She frowned, as much perturbed by his arrogance as her own inability to place his origins. "You may have spent your coin on it, but I assure you a crime was committed. It's my stolen furniture. I found my clothing in this drawer and that of my husband in the drawer below it. His tools lie in that drawer over there. And I'm certain my grandmother's china is somewhere in this house, along with our bed and dining room table."
"To whom would madam report this crime?" He dabbed a perfumed handkerchief across sweaty eyebrows. "Madam wishes to see my receipt for this furniture, perhaps?"
He had her there. If she told the redcoats, the entire story would unravel. She'd land in jail. "Where is my husband, John Clark Sheridan?"
"I do not know such a person."
Frustration swept her past good manners. "Pretend you're stupid, then. Clark told me the Ambrose spy ring was multinational. You most certainly are not a colonist. Nor are you British, French, or Spanish, but from your sunburn and obvious discomfort with Carolina heat, I wager the summers are quite cool where you call home."
His eyes widened just a bit and glittered with menace on her. Angered, she plunged on. "Perhaps you know Clark by some code name, not unlike the code names Isaac Sheridan and Samuel Taylor. Is the entire ring in hiding now? Camden's a dangerous town for you these days. After all, if assassins from the powerful Rightful Blood can be flayed alive, you never know when one of your own allies might be murdered."
"Camden is also a dangerous town for those who pry where they have no business. Leave this house and do not return."
Betsy glowered. "Deliver a message to my husband. Inform him I'm here and have grown annoyed at chasing him around the colonies. He knows where to find me." She stomped from the house. Tom exited after her and shut the door.
Shadows of evening engulfed the house where her belongings resided, beyond her ability to recover for the time. Damn the Ambrose spy ring. Damn the British, too. Camden wasn't half as colorful as it had seemed that afternoon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
JOSHUA DISMOUNTED AND helped Betsy off Lady May. "I fancy you flung the gauntlet back there."
"You fancy correctly. He claimed he bought my furniture in Charles Town and denied knowing Clark."
Seven blond-haired, big-boned Jägers rode up before the Leaping Stag in a cloud of dust and bombast: "Out aff zhe vay!"
Betsy led her horse down the crowded hitching post with Tom and Joshua, then stared at the rosy-cheeked Jägers, swaggering to the door of the tavern. "Tom! He's German!"
"Of course. Jägers are German."
"No, that obnoxious macaroni at the house. Did you hear his accent? He looked and sounded like those Jägers. He's German."
"German?" Joshua frowned. "That makes no sense. Germans are allied with the redcoats. Spaniards stole your furniture."
"If a faction of Spaniards ignores Spain's alliance with France and sends out assassins, a faction of Germans could be working with the Continentals and the Spanish."
"Uhhhh, Betsy." Tom grabbed his head as if it hurt. "My head is spinning with too many plots and intrigues."
Joshua clasped her shoulder. "You're grasping at straws. Slow down. You may have spoken foolish words back there, at that house on King Street."
"I don't care. I want my furniture back!" She bit at a quiver of impotence and loss in her lower lip. "I want my husband back. And I want my life back."
"I doubt you'll ever get back the life you had in Augusta."
She gaped at him, her doubts escalating, and squashed down panic. She'd given chase because she loved Clark. But at every juncture, he receded from her.
Joshua softened his tone. "The answers won't come easily, I fear. The Ambrose ring is crafty. Each member has at least two identities. Perhaps that fellow at the house pretended a German accent, just to keep you pondering why Germans would steal your furniture." He released her.
Tom took her hand and pulled her around to face him. "On the morrow, I shall accept the situation with Gamble and Wade. They're right off King Street. It will give me the opportunity to keep an eye on your furniture and that fellow at the house." When she hung her head, he squeezed her hand. "Let's not draw more attention to ourselves. It may chase the Ambrose ring away."
"I know it's frustrating, but listen to Tom." Joshua kissed her forehead. "And listen to your stomach, because if it sounds like mine, it's empty of trail rations and ready for a meal."
Suspend the search. Wait passively. Betsy grimaced. How she hated passivity.
***
The slave placed a second two-inch-thick filet mignon on Tom's empty plate, and he swigged red wine. "I'm not a prolific letter writer. I should have responded to Uncle Isaac three months ago, when he first proposed the partnership. We were so busy in Augusta, and there was that fuss over the capture of Charles Town. I didn't think he'd move on to Cousin Edwin's in New York, just as I never dreamed my house would burn. But here we are in Camden, and no Uncle Isaac, and no home, and Betsy's with child."
"You're with child?" Emma, her face flushed from wine, smiled at Betsy and fanned herself. "How wonderful, dear. I'm envious. You aren't showing yet. When will the baby arrive?"
Betsy ignored the soft grunting sounds from her right, where Emma's middle-aged husband, Abel, packed away a third filet. Where did the scrawny fellow find room for it? "By Yule."
"Will you follow your Uncle Isaac to New York, then?"
Tom shook his head and swallowed a chunk of steak that would choke a mountain lion. "With this war, further travel is out of the question. I start work with Gamble and Wade on the morrow."
"A prestigious firm. How fortuitous." From the way Tom squirmed in his chair, Betsy realized her cousin was toying her foot with his beneath the table. Emma folded her fan and leaned toward her husband, offering him a view of her cleavage. "Don't you think so, Abel dear?"
His mouth full of buttered rice and string beans, dark-haired Abel grunted a noncommittal response. Then he returned to the steak without so much as a glance at Emma's bosom.
Because Tom had just plugged his mouth with more steak, Betsy picked up the conversation. "Naturally we cannot afford a house yet. Might you recommend a rental arrangement?"
Emma crossed her arms on the table and pressed forward, offering a view that neither Tom nor Joshua declined. "Housing is scarce these days, with the Army camped a mile north in Log Town. Of course —" She grew thoughtful and sipped her wine. "We could let you rent the room you three are sharing tonight." Her expression enlivened. She put down her goblet to wiggle forward again, breasts bulging her bodice. "I've a fabulous idea. You and Tom may live in the room rent- and board-free if Betsy will help with the business."
Hope sprang to Betsy's heart. She longed to be useful. "Why, of course. I'm excellent with accounting, and —"
"I perform the accounting." Except for mumbled greetings during pre-supper introductions, the words were Abel's first.
"All by yourself, sir? It must be an ordeal with so robust a business. I managed all the books for our business in Augusta, and I assure you that —"
"Perhaps you didn't understand me, madam. No one touches the books except me." His voice rose on the "me." He glared at her, bloody beef skewered on his knife.
The stares of Tom and Joshua echoed Betsy's astonishment. Emma warbled out a laugh and stroked her husband's forearm, and he resumed his aggression toward his steak. "There, there, dear. Of course she understood. She was merely trying to be helpful." Emma smiled at her guests. "Abel always has been very protective of the finances. I'm ever so much better suited to managing the 'people' portion of the business." She twitched her nostrils at Tom. "We've the perfect arrangement, you see."
From the flush advancing up Tom's neck, Betsy knew he'd comprehended the Branwells' "arrangement." Jealousy poked at her, and she shoved it away with a gulp of wine. She'd no right to censor his behavior.
"So since helping with the books is out, we could use your assistance with housekeeping. Lotty, our chambermaid
, didn't show up for work Monday morning. When she finally arrived Tuesday noon, she was so drunk she couldn't stand up. I terminated her employment. The slaves Hattie and Sally have temporarily assumed her duties." Perceiving the downcast look on Betsy's face, she reached across the table as if to take her hand. Then she rested her fingertips near Betsy's wine goblet. "I know a woman of your station is hardly suited for a chambermaid's work, especially after you've helped your husband in such a cerebral capacity. But Fate has brought us together when we need each other's help. You need work here only long enough for you and Tom to get back on your feet financially. What do you say?"
The deal sounded repulsive. Betsy had never felt more like saying no. But Tom prodded her ankle with his toe, and Joshua watched her with an expectant smile, so of course the men must be right, as the deal did sound like the perfect cover under which to sniff around for Clark. "Very well, but you mustn't expect me to lift anything too heavy."
"In your delicate condition? Of course not, dear."
"And to help us recover faster financially, please don't tell anyone who comes asking that we're here."
Abel stopped chewing and narrowed his beady eyes on them. "You in trouble with the redcoats?"
Tom breezed out a smile. "No sooner did our house in Augusta burn then three fellows who'd loaned me small amounts of money came asking for their funds. And don't you know that the five fellows who owe me money are nowhere to be found."
With a grunt, Abel returned his attention to his plate and continued chewing. At Tom's quizzical look, Emma giggled. "Abel knows about those kinds of men. He won't say a word."
***
A wave of masculine laughter and tobacco smoke surged in from the first floor when Tom opened the door to admit Joshua. Candlelight gleamed in Joshua's eyes. "I wonder what time they quit serving the rum. We've over two hundred drunken redcoats downstairs." He shut the door and muffled some of the noise.
Betsy wondered whether she'd be able to sleep through it. She combed a final tangle from her hair and began braiding. "Are you sure your cousins don't mind spending the night in the stables?"
"It's quieter, and they want to keep an eye on the horses."
Tom smiled. "Don't they trust a weasely accountant to not be thieving horses in the middle of the night?"
"No, they don't trust the weasely accountant's drunken patrons." Joshua yawned. "What time has it gotten to be?"
"After ten." With a yawn, Betsy tied the end of her braid.
Joshua unrolled his blanket on the side of the bed nearest the door and positioned his loaded rifle on the floor next to it. While Tom unrolled his blanket on the opposite side of the room, Betsy shoved her shoes and stockings out of the way and reclined on the bed near the nightstand. The bed creaked and sagged, begging to have the ropes tightened, but she was just too tired. "Lights out, gentlemen?" They both answered her with a yawn, and she extinguished the candle, plunging the room into a darkness made incomplete by light filtering in through a small window. Noise from the floor below seemed amplified.
Joshua's breathing deepened into sleep within a minute. Shortly after, she heard Tom's soft snores. But she lay awake buffeted by unfamiliar sounds and smells from a tavern in revelry. She told herself she was lucky to have made it to Camden unharmed, to have a generous cousin like Emma, and to have uncovered clues of Clark's whereabouts on her first day. Yet she didn't feel lucky.
Instead, she felt overwhelmed and despairing, surely feelings her mother must have experienced when her second husband died and she was left to raise a child alone. Betsy remembered circles of fatigue beneath Sophie's eyes each morning after she'd worked a print run and the way her mother dragged around, almost too tired to care for either of them. By the time Betsy had been ten years old, she'd resolved to never land herself in the same situation. No, she'd marry a fellow who didn't travel, a man who worked a safe trade, because she didn't want to raise a child alone. In fact, the very idea of raising a child alone terrified her because she was sure she couldn't do it. Maybe some women could do it, but she didn't have the gumption and iron backbone of Sophie.
Now here she was, alone, and Clark was nowhere on the horizon.
...what a clever way to circumvent paying your most valuable employee. Marry her. If she thought about it hard enough, she could envision her husband bragging in such a manner to the men in the White Swan. But she didn't want to think about it. Not yet, at least.
Instead she experimented with her anger toward him for getting involved with the rebels and putting the baby and her in jeopardy. She blamed Loyalists and Whigs, too, who couldn't stop fighting long enough to hear each other's grievances, and who'd battled it out yet again four days earlier up in Spartan District, where Joshua was headed on the morrow. Begrudgingly, she realized she had herself to blame, too.
It had been her choice to thrust herself, her baby, and four men into danger, all because she'd hated the thought of waiting in Augusta for Clark to return, or not to return. In the wee hours of the morning, the reality of her folly tossed and turned sleep from her. If she'd had even an inkling of the dangers she'd encounter on the road or the drudgery she'd be required to perform, just to be in Camden, she'd have remained in Augusta, for waiting and passivity were her lot in Camden, too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AFTER SEEING TOM off to work the next morning, Betsy and Emma waved farewell to Joshua and the Creek. Then they strolled from the stables through the birdsong and humidity of a garden redolent of bread baking in the beehive oven. Sally straightened from weeding beans when they passed, her smile broad. "Mornin', Miz Emma. Mornin', Miz Betsy." She extended her basket. "Just look here at all the beans that come ripe since yesterday. Musta been that rain we had five days ago."
"We need another hard rain just like it soon, or the corn will dry up."
"Yes, ma'am, fixin' to be another hot one today."
In a dining room fragrant with bread dough, Hattie, her fingers floury, poured coffee for Emma and Betsy, set out biscuits and strawberry jam, and returned to kneading. Betsy sipped her coffee, relaxed, and listened while Emma apprised her of how they needed help each day. Sweep, air, and dust the four guestrooms. Empty the chamberpots. Make sure each room had candles and stocked tinderboxes. Bundle heavily soiled towels and sheets for the washerwoman, and see that every bed had sheets on it that didn't look too dirty. Patrons paid extra for fresh sheets. And make sure each guestroom had at least five clean towels in it. Hattie opened a cupboard and showed her a ring of keys that held the upstairs linen storage key.
All in all, Betsy heard nothing unusual in Emma's requirements until her cousin specified that the rooms had to be cleaned by one o'clock, since a few patrons began arriving that early. Betsy gave the ceiling a glance and considered how late the revelry had extended into the night. "Aren't some of them still asleep up there this moment?"
"Oh, no." Emma spread jam on her biscuit. "Standard patrons are all out by four o'clock in the morning. Todd and his men see to that, thank goodness." With a lovely smile, she bit into the biscuit.
Such a policy hardly made sense to Betsy's sleep-fogged brain, but she had plenty of other questions. "Will you need my help in the afternoon or evening?"
"Only if we've a frightfully messy patron."
Betsy wrinkled her nose after catching a whiff of alcohol, tobacco, and sweat from the common room. "Who cleans out there?"
"Henry and Philip, who'll be arriving any moment."
"Shall I tidy Abel's office?"
"Absolutely not. He's peculiar about who sets foot in there. Just sweep the hallway outside if it's dirty."
Betsy gave her a curt nod, glad to have one less room to clean. "You said four guestrooms. What about those four other rooms on the floor? Shall I clean those, too?"
Emma waved away the suggestion and washed down her biscuit with coffee. "The ladies clean their own rooms."
"You've residents besides us?"
Hattie chuckled, not missing a stroke with the bre
ad. "Lawd, child, but Augusta must be a small town."
The nature of the Branwells' auxiliary business dawned on Betsy. Recalling Ensign Halsey's attention in the common room the previous afternoon, she felt herself blush to her toes. "This is a bordello?"
Emma smiled. "Not exclusively, no, but we do such a brisk business pouring cheer that it seems only natural to offer it in other forms, too."
"This is a bordello."
Emma's smile became practical. "Betsy, if I need a sermon, I'll walk down to Church Street. Let us have an understanding, shall we?" Elbows bent and propped on the table, she steepled her fingers. "Georgia hasn't been in the forefront of this war. In the last six months, more atrocities have crossed Camden's doorstep than most people witness in a lifetime.
"Unfortunately, the victims aren't brutal men. If they were the victims, wars wouldn't last but a day. No, the victims are women like us, and their children.
"What happens to them when their men go to war? Many follow, and it's a hard life for them. Washing, mending clothes, tending the injured and sick, never enough to eat, never a moment to rest, never safe. When their men die, the army has no use for camp women. Consider what happens to women and children who've no kin to take them in."
Every day for more than a week, Betsy had considered it. The stark terror of it pained her like a lump of ice in her soul.
"Janet's nose had been broken and two back teeth had been knocked out when she came to me in February. She'd run away from her husband, who got drunk so he could beat and ravish her. The other three ladies followed Janet in the spring. Dolly's husband abandoned her, their son, and her grandmother, and she's no other way to care for the boy and old woman. Maria and her daughters were beaten by both Whigs and Loyalists on their farm when Maria's husband and brothers vanished into the war. One of the daughters died from the brutality. Margaret's husband was killed at Charles Town, leaving her to care for two sick children by herself. After her children died, she followed Cornwallis's army here last month to shelter with her only relative, a brother. But he died, too."
Emma sat back and folded her hands in her lap. "Each woman receives room and board here and may keep forty percent of her earnings. Two women donate to charity. What war does to women and children is heinous, and I shall do my part to ease that wherever I can.
The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 17