Le Chevalier

by Mary Jean Adams

  “Hello, Nathanial,” Alex greeted the young man, with a genuine smile.

  Nathanial Brown had scarcely spared her a glance before Josh chimed in. “Hey, Nate!”

  Alex cringed as Nathanial’s already thin lips grew even thinner. Nathanial hated being called Nate, and Josh only did it to vex him.

  “Alexandra,” Nathanial said, pulling himself up to his full height and casting a glance at Reid.

  The top of his head would barely skim her brother’s shoulders had Reid stood, but for once, he remained seated.

  Alex let loose the breath she had been holding. Reid had a look of ill-concealed dislike in his dark eyes and hard lips, but at least he couldn’t take a swing at Nathanial from his chair.

  Nathanial gave a pained sigh as he readdressed her, “Alexandra, no good shall come of it if thou continue to encourage these ruffians.”

  Ruffians? These ruffians were her brother and his childhood friends. They were her friends too when she felt charitable enough to admit it.

  Yet Nathanial was her…well, how could she describe their relationship? At twenty-two, she could be considered something of a spinster. Even the word made her cringe. While Nathanial’s Quaker ways and beliefs were stern and unyielding, his attentions brought her a sense of hope that defied common sense.

  So, while she didn’t hold the same level of regard for him as he did for her, she hadn’t discouraged his advances. In truth, her feelings for her suitor were not something she could pin down so easily. She held him in high esteem, but could she ever love him? She had always assumed her heart would tell her what to do, but so far, it had remained mute.

  Now, Nathanial operated under the assumption they were betrothed even though Alex had never accepted nor rejected his offer in any formal way. With each day, he grew bolder and more confident of the eventual outcome. He had once called her reticence mere modesty and told her it was an admirable trait. Alex knew the day approached when she would need to give him an answer, or she would find herself married only because she hadn’t found the will to push away the one man who thought she had potential as a wife.

  She stiffened as Josh and Beau stood and moved around the table until they flanked poor Nathanial, one massive body on each side. She was almost certain they wouldn’t hurt him, but they enjoyed scaring him whenever they had an opportunity.

  Nathanial never fought back. They said it showed cowardice since a real man would take a swing. She insisted he was just a pacifist adhering to his beliefs.

  Nathanial stood, unmoving, in the middle of the two boys. His pale blue eyes darted back and forth between the brothers, and flushed spots marred his round cheeks.

  “Spoken like a true Tory pig,” growled Josh, leaning closer and bringing his face within inches of Nathanial’s pinkening ear.

  “I am not a—” Nathanial opened his mouth to protest.

  “Yeah, you hide behind your Quaker ways and claim to be a peace lovin’ man. Truth is, if the Brits marched in here tomorrow, you’d welcome them with open arms.”

  “I would not do—” he started to move his head, but Josh and Beau’s faces were so close, he could do no more than shift his eyes back and forth between them.

  Reid stood. “I think I saw a barrel of tar out back,” he said, alluding to one of the more heinous punishments the Patriots were fond of exacting on those they deemed to be traitors.

  “You will not do this in my establishment,” Alex demanded, tugging at her brother’s arm as he moved to join his friends.

  “You heard the lady,” Josh said. “Let’s take this out into the streets where we won’t disturb the other guests.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” Alex stamped her foot in a gesture she knew to be childish.

  She could just see the top of Nathanial’s curly head and his blue eyes, wide with fear, over her brother’s shoulder. She used her own shoulder as a wedge to try to push her way between Reid and Josh Bandy. With all due deference to Archimedes, she decided, it would take more than a lever to move these two.

  “Gentlemen,” a quiet voice said from behind them. Mont Trignon stood, and all eyes focused on him. “I believe you are causing the lady distress. I suggest we reserve this dispute for a more appropriate time and place.”

  Thoroughly accustomed to this sort of dispute whenever her brother and his friends were around, it took Alex a moment to realize he had just come to her rescue as well as Nathanial’s.

  With a few warning looks at Nathaniel, Reid, Josh, and Beau retook their seats. Once settled, Mont Trignon sat back down in his own chair and sipped his ale as though nothing had happened. When he lowered his mug, his amiable smile returned, and he leaned back and stretched out a long, lean leg once again. Only Nathanial and Alex remained standing.

  Alex couldn’t help but gape at the chevalier. He had managed to cool three of the hottest heads in Philadelphia with a few soft-spoken words—something she had never been able to do so easily despite shouting and the occasional brandishing of a wet bar rag.

  Nathanial regained his wits with a spasmodic jerk of his shoulders. “Alexandra, when we are married, I shall refuse to allow thee to associate with these men. Reid is thy brother, so I understand that thou will want to spend some limited time with him. But as for Josh and Beau…and this tavern…” He looked around with ill-concealed disgust.

  The chevalier’s eyebrow rose, and she groaned inwardly. Nathanial had mentioned marriage in front of her brother, the Bandys, and this handsome foreigner. She would never hear the end of it from her brother and his friends, and the Frenchman’s amused smile had returned.

  She blamed herself more than Nathanial. He was too straight-laced for her not to understand where his intentions lay, yet there had never been any real talk of marriage between them in public. For him to assume she would agree to it and then to blurt it out in front of everyone did not bode well for any future they might have together.

  Even worse, this tavern was all that she had left of her parents. Did he really expect her to give it up? Even as her husband, what right would he have to ask that much from her?

  She needed to set him straight, as soon as possible, or at least as soon as she made up her own mind.

  “She ain’t marryin’ you, you pompous Tory pig,” growled Reid.

  “I believe that’s for Alexandra to decide,” Nathanial said, with unaccustomed bravery as he tugged the neckline of his shirt.

  “Alex is my little sister,” Reid said.

  “By all of five minutes,” Josh started to add, but Reid quelled him with a hard-eyed glare.

  “We may be twins, but I am the older and, more to the point, the man in our family. If I don’t give my permission, she ain’t gonna marry you.”

  If Alex had been surprised by Nathanial’s public declarations, Reid’s assertion she needed his permission stunned her.

  Reid had never displayed the slightest sign of brotherly protectiveness toward her, and since the loss of their parents and the start of the war, he had grown distant. She often suspected she only saw him because Turner’s Tavern served as a convenient place to distribute his pamphlets and get a hot meal he didn’t have to pay for.

  She set her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. As soon as she set Nathanial straight, she would do the same for her brother.

  “If thou were truly a man, thou would not put thy sister in danger like this.” Nathanial touched one of the pamphlets and then pulled his fingers back as though he found it offensive. “At least I can take her away from the fighting.”

  “Take her away to what? A life of living on your farm, cooking your supper, and raisin’ your brats?” Reid asked. “Alex is too good for that.”

  Alex cringed at how quickly things had heated up again, but at least Reid remained seated. As long as the conflict remained verbal, she need not be concerned.

  Still, she would not wish to have this sort of private quarrel aired in front of a stranger. She glanced over to see if the chevalier had the good graces to pretend
not to hear, even though they argued right in front of him.

  Instead of ignoring them, the chevalier watched with unveiled interest, his crooked grin having grown into a wide smile. He gave Reid a nod of approval.

  Men were the same everywhere.

  “I will decide whom I marry,” Alex said, through gritted teeth, yet loudly enough to attract the attention of several customers in the noisy tavern. Ignoring their curious gazes, she lowered her voice but pounded a finger on the table to emphasize her words. “This is my life and mine alone. I will decide how I live it.

  “Nathanial, I suggest you go home,” she said, giving him a gentle shove toward the door. “We can talk about this later.” She had to shove him with more force a second time before he moved.

  She watched him leave then turned on her brother. “And you, Reid Turner, we will also talk about this later.”

  The chevalier’s pensive gaze made her heart race, but she ignored him and fixed her brother with her sternest look. She would not take him to task in front of this Frenchman who found her personal troubles so amusing. No, a temporary withdrawal was the prudent course of action.

  Mont Trignon rose as she turned to go. Heading for the taps, a tingle ran up the back of her neck, as tangible as a touch. Once she reached the safety of the bar, she busied herself arranging bottles and mugs on the shelves, while watching him in the mirror along the back wall. When his eyes met hers in the reflective surface, she knew he watched her as well.

  Chapter Five

  Alex scrubbed the dark stains worn into the bar’s soft wood from years of wet mugs and spilt beer.

  “Is something troubling you, Miss Alex?” asked a gentle voice from beside her.

  “Oh, Molly, I didn’t hear you come up,” Alex said, putting her hand to her chest to calm her fluttering heart.

  “That’s because you were too busy punishing that counter with your rag,” Molly said, a touch of humor in her cornflower blue eyes and a smile on her cherubic lips.

  Alex chuckled. Molly, for all her timidity, had a way with words that never failed to raise Alex’s spirits. The best day of her life was the day Molly came to her door, begging for a job. Alex took the frail, underfed girl in, although with no more thought of anything other than giving her a warm place in front of the hearth and a hot bowl of stew.

  At Molly’s insistence, Alex promised to find her something to allow her to earn her keep even though she doubted the girl’s spindly arms could lift more than one full mug of ale at a time.

  It had been her eyes. Even back then, wasted away to almost nothing, Molly had the most intense gaze. One could almost see the iron will inside the fragile body.

  Since then, Molly had filled out only a little but had proven more resilient than any ten men. She would work from midday to the first crack of dawn without a whimper of protest. While she had failed to make even a passable toasted cheese, Molly could tend bar, serve food, and control the occasional rowdy customer almost as well as Alex.

  And Molly carried an air of respectability, with the prim collars of her homespun dresses fastened about her neck and her straight blond hair tied in a tight knot and covered with a white cap. Around her, the coarsest of locals, including Josh and Beau Bandy, curbed their tongue.

  “Molly, you have to be dead on your feet. Why don’t you go home?” Alex said, shaking out her rag and laying it over a dowel to dry.

  Molly never spoke of her private life, past nor present, so Alex didn’t know where the girl went after the last of the guests stumbled out the door in the wee hours of the morning. Surely, she had some place she called home.

  Molly hesitated, her gaze flitting to the full table in the corner. “I can stay around awhile longer, Miss Alex. It don’t look like the boys are quite ready to leave yet, and someone’s gotta lock up after ‘em.”

  Reid, Josh, Beau, and Mont Trignon were the last in the tavern, but a fresh round of ale sat in front of them. More than once in the last week, Alex had found them still sitting at the same table, nursing flat ale, when she returned around midmorning to ready the tavern for the day’s customers.

  She sighed and set a fist on her hip. What could make them lose all thought of sleep? And since when had Reid trusted anybody enough to allow them into his inner circle? The Bandys were her brother’s only real friends or confidants.

  Yet, somehow, in the course of little more than a week, Mont Trignon had become a fixture at the corner table.

  Reid’s intense brown eyes focused on his face while Mont Trignon demonstrated something with his hands. His long tapered fingers locked together as he sliced and pierced the air in front of him.

  Alex bit her lip. Troop movements perhaps? Did the Frenchman know something about Howe’s plans for Philadelphia? Or perhaps General Washington’s plans to protect the city?

  A shudder racked her shoulders, and she hugged her arms over her chest. A fire still smoldered in the hearth at the far end of the taproom, but goose bumps poked at her palms from beneath her thin linen sleeves.

  A thought occurred to her-one that made her stomach clench and her heart thump against her breast. Did he demonstrate the progress of the British?

  Alex shook her head at the way she allowed her anxiety to color her perceptions. As far as she could see, the chevalier spent all his time with her brother. How could he possibly have knowledge of anything not already known to “Ol’ George”?

  Mont Trignon punctuated a final movement by drawing a finger across his neck, and Alex thought her blood might pool in her feet. The Bandys nodded in solemn unison, while Reid leaned back in his chair and stroked the ever-present stubble on his chin with thumb and forefinger.

  Alex blew a drawn out breath between her lips. It had been a trying week as rumors of British troop movements continued to fly, stoked by the opining of Ol’ George.

  The stories fueled her business too as locals came to the tavern to share knowledge and speculation in equal measure. But as much as she appreciated a full taproom, she found herself scurrying between tables, catching snatches of conversation that did little to calm her fears.

  Alex covered a yawn with the back of her hand. If she could just get a good night’s rest, things would look better in the morning.

  “If you’re sure you can handle things here, Molly, maybe I will head out,” Alex said. “But promise me you’ll get one of those lugs to walk you home.” She nodded toward the men in the corner table.

  Maybe that would get them out of her tavern so she didn’t have to clean around them in the morning.

  “Most certainly, Miss Alex,” Molly agreed, bobbing her head with sudden eagerness. She stretched out her small hands as though she might give Alex a shove toward the door. “You go on ahead, and I’ll take care of everything here.”

  “Very well.” Alex sighed and untied the apron strings at her back.

  Although too tired to speculate at Molly’s eagerness to lock up, she knew she could trust her to do so. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same of her brother, even though the tavern was partially his.

  She tossed the filthy apron into a pile of rags she intended to wash in the morning.

  “I’m heading home,” Alex called out, taking her black cloak down from the peg on the wall.

  Throwing the cloak over her shoulders, she cast a rueful smile at her brother. If only Reid would display a scrap of concern and volunteer to walk her home, it would give her some small degree of comfort.

  Rumors of a potential invasion of Philadelphia by Howe’s troops had hung in the air all day, as thick as smoke from a pipe. She had heard stories of violence that made her breath catch in her throat-whole families turned out of their homes because of their loyalties, officials hung in effigy for enforcing the law, neighbors running neighbors out of town on a rail.

  She tied the strings of her cloak about her neck. In some cities, even the suspicion of loyalty to the King could earn you a bath in pitch and a coating of feathers. She shuddered. Being a woman was no guarantee agai
nst persecution.

  Alex straightened her shoulders and pushed the door latch with her thumb. Wishing for Reid’s protection would not make it happen. She gave her brother a small wave as she stepped through the tavern’s narrow side door, but engrossed in an animated discussion with Josh, he paid no heed.

  Stepping onto the brick sidewalk, Alex spread her course woolen cape over her shoulders, covering the front of her gray, linen shortgown and petticoats of sturdy blue cotton worn dull from years of wear.

  It had rained earlier in the evening, taking some of the heat from the air, and she breathed deeply of the cool, moist aroma of wet cobblestones. After a full day in a smoky tavern, the fresh air reinvigorated her despite the late hour.

  But even as a soft breeze caressed her cheeks, the heavy cloak dragged at her shoulders and scratched against the thin fabric of her summer work dress. She would have liked to remove the cloak, but its dark color afforded her some degree of protection, making her far less noticeable by those who might take great interest in a lone woman.

  She pulled her white cap from her head and stuffed it in a pocket. Then she flipped her hood over her dark hair and stepped out into the night, away from the warm glow of the tavern. The muffled tap of her soft-soled leather boots on the damp brick walk blended with a chorus of crickets from a nearby woodpile as she set a brisk pace into the shadows.

  ****

  “Will you not walk your sister home?” Mont Trignon asked with some surprise.

  “Feh!” Reid snorted before taking a swig of his ale. After setting his mug back on the table with a reverberating thud, he added, “My sister can take care of herself.” He sounded almost proud.

  Mont Trignon had spent considerable time with Reid Turner as well as Josh and Beau Bandy over the last several days. They were an excellent source of local knowledge and fancied themselves amateur undercover agents for the rebels. The information they gathered fueled George Smythe’s pamphlets as well as Mont Trignon’s reports to his father and Lafayette.

  However much he admired Reid’s patriotism and his cleverness, his attitude toward his sister confused and alarmed him. From what he could see, she might well be able to take care of herself, but she also had no choice.