The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution

by Adair, Suzanne

  Abel stabbed a finger at him. "The next time you see Mr. Jan van Duser, you tell him I want to talk with him."

  "Do you fancy me your servant? Seek him yourself." The Dutchman stomped out past Betsy and slammed the front door to the tavern at the same time Abel slammed his office door.

  "Mercy! What was dat all about?" Sally stepped from the common room into the hallway and spotted Betsy. "There you is, Miz Betsy. This here letter come for you in this morning's post." She handed her a letter.

  "Thank you." Betsy glanced at the return address and, certain she'd misread it, blinked to clear her vision. Martha Neely, Ninety Six, South Carolina?

  Sally grinned. "Looks like a good surprise."

  "Oh, yes." She hadn't had communication with her stepfather's aunt in almost ten years. The letter meant the old woman was still alive. Or did it mean that? Betsy tucked her dust rag in the waistband of her apron, sensing that someone was attempting to communicate with her using her aunt's name. "I shall run upstairs and read it in the privacy of my own room."

  Run she did, as fast as her swelling midsection would allow her. Almost out of breath, she closed herself in the room and broke the seal on the letter.

  22 July 1780, Town of Ninety Six

  My dearest Niece:

  I regret the Years that came between us and in my old Age am desirous of renewing your Acquaintance. Though the Times are troubled, and much Warfare tears the Colony, please find it in your Heart to pay your old Aunt a Visit before the Summer ends. I fear I shan't see many more Seasons on this Earth.

  Your loving Aunt

  Martha Neely

  Betsy reread the letter, set it on the desk, and walked away. The tone was appropriate for an old woman wanting to settle her affairs, but the handwriting was that of a much younger person, and something about it looked familiar. She returned to the letter and examined the address: Betsy Sheridan, the Leaping Stag Tavern, Camden, South Carolina. That the writer hadn't addressed it "Mrs. John Clark Sheridan" was significant, as if her mysterious contact from Ninety Six had known that identifying her in connection with Clark would be a mistake.

  Aunt Martha. Betsy closed her eyes and conjured a memory of the old woman, that of the two of them weeding a flowerbed. "Elizabeth, dear, if you don't use this spade, you won't get the roots of the weed out." Aunt Martha always called her "Elizabeth" and not "Betsy."

  She stared at the letter again, addressed not to Elizabeth but to Betsy. The curly "B" drew her attention. She gaped, astounded. "Mother!" she whispered, and turned the letter upside down and flipped it over and over looking for more information before reading it a third time. Dared she believe Sophie would be waiting for her in Ninety Six?

  On a hunch, she lit the candle. With the letter warmed above the flame, she watched a message appear between the lines: We are in deep hiding and dare not risk journey to Camden. If you can make it as far as Mulberry Creek, twenty miles northwest of Ninety Six, we will find you and bring you to safety.

  Relief, anguish, and anxiety tore through Betsy's heart. She set the letter afire to destroy evidence, then sat on the edge of the bed. We must encompass not only her mother and father, but Joshua Hale, who'd carried knowledge of her familiarity with invisible writing, and also Runs With Horses and Standing Wolf. With the armies converging on Camden, and military action all over the colony ramping up, her uncle and his Creek allies hadn't been able to escape back to Georgia. But at least they were all safe, and now she knew where to find them.

  ***

  The door creaked. She jerked awake to night near midnight. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest at the man-shaped blob in the doorway, and she dove off the side of the bed farthest from the door. Tom's voice sounded tired. "Sorry to give you a fright." He shut the door, closing out some of the jollification noise from below.

  She rolled up to her knees, confused from having deep sleep interrupted, remembering she'd intended to wait up for him and relate the news about her mother. "Why are you so late?" Not the first time in the past two weeks that he'd come in late.

  "Is there any water in the pitcher?"

  "Yes, I filled it before I lay down." She waited, but he didn't answer her question, so she sat on the bed.

  He strode to the washbasin, stubbed his foot on the desk, and muttered, "Damn."

  "Let me light a candle."

  "No. I'll manage."

  She squinted at him, feeling a subtle change: distance, avoidance. Dismay settled atop her heart, deflated it. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

  Water trickled into the washbasin. "No." He stripped to his breeches and began scrubbing his torso.

  Above the scent of soap, she smelled lilac. More than the twangs of jealousy and betrayal, she felt a great sadness and loss. She lay back and wondered why she hadn't considered before that intimacy with Tom might have expanded their friendship, while Tom pursuing intimacy with Emma served only to rift the friendship.

  Had she but realized it the morning she and Tom awakened in bed together, she'd never have given lovemaking with him a second thought. She'd lingered too long in an ideal that no longer fit with the revolution transforming her soul: fidelity to a man, just because a piece of paper claimed her as his wife. She was finished with Clark, but she'd yet to fully embrace revolution.

  By meeting her mother northwest of Ninety Six, she'd disappear into the wilderness. Her mother, and perhaps the Indians, would help her stay disappeared. The legal piece of the marriage would remain, but it was meaningless. She considered herself free already. Free to seek safety, free to seek a lover, free to not seek a lover. However part of that freedom meant she had to accept that Tom might not want to leave Camden, now that he'd become intimate with Emma.

  He sprawled onto his bedroll in a clean shirt and emitted a sigh laden with disgust. She rolled on her side facing him. "I heard from my mother today and know where to find her, so I needn't worry about a lengthy search."

  "Your mother?" He pushed up to a sitting position. "Excellent!"

  "Do you still want to leave?"

  He sounded ornery. "Why shouldn't I want to leave?"

  "I thought that perhaps since you'd taken up with Emma, you might want to stay with her."

  "Shit." He reached for her hand and clasped it. "All right, yes, I said I'd wait for you, but I've recently had an amazing lesson in how youthful idealism and the carnal needs of young men collide. Alas, youthful idealism didn't survive the encounter, but in the learning process I discovered that Emma is nothing more than big breasts and buttocks, a hot, wet mouth, and a hot, wet crotch. That's all she'll ever be, despite her claims to be in love with me."

  Betsy felt the inane urge to laugh at the image of her cousin falling in love with Tom. "I presume you intend to see her again."

  Amusement shook his shoulders. "I may not be very idealistic anymore, but I'm still a young man with carnal needs."

  She yielded to laughter. "But you'll break her heart."

  "Pigs fly."

  They guffawed. The distance she'd imagined melted away. He sat beside her in bed and wrapped his arms around her, and they hugged each other until Betsy felt herself nodding off to sleep again. After he tucked her in, he caught her hand and kissed her palm. She yawned. "We'll get out of here and find my mother, you know that."

  "I do know it. Now sleep, my sweet Betsy."

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, Emma asked Betsy to run down to Market Square again and select steaks for them. "Your taste in beef is exquisite, dear." Despite the black humor, Betsy was envious of her cousin. Why should Emma have such fun with Tom? She fancied letting him find her naked in his bedroll and longed to be seduced — kisses tickling her neck, wet tongue lapping the tender skin of her throat, hot fingers kneading and stroking her flesh. Young men weren't the only ones with carnal needs.

  Getting out of the tavern for awhile that morning was a good idea. Jan van Duser hadn't come running when Abel called, and the accountant prowled the common ro
om heaping curses on the absent Dutchman. "...the double-crossing snake...may his soul rot in hell..." Altogether an unpleasant place to be that morning, the Leaping Stag.

  In the sunshine before the butcher's counter, she stood shoulder to shoulder with goodwives and studied marbling in steaks. "I've a tip on a most excellent cut," Josiah Carter murmured in her ear. She turned and registered his good spirits. He proffered his elbow and strolled her into the heart of the market.

  "I admit trepidation after our last meeting, madam, but I decided to trust my instincts and follow your advice. Monday night, I had my slaves load your furniture onto a wagon and head east on the road with it. After a quarter mile, they took a small track that led to where your property is now stored."

  "Ah. And what of Mr. Van Duser?"

  "He called early yesterday morning with his own wagon, two bodyguards, and two Spaniards, desperate to retrieve the furniture. When I told him a Spaniard with the Gálvez name had taken it all Monday, he called me a liar, had bodyguards restrain me, and put a dagger to my throat.

  "The name Gálvez made him both paralyzed and terrified. He wanted to know everything that had transpired. I told him the Gálvez had laughed at my fears of receiving bodily harm from van Duser and said van Duser's days of causing bodily harm were over because he'd displeased too many of the wrong people.

  "I said Gálvez showed me legal papers identifying him as the owner of the property, and I could do nothing to stop his taking it because he'd brought ten men with him. I thought at that moment van Duser would kill me, but he let me go and rode off like a rabbit running scared before a hound. I've the feeling he won't be bothering me again."

  "I'm glad you've seen the end of it." Betsy smiled.

  Carter sobered. "Well, I'm not certain I have. Noon yesterday, the hound called, a lieutenant from the Seventeenth Light." He saw Betsy flinch. "You know him, eh? A mind reading devil. He questioned me about the furniture. When did I first receive it from van Duser, what did the legal paper from the estate sale say, what were the items I'd stored, had I heard the names Francisco de Palmas and Basilio san Gabriel."

  "Did he mention my name?" When Carter said no, Betsy let out a sigh of relief. "Good."

  "I'd heard van Duser refer to his Spaniards as Francisco and Basilio, so I told the lieutenant that. The Gálvez name also conferred authenticity on my story with him, so I replicated exactly the details I'd told van Duser. He inspected the barn where I'd stored the furniture." Carter shook his head. "Would you believe he examined the tracks from the different wagons?"

  She felt chilled remembering how Fairfax had knelt in the dirt and examined wagon ruts in Augusta. "Yes, but surely the traffic on the road obscured your wagon's passage."

  "I presume so." Carter paused and glanced over his shoulder. "One more thing. When the lieutenant was in the barn where we'd first stored the furniture, he found the print of a woman's shoe. Yours, I presume. I told him my wife had been out once to have a look at the china."

  Another chill crawled over Betsy. In Augusta, Fairfax had looked at footprints in the mud and compared shoe soles. "Did he believe you?"

  "I'm not sure. He'd so little emotion on his face. I'd hate to play piquet with him. His expression tells you nothing."

  Except when he anticipated killing someone. She swallowed, wondering how much time she had. Days? Hours? Or perhaps she'd grown over-anxious. In truth, her furniture was a spent lead for Fairfax. Bound up back in July with the innermost schemes of the Ambrose spy ring, it was now cut adrift of the core mission in the rebels' frantic haste to divest themselves of evidence, avoid capture, and succeed at assassination after several failures. Fairfax wanted the Ambrose spy ring, not her furniture. But Carter didn't know any of that, and she sensed his nervousness.

  "Never fear, Mr. Carter, the lieutenant doesn't want my furniture half as bad as he wants something that was once connected with it. Finding it would be a dead lead for him."

  "I hope you're correct. He treated me fairly, but I'd hate to be found on the wrong side of the law from him."

  His mention of law revived her curiosity over the ledger entries. "Sir, I've a question of personal nature. Were van Duser and Branwell blackmailing you back in 1777?"

  He stiffened and shot her a sharp glance. "Where the devil did you get that information? I know I mentioned the other day that van Duser was blackmailing me now, but —"

  "Is it how you lost your family wealth?" He nodded in disgust. "Are the names Richard Knox and Daniel Callahan familiar to you?"

  "The first is a banker out of Charles Town. I don't recognize the other."

  "Ah. Then I suspect van Duser and Branwell have blackmailed close to a dozen men in the past four years."

  Carter stopped walking and frowned at her. "Who are you? Where did you get this information?"

  She took a deep breath. "I'd tell you, except that I've no great wish to be found by Lieutenant Fairfax. If he comes round again and questions you about Betsy Sheridan, any further information I give you this moment about myself would tell him exactly how to find me."

  "Very well, if my ignorance protects you, you may have it."

  "Thank you, sir."

  They continued walking. After a moment, he said, "To my knowledge, I was their only local victim. I was ordered to keep my mouth shut about the entire business."

  "Well, if I'd plans to blackmail wealthy gentlemen, I wouldn't select many local victims, either. The word gets out sooner that way. If all of you are or were wealthy, how is it that no victim's attorneys were summoned to the rescue?"

  "I assure you they were, but van Duser has his own attorneys, and they're quite fond of perverting the law."

  "I've no need to spread details of your personal misfortune. Will you share with me their motive for blackmail? It may help me figure out why my furniture was stolen and my house burned."

  He sighed and glanced again over his shoulder. "You don't strike me as a gossiping sort of woman. Perhaps I may indeed trust you with the story of my misfortune. I hope I can also trust Lieutenant Fairfax, because he didn't believe my story about making poor investments and prodded me until he got the truth about my financial adversity." Carter paused. "In October of '76, my wife caught a fever. Two of our four children succumbed and died by the end of the year." A spasm of grief shot over his face. "Deborah lingered through the winter. I scarcely left her side. They said she wouldn't last until spring.

  "In February she rallied, but it became evident that she would remain an invalid in some ways. Understand that I'm overjoyed to have her with me still, and my love for her has become more profound since I almost lost her, but I'm a man, after all, and men have certain — ah —"

  "Certain needs." Betsy stared out into the crowd, intuiting the rest of his story, almost unable to believe it.

  "Mrs. Branwell was but nineteen, but she knew what to do to precipitate the situation, and Mr. Branwell knew how to take advantage of it. He found me in her bedroom after arriving home a day early from a trip to Charles Town. There was no doubt as to the recreation I'd been pursuing with his wife. I feared for Deborah's frailty and what the news of my misconduct would do to her, and so I paid. And I paid and paid, and damnation, I'm still paying, although I've naught left to pay with."

  Good gods, Abel and Emma had been working their scam for four years, a couple of fat spiders squatting in their Camden spider web, snagging the cream of the crop who passed through. Was Tom buzzing the same spider web? If so, the joke was on the Branwells, because he had no money.

  On second thought, the Branwells were shrewd enough to find ways to blackmail anyone, regardless of their income level. Neither she nor Tom was exempt from the Branwells' machinations. They'd best proceed with caution.

  Sarcasm scored Carter's tone. "I've heard they landed their biggest catch this year. The cousin of a congressmen."

  "You'd think folks would hear rumors and avoid Camden."

  "Can't do that. It's on the main roads."

  "This real
ly must stop. It's time someone terminated that particular business venture of the Branwells."

  He laughed. "Ah. Madam Mystery, I suppose you're in a position to do that, eh?"

  She didn't answer his question, imagining Abel catching Tom with Emma. "Such an unfortunate thing to have happen, Mr. Carter. You have my complete sympathy. And to think you've had to sell off most of what you own to satisfy those people."

  "I'd rather not think about it too much, else I'd be tempted to acts most nefarious."

  An unrelated idea popped into her imagination. "Have you a horse for sale? It doesn't have to be a well-bred animal, just one sturdy enough to serve as a packhorse."

  Some of the gloom left his expression. "Why, yes, I've a horse I could sell you."

  And she'd get a good deal from him, too, because he needed the money. "I'm not prepared to purchase for another week or so, but surely by mid-August. Tom and I will appreciate the opportunity to come out and inspect the horse this weekend. Will that be convenient for you?"

  "Yes." He captured her gaze. They stopped walking. "Where are you and the horse going?"

  Her lips twisted to seal in the destination. "Someplace where armies aren't stomping about."

  He nodded. "Were it not for Deborah, I'd have left this area long ago. You haven't asked me yet about your furniture."

  "That's because I'm not in a financial position to compensate you for storage fees."

  "Do you intend to abandon your property when you leave Camden in a week or two?"

  She bit her lower lip almost in time to prevent it from quivering. All her grandmother's china. Ah, gods. "Little as I care for the idea, I must do so. Someday, when this war is over, I shall have a home again. But right now, my immediate need is for my safety and that of my unborn child."

  No, she wouldn't beg Josiah Carter to hang onto her furniture out of the goodness of his heart. He'd been scorched enough to have little use for goodness, but he sure could put to use the ready money he'd receive from the sale of her property. So she must let it all go, for she wouldn't find safety unless she quit dragging the furniture around with her. But by god, nobody in the world could convince her not to grieve over it.