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“Yes, indeed, Hannah,” she said, closing the locket with a soft click to repin it to her bodice. “There are many things that must change, whether we wish them to or not.”
Hannah’s glance followed the locket. “You’re fretting over your little girl, aren’t you?” she said sympathetically. “I’m sure Miss Belinda’s worrying over you, as well. But you did right to send her away, mistress. A house full o’ rough men’s no place for a sweet angel like Miss Belinda.”
Catie nodded, her smile tight. It wasn’t the score of rough men under her roof that she feared so much as the one very polished major. When two nights ago, at the first news of the invasion, she sent Belinda from Newport to stay with a married couple she knew near Nantasket, she’d had no idea how wise a precaution it would prove to be.
She rose briskly, determined to put aside her own worries. “Now, Hannah, I want you to make sure that you keep the cellar locked, and that you leave nothing—nothing—unattended in the kitchen as long as we must house these particular guests,” she warned. “While that puppy of a lieutenant assured me his men will receive daily rations from their quartermaster, I don’t believe for a minute they’ll be able to resist trying to steal a taste of your cooking.”
“Don’t know a man what can, mistress,” said Hannah proudly. “But any of them lobsterbacks come creepin’ into my kitchen, an’ they’ll answer to my cleaver.”
“We should have had you and your cleaver on the beach at Weaver’s Cove instead of that fool militia,” said Catie wryly, only half jesting. Certainly she and Hannah would have made a better show of defending their home. “Now, as for supper—”
“Beggin’ your pardon, mistress,” Hannah interrupted, “but Cap’n Jon’s still waitin’ downstairs at the back door. That’s why I came up here, to tell you.”
“Captain Sparhawk’s here? Now?” Without waiting for an answer, Catie gathered her skirts and hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen. Jon Sparhawk was known to be a brave man, a daring man, but he was tempting fate to come to Hazard’s when it was so full of British soldiers.
Yet when she reached the kitchen, the room was empty, Hannah’s pie crust sitting half-crimped in its pan on the table, the back door closed and latched. Puzzled, Catie went to bolt the door. Perhaps Jon Sparhawk had left to avoid one of the British guards, or perhaps, more likely, he’d simply realized how foolish it was for him to come to the tavern now.
The man’s hand closed over Catie’s mouth before she could scream, his other arm locking around her waist to drag her back from the door and window beside it. Frantically Catie plunged against him, struggling to break free, but the man only tightened his grip further, pinning her arms against her sides. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger, and, terrified, she instinctively seized the one defense left to her: as hard as she could, she bit the palm of his hand.
With a yowl of pain, the man released her. Stumbling forward, Catie grabbed the rolling pin from the table and wheeled round to face him.
“For God’s sake, Catie, did you have to bite me?” demanded Jon Sparhawk indignantly as he cradled his wounded hand.
“Did you have to scare me out of my wits?” Catie glared at him, the rolling pin still in her hand. In all the time she’d known Jon, he’d never dared treat her this way, and she didn’t like it, not at all. “With everything else that’s happening in this town, I certainly don’t need you creeping about my house playing footpad!”
“I’m not ‘playing’ at anything, Catie. No one in Newport is.” He scowled down at the bright red marks Catie’s teeth had left in his hand. “I didn’t want you to scream and raise a fuss, that was all. Did you know your yard is full of those British bastards?”
“They’re in my yard, my attic, and my best bedchambers,” said Catie with disgust. She tossed the rolling pin back on the table, dipped a rag in the water bucket and held it out to Jon for his hand. “They’re probably under the very bedsteads, as well, if I cared to look. How else would I know your cousin is one of them?”
Jon looked up sharply. “Then it is Anthony?”
“Of course it is,” said Catie, praying she’d be able to keep her voice even. Though she had known Jon for years, he had never made the connection between Ben Hazard’s wife and the nervous serving girl she’d been at the Crossed Keys, and she had no wish for him to realize it now. “I wouldn’t have sent the message to you if it wasn’t your cousin. There is, you know, a certain family resemblance.”
“Oh, aye, no doubt of that,” he said. “Even though Anthony’s turned traitor, his face would still mark him as a Sparhawk.”
He dropped into the chair beside the table, the skirts of his coat falling back so that Catie could see the pistols in his belt, silver-mounted and deadly elegant.
Purposefully she looked away. No matter what the circumstances, she didn’t approve of guns in her house, but she didn’t wish to challenge Jon on it now. “He thinks we’re the ones who are the traitors, Jon.”
Wearily Jon shook his head. His jaw was stubbled black, his eyes ringed from sleeplessness, and his clothes so rumpled that Catie doubted he’d been home to sleep since the British landed.
“Anthony wouldn’t say that if he’d stayed here at home, where he could see how bad things have become. He’ll come round to our side. You’ll see. Once he learns how Father’s been driven away—”
“He knows already.” Catie’s hands tightened into fists at her sides. “Though he pretended not to, and tried to trick me into saying more. Not a quarter hour past, he left for the general’s headquarters.”
Jon swore, long and furiously. “To my father’s house, you mean.”
Catie nodded. “The only loyalty your cousin has now is to that blessed red coat of his.”
“Then they’ve poisoned him against his own people,” he said flatly. “There’s no other explanation. I cannot believe—”
“Believe it, Jon, for it’s true,” said Catie vehemently. “Two minutes in your cousin’s company and you’d see for yourself. He’s not an American any longer. He’s one of them now, the worst kind of arrogant British officer, and he doesn’t care a fig for what happens to you or your parents.”
Jon’s expression hardened, the lines carved deep on either side of his mouth. “Then we’ll have to treat him with the same high regard, won’t we?”
He lowered his voice to a conspirator’s rough whisper. “As long as he’s under your roof, Catie, I want you to watch him. Listen to his conversations, note who comes to see him, charm him into trusting you. Then tell me whatever you learn.”
Startled, Catie drew back, her hands clasped tightly together at her waist She hadn’t expected Jon to ask her to do that, and she didn’t want to, not at all. To charm Anthony Sparhawk no, she couldn’t do it.
“I can’t, Jon,” she said, faltering. “I just—I can’t.”
“Oh, aye, you can, Catie, and you will,” said Jon firmly. “You’ll have chances to be near him that none of the rest of us will. It’s not that much to ask. Think of all the men risking their very lives for the cause.”
But if she did as he asked, her own life would be at stake, too. Already Anthony had nearly recognized her. The more time she spent in his company, the more likely it was that he’d be able to remember who she was. And once he did, her carefully ordered world would collapse like a wobbly house of playing cards.
“You don’t know what you ask, Jon,” she said miserably, unable to explain. “I can’t—”
“You will do it, lass,” said Jon, and the harsh edge in his voice warned Catie to obey. “Not just for the cause of freedom. You’ll do it for my father and my mother, as well. After all my family’s done for you, Catie Hazard, you will do this for us.”
Her conscience twisting the fear around her heart, Catie stared down at the pistols at his waist. Such guns weren’t an affectation with Jon; he’d use them if he had to. She thought again of how he’d trapped her earlier, and now she shivered at the thought of what he could have done. This was the other side of the Sparhawk family, the ruthless, violent side that she’d heard whispered of, but had never seen in the front room at Hazard’s, the side that had made them their fortunes as privateers and in a score of other risky ventures.
Including, she realized now, her own.
Her shoulders drooped, and she touched the locket with her daughter’s picture. For Belinda’s sake, she didn’t want to do as Jon asked, but for Belinda’s sake, too, she knew she had no choice.
“Very well,” she said softly. “But I’ll send word to you, mind? You must promise me not to come here again. It’s too dangerous.”
Jon’s heavy brows curled down with contempt. “War is dangerous, Catie. If I hadn’t wanted to do what I could against the British here in Newport, why, I would have taken the children and scurried off to Providence with my parents.”
“I almost wish you had,” said Catie wistfully, thinking not only of Jon’s family, but of Belinda, too. His three children had dozens of doting aunts, uncles, and grandparents to watch over them, but she and Belinda had only each other. “You know that’s what Betsey would have wished.”
His face grew studiously emotionless, the way it always did when he spoke of the pretty young wife he’d lost in childbirth two years before. “Betsey wished for many things.”
“This is one wish you could grant her,” said Catie gently. “All I’m saying is that I—that we—must be careful, Jon, very careful. Your cousin Anthony is not a man to take lightly.”
“And you be careful, too, Mrs. Hazard.” Unexpectedly he smiled, almost ruefully. “I know what I’m asking, Catie, and what it must cost you. You’re the most kindhearted woman I know, and here I am trying to turn you into a low, sneaking spy.”
But Catie’s smile in return was bleak. He didn’t know what he asked, and, God willing, he never would. As for being low and sneaking, she’d crossed that boundary long ago.
“It won’t be that hard for me, Jon,” she said softly. “I’m wonderfully good at keeping secrets.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_9c3ce2a6-82a9-51bf-8c5e-b0c481e41f34)
“You’ve done well, Major Sparhawk, very well,” said General Ridley as he leaned back in his chair, making a little tent of his spread fingers on the mound of his belly. “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t appreciate the importance of your contribution to this campaign. That little cove you suggested for the landing was a capital choice, sir, a capital choice. We’ve taken the best harbor in the north, one of the richest cities, too, and not a single man lost. I’d like to see Howe say the same, eh?”
He chuckled, his watery blue eyes glancing around the room, past Anthony, with smug pleasure. “And I ask you, Major, have you ever seen more handsome quarters! A house fit for a gentleman, this one, even an English gentleman, eh?”
Anthony nodded curtly, not trusting himself to say or do more. The house that the general had appropriated for his headquarters was the grandest one in town, as was proper. The pale winter sun filtered through tall windows hung with red damask that matched the coverings on the chairs. The mahogany tea table was set with a delicate service of Canton ware, the translucent porcelain rimmed with gold, and more of the china filled the two tall cupboards that flanked the fireplace. The wall paneling and the mantelpiece were the finest work of Newport woodworkers, as was the stairway in the front hallway, where candles had already been lit in the polished brass sconces.
Without doubt, the house was as fit for an English general as it was for an English gentleman, the best of everything. As it should be, Anthony told himself grimly. As it must be.
“Pity to think of all this wasted on a rebel rascal,” continued Ridley. “Too bad we let the old rogue slip away from us, else I would have packed him off to London for trial. Still and all, he won’t be able to cause us any more trouble here. His name was Sparhawk, too. Kin of yours, y’think?”
“A distant connection,” said Anthony, as evenly as he could. “An uncle.”
Blast it all, the Hazard woman had been right. How could a man who had served the king as well as had Gabriel Sparhawk—a man who’d fought under the British flag in at least three wars—now join with that ragtag pack of rebels? And what in blazes had become of his aunt and cousins? Unconsciously Anthony gripped the carved arm of his chair, struggling to control the emotions that roiled within him.
Ridley grunted, idly rubbing his thumb across one of his waistcoat buttons. “Uncle, eh? Someone told me he’d been a privateer in the old Spanish war. Damned successful at it, too, from the look of this place.” The general’s gaze wandered beyond the top of Anthony’s head. “You know my wife’s parlor in Bath. Do you think she’d fancy that looking glass there, the gilt one with the gewgaws on the top? There’s a dispatch ship sailing for home tomorrow, and I thought I’d send dear Chloe a little gift to keep me well in her thoughts.”
Anthony twisted in his chair to look over his shoulder, more to mask his feelings than to appraise the looking glass. Though Ridley’s own orders had been explicit about looting, he wasn’t overparticular about helping himself. It was common enough knowledge among the other officers, and cause for more than a few jests, about how crowded dear Chloe’s parlor would be by the end of the war.
But this time Anthony wouldn’t be among those laughing, not when his aunt Mariah’s looking glass was to be the plunder. Damnation, they must have fled with only the clothes on their backs, for everything else in the house to have been left exactly as he remembered it.
But would good could come of remembering? Better, so much better, to forget his uncle’s desk as it had been, piled high with shipping manifests and bills of lading, and how Uncle Gabriel would always find the time to break away from his work to talk to him and to Jon, to show them some rare coin from China or explain how the jiggling needle of a compass worked, the three of them standing there together, with the summer sun slanting in through the tall window and the sweet fragrance of Aunt Mariah’s gingerbread drifting up from the kitchen.
“Yes, I do believe the looking glass would suit Chloe,” the general was saying. “It’s nearly a match for the one I sent her from Boston.”
Slowly Anthony turned back in his chair. How that woman at the tavern must be laughing by now, her silver-gray eyes fair bubbling over with mirth at his expense. She’d been right about his aunt and uncle, of course, while he’d been appallingly wrong in his assumptions. What a pompous, blustering, ignorant fool he must have seemed to her!
Abruptly he shoved back his chair and rose, his sword swinging back against his thigh. “I’m certain Mrs. Ridley will be most pleased with whatever gift you make to her,” he said with a curt bow. “But if you’ll be so good as to excuse me, General, there are a good many other matters that need my attention.”
Ridley’s brows rose toward the front of his wig with mild surprise. “I’d say that such matters are my decision, sir, not yours.” He waved his hand back toward the chair. “And I say you stay until I dismiss you. Unless in your present choler you find my company intolerable, eh?”
It was all the reproof Anthony needed. He’d always been known as a moderate man, one who kept his temper in check. At least he had been before now. Swiftly he bowed again and sat, mentally cursing the woman who’d let him make such a fool of himself. If she’d been more honest with him, if only she hadn’t been so damnably coy, then perhaps—
“You’d do well to watch yourself, Sparhawk,” continued the general, subtly replacing the air of a genial country squire with something harder, sharper and far more astute than his enemies would have dreamed possible. At once Anthony was on his guard. Off the battlefield, Ridley seldom showed this side to his subordinates, and its appearance now could mean nothing good.
“Sir,” said Anthony. It was the only possible answer.
“Sir yourself, man, and listen to me.” Impatiently he drummed his thick-knuckled fingers on the top of the desk. “You know I trust you, Sparhawk. You’ve been with me for more years than I care to count, damn me if you haven’t, by my side through all the worst of this wretched campaign. Breed’s Hill, Long Island, especially that miserable showing at Lexington—not once have you given me cause to doubt your loyalty.”
“Yes, sir,” said Anthony stiffly, already guessing what was coming. “Thank you, sir.”
“Why else d’you think I’ve made you my adjutant here, eh? But there’s plenty of others here who say otherwise, and I can’t say I fault ‘em for it.” He leaned forward, his gaze shrewdly appraising. “You don’t want me in this house, do you, Major? You’re thinking I don’t belong here. You’re thinking I’m taking the place of that blackguard uncle of yours, and you’re thinking of him instead of your king.”
“But, sir, I can—”
“No, sir, you hear me out,” ordered Ridley, each word crackling with authority, and antagonism, too. “I was sent here to put down this rebellion, and I mean to do it. But, by harry, how can I be expected to subdue these damnable colonials when I’ve someone who sympathizes with the bloody rascals in the fore of my own regiment, eh?”
Anthony inhaled sharply. “Are you challenging my honor, sir, or my loyalty to my king?”
“What, and have it said that I’d called out one of my own officers?” retorted Ridley. “I’m too clever for that nonsense, Sparhawk, and so are you. But what else will people think, eh? This town as much as belonged to your people, scoundrels that they are, yet you turned your back on them as pretty as kiss-myhand. Who’s to say you won’t do the same to us in return?”
Anthony lunged forward, the rank between them forgotten as his long-simmering temper finally boiled over, and he struck his fist down hard on the desk, inches away from the general’s face. “I say it, and to hell with the man who dares say otherwise!”
“How dare you—”
“Sweet Mary, Ridley, if you slander me and then can’t explain your meaning any better than that, then I—”
“Remember yourself, Sparhawk!” barked Ridley. “At once, sir!”
The order shattered Anthony’s anger, years of training racing to silence him. Orders were to be obeyed; every good soldier knew that.
So what the devil was he doing now? Two steps behind him the general’s sentries had rushed through the door with their muskets raised, the gleaming barrels aimed at him, at him, and in that horrible moment he realized how close he was to facing a court-martial and the end of everything he’d worked so hard for.
Breathing hard, he jerked his hand back as if he’d been burned and shook his head in disbelief, appalled by what he’d done. Once again he’d lost control. To threaten his superior before witnesses, to raise his voice and bellow like a madman—for the sake of this one insane minute, his career might be over and done, and his life with it.
He drew himself up as tall as he could, his eyes staring impassively ahead. “Forgive me, sir. I do not know what came over me, but I give you my word that it will not happen again.”
“The devil it won’t.” Furiously Ridley glared at Anthony as he waved the sentries from the room. “Your unforgivable behavior here only proves that I’m right to doubt your allegiances.”
“But sir, I assure you that—”
“I want none of your assurances, Sparhawk,” snapped the general, his face purple above his neckcloth. “I want your loyalty. Now you watch yourself, watch every last bloody step you take. Because I’ll be watching, too, and next time, an outburst like that will break you. Do you understand me, Major Sparhawk?”
“Perfectly, sir,” said Anthony, and this time, when he bowed to take his leave, the general didn’t stop him. “Good day, sir.”
But instead of feeling relief at having escaped the punishment he deserved, Anthony continued to smolder with anger as he stalked through the still-empty streets. By the time he reached Hazard’s, he felt close to strangling with blind fury and frustration. The winter sun had set, and supper, such as it was, would be served soon, but the very notion of sitting down to dine with the other officers was more than he could stomach. Instead, he turned to the stable in back, ordering the black gelding that he’d brought from Boston to be saddled.
“Now what shall I fetch for the others. Major?” asked the groom, trying to look around Anthony and out the door into the yard. “How many more do you reckon be riding wit’ you?”
Anthony swung himself up into the saddle. “There are no others,” he said, gathering the reins in his fingers. “I’ll be riding alone.”
The man stared up at him, openmouthed with surprise. “Alone, sir?”
“Alone,” repeated Anthony curtly, and turned the gelding’s head toward the street.
He understood the groom’s surprise. He carried no weapon beyond his dress sword, and even half-hidden by his cloak, his uniform coat, glittering with lace and polished buttons, would stand out wherever he went. For him to travel unattended on this island was risky enough; to do so after dark was madness. But tonight Anthony was mad, or close to it, and as soon as he reached the edge of town he let the gelding have his head, urging the horse to race wildly into the darkness.
He headed south, then west, following the curve of the coast as the road became little more than a worn path. The way hadn’t changed over the years, and he followed it effortlessly, without having to consider his route. Overhead, pale clouds scudded across the stars and the silver moon in the icy-clear winter sky. The wind was cold here, near the sea, as cold as it had been when they landed, two days before, but tonight Anthony scarcely felt it.
At last he came to the last of the land, a rocky outcropping called Damaris Point, jutting into the sea, and he jerked the tired horse to a halt. Here he was alone; here, at last, he could think.
Damnation, he was English. How could the general say otherwise? Since he left the colonies, he’d come to think and act and feel like a true English gentleman, one born in London’s shadow, instead of in a house of peeled logs on the banks of the Connecticut River. He had learned to prize the neat, well-drilled precision of a line of soldiers in battle over the strike-and-run Indian fighting he’d practiced as a boy. He had put aside the rough ways of the frontier and instead perfected the hard-edged confidence of an officer in the most powerful army in Europe. His honor was his guide, his king his master, and in his well-ordered London world, that had always been everything.
Yet he was still a Sparhawk, too. He couldn’t deny that, either. Staring out beyond the rocks and waves, Anthony pulled off his hat and stuffed it beneath his coat, letting the salt-filled wind from the water whip against his face and clear away the confusion in his thoughts.
Of course he’d been shocked by the news of his uncle’s treachery. How could he not have been? In those early, homesick years, he’d written to his Newport relatives as often as he could, whenever he heard of a ship bound for the colonies. But because he moved so often with his regiment, he had had no permanent address of his own where they in turn might write to him. Without replies, his own correspondence had dwindled and then finally stopped. Otherwise, he might have known of his uncle’s dangerous inclinations, and wouldn’t have been taken so completely by surprise.
Aye, surprise, that was it. His uncle’s decision to embrace the traitors’ cause was unfortunate, even lamentable, considering it had brought about his ruin, but that was no reason for Anthony to destroy himself, too. His duty was to protect the decent, loyal subjects of the king and to subdue the rascals who’d broken the peace of the land. If that included his uncle, then so be it. His duty to the crown must come first, and the rest would follow. That was what his grandfather had taught him so long ago, and his grandfather had always been right.
Autumn was slow in coming that summer he turned eight. It was the middle of September, yet only the very tops of the maple trees had begun to turn from green to red, and there were still tall stalks of snapdragons— rose, white, palest yellow—nodding around the base of the sundial in Grandmother’s garden. A long summer, but a peaceful one, too, the first that Anthony could remember when the Frenchmen and their Iroquois allies hadn’t threatened the wide valley around Plumstead. Otherwise Grandfather would never have brought him out to these woods to hunt, far from the big house or any of the lesser farms. Most likely he wouldn’t have been on these lands at all, but off with the rest of the militia, fighting with the other king’s men against the French.
Anthony shifted his musket from one shoulder to the other and stole another glance at Grandfather. Grandfather was about the oldest gentleman Anthony knew, his long hair snow-white beneath the flat brim of his hat with the old-fashioned sweeping plume, but he was also the wisest and the bravest gentleman, too. Everyone in the valley said so. Though he’d given over being the leader of their county’s militia, Anthony heard how they still called him Captain Sparhawk instead of Master Sparhawk or just plain Kit, though only Grandmother did that. They all came to him whenever they had a problem, too, and day or night, there always seemed to be someone waiting in the hall to see Grandfather.
But not today. Today Anthony had Grandfather all to himself, and he couldn’t quite believe his good luck.
“Here, lad,” said Grandfather, holding back a branch for Anthony. “We’ll stop here for a moment, then onward to home.”
