose of giving it to you. I thought…I thought you would appreciate something your mother had written.”

  His tone softened with that last part, but she had no intention of falling for that again. She snatched the letter from his hand without drawing any closer than she had to and nearly choked on a sob at Mama’s flowery, beautiful script. Hardly caring where Sir Arthur went, she moved to the chair at her secretaire and sank onto it as she flipped the page open. Mon amour…

  “You see?” His voice came from just behind her, quiet and imploring. “My thought was only for you. For finding you and keeping you safe.”

  No doubt it had been, and for that she was truly sorry. But still. She read through the letter, blinking back tears. And then she narrowed her eyes. The date. And the gap between notre and fille…

  “You cannot know how I feared. Finding your father was terrible enough—”

  “You found him?” That brought her gaze up and around.

  He was looking at the ground as he nodded. “I feared you were next. I feared his murderer would be looking for you.”

  “He was.” Hands strangely steady now, she opened the drawer and pulled out the keyhole drawing she had done for Mama. She set it down upon the letter. “And you brought him directly to me.”

  Thirty-Three

  Arthur frowned and gripped his pistol tighter, but her words still made no sense. “Pardon?”

  She didn’t even look at him. Her focus remained on whatever she was doing with that letter, smoothing down the drawing overtop it. “Uncle Gates killed my father. I saw him do it. I was outside the study.” Finally she turned her eyes on him, and he wished she hadn’t. They were too bright, too intense. “Papa sent me here to escape him, and you brought him directly to my door.”

  “Balderdash.” Much as he didn’t like Gates, he couldn’t believe the man murdered his own brother-in-law. Couldn’t. Because if it were true…nay, he wouldn’t even consider it. “It was an American spy who did it.”

  When did she learn to give a look like that, one that said in a mere second that he was either a liar or a fool? “My uncle’s theory, I presume?”

  Rather than need to answer, he peered over her shoulder at the letter. And frowned again. “What have you done there?”

  “What my father did when Mama first sent it to him, I think. The dates match.” She adjusted the drawing slightly, so that the keyhole cut from the drawing revealed only certain words from the letter.

  He moved to the side a step so that he could see both her profile and the page. So that he could watch her wash pale as she read, and then read himself to learn why. And mutter a curse. Both at the words and the tears that slipped onto her cheeks.

  Gwyneth shook her head, sending a red-gold curl bouncing. “I suppose I had hoped that this never touched her, that she never realized what her brother had done, but it would seem she was the one who saw it first.”

  It. That Gates was a criminal. One who had funded his son’s slave trade with goods siphoned from the spoils of war. Odd. Arthur had no trouble believing this part and found it changed very little his opinion of the man.

  He shrugged and slid over to the window when commotion from the street came through on the breeze. Perhaps Gates had caught up with Scrubs and was returning. “I fail to see why your uncle’s behavior is so reprehensible. He is
hardly the first man to take excess for himself and turn a profit from it. Rather ingenious, really.”

  “Would you have done it?”

  A different question entirely. “No, but…” What was that the people on the street were saying?

  “…from my brother himself. Ross is dead, and the British on land are in confusion.”

  The news shook Arthur far more than the next blast of a shell against the fort walls. Ross, dead? “No.”

  Gwyneth sighed. “Perhaps there is hope for you yet, then.”

  “What?” He snapped his head her way and realized she was still talking about her uncle. “Darling, it is best if you realize now that the world is an ugly place. Trying to fight it will bring you nothing but trouble.”

  “Trying to fight it is our only choice. If we do not, then the times will be beyond redemption.”

  “Perhaps they already are.” He strode to the door when he heard childish laughter from the hall, but the slave and child walked by without pausing. Good. “Our only recourse is to look after ourselves.”

  “How very sad that you think so.”

  “I have never seen evidence to indicate otherwise.” He rushed to her side when he saw she had drawn out a sheet of paper. “What do you think you are doing?”

  She blinked up at him in a way so very similar to the demure way that had won his heart, yet now it was colored with condescension. “I am going to draw to calm my nerves. Is that acceptable, sir?”

  If that was all she did… “I am watching you. If you try to write a note—”

  “Saying what? I have no idea what you are planning.”

  And he intended to keep it that way. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the side of her desk to keep a close eye on her drawing.

  Gwyneth didn’t so much as glance up at him. She just pulled out a pencil and started scratching lines onto the page. “If you want evidence of mankind’s potential, you should have seen this city the past few weeks. All normal business came to a halt and every citizen was working together in unity. I have never seen the like. Master and slave in the trenches beside one another, rich and poor rolling bandages side by side, every baker and cook making as much as they could to take to the soldiers, families opening up their homes to house those newly arrived—it was inspiring.”

  “It was self-serving. They knew they must work together for even a chance of survival.”

  “When is that not true? When would we not benefit more from harmony? Yet so rarely do people choose it. Too often they prefer to terrorize their neighbors, to kidnap and steal and kill.” She shot him a glare.

  He squelched the urge to hide his pistol. Perhaps this plan of Gates’s had chafed, this need for duplicity and trickery, but Arthur had not been able to come up with a better way to free her of the Americans’ influence. “Things will look different to you once you are home and away from these people. You will see then that we are only trying to protect you and return you to where you belong.”

  “I am where I belong. With my husband.”

  That word again. He gripped the gun tighter. “He is not your husband. You married him illegally, without the signature of your guardian. No court of law would uphold the vows.”

  With a few quick strokes of her pencil, her own face appeared on the paper with a wistful, resigned expression upon it. How did she do that so effortlessly? “First of all, it would never go to court and is perfectly legitimate in the eyes of God, which is what matters. Secondly, his parents were in fact my legal guardians. Papa sent a copy of his will with me. I could fetch it if you like.”

  He breathed a laugh. “You are not leaving my sight, my darling, until we are on the Falcon and on our way home.”

  She paused and looked up at him. “Sir Arthur, you are the most sought-after bachelor in London. You could have your pick of beautiful, wealthy young ladies. Why in the world are you set on claiming one who is already wed to another? You do not love me; we both know you do not. You were enamored, and you felt a need to protect me. I appreciate that. But—”

  Quick footsteps interrupted her seconds before the door opened and Gates slipped in, his breath still short. “I could not find him.”

  “Never mind him, then.” Arthur straightened, silently wishing Scrubs Godspeed to wherever he intended to go.

  “Yorrick will not be pleased.”

  “He can steal himself another Colonist to scrub his decks.” He paced to the window again when another blast came from the fort. “We had better hurry. The Lanes could be back soon, and fighting may spread to the city. ’Twill be a difficult enough trip to Annapolis as it is.”

  Gates pulled his pistol out as well. “I will take her up to pack a bag. You—”

  “I am not going with you.” She said it so calmly, as if that alone would make it so. All the while scratching furiously with her pencil. Unable to resist, Arthur came back over to watch the progression of the drawing. Another couple was in it now, looking like the ones he had watched leave the house hours earlier—the Lanes.

  Her uncle looked none too amused as he strode to her side and jerked her chin up. “Get up. Go pack. Now.”

  Rebellion burned so bright in her features that Arthur began to understand what had fueled this collection of farmers and merchants toward uprising forty years earlier. “Or what, Uncle? Will you kill me? Your niece, your own flesh and blood?”

  Before Arthur could do more than open his mouth with a warning, Gates had pulled his hand away. Fearing he would slap her, Arthur stood ready to leap to her aid, but no. He only gripped her hair and pulled her head back. No doubt with more force than he ought to have, but she made nary a whimper.

  “I would never hurt you, Gwyneth.” The words, spoken in a low pulse, were a strange combination with the fury in his eyes. “But I will kill each and every one of these ignorant Americans who have turned you against us. And I will begin with the Negro and child in the kitchen.”

  The flare of her nostrils was the only indicator of her emotion for many seconds. Until at last she closed her eyes and a tear slipped from her lashes. “Don’t hurt them. Please.”

  Would he? Arthur wanted to think not. He wanted to think it as much a bluff as his own threats had been. But in that moment, he was none too sure.

  Gates released her abruptly. “Get up and go pack your things. You will bring home every single thing you brought with you, and I mean every single thing.”

  She turned back to the paper and made a few more quick lines. “I cannot. I do not have it all anymore. I had to spend some of the coin—”

  He cut her off with a blistering expletive. “I do not give a fig about the money, you stupid girl!”

  The new lines turned into a wagon, one with strange apparatuses within. Roughly drawn, but precise. Then she dropped the pencil and stood. “Very well. If I have your word that you will not hurt them.”

  He didn’t so much as blink. “If you behave yourself. If not, I promise I will.”

  Her burning gaze moved to Arthur. “Can I at least leave my husband that drawing, or will you take that from him too?”

  Arthur glanced down again at the sketch. A whimsical image of herself, the man’s parents with satchels in hand, a wagon. Hardly a farewell love letter, but if that was what she wanted to leave with him… He shrugged. “Have it your way.”

  Thad looked over the wall at the ships in the harbor, waiting for the next flash, the next boom, the next shell to fall upon them. His musket rested along with Arnaud’s and Reggie’s, its thirty-six rounds untouched. For far too long, the fort’s massive guns had been as silent as their personal weapons, their major unwilling—wisely—to waste ammunition while the British vessels remained out of range.

  Still. Inactivity pulled the tension taut.

  Arnaud toed the unexploded ordinance that had landed a few hours earlier. Across it was scrawled, in black grease paint, A present from the King of England. “If we cannot do something soon—”

  Another round came screaming to
ward them. Thad dove for cover, pulling Reggie and Arnaud with him. The walls at their back shook, dust went flying, and the groan of metal came a second before one of the 24-pounders crashed from its place to the ground.

  Screams of agony filled the air.

  Thad sprang to his feet, but Major Armistead charged forward before he could get to the area littered with men. “We need to evacuate the wounded! And remount this gun, quickly.”

  Lending his shoulder to the remounting effort, Thad kept an eye out for Arnaud and Reggie to return from transporting the injured. When Arnaud returned, he did so with shaking head. “Two dead. Clemms and Clagett.”

  “God rest their souls.” Thad looked past him to Reggie and a young man. His eyes went wide. “Will! What are you doing here?”

  Willis sidestepped another soldier and hurried to Thad’s side. “I gave Gates and Hart the slip in the confusion coming into Baltimore.”

  His blood ran cold. “Baltimore?”

  The lad’s mouth set in a tight line, and he nodded.

  “We have ships pulling within range again, Major!”

  Armistead ran to the wall. “Bomb ships—they must have thought they did serious damage with that last one. Ready the guns, boys!”

  A cheer went up from the men. Thad gripped Will’s shoulder. “Tell me what they are planning.”

  The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “To take your wife. Take her back to London while you are here and unable to protect her.”

  Thunder and turf. He dropped his hand and fisted it, but then he told himself to calm down. “She is with my parents. They will keep her safe.”

  “They left.” He darted a glance toward Reggie. “That mulatto friend of Philly’s came, and they all tore off toward her house.”

  Reggie’s face went whiter than a sail. “The baby.”

  Willis shrugged. “I heard nothing. I just saw them leave, and then I took off myself. You need to get to her, Thad, fast.”

  “Ready!” Armistead shouted. “Fire!”