The Tory Widow (42 page)

Mrs. Loring snapped her fan open, angry blue eyes a-dart. Many players abandoned the table in disgust. Cunningham slipped the jack from the box and revealed the winning card—the nine of diamonds, a card no one had wagered upon. A very profitable round for the banker.

“We didn't win.” Anne put on a pretty pout and flipped open her fan.

“Ah, but we didn't lose either”—Blankenship gave her a little squeeze—“and we live to wager on.”

“Punters place your bets!” Cunningham called.

The dragoons decided the time was ripe to move their checks to the jack. When the provost revealed another jack as the losing card, Edward and Stuart watched the last of their checks swept into the burgeoning bank.

Anne fluttered her fan. “I warned you both—jacks bring bad luck.”

The three of them left the faro table and found a very tipsy Wemyss stationed in close proximity to the punch bowl.

“You are wise, Mr. Wemyss, to avoid games of chance.” Not having much tolerance for hard spirits, Anne refused the cup of punch he offered.

“You give Wemyss more credit than he deserves,” Blankenship said, gulping down the iced blend of lime juice, sugar and rum.

“Aye.” Stuart gave his mate a shove. “Wemyss
loves
faro.”

“Oh, I
do
so love to play, Mrs. Merrick,” Wemyss asserted, wavering on his feet. He'd slicked his hair back into a disciplined queue with a healthy dollop of pomatum, but a few defiant curls had sprung free to frame his plump, ruddy face. “But the provost marshall banks his game with funds earned from the inhumane policies he's instituted, and I, for one, will not gamble with carrion who feed off the misery of starving soldiers.”

Anne was not shocked by what tenderhearted Wemyss said, for the provost's inhumane policies were no secret, but she was surprised to hear the lieutenant proclaim his principled stand aloud, among such company.

“
Wheesht
. . .” Stuart gave his friend a poke. “Keep your voice down, ninny.”

“That bastard is starving soldiers to death, Stuart . . .”

“They are rebels, Wemyss,” Blankenship reminded. “Enemy soldiers.”

“Soldiers nonetheless.” Wemyss belched—as drunk as Anne had ever seen him—his voice increasing in volume. “There are standards of conduct we must abide by, even when at war. By turning a blind eye, and condoning prisoner abuse, General Howe invites the rebels to treat our poor captured lads in a like manner.”

Captain Blankenship grabbed Wemyss firm by the shoulder. “Mind your tongue and tone, Lieutenant,” he warned. “General Howe has higher priorities than the disposition of treasonous rebel prisoners.”

Wemyss jerked away. “What a load of old bollocks, Edward! You know as well as I, Howe's priorities are determined by the swing of his cock.” He turned to Anne, with an ungainly bow. “Please excuse my strong language, madam. Passion and punch rule the tongue.”

“We'd better get him out of here.” Blankenship grabbed Wemyss by one arm.

Stuart grabbed the other. “Aye, afore he begins to singing.”

Anne scurried after the dragoons as they rushed their drunken friend out the door onto Broad Way, and as predicted, Wemyss began singing one of the clever ditties making the rounds at the top of his lungs:

“Shhh . . . softly, Wemyss, lest you disturb our neighbors,” Blankenship cajoled. Wemyss cooperated with his captain by singing the second stanza in a loud whisper.

They skirted the Bowling Green and turned onto Whitehall, stopping once to allow Wemyss a piss in a doorway.

Anne opened the front door with her key. The candle Sally had left burning in a dish on the newel post had burned down to a stubby inch. Anne led the way, lighting the three dragoons up the stairs. Edward and Stuart deposited Wemyss with an
oof
onto the bed in Jemmy's old room. She lit the lamp on the bedside table. Stuart loosened his drunken friend's neckstock and tugged his boots off, while Wemyss declaimed to the ceiling:

“Stuart will see to Wemyss.” Edward took Anne by the hand. “I will see you to your door, Mrs. Merrick.”

 

 

 

JACK stood on the pitched kitchenhouse roof, careful to maintain his precarious footing on the clay roof tiles. Swinging the grappling hook over his head in three whooshing arcs, he released it to land with a satisfying thunk, right on target. He gave the rope a good hard jerk to seat the iron tines firm into the wooden sill, and kicked off—flying across the ten-foot span—feet and legs extended to absorb the brunt of the collision when man met wall.

Arm over arm, boot soles braced to the brick, Jack climbed several yards to the garret window. Giving the shutters a gentle shove, relieved to find them unlatched, he hoisted himself up over the sill, and slipped inside, quiet as a church mouse.

Squeezing between an upholstered chair and a cluttered secretary, Jack was careful to keep from banging his noggin on the low-sloping ceilings, winding a path on soft foot past an open clothing chest, its gaping jaw regurgitating mounds of silk and lace.

Taking a seat on the bed in the corner, Jack heaved a sigh, drumming fingers on his knees.
Biding my time in Anne Merrick's bedchamber—accessed with stealth via upper-story window.
“Oh, but you are indeed a sorely afflicted bastard,” he muttered.

Jack fell back on the mattress. Swinging his legs up, he folded his hands behind his head, and crossed his ankles. The garret room felt close, crowded and messy—very different from the spacious, neat bedchamber the widow had kept on the second floor. He bolted upright and snatched the bed pillow, scrunching it to his face.
Anne's, for certain.

Satisfied he'd trespassed into the correct room, Jack put the pillow aside and began sorting through the items on the crowded bedside table. He tidied a strewn mess of T-shaped pins, gathering them into a shallow pewter dish. While making a halfhearted attempt to drag Anne's boar bristle brush through his hair, he opened the copy of
Gulliver's Travels
to the page marked with a length of silk ribbon, but it was too dark to discern her place in the story. A small lacquered box caught his eye, and Jack flipped opened the lid.

“Most precious,” she called it . . .
Jack held the gold and pearl memento containing a lock of Jemmy's hair up to the starlight.
Nearly lost to thieves,
Jack thought, careful to put the brooch back exactly as he had found it.

A year and a half ago, he had followed the widow into the alley near the sugarhouse, quite certain of her Tory sympathies. He hoped with all his heart the Loyalism she exhibited of late was of the same ilk—a pretense—a ruse adopted in order to survive in a world turned upside down.
Be a Tory
, he had told her, and he could not fault Anne Merrick for taking his advice.

A cool breeze blew in off the bay, refreshing the stuffy room. In his delight gaining entry with such ease, not only had he left the shutters ajar, he'd left his climbing gear suspended from the open window for the world to see. Tully would have delivered a well-deserved cuff to the head to anyone on his crew exhibiting such amateur ineptitude.

The way in is the way out.
Jack pried the hook from the sill and drew the rope in, using his forearm as a windlass to form a neat coil. Piling his climbing apparatus convenient to the window, Jack spied a stack of familiar, paper-wrapped packages, sitting on the floor near the secretary.

Four reams of foolscap—two thousand sheets.
An awful lot of paper for personal correspondence—the widow must be accumulating stock for the printing business she meant to rejuvenate. Shoving aside the sundry rouge pots, patch boxes and scent bottles cluttering the surface, Jack set a ream of paper on the desk, knocking a reel of ribbon to the floor.

The ribbon careened away, unspooling. Jack followed the inch-wide trail, retrieved the spent reel and set to rewinding the grosgrain ribbon—the sort of ribbon women used to secure their stockings, or to bind a package. Jack glanced back at the ream of paper he'd set on the desk.

A loud thud issued from the lower story—followed in an instant by manic barking. Jack shoved the ribbon inside his shirtfront. In three long strides, he was at the door, cracking it open, peering out into the dark hallway.

Bandit barked and scratched from behind the door across the hall as hard-soled boots clomped up stair treads, and laughter accompanied by a man's voice rising in song was shushed into silence. The bolt on the door across the hall slid back, and pale Sally emerged in her ghostly shift, moving like a frazzle-headed banshee to peer down the stair, Bandit writhing in her arms.

“
Sha
—ye can see, hellion—it's only Annie and her lobster backs returned.” Bandit calmed and ceased his yapping. Sally scuttled back to her room, rebolting the lock.

The garret stairs squeaked and creaked with climbers, and like daylight breaking, an ascending light brightened the hallway. Captain Blankenship appeared at the top of the stair holding a candledish aloft, lighting the way for Anne, whose hands were busy managing voluminous skirts as she climbed the steep and narrow staircase.

Jack nudged the door, widening his view by a fraction. Dressed in the most drab grays and browns, with her hair pulled back into a utilitarian knot, Anne Merrick was a beautiful woman. Wearing a gown of cornflower blue silk, matching her eyes exact, with her chestnut curls pinned up to leave two locks trailing over her pale shoulder, Anne Merrick was stunning. She and the British dragoon in his splendid regimentals made for a very attractive couple.

Blankenship stepped forward and planted a rather stiff and sedate kiss on her lips, which Anne seemed to accept as a matter of course. Jack fought an overwhelming urge to charge out with a roar and send the golden-haired captain tumbling down the steep staircase. The thought of whisking Anne into his arms and pledging undying love to the tune of the dragoon's skull bone
thud-thud-thudding
on the treads brought a smile to his face.

Anne reached for the doorknob. “Thank you, Edward, for another lovely evening . . .”

Handing her the candle, Blankenship took her free hand and held it to his heart. In a provocative tone he recited,

Blankenship brought Anne's fingertips to his lips. “Let me share your bed tonight . . .”

Fucking poetry . . .
Jack drew the dagger he kept in his left boot.

Before Anne could reply, the bolt to Sally's door clacked open. Anne broke away from her suitor, awkward and flustered. Bandit rushed out, barking and leaping at the dragoon, with Sally not far behind, brandishing the fireplace poker in a two-fisted grip. “Blackguards!”

“Sally! No!” Anne cried.

“Megstie Me!” Sally lowered her weapon. “I mistook yiz fer rovers . . .”

Blankenship kicked at the dog growling at his heels. “Your Scots she-devil and her minion require tethering.”

“Shush, puppy. The captain means us no harm.” Anne scooped up Bandit, and gave him a kiss. “You must forgive Sally. Her imagination tends to run wild when she's left overlong to her own devices.”

Sally stood swaying, toying with the poker, an evil smile on her impish face. “I apologize, Captain, if I frightened ye.”

Blankenship shot Sally a look that would freeze water.

“As to your request . . .” Anne gave her captain a little shove toward the stair with a covertly whispered, “Soon, Edward . . .”

“I bid you good night, then, Mrs. Merrick.” Mollified somewhat by Anne's whispered assurance, the dragoon smiled, bowed and retreated down the stairs.

Cocksucker . . . look at him—grinning like a cat with a cream-flavored arsehole . . .
Dagger in hand, Jack 's fingers tightened to the haft, sorely tempted to bury the blade between Blankenship's retreating shoulder blades.

Anne plopped Bandit into Sally's arms.

“Did ye have a fruitful evening, Annie? Was it worth the effort?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Anne nodded. “Correspondence in the morning . . .”

“I'll ready the petticoats.”

“Good night, Sal.”

“Sweet dreams, Annie.”

Soon, Edward.
Two words from Anne Merrick's smiling lips hit him like a cannon shot to the chest. Moving with the swing of the door as Anne entered her room, he fell back and hunkered down against the knee wall, hiding in deep shadows.

As he was loath to have the widow privy to what a pathetic fool he had proven himself to be, he was forced to hunch like a rat in the corner until the treacherous hydra snuffed out the light and fell asleep—this final humiliation a cruel afterclap to his entire misadventure. Jack returned his dagger to his boot, wishing he could turn the blade on his heart and eviscerate the awful pain lodged there.
Anne Merrick might not be a Tory, but she was a whore for certain.

He settled in to wait for a chance to sneak away, dropping into an uncomfortable crouch onto something hard and lumpy digging into his seat. Slow and careful, Jack extracted the annoyance—Anne's half of the little crown token he'd given her, all tangled in a length of silk ribbon, forgotten and discarded in the corner like the rubbish it was.