Mistress Firebrand

by Donna Thorland

  Devere took her hand and pressed it to his lips. She felt the contact through her whole body and tried hard not to show it. Howe bowed and left them in relative privacy, and finally, after a year, she was standing again face-to-face with Severin Devere.

  * * *

  He hated the way she was looking at him, as though he had somehow disappointed her. Perhaps he had.

  She had changed. So had he, of course, but the regimentals, which Captain André had rightly insisted he wear, loudly proclaimed that he had not. He wished to God there had been some other—any other—way to meet her again without endangering her. John André had men watching him. That would have been a sensible precaution with an officer one suspected but dared not yet accuse of turning coat. It was an absolute necessity with one you believed held the key to your professional advancement.

  “Jenny,” he said.

  “A very familiar use, considering we have just met.”

  He had liked her tart and clever in her ugly linen smock. Tart and clever, he liked her as much or more in marigold silk turned iridescent by the candlelight. It outlined her admirable curves and set off her copper hair, which, unpowdered, was piled high on her head in a luxurious tangle of curls. A glossy plume of them hung down her back. She wore sparkling paste around the throat he wanted to lick and the wrists he longed to kiss.

  “The introduction,” he explained, “was a necessary fiction.”

  “Yes,” she said, the disappointment plain now in her voice. “You have always been very good at doing whatever was necessary.”

  He had worn the uniforms of many regiments and many nations, but never felt such a fraud as at this moment, in his own. “It is a costume, Jenny,” he assured her. “Nothing more. Everything I wrote to you in that letter is true, and more.”

  “Then how do you come to be speaking so intimately in the general’s ear?” she asked.

  “You are smiling now,” he said, “for the benefit of others, because they cannot hear our words but they can read our expressions. We are giving them the scene they all know, the one Burgoyne wished to play with you. The one in which the officer with a reputation for bedding beauties seduces the pretty niece of an infamous actress. You play your part well. Pray give me credit, then, for a little skill in mine.”

  “Your performance with Howe was very convincing,” she said.

  “And so it has to be. If our host suspected how I really felt about him, believe me, he would fear for his life. He left me to die at the bottom of that mine.”

  A little of the color left her face and threw her cosmetics into relief. She looked fragile, her skin porcelain with painted roses.

  “And my aunt and I sent you there.”

  “The Widow sent me there, and I hold no grudges. She was doing her job. I was doing mine. But Sir William Howe was supposed to be my ally, a brother officer, a gentleman. He did not rescue me. Indeed, he did not stir himself at all on my account. Nor, it seems, did anyone on his staff spare a thought for me.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “With help from my family—the American family whom I was too English and too proud to own before. They got me out of the mine and nursed me back to health. And they risked everything they had to do it, because their farm is deep in Rebel territory and rescuing me could have cost them their land, their fortune, and their lives. As it is, they had to endure a visit from a troop of dragoons in the middle of the night—although if you were to ask my aunt, she would likely tell you the King’s soldiers caused a fair bit less damage to hearth and home than did I in the grip of my fever.”

  Jenny swallowed, the muscles in her slender neck working, and said, “What happened to you at Simsbury?”

  “The usual sort of thing that happens in prisons compounded by Mr. Hallam’s superbly vicious enmity and the inhuman conditions of the mine.”

  “I am sorry,” she said, “for all of it. I did not know what else to do. I could see no other course.”

  “Necessity is a harsh mistress, as I have cause to know. But you didn’t do it for yourself. You did it for your aunt. I know that. In your position, I like to think I would have done the same, but I’m not certain of it. I was misguided then. I would do the same now. I am doing the same now. Or at least I am trying, because I am a little wiser at least than I was a year ago. Howe ignored my letters, my entreaties for aid. Three times he denied me, and I am no saint.”

  “Then you are here for revenge.”

  “No. Though the instinct glows hot, like a muse of fire. I am done with them. I’m here for you.”

  “Then why not come to me in private, where we could . . . be ourselves?”

  Oh, how he hated the uniform then. “Because I am being watched, and because I know what you have been about, Cornelia.”

  All the color drained from her face now, but she hid it with a flourish of her fan and asked, “Who else knows?”

  “No one, yet. That is why I came back. To ensure no one else finds out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I must put the gifts of my calling to use one last time to make sure you are safe, and then I can take off this uniform—this costume—for good, and you and I can begin again.”

  “No,” she said.

  “No, what?”

  “I won’t have you kill for me.”

  “You did not scruple over it in the street that night.”

  “That was different. You were defending our lives. What you are planning now is cold-blooded murder.”

  Her mask was slipping, her smile fading, her voice rising. He could not risk discovery here.

  “We must talk in private,” he said. “Meet me in the gardens tomorrow night.”

  “Vauxhall is closed.”

  “I’ll leave the hedge door unlocked. You know where the private boxes are. Come to me there, and I will explain everything.”

  * * *

  He had come back for her, and he was prepared to do murder for her. It would make a very good play.

  It was not how she wanted to live her life. Entrapped in such a dark drama. It was not how she wanted him to lead his. He said he had changed, but if he intended to do this thing, he had not. He had only changed costume.

  General Washington had warned her that she would hang if she was discovered. She had heard the talk, read about Burgoyne’s oath to execute the seditious scribbler and about Howe’s generous reward for the man’s capture. She had felt safe, because everyone assumed the writer had to be a man.

  She was not safe at all.

  Devere had not told her to make sure she was not seen—perhaps he hadn’t felt it necessary to belabor the obvious. She knew that their meeting must be secret.

  It was easy now to understand why Angela Ferrers had sought out the Divine Fanny’s tutelage. Anyone could buy a wig or don a costume, but the art of impersonation relied on carriage and gesture and gait. Jenny entered her room Saturday afternoon as herself and emerged from it as Margaret, their part-time maid, in a brown linen gown with a white kerchief tucked into her neckline, a plain muslin apron, and her distinctive copper hair hidden by a black wig and tucked into the ugliest cap she could find. With a thin wool cloak that both entirely failed to keep out the cold and became quickly drenched with melting snow, she not only looked but felt the part.

  She took the precaution of carrying a basket of washing with her as well, and set out on the long walk through the falling snow to Vauxhall. Huddled into her miserable excuse for a cloak and stooped against the wind, she received a second glance from no one.

  When she reached the hedge that bordered the pleasure gardens, she panicked, because it was thickly covered in snow and she could not see the door, but she thrust her hands through in the place where she thought it had been. Her fingers met cold brick. She moved a little farther along the wall and tried again, and her fingers at last met co
ld iron and smooth wood, found the ring, and pulled.

  Beyond was a fairyland covered in pristine snow, the paths deeper depressions in the blanket of white. She retraced their steps from the year before, stopping when she reached the manicured grove where the little private dining rooms were nestled in the snow-frosted trees. They were all identical: single-story garden follies with large windows, painted green doors, and rusticated masonry corners with Chinese fretwork galleries running around the top. The little structures were closed for winter but footprints in the snow, coming from the direction of the banqueting house, guided her to the right one.

  She pressed her thumb to the latch and pushed the door open on surprising warmth. The room was heated by four small brass foot stoves, the Dutch kind, with coals glowing red and throwing splashes of light on the paneling. The furnishings were pushed to the walls, a table along one, four chairs along another, a caned chaise topped with a cushion tucked into a corner.

  Devere sat in the window seat, one foot up on the bench, looking out at the snow. When she entered, he turned to look at her. He was not wearing his regimentals tonight and in the moonlight his face was full of relief and something else.

  Joy.

  “I was worried you would not come,” he admitted.

  “Who can refuse a private invitation to Vauxhall?” she asked, setting down her basket of washing.

  He smiled. “I wish that I could lay a banquet before you this time.”

  She thought of the cake and his mouth on hers, and suddenly the little room felt very warm. She untied her cloak. He rushed to take it, but he was careful not to touch her. He draped it over the chaise and retreated to the window, his tall frame leaning against the embrasure.

  “A banquet of sweets is not necessary, but I am grateful you have provided heat,” she admitted.

  “I find I’ve grown less tolerant of cold places,” he said.

  Like the mine, which had been her fault. “I am sorry for what you have suffered, Severin, but it’s all the more reason I don’t want you to embrace your former profession—not on my account.”

  “I have never killed lightly—or for better reason. The man who threatens you bids fair to replace me, and he is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, like Angela Ferrers: ruthless, with few if any weaknesses.”

  “But he does not yet know my name,” said Jenny. “Which would make killing him murder. An assassination.”

  “He does not yet know your name,” agreed Devere. “He doesn’t even want Cornelia. He offered her to me, in a bargain. He wants the Widow’s New York contact. He wants your aunt, Jenny, so that he can discover everything she knows about Angela Ferrers.”

  “Why?”

  “Ambition. Something you and I can both understand. I chose this work because it promised quick advancement for men who can get results. I chose it because it is one of the only ways for a man to succeed on his abilities alone, without the advantages of wealth or powerful friends. So has he.”

  Devere continued softly. “Howe’s current adjutant general is not an able intelligencer. Stephen Kemble came by the job through interest and family connections. Kemble’s appointment was pure cronyism—made at a time when this was only a rebellion in Boston, and the fate of America did not hang in the balance—but he is General Gage’s brother-in-law, and so not easily displaced. André has already made the first move. He has supplanted me as indispensable during my absence—in the space of a few months. Now he wants to rise higher, to take Kemble’s place. It will be nearly impossible to deny him the job if he can capture the Widow.”

  “André? Captain John André?”

  “Yes.”

  “Captain André paints scenery at the John Street and sometimes speaks the prologue, rather badly. He hardly seems an assassin.”

  “No. He isn’t the sort to do his own killing, at least by preference. But he is a spy. A very skilled and very ambitious one. And he already has half the evidence he needs to hang you.” Devere drew a crumpled sheaf of papers from his pocket and placed it on the table.

  She could just make out the words in the moonlight. “That is my manuscript,” she said. “How did he come by that?”

  “Does it matter? It is in your hand. All John André needs is a sample to match it against. Your writing is distinctive. You must have had a very thorough tutor. You form your loops the same way, without fail, line after line. You dot your i’s and cross your t’s with neat, short marks. I could attempt to make the case that this is a forgery, of course, but it will be a weak argument. Not something to hazard your safety on.”

  “The last time I saw this manuscript, it was in the hands of my printer. A man trusted by Washington.”

  “Who?”

  “I never learned his name.”

  “Describe him.”

  She did.

  “Rivington,” said Devere, decisively.

  “No. That can’t be,” said Jenny. “Rivington used to print the Tory Gazetteer.”

  “He is a double agent. He sells information to both sides, and each believes he is loyal to them while playing the other.”

  “So he is a traitor.”

  Devere shrugged. “Perhaps. And perhaps not. He has to give Howe something real from time to time. Cornelia’s manuscript is real, but useless, unless you have a suspect, handwriting samples to compare, and an expert to assess them. Until I returned a few days ago, Howe had no such expert readily to hand.”

  Relief washed over her. “So as long as I do not put pen to paper and allow any samples of my writing to cross Howe’s desk, I am safe.”

  “No,” said Devere. “You aren’t safe—certainly not until we discover who has my possessions. I ordered them sent ashore if I did not return to the Boyne. They should have gone to the King’s Arms and been held there for my return, but the trunk disappeared. Your letter to Burgoyne was in it.”

  Her heart sank. “Did your things include all the movables in your cabin?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then the trunk will contain more than just my letter. When I took Burgoyne’s plans, I replaced them with a manuscript—a play I was working on—and disguised the substitution by placing the general’s cover page on top.”

  “It is no matter. The letter alone is damning enough. More handwriting would not make the case any more persuasively.”

  “It is not the handwriting. It is the content. The manuscript I left in your cabin has a decidedly Tory flavor, and the Miles Gloriosus is anything but that. Unfortunately, many of the jokes are the same. It seemed a shame to waste them.”

  “I might have been able to cast doubt on the authenticity of the handwriting. Chancy, but possible. But if the content matches, Jenny, we have no hope of saving you that way.”

  “Who might have your possessions now?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly my man of business, who is—unfortunately and rather worryingly—missing. Possibly an agent of Angela Ferrers. Possibly no one of any importance at all. During the period since they were removed from the Boyne—and we can only assume that Hartwell followed my instructions in their entirety—the city has changed hands, twice, there has been a fire, and the staff at the King’s Arms has had to make many compromises to keep the place open.”

  “Compromises,” she said. “Like Bobby. He was a covert Son of Liberty before the Americans turned the theater into a hospital and threatened to arrest him for entertaining loyalists, and now the army has treated him no better. He is not being paid for the use of the theater, only a weekly pittance for Mr. Dearborn’s services while Howe’s ‘players’ make free of the theater like it is a public house and tryst in the slots with their mistresses.”

  Devere smiled and looked her up and down. “If they’re half as pretty as you, then I cannot blame them.”

  “Some are far prettier. And all are better dressed. I borrowed this from our mai
d.”

  “Was the smock from The American Prodigal not available?”

  “That is a costume, and would look like one on the street. This, on the other hand, is making a game attempt to flatter with its cut and failing mournfully in its cloth. This is what a real maid looks like.”

  “You’re a very good observer of people. If you hadn’t been an actress, you would have made an able spy. Although you are mistaken about the gown. It does most definitely flatter. It makes me wish I could find my missing impedimenta and with it those elusive French letters. I think it might be worth shaking down every fence and vendue master in New York to get hold of them.”

  “There’s no need to go to quite so much trouble because on this occasion I’ve brought my own.”

  Eighteen

  It should not have surprised him at all: that this woman who had taken her future into her own hands time and time again would take this into her own hands. But it did.

  And, God help him, he was eager as a boy for her to take him into her own hand and other softer places, but an unwelcome thought intruded. “And what, or who, in my absence, inspired you to go shopping for French letters?”

  “Aunt Frances,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I told her that I’d decided that no man who wouldn’t consent to wearing one was worth bedding, and she said that if I truly felt that way I ought to have my own. She also opined they would only gather lint in my pocketbook.”

  “Was she right?” he asked.

  “Yes. For all the wrong reasons, of course. Are they really so awful to use?”

  “I suppose that depends. If you are a man and intent solely upon your own pleasure, then they are a nuisance, particularly if you have . . . difficulties maintaining your . . . intention.”

  “But your intention,” she said lightly, “your intention is unwavering, I should hope.” Flirting, as he had not been able to induce her to do in the kitchen that previous night.

  “I would show you my intention,” he said, warming to the smile that kissed the corners of her lips, as he was about to do, “but first I would see these French letters.”