Mood Indigo (11 page)

“I can’t imagine you being afraid of anything,” she murmured into the fringe of his leather shirt that emitted earth’s sweet-pungent smell.

“I assure thee I was,” he said in that curious mixture of Irish brogue and soft colonial drawl. “I came to the colonies as a boy of eight. A skinny, underfed, undersized runt.”

“And I can’t imagin
e you ever being underfed or undersized,” she said with a chiming laugh.

“Ah, but I was. In Dubli
n I had been arrested for thievery—it was the only way orphans could survive those hard times. I faced the gallows at Kilmainham Gaol when a nobleman, a proprietor of a small grant west of the Pennsylvania Colony, offered to sponsor a number of convicts. I was one of the lucky ones chosen.” He grew silent with his own reflections.

“And what happened?”

Almost like a pillow, his chest shifted against her cheek with the movement of his shrug. “Fortunately I was bound out to a Quaker couple, Ezra and Miriam. They sacrificed to send me to William and Mary’s preparatory school in the winter months. And I was afraid of everything. Of the dark forests. Of the well-to-do planters’ sons at college. Of the silent, fierce-looking Indians.”

And he was fierce-looking, she thought. And roughly handsome with the sharply planed cheeks and broken nose. “And then?” she prompted.

He chuckled, his breath rustling the ugly tendrils of hennaed hair. She thought how deliciously disturbing his laughter was. It tickled all the way to the pit of her stomach. “Why, I grew, mistress. And grew and grew.” His lips brushed away the tendrils to linger on the delicate flesh that planed her temple.

What he was doing was dangerously distressing. “How . . . how did you come to Virginia?” His lips nuzzled the black sweep of her brow, and she knew what was coming but could not help herself.

“Governor Dunmore awarded me this parcel for my scouting services with the Virginia Riflemen,” he said.

Without her realizing what was happening her face turned up to that bronzed one so close. He kissed her lingeringly, softly, gently. He tasted her mouth, learning its shape and texture. His lips . . . they were warm . . . and the way they moved over hers ... a pleasant creamy feeling eddied through her. Restlessly her fingers plucked his shirt’s fringe. They itched to tunnel through the thickness of that red hair, to—

“Oh my goodness,” she gasped, drawing back. “What are you doing?”

His lips twitched, but a self-anger played there also. “Thee has never been kissed, mistress?”

She had waited all these years for Terence. For her there had been no man, no kisses, no fondling—not even at St. James’s Court where all manner of licentious intrigue went on behind the royal backs of His Majesty and the queen.

With a panicky need to escape she pushed herself to an unsteady stance. But she just stood looking at the man seated before her, his marred face mirroring wonderment.

She was intensely aware of Ethan from her frazzled carrot curls to the tingling tips of her toes. Her fingers uncertainly touched her lips. She wished he would kiss her again. Not just wished—ached. Ached for the completion of the kiss. She fled the room.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

E
than’s eyes scanned the letter the dispatch rider from Williamsburg had brought that morning. Ostensibly the letter from Massachusetts and Georgia’s agent in London, Benjamin Franklin, was a light, newsy one.

Edmund Burke speaks in Parliament for conciliation with America, but his proposals are turned down. Mrs. Caroline Howard, Lord Howard's sister, has been playing a decisive game of chess with me. Like her brother, she, too, hopes that Great Britain and her American colonies can settle their dispute before events reach a point from which they cannot be reversed
.

Between the lines that were penned in the common yellowish brown ink Ethan knew he would find more important information. Fire, which would bring words written in lime juice or milk to light, would have no effect on Franklin’s in
visible ink. But potassium chloride would work wonders with litmus paper.

Below his bedroom Ethan could hear the thwack and thump of Jane’s loom. Warning enough that she was otherwise occupied. He set to work with the chemical compound, silently cursing when some words did not develop or others washed out. But by the time he finished enough of the secret missive remained for him to forward its major impo
rt on to Dickey Lee in Williamsburg.

The last of the message brought another muttered oath from Ethan.

Intercepted letter to British Secretary of State received from your Lord Dunmore, emphasizing prudent measure should be taken now that the Virginia Colony has raised and trained militia. Dunmore suggests that gunpowder stored in Williamsburg magazine be removed.

Hell and damnation! That explained the man-of-war, the Fowey, that had been reported standing in the York River off Williamsburg.

Ethan slumped back in the chair, his legs stretched out before him, and ran his fingers through his long, thick red hair, mussing the queue’s arrangement. Patrick had been right. He would have to spend more time in Williamsburg, though the fledgling Committee of Correspondence there was not developed to the extent of that in Philadelphia’s or Revere’s in Boston.

From below came again the thump of the batten on the weft of the loom
, reminding him of another problem. His maidservant. The Lady Jane Lennox. Though she was performing her tasks better than he would have expected, and had admirably demonstrated a courage he had not suspected the day Mattaponi and his Powhatans visited, she was still the Lady Jane Lennox. She was not some maid to be tumbled in the hay. And yet that was what was too often on his mind.

She was thinner, wi
th callused hands, strained features. That cool composure she maintained had finally cracked with Mattaponi’s visit. And the cracking had not delighted him as he had expected. Instead, fingers of some curious emotion tightened his heart. He could picture the way she moved—like damned royalty with that proud walk and imperious tilt of her head. But it was her inner fire—that taunting spirit that so annoyed, so distracted him from his daily work. And her chiming laugh—it did strange things to him.

For years he had told himself that if he could not have Susan he would wait to take to wife someone so similar that his loss would be muted. But the Lady Jane Lennox was no pale counterfeit. She and Susan were nothing alike. She could not be a substitution for Susan.

Yet he found himself drawn to this tall, haughty woman . . . found himself watching her as she walked from the well to the kitchen . . . found himself wanting to glimpse the occasional childlike sparkle that peaked through the veil of her damnably thick eyelashes . . . found himself foolishly bending to inhale the fragrance of fall’s wild flowers or to run a finger along the downy cattails she set in vases about his house.

He reminded himself that her station in life was too far above his; that without the luxuries to which she was accustomed she would become miserable and make her husband wretche
d; that she was committed to another man.

Cabin fever was all it was. Obviously what he needed was to take a wife. He was as randy as a pastured bull. Come May and the General Assembly he would give Jane her freedom and rid himself of her. Then he would begin his search in earnest for a woman to take to wife.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
he American espionage network in Boston began as a volunteer group of amateur secret agents. Paul Revere, a silversmith who first set up the American intelligence net, and about thirty others held regular meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern.

This broke the one fundamental rule in all suc
h organizations—that various agents must not know one another. True, all took an oath at every meeting, swearing to reveal their work to no one except John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and one or two others. And true, most of the spies were well-known citizens, established businessmen or tradesmen. But inevitably the personnel changed as a member would have to flee, either from imminent Tory persecution, British confiscation of his home, or because his espionage was exposed by British spies who kept dossiers on such myriad matters as waterfront pubs and dock-side whores.

Ahmad was the most successful of the British spies, for he managed to infiltrate these Boston Sons of Liberty. With his gift for languages, it was easy enough to assume the Yankee dialect. And with his charm for women, it was even easier to convince the middle-aged wife of one of the lesser members of the American espionage network to hire him as a tutor for her two sons. That was how it all started.

The Yankee spy was a grocer named Horgan. Ahmad had readily found the rebel spy’s house, spotting above the door the traditional sign of grocers—three sugar loaves. Horgan was not in that afternoon, but the wife, a little woman in a starched ruffled cap, greeted him cordially. He introduced himself by the name Nathaniel Rand and explained that he was a schoolmaster who left South Carolina to seek employment in Boston.

“Alas,” Horgan’s wife told him briskly, “few are lucky to be employed, what with the British Port Bill and the times being what they are. Best you hie yourself back to the Carolinas, Mr. Rand.”

His eyes locked longingly with hers before his lids lowered shyly. “The colonies farther south do not hold education in such high esteem as you Bostonians.” His palms lifted in a hopeless gesture. “But, as you said, madam, it really is a futile effort, what with the times.”

She hired him.

He lived in an attic room of the house, which reeked of fried fish and boiled cabbage. The two sons, aged eight and ten, were abominable monsters who shared their mother’s prodigious lack of intellect. But Ahmad was able to watch the comings and goings of Horgan.

If, after the rotund little grocer left, the Tory spy’s gaze seemed to dwell with a futile infatuation on the myopic wife—well, naturally, her inn
ate generosity and kindheartedness led her to do what she could for the poor bachelor.

And if at dinner the spy found it difficult to control his patriotic outbursts at the indignity Boston citizens suffered under the rude lobsterbacks, the grocer could w
ell understand. From there it was only a matter of weeks until the Horgans were including the good-looking tutor in their small but close circle of friends.

With his droll wit and vociferous resentment of British tyranny, the lonely tutor found consolation in these Yankee bosoms—and, at last, a hint by the good grocer that he might be better able to help his country than by simply educating the ignorant. The grocer’s sly nudge in the ribs was followed by a mention of the Sons of Liberty, and Ahmad innocently responded with the expected question: “What can I, a mere tutor, do?”

Soon after that, with Horgan’s sponsorship, Ahmad was accepted into that intelligence realm that frequented the Green Dragon Tavern. The leaders of the Sons of Liberty naturally held reservations about all newcomers. But then Ahmad knew that, with patience, he would be welcomed with complete trust; that information could quite often be gleaned from those who let things slip due to sheer self-importance.

He bided his time, sitting for the most part unnoticed in the tavern’s wainscotted back room where a welcome fire blazed against the bitter winter-night cold. Silently he listened to the general discussion among the members of the spy net—the vain
and wealthy merchant, John Hancock; Dr. Joseph Warren, the probable leader of the ring; Samuel Adams, the rabble-rouser whose red cloak was invariably rumpled and spotted and his wig askew. The last was the most dangerous of the American spies, for Adams had the talent to inflame the colonists through his pen, and to distort events without actually lying.

Yet it was the shipper-merchant Hancock the spy found most cunning. Ahmad would not be surprised to learn that Hancock, who had quantities of tea chests stored in one of his many warehouses, had instigated the now famous Boston Tea Party for the sole sake of driving up the price of tea.

It was these three men, Ahmad deemed, whom Gage would be most interested in when the time arrived to permanently crush the rebellion fomenting in Boston. And that would be soon.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
minor annoyance that was just the bud of the deep-growing tap root set off the argument between two people who for the past months had been warily circling one another like fighting bantams.

Jane finished playing the sentimental parlor ballad, “Rural Felicity,” and la
unched into “Tally Ho.” Her fingers flitted like fireflies over the harpsichord’s keyboard, while One-eyed Peter played his fife to simulate the horn fanfares of the Virginia fox hunters. Icabod punctuated the fanfares with a jut of his parrot’s nose, and Josiah, grinning widely, enjoyed the camaraderie of the impromptu gathering.

February’s ice-cold rain had drummed out the day’s work, to the delight of th
e three men who ringed the harpsichord. Ethan, though, was alone in his room—had been ever since that Powhatan, Mattaponi, appeared at the kitchen door that morning, asking in guttural tones Jane barely understood, to see Ethan. After nooning was past, she finally took the opportunity to fondle the keys, and one by one the three men drifted in from the kitchen, drawn by the lilt of the music.