“To keep your nose out of our plans.”
“What plans?” So it was exactly as Phillip feared. The Tarletons were colluding with the English navy, providing them information. That’s why Graham had befriended Christopher, a talented mapmaker, in the first place.
He laughed. “Your brother should have stopped snooping around my maps and he’d be fine, too. Too bad you two don’t know what’s for your own good.”
“You’re making no sense.” Could she convince him she knew nothing?
“I’ll have to deal with Christopher, too.”
She shivered at the evil in his voice but Martha had to stay strong. “Just get me out of here and help me with the horse.”
“Oh, I shall help.” He reached into his pocket and lazily began pouring powder into his pistol, light filtering through the woods to illuminate its silvery shaft. “Too bad my horse will have spooked when I put your horse down.”
“No!” Martha patted Galileo’s head, her hand shaking.
“A shame I’ll miss him and shoot you. All’s fair in love and war and all that nonsense, you know…”
“What?” She gasped and slumped back down, her brother’s horse’s breaths coming more slowly now even as hers increased.
So this was to be it? Dear God, help Johnny. Help them know the truth, Lord. And protect our country from Graham and other men like him who would return our free land to the British. And Lord, please protect Phillip’s heart.
A large, heavily-muscled, black gelding cantered into the woods, spitting dirt behind its hooves. Thank God. Phillip on Othello. Graham’s horse reared, his gun falling to the ground as he was thrown. His horse came down on his chest and Graham cried out in pain.
What Phillip had just witnessed shredded years from his life. The woman he loved, in a pit with her brother’s horse shuddering beneath her. Tarleton standing over her loading a gun.
After dismounting, he tied the horse off and retrieved his pistol, lest Tarleton was feigning injury. The sorrel trotted off. Did his owner lay dying? Phillip ran first to Martha and pulled her up into his arms. Her hair fell from beneath her cap.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” Tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know.”
He pressed Martha close to him and kissed the top of her head. Curls freed from where pins had come loose. “Thank God he didn’t…”
Martha pulled away and glanced toward Tarleton. Phillip took in the odd angle of the man’s neck and knew he’d not survived. Martha shuddered out a sigh and began to weep.
Patting her back, Phillip’s concerns of war boiled down to one individual he most wanted to protect forever—the woman he now held in his arms.
“You frightened me half to death. Don’t ever do that again!” He held her close against his beating heart as he whispered into her ear, “I love you, Martha.”
She pulled free and looked up at him. Slowly, he lowered his head, but she grasped his neck and pulled him closer, her tears wetting his cheeks as they deepened the kiss. She smelled of sunshine and verdant fields, her hair of faint rosewater and the salt of perspiration. Her lips tasted of the sweetest tea and finest Demerara sugar. Her curves, obviously restrained and bound, were nonetheless obvious to him as he clutched her closer. Oh sweet heavens, she must become his wife. He pulled back and tucked her head beneath his chin, rubbing her back as his heart tried to pound its way out of his chest. He must restrain himself. And although Tarleton had been a wicked man, his death must be reported.
“I’m taking you home,” Phillip whispered into her ear as he lifted Martha up beside him on Othello.
They’d almost reached his home when she collapsed, slumping into him.
Chapter 11
Phillip paced the corridor outside Martha’s sick room, where Dr. Shield examined her.
Maman’s dusky rose perfume accompanied her as she took his arm. “Go sit.”
“I feel better standing.” Not that anything made him feel better.
“Stephen will take good care of your Martha.”
His Martha. He loved the sound of it. But had he compromised her health, her very life, by not stopping her from racing with those young men to the steeple?
The French blue-paneled door opened as the surgeon exited the room.
Phillip clenched his fists. “Shall she make a full recovery?”
Maman pressed her fingers to her lips.
“She’s suffered some injuries.” Stephen crossed his arms. “But I expect a week or two abed will bring recovery.”
“Praise God!” His mother uttered the words Phillip couldn’t seem to manage.
He sank onto the chair. “Thank you.” Thank you, God.
His friend nodded. “I’m going to get her brother and bring him to you.”
Phillip raised his head. “Is it true then? Has her father gone?”
“Yes, but let’s not discuss that here.”
“Later,” Phillip mouthed.
Maman took Stephen’s hand. “You’ve had a busy day.”
“But with a happy ending, praise God.”
“Come let’s get some refreshments.” She turned to Phillip. “I’ll bring you and your fiancée some tea in a bit. We have much to plan.”
Looking into her glittering eyes, Phillip knew his mother was already setting into motion a wedding over which he and Martha would have little control. Despite the gravity of the situation, he almost laughed.
After they left, Phillip slipped into the room. Martha had a right to know everything. But was now the time to tell her?
Taking one glance at her wan face, eyes closed shut in sleep, Phillip sank into the padded boudoir chair beside the bed. Lord, who are we really in Christ? Who did You make us to be? Restore Martha to complete health. Don’t let the sins of the father or, in this case, stepmother, be visited any further upon her. Show us your will in our lives—together. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
When he opened his eyes, Martha looked up at him. “Did you know I thought you were my angel?”
“What?” He knelt by the bed and took her hand between his own.
She gave a faint laugh but then closed her eyes in pain. “I prayed for help. And you came to the baker’s shop.”
“I’m glad God sent me. I had no idea of His plans for me.” He pressed a kiss to her hand and heard her soft intake of breath.
“We’re to be wed?” Martha’s words slurred. Perhaps the physician had given her some laudanum.
“If you’ll have me.”
“I heard your mother…” Her words trailed off and her eyes closed again.
He rose and sat back in the uncomfortable chair, still holding her hand.
The door creaked open and Father eased in, holding a silver tray with two cups and saucers and a teapot. He set them down on a tea table in front of the window and poured into one of Mother’s blue and white Limoges china teacups, reserved for special occasions.
“Have you told her, Son?” Father passed the cup of steaming gunpowder tea to Phillip.
He took the tea. “If you mean about Letitia, no, nor really about the rest.”
Huffing out a sigh, Father lowered himself into a straight back chair by the table. “I’m afraid there is more.”
“I think she’s asleep. Do you want to tell me?”
“Best done before the boy arrives. You see, his mother is believed dead.”
“Letitia?” He’d heard she was reported missing. That American spies in England could no longer track her. “Dead?”
“Yes. We have it on good authority that she and her daughter departed from her parents’ estate in Kent and traveled to her lover’s estate in Devon, yet she never arrived.”
Phillip’s head began to pound. “Poor Johnny.”
“Yes.” Father poured himself some tea in the cup intended for Martha. “’Tis better than witnessing his mother hung for being a spy, don’t you think?”
So Letitia was indeed a British spy. “And the lad?”
“As
we believed. Osborne is not his father.”
“Yet Stephen said Professor Osborne has left for England.”
“Some men think with their hearts rather than their heads.”
“Or have neither.” Phillip shouldn’t speak with such scorn of his future father-in-law, but what in the world was the man doing?
“If my beautiful wife and my daughter were missing, I’d want to know what happened.” Father gazed at Martha in paternal admiration. “Yet, unbeknownst to him, he almost lost another daughter.”
Both Phillip and his father exhaled a sigh. “It will be hard keeping Martha at rest.”
“Especially once her brother arrives at the house.”
“The admiral will never lay hands on Johnny to claim him,” Phillip ground out. “He may have fathered him, but…”
Father’s shocked expression bespoke his agreement.
“And Professor Osborne…”
“Don’t blame the professor too much. I’ve heard his in-laws, despite their lofty aristocratic status, sent a lengthy missive demanding that he come help find their daughter and granddaughter.”
“Is that so?”
“Young Osborne and his elder brother will both benefit from your counsel, Phillip.”
“Christopher is now on his own.”
“At least Dr. Shield assures us that Christopher’s illness is a malady brought on by anxiety and not a disease.”
“Now that this race has ended and his maps have been recovered…”
“And Tarleton dead.”
“What a sad waste.”
The bed creaked as Martha raised her head from the pillow. Her eyelids briefly fluttered and then her head fell back. Phillip rose and pressed a hand to her brow, then felt for a heartbeat. Thankfully, it thrummed strong beneath his fingers.
“Let’s take this conversation downstairs, Father.”
“I’ll send your mother in to sit with her.”
The bedchamber door opened, revealing Maman.
“You men, shoo!” Maman fluttered her hands at them as though they were pigeons come too close to the house and disturbing the yellow finches she so loved to feed.
“Going.” Father planted a brusque kiss on her cheek.
She offered the other cheek to Phillip to kiss as he passed by. If he had a marriage half as good as his parents’ had been, he’d be a blessed man.
Martha awoke with a crushing headache and pain in her sides, which were tightly wrapped with cotton strips. The pungent odor of liniment permeated the air. Beneath her, the mattress was firm rather than soft as her bed was at home. When she opened her eyes, there was Johnny, playing with toy soldiers on a window bench seat.
“Johnny?” Her voice sounded breathless.
“Marty!” He ran toward the bed but then skidded to a halt. “Mr. Phillip said not to hug you. But I can give you a kiss, can’t I?”
Tears pooled in her eyes as her little brother pressed a feather-light kiss to her cheek.
A dark-skinned young woman came into the room, her bright coral headwrap accentuating the colors in her unusual gown of striped cotton. This was no slave. “I’m here to help you get up and take care of your needs.” She cast a glance at Johnny.
Martha understood. “Yes. Thank you.” She needed to be cleaned up.
But her brother didn’t move.
“Johnny, do you know where to find Mr. Phillip?”
“Um hum.” He glanced between her and the servant.
“We gonna get your sister ready, in case she wanta get up and wander these big hallways upstairs and see all the pretty pictures we have.” The woman bent, placing her hands above her knees, her voice soothing.
Martha eased up onto her elbows. “Run down to see Mr. Phillip, then, all right?”
“All right.”
“Your brother Christopher will be arriving soon.”
“Huzzah!” Johnny ran out.
When the door slammed behind him, Martha flinched.
The servant sighed and latched the door. “For privacy, Missy. Now, you let me help you.”
“Thank you.”
“Your horse is fine. My man tells me your Galileo gonna run again one day.”
Tears streamed down Martha’s cheeks.
The woman sat beside her on the bed and began to brush out Martha’s hair. “You and Johnny gonna love livin’ here, Missy. Don’t you worry any.”
She’d not left this bedroom, but Martha had heard stories of the grand estate.
Setting the brush down, the servant revealed her even white teeth. “Master Phillip is a good man. You’re a lucky woman.”
“I’m blessed.”
“Not my place to say, but Master George’s wife, she make a big mistake when she pass up Mr. Phillip. Now look what happenin’.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Phillip gonna have this big ol’ place, not Mr. George.”
Father poured himself a crystal snifter of brandy. “Now that you are marrying, your mother and I wish to make a few things clear to you.”
Phillip turned from the bank of mullioned windows overlooking the glittering water of the York River. “Such as?”
“This home and half the acreage will be yours.”
“Not George’s?” And Andrée’s?
Father’s silver head bobbed. “George has already received his inheritance—that of the land, the academy, and his home.”
“And he understands this?” Phillip didn’t need his brother despising him over worldly goods.
“Yes.” Father’s clipped word brooked no room for an argument.
“Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“The horses on the farm are all owned by you anyway, Son. They bring a great deal of income to the maintaining of this property.”
Phillip ducked his chin. He’d never complained about helping. He did, after all, use the stables and the land, as well as dwelt in the house. And these were his parents. “I didn’t expect you to leave me the plantation, though.”
“With the militia making their headquarters here soon, who knows what the place will look like in a few years.”
They both gave a curt laugh. “But we’d be protected.”
Phillip squinted to look out the window and count the masts on the vessel approaching the wharf. “I wonder how much information Tarleton fed to the Admiralty.”
“Young Osborne didn’t realize his so-called friend was giving British naval intelligence his maps with detailed information about the rivers and waterways. He won’t face any reprimands from the Commonwealth, especially since there is no war.”
“Not yet.” Phillip swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat.
The schooner approached the wharf and their men rushed to secure the vessel. Christopher Osborne had been betrayed by his former best friend, now dead. His stepmother and half-sister were missing. And his father had left the college for England.
At least Martha had Phillip and his family. They’d offer the same to her brothers. Phillip straightened his jacket and strode out to greet his future brother-in-law.
He’d let go of his past. Andrée wasn’t the woman God had planned for him. Martha and her brothers would be under his protection now—right where they were meant to be. And despite the extra burden suddenly Phillip’s soul felt lighter than ever. He was free to claim a new life. Who knew where God would take them all?
Epilogue
“Virginia in spring is a fine sight indeed.” Mrs. Paulson pressed a bouquet of forsythia, dogwood blossoms, and early roses into Martha’s hands. “But not nearly as beautiful as the bride before me.”
Martha blinked back tears. “Thank you.”
Someone knocked on the door. “It’s time,” Christopher called out.
“I’ll be praying for you.” Her almost mother-in-law patted Martha’s shoulder.
“With only the finest of Virginia waiting on the lawn and a contingent of militia, too, what have I to be nervous of?” Martha would keep her wits about
her only by God’s provision.
Christopher stepped aside to allow Mrs. Paulson to depart. He turned to Martha. “Don’t forget the boys from the academy.”
“How could I?”
Christopher whistled. “I already threatened to tie the younger ones to a tree if they don’t stop climbing them.”
“Oh my. Not Johnny?”
“No, he’s carrying around a basket of flower petals with the Lightfoots’ youngest girl.”
“Throwing them on the other children, I imagine?”
“Exactly.”
They laughed and her anxiety lifted. “I’m going to be married, Christopher, can you believe it?”
He sighed. “I can believe that. What I can’t believe is our stepmother went to such lengths to avenge her father’s death.”
Martha’s chest tightened. “Killed in the American Revolution, right here in Virginia.”
“And her aristocratic mother left impoverished until she’d remarried the duke.”
“Letitia wasted her life.”
“If she’s dead.”
Shuddering, Martha smoothed her wedding dress. “At least Emily has been found. We have that to be thankful for.”
“Father wrote that Emily believes her mother is biding her time with the Admiral.”
Johnny wasn’t their sibling and neither was Emily, if reports were true. Still, they loved both. “Will she return with Father?”
Features tightening in regret, Christopher ignored her question and extended his arm. “We best be going.”
“Christopher?”
“Yes?”
“Would you really have dueled Phillip?”
“I was too busy trying to figure out what Graham was up to. I knew he must despise me to pursue Miranda. Before that, I wondered at his intense interest in my maps for my cartography classes. But afterward…” He bit out a retort.
“Let’s not think of that now. I’m sorry I brought it up.” Goodness, these wedding nerves had her chattering like a schoolgirl. “You’ll soon be married, too, brother, won’t that be fine?”
“And father to Graham’s child.” Although his voice held tension, there was no resentment in his words.
“To Miranda’s child and my niece twice over once you marry,” Martha enthused.
The Steeplechase Page 10
