The Turncoat (8 page)

He looked up at Tremayne. “Don’t go offering to pay for the beer, Peter. Or anything else, for that matter. The brewer is a Rebel, and as such, his property is forfeit.”

“How do you tell the Rebels from the Tories, Bay?”

“The Rebel women are prettier.” He slapped Tremayne on the back and led him into the stone-walled kitchen.

It was a well-scrubbed and busy room, with an ancient sideboard groaning under the weight of mismatched pottery. The two women standing behind the pitted trestle table were indeed unusually pretty. The older was no more than thirty, and her sleeves dripped with muslin frills and Mechlin lace. The mistress of the house, no doubt. The younger was barely out of her teens, and from her dated skirts and cheap leather stays, she must be the maid.

Caide bowed politely to the lady. “Ma’am.”

He reached for her hand, but she stepped back. Her black brows knitted, and an angry flush crept over her fair skin. “What do you want?” she asked.

The maid, more attuned to Bay’s mood than her mistress was, sidled toward the low door. Lieutenant Dyson, a hulking brute from some northern factory town, and just the sort to toady to Bay, appeared in the doorway, cutting off her escape and blocking the light. He advanced, not on the girl but on the kegs racked against the wall.

“Beer, to start with,” said Caide, but he wasn’t looking at the beer.

The keg nearest the door was already tapped. Dyson turned the handle, and the beer pattered onto the floor and spread over the stone tiles.

“You’re no better than thieves,” the lady said.

Bay fingered the cord hanging from the clock jack on the mantel, and pulled a sprig of sage out of one of the bundles drying overhead. “Cooperation, second,” he said, inhaling the pungent herb, “or perhaps you would rather watch your livelihood run out over the floor?”

Dyson took another tap from a set hanging on the wall, and hammered it into the next keg. The lady flinched at each blow, and the maid began sobbing.

“What will it be?” asked Bayard Caide.

Tremayne barely heard him. The structure possessed none of the classical elegance of Grey House. The woman behind the trestle was not poised or quick-witted, nor did she have pie crumbs in her hair, but the situation reminded him all too much of a Quaker girl he couldn’t get out of his head. The room seemed suddenly overpoweringly hot and close.

Caide advanced on the women. “If you are loyal subjects, you will of course want to help His Majesty’s trusty servants in any way they might require.”

Tremayne knew this preamble all too well. Once, he would have shared in it.

“Excuse me. I think I’ll go see to the wagons.”

Bay turned, the women forgotten for the moment. “Come on, Peter. It will be just like old times.” He scooped a tankard from the sideboard and held it under the spluttering tap, then offered Tremayne the beaker. “And there’s beer.”

“I find I’m not thirsty.” He was parched, but he knew he would choke on that beer, and what would come after it.

Caide shrugged and downed the beaker. “Suit yourself. Dyson, watch the door.”

Out in the crisp air, Bay’s men were loading wagons with sacks of barley. From inside the farmhouse, Tremayne heard a loud crash. The trestle table, overturned. Then the musical note of a single, fine piece of china dashed against a wall, followed by the deeper chord of a shelf full of earthenware swept to the ground. The curtains rustled, and Tremayne knew that Bay’s ugly little drama had reached its climax.

It would have been easier to bear if he had not been guilty of similar indulgences. Certainly, as a young officer he had used his authority to commandeer supplies and other less tangible benefits. He knew all too well how it was done. You put the men to some heavy-lifting task, set a lackey to guard the door, demanded goods or information the locals were unlikely to have, then bargained, and finally threatened, until the line between coercion and force became indistinct.

Before Kate, before Grey Farm, he might have done the same. Hell,
at
Grey Farm, truth be told, he had almost done so. Now, with little sound coming from the ravaged kitchen, all Tremayne could picture was Kate, plain, disheveled, disarmingly clever Kate, at the mercy of someone like Caide, at the mercy of someone like himself. He felt sick.

He must have looked it, too. Caide emerged some time later, stooping from the low batten door, and rolled his eyes at Tremayne. “Developing a conscience, Peter? It won’t do you any good in this war. Dyson,” Bay called to the lieutenant idling beside the door. “Your turn.” Dyson smiled his vicious, heavy-lidded smile and ducked into the kitchen. There was no noise this time.

“These people,” Caide said, turning his attention back to Tremayne, “won’t give up until they’ve been taught a lesson. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Yes,” Tremayne said, placing his foot in his stirrup. “Only I’m not so certain of the pedagogy anymore.” Mounted on his horse, he continued. “Anyway, I thought you recently became engaged to some gilded Tory heiress. What do you need farmers’ wives for?”

“Ah, well, that’s just the thing. I need farmers’ wives because I am engaged to the most dazzling creature in Philadelphia. And once married, I swear to you, I shall cleave to her bosom and forsake all others. But until then all she does is tease and leave me with an itch that needs scratching.”

“Clearly your reputation has been slow to reach Philadelphia. I can’t think of a respectable matron in London who would allow you to marry her daughter.”

“Well, fortunately, Lydia’s mother is
respectably
dead. And her father’s at sea. Sumatra way. Making a fortune in pepper or some such thing.”

“You’d be wise to marry her before the blockade is lifted and her father gets a look at you,” Tremayne advised.

“The thing is all sewn up. Aunt and uncle wrote to her father for consent. We’re to be married in the spring. Only waiting for her father’s return. Howe’s brother will issue a pass so he can land.”

“With his fortune in pepper.”

“I’d take her with two pecks of pepper. She’s magnificent. Chestnut hair like silk. Eyes so dark they’re almost black. Skin like new snow.”

“If the thing is all sewn up,” Tremayne reasoned, “then there should be nothing to stop you from scratching your itch with her.”

“No. I’d like to, and I daresay she’d let me, but no. In this, if in nothing else in my life, I’m determined to do the thing properly. I won’t bring my bride to the altar in an embarrassing condition, or my children into the world with questionable legitimacy.”

Tremayne couldn’t argue with that. “What if she’s frigid?” he prompted.

Caide cast a sly glance at Tremayne. “I said I haven’t bedded her. I didn’t say I haven’t sampled the vintage. In company, she’s a picture of grace and manners. In private, she’s got a wild streak a mile wide. She’s
perfect
.”

“For you, certainly,” Tremayne replied. “I wouldn’t wish an innocent girl tied to you for life.”

“That makes two of us, cousin.”

They reached Germantown at dusk, where Howe was still encamped with the bulk of the army. “I’m for a glass of whisky and bed,” Tremayne said. He was staying with Caide until he could find his own lodgings in the city. He hoped that Philadelphia would prove more welcoming. Whatever the feelings of the people of Germantown had been before their home became a battlefield, they wanted the British gone now. The pretty stone houses that had once lined Main Street were shot to pieces. Blood spatters stained the remnants of the whitewashed fences and window shutters, and yards were littered with blood-caked doors, called into service as makeshift operating tables after the carnage, and abandoned, indelible with gore, in the aftermath.

“No. You’re for a game of cards with Black Billy. He wants to see you.”

Tremayne dreaded meeting Howe. “Liar. He didn’t answer any of my letters. He’s only put me on his staff to keep you happy.”

“Not so. He has a job for you.”

“Mucking out his stable, most likely.”

Caide laughed. “Whatever task he appoints you, you’ll do it and like it, or you’ll never see a command again.”

Whatever penance Howe had in mind was likely to be far nastier than cleaning stables. The worst part was that Caide was right. Tremayne would never see command again in this theater if he failed to please Howe.

Which was why he found himself, boots polished, braid glimmering, hair tied neatly at the back of his neck, at the doors of the elegant little manse Howe had appropriated for himself. Light blazed from every bullet-riddled window, and the thick, waxy smell of expensive candles and pricier scent met him in a wave of heat at the door.

Bayard Caide was in his element here among the crowded tables of cardplayers, the impromptu boxing matches, the dicing, and, in the shadowy corners, the illicit couplings with Philadelphia’s Tory daughters.

Or wives, in the case of General Howe. Tremayne found him holding court at a table littered with punch glasses, broken pipes, and discarded dice. Mrs. Loring, his mistress, resplendent in teal silk, sat beside him, her husband nowhere in evidence.

“The prodigal returns, Major Tremayne.” Howe rose from the table to clap Tremayne heartily on the back. “You’ll have to be on your guard here. Philadelphia has no shortage of beautiful American women.” A young girl at Howe’s table, too young, probably, to be out with this company, blushed prettily. “And I’m certain at least half of them are spies.” He turned to his mistress. “Viscount Sancreed here was beguiled by the Merry Widow.”

Mrs. Loring pursed her lips in distaste. “Really, Major. I would have thought that woman was growing too long in the tooth to beguile any man.”

“The Merry Widow?” Tremayne inquired politely, feeling for the letter in his breast pocket, folded beside the ribbon.

Howe smiled sourly. “Your mystery lady, Major, is a notorious agent. The French used to pay her to stir up trouble in Ireland. I believe she was calling herself Ferrers when you met her.”

Tremayne had heard all of this before in New York, and wished desperately to change the subject, but Mrs. Loring was enjoying herself. “Hessians, of course, prefer their women coarse.”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Mrs. Ferrers is how she styled herself. A Quaker lady.” During his court-martial, he had omitted entirely the presence of a young woman in the house, and had never once uttered the name Kate Grey. The letter in his breast pocket revealed her to be a Rebel. She was a traitor, and a spy, and she had destroyed his career. And against all reason, he still wanted her.

“Come now, Peter,” the general said, and led him out of the room and into a spacious parlor where the carpets were rolled back and a boxing match was taking place. “I have a job for you.”

The combatants fought barefoot, their breeches rolled up, shirts discarded. Whatever business Howe wished to transact was clearly secondary to laying his bet. “Three crowns on André,” he said, placing his wager and nodding at the swarthy black-haired man, whose footwork was better than his punches. He was fighting a larger, slower man, but they were well matched. André was faster, more agile, but the bigger man was more powerful.

“What sort of job, sir?” Tremayne asked, attempting to recapture Howe’s attention.

“Two jobs, in fact.”

The bigger man landed a blow, and André went down, but only for a moment. He rose back up like a buoy, with a wicked smile and a glint in his eye. He would have a black eye in the morning.

Something told Tremayne that André did not take kindly to being bested. In his next move, he proved Tremayne right. With speed and grace, he executed a series of dirty maneuvers just clean enough to be allowable, but ungentlemanly all the same, bringing his opponent down in a bloody heap on the boards. It was, reflected Tremayne, exactly what he would have done.

André collected a tidy pile of winnings, and a simpering blonde slipped his shirt over his shoulders.

“Good man,” Howe opined, collecting his own winnings, Tremayne, and André, and heading out onto the terrace and into the cool night air. Steam rose off André’s glistening chest. “Captain André here has need of you, Peter.”

Dirtier than cleaning the stables. On the surface, Captain André was a staff officer and charming dilettante, his name already connected with several of the town’s Tory daughters, most often with the notorious Peggies: Shippen and Chew, though Shippen was said to be the odds-on favorite. No doubt they were charmed by the ambitious Huguenot’s gallant manner and exotic good looks; his coal black hair and gold-flecked hazel eyes. His dress and manner, no doubt learned during his education in Geneva, were altogether impeccable. Few would guess he was the son of a middling Huguenot merchant.

But his brother officers knew André as a hardened veteran of the siege of Fort St. John. He’d spent nearly a year in captivity after the garrison surrendered, and came away from the experience with a bitter dislike of Americans. Those within Howe’s close circle knew him better as a calculating and ambitious spymaster who would stop at nothing to further himself.

“You can identify the Merry Widow,” Howe explained to Tremayne.

Tremayne didn’t like where this was going, and fought against the urge to touch the letter and the ribbon concealed in his breast pocket.

André drained the glass of punch he was holding and fixed his remarkable gold-flecked eyes on Tremayne. “Mrs. Ferrers won’t come near us, Lord Sancreed, because I can identify her. She’s working through someone else. We need a name.”

Kate. Her name was Kate. And she was false, ruinously false, duplicitous and beguiling. “I’m not certain I can help you. I wouldn’t know the first thing about ferreting out a spy.”

“That is unfortunate.” General Howe sounded disappointed. “Do you know what chevaux-de-frise are, Major?”

“Frisian horses. Some kind of river fortification,” Tremayne ventured. He was a soldier, not a sailor.

“An incredibly nasty bit of business,” Howe replied. “Pine boxes thirty feet square and weighted with stone, topped with iron pikes. Float ’em downriver, sink ’em, and no ship can pass without exact knowledge of their locations.”