Freedom's Ring

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  As I looked at my son, together with the ring, a knowing settled over me. I would marry Hugh. He was an honorable man, and the best fit for a secure future for James. And while my heart may not thrum for him as it did—traitor that I was—for a certain red-coated man, I would do all in my power to love him as I should, to honor him as a wife and lover.

  And I would throw myself into this very role first thing tomorrow morning. After I put the past behind me forever. After I said farewell and insisted Alexander take his ring back for good.

  I stole across the green in the shadow of night, the press of time tight upon me. I did not have long. James would sleep through my absence, no doubt. Rebekah would tend to him if he woke to find me gone, as she had the many times I’d been out into the early hours of morning.

  No, James was not my worry.

  I thought of Hugh, asleep in his brother’s house, his body weary from a long day of building our home, tending to fledgling fields, seeing that he donated some to the starving people of Boston. His mind likely full of unrest at the crimson-coated visitor. I felt I played the part of the unfaithful wife, three weeks away from marriage. I should turn around, steal away to my safe bed, keep the ring tucked in the pocket of my dress for all of time, and forget about Alexander.

  And how would my guilt play out then? To know that I had shunned the only man who knew the full extent of my sins—who had nevertheless accepted me and wanted me as his wife. No, my attachment to Alexander was a moot point. When it came down to it, this meeting was the decent thing to do. Returning the ring was the decent thing to do. With all my past disgrace taunting me, I was ready to act honorably. Even if my husband-to-be didn’t agree with my actions.

  The tavern whispered of sleeping inhabitants, of dirty dishes waiting until morning, of old fires and whiskey aged to a strong tang. I idled beneath a maple for a short time, wondering how Alexander could possibly know of my presence. More likely than not, I’d go home without our farewell. The thought both relieved and disappointed me. I had tried. And yet I wouldn’t risk my fool of a heart any more shame.

  And then the door of the tavern opened, and his familiar shadow stepped out. As he came closer to me, the light of the moon showed his uniform absent of a red coat. He was only a man. Not a coldhearted killer or even the pawn of a king. He was a man. A man who cared for me.

  As he walked to me, his shoulders back and profile regal, it was as if an invisible force drew me to him. And I knew all at once it had been a mistake to come. I should have borne the guilt of not saying good-bye. Of not attempting to return the ring once more. I should have risked this small remorse to honor my husband-to-be.

  He ducked beneath the tree, clasped my shaking hands in his own. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I’ve done so against my better judgment.” I inhaled the scent of cedar and soap, did not resist when he stepped a bit closer.

  “Tell me you love him, Liberty, and I won’t beg you to come away with me. I won’t profess my own feelings for you. If you tell me such now, I will turn and go back into the tavern a happy enough man knowing you are happy.”

  My head swam with his words, with his presence sucking the air from the night, with his tall form hovering over me, his warm breath washing me in a dream.

  My hesitation seemed answer enough. For when Alexander pulled me closer and lowered his mouth to mine, I did not resist. I allowed myself to become caught up in the pleasant heat emanating from him, allowed my body to shamelessly press along his.

  He tamed his lips against mine. I could feel how he restrained himself, and I teased him, begging him with my own hungry mouth, relishing the slight taste of salt upon his tongue.

  He gave in easily, his arms coming around me in hasty pleasure, his lean muscles strong yet tender against my sides. I melted into him, forgetting. Forgetting what should be done, forgetting my responsibilities to a husband-to-be.

  I could allow this man to love me. I could love him back. Things could be . . . just like this. Behind the curtain of passion and ardor, anything seemed possible. A life in the mountains, away from the town and redcoats and a starving Boston. Alexander being a father to—

  I pulled away, reality coming to a halting crash on my moment of indiscretion. I put my hands on his chest, pressed him back slightly. “I shouldn’t have—”

  He quieted my words by dipping his mouth back to mine. “You care for me, Liberty. I feel it in your kiss.” Another sweet taste of him. “Please don’t deny it. We can be together.”

  I thought of running. I thought of staying. My mind scrambled for a way to make everything right. Everyone happy. In the end, it always came down to what was best for James. At one pitifully low point, I even tried to convince myself that what was best for James was what was best for his mother. Me. And running away with Alexander was what was best.

  Yet running away where? To a hovel in the woods? What happened when Alexander was found and shot on the common for desertion? What happened when he was ridiculed for who he was—loyal to the Crown? Would he stand by us? Could I stand by him? What sort of legacy of honor was I bringing my child up into—my child, the namesake of my dear brother who had died for freedom?

  With final determination, I pushed Alexander away. Hard. “I—I do care for you, Alexander. More than I dare admit. But we can’t be together. My son . . . Hugh . . . the Crown. There are too many reasons to count.”

  “I love you, Liberty. It is more than enough to come up against your other reasons.”

  “You are a sentimentalist.”

  “You must be so also to kiss me as you did.”

  I knew he wouldn’t back off easily. It came to me then how to dissuade him. Lord, forgive me. But my cruelty would hurt less for him in the end, I was certain.

  I breathed deep, forced the ugly words from my mouth—the same mouth that not moments before had been upon this man in a show of passion. I schooled my voice to exhibit sincerity, sorrow. “Alexander, you are not listening to me. A kiss is only a kiss. Many times have I kissed Captain Philips with similar show.”

  I watched the slow shock on his face in the patches of moonlight that filtered through the trees. “You lie.”

  I forced my gaze to remain on his. “I do not. I’m sorry, Alexander, but I was not as innocent as you presumed me to be.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Yet his wary gaze showed his doubts, which hurt ten times worse than the words I spoke. Did he really think me capable of giving away kisses to the captain while I fell in love with him?

  “And, Liberty Caldwell, do you kiss this Hugh—your betrothed—in the same manner?”

  Oh, that I should feel such an overwhelming need to kiss Hugh that way. Why could not my passion be directed in such a fashion? I looked away from Alexander’s intense gaze. “Yes,” I whispered.

  I wanted to hear him call me a disloyal whore, to anger him with my betrayal, to prove to him my sinful heart. Instead, he backed away a step. “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.” And I did, didn’t I? Who would be so foolish as to not love a man who would take me as his wife, who would take my son as his own without knowing my history?

  A small smile tilted Alexander’s sweet mouth, which even now called to me. “You are pushing me away, dear one. And yet it is not my place to beg you. Know, though, that I will always love you, my sweet lass. How many times have I replayed that night in my mind, when we were together by the fire? How many times have I stopped Philips from his indecency? And now, how many times will I fall asleep, knowing you are in another’s bed, wishing very much that my life were his?”

  His words caused a tear to seep out of my eye. “You go too far, Alexander. Even if we were to be together, you would be sorely mistaken when you realized I am not the sweet lass you claim me to be. You should leave this town as quickly as possible.”

  He brought his hand to my chin. “Would you set him against me, Liberty? Would you rally Lexington’s minutemen so that they hunt me down and do away with me forever? I
s that what your heart desires?”

  No! No, it was not what it desired at all. I stood on my tiptoes, pressed a last kiss to his cheek. “Farewell, Alexander. Do not ever regret this night, and I will try very hard not to either.” I searched the ring from the pocket of my cloak, pressed it into his warm palm, and ducked out from beneath the tree before he could protest. I scurried across the green to the house where Hugh slept, perhaps dreaming of me.

  Whom did I fool? I already regretted this night. For instead of hiding one secret from the man I was to marry, I now hid two. And how much worse was the second sin of my heart, committed three weeks away from the bond of marriage?

  “YOU’RE GOING TO have to roll me up the stairs to my apartment.” I placed a hand over my stomach as Brad and I made our way up. “I have to remember that just because I’m running a little now does not mean I can pig out on my sister’s carrot cake.”

  Brad laughed, offered his arm. “It sure was good. And she’s not at all the tyrant you made her out to be, either.”

  I stopped midstep. “I never said that.”

  He scrunched up his face. “You implied she might be hard to get along with. . . .”

  “I told you she was having trouble forgiving me. That’s a lot different than hard to get along with. And for your information, I tried to bring up the hospital, your card and all that, and she totally changed the topic.”

  “Just give her time.”

  I slid my key in the door. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

  “Annie . . . yours, of course. Always. I’m trying to encourage you. And if you keep thinking you two are on different sides, you’ll never get to where you want to be with her.”

  We stepped in, closed the door behind us. He was right. I put my keys on the hook beside the door. “Maybe I’ve read Little Women too many times. I’ve just always felt that sisters were supposed to be close. But why? Because we come from the same womb?” Yes, I’d done a horrible thing. But I’d apologized. I wanted to start new. What more could I do?

  “You grew up together. Things will fall into place, you’ll see.” Brad wrapped his arms around me, started kissing my temple, then trailed his mouth down my cheekbone. He let out a sound of frustration. “Six comes early on a Monday. I should go; it’s late.”

  I tilted my face up toward him. “Too late for Rocky V?”

  He groaned. “Pulling out the big guns, huh?”

  I giggled. “I’ve just had such an amazing week with you. I don’t want it to end.”

  He nudged my cheek with his nose. “You have the day off tomorrow, right?”

  “Right.”

  “If the inspector comes to the job site first thing like he’s supposed to, how ’bout I cut out early and we be tourists on the Freedom Trail?”

  I turned into his lips. “I can’t think of a better way to spend my day.”

  He pulled away to see my face. “Me neither. In fact, you’re starting to scare me a little, Anaya.”

  “How so?”

  “I—I’ve never felt about anybody the way I feel about you. It seems like what’s happening, like it’s some sort of fast, exhilarating ride that I never want to get off of.”

  He’d grown serious, and I found myself doing the same. Hoppy toads—the little fast kind—jumped around in my stomach. I inhaled that spicy wood scent I’d come to associate with him alone. I ran my tongue over my teeth, avoided his deliberate gaze. “I know what you mean.”

  His breaths played against my forehead and I leaned into them. Closer, closer still. “Do you think we’ve separated ourselves from it yet?”

  “It?”

  “You know, the whole trauma thing around our first meeting. Let’s face it—you wouldn’t have given me a second glance if you hadn’t found out I was the one who gave you the ring that day.”

  “That’s not true.” Not completely anyway. The hoppy toads settled in my stomach. Was it true? There was no denying that the force that drew me to Brad was his role as my hero that day. Since I’d met him, the anxious, sweat-producing, nightmare fairy-tale dreams had nearly stopped. I felt myself healing. “Okay, maybe it is a little true. But so what? We’re together now and I’m not looking to turn back, so what does it matter?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m scared you have a sort of tunnel vision when it comes to me. Like you’re going to wake up one day and realize I’m not the hero you thought I was. I’m not perfect, Annie. And yes, there are things about me you don’t know.”

  “Tell me, then. I want to know everything.” I grasped his face between my hands. “The good and the bad, Brad. We all have things in our past we’re not proud of. It’s a part of you. I think I can take it.”

  He looked at the space behind me and his eyes grew dark. It scared me. He was always so open and honest.

  I stroked his slightly stubbled cheek with my finger. “It’s the war—I know it is. Won’t you share your burden with me?”

  He ran his hands up my arms until our fingers were entwined. Then he led my hands away from his face, clasped them to his chest. “Annie, I—I love you. And because I do, this is one burden I have to bear alone.”

  If I could have thought on his words longer, I would have disagreed with him. Love shared all burdens, didn’t it? But I was so caught up in his confession of love, I couldn’t think straight enough to argue. My brain grew fuzzy and I leaned against him, suddenly not strong or sturdy enough to hold myself up.

  “I think I love you, too,” I whispered. He lowered his mouth to mine to capture my lips in a gentle kiss that made every one of my nerve endings tingle. He tasted of peppermint and new beginnings. Of Christmas mornings and steamy summer nights. He deepened the kiss, and I leaned into him farther. Ran my hand over the back of his hair—not much longer than the Marines would have allowed—then his neck. We sunk into each other, and while my heart thrummed out a crazy melody and I longed for more, I also felt a foreign feeling of contentment settle over me. Like this—this was how it was supposed to be. This was the man I was supposed to be with.

  And Brad was right: it was a little scary.

  Frighteningly, awfully scary.

  In a really good way.

  “Man, I can’t get enough of this stuff.” Brad pointed at Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre. It sat just below the large front window of the Old State House. Behind the redcoats pictured firing into a crowd of colonists was a depiction of the same State House we stood in. A red circle had been drawn around the window in the engraving, connected to the letters You Are Here.

  “Me neither,” I admitted.

  “If only we had a DeLorean and a flux capacitor.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If only.”

  He bumped my side with his arm. “Well, don’t you? It would make figuring out this whole story a walk in the park.”

  We’d taken both an Old State House tour and a Boston Massacre tour, hoping to glean some new insight into that tragic winter night 245 years ago, hoping to come to a better understanding of Liberty’s poem. But while we’d taken in a bunch of amazing history, none of it seemed to bring us closer to learning more about Liberty and the ring.

  We exited the building and headed southwest along the path of bricks that signaled the Freedom Trail.

  I imagined living during the Revolution, befriending a girl named Liberty who loved a British soldier. What was she like? Did he love her, too? How did they meet? And had their love been doomed from the start?

  We toured the Old South Meeting House and walked past the said-to-be-haunted Omni Parker House hotel, a historic meeting place of writers Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. We explored King’s Chapel Burying Ground, then walked up the stone steps to the Old Granary Burying Ground—the final resting place of John Hancock, Sam Adams, and Paul Revere.

  We turned right and stood in front of Samuel Adams’s grave. Beside him was a large headstone listing the five victims of the Boston Massacre, above the name of a twelve-year-old boy
, a victim of the first struggles between the Patriots and the Crown.

  “Hey.” Brad pointed to the grave. “James Caldwell. That’s Liberty’s maiden name, right?”

  I nodded. “You don’t think . . .”

  “Caldwell’s a pretty common name, but it’s worth a check.” Brad pulled out his phone and punched in one of the websites we’d used the past few weeks. He did a search for James Caldwell, date of death March 5, 1770 in Boston. Two records came up. He clicked on the first, Deaths Registered in the City of Boston. It listed James’s name, date of death, cause of death, where he was buried, and finally, under the Family heading, one name.

  Sister: Liberty Caldwell

  MAY 1774

  I slipped into the keeping room with utmost care, stepping out of my muddy boots and allowing my stocking-clad feet to smooth out any noise the door made.

  A movement from the corner of the room, where Graham’s chair was kept, echoed through the quiet house. “So help me, Liberty, I consider myself a patient man.” My heart skidded to a halt at the sound of Hugh’s voice.

  “Hugh, I—you gave me a fright.”

  “Where have you been?”

  I didn’t think the lie through; I only told it. “To aid in a birth. The call came late. I thought not to wake Cora but to—”

  A hard slam—his fist on the nearby table. “You lie!”

  My future—James’s future—crumbled before me with the two words, and I scrambled to make him believe my story. “’Twas a girl of—”

  “I saw you.” Hugh’s soft words barely made it past my frantic ones.

  “What?”

  “I saw you outside the tavern. With him.”

  “Hugh, you must believe me. He is not James’s father—”

  “Who then is he, Liberty? For you seemed all too familiar with him beneath the tree.”

  I collapsed under the weight of the truth. With a single decision I’d ruined my son’s future. Now there was naught to do but allow honesty to prevail. “I—when I came to Boston to find my brother, I had given the last of my money to a farmer for a ride. It was November. I was on the streets, accosted by a group of young men. An officer helped me. He offered me an employ in his home—one he shared with another officer. He was always kind, never inde—”