"Oh, Maggie, Maggie. What am I going to do with you?" He pushed back a lock of her hair and brushed a kiss across her cheek. "I'm telling you it's all going to be all right. Reagan and Sterling will love you. You'll see."
"I don't care if they like me or not," she lied. "I just don't want anyone calling me your whore when my back is turned."
"Sweet, in this family we call people names to their faces. Now let's go. I've got a mind to share a palm toddy with that my brother of mine." He released Maggie and parted the flowers again. "All safe," he told her. "Look, they're gathering up their balls to go in."
"So what do you do now that you've sneaked up on them like a thievin' redskin?" she asked, lowering her voice as Reagan and Sterling came toward the hedge.
Grayson pressed his finger to his lips. "Shhhh."
With a groan, she crossed her arms over her chest, wishing she'd never come along, wishing she'd never met Grayson Thayer.
A moment later Maggie heard Sterling and Reagan's voices as they approached the Queen Anne's lace hedge. Then suddenly Grayson let out a horrendous, bloodcurdling shriek and hurled himself over the hedge at Sterling.
Reagan screamed and Sterling dropped the game pieces he carried and raised his arms in defense. Grayson knocked him head-over-heels and the two rolled over and over, wrestling to gain the upper hand.
"You son of a bitch! You scared me half out of my wits," Sterling protested as he fought to pin Grayson's arms to the ground. "You're lucky I didn't shoot your sorry ass."
"Me? You're lucky I wasn't some vengeful redcoat, else I'd have shot you and carried that beautiful wife of yours off."
Unsure of herself, Maggie climbed through the bushes, stepping into Reagan's view.
"Oh." The auburn-haired woman put her hand to her chest. "You scared me nearly as badly as Grayson. You must be Maggie." She offered her hand.
Maggie swallowed hard against the lump of fear in her throat. "Um. yeah. How'd you know?" She wiped her filthy hand on her torn petticoat and accepted Reagan's hand giving it a squeeze.
"Grayson," she nodded to the two men still grunting and rolling in the grass, "told Sterling about you in a letter. I knew you had to be special to hold my brother-in-law's eye."
Maggie withdrew her hand, feeling deathly inadequate compared to the beautifully dressed woman who spoke so properly. "Not so special," she mumbled.
Reagan dropped her hands to her hips, turning her attention to the two brothers. "Enough! Enough. If the two of you don't break it up, I'll set my hounds on you!"
Grayson twisted Sterling's hand behind his head and groaned as he tried to force him flat on the ground. "Just trying to teach him a lesson, Reagie. I'm gone too long and he gets soft."
Reagan walked to the two men still wrestling and grasped her husband's neat blond queue, giving it a harsh tug. "I said enough, Sterling Thayer! You two've got no better manners than barn cats!" She prodded Grayson none too gently with the toe of her dyed green calfskin slipper. "You hear me, Grayson? Get off my husband. You injure him and it'll be me you have to pay your debt to!"
Reluctantly, Grayson rolled off his brother and dropped onto the grass, panting heavily. "Strong man for being so old," he teased.
Sterling laughed, sitting up as he struggled to catch his breath. "Spare me any jokes pertaining to my age, please. I'm feeling feeble enough as it is with that son of mine to run after all day." He glanced up, noticing Maggie for the first time. A smile came to his lips as he hopped up and came to kiss Maggie on the cheek. "I don't have to ask who this is. She's as beautiful as you said."
Maggie blushed. "Pleased to meet you."
Grayson rose to his feet and came to link his arm through Maggie's. "We're going to be married, Maggie and I."
Reagan smiled. "Congratulations."
"We are not," Maggie corrected, elbowing Grayson in the side.
Reagan pursed her lips. "Oh." Her gaze went to her husband, then Grayson.
"She's just shy," Grayson explained. "It's really all settled."
Maggie turned to Grayson. "I tell you, you're going to go straight to hell and going to burn in eternal flames for lying! I said I wasn't marrying you. Now take it back."
Grayson glanced sheepishly at Reagan and Sterling. "Well, actually, it's not completely settled. Maggie here is having a little problem with my identity."
"That's certainly not surprising," Reagan offered. "Seems to me Sterling and I had problems with that a few years back."
"Speaking of identities, Brother, what the hell are you doing here?" He looked around. "Who knows you're here? It's not that I'm not glad to see him," Sterling explained to Maggie, "but word is, this little brother of mine is in the hot seat. Half of Virginia's looking for him."
Grayson seized his brother's arm. "It's a long story, and one I'd prefer to relate over a palm toddy."
Sterling waved a hand. "Well, come on in with you and let's at least get Maggie some refreshment. The two of you look like you've had one hell of a trip. It's a wonder you ever made it with Clinton's redcoats running amuck the way they are."
Grayson retrieved the saddlebag from behind the hedge and took Maggie's arm, escorting her toward the house. "Just like two rabbits in a briar patch we were." He winked at Maggie. "We slipped directly beneath their noses, safe and sound."
Chapter Sixteen
Maggie tried not to gape as she walked up the winding brick walkway toward the immense Georgian redbrick house that loomed ahead. Stretching two and a half stories into the sky, the L-shaped country house was styled with elaborate rows of header bricks, and whitewashed shutters on every window. Beds of flowers grew along the inside walls of the bricked courtyard between the two wings of the house. A mother cat and her kittens played in a bed of herbs near a back door.
"Quite something, isn't it, sweetheart?" Grayson asked, grinning like a schoolboy. "Reagan keeps it as well as my mother ever did."
Maggie gave a gulp. Overwhelming was what it was. Holy Mother Mary! The detached summer kitchen, the aroma of fresh-baked bread seeping from its walls, was nearly as large as Maggie's entire house back in Yorktown! The yard around the great brick house was sprinkled with dependencies—a smokehouse, a dairy, an icehouse—and in the distance Maggie could see huge barns for livestock and crop storage. From what she could see, Thayer's Folly was much like the great manor in which Maggie's da had lived as a boy back in England when his grandfather had been a gamekeeper. Her grandfather had been a servant to a man who owned a home like this!
Maggie twisted her perspiring hand in Grayson's, feeling as if she ought to be walking in through the servants' entrance instead of weaving around toward the front door. Oh, heavens, she thought. I don't belong here! What Zeke said, what Mildred said . . . they were right, they were all right. Grayson Thayer wasn't for the likes of her! She was a bootmaker's daughter for heaven's sake!
But it was too late to back out now. Here she was, walking beside one of the masters of this great plantation, listening to him chat with his brother and sister-in-law. Catching a quick glimpse of Grayson's startlingly handsome face, Maggie lifted her chin a notch. He didn't seem to realize she didn't belong here. Perhaps no one else would, either. Besides, it was just for a few days, wasn't it? She promised Grayson she'd stay a few days and then she'd be gone. She'd already sent a letter to her cousin in New York saying she was coming, so it was settled. A few short days with Grayson and she'd be gone from his fancy life of rich clothing and manor houses.
Sterling went up the steps of the front stoop and pushed open a great carved door, decorated by a scrolled doorknocker with the letters "C" and "S" carved in the center. When he realized the doorknocker had caught Maggie's attention, he ran his fingers over the polished silver. "Beautiful, isn't it? A gift to my great grandfather, William Thayer, from King Charles the Second himself."
Grayson leaned against the doorframe, already feeling more relaxed than he had in months. "The official word is that King Charles gave it to grandfather with the deed to
this land out of thanks for the part the Thayers played in restoring the Crown to him, but our father always said it was a bribe to get William out of England. It seems he was beating the king too often at the gaming table."
"Not only did he get the land and the knocker, but our great-grandmother in the bargain," Sterling finished. "They say she was the most beautiful woman in London and she was apparently none too pleased to be married off to a man headed for the god forsaken American Colonies."
Maggie looked up, a smile on her face. "Your great-grandfather played cards with a king?" she asked, her voice breathy with disbelief.
"That he did," Grayson took her arm and led her into the front hall. "Now come along. My brother's promised me a palm toddy and I intend to get one. I haven't seen a bottle of arrack in six months."
Maggie walked beside Grayson through the front hall and into a paneled parlor to the left. She tried to keep her mouth closed and not gasp at the beauty of the home in which Grayson had grown up. The house was simply but elegantly furnished, with various pieces constructed in the last one hundred years, but there was an air of dignity about the house that Maggie hadn't felt in the pretentious home of Mason Pickney.
"I'll show you around later," Grayson murmured in her ear as he offered her a seat on an upholstered settle. He brushed a kiss across the top of her head. "Don't worry," he whispered, "you're going to be fine."
Reagan called to a servant and then entered the room behind her husband, coming to sit beside Maggie. She patted Maggie's knee through her dusty, torn green petticoat. "Grayson dragged you here on foot from Yorktown? What a brave woman."
Maggie gave a gulp, wondering if Reagan realized how close to the truth she'd come. "Ah, yes," she answered, concentrating on her speech. "Grayson ran into a bit of trouble, so we had to keep our heads low."
"Ran into a bit of trouble! God's bowels, she's not jesting." Grayson perched himself on the arm of a winged-back chair. "You're not going to believe what I've done, Sterling."
Sterling poured a dose of arrack from a decanter into a handleless pewter cup and accepted a pitcher of water from a young blond girl in a starched mobcap. Maggie couldn't help noticing the way she cut her eyes toward Grayson as she set down her tray on a sideboard before sidling away.
"Actually, I probably will have no trouble believing it," Sterling answered, adding water to the arrack before handing the cup to Grayson. "But go ahead and try me anyway."
Grayson took a sip from the cup and gave a sigh. "Damnation, but that's good." He lifted his cup in salute to Maggie and then continued his conversation with his brother. "It is a long story, and I'll give you the details later, but the gist of the matter is that I've futtered things up royally!"
Sterling turned to Maggie. "Port, claret, some Madeira? What can I offer you, Maggie?"
She smiled hesitantly. "Just water . . . please."
"Water then." He poured water from the pitcher and brought it to Maggie along with a goblet of claret for Reagan. "Go on, little brother, I'm waiting."
"It seems my dear Maggie, here, who led me to believe that she was neutral, is actually one of the Yorktown rebels everyone has been talking about."
All eyes in the room turned to Maggie, making her feel as if she owed them some sort of explanation. "I . . . it was by accident. I guess. I mean, I didn't start out meaning to join the band. It's just that I sell my boots and make repairs in the camps, the British camps." She shrugged. "After a while, I started hearing things, so I started reporting them. Later, my friend, Zeke, asked me to join the group."
Grayson stood, stretching his lean legs. "She's riding with the masked men, for Christ's sake!"
Reagan sat back against the settle, a smug smile on her face. "And you thought she didn't care." She waggled a finger at her brother-in-law. "I told you. Grayson, you should have let women start fighting this war five years ago and we'd have sent the redcoats running for Mother England with their coat-tails between their legs."
"So what's Maggie got to do with your . . . error, Brother?"
Grayson sighed, swirling his palm toddy in his pewter cup. "I discovered what Maggie was doing when I found a mask at her house after a Hessian payroll was taken."
"We were lookin' for mail bags with dispatches in them," Maggie injected.
"Anyway, we sort of had a disagreement. I was angry with Maggie because she'd taken a risk like that. And of course I was trying to figure out a way to get a warning back to the other men in her band that Riker and Major Lawrence were on to them, without actually telling Maggie who I was."
Sterling lifted an eyebrow. "Or who you weren't, as the case may be."
"Right. Well, I left angry and ended up in her brother-in-law's tavern having a few."
"Oh, Jesus, Grayson," Sterling's face went hard. "You didn't."
Grayson lowered his gaze to the polished hardwood floor. "I don't know exactly what I did or said, but apparently men in her group saw me with Maggie's mask. Anyway, they ambushed me on the road and meant to kill me to keep Maggie's secret."
"They didn't know who you really were?" Sterling offered.
"Hell, no. You know how Colonel Hastings feels about not disclosing identities. If a man doesn't absolutely need to know who I am, he's not going to know. Billy Faulkner was the only man in Yorktown who could identify me, and he was already dead, except I didn't know it."
Sterling turned away, slamming his fist into his palm. "I knew this was going to happen! I knew it, Grayson. You should have come the hell home when I told you to!" He paused, and a deafening silence hung in the air.
Maggie's heart went out to Grayson as she suddenly came to the realization of what a grave error he had committed when he'd allowed Zeke and the others to know he knew she had played a part in the payroll theft. The sound of his strained voice, the tone of his brother's, made it obvious to her that Grayson had told her the truth when he said he was a patriot spy. No one could fake the pain and fear she heard in the voices of the two brothers.
"So how did you get free? You convince them of who you were?"
Grayson laughed humorously and went to make himself a second palm toddy. "Not hardly. They were all Maggie's friends and already had it in for me, seeing as how," his gaze went to Maggie, "well, let's just say they didn't like my association with their friend. Anyway, the only way I escaped a lead ball through my chest or a noose around my neck was because of Miss Bootmaker over there."
Maggie stared at the scuffed toes of her work boots.
"The private who was with me when I was ambushed, Michaels, managed to escape. For some reason he went to Maggie instead of back to the camp to tell Lawrence. The next thing I know, Maggie's riding in, all hell and fire and cutting my sorry, drunken ass down out of a tree. I rode off a free man." He took a deep breath and then his words came more slowly. "She saved my life, Sterling. I've cheated the grim reaper more than once in the last couple of years, but this time I wouldn't have gotten out of it, Brother. I dropped my guard. I lost my edge."
Before Maggie realized what she was doing, she was up and crossing the room. She linked her arm through Grayson's and kissed the hard biceps of one of his arms. What could she say? He'd failed miserably. Not only had he risked his own life but probably those of men who worked for him. She couldn't help wondering if he was inadvertently responsible for Billy Faulkner's death. Yet she still loved him. All she wanted to do now was comfort him.
Sterling turned to face his brother. "Well, what's done is done. You're not the first man to make a mistake, and I fear you won't be the last. I suppose all we can do is cover your tracks and sweep up now."
Maggie felt Grayson's muscles tense. "I can't just leave it, Sterling," he said gruffly. "I have to go back in."
Sterling laughed. "You've got to be joking! I've got news for you, Brother, this is the end of your career. I'd imagine your commission will be retired in a matter of days."
"I'll talk to Colonel Hastings. Surely he'll—"
"He'll realize it's tim
e you came in. Look, Grayson, you did your duty, more than your duty. It's been seven long years and it's time to come home."
Grayson's sky-blue eyes lighted with anger. "You've been in since the beginning. I don't see you 'retiring.'"
"Not under cover. I haven't been undercover except for an occasional mission since Philadelphia and you know it."
"It was your choice. Look, Sterling, just because you couldn't take the pressure—"
"It's pretty obvious you couldn't stand the pressure, little brother, else you wouldn't have been drowning your sorrows in your cups."
Reagan suddenly stood, clearing her throat. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, you want the entire household to hear you?" She eyed them both. "Now please lower your voices and excuse us." She lifted her chin regally and turned to Maggie. "Would you care to see your room. Maggie? I've had a bath sent up."
Maggie was caught between wanting to remain at Grayson's side and wanting to feel clean again. She was grimy, and she was tired and achy to the bone from her long trip. She looked up at Grayson, hating to see the etched lines of anguish on his face.
"Go ahead, sweet," he told her, covering her hand with his. "I'll be up shortly." He looked at Reagan. "My room."
Reagan's gaze met Maggie's with uncertainty. "I gave her the blue room, but whatever you like—"
"The blue room will be fine," Maggie interrupted, embarrassed that Grayson would want her to share his room in his brother's house. Did he want her to just wear a sign across her chest declaring she was his whore? She followed Reagan out of the parlor, not knowing what else to say that wouldn't make matters worse.
But Reagan graciously breezed right over the incident, chatting pleasantly as she closed the sliding doors that led into the parlor. "I know you must be hot and tired after your journey. I saw you didn't have a chance to bring clothing so I took the liberty of having some garments sent to your room," she said above the din of Sterling and Grayson's shouting behind the paneled doors. "I would guess you and I are about the same size, though my hips haven't been the same since Forrest was born." Her light laughter filtered up to the high ceiling, echoing off the walls.
The Bootmaker's Daughter: Revolution (Destiny's Daughters Book 2) Page 19
