“Good. Your Terence is here, in Williamsburg, isn’t he?”
Jane nodded. “How did you know?”
“I’m not the only one who knows. The Leper’s Colony knows also.”
Jane’s hand went to her throat, and the old woman said, “The Colony knows that the British Army’s top spy is in Virginia. They don’t know it’s Terence MacKenzie. But with the Leper’s wide network of informants, he’ll know soon. If you care about England, girl—if you care about your Terence, then you must help us expose the Leper.”
Jane rose to pace the room. “I have watched and listened but seen nothing out of the ordinary—nothing to indicate that the Leper operates out of Williamsburg.”
The widow took the pipe from her seamed lips and pulled on the pipe’s tubular end. Like the quill pen, the pipe’s end separated. From its hollow she extracted a narrow strip of rolled paper and passed it to Jane, saying, “Governor Henry carelessly left this in his wastebasket, and his underservant, one of us, was able to retrieve it.”
Jane read the strip. Have information for the Leper about Ahmad. Tonight at 11:00 at the middle chamber.
“A ball celebrating the colonies’ Declaration of Independence, doomed as it is, will be given tonight, and the Leper will be there. So must you—at eleven in the middle chamber upstairs, child.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Food was carried to the palace’s formal dining room in great covered containers from the service area west of the building. The independence celebration was an elaborate affair, with the Binn Cellar beneath the Georgian executive mansion providing hundreds of gallons of imported wines. Governor Henry was at his wittiest, his sharp ripostes keeping the guests amused.
After the meal, a violin, harpsicord, and cello, played by students from William and Mary, furnished the entertainment for the evening.
A glorious evening for everyone but Jane. Now she could understand why people were said to die from heartbreak. She could actually feel the throbbing pain in her chest. Lest anyone guess her distress, she danced merrily with partner after partner, waiting for that fateful hour of eleven. To those who asked about Ethan’s absence she lightly explained that mercantile business called him out of town.
How, anyway, did she ever expect to compete with a woman such as Susan? Having never made love to Susan or grown uncontrollably angry with her or laughed with her until tears came, Ethan could never know that she might not be suited for him—though he might have realized it had he ever gotten close enough to hold her in his arms.
Jane wanted only to go to Terence, to seek solace in those arms that always held comfort. She wanted to leave this little rural college town and all its memories; to leave the colonies and return to the civilization that was England. However, Terence was in danger, and she would see the party through. Yet just thinking of the contempt she glimpsed in Ethan’s eyes the night before gave her an unbearable headache. She knew she was not the woman he deserved. But the thought of another woman lying beneath him shafted the backs of her eyes with streaks of searing red.
By ten, she could no longer hide behind the facade of the witty and brilliant lady. Claiming fatigue, she withdrew from the rigors of the dance. She sought out the dowagers along the wall and, listlessly fanning herself, watched the dancing couples move in the stately grace of the gavotte. She could find no joy in the evening. Only an anxious waiting. Above the din of the laughter and music, she was sure she heard the slow, monotonous tick of the clock above the great marble mantel. Her gaze followed the slow progress of the clock’s hands. Fifteen before eleven.
Another ten minutes and she would desert her wallflower’s post to climb the red-carpeted stairs to the middle chamber, which was in effect a much-used council room.
Her gaze passed over the guests. Who among them was also waiting for the hour of eleven? In an ironical way, she almost dreaded discovering the identity of the Leper. She knew that he was brave, that he risked his life for ideals. She knew that once she gave the information to the Widow Grundy, the Leper’s days were numbered. Yet if she withheld his identity, Terence’s life was in jeopardy.
At five before eleven, she saw Daniel Franks desert his dancing partner, the beauteous Margaret, and head for the stairs. Was Daniel a member of the Leper’s Colony—or the Leper himself? She thought not. He did not have the resourcefulness to mastermind such an organization. The Leper must be in the middle chamber, waiting. With a laden heart, she rose, made her excuses to the matrons, and followed Daniel up the stairs at a discreet distance.
By the time she reached the landing, the door to the chamber was closed. Was she too soon? She stepped inside one of the boudoirs, waiting in the shadows for some seconds. But no one else proceeded down the hall.
She stepped out into the hall again, crossed to the chamber door, and listened. Nothing. No sound. From below came the faint strains of the music. Barely half a minute had passed since Daniel had entered the chamber. Gathering her courage, she opened the door. Her gaze swept over the room with its crimson damask wall hangings and green Chinese Chippendale furniture until she spied Daniel in the far comer next to an enormous silver candelabra. Not another soul was in the room. Was Daniel indeed the Leper? His back was three quarters to her, a scrap of paper in his hand.
She moved stealthily forward, but the rustling of her many petticoats gave her away. Daniel jerked around. “Mrs. Gordon!”
She had to read the note. “I—I felt so hot down there.” The back of her hand went to her forehead. “Smelling salts . . .” she murmured, and swayed.
As he rushed to catch her about the waist, the candlestand lurched violently, the light shimmering eerily across the walls and ceiling. He grabbed to set it right, and the sheet of paper fluttered to the floor near the green settee. Weaving slightly, she stepped back from him, her full skirts lapping over the folded missive, and braced herself against the couch’s arm. “Smelling salts . . .” she murmured again in a faint voice. “Will you get me a bottle somewhere . . . please, Daniel.”
He looked at her with worried eyes, before his gaze swept the carpet with confusion. His hands searched his pockets. In his eyes she saw the realization dawn that the note must be beneath her voluminous skirts. Embarrassment at his predicament flooded his pale face.
“The smelling salts . . .” she reminded him with a gasp that heaved her snow-white breasts.
“Of course . . . of course. I’ll be right back, Mrs. Gordon.”
No sooner had the door closed than she lifted her skirts and bent to retrieve the note. It read: The dancing master, Terence Mackenzie, is Ahmad. He must be prevented from carrying out his mission—immediately.
CHAPTER FORTY
But for Polly, who admitted him, the Paradise house was empty. “The missus didn’t come ’ome, sir,” the woman told him sleepily.
Ethan was not surprised. Before daybreak that morning Daniel sought him out at the Raleigh Tavern and relayed the story of Jane and the message—as well as the fact that Jane had pleaded a headache and left the party early. Ethan shouldered past Polly and took the stairs two at a time. For a long moment he stood looking at Jane’s empty bed. The puzzle of Ahmad was completed. And now she was on her way to join MacKenzie.
He had already guessed the fact that Ahmad and MacKenzie were one and the same. The afternoon Jane mentioned MacKenzie had served in India, the correlation between Ahmad and MacKenzie had wormed its way into Ethan’s mind. But he had forestalled action, beguiled by the woman he loved. She had played him for a fool. Ethan’s Folly.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Rather than occupy a guest room, the spy Ahmad was given his own guest house to the rear of the Knowles’ large, two-story brick mansion that was set off the Post Road that stretched between Williamsburg and Alexandria. With dawn breaking, the lamps in the mansion had long since been extinguished. But the candle in the guest house still burned.
By the light of daybreak Terence’s eyes stared at the house plan laid out on the table before him, tryin
g to memorize the location of Mount Vernon’s various rooms. The ground floor contained six rooms, and a massive staircase in the spacious passage led to the chambers above. But it was the narrow staircase on the mansion’s south side, ascending from Washington’s breakfast room to his private study on the second floor, that most interested the spy.
Already he knew the names of all the servants and the details of their habits, cunningly gleaned from friends and relatives of the Washingtons in both New Kent and Williamsburg. There was Breechy the butler and Mulatto Jack, his assistant; Moll the cook; Martha’s personal maid, Sally; and a score of others—including the most important, old Bishop, Washington’s orderly, whom he had inherited along with a saddle from the dying Braddock in the French and Indian Wars.
The old man would be the most serious problem, for he shadowed Washington’s footsteps whenever the general was about. But Bishop could be dealt with in a quick, silent, and most effective manner.
Ahmad picked up the letter he had received only days before from Martha Washington. In the neatly penned note the general’s lady graciously acknowledged receipt of the letters of recommendation from her friend, Lucy Knowles, and her sister Nancy.
I am of the opinion that Alexandria would be most appreciative of a dancing master of your accomplishments, sir, and forthwith extend an invitation to present yourself at Mount Vernon.
He permitted himself the slightest smile. After all his years of striving, of patient waiting, of humiliation and deprivation, his goal was near.
All but for Jane.
His smile faded in a thin hard line. He would have her, all right. In the early stages of his planning he had never considered the possibility that she might belong to anyone but him. He had believed—nay, he had known of his hold over her. A hold he had carefully nurtured, so that none existed for her but him. Yet still the Quaker had managed to snare her.
Ahmad rose, rubbing his tired eyes with his fingers. Before he would leave for England, there was the Quaker to settle with. There could be nothing to stand in the way of his marrying Jane once he possessed Wychwood Estates and Manor House. There could be nothing to stand in the way of his complete and devastating revenge on Robert Lennox.
The spy went to the press and began taking out the few articles of clothing he traveled with. Quickly he packed them into the small portmanteau. Mount Vernon was two days of hard riding from Williamsburg.
And he meant to be at Mount Vernon on the heels of Martha Washington’s arrival. There could be no slipup. No leeway for the general to come to or leave Mount Vernon prior to his own arrival.
Meticulously he collected all the sheets of scrawled notes and shoved them into the embers that slumbered in the fireplace. Within the hour the evidence of his mission would be only ashes. Within the year the general’s body would be little more than ashes.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The hood fell away from Jane’s head, and her cape flapped behind her as she used the quirt to spur the horse she had rented to a greater speed. The sleepy black custodian at the livery had looked at her as if she were daft for wanting to rent a horse in the small hours of the morning. Perhaps she was.
In the clearing the Knowles’ guest house stood white against the gray-green of the surrounding cypresses and spiraling pines, with morning’s eerie mist writhing low about the trees’ herniated trunks. Was she too late? Could a fanatic like Uriah Wainwright—or a phantom like the Leper—have reached Terence ahead of her? Her heart pounded against her ribs as she slid from the horse and ran the short distance to the small house. Without waiting to knock, she shoved open the door. Her gaze took in the room before her. Empty.
She stepped inside, moving slowly about the room. Had Terence been kidnaped and taken elsewhere?
Her fingers trailed over the low post of the bed; the bed linens were smooth—the bed had not been slept in. She scrutinized the room. Nothing was out of place. No overturned chairs to indicate a struggle. No signs of clothing— books—shaving utensils—to evidence that Terence had ever been there. Had he learned that he had been exposed as a spy and fled already? And where to?
Her glance picked up the cinders in the fireplace. She knelt to touch the peripheral ash, testing the lingering warmth between her thumb and forefinger. The fire had only recently burned low. He couldn’t have been gone long. As she began to rise her gaze fell upon the thatch of papers. Their edges were charred, but the writing could be made out. Instinctively she knew what the papers were—information Terence had gathered about the rebel colonies. Apparently he had counted on the hot coals destroying the incriminating evidence. And they would—if someone didn’t arrive immediately on her heels. Someone like Uriah Wainwright.
She knelt to tug the papers from the weight of ashes and shove them toward the center of the pile of glowing embers. But a curious drawing caught her eyes. She laid aside her quirt and held the papers up to the pale light sifting through the chintz curtains. Cinder flecked off the pages to drift over her skirts as she read.
The top sheet was a floor plan of—her gaze dropped to the words scribbled at the bottom of the sheet—Mount Vernon. Quickly she thumbed through the rest of the sheets. Names of servants, their personal habits, some of them intimate habits—breakfast and dinner hours—descriptions of various rooms—and always the recurring notation G. Washington.
Then that last sheet, a rougher sketch of the house with further notes: . . . should take no more than two minutes from library to river bank. Must arrange for rowboat. Eng. frigate to be waiting a mile beyond.
But it was the abbreviated notation beneath the area marked Library that riveted her eyes: Assas. here.
The sheets fluttered about her knees as a dawning horror crept over her. Terence’s intentions—the mission of which he had spoken. Assassination!
Her fingers massaged her suddenly throbbing temples as she tried to make herself think clearly. Logic told her that a war was going on; that agents—spies—had to do unpleasant things if the war was to be won.
Assassination was more than merely unpleasant, her mind screamed. But people killed on both sides in a war. Killing was part of war. And it wasn’t her duty to stop Terence. Let people like the Leper’s Colony worry about stopping—
She rose and ran to the door. But her heart was leaden as she spurred her mount away from the cottage’s clearing. She was betraying England . . . forfeiting all the childhood dreams of the happiness that was to have been hers. Yet what Terence was about to do was abominable. Her growing kinship with the American colonies that was changing her viewpoint about the revolution, the realization of her love for Ethan—these overrode her past feelings for England and Terence. She knew she had to stop him.
She took the only road north she knew—the lengthy Post Road that stretched through more than half the colonies. The Post Road, walled by towering sycamores and beeches and oaks, led toward Alexandria and Mount Vernon—and Terence. And with a sudden clarity she heard again the old Hindu’s prophecy: Terence awaited her at the end of a long road.
No one was out on the road at that early hour. In the still silence of dawn her heart thudded in furious tempo with her mount’s galloping hooves. The mammoth trees arched above her, shadowing the road into a tunnel of leaves. How far ahead was Terence—thirty minutes? An hour? She spurred the horse faster.
Suddenly she was flung from the horse by the man who dropped from the tree limb overhead. Her breath whooshed from her lungs as she hit the hard-packed earth. Her vision grayed for a lost moment.
“Jane!” Terence growled as he half straddled her. “It was you who was following me! Why?”
“Terence . . . you can’t do it.”
Her words were little more than a gasp, but she felt his body stiffen against hers. “I can’t do what?”
‘‘I saw your . . . plans . . . your notations.” She inhaled deeply. “Terence, you can’t kill General Washington!”
He grasped her elbows and drew her upright. She clutched at his sides for suppor
t, feeling the hard pistol lodged in the inside pocket of his frockcoat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jane.”
“I’m not stupid!”
He smoothed the hair back from her face. “Have you no loyalty to England, Jane?”
“Have you no principles or ethics or morals? What you’re doing isn’t patriotism. It’s cold-blooded murder!” She saw in his cold blue eyes a relentlessness of purpose that brooked no intervention. And she knew she had no alternative. Swiftly her hand drew out his pistol and she backed off, leveling the barrel at his red brocade waistcoat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.
Trying to control the trembling of the barrel, she moved toward her mount, which had wandered off to join Terence’s piebald, placidly cropping the turf at the road’s far edge. “I’m taking both horses. By the time I reach Mount Vernon, you will have had long enough to escape.” Her eyes misted over. “Go back to England, Terence.”
A gentle smile softened his lean features. “I won’t, Jane.” Slowly he walked toward her, hand outstretched. “I won’t leave the colonies without you.”
She grasped the barrel with both hands. “Don’t! Don’t move!”
“You won’t shoot, Jane, because you love me.”
She retreated another step. “I love Ethan,” she sobbed and brought the gun up to eye level.
His pace never altered as he continued to stalk her. “But you still won’t shoot me.”
“I will—I will!” Her voice sounded shrill to her ears.
“No,” he said calmly. “With your naive belief in morals and ethics, you would not kill your own brother.” “My own brother?”
“Aye, Jane. Why do you think your father was so against our marriage? I am his bastard by the Lady MacKenzie. But his damnable pride would not acknowledge me. Now his pride will cost him dearly.”
“You knew?” The pistol’s barrel wavered and dropped an inch. “You knew all the time we were brother and sister—and still feigned love for me?”
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