Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (33 page)

At length, she
heard a shuffle across the table: paper folded, a wax seal impressed.
 
When she opened her eyes, she found him
motionless in his chair, one elbow propped on the desk, waiting, his stare
drilling through her brain.

"I — uh —
I came to speak with you about this morning."

Indifferent, he
hooked his chair and planted it before her.
 
After adjusting the blanket to cover her neck, he sat.

She
fidgeted.
 
"I apologize for arguing
with you.
 
Civilians don't understand
until they experience it the order that the Army must keep."

He leaned
forward, elbows on knees.
 
"By now,
Kennelly and Mrs. Pearson will have purchased supper for your party."

"Thank
you."
 
She squirmed in the
chair.
 
"We — um — need access to
our posts."

He smiled and
straightened.
 
"Ah, yes."

"Jonathan
and the Pearsons have ongoing business and financial concerns that require
their interaction."
 
She slid her
feet into her shoes.
 
"And I expect
bank drafts from Badley, funds for me to continue the assignment.
 
Possibly letters from my attorney."

"Soon as I
receive those posts, I shall pass them along to you."

Consternation
trickled through her.
 
"You're
busy.
 
If you're out for several days on
patrol, and an important letter arrives from Roger's apprentice or Jonathan's
attorney — oh, why does our mail need to pass through you at all?"

"It's a
policy established by the Legion."

"Newman
told me there could be exceptions to that policy."

"Darling,
you're toying with me again."

When would he
cease questioning her loyalty?
 
She
exhaled and rolled her gaze away from him.
 
"I understand how important it is for you to capture Will St.
James."
 
She gave him a pointed
look.
 
"But I don't know where he
is."
 
Skepticism curled Fairfax's
upper lip.
 
Despair excavated her
soul.
 
"You won't be able to find
him through me, either.
 
My relationship
with his son is over."

"I'm sure
you haven't seen the last of him."

She regarded
him with disbelief at his implication.
 
"David's no halfwit.
 
He
won't approach me while I'm traveling with the Legion."

"You
underestimate your own charm.
 
Apparently, so did Silas Chiswell."

She coughed
with scorn.
 
"A marriage of
convenience.
 
My husband never loved
me."

"Well, he
certainly couldn't buy love."
 
Fairfax's smile twisted.
 
"Not even when the comely shape of it presented itself so
vulnerably during procurement."

The inside of
the tent reeled a few times, and Helen's breathing grew ragged before she
settled it back down.
 
One second, she
debated denial; the next she acknowledged futility.
 
Her voice emerged even.
 
"If you expose my background, your story about Tarleton will never
be completed."

"Expose
your background?
 
Why should I do
that?"
 
He rose and held out a hand
to help her up.
 
While sliding the
blanket from around her shoulders, he trailed fingers down the length of her
arm.
 
"You're a talented writer and
artist.
 
And Vivaldi, Isaac Newton, and
French philosophers — Helen, you're a delectable piece of work.
 
Granted, your professor helped, but the
innate capacity for transformation was yours.

"My
stepfather and the vicar debated the sense of my mother's education
project.
 
Were they still alive, they'd
never recognize you.
 
You transcended
expectations she had for those village brats.
 
A most sublime revenge."
 
He
caught her hand in his and brushed soft lips over her fingers.

Revenge?
 
The peerage had to mean more to him than
that.
 
Surely his plug for Parliament
meant he craved acknowledgement and acceptance from the peers.
 
"I presume, then, that it was Treadaway
who filled in the missing piece of my identity for you."

"Oh,
Treadaway.
 
Bah."
 
He towed her to where their garments
hung.
 
Rather than wrap her cloak around
her, he took her in his arms.
 
Warm from
blankets and brandy, her body heated further wherever he pressed against
her.
 
"Treadaway's recall improves
dramatically when he's drunk.
 
When he
sobers, he jumbles it and misplaces pieces."

It didn't sound
as though Treadaway had been of much assistance.
 
"Then you remembered me from Lady Ratchingham's
classes."

He stroked her
cheek.
 
"Beltane 1767."
 
When she shook her head, he added,
"Inappropriate for the wife of an influential Anglican merchant, yes, so
you smuggled the gods to America.
 
Why
else paint watercolors of the sacred places?"

Fire and ice
raced Helen's spine together.
 
She'd
done more than smuggle the gods to America.
 
She'd filled her house with them, painting after painting, defying Silas
Chiswell.
 
She gawped up at Fairfax and
his irreverent, tainted amusement.

Warm and
insistent, his lips brushed the side of her mouth.
 
She stiffened, and he whispered, "Remember for a
moment.
 
Full moonlight.
 
Drums on the plain.
 
The roaring bonfire."

Then he plunged
straight into a wet kiss that tasted of chocolate and coffee, exploring her
mouth with the meticulousness of a surveyor who has mapped many frontiers.
 
Bonfire.
 
Bone fire.
 
The scent of salt
punched a lightning-shock circuit of her nerves.
 
She resisted a grand total of two seconds before her hips rotated
to meet masculine hardness.
 
Through the
material of her bodice, heat from his hand penetrated, exacted response from
her nipple.
 
Her fingers groped the side
of his breeches, squeezed a muscular buttock, and clutched at it.

"Dine with
me tonight," he murmured from the mounded upper crescents of her breasts,
where her lace tucker opened.
 
He pinned
her wrists together and snaked linen around them while his lips traced the line
of her jaw.
 
"Divine sister, sibyl
of the gods, vision-priestess."

Drums pounded
Helen's womb and deafened her ears.

He lifted her
hands eye-level, where she stared, her breathing uneven, at her own wrists
bound with the handkerchief.
 
"Obedience, darling, yes."
 
His countenance glowed with supernatural light.
 
"Sing for me."

Fascination and
fear coiled within her at the sight of her wrists.
 
Bound wrists.

Over his
shoulder, the interior of the tent came into focus, its peculiar utilitarian
nature registering upon her again: the absence of personality, savage serviceability
enforced everywhere, as if Fairfax had filled the marquee with the expected
forms of things but bestowed upon them no life.
 
Likewise, the green of his eyes reflected a glacial surface,
guarantee of raw futtering without depth.
 
Unnerved, she pushed from his embrace and thrust the handkerchief at
him.

Conviction
carved his smile.
 
He returned the
handkerchief to his pocket.
 
"So
many questions in that inquisitive mind of yours.
 
You must learn to trust me."

Ambiguity and
more unrest washed over her.
 
Think —
no, she couldn't sort it out
there
.
 
She had to get away.
 
She fumbled
her tucker closed, hands trembling, and clenched her petticoat.
 
"I've kept three people waiting on
supper."

He laughed,
impudent again, and spread her cloak open for her.
 
"You know where to find me."

***

The rain held
off, and the four sat on campstools outside their tents, supper lit by two
lanterns.
 
Hannah plugged the hole in
conversation with a spirited account of the dragoons' morning practice.

Divine
sister, sibyl of the gods, vision-priestess
.
 
Glad for the relative lack of light, Helen stayed quiet.
 
She hated dodging Jonathan's attempts to
draw her from reticence.

Her skin felt
too tight, her lips too full, her cheeks flushed.
 
Bound wrists.
 
Odd.
 
Eros had visited her dream about Jonathan
with an image of bound wrists, and she'd also dreamed of bound wrists on the
Santee Road.

Form without
content.
 
Sex without unity.
 
At least now, she had an idea of the shape
that Margaret's manna took.

Chapter Thirty-Three

NATTER ABOUT
RAINFALL buzzed the parlor.
 
Just
outside the wives' circle, Helen toed her semi-dry shoes closer to the fire,
smoothed a woman's pocket in her lap, and assessed the embroidered, completed
cardinal.
 
Her stitches appeared even.

Rain had
permitted her scant occupation except writing or embroidering since her
arrival.
 
She'd seen little of camp
beyond her tent and the manor.
 
At least
enough of a lull occurred in the rain most mornings for her to seek the dawn
place.

That day,
Sunday, she didn't expect mail except emergency posts.
 
But each day she'd sent Roger to query
Fairfax, the locksmith had come away empty-handed.
 
Did Fairfax withhold a whole pile of letters from them,
contingent upon her gracing his marquee with another intimate visit?
 
Not an opportunity for which she
longed.
 
The gods thrust all manner of
messengers upon her.
 
Fairfax was by far
the most complex and ambiguous.

She'd embroider
daisies on a kerchief next.

A familiar,
booted tread descended the stairs into wifely griping about the quagmire camp
had become.
 
"So this is how the
winter of our discontent sounds."
 
A statesman's smile charming his boyish face, Tarleton swaggered between
the ladies' chairs.
 
"Shall I move
camp to higher ground, just to see each of you smile again?
 
How does upriver suit?"

To hear him
talk, feminine approval over the camp location was more important than
protecting the garrison at Ninety Six.
 
Helen muffled her laughter at the cloud of silk and satin that engulfed
the commander of the Legion.
 
If ladies
in Liverpool could vote, Tarleton would have clinched his seat in Parliament
the first go-round.

She doused her
grin and examined the embroidery.
 
The
colonel sweet-talked all the wives and their maids, but, as Hannah had observed
the previous day, he singled Helen out for extra flattery every chance he
got.
 
Such favoritism could wreak havoc
on a journalist's objectivity.
 
Not to
be encouraged.

Spurs jingled
with his strut over to her chair.
 
"Mrs. Chiswell."

"Sir."
 
She flashed a smile at him and looked at the
cardinal, her ears grown hot.
 
If the
smolder of admiration in his eyes were quantified in English pounds, she'd be a
wealthy woman.

He bowed.
 
"A stunning piece of embroidery.
 
May I see it?"

She handed it
to him.
 
His fingers stroked hers in
passage.
 
Then he crouched and brought
his gaze level with hers, a wistful expression on his face.
 
"Made for a friend, I suppose."

On the verge of
admission that she'd just passed the time indoors with it, she caught herself,
business sense tingling.
 
"Possibly."
 
She
affected disinterest.

"Will you
sell it to me?" he whispered, his expression ardent.

She and the
wives weren't the only ladies cross over being confined indoors.
 
Margaret must have given him an earful about
pitching camp in a massive mud puddle.
 
Just how badly was he smarting?
 
Helen could certainly use some money.
 
She protracted a sigh.
 
"Oh,
I don't know if I could part with it.
 
I've grown fond of this particular piece.
 
It did turn out well, didn't it?"

"Very
well.
 
Stunning.
 
Magnificent.
 
Four shillings."

He
was
desperate.
 
"Ten."

"Half a
pound —?
 
Seven.
 
Seven shillings."