Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (50 page)

One of the
cowhide boots slid off the bench, so she leaned over and snagged it.
 
When she propped it beside its mate, she
spied a sliver of paper between heel and sole.
 
Curious, she pried it out and read
Mrs. Filbert's daughter is Sally
in her husband's handwriting.

Odd.
 
Who was Mrs. Filbert?

Betsy tilted
the paper closer to the candle.
 
Here,
now — what was that?
 
Writing appeared
on the edge of the paper nearest the heat.

Amazed, she
passed the rest of the paper above the flame.
 
Bluish script gibberish and three-digit numbers filled in the page, some
sort of cipher.
 
She waved the paper
around.
 
It cooled, and the writing
vanished.

A chill brushed
her neck.
 
Clark had planted a secret
message in the boot.
 
Should she tell
him she'd found it?

More anxiety
wound through her.
 
Bad enough that her
family on the St. James side was in so much trouble lately, but now her husband
was involved in questionable deals.
 
When they'd married in January, she'd dreamed of leading a normal,
uneventful life: helping him with his business, raising children, tending the
garden and house.
 
By the lamplight of
that Tuesday morning, though, her optimism looked as naïve as that displayed by
fifty-six Congressional delegates who'd signed their names to a declaration of
independence from George the Third's rule.
 
Four years later, thousands of redcoats still occupied the thirteen
North American colonies.

Another crow
from King Lear prompted Betsy's attempt to wedge the paper back in the
heel.
 
Unsuccessful and exasperated, she
shoved the note into her pocket, lit a lantern, and bustled from the shop with
it.
 
The back door squeaked when she
exited from dining room into garden, and Hamlet and Horatio loped around from
the front yard, tails awag in greeting.
 
She paused to scratch behind the hounds' ears, and memory caught up with
her.

Almost two
months earlier, during her mother's last visit to Augusta, they'd sat in the
dining room sipping herbal tea, and Betsy told her the news:
You shall be a
grandmother before Yule
.
 
They'd
laughed and embraced through tears of joy, and for the first time ever, Sophie
had talked with her as one mother to another, dissolving the physical distance
between them that seven years of living apart had imposed.
 
But now, captive of the Lower Creek...Betsy
blinked away the salty mist of misery, her stomach afire again with
apprehension.

She stumbled a
few steps before righting herself and continued down the path to the
henhouse.
 
The dogs bounded away to the
front of the house.
 
A sparrow began his
reveille.
 
The earth smelled cool, damp,
and ripe.
 
Inside the henhouse, she hung
the lantern on a hook and grabbed a basket.
 
The hens welcomed her with soft clucks, the acrid odor of their
droppings magnified by her nose.

"Well,
Titania, have you an egg for me this morning?"
 
The hen shifted to allow Betsy's groping fingers access to straw
only.
 
She proceeded to the next hen.
 
"You, Desdemona?
 
Alas, no egg."
 
She straightened.
 
"Strange.
 
Perchance
you need a change in diet.
 
Well, I'm
sure to find something from Portia.
 
No?
 
Oh, very well, you did lay
two eggs yesterday."
 
She fumbled
beneath more hens without success, and an eerie sense of familiarity spread
through her.
 
The only other time this
had happened was when all the eggs had been collected as a
prank
just
prior to her arrival.

She lowered her
voice, not daring to believe.
 
"Uncle David?"

She heard
amusement in his voice outside the henhouse.
 
"I cannot play that trick on you twice, can I?"

She raced out
and flung her arms around dark-haired, lanky, handsome David St. James who'd no
doubt passed the night in the arms of a certain wealthy, lovely widow in
town.
 
Small wonder the hounds hadn't
alerted her to his familiar presence.
 
"Great thunder, it
is
you, and you're all right!"
 
She smacked his cheek with a kiss.
 
"Oh, gods, when I heard the news
yesterday, I could scarcely eat or sleep for worry."
 
She tugged him toward the house.
 
"Clark has been so worried, too.
 
But you've escaped the Indians!"

David braked
their progress toward the house.
 
"Don't tell your husband or anyone else that you've seen me."

"Why
not?"
 
She noticed her uncle's
hunting shirt and trousers and checked herself.
 
"You're running, aren't you?
 
Mother, too."

"Yes."

"Just like
Grandpapa Will."

She watched
David's stare home on her.
 
"What
do you mean?"

"
He
was hiding in the henhouse yesterday morning."

David darted a
look around.
 
"Where is the old
man?"

"Probably
in South Carolina."
 
Cynicism
seeped into her voice.
 
"That's
where he seemed to think he could lay low with rebel friends because he landed
himself in all that trouble with the redcoats last month.
 
Running a spy ring from Alton, printing
incendiary broadsides, escaping to Havana to intrigue with the Gálvez
family.
 
The
Gálvez
family.
 
Zounds.
 
How did a printer from a frontier town ever catch the eye of people so
high up in the Spanish court?
 
And what
did he expect from all that intrigue?
 
Surely not a pardon.
 
I don't
suppose he'll ever learn, will he?
 
So I
fed him breakfast and sent him on his way before it grew light.
 
And where's my mother?"

"On her
way to a Cherokee village in South Carolina."
 
He glanced at the sky.
 
"And since I don't want to be recognized on the road, I must away
to Williamsburg before it gets much lighter."
 
His tone became shrewd.
 
"I'm here only to assure you your mother is safe and well, and she
sends you her love."

The unreality
of the situation descended on Betsy.
 
She felt as though cotton stuffed her head.
 
"A redcoat from our garrison came by last night to relate
the news.
 
You and Mother had been
arrested as rebel spies after chasing Grandpapa to Havana.
 
Then you were captured by Indians north of
St. Augustine while the redcoats were escorting you back to Georgia.
 
You and Mother, rebel spies?
 
Hah.
 
Perchance if men bore children, yes.
 
Why don't you tell me what really happened."

David ejected a
soft laugh.
 
"Well, we did go after
the old man, but it was for his own good.
 
We aren't rebel spies, and it's a great misunderstanding that would take
me too long to explain.
 
Rest assured,
though, that your mother is safe for now."

Betsy
frowned.
 
Of course it was a
misunderstanding, and no one could dance a reel around the truth like her
uncle.
 
"When shall I have the full
story?"

"When
someone has the time to explain it."

Ah, no.
 
He wasn't going to escape without explaining
the greatest mystery of all.
 
"Surely you can tarry long enough to clarify
one
detail.
 
Wait here while I fetch what
arrived by post yesterday and show it to you."

"Very
well, but hurry."

She bustled up
the path, flung open the back door, seized the package from within a cupboard,
and trotted back out to David.
 
"See here, this was addressed as follows: 'To Mrs. Betsy Sheridan
in Augusta, Georgia.'
 
Well, go ahead
and see what's inside."

Stupefaction
and recognition flooded his voice when he examined the parasol and lace veil
within.
 
"I don't believe it."

She set the box
and its contents down next to the basket of eggs David had collected.
 
"There's a brief letter here
somewhere.
 
Who is Miguel de Arriaga,
author of the letter?"

"Captain
of a Portuguese merchant brig, the
Gloria Maria
."

"So you
and Mother had quite an adventure!"
 
Awed and envious, Betsy straightened and handed him the letter.
 
Then she leaned inside the henhouse,
unhooked the lantern, and held it to illuminate Captain Arriaga's script on the
page.

David skimmed
the letter, and she followed the path his eyes took over it, having already
memorized the contents:

MADAM:

Your Uncle and Parents were Passengers aboard my Ship, the
Gloria Maria.
 
I gave this Parasol and
Veil to your Mother, a remarkable Woman, and she lost them in Havana when
British Soldiers captured her.
 
If you
see her again, please give them to her and tell her I tried to help.

I am Madam

Your humble Servant

Miguel de
Arriaga

"How did
Captain Arriaga find me?"

"Your
mother told him about you."
 
Her
uncle folded the letter with haste and handed it back to her.
 
"Here you go.
 
Now I must away."

She'd once seen
a large-mouthed bass wiggle off a hook with greater finesse.
 
"Oh, no you don't."
 
After tossing the letter into the box, she
seized her uncle's arm.
 
"You tell
me what the captain meant by my 'parents.'
 
No more pretense.
 
Look at
me.
 
Dark hair and eyes, olive skin.
 
And these cheekbones!
 
Both my mother's husbands had blond hair and
blue eyes.
 
I couldn't be the daughter
of either of them.
 
So who was —
is
— my father?"

David squirmed,
trying his best to get off that hook.
 
"Your mother's the one who must have this conversation with
you."

"But she's
on her way to South Carolina, and you're here."
 
Betsy released him and set the lantern down.
 
"She's with my father, isn't she?
 
I shall go looking for
both
of them
so I may have a proper explanation."

"Come now,
you've more sense than to travel into a war-torn colony."

She jutted her
chin forward.
 
"You tell me,
then."

He sighed.
 
"Your father is Mathias Hale, a
blacksmith from Alton."

Astonishment
shot through her.
 
"Hale?"
 
She had a
vague recollection of the Hale family as respectable blacksmiths in her
hometown of Alton, south of Augusta.
 
The wonder of discovery began arranging perplexing pieces of her past
into a logical picture.
 
"
That
's
why Mother sent me here to be fostered with Lucas and Sarah seven years
ago.
 
I must resemble my father or
someone in his family, and she wanted me out of Alton."
 
Confusion trailed off her words.
 
She blinked at her uncle
 
"Why didn't Mother marry Mr. Hale?
 
Was shame or hardship involved?"

David held up
his hands.
 
"Another long story
which I've no place or leisure to explain.
 
Forgive me, but I must begone."
 
He strode to the back of the henhouse and unhitched his horse.

She tracked
him, her thirst unquenched.
 
"Is he
a good man?"

"Yes, a
very good man."

"Well,
then, I truly don't understand why she didn't —"

"Betsy."
 
He turned to her and seized her
shoulders.
 
"You must leave it for
now."

"But can
you not imagine what it's been like for me, Uncle David, to never have had a
father?
 
In all my seventeen years, I've
had uncles, a stepfather, and grandfathers, but they haven't been my
father
."

"You shall
meet him someday, I know it.
 
He's that
kind of man.
 
But now isn't the time to
look for him."
 
David pressed a
kiss to her forehead, released her, and climbed into the saddle with his
fowler.
 
"
Don't
go to South
Carolina."

Betsy stepped
back, certain she exuded defiance in her stance.
 
"Why not?"

He wagged his
finger at her.
 
"I mean it,
Betsy.
 
Don't
go to South
Carolina.
 
And, for that matter, stay
clear of Alton for awhile, especially a lieutenant by the name of
Fairfax."