Mistress Firebrand

by Donna Thorland

  Like Jennifer Leighton.

  As with so many colonists, the girl very obviously felt the pinch of her status as a provincial, and admired all things English and “sophisticated.” It would be so easy to play on that, to manipulate her into his bed by preying on her insecurities. As he had been maneuvered, he fully realized, into his role as spy and provocateur to counter the stigma of his Indian blood. He had never been bitter about it before. Not until this trip to America. Not until Boston.

  He was not even certain it would be so very wrong to use his hard-earned status as an Englishman to attract her, because Jennifer Leighton’s American character was a decided part of her appeal for Severin—but he was not in New York to indulge himself.

  And the girl was not for him. He fixed things for powerful men. Reordered some bothersome aspect of the world to their requirements or advantage. A part of him wanted to fix things for Jennifer Leighton, to warn her that Burgoyne was a brilliant soldier and a talented playwright, and a selfish ass with no intention of advancing her career in the theater—except, perhaps, at a price that she should not have to pay—but his duty was to get the man home in one piece, not to safeguard the virtue of a woman who might be willing to part with it cheaply anyway.

  He bypassed John Street and the charms of Jennifer Leighton in favor of duty, following the telltale signs of conspiracy to Beekman’s Slip, where Jasper Drake’s tavern stood opposite the quay.

  Drake’s was not a grand public house like Mr. Fraunces’ or the King’s Arms or Smith’s in Philadelphia, all handsome brick structures with lofty ceilings and large windows. This was a workingman’s tavern, an old squat clapboard dwelling with a saltbox roof that sloped so low the shingles nearly kissed the ground at the back and the whole thing was more lean-to than gable. And it was a notorious gathering place for Liberty Boys and the dregs of the New York docks.

  In his battered leather coat and old buckskin breeches Severin blended in with the sailors and stevedores and laborers who frequented the place. It was easy to do because the smoky taproom with its yawning hearth was packed and the patrons were full of the particular sort of good cheer engendered by free pints of steaming flip.

  There was no obvious occasion for this merrymaking, no identifiable source of this unlooked-for generosity. It was an absence, Severin reflected, as a pretty barmaid pressed a foaming pot into his hands with a smile that told him there was more than spiked beer on offer, which told its own story.

  That, along with the two mechanics slumming in homespun and passing through the crowd like proud parents at a wedding, with a warm word for every man there.

  It was an art, this kind of provocation, stirring up trouble and convincing otherwise law-abiding men to rob their neighbors, and these two were very, very good at it. Dressed like common workingmen but with suspiciously clean fingernails and soft hands, one was tall and blond but too lean faced to be handsome and the other was a small, dark, bandy-legged fellow with greasy hair who spoke in a nasal New England twang.

  It did not take long for the two mechanics, who had the rhetorical skills of revival preachers, to stir up trouble, calling to each other, song and response, across the crowded room, decrying the decadence of the rich loyalists who supported the corrupt governor by provisioning the Duchess of Gordon, his floating office in exile in New York Harbor, and Vandeput’s Asia, whose guns were trained, even now, on the town.

  These were legitimate complaints, not just the dogma of the church of liberty. No Englishman should have to live under the threat of English guns. Severin had found it difficult to maintain his detachment when he had infiltrated the Rebel lines outside of Boston. He felt the same tonight, even though he knew that someone was definitely fanning the flames of American outrage.

  The Asia, though, and the Duchess of Gordon were unattainable targets of impotent rage. The trick was focusing that anger on an object within reach. A vessel anchored at the wharf, a warehouse filled with British goods, a prominent loyalist whose thrashing, humiliation, or imprisonment would intimidate others.

  A pot of black grease paint and a bag of feathers appeared, passed from hand to hand, and that was when Severin knew it was more than a show. The Rebels had done the same in Boston when they had destroyed the tea, disguised, in a manner that might obscure identity but fooled absolutely no one, as Mohawks.

  Severin accepted the grease paint when it reached him, and pressed his hand over his face. He stayed his practiced fingers, remembered to smear the paint so that it did not look too convincing. The feathers were sad things plucked from domestic fowl, and he would not have been caught dead in them under any other circumstances.

  Devere edged toward the door so that he could slip away as soon as he was certain of the mob’s direction. If their object was naval stores needed by the Boyne, he would have to compel Governor Tryon to call out his regulars, and devil take the consequences.

  The short mechanic began preaching the sins of decadence and dissipation and idolatry, while the tall one unrolled his sheaf of broadsides with a flourish worthy of Garrick, and set them alight.

  The flames licked at a familiar name picked out in bold type and Severin felt a queer fluttering in his stomach. The mob’s object was not the wharf or the warehouses. The governor would not call out the troops because the place was operating with no official license, and with Burgoyne safely aboard the Boyne, the matter touched on Severin’s professional affairs not at all.

  The broadsides were playbills for the John Street and The American Prodigal, the same ones Severin had seen in the lobby Monday night. The mob was being stirred up to pull down the theater, drag the players through the streets, and whip them to the palisade. Had Severin not intercepted Burgoyne, the general would be there right now, directly in the path of the angry mob, as no doubt the writer of the innuendo-filled letter had intended.

  Burgoyne, of course, was safe, but Jennifer Leighton was not.

  * * *

  Burgoyne was not coming. For two days Jenny had held out hope that the general might put in an appearance at their next performance. She turned Frances Leighton’s risky plan over and over in her mind, but could not commit to it if there was even a slender chance that her potential patron might come to John Street. A professional visit would set the tone for all their future dealings. A personal one would put Jenny’s foot squarely upon the path that Frances Leighton had trod.

  Her aunt’s regrets had been palpable, and Jenny knew she must not make the decision to pursue the more personal variety of patronage lightly. It would change, forever, how the world viewed her, and she was wise enough—in this at least—to know that it might change how she saw herself.

  She stood in the wings, stage right, listening to Bobby give the prologue and trying to discern if there were deeper shadows within the enclosure of the royal box, but it was too dark to see. Jenny turned to find Mr. Dearborn watching her, and when he shook his head she finally knew for certain that Burgoyne had not come.

  There was always Friday, two nights hence, their last performance for the week, that the general might attend. Perhaps she could send another invitation by way of Devere. For tonight, though, the play had to go on.

  Aunt Frances was moving stiffly tonight. The aches that plagued her in the damp weather had started early this year. Otherwise, though, she was in fine form, her charm so potent Jenny could almost see the spell she cast over the house, like a gossamer net. Jenny knew she herself didn’t have the talent as an actress to enter directly into that kind of emotional communion with the audience, but her words could be the catechism, and if she found a patron to champion her, they might be heard by tens, even hundreds, of thousands of people in London.

  They were acting the duel at the end when it started. Jenny did not recognize the sounds for what they were at first. Her sword clashing with Bobby’s was loud in her ears, the war whoops in the street just a distant ruckus, not unusual at night in this
neighborhood.

  The doors at the back of the house burst open. The audience murmured and turned. Men with feathers in their hair and paint on their faces streamed into the pit, shouting, “Liberty!” and overturning the stands and knocking down anyone who stood in their way. More than a few brandished weapons—cudgels or balks of wood, even a few cutlasses and knives.

  The boxes emptied, both tiers, in a stampede of silk and lace. The audience in the pit fled in a more plebeian exodus of linen and leather. The rabble up in the gallery cheered and threw fruit at the mob, because they were high above the fray and, for them, a riot was just another form of theater.

  Jenny dropped her blade and teetered frozen on the apron as the mob surged toward the stage. She did not know what to do.

  The Mohawks reached the footlights, and Bobby cursed. “Mr. Dearborn,” he shouted. “The lights, if you please!”

  Jenny saw the danger at once. If the mob ransacked John Street, the company could rebuild, but it would take only one candle toppled, one sconce unseated, one curtain touched by flames, to destroy the playhouse utterly, and the company’s future with it, provided they didn’t all burn to death.

  Jenny ran to the great torchère on the left side of the stage. Matthew Dearborn was already lowering the footlights, safe in their deep trough of water, into the cellar, while Bobby vaulted into the gallery and began extinguishing lights. The high chandeliers above the stage, the pit, and the gallery would be securely out of reach so long as no one lowered—or cut—the ropes.

  Jenny put out the torchère and turned to cross the stage, but the apron was seething with Mohawks smashing props and furniture and hacking at the painted scenery. She was buffeted by their bodies and by the smells of salt fish and wet wool and cooking oil and spilled beer and sweat.

  A burly mechanic in a dirty mustard shirt and leather apron took great handfuls of the main curtain and heaved until the rod started to groan high overhead. It was, after the scenery, perhaps the most essential fitting in the building.

  Jenny acted out of instinct, grasping the curtain herself and trying to pull it out of his grip. For a moment they were engaged in something like a tug-of- rope contest, with Jenny throwing all her weight onto her heels. Then the rogue let go without warning, and something—someone—struck her a blow that slammed her back into the proscenium door hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

  Pain exploded in her chest. She couldn’t hear. Her vision swam. Her knees crumpled and she slid to the floor. A booted foot trampled her fingers but she could not draw breath to scream. Wind ruffled her hair and buffeted her face, taunting her because she could feel it on her cheeks and over her eyelids but could not get it inside her chest, and something—the curtain, she registered, through her haze, on its heavy bar, hundreds of muffling yards of velvet on an iron rod—hurtled down toward her.

  Another Mohawk, all grease paint and feathers and hard biting hands, gripped her by the armpits and threw her through the proscenium door into the cool darkness of the slot.

  Her back hit the flimsy canvas wall. The stage shook violently and the flats trembled as the curtain struck the stage. Her Mohawk cursed, pulled the door shut, and shot the bolt home, trapping her alone with him in the enclosure.

  She tried to cry out but her lungs would not fill with air and hot tears coursed down her face. Hands grasped her waist, hauling her up and propping her against the wall. They ran over her arms and legs and took hold of her stays and cut through the laces with a knife. Her rib cage expanded enough to make a strangled noise, more a whimper than a scream.

  “Easy,” said a cultured voice in the dark. “It is Devere. You are safe, and not, that I can detect, badly injured. No broken bones, in any case. You’ve just gotten the wind knocked out of you.”

  It was a narrow enclosure, just enough room for a single actor to wait his cue, but the second door, the one that led to the boxes, told its other function: a vestige of the “traditions” of the English stage, when such slots were a trysting spot for actresses and their patrons. Devere’s every move in the tiny room brought his body into contact with hers. There was no avoiding touching him as she clawed involuntarily through the dark while she gasped for air.

  He caught her hands in his and held them. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’ll be able to breathe normally again in a moment.”

  It didn’t feel like it. It felt like she was going to die. She was locked, voiceless, in a body that could barely perform its most basic function. Devere’s touch was her only tether to the world. And then her lungs began to work again. Only a little at first, and it was pure, undiluted agony, and sweet, joyous relief.

  She breathed at first in ragged, ugly gasps, like an old bellows. Each expansion, each contraction made her chest ache. Her eyes watered and she was only glad that in the pitch blackness of the slot Devere could not see how horrible she must look, like a hooked fish, mouth open, flopping on deck.

  Finally, when she was breathing normally, she became aware of the sounds of destruction, of splintering wood and tearing cloth, muffled by the thin walls. She gathered herself together and tried to push past Devere.

  “Where do you think you are going?” he asked, without moving.

  “To stop them, or there will be nothing left.”

  “They’ll stop when the rum runs its course, and not before. Until then, there is nothing practical one can do to deter a drunken mob.”

  “So John Street is ransacked while trembling Governor Tryon sleeps snug on the Duchess of Gordon tonight,” she said bitterly.

  “Some would say it is the price you pay for trying to play both sides. You can’t stage plays catering to loyalists and appease the radicals at the same time.”

  “We were managing until tonight.”

  “You were managing until you invited Burgoyne to the theater and someone in the Rebel faction found out about it.”

  “I was discreet,” she said.

  “But someone else wasn’t,” replied Devere. “And The American Prodigal is an easy target for Whig ire.”

  “A play—or a person—that expresses no point of view might as well not exist at all.”

  “Then may I suggest choosing a less divisive one?”

  “It is impossible to stage anything in New York at the moment without giving offense to someone.”

  “Have you considered that there are safer ways to earn your bread?”

  “That is what my parents say.”

  “Is there a mother and a father Leighton?”

  “My birth was not the stuff of miracles. Quite the opposite, or so my mother and the midwife like to remind me. Usually in company. It is exceedingly embarrassing.”

  “Forgive me, but I can’t be the first man to have wondered if you are a natural daughter of Frances Leighton.”

  The idea had certainly never occurred to Jenny. “I am twenty-five. Aunt Frances is barely forty.”

  “She was fifteen when she made her debut on the stage, and it is not so very uncommon for women in such circumstances to invent origins for their bastards that allow them to be kept close to hand,” Devere said.

  Jenny hadn’t known that. Aunt Frances, she was coming to think, practiced a decidedly selective form of candor. “Then she did a very poor job of it. I met Aunt Fanny once when I was eleven and didn’t see her again until she turned up on our doorstep two years ago. In between she sent me a subscription to the circulating library and boxes of plays. And my parents are very real. You cannot get much more prosaic than being a bricklayer in New Brunswick.”

  “Have you considered going home to them?”

  “Have you ever been to New Brunswick? My aunt calls it New Bumpkin, and with good reason.”

  “It may be dull, but I’ll wager it’s a good deal safer than New York at the moment.”

  “So is London. And yet here you are, dressed—if the blow
did not disorder my mind—as a Mohawk.” She thought of Aunt Frances’ remarks about the man’s parentage.

  “It was the easiest way to infiltrate the mob, but the several ironies of the costume are not lost on me,” he said.

  “Are those chicken feathers?” she asked, reaching up to pluck them free. His hair was silkier than she’d expected, and touching it was far more intimate than she’d intended.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  They were knee to knee, thigh to thigh in the narrow enclosure and it would be impossible now to lower her arms without touching him.

  “If it is any consolation,” she said, feeling a flush rise up her neck to heat her face, “I am dressed in my bumpkin’s costume, though I would not be caught dead in it even in New Brunswick.”

  “But it is what the audience expects,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  She did not mean for it to come out quite so breathless.

  His lips, unexpectedly soft, covered hers. It was the lightest of touches—a question, not an answer—but when his mouth urged hers open, she responded. The wetness of it startled her. The slick penetration of his tongue suggested another kind of joining.

  Her hips tilted to meet his. She grasped his shoulders for balance. He placed his palm at the small of her back and pressed her closer still, where she needed him. Her chest ached from the blow earlier, but she didn’t care because this was too good to stop.

  Her fingers met the silk rope of his braided hair at the back of his neck, thick and heavy atop the collar of his coat. She wanted more. She tugged at the ribbon until the bow opened and she could comb through his hair in greedy handfuls.