He did not answer at once. He lowered his gaze to the chessboard and looked at it for a long time. She waited, and finally, he gave a slight laugh and returned his gaze to her face. “If I told you it was because my father was one of the most loyal Tories in the king’s possessions, would that make sense?”
“Because you hated your father?”
“Because I loved him.”
“I don’t understand.”
He picked up one of the chess pieces he had taken from her and rolled it between his fingers, studying it. “My father was a very straightforward and plain man. He believed your king was your sovereign, and you had no right to question anything he did. I believed it because he believed it, and he was my father.”
“And then?”
“Then, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and the riots broke out all over Boston. My father tried to intervene when a group of redcoats beat up one of the rioters.” Ethan set down the chess piece. “One of the redcoats shot him.” He looked down at the board. “It’s your move.”
“Is it?” She took no time to consider but simply shoved her rook sideways. She wasn’t interested in the chess game now.
Ethan immediately moved his knight, took her rook, and sat back. “Checkmate.”
She made an exclamation of vexation and stared down at the board, clearly trying to discern what she had missed and where she had gone wrong. Finally, she sat back, laughing. “I cannot believe I didn’t see that!” she cried. “Your strategy seems so obvious to me now.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantel, then sighed and returned her attention to the board. “Playing against me is too easy for you. You won that game in less than two hours.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You played well, but I’ve been playing chess since I was a boy, and it’s a game of experience as well as ability. You said yourself, you don’t play often. You simply need more practice. Dorothy plays the game. You might practice with her when she has free time.”
Her expression did not brighten. “I take it that idea does not appeal to you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Dorothy does not like me.”
“She doesn’t trust you. There’s a difference.”
“Perhaps, but that still doesn’t make me want to play chess with her.”
He laughed. “She is only trying to protect me from possible Tory spies. I didn’t tell her that you were considering becoming one until I made you a better offer.”
She propped her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands, looking directly at him across the chessboard. “You realize, of course, that she is madly in love with you.”
“Molly says the same.”
“It’s true. My guess would be she doesn’t give a damn about colonial liberty. It is you she cares about.”
Ethan shook his head with a sigh. “Why do women always attribute everything to love? Don’t you think Dorothy is like her brother, a believer in freedom and self-government?”
“Rot.” Katie made a face. “Women don’t do anything for an ideal. They do it for a man. Dorothy is involved in this for you.”
“Perhaps.” Ethan leaned forward in his chair. “But you are different. You do this neither for an ideal nor for a man. You do it for yourself.”
She sat up abruptly, and her eyes narrowed. “Of course I am doing this for myself,” she said in a cool, passionless voice. “I told you, for me, survival is what matters. That and my freedom.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why is freedom so important to you?”
“I found being indentured intolerable.”
He leaned forward. “Intolerable in what way?”
“It was…” She jerked her chin, looked away, hedging now. “I didn’t like it.”
He would not be denied. “Why?”
She let out her breath in a sharp, impatient hiss. “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “Why all the questions? Why does it matter?”
He was honest in his reply. “I don’t know why it should matter,” he answered. “But it does. It matters to me. Katie, what happened?”
She stiffened in her chair, a brief, fleeting stiffness that melted away as suddenly as it had come. She leaned forward, mirroring him, smiling that angel smile. “Why do you want to know?” she murmured in a teasing voice. “Do I matter to you so much, Ethan?”
He was not fooled. “You’re not answering my question. What happened?”
Her ploy having failed, she leaned back with a sigh, of irritation or resignation, he could not tell. She picked up a chess piece from the table and focused her attention on it as she spoke. “I knew the moment I saw him what he was like,” she said, and he knew she was speaking of Willoughby. “I was standing on the docks in a line with the other prisoners, and I saw him walking along the line, picking the ones he wanted. I could tell that he was a man of some consequence by his clothes, the way he walked, the way he spoke. He stopped in front of me, and when I looked in his eyes, I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I knew he was going to buy my indenture, and I knew why. At that moment, on the docks, both of us were fully aware of what would happen, even though neither of us said a word.”
Ethan was aware of it, too. He knew there were men who abused their indentured servant girls and slaves, and he could well imagine Willoughby’s intentions, especially toward a woman as lovely as Katie.
“He just turned to the captain, who told him how much,” she went on, her voice flat and matter-of-fact, as if she were speaking of the price of eggs, not the price of herself. “Female indentures aren’t usually worth much, but the captain got five pounds British sterling for me. You see, he knew what Willoughby was looking for, and he knew how much Willoughby was willing to pay for it.”
Even though he had suspected this, Ethan felt sick. “Because you were still innocent,” he said harshly. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were dry, and something in their depths made him feel as if he were looking into a dark and bottomless chasm. Somehow her lack of any visible emotion hurt him more than sobs or tears ever could. It cut him deep down inside.
“I assumed he would do it right away, that very day. I was wrong. Oh, God, I was so wrong.”
She choked on the last word, the first inkling of her inner feelings, but she closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed hard, then continued in that same dead voice, “I underestimated his cruelty. He kept me on tenterhooks for six weeks, just looking at me in a way that made me want to bathe in hot water and lye soap. Then he showed me what his intentions were. He took another girl and made me watch them. I had no idea what he was going to do to her until he did it.”
She looked at him, her blue eyes huge and expressionless, like dead lakes, and Ethan could imagine what she had seen, because he saw it reflected in her eyes. He wanted to grab her, hold her, tell her to stop. He did not want to hear the rest of the story, but it was too late to stop her. She was speaking again, telling him the rest.
“I did not know such sick things existed,” she said. “I have slept in alleys. I’ve lived in brothels. I’ve seen a great many things in my life, but I had never seen anything as sick as what Willoughby did to that poor girl. She died.”
Katie looked at him, her eyes glazed with pain for that other girl, a girl who was dead because of one man’s sick perversions. Though she was looking straight at him, Ethan knew she did not see him. In her mind, she was reliving what she had been forced to watch. She began to shake. She covered her face with her hands.
The things she had seen were beyond his experience, but he could feel the pain inside her. “Katie—”
She lowered her hands and sat back, struggling to regain control. “That night, I picked the lock on Willoughby’s strongbox, stole the silver that was inside, and ran for my life.”
“Then he didn’t…” Ethan could not finish the sentence, but Katie understood what he wanted to know.
“No,” she said flatly. “I never gave
him the chance. I got out of Virginia as fast as I could, and I ran as far as I could before my money ran out. I stopped here.”
Ethan sucked in a deep breath of relief. But, though he was relieved, Ethan saw the pain in her eyes, and relief did not diminish the rage he felt. He knew there was nothing he could say to ease her pain, but he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to find that bastard Willoughby and kill him. He wanted to take back the threat he had made to send her back to her former master. Most of all, he wanted to hold her, protect her, keep her safe. Damn it all, she needed that.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he demanded hoarsely. “If I had known…”
His voice trailed away as he looked at her, and his words seemed ridiculous. He had known, in a way. He had been given an inkling of the truth that night when she’d waved the broken bottle in his face. He had seen her loathing of her former master. He had seen her fear. But he had not been able to risk letting her go. So, he had used her instead, not wanting to know where her loathing and fear of her master came from, not wanting to think about the brutal reality to which he had threatened to return her.
“If you had known,” she repeated thoughtfully. “If you had known, what would you have done? Would you have done anything differently? Knowing that I would never have agreed to help you without the threat of Willoughby over my head, would you have let me go?”
He stood up so abruptly that his chair tipped over backward, and the clatter of it hitting the floorboards echoed through the room like a musket shot. “It’s late,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair as he turned away and started for the door. “I’d better be on my way.”
He took the package from the hall table and paused by the door. “I’ll bring this back to you in a day or two. Then you can take it to Cambridge.”
He did not wait for a reply. Turning away, he opened the door. He strode down the steps and got into his waiting carriage.
He should just let her go, end their charade, and release her from their bargain, but he could not. It was too great a risk. He had no illusions that she would stay for him or his cause. As she had told him, she was not in this for an ideal or for a man. She was in this for herself. Nonetheless, Ethan remembered that dead look in her eyes as she had told him about Willoughby and why she would rather die than go back to that life. He had the feeling that look would haunt him for many days and nights to come.
He was threatening to send her back to that life if she did not cooperate with him. Doubts about his decision to involve her assailed him, and he shifted guiltily on the carriage seat. Perhaps he should find someone else to go to Cambridge. He could afford to buy her indenture and free her. Perhaps he should just let her go.
No, she knew too much. She wouldn’t stick at handing him to the governor for money if he no longer had anything to hold over her head. He could not let her go. Once again, guilt and doubt overtook him. Was he doing the right thing by making her stay? So many people depended on him to make the right decisions, to find the right information, to keep danger at bay, and he had never been uncomfortable with the role. Until now.
He smiled to himself, but there was no humor in it, only irony. He was getting too softhearted, it seemed, and for a spy who was committing sedition, plotting revolution, and preparing for war, a soft heart was a very inconvenient thing.
13
For the next two days, Katie heard nothing from Ethan, and she occupied her time doing things she had never had the means or opportunity to do before. She visited as many dressmakers and haber-dashers in Boston as she could find. She found it amusing that shop assistants fawned all over her, now that she had fine clothes and a fancy carriage. Only a few weeks ago, any shopkeeper would have taken one look at her and chased her out with a broom and threats of the constable. Now, they tripped over themselves to assist her, and she took a somewhat wicked enjoyment in sending them running for the richest foodstuffs and fabrics for two or three hours and then walking out after buying only a ha’penny box of sweets or half a yard of lace.
She also savored her comfortable house and the servants who fetched and carried for her. She knew she had only a few more days before Lowden returned and she would be forced to end this charade, but she wanted to take all the pleasure from it that she could, for she doubted she would ever have the chance to live like this again.
One of the most enjoyable pleasures of her new life was a nightly soak in the huge copper bathtub Ethan had bought for her, a luxurious ritual complete with lavender-scented soap and warm towels. This evening bath enabled her to forget, at least temporarily, about the price she would pay for the enjoyments of her new life, to forget about the dangerous line she was walking, to forget about the control two men had over her life. Until one of them intruded on her nightly bath and reminded her.
“Now, that is how a mistress ought to look.”
Katie knew it was Ethan before she even opened her eyes. With a startled gasp, she turned her head and saw him standing in the doorway to her room, dressed all in black, tricorn pulled low over his eyes, the copy of Shakespeare in his hands. He leaned with one shoulder against the doorjamb in that languid yet alert stance she was coming to know so well. Instinctively, she crouched down in the tub in an effort to shield herself from him, but she knew he had probably already seen everything there was to see.
She grabbed for one of the towels that lay on the floor beside her and took the offensive. “What do you mean barging into my room?” she demanded as she stood up, hoping to brazen things out while shielding her nakedness from his intense perusal with a towel that suddenly seemed far too small.
He grinned at her awkward efforts, unperturbed by her bravado. “Since it is my money that pays for this room, I think I have the right to enter it if I choose to do so.”
Katie made a sound of outrage, but it was hard to express it effectively when she was dripping wet and a towel was all the protection she had. Before she could figure out how to respond, Ethan entered the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
She watched with growing dismay as he sauntered over to the bed where Janie had laid out a nightgown for her earlier. He set down the book and picked up the filmy garment of lawn and lace. To her acute embarrassment, he held it up for a good, long look. “Very pretty,” he said, and shot her a look of pure deviltry. “I’m so glad I bought this one.”
The sight of that delicate wisp of fabric in his hands made Katie’s heart begin to pound hard in her chest. Her throat went dry. “What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound blasé, and ashamed that her question came out in nothing more than a hoarse whisper.
She wrapped the towel securely around herself and stretched out her arm, but Ethan did not give the nightgown to her. Instead, he stayed well out of her reach, that teasing gleam in his eyes. “An interesting situation for a man to find himself in, wouldn’t you say?”
She lunged for it, but she was hampered by the fact that she was still standing in the bathtub. With a sound of aggravation, she stepped out of the tub, but Ethan took a step back, still keeping the gown out of her reach. “Ethan, give it to me,” she demanded.
Tongue-in-cheek, he considered that for a moment. “Why should I?” he countered softly, slanting her a look from beneath his lashes that made her body feel flushed with heat. “I think I like you better without it.”
He took a step toward her and reached out his hand to her face. When his fingers traced a delicate line across her jaw, down the line of her throat, and across her collarbone, she forgot all about her nightgown.
Paralyzed by the intensity of his gaze and the light touch of his fingers as they moved further down, Katie could not seem to move, or breathe, or even think. She felt him trace a line over her skin at the edge of the towel, just above her breasts, and knew she should do something to stop this intimate exploration, but she could not seem to find the will to move. Slowly, ever so slowly, he leaned toward her.
She thought of the other times he had kissed her, and s
he felt again that trembling excitement, knowing that he was going to kiss her again. Her lips parted in anticipation, and she swayed closer to him, silently pleading for him to continue.
But Ethan did not do so. He stepped back with an abruptness that startled her, and he thrust her nightgown toward her as if it were suddenly a barrier between them. Katie’s pleasurable anticipation evaporated, and she felt all her previous embarrassment return.
When she took the nightgown from him, he turned his back to her. She hastily cast aside the towel and slipped the gown over her head.
Clothed, more or less, she felt much more in command of herself and the situation. “What have you been doing for the last two days?” she asked.
He turned around and smiled at her. “Katie, that is none of your affair.”
“You disappear for two days, then arrive in my bedroom out of nowhere and interrupt my bath…” She knew that comment was heading her into dangerous territory, and she took a deep, steadying breath. Pointing to the book on the bed, she said, “If giving me that was the purpose of this visit, you’ve done what you came for.”
“Actually, I really came to see you naked.”
Those words sent a rush of tingling pleasure through her entire body. It was a sensation she had never felt for any man before, and she did not like it, for it also made her feel far too vulnerable.
Somehow, in the three weeks since their first meeting, Ethan had become more than just a traitor to be captured. Now, she knew him, she knew his kiss, his touch, and somehow that made him more dangerous than before—dangerous to her peace of mind. When he was the cool, impersonal stranger, it was easier to keep her own distance. But the man standing before her now, the man who was looking at her with desire—that man was dangerous indeed.
She knew he wanted her. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it in his touch. There was no doubt about it. He wanted her.
Katie closed her eyes for a moment, feeling again that dizzying sensation of walking the edge of a cliff. The realization that Ethan desired her was exhilarating, but it was also frightening.
The Charade Page 18