The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (42 page)

***

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 room 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."