“Uh-huh.” At its conclusion, Mrs. Adams looked from Raven to Hawk. “You two let a little girl rescue you—and you couldn’t even bother to put decent clothes on her back?”
All three men laughed.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Raven said. “He made her serve as his cabin boy.”
Mrs. Adams pressed her lips together to suppress laughter, but she failed.
“No, that’s not the worst of it,” Hawk said. “The worst was when Deming saw me embracing her, after it was all over.”
The dining room shook with laughter. “Oh, come now,” Ashanti said. “Deming is a smart man. You can’t tell me you fooled him for a second.”
“Well … we did fool you. But the alternative means he and all the rest of my crew failed, and were bested not by a cabin boy—but by a girl. Truly, she was the best part of this trip.”
His laughing eyes met hers.
“Well,” she added, with practical grace, “except for a ship full of big guns and turnips.”
Mr. Adams clinked his fork against his wine glass. “I should like to make an announcement.” Having their attention, he went on. “We all know the fourth Thursday of November is perhaps a week off, and we would like to offer thanks for our blessings by visiting our good friends in Williamsburg.”
Hawk and Raven cheered. “Fortuitous timing,” Hawk said, “given that our next voyage was in that direction to pick up my father for the return to St. George’s.”
Marley noticed the gaiety in the other women—except for Helen. Even as she noticed, Mrs. Adams also looked at her daughter, but with understanding.
“Helen?”
“I am delighted at the idea of a trip to Williamsburg, but Taleeb is here. How can I leave him, and on such a day?”
Mrs. Adams chose her words thoughtfully. “I can understand how you feel, and if you’d rather stay here, I’m sure the Brownsons will welcome you. Elizabeth’s baby is due in another month, and she’ll need help preparing for that.”
“It isn’t that I don’t want to go, I do. I’d just like for Taleeb to be able to spend the holiday with the family, all together.”
“But Taleeb’s family has never celebrated the feast as we do, so how can it be any great loss to him? Plus, the schedule of a soldier is uncertain and is it not unlikely he would be granted leave either way? The city is under siege.”
Helen set her glass aside. “But, Mama, since he became a part of our family, he loves Thanksgiving! You know that.”
Mrs. Adams, elbows squarely planted on the table, steepled her fingertips above her plate. “Let me understand, then. Even though you’re well aware that he may not even be able to attend, the entire family should cancel our plans and hope that the siege—which has dragged on now for seven months—might miraculously resolve itself before then.”
Helen said nothing.
“My dear daughter, we would love for you and Taleeb and the children to accompany us to Virginia. But we shall miss you if you cannot.”
“Why do you even want to go to that awful place, anyway? They enslave people like us!”
“As does our own colony. Can we never depart from this topic?”
“And the awful shacks those people live in! ’Tis a miracle they don’t all die of pneumonia.”
“Why, my own darling daughter is a snob.” Mr. Adams spoke quietly, and his face was neither amused nor teasing. “You’re as bad as Boston’s worst, and a hypocrite in the mix.”
“I am not. I simply dislike the cold.”
He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “Thus ends this conversation. Our friends there risk their lives to try to improve the lot of those on nearby plantations. They work from sunup until sundown so that their farm might be profitable—the women and children, too, something that you, young lady, have never had to do.”
“But Father—”
“Please leave. When you are ready to begin your next sentence with the words I apologize rather than but, you may rejoin us. You are far too old for this.”
Her mouth dropped, and she walked stiffly up the stairs.
When she heard the door above close just firmly enough to register protest—but hopefully not awaken the children—Mrs. Adams smiled and shook her head. “Twenty-six years old and three children, and she still acts like one herself.”
The men left to smoke cigars in another room, and she began to clear dishes as Parks and her mother prepared the wash water in the kitchen. After taking a stack of dishes in, she returned to the dining room. Hawk stood in the hallway, leaning back against the wall, his gaze roving over her.
She went to him.
Without speaking, he drew her into his arms, locking his hands behind her back. In a swift motion, he drew away her shawl, a slow glance moving over her. He lowered his lips to her bare shoulder, his open mouth nipping lightly, his tongue lingering. He traveled to her collarbone, her throat, her earlobe.
Then he straightened, his eyes bright with emotion. Finally, he brushed his lips against her temple and released her. She gave him a single, lingering glance and returned to the table. As she hurried with more dishes back to the kitchen, she heard his heels clicking down the hallway.
Later, after the kitchen and dining room were spotless once more, Mrs. Adams led Marley to a guest suite. She’d had a servant light the fire an hour before, and the room was quite comfortable for a house in Boston with no heat at all besides fireplaces.
“I hope you’re comfortable. If you need anything in the night, just let me know. Ashanti and I are just down the hall.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Adams.”
The woman laughed. “Please. Call me Camisha.”
Marley smiled, plagued again with a notion of déjà vu. “I know it isn’t possible, but I feel as if I know you.”
Camisha touched her face, lifting her chin, peering closely at her. She reached for the candelabra nearby and held it up.
Her face drained of expression. “Where did you get that scar?”
Marley touched the corner of her eye self-consciously. “My grandmother told me I was jumping on the bed and hit the headboard, but I don’t remember.”
Camisha patted her shoulder. “Don’t give it a second thought. It’s not even noticeable. I once had a dear friend who had a similar scar, and I thought …” She smiled and leaned forward to hug her. “Goodnight, Marley. Sweet dreams.”
When Marley was alone, she quickly slipped out of her clothes, shaking them out and setting them aside neatly. She slid between the sheets, hugging herself. Despite the coffee, she was exhausted, and she soon found herself drifting to sleep.
She didn’t hear the door open, didn’t hear her fire being stoked, didn’t feel the heavy quilt being drawn away from her naked body. Only when she felt the reassuring weight behind her, drawing her close into his embrace, did she know he was there with her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Hawk whispered. “I hope you don’t mind. You seem to have become an indispensable part of me.”
His breath was hot at the nape of her neck, and although he wore a nightshirt, she felt each ripple and thrust of his hard body as he hugged her close.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
After a long moment, he responded. “I’ve always had insomnia, even when I was a child—until you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me my heart had stopped?”
“I don’t like to remember that. It brings to mind how near I came to losing you.”
And a moment later, they both slipped into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
It wasn’t until she awakened alone the next morning, content in the memory of sleeping with him, that another memory of the night before came to her.
That of Camisha Adams’ words: Oh, good grief!
What kind of eighteenth century woman spoke in this way?
Chapter Twenty-One
The Georgian mansion on King’s Highway rose from the gray morning mist as the horsemen approached. The home belonged to John Va
ssall, Tory and aristocrat, now huddled on the Boston peninsula with the rest of the loyalists. Uniformed men moved about the house, coming and going.
“I do hope they’ve rid the place of dysentery,” Raven said. The house had served a multitude of functions, most recently a hospital.
Hawk didn’t reply, nudging his horse onward. They soon dismounted and stamped their feet at the doorway to dislodge the snow, leaving their coats with a footman as they entered.
They were escorted into the office of one Lieutenant Colonel Robert Harrison. He was new to the position, and neither Hawk nor Raven had met him. He was perhaps their own age, but his rank as General Washington’s secretary and aide-de-camps gave him a polished authority no common citizen could match.
He gave a nod of acknowledgment as they approached.
“Hawk and Raven to see the Commander-in-Chief, regarding the adjudication of the prize Delight.”
The man’s face lit up, extending his hand to Hawk. “You are welcome indeed, sir. Delight is indeed, shall we say, a delight to the general and a boon to our cause, and your accomplishment is nothing short of a miracle from heaven.”
After a brief interim where they were announced, an inner door opened wide and none other than Washington himself appeared there. Hawk had met him once in Williamsburg, many years before, but he doubted he would remember him. Washington himself was nearly unrecognizable with his excitement over the prize.
“The infamous Hawk,” Washington said. “And how does your father?”
“I wasn’t sure you would recall me. A number of years have passed since my father served in the House of Burgesses.”
“Ah, but you were the apple of his eye.”
He welcomed them into the inner sanctum where several other officers sat, and it was then that both Hawk and Raven grew uneasy about something unspoken in the room. Neither could put their finger on it—until the moment when Harrison offered a single empty chair to Hawk.
Hawk glanced around for another for Raven. Then he met Raven’s gaze in the unspoken communication twins are good at.
“If you’re short of seating, we’ll stand,” Hawk said coolly, even as Harrison and Washington himself made to sit.
Washington sent a short glance to Harrison, who held out a hand to the door. “Do forgive me. Your manservant need not trouble himself here. Perhaps he’s hungry, the kitchen no doubt will be more comfortable?”
Hawk reined in his emotions, again meeting Raven’s shuttered gaze.
Of all the despicable things Hawk had encountered in life—sham aristocrats; contemptuous tidewater landowners whose fat purses bought them into a gentility that none-too-secretly mocked them; thieves; plunderers; turncoats—he detested nothing more than that awkward, meekly obsequious gaze on his dearest friend’s face. It said: I know my place. In a land where men prided themselves on abolishing the very notion of place. The look made him want to race back to the Delight and set the entire thing afire.
It took quite a bit to dampen Ray’s enthusiasm for life, but these reminders of the world they lived in did the trick. And that enraged Hawk.
Not bothering to veil his contempt, Hawk laughed. It was not a sound of joy, but of mockery.
“Mister Harrison,” he said, dispensing with the man’s military title, “Mr. Adams shall hear your apology now.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Raven raised his hand to stop him, but Hawk was controlling himself. Had he not, Robert Harrison would’ve been lying in the corner with a broken nose, in a pool of his own blood.
“You have insulted my partner, Mr. Rashall Adams, of the Boston Adams who are well known on Beacon Hill as brave, upstanding patriots. Mr. Adams has risked his own life countless times over the past five years to serve the cause of freedom—as have his father and mother their entire lives. A freedom, as we all know, his black brethren are not afforded, neither in the colonies of Virginia, nor of Massachusetts, nor in your own Maryland. Mr. Adams is my business partner, and you will apologize now.”
As he spoke, rather than shouting, his voice grew increasingly quiet—until his last words were a grating whisper.
Harrison was frozen in embarrassment at his blunder.
“For God’s sake, Harrison, do it.”
This, from their Commander.
This thawed the man’s tongue, and he bowed deeply to Raven. “Sir, I do heartily apologize. It was a foolish assumption. I beg your forgiveness.”
As he spoke, Hawk’s gaze drifted from the officers nearby, staring at their laps, to Washington, watching the scene, his gaze unreadable, to Raven himself, equally inscrutable.
Harrison hastily fetched another chair from the other end of the room and presented it to Raven. At last, the men sat.
Washington leaned back in his chair, looking at them both, aware that their rightful joy had been clumsily dashed. He leaned forward once more, folding his hands on his desk before him. “Gentlemen, you have with your capture of the Delight offered the Continental Army both an arsenal that is almost beyond imagining, and the invaluable boost of morale as well. As you said, you have served the cause of liberty well, and I thank you.”
Hawk watched the Commander as he rested his hands flat over a ledger on his desk. “I don’t have to ascertain the value of the prize, for you, since this is your business. However, as I mentioned in my last letter, Congress continues to be difficult to manage, and they have yet to name a body for adjudicating prizes. Oh, they’ve assigned two men to the task, but it is a much larger responsibility than they own.
“Only now are we beginning to see fruit from those ships we’ve outfitted for our fledgling navy. In truth, they have no funds at all to allocate to the operation of this endeavor. And yet, I’ve men who are willing to serve, and who must be properly outfitted. This will go a long way to arming my men.”
He reached for a few papers, and Hawk recognized it as the inventory they’d sent on ahead to him. He looked over the list and again set it aside.
“Sir, may I ask that you simply say what you’d like to say?” Hawk was losing patience with the prevaricating, especially from a man so famous for his directness.
“I cannot yet issue payment for the prize. I do not know when I can.”
“Oh.” Hawk exchanged a laughing gaze with Raven. “That.”
Washington went silent, nonplussed. He cleared his throat, as if to re-establish decorum.
“General, we withheld a number of arms and some supplies for our families’ use. We made note of that on the inventory. What’s the current crew’s cut for a ship full of artillery? A tenth? An eighth?” They both knew the going rate.
Washington humphed, and Hawk guessed it was a point of contention between the general himself and Congress. “Mr. Harrison?”
One of the officers cleared his throat. “The figure was one-third. Congress has raised it to one-half.”
“Well, that’s quite generous of them, for a body that has no cash on hand,” Hawk mused.
“Indeed,” Washington said, with a gloomy nod. “I will have the money to pay you, but I do not know when.”
Here, Raven leaned forward, speaking with that quiet voice he’d acquired by watching his mother, when she had something important to say to his father.
“Sir, with all humility, we are not impoverished, nor are our families. We will wait until you are comfortable paying us. If your men need coats and uniforms, we beg you deal with those more immediate needs first.”
Washington looked at Raven with grim respect and humility. He gave a slight nod of thanks.
Hawk made to rise, but Washington stopped him and turned to the officers nearby. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us.”
Everyone quit the room except for Washington, Hawk, and Raven. Washington rose, looking out the window on the snow, still falling.
“Boston has been under siege for seven months now. Our militia is strong in spirit. But they know as well as you that, even with the added miracle of Delight, we lack the cannonade nece
ssary to repel those ships that refuse to leave.
“I do have a plan underway to secure the heavy guns we need. It may take weeks to accomplish with the poor weather.
“But I need not tell you of our desperate straits, where willing and capable leaders are concerned. Ours is a rich land populated by poor men. Farmers and furriers, bakers and bricklayers. Not warriors.
“I need not tell you the enemy’s numbers. They can and do summon troops on a whim numbering more than all our colonies’ militia. It is by God’s grace that we still live.”
He turned away from the window, returning to his desk—but this time, he came to the front and leaned against it.
“You have led many successful expeditions in perilous circumstances. Yet I would ask you now to consider volunteering your ship to serve our new country in our quest for freedom.”
“You simply want our ship?”
“No. I merely assume your ship will accompany you. Again, you personally will be reimbursed at some point.”
“Sir, I do not understand.”
“I wish to offer you a commission in the Continental Navy. At present I command all military forces, but in time I should think you will ably take over the Navy. That is yet to be determined, but I have been greatly disappointed by the results of commanders I have commissioned thus far.” He hesitated, then added grimly, “And all of this, of course, assumes that we survive the gallows in the meantime.”
Beyond the fact that neither of these men had any patience for government, and despite the flattering offer, Hawk was focused instead on another distraction.
He had noticed—as would any man in his predicament—that Washington had smoothly transitioned from a plural you to a singular. That, as the tall man leaned against the desk, he did so not placing himself between the two men seated before him, but solely across from Hawk.
Raven might have left the room, so utterly had Washington dismissed him.
And, even as Hawk had the thought, Raven rose. “General, I can see I’m not needed for this discussion.”
“Sit down,” Hawk said.
With the last of his dwindling reserve of patience, Raven sat.
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 19
