The Turncoat Page 24

  They did not clap her in irons, but she made a break for it in the street and took down two men, who would not be addressing attentions to their sweethearts anytime soon. It took four to subdue her. André bound her hands with rope himself, and then once she was mounted pillion behind a dragoon, he tied her feet to the stirrups as well. Through all this Howe looked away, vaguely embarrassed, and fell back on praising Tremayne for his efforts. “A new command in the spring, Major. You can rely on it.”

  They expected him to join them, he realized, as the detachment mounted up and prepared to depart. He could feel the furtive eyes of the neighbors peering through their shutters. With scenes like these, he wondered how many loyal subjects would be left in the city when this winter was done.

  He did not want to go with them, for what was certain to be an interrogation, a trial, and an execution. He wondered if the dapper André did his own dirty work, or left that to others. He tried to beg off, pointed out the vulnerability of the reverend and his sister with both their doors off the hinges, but in the end André detailed a guard to protect the house and Tremayne had no choice but to accompany them.

  They rode in silence, because their errand was secret and, to Tremayne’s mind at least, shameful. The route was different but he recognized their destination long before they reached the Neck. He could not inquire whether the idea was André’s, who had, he knew, traced him with Kate to the pretty stone cottage, or Bay’s, who stood languidly waiting for them in the door of the house beneath the chalked warning that bore his name.

  THIS HOUSE UNDER THE PROTECTION OF BAYARD CAIDE.

  Caide was not alone. The dragoons, of course, had been his. André chose well. A dirty job, for men who would not ask questions. But even Caide had some scruples and Tremayne did not think his cousin was capable of torture.

  That was why Dyson was there.

  They bundled the Widow, still silent, into the kitchen, André taking the lead and Dyson padding in after them like the predator he was. Howe nodded and strode out the front door of the little cottage, distancing himself from the proceedings until they achieved the desired result. Tremayne watched the kitchen door close and turned to find Caide scrutinizing him.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you, Peter.”

  He didn’t, of course. He’d told Kate he would give them the Widow in her place, but he’d never have gone through with it. He’d seen torture, and knew what the low voices, the scrape of furniture over floorboards, the soft snap of the fire all meant.

  He had no illusions about what was taking place behind that door. Everyone talked under torture. The best he could hope for was that Dyson was clumsy or cruel, that the Widow died before naming Kate.

  Tremayne was poised on a knife’s edge. He could ride to warn Kate now, and give her away for certain. Or he could wait and pray God the Widow did not break.

  John André had proved himself more clever than they had realized. Tremayne had noticed Kate’s watchdogs. He could not fail to. Beaver Hat and Alley Loafer made no attempts to hide. And so Tremayne had not suspected that he himself might be watched by more subtle agents.

  Caide returned from the parlor with a flask, and the same delicate cut glasses Tremayne had shared with Kate. Peter was thankful that his hands did not shake when he took his.

  “We should get drunk,” Caide offered, with rare sympathy.

  “Afterwards,” said Tremayne.

  They waited.

  Caide, never squeamish, sat beside him in the cold dark hall. But he was not unaffected. Bay was not ordinarily a man to drink purposefully toward oblivion, but he did so now, neglecting even to offer Tremayne the flask again.

  Then the door opened, Howe was summoned, and the door closed again.

  Tremayne and Caide waited once more, listening to the low voices and the occasional hoarse, shuddering moan. It could not go on much longer.

  It didn’t. Captain André opened the door, looking, for once, suitably grim. “My lord, matters are near a conclusion and your presence would be helpful.” He oozed polite deference. His linen, Tremayne noted, was spotless, but there were dark glistening speckles patterned over his boots.

  Bay followed Tremayne in. He could only be coming out of solidarity. Under other circumstances, Tremayne would have welcomed his support, but not tonight. If Angela Ferrers broke, if she told them what she knew of Kate, and if Bay heard it, if he learned that his adored fiancée was a spy and, more, Tremayne’s lover, her life would hinge on who reached her first, and whether or not Tremayne could kill a man who had been raised as—and whom he still considered—his brother.

  They must have tidied the room and the prisoner before admitting Howe. Angela Ferrers wore her shift, but it was bloodstained in telling places. She was tied to a straight-backed chair now, but bloodied ropes still dangled limply off the edge of the pine table.

  Dyson had not tidied himself, and Howe took pains not to let his eyes light on the man. “I am sorry, Peter,” said Howe, “but you must remember what she is, and what is at stake.”

  The lives of at least twenty thousand British soldiers and an equal number of loyal civilians. He knew it too well. They had fallen for her ruse at the reverend’s house. Of course they had. Her performance, her outrage—the way she had slapped him—had been thoroughly convincing, worthy of Drury Lane. They thought he’d made love to her and was witnessing the violation and torture of a woman who had taken him into her body. And he might as well have been, because all he could see when he looked at her was Kate.

  “Mrs. Ferrers has already been kind enough to give us the names of her couriers and the locations of her dead drops,” André explained, in a voice an octave deeper than the dulcet tones he favored with the belles of Philadelphia. “We are trying to establish now the events of the night the lady entertained you in Orchard Valley. We need to know who else in that house was working with the Widow. And whom else she might have working for her here in Philadelphia.”

  “Orchard Valley. Was that the name of the place?” Tremayne replied, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. “It was a provincial backwater, a hamlet full of dour Quakers. I cannot believe Angela had accomplices there.”

  André shrugged, and Caide’s brute, Dyson, took his cue. He stepped forward, blocking the Widow from Tremayne’s sight. Tremayne knew he had a knife, suspected what he was doing with it, knew for certain when he heard her muffled cry. He could not control the muscle in his cheek that spasmed at the sound.

  “This will go on until you give us names,” André advised the Widow. “And your suffering pains Lord Sancreed almost as much as it does yourself. Have some pity on the man and bring this to an end. You have other agents in Philadelphia. Who are they?”

  Dyson stepped close again.

  “Give her a chance to answer first, man.” Howe looked decidedly uneasy. Tremayne sensed there were deeper currents running here, that André and Howe were not after the same thing. He forced himself to look at the Widow.

  She curled her lips into a snarl. “Which lord did you mean, Captain André? Peter Tremayne, or his cousin, who is surely twice as entitled to be called Sancreed.”

  Bay tensed beside him. The room became dangerously silent.

  “You have an accomplice in the city, Mrs. Ferrers,” André persisted. “A woman who is feeding you information. Give us the name or I will clear the room and allow Lieutenant Dyson to persuade you.”

  Howe looked stricken and anxious. “I think that’s enough, Captain André. The woman has nothing more to tell us. She’s just spewing bile now.”

  “Oh no, General, I have more to say. But first…” It was as though a dam had burst and what had been withheld might now be revealed.

  The Widow turned her face to Caide. “It was you I was waiting for in Orchard Valley, Colonel. I’ll confess, I was relieved when your cousin came instead. Tell me, does your pretty fiancée know what her children will be? If so, she has a stronger stomach than I. Children? Sickening enough just to lie with a bastar
d whose—”

  Tremayne guessed what she was doing a moment too late. “Don’t,” he said, but Caide had already smashed the delicate glass in his hand against the table. Dyson twisted with a tigerish grace out of his master’s way. And before Tremayne could reach him, Caide jerked his arm down in a graceless arc.

  Tremayne heard the hiss, but mercifully he did not see the glass slice through the Widow’s throat. There was a gurgle. The ropes groaned. The chair creaked. Then all was silence.

  For a second no one moved.

  Then André shoved Caide aside and bent over the Widow. “You imbecile,” André spat at Caide. But Bayard Caide didn’t hear him.

  Bay stood trembling beside the chair, and by the time Howe placed an arm on his shoulder and turned him, shirt spattered in a thick red line, away from the body, that is what it was. Angela Ferrers’ eyes were closed. Her chemise was soaked, the blood saturating the silk and dripping in a steady stream from her torn hem onto her bare feet.

  The woman was dead. Tremayne knew he should see to his cousin. But Howe was doing that, herding Bay toward the door, calling him “my boy” and murmuring that it was all very understandable and that the woman had goaded him.

  And so she had. To protect Kate. The Widow had known, or hoped, what Bay would do.

  Dyson threw the corpse over his shoulder like a sack of meal and strode out through the summer kitchen. André watched him go with visible distaste. “Do not think I enjoy this,” he warned Tremayne, wiping his boots with a kitchen towel.

  Tremayne shut the door to the hall and turned to face Howe’s spymaster. “Let us speak plainly. What is the price of Kate’s safety?”

  There was genuine surprise in André’s gold-flecked eyes. “Plain speaking indeed, my lord. But that is what it always comes down to for your sort, isn’t it? Money. You think you can buy anything or anyone. But you could not buy a woman like the Widow.”

  The bloodstained chair stood in mute testament.

  “You sound as though you admired her,” Tremayne said, light-headed with revulsion and anxiety.

  “I did. I had never met her equal, except perhaps Miss Grey. She may be as great as the Widow, someday. And that is why you have nothing to fear from me. I do not wish Kate Grey dead, and now that I have broken the Widow’s network, I do not need her dead. But make no mistake, Major. Miss Grey is mine.”

  “I was given to understand that you have little use for women, Captain.”

  “Not so. I esteem them greatly. I even bed them when necessary. But my passion I bestow elsewhere.”

  “Tastes such as yours can be expensive to conceal,” Tremayne said, hating the idea of blackmailing the man for this. Bay was right. A great many men of their class engaged in buggery as youths, the practice sanctified by the cloistered air of the public school. Some even continued the practice into adulthood, hiring linkboys in Drury Lane, or accommodating servants. But the privileged prosecuted their inferiors when they dared follow suit.

  “If money does not tempt you, Captain, then tell me how I may be of service to you. Invitations, introductions to men of power and influence. In exchange for the liberty of one rather ordinary girl.”

  André laughed out loud at his last statement. “The ‘girl’ in question is anything but ordinary, as you have cause to know. Still, there might be another I could groom to take her place in my plans. I shall consider your offer, my lord. Only tell me, how are you so certain she won’t betray you? Again.”

  There was no point, Tremayne decided, in lying. “I’m not.”

  Fifteen

  General Howe’s winter revels proceeded with the forced gaiety of a cuckoo clock, and Kate found herself trapped in the works, called upon to twirl hourly like an automaton. The playhouse opened shortly after Christmas. The deep January snow ushered in sledding in the Neck. And ice skating. And toboggan races. Between Smith’s City Tavern, the private subscription clubs formed by the officers, and Howe’s own appetite for conviviality, there were dances at least three nights a week. The Quaker City had never known such merriment.

  The Valbys said nothing about it, of course, but there was the problem of money. All Kate’s expenses had been paid publicly by the Valbys, but were reimbursed privately by Angela Ferrers. The money stopped coming at the same time as her instructions, the day after the Widow’s midnight visit. For her own safety and theirs, Kate did not know the Widow’s other agents in Philadelphia, but after two weeks passed in silence, she called upon the only person she knew to be in Angela’s confidence, Anstiss Black—only to discover that the dressmaker and her husband had also disappeared.

  It was February, and Philadelphia was shingled with ice, when she remembered what the Widow had said in Washington’s headquarters at Wilmington. There was another agent in Philadelphia. Still with Howe, but trapped like a fly in amber. Now Kate was trapped as well.

  To her great relief, Caide was much away on business for Howe, foraging, and when he was in Philadelphia, he was attentive but distant. Something had changed in him since the Widow had disappeared, though Kate was hard-pressed to name exactly what.

  Since their reckless encounter in the tunnel beneath the tavern, Kate caught only glimpses of Peter Tremayne. She understood that he continued to work to stem the tide of vandalism in the Neck and looting in the city, and that he protected the property of absent Rebels with the same zeal as that of absent Loyalists. Angela’s disappearance strengthened Kate’s resolve to stay away from him. Whatever had happened to Angela, Kate knew it could be nothing good. She did not wish the same upon Tremayne.

  Then it was March and the news spread like wildfire: General Sir William Howe was being replaced. The British planned to withdraw from Philadelphia. It was as though the entire Loyalist population woke up from a winter-long drunk with a spectacular hangover. They’d been so confident when the Rebels fled—so quick to offer their absent neighbors’ houses to the British, even pocket a few items, or an entire business, for themselves, when Howe invested the city with twenty thousand men. Now, in the harsh morning light of retrospect, some of the Loyalists’ actions appeared unwise.

  In April, the ground thawed but the local inhabitants grew frosty. If Howe’s officers noticed a certain coolness, they ignored it. The general’s staff was too busy anyway, planning his farewell celebration. A river flotilla, a tournament with knights and ladies and jousting, a ball, a dinner, fireworks. It sounded fit for a conquering Roman general, rather than a defeated one. Captain André had dubbed it the Mischianza, a medley, a bit of everything.

  In the first week of May, Kate found that she was to play a leading part in the entertainment. If she did not drown first. She returned from a rainy rehearsal bedraggled and choking under twelve yards of sodden cotton tulle. She dripped up to her room at the Valbys’ and knew a moment of déjà vu. She looked into the shadows between the window and the fireplace, but no one was seated there. But her instinct had not been wrong. There was someone in the room with her. She realized what it meant a moment too late.

  A strong arm fell over hers like a bar, and a man’s hand smothered her cry. This was it then; André had decided he did not need her after all. At least it would be her death and not Peter’s. But she was afraid. When André had poisoned her, she’d had no time to be frightened. But pinned in the dark, she had the unwanted leisure for fear.

  “Easy, Kate. It’s me.”

  Peter.

  She sagged in his arms, and he went from holding her prisoner to holding her up. He led her to the bed, placed her hands on the counterpane to steady her. “Stay here,” he said. He knelt at the hearth and lit the fire. “You look like a drowned rat. And you’re shivering. We should get you out of those wet clothes. Good God, what are you wearing?”

  “It is one of André’s costumes for the Mischianza,” she said of the transparent polonaise plastered to her breasts. “I’m to play one of the Ladies of the Blended Rose, and Captain André is to be my champion. It was supposed to be Peggy, of course, but her father
withdrew his permission, and now here I am.” She curtsied, and the turban fell from her head, releasing her dripping hair.

  Tremayne laughed, and she smiled wearily back at him, and he reached for her laces. She’d been holding on by her fingernails, alone and threatened from all sides, for months. And now Peter was here in her bedroom. One by one he peeled her sodden garments away and then she was naked. His finger followed a drop of water as it fell from her hair, ran over her breast, and formed again over her nipple. “This isn’t precisely why I came here,” he said, circling the hardening bud.

  She couldn’t speak. Fear and relief were all mixed up inside her and she couldn’t sort them out because her body was not her own anymore. Not with him so near.

  He backed her to the bed, the wool of his breeches absorbing the moisture on her thighs. He threw off his jacket as her calves hit the bed; then his shirt was plastered to her dripping breasts and there was no place that their bodies, hers naked, his clothed, did not meet.

  “You should stop me,” he said, his breath feathering her cheek.

  She shook her head, slipped her arms around his neck, drew his mouth down to hers.

  He reached between them to free himself from his breeches and test her readiness. Then he lifted her by the knees, perched her on the edge of the bed, and slid inside.

  Kate hadn’t spoken since he first touched her, but he could not possibly mistake the tenor of her cries, low and throaty and needful, as he rode her. The wool of his breeches scratched her damp skin, an erotic contrast to the wet glide of his body inside hers.

  It was only the third time she had done this with a man, but she sensed by his grip on her thighs, the speed of his thrusts, the fierceness of his expression, that he was going to reach his peak before her. She didn’t care. She just wanted to be close to him, intimate with him, like this.

  He slowed, then stilled, and she expected him to pull out. Instead, he unwrapped her arms from about his neck. “Lie back.”