The Turncoat (44 page)

“For heaven’s sake, Hamilton,” Tremayne said, his voice breaking. “She shouldn’t have to see me like this.”

His clothes were in tatters. His hair was snarled and matted about his shoulders. She didn’t care. He was here.

“Had I spared your wife’s sensibilities, my lord,” Hamilton said dryly, “you would be dead. It was she who fired the shot that saved you.”

Tremayne gently disentangled her from his arms, leaned back, and looked into her eyes. “Good God, Kate, what have you been doing while I was gone?”

“Repairing deficiencies in my education.”

He raised an unkempt eyebrow. “Embroidery, watercolors, and marksmanship?”

“Lock picking, trick riding, and marksmanship.”

“She also expressed a keen interest in explosives, but we could not find a suitable tutor,” Hamilton interjected. “And, now, really, I’m afraid we cannot stay. If the marines on the hulks heard two shots rather than the expected one, they may well send a boat to investigate. They will do so presently in any case when the execution detail does not return.”

They rode into the valley that lay west of the Palisades, where Kate, Tremayne, and Hamilton parted ways with the hirelings and followed the road to an inn where Hamilton was known. He requisitioned a bath and a meal and clean clothes for Tremayne, and then all three of them spent an hour closeted in a private room speaking of powder and shot, of mills and waterfalls.

Hamilton rode south with them for another two hours, then turned back. They were well into American territory by then, and dawn was only a few hours off. But husband and wife pressed on, talking the whole night through and into the morning. Of Peter’s mother: “She was never happy at Sancreed. Paris suits her.” Of his cousin: “The king refused to give Sancreed to Bay. I expect the title will go into abeyance, and Bay will go to India.” Of France and his embassy to the French court: “America is very much in fashion now, but only so long as it torments the English. It has always been so. The French will meddle in Scotland and Ireland and America to spite the English.” Of the future: “We cannot rely on foreign nations for arms indefinitely. We must build our own munitions and industries. Hamilton already has a site in mind.”

In turn she told him about John André and Peggy and the planned betrayal of West Point. The new day was half gone when they reached Grey Farm. They climbed the porch, their hands entwined, and crossed the threshold they had not entered together since the day they met.

They sought her father in the parlor, but the house was empty, and they could no longer wait. They kissed with an urgency that did not require bolsters or feather beds, and Kate found herself perched on the wobbling harpsichord, her legs wrapped around her husband, her jacket unlaced and her body alive, alive, alive to him, when the door opened and her father stopped abruptly on the threshold at the sight of them.

Then he nodded, a short sharp gesture that brooked no argument, and said, “Damned harpsichord can’t take the strain. Leg’s always been bad. Take yourselves off upstairs where the furniture’s sturdier.”

And they did. They climbed the stairs together, which still creaked as they had on Tremayne’s first visit to the house. And Kate opened the door to her bedroom and stepped inside.

Her husband lingered in the hall. “I should like to hear you consent to my presence in your bedroom.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And in your life.”

“Yes.”

“And in your heart.”

“Always.”

And he came inside.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Kate Grey is a work of fiction, but the woman who inspired her was real.

On December 2, 1777, Quaker Lydia Barrington Darragh overheard Howe’s officers planning a sneak attack on Washington at Whitemarsh. Lydia put her patriotism ahead of her pacifism—and her safety—and set out from Philadelphia to walk twelve miles through freezing snow to warn the Continentals.

Lydia delivered her message at the risk of her life. Later questioned by John André, she claimed to have been asleep during the meeting. If he hadn’t believed her, she would have hanged.

When the British attacked on December 4, the Americans were ready for them. Four days of skirmishing followed, after which Howe retired to winter quarters in the City of Brotherly Love, and Washington moved his men to Valley Forge and built an army.

Count Donop’s dalliance and disgrace at Mount Holly, as well as his death following the attack on Mercer, occurred as described. The identity of the beguiling Widow of Mount Holly has never been established, although some scholars have suggested she may have been former Quaker Betsy Ross. There is no evidence that Donop ever saw her again.

Graduating from Yale with degrees in classics and art history, Donna Thorland managed architecture and interpretation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem for several years. She then earned an MFA in film production from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. She has been a Disney/ABC Television Writing Fellow and a WGA Writer’s Access Project Honoree, and has written for the TV shows
Cupid
and
Tron: Uprising
. The director of several award-winning short films, her most recent project aired on WNET Channel 13. Her fiction has appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
. Donna is married with one cat and splits her time between Los Angeles and Salem.

CONNECT ONLINE

www.donnathorland.com

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RECOMMENDED READING

Bailyn, Bernard.
Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence
. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Bakeless, John.
Turncoats, Traitors & Heroes
. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Bonk, David.
Trenton and Princeton, 1776–77: Washington Crosses the Delaware.
New York: Osprey Publishing, 2009.

Brown, Jared.
The Theatre in America During the Revolution
. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Clement, Justin.
Philadelphia 1777: Taking the Capital.
New York: Osprey Publishing, 2007.

Dwyer, William M.
The Day Is Ours!: An Inside View of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, November 1776–January 1777
. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Fischer, David Hackett.
Washington’s Crossing
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hatch, Robert McConnell.
Major John André: A Gallant in Spy’s Clothing.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986.

Hibbert, Christopher.
Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

Jackson, John W.
With the British Army in Philadelphia, 1777–1778.
San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1979.

Lancaster, Bruce.
The American Revolution
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Langguth, A. J.
Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

Lyons, Clare A.
Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

May, Robin.
The British Army in North America 1775–1783
. New York: Osprey Publishing, 1998.

McGuire, Thomas J.
The Philadelphia Campaign.
Vol. 1,
Brandywine and the Fall of Philadelphia.
Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006.

———.
The Philadelphia Campaign.
Vol. 2,
Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge.
Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007.

Middlekauff, Robert.
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Mollo, John.
Uniforms of the American Revolution in Color
. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1991.

Norton, Mary Beth.
Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Nylander, Jane C.
Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760–1860
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

Paine, Thomas.
Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Palmer, Dave R.
George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots.
Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006.

Reid, Stuart.
Redcoat Officer: 1740–1815
. New York: Osprey Publishing, 2002.

Scull, Gideon Delaplaine.
The Montresor Journals
. New York: New York Historical Society, 1882.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley.
The Rivals
. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1893.

Smith, Billy Gordon.
Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Period.
University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995.

Wister, Sally.
Sally Wister’s Journal
. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1995.

Zlatich, Marko.
General Washington’s Army (1): 1775–1778
. New York: Osprey Publishing, 1994.

READERS GUIDE

the

Turncoat

RENEGADES
OF THE
REVOLUTION

DONNA THORLAND

READERS GUIDE

READERS GUIDE

A CONVERSATION WITH DONNA THORLAND

Q. So few writers these days set their work during the American Revolution. Why do you think that is?

A. Contemporary scholarship has added a great deal to our understanding of the period, but it has also added a layer of distance. We’ve forgotten that revolutions are led by daring men and women—not demographics or economic trends.

Q. What appeals to you about this period of American history, and why did you choose to focus on the British occupation of Philadelphia?

A. Howe’s officers attempted to re-create decadent Georgian London in conservative Quaker Philadelphia. It was a clash of cultures from the start.

In London, this was the era of the Hellfire Club (which Franklin attended) and public figures such as John Montagu, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who had as many as nine children with his opera-singer mistress. Sex and the Georgian theater went hand in hand. Wealthy men chose their mistresses from its stages, and those with less coin from the streets outside.