He peered through layers of dust and fog. "It's almost half a mile away. You're certain of it?"
"Yes." She knew he could see, as she saw, a body lying near the horse. Tears smarted in her eyes. "I need to know," she whispered, blinking to clear her vision. "We both need to know."
"The gods help us, then." Although he appeared even closer to puking than she felt, he squared his shoulders. "Follow me."
Chapter Forty-Three
SHE KEPT HER gaze on the tail of the packhorse ahead but couldn't shut out the stinks of blood-soaked sand, feces, and vomit. Nor could she block her ears from human and equine torment: a blend of whinnies, curses, supplications, and sobs.
Long before they reached the pines, she recognized the downed man as Clark. From the blood staining his shirt, and the fowler lying within his reach, his luck at receiving mere flesh wounds had run out. They knelt beside him. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. The wound to his chest was greater on the front. "Shot from behind," Tom whispered.
Tears smeared her vision again. "Ah, Clark," she murmured, and stroked his face.
His eyelids fluttered, and he focused on her. "Betsy, go. Get away. Safety," he whispered, and coughed bubbly blood.
A lung shot, beyond the skill of any physician to repair. Resolution steadied her gaze on Tom. "We cannot leave him like this. Find someone with a stretcher to help us."
Tom glanced over the battlefield. "I don't want to leave you out here. Looters have already started showing up."
She stood. "I've my musket and his fowler."
Tom rose also. "Very well, but I don't like this."
"No, both of you go." Clark's speech curtailed with more coughing and bloody froth.
Betsy stamped her foot. "Be quiet, Clark."
Tom loaded Clark's fowler. Then, his expression dubious, he mounted his horse and headed back through carnage and chaos, the packhorse in tow. Betsy set the fowler within easy reach beside her musket. She stripped the saddle from Clark's horse and, ignoring his groans, propped him up against it.
The clench of pain in his face eased, and he spoke with less effort. "Go. They think you betrayed them. They'll kill you."
She knelt before him again. "Did they shoot you when you were trying to get away and warn me?"
"Yes. They may return."
"Let them come. I'll put a ball between the eyes of two of them, at least."
"Betsy, I never meant to hurt you."
A lump gripped her throat. She couldn't afford to break down just then, but later, later —"I know you didn't."
"Forgive me for leaving you."
She brushed fingers on his paling lips and swallowed. "Please, save your breath."
"I know you didn't betray me."
The snare of duplicity squeezed her heart and brought the sting of tears to her eyes. Under no circumstances must Clark know. She folded both her hands over her breast.
"Beware Adam Neville. Ambrose. He thinks you told redcoats about the furniture." He coughed flecks of blood. "And Fairfax knows I'm lying here."
"Fairfax saw you and didn't kill you?"
A mirthless smile ghosted his lips. "Why bother? A fellow Patriot managed the task. I shan't see my child born."
"Oh, Clark."
He coughed, weaker. "Go somewhere safe and have the baby. Tom will help." He licked his lips. "I noticed in Augusta. The way he looked at you. He loves you. And he's still at your side through all this." A tear spilled over her lid and curved her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand. He reached for her hand, his icy. "Darling, I should never have doubted your fidelity."
Her eyes widened, and she felt sickened by his words. Handwriting wasn't all Fairfax counterfeited. No wonder she'd been so easily lured to the cellar. If he planned to eliminate the spy ring, he might have left Clark alive as bait for any surviving members. The vigil with her husband could be a trap.
She sat up, alert, and swept her gaze over the battlefield. Tom was nowhere in sight, but she had the feeling of being watched. Clark's voice sounded gravelly, faded. "Behind you."
After seizing her musket, she sprang up. Grins on their faces, knives and tomahawks in their hands, the four of them charged from the swampy terrain concealed by nearby pines: Basilio, Francisco, and two other men she recognized from the meeting in the cellar. With no time to think, she cocked her musket, took aim, and fired.
Francisco dropped with a howl, clutching his stomach, but his companions continued their sprint for her. She heard the approach of a galloping horse from the north, even while she hauled up Clark's fowler and fired at Basilio. He shrieked and collapsed, blood spewing from his chest. The other two men had a second to reorient their attention and scream before a blur of scarlet and raised steel on horseback shot past Betsy and Clark and decapitated the men not fifteen feet from where she stood. Sunlight sparkled in twin geysers of crimson. Their headless bodies toppled over.
"Christ Jesus!" Still powered on fear and survival instinct, Betsy flung down Clark's fowler and reached for her musket, realized no one had reloaded it, and seized her cartridge box and bag of lead balls. Seconds later, she'd performed her quickest reload of a musket ever. She raised it to sight Lieutenant Fairfax, who trotted his gelding around for a more leisurely reconnaissance with the Sheridans, his carriage confident, his countenance enraptured and unearthly.
He reined back near where Basilio and Francisco moaned and thrashed, whipped out a rag, and wiped the blood from his saber. "Such gratitude, madam. I save your life for the second time, and you plan to thank me by blowing my brains out."
"I will blow your brains out if you don't gallop out of here. Now."
"Never underestimate a wounded opponent." He sheathed his saber and put away the rag. "These two rebels are still alive."
"Not for long."
"I agree." Before her heart hammered twice more, he whipped out a pistol from his saddle holster and shot Basilio in the head.
Clark gasped out "Oh, my god!" even as Fairfax dispatched Francisco with a shot from a second pistol.
Horrified, Betsy stared down the muzzle of a third pistol. The lieutenant had moved so fast that she hadn't seen him swap out the weapons. Sweat slicked her hands and beaded between her thighs. The certainty rolled over her that his trigger finger was far quicker than hers, and even though they held each other at gunpoint, the disadvantage was hers, for he knew how to incapacitate without killing.
His smile softened. "Drop the musket, or shoot me. Your choice."
Normal men used that tone to court women. She took several breaths and felt her entire expression, even her eyes, harden. If she didn't find a way to seize advantage, Fairfax would shoot her, or the noise they were making would attract soldiers to his aid. "Throw all your firearms on the ground." For seconds that stretched like centuries, he stared her down. She tightened her lips. "It appears you've given up believing I can lead you to my mother."
"Your mother — ah, bloody hell, now you've gone and called my bluff, you clever woman." With a sigh, he tossed the pistol, three others, and a musket on the ground near Clark and regarded her with an innocent expression.
She suspected he had another firearm hidden. "Keep your hands raised. Throw down the other firearm, the one you're planning to pull out as soon as you think I've dropped my guard." A surly expression enveloped his face. His right hand up, he plucked out a civilian pistol from near the holsters, tossed it down, and lifted his left hand again. "Good. Now head for the road."
"So you can shoot me in the back?"
"That's an excellent idea.
"Without hearing what I have to say?"
"I don't care what you have to say."
"Oh, I think you do, but I doubt your husband does."
Anger punctuated her composure. Clark hissed, "He isn't going to let you go. Give me your musket. I'll keep him here as long as I can."
"How poignant, sir."
Another lump formed in her throat at Clark's suggestion. She clamped down on gr
ief and anger and glared at Fairfax. "Get moving. East."
He clicked his tongue, nudged the horse about with his knees, and smiled back at her. "Exhilarating, every moment of it, from the note you sent me about van Duser and the furniture two weeks ago to the kiss you gave me last night."
"Why, you son of a —"
"Betsy, watch out!"
Gambling on the distraction caused by her outrage, Fairfax reached for something else near his saddle, twisting at the same time she pulled the trigger. Her musket ball clipped his left upper arm. He sprawled onto the ground.
"Give me one of his pistols!" Clark rasped. "I'll hold him off. Go!" Even through the haze of black powder smoke, his lips looked gray. She hesitated, her heart aching as if it had fissured and hemorrhaged into her chest. He coughed blood. "Go!"
Fairfax, his back to them, had risen to his knees. Betsy shoved the pistols over to Clark, not knowing which were loaded, scrambled into Lady May's saddle with her empty musket gripped in one hand, and kicked the mare into motion. East across the cratered field of death she rode, the wind whipping tears from her eyes, the vision forever burned into her memory of Clark's final act as her rear guard, his face devoid of color, his lifeblood draining into his punctured lung.
Tom. She must find Tom. Clark had bought her that much. She paused at the road and scanned north, where hundreds of bodies cluttered road and field, then south across the more ordered array of the British. Tom was nowhere in sight.
A glance behind blasted panic and grief through her. His left arm stiff, Fairfax was mounting his horse. Clark was either dead or unconscious. She galloped the mare southward, hoping to find Tom, hoping they could outrun Fairfax. He was, after all, injured. Maybe he'd lose blood in the chase and pass out.
Faces whizzed by her, none of them Tom. She passed wagons of supplies and injured men and headed downhill, alone on the road. Gods, something must have happened to Tom. She'd have to press on to Camden by herself. She dared not pause even to load her musket. At least her mare was rested.
They slowed to ford the creek. On the south side, Betsy glimpsed Fairfax cantering downhill toward her, seeming unfazed by his injured arm. Never underestimate a wounded opponent. She bent over to the horse's ear and stroked her neck. "Give me everything you can, my lady."
To her credit, Lady May held the gallop. But after a minute, Betsy could tell the gelding was gaining on them and knew she'd never make it back to Camden before Fairfax overtook her. Just as distressing: slow cramps had replaced the ache in her womb.
Around a bend, she spied a trail to the right, reined the mare onto it, and trotted her back thirty feet, where pines and undergrowth swallowed the trail. After wheeling the horse around, she seized her ammunition and began reloading her musket. Horse and rider thundered past on the road. Then the sound of the gallop ceased. Fairfax realized she'd left the road. Her breath drawn in gasps, Betsy fumbled a ball from her pouch but lost it on the ground. She reached for another ball, the tremor of fatigue and fear in her hands, and dropped the entire bag.
Through the foliage, the scarlet of his coat winked in and out of view. With no time to retrieve the pouch, she pulled up the musket and aimed at the entrance of the trail: Betsy Sheridan's brave, last stand. Seconds later, Fairfax walked his gelding down the trail, pistol held ready, and halted the horse about fifteen feet from her. "Ah, here we are again, darling. Shall we call it the second verse of the same song?"
Chapter Forty-Four
BETSY JUTTED HER jaw with confidence she didn't feel. "Move to the refrain, where I order you to drop your weapons."
Fairfax indicated the bag in the pine straw. "Were I a perfect gentleman, I'd invite you dismount and fetch a ball for your musket. I'm gambling that it isn't fully loaded, but you've no idea whether my pistol is." Midwinter built in his eyes. "Drop your musket, or I will take it by force."
Firing her musket and igniting the powder might buy a moment's distraction, but she wouldn't get far when he had the faster horse. And he was beyond cerebral appreciation for heroic feints. Her game was over. Fatigue poured into her arms. She cast down the musket.
"Dismount." His pistol was trained on her head. Legs and arms shaking, she lowered her gaze and complied. "Walk to me. Keep your hands where I can see them. That's far enough." He dismounted and walked a full circle around her before releasing the cock on the pistol and pushing it into his sash. "Look at me. How did you get out of the cellar?"
Though she felt certain Tom wouldn't be rescuing her, she saw no point in admitting she'd had an accomplice. "You left me plenty of time, so I gnawed my way out."
Perhaps her chafed wrists conferred credence. His mockery subsided into perplexity and metamorphosed into admiration, then sentiment hotter than admiration. Her skin crawled like a drove of caterpillars homing on spring-green leaves.
He lifted his left hand and caressed her cheek with his fingertips. Alas, the injury to his arm must have been minor, for no pain registered in his expression at the movement. His fingers wandered to her lips before stroking her chin and jaw. She clenched her teeth against his scent. In one motion, he yanked her linen tucker out of her shift and jacket, leaving her shoulders and collarbone exposed. Steel glinted in his right hand. She flinched in anticipation of the blade on her throat. At least she wouldn't be flayed alive or hacked to pieces.
"Well, then, I shan't bind you with rope this time." The knife flashed. Fabric rent. He hauled her to a tree and pushed her back against it.
Through fatigue and numbness, she stared at Lady May while Fairfax tied her wrists behind the tree with shredded tucker. Then he blocked her view of the horse and traced his forefinger across her naked collarbone. "How wicked of the Fates to cast us as opponents, Widow Sheridan." He grinned at her wince of grief. "I hope you don't think I killed him? Thank his rebel allies for that. I have, all except for Neville. I suspect he may prove useful in the near future.
"As for your husband, he expired on his own. But not before hearing my gratitude for your role in sparing Britons the rule of the Stadtholder. Since he was reluctant to believe me, I told him of our rendezvous in the cellar and how we witnessed his meeting. I even recounted portions of conversation. I'm not certain which concept upset him the more — imagining you'd betrayed his cause, or imagining you as my willing mistress." He spread his hands. "But he saw no reason to linger after that."
No one would have lingered after that. Fairfax had conferred harsh dignity upon Basilio and Francisco, shooting them and ending their agony. But he'd eviscerated Clark with a weapon that cut deeper than any spear or blade. Detestation crackled in her voice. "Go to hell."
"I've a better idea." He walked his fingers down the front closing of her jacket. "You tell me where to find your mother." His lips brushed her throat. "But you needn't hasten to arrive at the truth. We're both enjoying this."
Goosebumps emerged all over her body. "Take your hands off me. I didn't give you permission to touch me."
He chuckled and unfastened the top of her jacket. "Your permission is irrelevant. Let's start with your uncle. On July the eleventh, he paid you a quick visit on his way to Virginia or the Carolinas." She squirmed when he began toying with the drawstring of her shift. "He'd traveled with your mother north from East Florida, yes?"
"I don't know. He didn't say."
"But she gave him a message to deliver to you. 'Don't worry, I'm all right, I'm hiding.'" He caressed the side of her mouth with his lips and whispered, "Where is she hiding?"
She smelled blood on him. How many men's blood? Revolted, she jerked her head to the side. He forced her face back around to him while his other hand opened her drawstring. Primitive fear overcame her rational mind. Her knees knocked. "In the C-Carolinas or Virginia."
"Oh, she was more specific than that. She's your mother."
All Betsy wanted was to escape the smell, taste, sight, sound, and feel of death. "N-no, I swear it, and oh, g-gods, please just l-leave me alone! You've tortured me enough over my husband! Must
you t-torture me over the mother and father I cannot find because —" She gulped back her words with renewed horror. Oh, no, she hadn't just said that, had she?
He dropped the drawstring in surprise. "Father? Then your father wasn't le Coeuvre?" Venom infiltrated his voice. "Why, he's that half-breed Creek bastard, isn't he? Ah, that makes much more sense." He bared his teeth, his face in her face, becoming her view of the universe. "Savages. I loathe the lying, traitorous lot of them. So where are Mother and Father, Betsy? Are they hiding with the Creek near Alton? Or with the Cherokee northwest of Ninety Six?"
Tom's voice bellowed through the clearing. "Maggot, unhand her!"
Fairfax pivoted in a blur of movement faster than any human ought to be capable of moving and drew his pistol on Tom, who stood a few feet ahead of his horse and the packhorse with his musket trained on the lieutenant. Aware of the accuracy of Fairfax's pistol, Betsy kicked his knee as he pulled the trigger, skewing the trajectory of the ball to the right.
The shots, simultaneous, loaded the clearing with smoke. Fairfax regained his balance from the kick and stepped away from her. Tom toppled to the ground, blood darkening the hair near his left temple, and lay still, supine. Betsy shrieked. "No! No! Oh, gods, no!"
His shoulders thrown back, Fairfax ambled over to his horse, granting Tom a cursory look on the way. He swapped his fired pistol for another, shoved the new one in his sash, and ambled back to Betsy without a second glance at Tom. "Pardon the interruption, darling. Where were we? Ah, yes, Mathias Hale."
"God damn you to hell!"
He studied her a few seconds, no emotion in his eyes, before retrieving another strip of torn linen from the ground and gagging her with it. "I need your attention, and you've been talking too much and saying too little." He unfastened more of her jacket. "Such soft skin. You do know where your mother is hiding. Mothers tell daughters things like that." The remainder of the jacket opened. "She told you where to find her. Perhaps she communicated it to your uncle or sent you a letter. But you do know, and you will tell me."
Although he dominated much of her field of vision, she spotted movement over his shoulder — Tom swabbing the palm of his hand to his temple and bringing it away bloodied. She yanked her gaze away from a head wound that looked lethal enough to fool Fairfax, wondering how serious it actually was, hoping the lieutenant didn't notice where she'd looked. His attention was on the neckline of her shift, which he'd hooked with his forefinger and begun teasing open.
The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 31