The Turncoat (24 page)

He searched the rest of the magazine thoroughly, but found nothing else. Then he withdrew to the corner farthest from the water.

He had no way of marking the time, but he judged that a day passed before the door opened. He was blinded, as he knew he would be, by the lantern, and by the time he was able to see clearly, his guards were gone. He’d seen enough, though. They were smart enough to open the door and shine the light in first, then one man entered and covered him with a rifle while the other set something down on the ground.

They’d brought him a tin bowl of some kind of gruel. He ate it, licking the bowl clean like an animal because he knew that water was vital and he must not drink the stuff pooling in the darkness unless it was his only choice. On a single ration of gruel, he would grow weaker every day. If he were to escape, it must be now, before the cold and hunger sapped his strength.

When they returned the next day he was waiting behind the door. He had spent the past twenty-four hours learning every inch of the space just inside the entrance, and now he made good use of his knowledge. He hammered his fist into the kidney of the man with the lantern, and brained the rifleman with a broken brick. He made it as far as the guardhouse, where the shift was changing. There were six men on duty, and they took their time beating him. When they dragged him back to the magazine they took his boots, his shirt, and his coat.

After that he lost track of the days, slipping in and out of consciousness, trying to keep as much of his bruised body off the cold stone floor as possible. When he was lucid once more, he began to hear the shelling. It was like a distant thunder that rose and fell in volume, but never stopped. Not an attack on Mercer, then. It had to be Howe bombarding Mifflin, across the Delaware, on the Philadelphia side. And for the sound of it to reach him here, on the other side of the water, behind such thick walls, Howe must be blasting the fort from all sides.

Listening to the roll and report of the ordnance, Tremayne knew it would be only a matter of time before Mifflin fell. Nothing could hold up under that kind of fire. And then Howe would turn his full attention on this garrison and it would fall as well. Colonel Greene was a competent commander and a realist, and must know by now that the fort’s days were numbered, so Tremayne was not surprised when the door opened, three days after the bombardment started, and he was dragged from his cell. It only remained to be seen whether Greene was going to release him or shoot him.

Twelve

Philadelphia, November 26, 1777

“Where do you go to do it?” Peggy Shippen sat in front of her dressing table, admiring her freshly coiffed hair. It was teased up and plumped with wool padding, and framed by golden ringlets that perfectly matched Peggy’s own. The style towered atop her head like an over-risen loaf.

“Do
what
?” Kate asked, stifling her impulse to tell Peggy what she thought of her hair. Elaborate, chandelier-scraping styles were all the rage in London, of course, and Philadelphia’s Tory daughters strove to outdo one another in their Englishness.

“It,”
Peggy Shippen hissed, her coiffure wobbling dangerously. “John André says you and Bayard Caide can’t be going to the theater anymore because the players rehearse there during the day.”

Sometimes Kate forgot how young Peggy was, but in the sunlight streaming in the window, without cosmetics, it was plain that she was still a child, barely eighteen, and trapped in a prolonged adolescence by wealth and comfort. The reminder of her connection to the calculating Captain André was more poignant still.

“We don’t do
it
, Peggy, and even if we did I’d hardly go advertising the address for our trysts in the
Gazette
.”

“No one believes that,” insisted Peggy. “Everyone says Sir Bayard is debauched and that you must be as well, no matter how demure you act in public.”

Kate decided it was fruitless to argue. Better that the world thought she was already sleeping with her fiancé. No one would believe the truth: that since his initial seduction at the playhouse, he had not touched her. He treated her with an uncharacteristic delicacy, a reserve that spoke of passion under heavy rein.

Bay’s urgent desire to marry her, thankfully, had passed with the fall of Forts Mifflin and Mercer. After Donop’s failed attack in late October, Howe had concentrated all his guns on nearby Mifflin. The bombardment lasted nearly a month and reduced Mifflin to a heap of indefensible rubble. But the Rebel garrison still did not surrender. The wily Americans had infuriated Howe by abandoning the fort in the dead of night and slipping away across the river to Mercer. When Howe turned his attention there, the Rebels spiked the guns and blew up the magazine, leaving Howe nothing but a wrecked shell.

And control of the river. With the Rebel guns at Mercer and Mifflin silenced, there was nothing to stop Howe’s brother, the admiral, from clearing the chevaux-de-frise from the river and warping his frigates through. With the city firmly in British hands for the winter, no doubt Caide felt more certain of her.

Peter Tremayne had been right. Her espionage had not prevented the taking of the forts and the river—it had only delayed it. She should have prayed for Mercer to hold out. She’d sacrificed her safe, respectable future in Orchard Valley to keep the river American and drive the British out. But when the navy guns announced their presence in the river, when the
Cerberus
and the
Roebuck
fired their salute, rattling her windows and waking her from an uneasy sleep, she’d wept with relief. She would not have to marry Caide. And Peter Tremayne would be free. She only hoped he would go home to England, away from her and all the trouble she had brought him.

“And no one imagines,” Peggy prompted, “that Sir Bayard is a man who would long be content with kisses.”

Of course they didn’t. Few people understood Bayard Caide. And just as well, Kate thought. Admitting to corruption was clearly the only way to end this conversation. “Then thank goodness I’m engaged. Otherwise I would be quite ruined.”

“Not if you took precautions,” Peggy suggested carefully.

Kate suppressed a sigh. “What are you planning, Peggy?”

“Captain André and I have an understanding,” she said, blushing.

No doubt André wished her to think so. If only Kate knew what purpose the spymaster had in mind for Peggy. If only she could keep the girl away from him. It occurred to her that André was handling Peggy the way the Widow handled Kate. The only difference was in their respective levels of awareness. Kate understood the danger she was in.

“Is this an understanding you would be willing to tell your father about?”

“Yes, of course, but John and I agree it’s best to wait until after his promotion to tell my father. Only I’m tired of waiting. Tell me what to do so I won’t get pregnant.”

Kate did not, herself, have any practical experience in the matter. What she did have was a small wooden box with an assortment of sea sponges, left for her by Angela Ferrers in their agreed-upon drop spot, since they no longer dared meet in person. She could not possibly give one to Peggy. André would know where they had come from.

And while André had admitted that he preferred lovers of his own sex, Kate suspected he was quite worldly when it came to women. Espionage, she was coming to learn, was a study of the human condition. André was unlikely to leave such a fundamental experience untried. Still, she could think of no reason he would want to compromise Peggy, so she asked, “Is this your idea, or his?”

Peggy bristled. “He is too much a gentleman to broach the matter.”

“And Caide is too much of an aristocrat to leave me unbroached?” Peggy goggled at her crudeness, but Kate plunged on. “If you are planning to become his lover, then discuss the matter with him.” Then she added, with genuine concern, “But Peggy, you would be better off not to—at least not without some formal promise from him. You might be left disappointed, or worse.”

She had been lectured, in occasionally shocking and often humorous detail, on the perils of intercourse. Angela Ferrers had tutored her in all the means available to prevent pregnancy and disease. Unfortunately for Peggy Shippen, the Widow had no recipe against heartbreak.

Which was a pity, because when Kate returned home to the Valby mansion that afternoon, Peter Tremayne was waiting for her in the parlor.

*   *   *

T
remayne had seen very little of the Valby house on his last visit. He remembered only a darkened hallway, an impression of grandeur about the double staircase, and shadowed swaths of drapery. The parlor he was shown into today was elegant and modern, if somewhat provincial in scale and ornament. The faux Titian over the fireplace gave away Kate’s equally false aunt and uncle for what they were: merchants with pretensions. Exactly the sort of people who shouldn’t be swept up in a revolution. The Indian cotton, Turkish carpets, and Chinese wallpaper said it plainly: they’d done well under the present regime. They had too much to lose. Like Kate and her father. Coming on the heels of Donop’s disastrous assault on Fort Mercer and Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, it was worrying. A people who would not be cowed easily. Another Ireland waiting to happen.

Tremayne was so busy studying the room, lost in his own thoughts and misgivings, that he did not hear the door open. He had dreamed of Kate, in the cold dark of the powder magazine. Not the sophisticated coquette in silk he’d encountered at Germantown, but the farm girl from Orchard Valley whose cotton skirts carried the kitchen scents of nutmeg and vanilla.

Today she was everything clean and soft and domestic that he had longed for. Kate wore a striped polonaise in blue and cream sateen. The color set off her coffee eyes and chestnut hair; the pattern emphasized the neat curves of her body. The irony of a real country girl dressed as an aristocrat’s notion of a milkmaid was not lost on Tremayne, but he discovered then that his imagination lagged behind the reality. Kate now belonged to neither world, had transcended her rural upbringing and Angela Ferrers’ tutelage to become something entirely original.

She closed the door gently behind her and they were alone.

He had had a month to rehearse speeches for her: in the cold dark of Mercer; in the guardroom, where they allowed him to wash and dress, with the imperturbable Sergeant Bachmann assisting him, as the Rebels spiked their guns and prepared to abandon the fort; on the road home to Philadelphia, where the countryside had smelled of wood smoke and apples instead of gunpowder, mold, and rotting flesh. And now he was speechless.

He smelled her perfume: citrus and spice and vanilla, like a Christmas pastry. He remembered the feel of her fevered body, as she thrashed in the grip of the opium and he held her close on the bed upstairs. At the time, protectiveness had swamped lust, but now the memory came back to him colored with desire.

“Thank you,” she said, taking another tempting step closer to him, “for saving my life. It’s long overdue, but I am more grateful than I can say.” Her eyes lingered on his scar, still livid across his cheek, but there was no pity or horror in her expression.

It was his cue. He could take her in his arms now and taste her mouth, run his hands over her supple body, whisper all the things he planned for them in her ear. He reached for her, but she sidestepped him.

“But you must leave. And we cannot meet again.” The words left her mouth in a rush.

“Why the hell not?” The first thing he had said to Kate in a month’s time. And the very last thing on earth he could have imagined saying to her after weeks of captivity and deprivation. He’d come expecting gratitude. Sweet words, soft, yielding flesh, and ultimately, her carnal surrender. Not a curt dismissal. “Madame, the warmth of your welcome leaves something to be desired. I rather thought you were partial to me.”

“You know I am. And so far my partiality has gotten you court-martialed, lost you your command, and sent you into an ambush. Imagine the consequences if I loved you.” The last was said in a throaty voice that made his cock stir. He could imagine a great deal. He was about to tell her so in more than words when she slipped past him to the window. “Captain André has me watched. He will know you were here. You must leave now. A short visit from my fiancé’s cousin will arouse suspicion in no one but those who already know what I am. A long one will tempt André to scheme.”