The Turncoat

by Donna Thorland

  Lytton was baffled. “Is General Washington a Quaker?”

  “No, Lytton. Miss Grey is a Rebel.”

  “Are you really, Miss Grey? I’ve yet to meet a Rebel.”

  “We prefer the term ‘American.’ And I suspect you meet them all the time, Mr. Lytton, but they are too sensible to declare themselves to you.” Unlike me, Kate added to herself.

  Tremayne was obviously enjoying himself. “Yes, we do meet them all the time, Miss Grey, but the trouble is they’re too busy running away to chat with us. I believe I’ve just bitten into the chicken’s beak.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. You’ve frightened the maids out of their minds. I expect you’ll find they’ve sweetened the mustard and put salt in the pudding.” Kate had addressed herself to their end of the table, but Tremayne pitched his answer to her alone.

  “Really? I quite enjoy finding the sweet and the savory in the same dish.”

  “Then you’ll be well satisfied with dinner tonight.” Kate pushed another mysteriously tough bit of chicken to the side of her plate.

  “I wasn’t speaking of dinner.”

  Lytton had stopped eating, uncertain where the conversation was leading. Tremayne ignored him. “That reminds me. Would you like your letter back?”

  The other end of the table erupted in raucous laughter, and one of Tremayne’s officers began to perform a trick with a spoon, a pickle, and a saltcellar that promised to stain the tablecloth.

  Kate proceeded like a child shod in pattens on a slick of ice: cautiously. “Yes. I would like it back.”

  “Then leave your bedroom door unlocked.”

  “You are embarrassing Mr. Lytton,” Kate said, blindsided by the directness of his response. She had expected clever baiting, and had his demand been different, she would have welcomed this plain speaking.

  Lytton stood up, his chair screeching over the floorcloth, unheard beneath the drunken laughter at the other end of the table. “Sir. I protest—”

  “Sit down, Mr. Lytton. Miss Grey is quite capable of defending herself. And locking her door if she chooses.”

  Lytton looked uncertainly at Kate, who decided that the situation, and the fate of the letter, was getting out of hand. “Yes, please, Mr. Lytton, do sit down and finish your dinner. The major is only joking. Isn’t he?”

  Tremayne rolled his eyes. “Yes, Lytton, I’m having a bit of fun.”

  Kate smiled reassuringly at Lytton, and he sat back down. “Tell me more about the play, Mr. Lytton.”

  He spoke at length about Sheridan, and blushed when he described the leading actress in the play. Kate listened attentively, and Tremayne made no further mention of the letter, but when the puddings were served, Kate looked up to discover the major studying her with more than casual interest. What she failed to observe was that Mrs. Ferrers, entertaining her guests effortlessly at the other end of the table and directing with rather less success the efforts of Margaret and Sara, was studying Lord Sancreed with equal, but far less benign interest.

  * * *

  Viscount Sancreed was not a bad officer. In an era of purchased commissions and only intermittently competent soldiering, Peter Tremayne was a professional. Born to wealth and privilege, but unsuited to politics, he’d entered the cavalry young and grown into leadership. The command of a troop of horse—a small thing in the grand scheme—suited him admirably.

  He had probably once been quite like Lytton, though the army tended to attract fewer prudes in his day. He regretted teasing the boy, and knew Lytton bore watching. He was chivalrous and prickly and, without some good advice, would most likely end up gutted in some pointless duel.

  But Lytton was for tomorrow and the long road to New York. Tonight Peter Tremayne had other quarry.

  Kate Grey’s mysterious letter, most likely to some unsuitable lover, lay snug in his tunic. The lady herself had retired, and the state of the lock on her door remained an open question. The household was still awake, the maids banking fires and extinguishing lamps. When quiet settled over Grey House, Tremayne would try her door.

  He had considered a more forceful approach. The aunt was careless and left the girl alone with him after dinner once more, but Tremayne didn’t touch her. He was wholly smitten, but still uncertain. If she was worldly, and inclined to arranging such matters for herself, she could leave her chamber unbarred. If she was inexperienced, she had only to throw the bolt.

  He knew she was attracted to him. And the proximity of Grey Farm to Philadelphia was improving his attitude toward winter quarters in the City of Brotherly Love. Even if he was unsuccessful with her tonight, future visits might prove more rewarding. It occurred to him that his mind was turning to seducing a farm girl with pie crumbs in her hair, and he laughed out loud at himself.

  His cousin, Bayard, had mocked him for choosing this duty, for retracing by land the miserable journey they had just undertaken by sea, for being Howe’s errand boy. Carrying Howe’s dispatches to Clinton in New York was hardly glorious soldiering. But it was preferable in Peter Tremayne’s mind to the other less palatable missions he knew Howe had ordered that night. He had no desire to kidnap private citizens, no matter what their politics, and thought that abducting Rebels from their homes smacked of Tudor intrigue. If the parties sent forth from Head of Elk with orders to drive deep into Rebel territory and capture members of Congress were not instructed to throw such men in the Tower, it was only because Philadelphia offered nearer prisons.

  Mrs. Ferrers had served rum in the parlor, an expensive luxury since molasses had stopped reaching the blockaded American harbors. Tremayne sought, and found, a bottle of local whisky in the kitchen and poured himself a glass. He returned briefly to the parlor, where he opened the secretary and helped himself to pen, paper, and wax.

  The rooms were creaky, hot, and old, but the mattresses were fresh and the bed curtains free of dust. Returning to his room, he arranged his kit for the morning, listened with satisfaction to the house retiring for the night, slipped out into the corridor, and closed his door behind him.

  Kate’s room lay at the end of the long hall, past the stairs. The scuffed boards groaned beneath his boots and he wondered to himself if the aunt was deaf or just unusually broad-minded. Another, less charitable thought occurred to him: that there were Tories aplenty who would pimp their wives, daughters, or nieces to British officers in exchange for trading concessions and protection. Howe had been accompanied on the journey from Boston not only by his charming mistress, Mrs. Loring, but by her husband as well, who profited handsomely from the arrangement.

  When the door to his right opened, Tremayne was prepared for a woman’s tirade, but not for drawn steel. Lytton emerged, flourishing his saber, already realizing that it was a poor weapon in the confined space of the hall.

  “Trouble sleeping, Lytton?”

  “You weren’t joking about Miss Grey.”

  Tremayne sighed. This was a lecture best delivered under other circumstances, but here and now would have to do. “Phillip, this is the way men and women arrange things.”

  “She’s only a girl.”

  “She’s older than you are, and quite capable of locking her door. Go back to bed. The whole house will hear me if I break her door down, and you can hack me to pieces then, if you don’t bury your saber in the doorjamb first.”

  Lytton had no facility for clever words. Wounded pride was writ large on his face, and wounded pride was a dangerous thing in a young man with a sword. He stepped in front of Kate’s door, barring Tremayne’s way. “Put the saber down, Phillip. Someone is going to get hurt, and I assure you it will not be me.”

  “I won’t let you pass, Lord Sancreed.”

  Lytton failed to anticipate the short, sharp move with which Tremayne disarmed him, and the blow that knocked him to his knees. From his place on the floor he hissed, “You are a scoundrel and a rake, sir.”

  “And you are young and foolish, and infatuated. Examine your own motives before you adopt a pose of chivalry, Phi
llip. You aren’t interested in preserving the lady from my advances. You are frustrated that your own weren’t more successful. The Rivals indeed.”

  Tremayne stepped over and past the wheezing boy and laid his hand lightly on the latch to Kate’s door. He would look an utter fool if it were locked.

  He pressed, and the door swung open.

  * * *

  Kate had heard the two men arguing in the hall. Peter Tremayne seemed to do rather a lot of arguing. Then again, so did she.

  She supposed Angela Ferrers would have laid a scene for seduction, but Kate had no intention of seducing, or being seduced for that matter. Quakers were good at convincing people. Her mother had convinced her father after all. She must simply convince Peter Tremayne to return the letter.

  She heard a scuffle, the sound of metal clattering to the floor, and her door swung open.

  She realized a moment too late that she was standing in front of the bed, and that that wouldn’t do. She stepped away, which brought her, in the confines of the small room, closer to the door. And to Tremayne.

  He stood on the threshold, one hand tucked casually into the pocket of his tunic. “Mr. Lytton has had an accident. He tripped on the carpet.”

  “There isn’t any carpet in the hall,” Kate answered.

  “Yes, well. He is extremely clumsy. May I come in?”

  She wanted to say, “Yes, please.” His pale blue eyes and crooked smile made her smile involuntarily in turn. Tonight his long hair was tied loosely at the back of his neck and snaked inky black over the gold braid on his shoulder. Instead, she observed, “The door was unlocked.”

  “Yes. Is that an invitation? Only, you see, I should like Mr. Lytton to hear you consent to my presence in your bedroom.”

  “Another few hours in your presence, Major, and I will know when I am about to be maneuvered into a corner.”

  “I was hoping for something rather softer. The bed, for instance.”

  “Give me back my letter, and I will consent to your presence in my room.” She held out her hand.

  He produced the envelope from his tunic, and this time laid it on her open palm. Her fingers closed around the letter, and Tremayne stepped over the threshold, kicking the door neatly shut behind him. “Now I have both hands free and at your disposal, Miss Grey.”

  He took another step and closed the distance between them. She backed toward the bed, then realizing it, stopped herself. “What a puzzle you are, Miss Grey,” he said and, without touching her, bent his head to brush his lips lightly against hers. She opened her mouth to speak and his tongue darted inside. The sensation shocked her, and she opened her lips farther. He pressed his advantage, running the tip of his tongue lightly over the surface of Kate’s.

  She felt his hands, still tentative, on the small of her back and at the nape of her neck. She might, she realized, easily break his grasp, if she had the will to do so, but the heat of his body as he stepped closer eroded her resolve.

  Uncertain of what to do with her hands, she slid them under his tunic, over the fine lawn of his shirt and the hard muscles of his chest. Her heart was pounding, her breath becoming short. She felt an unfamiliar heaviness at the apex of her thighs and found it thrilling and terrifying all at once.

  Tremayne lifted his head and drew back to look down at her, tipping her chin up with one hand and caressing her neck with the other. “Say yes, Kate. Or say no, and I’ll leave.” He dropped his hands and stepped back from her, withdrawing his warmth with his touch.

  He never heard her answer. The battering of the front door below drowned out her words, and the clatter of weaponry and opening of doors throughout the house signaled an end to their privacy.

  Tremayne heard Lytton hammering on Kate’s bedroom door. He reached out and pulled sharply on the ribbon that bound her shapeless jacket closed. The amateur embroidery came away in his hand. It seemed all the more intimate because the handiwork, though clumsy, was her own. He pressed it to his lips, sketched a small bow, and slipped from her room, before his presence there could cause her any embarrassment.

  Lytton, standing just outside her door, would not meet his eyes.

  Tremayne collected his kit and found the rider below in the kitchen. The man was lean, old, and wiry, dressed in fine but plainly cut brown cloth. “Rebels. A raiding party. They’re pillaging a farm on the West Road. They mean to burn it.”

  The man was obviously local and known to the Greys.

  “How many?” Tremayne asked sharply.

  “Forty. Maybe more.”

  “On foot?”

  The man shook his head. “Mounted. Well armed. Organized.”

  “Damn. Right. Lytton. Mount up. This is what we’re paid for.”

  Mrs. Ferrers arrived in the kitchen in a far more attractive, if less artless, state of dishevelment than the one in which he had left Kate. He wondered briefly what the girl would look like with a touch of her aunt’s polish and élan, and dismissed the thought just as quickly. Kate had her own charm, which needed no ornament.

  “What’s happening, Mr. Talbert?” the widow asked.

  The old man took his hat off. “Mrs. Ferrers. Ma’am. Rebels, attacking the farm to the west.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Ferrers.” Tremayne followed Lytton out into the hall and was about to dart up the stairs when he saw Kate, clutching her jacket closed, standing in the door to the parlor.

  Her ribbon was still in his hand. “Your Rebel friends are attacking a farm to the west,” he said to her.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “I must go. Protecting His Majesty’s loyal subjects and such.”

  “Yes,” she said again. He could see her chest heave and fall in the confines of her sensible cotton stays.

  “Miss Grey?” He cocked his head, realization dawning on him. “Is that your answer?”

  “Yes.”

  She bit her lip, and he could tell she wished to say more. He waited.

  “That is, you must understand, I have never said yes before. To anyone.” Then she laughed. “Not that anyone asked. But you are quite outside my experience, Major, in every way.”

  “I rather thought so. And I’m glad of it.” He stepped close to her but could not touch her here in view of so many. He spoke quietly, for her alone. “I won’t take the responsibility lightly. Wait for me.”

  The daunting prospect of an enemy engagement at night against men who knew the territory better than he dwindled to a minor impediment. He slipped her ribbon through the button loop on his sleeve and tied it, then bowed and was gone.

  * * *

  The Miller house was already burning when thirty-odd mounted men thundered to a halt outside the place. There were no Rebels to be seen. The house was old, at least a hundred years, and flames had already engulfed the steep gables and melted the lead from the casements.

  “Waste. A vast, natural paradise. More land than anyone can settle. And this.” Tremayne spoke more to himself than to anyone else, but Silas Talbert, mounted on the horse that had earlier that day made a remarkable recovery, answered him.

  “It’s a rare man on either side of this war whose reach is equal to his grasp.”

  They watched the house burn. There was little to save, and no point in pursuit.

  On the cold ride back after Talbert left them, Tremayne’s thoughts turned to Kate, and he fingered the ribbon at his cuff. A showy flourish, a bit of schoolboy romance, plucking the lace from her jacket, but well worth the result.

  He recognized infatuation, though he’d not felt it in a long time. Affairs, some of them long and satisfying, he had pursued since his late teens when he had left home for the army. He had enjoyed briefer encounters as well, none more debauched than in the company of his cousin and brother officer, Bayard Caide. It occurred to him that there were elements of his past—and regrettably, with this late war, of his present—that made him an unfit companion for a Quaker girl.

  Those considerations were for tomorrow, though. Today, s
he waited for him.

  The house looked different in the cold blue light of dawn. The windows that yesterday had glowed softly with welcome now stared like empty sockets.

  He’d hoped to wake only the servants by knocking quietly, but no one came. Lytton joined him on the porch. “There’s no smoke in any of the chimneys, sir.”

  “What?” Fear stole over him. The viciousness that would cause a man to burn his neighbor’s house led to worse things in a conflict like this. England’s own Civil War had been rife with atrocity, and the Colonists seemed determined to replay that internecine struggle. He pounded hard on the door.

  It swung away from his hand.

  They searched the hall, parlors, and bedrooms, and finally the attics and cellars, calling out for the women; but of the servants, Mrs. Ferrers, and Kate Grey, they found no trace.

  Recalling with sickening apprehension and the first cold sparks of anger Mrs. Ferrers’ anecdote about the cruelly deceived Hessian colonel, he reached for the oilskin packet in his bag, and the papers entrusted to him by General Howe.

  The envelope was still there, but when he examined the pages in the cold morning light, they were utterly blank.

  Three

  After Tremayne had gone, Kate had remained in the parlor listening to the clatter of spurs and hooves on the paving. There was little talk. She was not surprised. She’d seen it before. Her father was one of the men their community called upon when Indian raids threatened, and she knew from experience that men who had been wakened in the middle of the night for skirmishing were rarely garrulous.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket and was reassured to find her father’s letter there. Absently, she attempted to tie her jacket shut, and blushed when she realized that a man was now riding into the dark with her ribbon around his cuff. She subsided into the lolling chair where he had sat that afternoon and tried to get her mind around what she had just done.

  Kate had always been the gray mouse of Grey Farm. Most of her friends were married or courting by now. She knew that some of them enjoyed an advantage of appearance and, most saliently, of disposition. Few farmers wanted a tart-tongued girl for a wife.