**
Dinner was funereal affair. The two junior officers said little more than necessary for civility. As the meal finished, the sole topic of conversation was the death of yet another young woman. She was a prostitute, evidently one well-known to some of the officers. Unfortunately, the decayed condition of the body put her death before the round-up of the suspects.
Rose and her mother, probably, disliking both the company and the conversation, left the table quickly.
Deborah soon followed. She settled into the settee in the parlor to put the finishing touches on her cloak. This was perhaps her favorite room in the house. It was gracefully appointed, but without the opulence of the main salon. The fire crackled merrily. Scamp snored on his bed near the fire. The wind had come up, even though the day had been fairly mild. She knew it wasn’t going to last. She needed to have this finished.
Marshall walked in as she put the final stitches in the first ribbon. He went straight to the brandy decanter and poured a glass. Moving to the fireplace, he leaned against the polished wood mantel and rested one foot against the fire dog. Scamp open one eye, wagged his tail, and promptly fell back asleep.
“Well,” he began, “we are either holding a bunch of innocent and very frightened men, or we have an imitator on the loose, or we are barking up a totally wrong tree. Which do you think?” He took a swallow of brandy.
“I’m going into town tomorrow to confer with the constable. I want you to go with me.”
He had stepped closer, and she made the mistake of looking up the long length of him. His grey eyes seemed to will her to say yes. She rose too quickly, stumbling backward. His hand shot out and caught her elbow. She sat back down, rather ungracefully.
“Thank you, sir, but I have a great deal of work to do here.”
“I would appreciate your company.”
Still she hesitated.
“Please.”
“When do you want to go?”
**
Deborah couldn’t sleep. Her mind whirled like a carriage wheel drawn behind galloping, blooded horses. The clock in the hall had struck 1:30 a short while ago, and the house was quiet.
That morning she and Marshall had gone into Camden. They consulted with the constable and then gone to the dressmaker’s. He ordered several dresses for her, over her objection. Short of creating a scene (the likes of which she had always detested), there was little she could do as he conferred with the modiste about the garments.
When they returned, she had marched up to her room and pounded the bed pillows. Scamp had jumped up to lick her face. She took him with her later on her rounds. It was hard to be angry around that perpetually wagging tail. She did it though.
To make matters worse, now she was hungry. She nibbled at dinner because she wasn’t hungry, but now she was most definitely hungry. Ravenous, if she wanted to be accurate.
Lighting the candle next to the bed, she stared at the embroidered sampler on the wall. “Bread of wheat and fruit of the vine, Cannot compare with Love Divine.” The motto inspired her, but not as the writer intended.
“I don’t know about ‘Love Divine,’ but I could sure use some of that bread or a piece of fruit. Or just about anything, for that matter.”
Decision made, she swung her feet off the bed and searched out her shoes with cold toes. Pulling her shawl off the clothes peg and expertly flipping the material into a triangle, she wrapped it tightly around her shoulders against the chill. She walked to the door, hesitated, and went over to lay another log on the fire. “Might as well not freeze when I get back up here.”
Her candle was the only light in the hall. No glow showed from under doors or around corners as she walked quietly through the house and down to the attached kitchen. Mr. Kershaw liked his food hot, so he wagered the taste of his food against a kitchen fire burning the kitchen and the house with it. For Deborah’s purposes, it meant that she didn’t have to traipse out into the cold in order to get her midnight snack. Mercifully.
She opened the door to another candle on the worktable. Deborah stopped in the doorway and stared at Mistress Kershaw standing over a middle-aged, shirtless man with a bloody cloth around his upper left arm. Mistress Kershaw smothered a small shriek, but the man had more presence of mind. He pulled a pistol off the table and cocked it in the same motion. He aimed it straight at Deborah.
No one spoke for a count of ten. Then the man smiled faintly and the tension drained from his body, leaving him tired and drawn and…wounded. He lowered the weapon. Deborah stepped forward, her healer’s instincts coming to the fore. Mistress Kershaw had not taken her eyes off Deborah until she moved into the room. Grabbing a knife from the table, the older woman raised it high and advanced on Deborah.
Before Deborah could react to this second attempt on her life, the man grabbed Mistress Kershaw’s skirt with his good arm as she passed.
“Ahh, stop, Sarah. Put that down.”
She stopped. He sank back and grabbed his arm, his face paling with pain. “Isaac, she’s a Tory whore and a spy and a…”
“Nonsense. Put that down, Sarah. Mistress Morgan’s no more a British sympathizer than you are.”
Deborah advanced slowly and carefully, keeping one eye on the lowering blade and the other on this increasingly familiar man. “You’re…you’re…I know you. You’re…”
“Captain Isaac Montgomery, ma’am. We met some weeks ago when you helped with a small problem of mine.” He smiled slightly, and Deborah remembered that the “small problem” had been an ugly boil in a most uncomfortable and delicate position.
“Yes, I remember. What happened this time?”
He grinned, “Stupid me! I was checking on the number of troops left here in Camden. My horse threw me, and I sliced my arm on a branch. Figured Rogers could fix me up. I didn’t realize Sarah was back here.”
“Isaac!” Mistress Kershaw exclaimed. “What’s going on?”
Deborah put down her candle and bent to examine the wound
“Sarah is my sister,” he explained to Deborah, “my older sister. She feels that gives her the right to be bossy.” He had an affectionate twinkle in his eye, even through the pain and exhaustion. “Sarah, may I present Mistress Morgan…”
“Yes, yes, I know who she is.”
“…The daughter of General Daniel Morgan of the Continental Army.”
Mistress Kershaw breathed an “ohhh.”
“Until recently she was patching up Continentals and keeping her father so as he can sit a horse. How did you get here, young lady?”
Deborah explained about Adam and her blanket-buying mission for the army, their capture, and his escape. “Marshall has pretty effectively blackmailed me into staying and doctoring his men.”
The side door to the kitchen opened and once again Captain Montgomery reached for his gun. Rogers appeared in the doorway with a cloth bundle. The captain laid his weapon aside. Deborah, realizing the servant was part of the conspiracy, finished her bandaging.
Rogers took in the scene with his usual serenity. “Good morrow, Mistress Morgan.” Turning to Mistress Kershaw, “Here is the shirt you requested and the sack.”
Montgomery looked up at him. “My thanks, Rogers. I knew I could count on you.”
“Always my pleasure, sir. Although I could wish that you might have more of a care for your…uh hum…carcass.”
Montgomery snorted to stifle a laugh. “Rogers, you never change, do you?”
“No, sir, not if I can help it.”
Deborah stared at this aspect of a man she had viewed as simply part of the furniture.
Isaac shrugged painfully into the shirt. Rogers took the bag his mistress had filled with food.
Montgomery was still pale, but moved easily. “Time to go. Thank you, Mistress Morgan. I will tell your father how I found you. Maybe he’ll stop tearing a strip off you brother for leaving you behind. You seem to be safe, but have a care. They are still British.”
Deborah nodded. He kissed
his sister, gathered his gun and hat, and went quietly out the back door with Rogers. Mistress Kershaw stared at the closed door.
Deborah put her hand on the older woman’s arm. “He’ll be all right.”
Sarah turned. Fear and love and grief were all in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so very much. I was so very wrong about you.” A tentative smile played around her mouth.
Deborah smiled back. “Well, I came down here for a snack, but we’d better get cleaned up here.”
Sarah waved at the table. “I’ll get this stuff; you get what ever you wanted.” She gathered the scissors and bloody towels and shirt. “Thank you again and good night.”
After she left, Deborah rolled her shoulders to loosen the tension. She wasn’t that hungry any more, but was too keyed up to go back to her room. Finding a biscuit in the cupboard, she sat down at the table to eat it. As she munched, she hoped Montgomery got safely back to the Continental lines, not only for his sake, but for her father’s peace of mind. She rolled her head around again. As she did, she noticed a bloody cloth under the seat Isaac Montgomery used. She picked it up. The kitchen fire was banked, so she decided to take it up to her room and use her still-burning fire to dispose of it.
Taking her lamp, she headed back through the public rooms to the stairs. Up above her the stair creaked. A figure loomed above her. Deborah gasped.
“Anything interesting going on at this time of night?” Marshall inquired. His shirt was loose, his stock discarded, and he had crept up on her because he wore only socks on his feet. How could a man in his socks look so formidable? Or so interesting?
His gaze traveled over her with a hungry kind of intensity…until it stopped on the bloody cloth in her hand. His eyes became wary, professional. “Hum?” He stepped down to the floor directly in front of her with a fluid masculine grace that was both entrancing and deadly. A finger reached out to lift her chin so that she looked up right at him. “Hum?” More insistent this time, he increased the pressure of his finger.
Deborah frowned and leaned her head away from him. She crumpled the towel. “Woman’s matters!” she snapped.
Marshall jerked his hand away as if he’d been stung. “Um, yes, well…”
“Excuse me,” she muttered and marched up the stairs, leaving a hopelessly outmaneuvered male in her wake.
Chapter 9
December was proving to have moments of bone-biting cold. Much as she hated to admit it, Deborah was grateful beyond words for the warm cloak. She and Scamp visited the infirmary. Lt. Harvey’s men were healing nicely, and even he was coming along, despite his refusal to take more than a token rest.
Scamp reveled in the outing. He investigated, and blessed, all the bushes in the area. Deborah had generally kept him inside for a few days, until she was sure that he had no lingering ill effects from his sousing. Now, he made up for his enforced confinement.
Deborah watched him, hands on her hips, streak down one of the camp paths to where Sgt. Thomson strode towards her. The dog’s path led him in a gigantic spiral that funneled both him and the man towards her.
She was glad that it was Thomson coming toward her and not another British officer whose name she didn’t even want to think. She had, after all done entirely too much thinking about that unnamed officer. With some measure of disgust, she acknowledged her own gut-twirling response to him. Grimly, she reminded herself that giving in to that response, even in the slightest, could land her in a whole dung heap of trouble. No man was worth that.
They were on opposite sides of an ugly war. If he ever found out that she was anything more, or less, than an innocent girl on a family errand gone badly, well… Plus, he was a British aristocrat. The British upper class made no secret of what they thought of their overseas brethren. The American colonies existed solely to benefit England. Colonists were all one step up from farm animals, and to be utilized in much the same way. Deborah knew of several people who had an unacknowledging English milord on one side of the family tree and a colonial mare on the other. She would take a peasant and present father for her children any day. Lastly, she was a young woman, far from the protection of friends and family, and he was a man. Enough said about that.
She plucked a leaf from a nearby bush and began to shred it as she thought. Adam was safe, if somewhat discomforted, with her father. Knowing that gave her more freedom of action than if he was still hiding in the area. It was her turn to get back to the rebel lines. How? Marshall hadn’t sent out any search parties, as such, and none of the patrols had, naturally, made any report of Adam. This could be put to good use, she mused: a sign of British lack of commitment to finding her brother. Perhaps it was time to start getting very worried about her poor half-wit brother. If she couldn’t out-think this Britisher, than she didn’t have any business fighting a war. Yes, it was definitely time.
“Good day, Mr. Thomson. Is your cold better?” He walked her to the house.
“And a g’day to you, m’um. Thank ye, aye. Ah be feeling much more t’thing. Tha’ coneflower brew tha’ you sent over’s bitter as t’thoughts of ‘ell, but Ah most certainly feel better fer taking it.”
“Yes, it certainly is disagreeable to drink, but it does work.” They climbed the wide staircase and pulled the doorbell. He bent down to scratch Scamp between the ears.
“Umm.” While they waited for a servant to open the door, a rumble of wheels caught their attention. A large coach with outriders entered the camp. “Wonder who that be.”
“I don’t know, but it certainly is a fine equipage.”
Rogers opened the door, but they all waited in the doorway. The coach drew up to the house. One of the footmen riding on the back jumped down to open the door. No one emerged for a moment. Then a vision enveloped in pale blue wool and white fur muff emerged on the footman’s hand.
Thomson groaned, and Deborah looked at him, startled. “Oh no, not ‘er, again” he muttered.
Deborah unabashedly studied the newcomer. With one hand, the woman threw back the fur-trimmed hood of her cloak to reveal rich brown hair styled into a fashionable riot of curls and ringlets around her face. Her other hand lay buried in the fur muff. The face was exquisite, fine boned, and delicate as porcelain.
For her part, the woman ignored Deborah and the sergeant. Instead, she surveyed the house and immediate grounds with a distinct air of satisfaction. A man clambered out of the carriage behind her. Shorter than the woman and as stout as she was slender, he offered his arm to her, and they started up the steps. A non-descript mouse of a woman followed them.
Scamp barked twice and ran down the steps towards the newcomers. Deborah followed at a more sedate pace. As she drew closer, Deborah gasped, for the woman’s muff moved. A small white dog was the magnet for Scamp.
Deborah opened her mouth to greet the couple. In her experience, people with dogs as pets tended to be friendly and approachable. “Good…” The words caught in her throat as the woman lifted the hem of her skirt and kicked Scamp. The pup yelped, rolled, and staggered to his feet before scampering up the steps to the relative safety of Deborah’s skirts.
“Keep that mongrel away from me!” the woman ordered in a voice that dripped English upper class.
“He’s not a mongrel, he’s a Norfolk terrier,” Deborah retorted.
“I’m sure I don’t care what he is, just get rid of him.”
“That may be difficult since he lives here.”
“Not for long,” the woman muttered. “Here,” she shoved the white dog into Deborah’s arms, “walk Fluffy, then feed him, and then you can unpack my things. I suppose I’ll have to watch you to make sure that you don’t steal anything.”
Deborah’s jaw dropped, and she scrambled to keep from dropping the dog. The woman didn’t see her bobble the dog because she had already turned to mount the stairs.
The little Maltese licked Deborah’s hand, and she automatically petted him. Scamp jumped up her leg to investigate the new arrival. “Down, Scamp.
You can’t play now.”
The woman turned at the words. “Keep that ugly mutt away from Fluffy!”
“I have a better idea!” Deborah growled as she stomped up the stairs. “Keep Fluffy away from Scamp.” She pushed the dog at her owner. “And unpack your own clothes.” With that, she whirled and marched down the stairs. Sgt. Thomson followed her.
After they were out of earshot, she looked up at him. “Is discretion still the better part of valor, Mr. Thomson?”
“Indeed it is, m’um. Indeed it is.”
“Pity. Now, pray tell,” she cocked her head as she looked at him, “who was that charming, gentle lady?”
He grimaced and cleared his throat before answering. “Well, now, m’um, tha’ be Lady Claudia Grant and her husband, Sir Oliver Grant.”
There was more, she could smell it. “And they are…?”
“H’ be a victual supplier.”
His voice had trailed off as he spoke, and she knew there was still more. “And…?”
His shoe scuffed a pattern in the rocks of the path. “T’ain’t fitting, m’um.”
“Sergeant,” she growled.
“M’um!” he wailed.
“Tell me! I’d rather find out now than fall into something squishy and disgusting.” What could this man possibly be? An inspector? A Crown agent looking for rebels?
“T’Lady Claudia’s a special friend of the Colonel.”
“A ‘special’…Oh, oh my heavens. She’s his…” Deborah clapped her hands over her mouth. Young ladies were not supposed to know about that sort of thing, let along talk about them. Her shoulders began to shake and Sergeant Thomson reached out in alarm.
“M’um!”
The laugh popped out of her. His expression grew more concerned.
“Oh my, oh my.” As soon as she gained control, she waved off his fears. “It’s just that she is so much the…” she lifted her arm with the hand held limply from the wrist, “…lady.”
“Aye, m’um, she is.” He smiled, but his voice was somber. “But you jus’ remember. She’s got t’claws of a right mean cat.” He nodded and walked off towards the encampment.