The Turncoat (26 page)

They were challenged once more, but this time he murmured to her not to stir, and kissed her hair softly, speaking the password in hushed conspiratorial tones, as though not to wake her.

The air freshened, the night closed in and became cooler, and she smelled the Delaware, not fouled as it flowed through the city but fresh from the countryside. When she opened her eyes they were riding slowly up to the low stone wall of a cottage, and she realized when she saw the chalked door that it was the same place she had come with General Howe and Caide. They were in the Neck, the abandoned neighborhood of pleasure cottages and private docks where the wealthy retreated from the city for rustic weekends. In truth it was as pastoral as her polonaise dress, a citified version of Arcadian life, but charming all the same.

She blinked sleepily in the light spilling from the house. Tremayne slid lightly from his horse, then set his hands about her waist and lifted her from the saddle.

A man appeared at the gate. Kate recognized him as Bachmann, her new watcher. Impassive and efficient, he seemed a fine accomplice for such sordid business. With a nod for Tremayne, he took the reins of the horse, and led the animal away. Then they were alone in the chill night air, the cottage beckoning.

She expected Peter Tremayne to lead her directly inside, but instead he stood looking down at her, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. “I will always wonder how things might have been different,” he said.

His words were baffling. Stranger still, he took a fine lace handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped the rouge from her cheeks. He rubbed the stain from her lips with his thumb, then said, “Damn it all to hell, I’m no saint.” Then he kissed her.

There was nothing gentle or teasing about it. This was not a prelude to seduction. And it was not rape. She opened her mouth to his thrusting tongue and decided that no matter the circumstances that brought them here, she wanted this man, and she was going to have him. When he drew away, her lips felt bruised, her throat parched, and she wanted more, wanted everything, but he made no move toward the house.

She didn’t understand his hesitation, wondered if there was some gesture she ought to make, words she ought to say. She knew so little of lovemaking, and now she regretted her ignorance. She found she wanted to please him. “Should we go inside?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. She turned toward the cottage, but Tremayne still hung back, reluctant to enter. She picked up her skirts and pushed open the gate. The rosebushes that had bloomed only two weeks ago were now bare. Their bruised petals carpeted her path. She climbed the granite steps and wiped her silk court shoes on the straw mat just inside the door. The diamond buckles twinkled in the moonlight. A pretty compass rose floorcloth radiated from the center of the hall and Kate turned left, and according to the floor, east, toward what she presumed to be the parlor.

When she opened the door, the air was wood-scented and warm, and the cottage was not empty. The cheery yellow parlor was papered in Chinese silk, a fantasy landscape of birds and branches and flowering trees. There was a fire burning, and two needlepoint lolling chairs pulled up beside it.

One chair was empty. Waiting patiently in the other was her father.

Thirteen

Tremayne knew he ought to allow them some privacy, but he trailed Kate into the cottage like a faithful dog. He could not bear to be separated from her. Not now, when they had so little time left.

She rounded on him at the sight of her father. “You tricked me.”

“Yes,” Tremayne agreed. “I did not like doing it, but I could see no other way to bring you here. I could not convince you to leave Philadelphia, but I hoped your father might.”

The look she gave him was full of regret and longing. He supposed it was the same expression he had worn outside the cottage when he kissed her. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face her father.

Arthur Grey was much as Tremayne remembered: grizzled, lanky, forbidding. He wondered if Grey had ever been truly accepted among his Quaker neighbors. There was a steady hum of violence about the man. Or perhaps that was just the circumstances under which they met. In the Jersey woods they’d been on opposite sides of a nasty firefight. Tonight, Tremayne suspected, would be the same.

Arthur Grey rose as his daughter approached, and Tremayne observed the old campaigner, who had terrorized the French a decade ago and remained very much a force to be reckoned with, doff his cap and hunch his shoulders in the presence of a beautiful woman.

He didn’t recognize her.

Then Arthur Grey took another look. An uncomfortable thing for a father, Tremayne realized. Harrowing, even: to have a daughter, and see her for the first time as a woman.

An alluring woman. Not
pretty
, actually. Kate would never be anything so simple. Her features were even and regular, her eyes a glory to behold, chocolate swirling in the cup. But it was her poise, her wit, her bearing, the intelligence sparkling behind those eyes that would draw men to her for the rest of her days. He’d seen this at Grey Farm, these qualities that others had missed. Like a perfect stone stuck in a dull bezel, she had lacked only the proper setting to bring out her sparkle.

“It suits you, Kate,” her father said at last, with unexpected gentleness. “The finery. Would have suited your mother too.”

Tremayne could not see Kate’s face, but he heard her controlled, even voice. “I never meant for you to see me like this,” she said.

“I wasn’t born in Orchard Valley, Kate. I have nothing against finery.” Arthur Grey opened his arms to his daughter, and she flew into them.

For a moment, Tremayne hated Arthur Grey. Hated a man who had not recognized just how extraordinary his daughter was. Had kept her at home, in that dull backwater, where she could find no occupation, no man worthy of her.

But he had no business being angry, should not be here at all. Kate was no longer his. She would go away with her father, resume her quiet life in Orchard Valley. He could not follow her there, no matter his fantasies of seeking her out and making her his mistress. Nor were the secrets, the quiet murmurs between Arthur Grey and his daughter, of Angela Ferrers, of Mercer and Mifflin, of Washington’s winter plans, his to bring away. He would leave here tonight empty-handed, report his failure to Howe, resign his commission. He too would go home.

“And what is this man to you?” Arthur Grey asked of Kate, when the conversation turned at last from armies and generals to more personal matters.

She turned to look at Tremayne and said softly, “I have wondered that myself, but I think now I can safely say he is my friend.”

He didn’t want her as a friend. He wanted her in his bed, crying out beneath him, but by bringing her here tonight, he’d forfeited that pleasure.

Arthur Grey snorted. “A damned dangerous friend. Men like him don’t make friends with country misses.”

“You’re entirely right,” Tremayne said. “Until tonight, my intentions have in truth been less than honorable, but also less than successful. You can take her home without shame.”

Arthur Grey stiffened.

“I’m not going home,” Kate said, perching on the other armchair with regal grace.

Her father poked the fire. “Orchard Valley isn’t safe, but you could come with me, Kate. It will be a lean winter with the army, but there would be plenty of work to occupy you. Washington is short of clerks.”

She blinked. Tremayne damned Arthur Grey once more for a fool. She would never go with him now. Philadelphia, of course, was not London. In London she might have found scope for her formidable talents, become a rich and influential courtesan, a patroness of the arts, a political power as the mistress of an important man. But even here she had tasted power, moved events, become part of something larger than herself.

“Clerks copy reports and orders,” she said coolly. “My intelligence makes them.”

“Your mother always said pride would be my downfall,” Arthur Grey replied evenly, “but we never suspected it would be yours. Your damned fool lover is right. It would be best if you came away with me tonight.”

“Lord Sancreed is not my lover,” she said impatiently, sounding more than a little like Angela Ferrers. “But pray tell me where you met.”

It was a trap, but Arthur Grey, wily old campaigner though he was, didn’t see it. “In the woods near Haddonfield,” he replied.

“On the road to Mercer, you mean.” There was a gleam in her eye that quickened Tremayne’s pulse. She was remarkable. “Where my intelligence dispatched you,” she finished.

“Yes,” her father agreed. “Where your intelligence, as relayed by Angela, dispatched me. Though I did not know the source at the time. Washington refused to speak about it with me. It was his secretary, Hamilton, who confirmed what Sancreed here told me in the wood. That you’d gone to Philadelphia with the Widow. Hamilton says you code the cleverest messages he’s ever seen.”

Grey paused a moment, and Tremayne saw at last how much alike these two were. Neither would hesitate to use the weapon to hand. “Six hundred men died at Mercer, Kate. I have been a soldier most of my adult life, save the years I spent in Orchard Valley with your mother. But you were born there. The weight of those deaths is not something you will carry lightly, when all this is done. And in the game you’re playing, you won’t be able to do all your killing at second hand. Angela Ferrers could tell you as much. There will come a time when you will have to choose between your life and that of the enemy who would take it from you. If you haven’t the resolve to take that life, then what you do here is martyrdom, not patriotism.”

“I will not leave,” she said.

Arthur Grey rose from his chair. “If that is your decision, then it is time for me to go.”

“Good God, sir, what kind of father are you?”

Kate gasped. Arthur Grey rounded on Tremayne. They had forgotten he was there.

“What would you have me do?” Grey challenged. “Carry her out the door kicking and screaming?”

“I am asking you to exercise a little paternal authority,” Tremayne said icily. “Captain André thinks he can use her now, but when she crosses him again, as she surely will, he will have her dragged from her bed in the middle of the night and hanged without a soul to witness. And I will be able to do nothing—nothing—to stop it.”

Arthur Grey picked up his battered hat and strode to the door. He paused to look back at his daughter, but he made no move to touch her, and for a second Tremayne thought the man a coward. Then he recognized it for what it was: a love that ran so deep it could not be overridden by self-interest. Arthur Grey had the power to break his daughter’s resolve, to keep her safe—and a child—forever. But he loved her too well to use it. “Take care, Kate,” he said, and walked out the door.

Kate did not move from her stance by the fire. Tremayne hesitated only a moment before following Grey outside. He ran to catch up, around the side of the house, down the grassy hill, to the small dock at the bottom of the lawn. Bachmann was there already, speaking quietly with the boat pilot. When he saw the two men coming, he retreated into the shadows.

“Sir,” Tremayne began, but quickly realized that everything had already been said.

“
Are
you her lover?” Grey asked suddenly from the boat, as the pilot made ready to cast off.

“No,” Tremayne admitted. He owed this man honesty. “But I intend to be.”

“Angela Ferrers had the nerve to tell me this was all my fault. That I should have found Kate a husband. Made her a farmer’s wife. But she’s more than that, isn’t she?”

“Much more,” Tremayne agreed. “I can’t marry her, of course.”

Arthur Grey snorted. “Of course.”

“You are a man of the world. You must recognize the unsuitability of such a match. But she would want for nothing. You heard her. She won’t go back to Grey Farm. But she would be happy in London. Admired, influential. We could come to terms.”

Tremayne had bargained for women before, because that was how the world worked. He was taking a risk, of course, because Americans were infatuated with equality, tended to be unsophisticated about the arrangements of privileged men, and Grey might take mortal offense at being offered a settlement for his daughter’s protection. But it was the only recourse left him.