She pushed open the door and hesitated on the threshold. It was not her father. Trent sat in one of the slipcovered chairs flanking the paneled fireplace.
“Come inside and close the door, please,” he said. “Your father finally has gone to bed and the servants are too well paid to gossip.”
Sarah stepped inside the room and shut the door.
“Thank you,” said Trent, with the brittle politeness she recognized from his confrontation with the fusilier at the Three Cranes, and his more recent meeting with Lieutenant Graves. She had known, of course, that he was a duelist and a dangerous man, but lulled by his kindness to her family and the gentility of his home, she had lost sight of the fact that he could be dangerous to her.
“I was called to the admiral’s house near the battery this evening,” he said. “It seems Sparhawk has escaped.”
She wished she had the poise of Angela Ferrers, the widow’s practiced ability to conceal her thoughts and feelings, but she did not.
“I know,” she said. “Benji and I helped him.”
Trent did not answer at once. He had taken his blue coat off in deference to the warmth of the night. He was dressed from head to toe in faultless cream linen and gold lace, but now, as the silence stretched, she noticed that his sword lay across the arm of his chair, and that he had placed two pistols on the table beside him.
Finally he spoke. “That is . . . unfortunate. This Sparhawk has used you badly. If he takes his case before the Admiralty, and can muster even a shred of proof, Graves will try to find another scapegoat for the theft of the gold, and he has one near to hand, in you.”
I am not afraid of Admiral Graves or his odious nephew.
You should be.
Here was the danger Sparhawk had warned her about. And abandoned her to.
“You must be sorry you took us home from the Three Cranes,” she said.
“No. I’m only sorry that you did not heed my warning and stay out of this.”
“I could not let Sparhawk die. He had saved Ned’s life, and he was innocent.”
“But you are not,” said Trent. “To prove you innocent of theft is to prove you guilty of piracy. Either will see you swing from the Preston’s yardarm. We have a little time, I hope, to take steps to protect you from that fate.”
She considered her options. Salem was closed to her because of Micah Wild. She might appeal to Angela Ferrers, but she had nothing to bargain with now.
Trent seemed to read her thoughts. “You cannot run. Graves has transferred Ned to the Diana, under one of his nephews, Thomas. It has been done in the guise of patronage, with Ned made midshipman, but he is a hostage; do not doubt it.”
“What, then?” she asked.
“Admiral Graves knows you live under my roof. No doubt he assumes that you are my mistress. He is a man of limited imagination and will not suspect that I might wish to make you more. I am a baron. It is not a great name or beautiful estate, but with it come certain privileges. Peers and peeresses can only be tried in Parliament. Such trials are very public, and the truth about the gold would be almost certain to come out. At least as damning allegations. Not what the admiral wants at all. Marry me, and Graves and the Admiralty Courts will have no authority over you.”
He was offering to save her life, by joining theirs forever. She could not play this man false. “I have had lovers.”
“So, as it happens, have I,” he said.
“That is different.”
“Only if you think of women as commodities, to be bought and sold, their value dropping with use. I have been a mariner long enough to know that maiden voyages are generally full of unhappy surprises. Better a seasoned ship that’s had a taste of the wind and settled into her frame.”
“How can you be certain that I’m not a shoddy old tub like the Charybdis?”
“Because I have come to know you, these past weeks, and your father shared with me the circumstances of your disappointment.”
There were other, more recent circumstances as well. But they did not matter. What mattered was that she had a family who loved her and a man who esteemed her and was prepared to shelter them from harm. She felt tears prickle her eyes. “Did he also tell you I am a bad cook?”
Trent smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact he did.”
• • •
Cheap returned just before dawn, pushing a briny cart. Benji was still unconscious. Sparhawk and the Wards’ sailing master made a bed for the injured man out of tarps, and concealed his presence with oyster nets and baskets. Sarah’s brother barely stirred until they reached the dock, and fortunately by that time he had recovered a little of his sangfroid, enough to remark on the persistent smell of oysters and to pluck a handful of swamp roses growing between the stones of the rough-hewn quay. He inhaled their elusive scent, then tossed the flowers into the waiting boat and climbed stiffly down after.
They rowed, oars muffled, north toward Noddle’s Island where Mr. Cheap had concealed the Sally, staying as far from the Somerset and the Glasgow, their guns trained ominously on Charlestown, as they could manage in the narrow channel.
When Sparhawk chanced to look back at the Preston, he spied an unfamiliar sail behind her.
Ward looked as well. “Ah,” he said, plucking the petals of his mallow roses. “Behold the Cerberus, the Atlantic plow. Her precious cargo—Burgoyne, Clinton, Howe”—Sarah’s brother awarded each a petal over the side—“Bow, wow, wow. Or so the papers say. She came in yesterday, bearing three new major generals. Parliament’s answer to the present troubles. More soldiers. And a promotion for Samuel Graves, to vice admiral of the white.”
“Flag officers advance when the rank above them becomes vacant,” Sparhawk said. The system always sounded ludicrous when it was explained to civilians. And yet, like the press, it was an integral part of the most powerful navy in the world, and for the most part, it worked.
“Graves will celebrate his elevation tomorrow, with all the ships in the squadron dancing attendance on him,” said Ward. “There is to be a grand ceremony on the Preston, with the high Tories invited to partake. My sister will be there,” he added pointedly. “With her beau.”
Mr. Cheap snorted.
Benjamin Ward sighed. “Mr. Cheap does not think anyone is good enough to marry my sister, but I am inclined to say that she can make do with a lord.”
“Lord or no, it doesn’t sit right,” said Mr. Cheap. “A Ward marrying a navy man.”
“I did not realize he was a fellow officer,” said Sparhawk. Although after tonight, he was probably no longer an officer himself. In his mind he ran through the other captains in the squadron.
“Trent is only lately arrived in Boston Harbor,” said Benjamin Ward.
The day promised to be warm, but Sparhawk felt a chill wind. “Trent is in the Med.” Sparhawk knew where he was at all times, made it his business to know.
“The Charybdis came in while you were at the castle,” said Ward. “Evidently, she was so badly damaged by the crossing that her keel split.”
“Sarah cannot marry him,” said Sparhawk.
Ahead the dark shape of the Sally peeked out from behind Noddle’s Island. And beyond her, the Atlantic. But all he could see in his mind’s eye were another harbor, another ship, rails dripping with tropical flowers, a splendid figure in blue and gold bellowing from the quarterdeck, Sparhawk’s mother being dragged, screaming, to the side.
He could not leave Boston now.
“Do you know him?” asked Sarah Ward’s brother.
“I have not laid eyes on him in fifteen years,” said Sparhawk. “But he is a rake, a villain, and a murderer.”
Cheap stopped rowing.
Ward dropped his flowers.
“How do you know that?”
“Because he is my father.”
Seventeen
It was midmorni
ng when Sarah woke. The room was cool and dark, the shutters closed against the beating summer heat. One of Trent’s pistols lay on her bedside table. He had left it there when he said good night, as a precaution. He believed she would be more valuable to Graves alive, as a scapegoat in a show trial, but it was impossible to be certain how the admiral would take Sparhawk’s escape. And it would be all too easy to conceal a private murder in the actions of a Rebel mob.
She washed and dressed in one of the smart cotton jackets Trent had bought her when she had expressed a longing for clothing simpler than the fashionable gowns that now filled her closets. There was such a thing, she had explained to him, as too much luxury, particularly when it came in the form of unforgiving silk over stiff reed stays. After the night she had just experienced, a pair of soft leather jumps and a roomy caraco jacket offered simplicity and comfort, and she needed a little of both.
She was surprised to find the routine of the house unchanged when so much else, including she herself, felt transformed. Her brother had sailed for Portugal, Mr. Cheap with him. Ned was on the Diana. She had gone to bed with Sparhawk, and she could still feel the print of his hands on her body.
She had consented to marry Trent.
They could not speak of it yet, must move quietly and quickly so that the admiral did not learn of their plans to put Sarah beyond his reach. But Trent had agreed that they must speak with her father, and promised that he would do so first thing in the morning.
And then he would go out and begin to make delicate inquiries. A marriage outside the church might be open to legal challenge. A marriage inside the church required a license. They did not want the bans read. Nor did they want the admiral to learn of their plans. King’s Chapel was out of the question: too gossipy, too closely tied to the Loyalist community, too likely for word of their scheme to reach Samuel Graves.
“I hope to have a license in hand by the end of the week,” Trent had said. “If I cannot find a sympathetic cleric in Boston, then I will find one outside of Boston who can be persuaded to come to us.”
The Rebels, of course, held Cambridge and the college, but passes, as Sarah had discovered, were easy to obtain if you were rich.
Trent was already gone by the time Sarah came downstairs, so she went in search of her father and found him at the table in front of the windows in the Chinese parlor. The celadon damask upholstery and pale green walls glowed softly in the sunlight sparkling off the waters of the Back Bay. The model of the Sally lay on its side, a pot of gum and a pile of tiny copper foil plates, such as a goldsmith might use, beside her. Abednego’s paints and brushes held down the corners of an inscribed letter sheet, a receipt for ten ounces of copper, with the compliments of one Paul Revere.
“I presume your brother, Mr. Cheap and all”—and by “all” he meant Sparkhawk—“got well away last night,” said her father, not troubling to look up from his paintbrush.
“Benji got himself shot, but Sparhawk found him a doctor.” She felt a pang of the misery she had known walking home last night. “The bullet came out clean, and they are well away.”
He would not take me with him.
Her father looked up from his model. He had already laid a row of copper plates over the keel. “I was surprised when Trent spoke to me this morning. When you did not come right back last night, I thought you might have gone with James Sparhawk.”
Her father was too perceptive by half.
“Don’t you like Anthony?” she asked.
“I like him better than Micah Wild,” said Abednego Ward. “And he is well cut to be a husband.”
And Sparhawk, she knew, was not.
Sarah had discovered early on that there was very little to do in Trent’s well-ordered household. The cook might have welcomed the interest of a skilled chatelaine, but she had politely banned Sarah from the kitchen when she had seen what passed for toast in the Ward family.
Now, with Benji and Ned gone, there was even less for Sarah to do, so she turned to needlework, one of the genteel accomplishments of the dame school, to keep herself busy.
Embroidery had come easily to her in school. She had already known how to sew neat, even stitches in canvas, and how to tie complex sailor’s knots. Silk and wool, she had learned, were far easier to manipulate than tarred hemp. The preliminary sketches that stymied the other girls, copied from the dame’s precious collections of engravings, posed no challenges for Sarah. The Sallys had taught her how to transfer the images they found near to hand, playing cards and newspaper illustrations, onto far more difficult material like wood and whalebone. Sarah’s samplers, pillows, chairbacks, and fire screens had exceeded those of her classmates in design and execution.
There was a frame and a worktable in the large parlor looking out over the Common. Recalling Trent’s warning, she brought the pistol downstairs with her and stashed it in her sewing bag.
She drew Trent’s coat of arms from memory on a sampler canvas. Pleased with the result, she began selecting thread and making a list of colors to purchase at the market.
She’d run the first thread through the canvas when she heard the carriage in the street. The day was warm, but she felt chilled when she looked out and saw it come to a halt in front of Trent’s manse. Larger than the rig her host rented, it was black with gilding, drawn by a matched set of four. The servants who rode on the back were sailors in uniform.
The officer who alighted was a stranger to her, but his epaulets and the cockade in his hat told her he held the rank of captain, and she could think of no good errand a naval officer would perform at her house the night after she had helped Sparhawk escape.
Her maid appeared a few minutes later. Charles Ansbach, captain of the Hephaestion, hoped that she would receive him.
He was Trent’s friend, her brother’s lover, and until last night, Sparhawk’s jailer.
From the street she had seen that he was simply and soberly dressed, his shirt, breeches, and waistcoat cut from practical cream linen. No silk or gold-wire embroidery. His coat was dark blue wool with cream lapels, the gold lacing around his buttons narrow and discreet. Not one of the navy’s peacocks, then, like Sparhawk or Trent.
When he entered the room, she observed that he was handsome in a bluff and hearty way, with deeply tanned skin and blond curling hair. She tried to detect some resemblance to portraits of the monarch or George’s sister, Princess Charlotte, but found none.
He removed his hat and bowed low.
The dame had been a font of knowledge on protocol, on the correct way to greet everyone from one’s future mother-in-law through the royal governor. Sarah did not know, exactly, where Charles Ansbach fell on this spectrum, but she curtsied prettily as the dame had taught her and waited.
Ansbach received this stiffly, then shot an anxious glance at the door, where Sarah’s maid stood waiting. And Sarah realized something: Ansbach wanted to be alone with her.
Sarah sent the maid for coffee and closed the door.
“Thank you for receiving me,” said Charles Ansbach. “Your brother and I were acquainted in London. You and I should have met before now, but I was detained by duty in the harbor.”
“My brother,” she said, “has told me of your friendship.”
“Did he? I am glad of it. I was to dine with Benji today, but he did not appear at the appointed time, so I thought perhaps I had mistaken the place or the hour, and came here to inquire for his direction.”
That was an obvious lie.
Sparhawk had told her that Ansbach had seen and recognized Benji, and held off the marines on the Hephaestion. If this man had intended to expose her brother’s part in Sparhawk’s escape, he would already have done so. He would not have delayed the pursuit last night. And he would not have come here today on his own.
All well and good, but that did not mean she could trust him. Charles Ansbach might be willing to shield her brother from Admi
ral Graves and the justice of the Crown, but that did not mean he was willing to do the same for her or James Sparhawk.
“My brother has gone to Portugal on family business,” she said. It was true.
Ansbach stiffened. “He said nothing of this to me.”
Her brother had refused to embroil Ansbach in their scheme to free Sparhawk from his ship. That she had understood. But his connection to this man was of some duration; yet Benji had planned to leave the country for six weeks—possibly longer—without telling him.
Sarah resented the danger this man placed her brother in, but she had not intended to drive a wedge between them, had not considered that it would be impossible for her brother to tell Ansbach that he was making a powder run to Lisbon for the Rebels.
“I am sorry,” she said, at a loss. “I believe he felt the nature of the business might compromise your loyalties.”
“It vexes me to hear it. I have tried to tell your brother that I am not unsympathetic to American grievances, but I cannot support open rebellion. It is not only the navy that constrains me, but also family loyalties. You must tell me,” Ansbach said, no longer bothering to hide his distress. “Did you see your brother before he sailed? And was he well? I have reason to believe that he might have been . . . that is to say, I think his health may have suffered a blow, when last I saw him.”
That explained Ansbach’s anxiety. He knew that Benji had been shot; he was not, perhaps even now, certain that he lived.
“He did receive an injury, and that is why, I am certain, he did not write to you. He was out of danger when he embarked, but also dead drunk.”
Ansbach’s relief was palpable. “That does sound like Benji. Whatever else he may be up to, I am very glad to hear that he is well. And it may be for the best, this trip of his. If you write to him, you might advise him not to land in Boston, and to avoid, if he can, encountering any of the ships on this station.” He paused, then added, “Even mine.”
The Rebel Pirate Page 21