The Turncoat

by Donna Thorland

  He laughed, and his shoulders twitched in a graceful, self-deprecating shrug. “But alas, kindness rarely stirs the feminine heart. Go and speak with Peter Tremayne, Miss Grey, but bear my offer in mind.”

  * * *

  Proposals of marriage, it seemed, came in flavors, like pies. She’d been offered a union of tortured spirits with Bayard Caide, a lifetime of lies with Peter Tremayne, and a platonic alliance with Alex Hamilton. But today was the first time she’d been offered a marriage without a husband.

  “Your father and Washington need a man in France with my expertise. It is an opportunity for me to prove my loyalty and usefulness,” Tremayne was saying from his place on the carpet.

  He was kneeling, like some chivalric knight, and after the idiocy of the Mischianza, she found it more than slightly ridiculous. “Do please get up,” she said.

  They retired to the settle together, like some courting couple. “Your father and Washington are pragmatists. War makes men so. They know that once I am in France my countrymen will send emissaries, make overtures, try to woo me back. And failing that, they’ll do their damnedest to catch me and hang me. Your father and Washington are right to keep you here—both as surety that I will not be tempted to betray them and to keep you safe from harm,” Tremayne said. “Do you want to be my wife? You will have other offers, from your own countrymen; of that I have no doubt. I am going to lose Sancreed and the viscountcy. There is money in France, but not a great deal of it. You will be ordinary Kate Tremayne, not the fine lady I wanted to make you. But we will be together.”

  “You will be in France. For a year. At the least. We would have to marry today.”

  “Yes.”

  And then he would be gone. “I can’t. Not yet. Not today.”

  “I am not expecting a wedding night, Kate,” he said gently.

  “It isn’t that. I mean, I know your mother was never able to…that is to say…what happened with Bay will not haunt me. I knew the risk I was running, was already prepared to endure it. But, Peter, he did not withdraw. I could be carrying his child. It would be better if we waited until you returned.”

  “It is something of a family tradition, raising another man’s child.”

  “This is not a joking matter.”

  “Then let us be serious. I am embarking for France tomorrow, Kate. I have to cross three thousand miles of ocean controlled by the country I just betrayed. I may well die. If I do so before I am tried, any male issue of our union would inherit Sancreed. And there might be some safety there for you if the war goes badly, to be the mother of a viscount. If I am tried, and Sancreed gone, then there is money and land in France to keep you, and the child if any. Please, Kate. I have failed in every effort to protect you. You may be pregnant. It would give me great peace of mind to know you were provided for. Let me give you what little I have.”

  “That was almost the least romantic proposal I have ever heard,” she said. It was also the most welcome.

  “Almost?” he asked.

  “It is neck and neck with Hamilton’s. He thought my life might be easier with a husband.”

  “Did he kneel?”

  “No.”

  “Then I beat him by a head. Let me get on my knees again and I will beat him by a furlong.”

  He knelt and took her hands in his. “You refused me at the cottage because you would not lead a life of lies. You were right to refuse me then. You left me in Philadelphia because you had a duty to warn Washington. You could not have done otherwise and been true to yourself. But you are wrong to refuse me now, because even if the worst comes to pass and we cannot rediscover desire together, we have something more abiding than physical love to unite us: amity and equality of spirit. Kate, marry me.”

  “Yes.”

  She had no idea until he stood up and kissed her tears away that she had been crying.

  They were married twice. Once, in the Quaker way, which had always been of dubious legality with the English courts, and then once more in an Anglican service to satisfy Tremayne and the laws of succession.

  Reverend Matthis had not read Kate or her father out of the meeting, because he had not returned to Orchard Valley. He’d stayed on at Valley Forge, and was tickled to witness a wedding for the first time in nearly a year. Kate and Tremayne made their promises in front of him and an hour later, a Church of England divine was brought at gunpoint by Arthur Grey from a neighboring township. He proved entirely happy to perform the ceremony once Tremayne produced the license.

  And by that time it was afternoon, and Peter and Kate retired with her father’s grudging blessing to a garret room made available to them, in one of the little houses that dotted the bottom of the valley. It was hot and stuffy under the eaves, and she stripped down to her chemise without pretense to either seduction or modesty, while he watched from the bed.

  She came no closer. “About Bay,” she began.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “You said you wouldn’t have me fresh from his bed.”

  “He forced you.”

  “I didn’t fight him.”

  “You were his prisoner,” he said decisively. “You were alone and friendless and in his power. You didn’t choose what happened to you. We often don’t.”

  “I chose not to shoot Lytton on the road. I chose not to fight Bay in that inn room. And I did the things he asked me to. And I…” She couldn’t say it.

  “You responded to his cruelty because you thought you deserved it. And you responded to his touch because this was a man with whom you had already resigned yourself to intimacy.”

  “And because he is so like you,” she whispered.

  “None of that changes the fact that you were raped, even if you can’t bring yourself to think of it that way.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered, despite the airless heat of the room.

  “My love, all of that is behind us.”

  “All I want is to lie with you to prove that true,” she said, without one ounce of desire in her entire body.

  “You might be brave enough to reopen your wounds for the sake of consummating this marriage, my blushing bride, but I’ve been beaten to within an inch of my life and beg your forbearance.”

  “Liar.”

  “Good God, woman, I hope that isn’t what you’re going to say anytime I fail to spring to attention and salute your beauty. I’ve married a virago.” He laughed and opened his arms. “Come here.”

  Kate climbed up beside him. “This is our wedding day. We can hardly troop back downstairs. Some poor officer gave up his lodgings so that we might have some privacy. Washington would be insulted, and it would raise questions about our marriage.”

  “I thought,” Tremayne said, “that we might spend the afternoon reading to each other.”

  She laughed. “Peter, I would like nothing better, but I suspect books are scarce in an armed camp, and we can hardly go from hut to hut asking if anyone has a three-month-old copy of the Gazette they can spare.”

  “In most other camps, you would be quite right. But Washington, true to baffling form, has put a bookseller in charge of his artillery. These are General Knox’s quarters. I found a rather extensive library downstairs.” From the floor beside the bed he produced a saddlebag stuffed with books.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “That bookseller drove fifty-nine guns from Ticonderoga over three hundred miles of ice and snow to force the British Army out of Boston.”

  “Yes. Howe should have fortified Dorchester Heights when he had the chance. It was not one of our finest moments,” Tremayne agreed. “But I can’t be sorry for it. If Howe had remained in Boston, I might never have met you. Shall we see what the bookseller general has been reading?”

  She couldn’t resist.

  And the next day he was gone.

  * * *

  Kate did not return immediately to Orchard Valley. Tremayne had spent their last morning together writing instructions for his stewards, his bankers, h
is lawyers—and his wife. She had trouble thinking of herself as anyone’s wife, but there it was.

  He’d asked her to remain with the Continental Army until the British were truly gone from the area. “If something happens to your father, go to Hamilton.”

  “That might be awkward. He did propose to me.”

  “That only proves his taste and perspicacity. He would not be a bad choice if I don’t come back.”

  She didn’t want to talk about this. “You will come back.”

  “You must be prepared to carry on if I don’t. Depending on what story Bay tells, you may be branded a murderess. Though Dyson won’t be much mourned. It is a far easier thing to arrest and hang you for murder than for treason. André will likely suggest as much if the fact escapes my brother’s notice. Stay behind the American lines at all times. And for God’s sake, don’t set foot in New York.”

  “I have no intention of going to New York,” she told him, “but I hardly see what makes it more dangerous than Philadelphia.”

  “Loring wasn’t the best Commissioner of Prisoners, but it seems he kept his charges alive as often as not. If you’re taken in New York and end up on one of the prison hulks in the Hudson, you’re as good as dead. They are floating caskets.”

  “Prisons ought to be places where character can be reformed.” It was a popular Quaker notion, and sprang to her lips unbidden.

  “That is not the view held by the military government in New York. Stay off Manhattan, Kate.”

  “You are the one who is going to be in danger, from almost the moment you leave this camp.”

  “Yes. But I am willing to take another life to safeguard my own—I’ve done it before, with less at stake. Whereas you are not. Promise me you will stay out of New York.”

  She promised.

  And immediately after Tremayne left, she took out the false bottom of the Widow’s trunk and carried the pistols, the knives, and the lock picks to Hamilton. “I want to learn how to use these.”

  He didn’t bat an eye. He taught her, patiently, to shoot accurately with a pistol. He knew a little of knives, and nothing of lock picks, so he found a raffish, gimlet-eyed man among one of the New York regiments who did. And a brusque, ill-mannered cavalry officer from Massachusetts who improved her seat on a horse, though she suspected she would never ride half as well as the Widow.

  When she did ride, at the head of an army, back into Philadelphia a month after she had left, she discovered herself no longer a pretend heiress but a real one. She’d gone to the Valbys’ to repay their kindness with cold cash from the Widow’s store, and collect her wardrobe, and found a lawyer waiting for her. Middle-aged, soberly but expensively dressed, he treated Kate with an unexpected deference. He treated her as Washington had treated the Widow.

  “Mrs. Angela Ferrers has bequeathed to you her entire estate. Her holdings were, of a necessity, diversified, as collecting income in some countries becomes impossible when one is acting for others. But at present, you are receiving revenue from a sugar plantation in the West Indies, orange groves in Spain, olives in Italy and Greece, wheat and grapes in France, and barley and rye in England, though that income is, as you might imagine, uncertain now. And there is cash.” He named a sum. Kate blanched.

  “You may wish me to act for you, or you may wish to hire someone else,” the lawyer, Mr. Sims, was saying. “Angela believed in land, but I suggest you consider broadening your outlook and investing in manufacturing.”

  “Who was she?” Kate cut in. “Who was Angela Ferrers?”

  He shrugged. “She trusted me with her land, her money, and at times, her life—hers was a far-ranging and fascinating career—but she never trusted me with her origins. It was not important to her, where she had come from. Only what she had become.”

  Kate remained in Philadelphia long enough to settle her affairs with Mr. Sims, and to observe Peggy Shippen’s defection from the departed John André to the newly arrived Rebel military governor, General Arnold. He was almost twice her age and before the summer was gone, was accused of using his office to enrich himself. Kate wished them joy.

  She also sought, but failed to find, Elizabeth and Joshua Loring. Sims informed her that the couple had departed for England with Howe and the other Loyalists. “Mrs. Loring’s role as Howe’s mistress was public. Even if her private patriotism became widely known, few of her countrymen would thank her for it. It is a peculiarity of our American character that homicide is more forgivable than adultery.”

  Kate retired to Grey Farm, and with the income provided to her by Mr. Sims, immediately took up the web of international correspondence spun by the Widow and rent by André, and wove it back together. Through the network she learned, before his first letter reached her, of her husband’s arrival in Paris. His own report arrived a few days later.

  We were stopped once, by a naval frigate, searching for that traitor Tremayne. They could not handle us too roughly as we flew a Dutch flag, but they brought all the passengers up on deck to be inspected by a young man. Lytton, of course. What a tangled web, etcetera. In any event, he passed me by and left, declaring: “The man I knew in Philadelphia is not on this vessel.” Your father’s influence on his character, perhaps? Or yours. Certainly and decidedly not mine.

  And she wrote back:

  There will be no child. Your brother lives.

  And because the Widow’s network brought her information from every quarter:

  They say you are much admired at court and young Louis has honored you with a title to replace the one you lost. Or will lose.

  There was no word from England on the status of Tremayne’s title or lands. Rumor had it the army wanted to capture and try him first.

  She sent him letters filled with the minutiae of life at Grey Farm, because that was what she longed for most: the companionship that made light of drudgery and created epics out of trivia.

  Sergeant Bachmann turned up after you left. He is extremely handy about the house, and he is teaching Sarah and Margaret to make sausages. He cannot be persuaded to part with that mustache of his—though if he shaved, I am convinced he would garner a great deal of attention from the local widows and spinsters.

  Tremayne’s next letter contained a sketch.

  The French are far more interested in my wife, who is popularly believed to be an Indian princess in buckskins and beads.

  The sketch showed a woman who was a good deal more buxom than Kate, and awarded her the sort of winsome, heart-shaped face so beloved by Fragonard. She preferred it to the caricature she’d been sent from an English newspaper, a surprisingly good likeness of her dressed as the harlot America, picking the pockets of Tremayne and Caide both while they dueled for her.

  Bay is in London and petitioning the Crown for Sancreed.

  She knew that, and something more, which she had no choice but to tell him:

  I have heard the king will offer you a pardon and an annulment. That is the carrot. This is the stick. If you do not agree, they will try your mother for passing off another man’s child as the heir to Sancreed.

  She could not say: come home, choose me. Because she had been faced with the same choice, and she had chosen to save her father. Tremayne wrote only a single sentence in reply:

  Have faith in me.

  The letter arrived a little more than eighteen months after Tremayne had left, and it was the last word she received from him.

  In writing, anyway. In the summer of 1780, three ships in fast succession arrived in Philadelphia. Each one carried arms from France. And each one was met by an anxious Kate Tremayne. None of them bore her husband, but there was a gun in the hold of each named Kate.

  To keep herself busy, she put her newfound wealth to use making improvements to Grey House. She was not interested in useless luxuries, but saw no sin in the modern comforts she had enjoyed in Philadelphia. She replaced the parlor curtains, and the bed hangings in her father’s room, had a glazier in to do something about the window drafts, and employed a maso
n to improve the draw on the chimneys with the new technology. And she got a cabinetmaker in to try to fix the wobbly leg on the harpsichord, which had been broken since before she could remember. He was unsuccessful.

  Alex Hamilton visited Grey Farm on several occasions. Like Arthur Grey, he was silent on the subject of Kate’s absent husband, until one day late in August he brought her news. “We had a shipment of arms out of Paris. Tremayne sailed with the boat, but they were stopped three days short of Philadelphia by a British frigate that promised to spare the crew and the cargo if your husband went with them willingly. It may have been a genuine abduction, but, Kate, we have appealed to General Clinton and offered him very generous terms for a prisoner exchange, and they claim they do not have Sancreed.”

  “You think he has abandoned me.” She was not asking a question.

  “I think you may have need of a friend, Kate, and I hope you will allow me to be that for you. I will continue to make inquiries.”

  Then it was autumn, and without warning, she was summoned. The messenger arrived mud-splattered from hard riding, and though it was obvious he had ridden all night to reach them at the crack of dawn, he refused rest or refreshment. Kate was to come with him to West Point at once, at the request of General Washington.

  It could mean only one thing: Peter.

  Twenty

  September 25, 1780

  It must mean he was alive. For now. She left instantly.

  Though she was traveling by day, the journey reminded her of nothing so much as that terrifying midnight ride with Angela Ferrers. They changed horses every hour, and though the young lieutenant sent to fetch her was respectful and solicitous of her comfort, he insisted they could not stop to rest. She took her midday meal on horseback, in the yard of an inn, being gawked at by the landlord and his family. Military couriers hastening to deliver important messages were a common sight. Those accompanied by Quaker farm wives in singed aprons were not.