The Turncoat (9 page)

“
Our
ships cannot pass,” supplied André. “Philadelphia is a trap fast closing around us. The Rebels control the roads to the north. We are surrounded by water on the south, east, and west. We must have the Schuylkill and the Delaware or we cannot supply the city. Washington hopes to starve us out of Philadelphia and force a winter march on us.”

Howe downed his beaker of punch in a single draught. “The chevaux-de-frise protect the approaches to Rebel forts Mercer and Mifflin—if we attempt to bring our ships with their naval cannon into range of the forts, they will be holed and sunk. And if we attempt to move the chevaux-de-frise, our craft will be blown to flinders by the long gun batteries in the forts. My brother, the admiral, has four frigates loaded with supplies sitting idle in the Delaware. He cannot reach us.” Almost as an afterthought, Howe added, “Colonel Donop has offered to lead a land assault on Mercer.”

Donop.
The Hessian colonel beguiled and disgraced by the Merry Widow—Mrs. Ferrers—at Mount Holly. The man had lingered there for three days, enjoying the lady’s favors, when he might have brought his men to reinforce Trenton. The dalliance let Washington slip across the Delaware on Christmas and take the town. The capture of Trenton and of Colonel Rall’s garrison of a thousand Hessians and their field artillery had been disastrous, and had all but destroyed Donop’s reputation.

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” André said, hardly troubling to disguise his contempt.

“I won’t allow it until there is no other recourse,” Howe barked. “It’s throwing away lives to attack by land if we can’t bring our ships to bear on the fort at the same time.”

“Hessian lives,” added André, as though these were of less consequence.

“How can I be of help?” Tremayne asked. “I’m no sailor, and I’m no engineer.”

“Washington has anticipated our every move against his river fortifications, rushing reinforcements to our exact points of attack. Mrs. Ferrers is here, supplying him with information. I require you to find her, and deal with her.”

“Quietly,” added André.

“I see.” Tremayne bristled. “You wish me to be an assassin?”

“Not at all. We wish you”—André began to tie his cravat—“to discover Mrs. Ferrers and her agents. When you do so, you will be returned to command. I will do the rest.”

“It’s a generous offer,” Tremayne conceded. “May I think about it?”

“No.” Howe had lost all trace of avuncular jollity. “We are a month away from being starved out of the city, Major. Do you know what would happen to this army if we had to march twenty thousand men and another five thousand loyal civilians through Rebel territory to New York? It would be a slaughter. Mrs. Ferrers is in Philadelphia. It is your duty to find her and lead us to her. The woman almost ruined you. You need have no gentlemanly scruples in this matter. Her capture and…removal…are of the utmost importance to me. Is that clear?”

It was. All too clear. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Good!” Howe seemed his merry self again. He led Tremayne back into the house, where the petite blonde reappeared and attached herself to Captain André like a limpet. “Now, for the other matter I spoke of. You and Bayard Caide are cousins, I believe.”

Tremayne made no effort to clarify the relationship. They were, in the eyes of the law, cousins. What else they might be was a source of speculation and gossip for London society. Viewed from a certain angle, the two men looked more alike than cousins.

“Yes. We grew up together.”

“He’s always been wild,” Howe added, as the man they were discussing came into view, wrestling with a fellow officer on the cold marble floor of the carved and painted foyer, beneath the wide and elegant curved staircase.

“Yes,” Tremayne agreed.

“Wild is to be expected. Milkmaids don’t win battles. But cruel we cannot tolerate. We are losing the people.” Howe gestured at the crowd with his wineglass. “Don’t be fooled by the fops who have attached themselves to the army. This is a country of dour Quakers and Puritan farmers. His ruthlessness has come in handy at times, but he’s a blunt instrument. His raids are stirring up sentiment against us, and we have precious little goodwill here. If we do have to evacuate the city, you can be sure the locals will not forgive us your cousin’s actions.”

“What would you like me to do?” Tremayne thought back on all the years of his childhood spent covering for Bay. For the girls he ruined, the fights he got into, the servants he beat. And his mind turned inevitably to the farmhouse today…

“I like Caide. I don’t want to come down hard on him. Just get him to the altar as fast as you can. His fiancée’s a lovely little thing. Maybe marriage will tame him.”

Not, reflected Tremayne, if the girl was as described—a nascent sybarite with a wild streak to match Caide’s own.

“Ah!” Howe exclaimed, looking up at the head of the stairs. “Here she is now.”

The girl descending the stairs was everything Tremayne had expected. Her hair was elaborately curled and piled high on her head. Her brows were artfully plucked and tinted to set off dark, painted eyes. She wore no powder, because her skin was as white as milk already. She wore a diamond on a velvet ribbon around her neck, dyed to match the pale blue of her gown, which plunged to a perilously low square neckline. Her skirts were hemmed to show a daring amount of ankle, and from her wrist dangled a painted fan. An artful, useless creature, of the sort Tremayne found most distasteful: powdered, plucked, and primped, and choked and cuffed with pearls like pigeon’s eggs. Everything from her brocade pumps to her plunging neckline spoke of citified sophistication and coquetry.

Worst of all, the girl was Kate.

Five

The girl who had accompanied Angela Ferrers to Washington’s headquarters six weeks ago would have stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Peter Tremayne. The coquette who emerged from Mrs. Ferrers’ crucible of artifice and subterfuge might only have dropped her fan, and recovered nicely by the time her silk-shod feet touched the marble floor.

The woman who had survived a month in the decadent salons of occupied Philadelphia, and captured the affections of its most louche scion, betrayed her surprise to only two men in the room, and Peter Tremayne alone had the knowledge to interpret the flash of panic in her kohl-rimmed eyes.

Caide broke off from his match to down a beaker of punch and sweep the girl into his sweaty arms. She forestalled his too-intimate embrace, turning lithely to offer Peter Tremayne her hand. “Who is this, Bay?” she asked, as though she had never set eyes on Tremayne before.

Caide released her and bowed. “Peter, may I present my fiancée, Miss Dare.”

“Lydia,” Kate supplied, looking him steadily in the eye and challenging him to say different.

He took the hand offered, which for six tortured weeks he had desperately wished to possess again, as Caide completed their introduction. “Lydia, my heart, my love, my joy, may I present my cousin, Major Peter Tremayne, Viscount Sancreed.”

Tremayne planted his kiss lightly on her stiff fingers and released her arm to fall like an unstrung marionette at her side. Caide was too drunk and excited to notice.

“Don’t you know, Bay? We’ve met before,” Tremayne said.

Again the flicker behind her eyes, which only he could read.

“Where was that, Major?” She covered her fear with a flourish of her gilded fan.

“Boston, I believe,” he said, careful to choose a city Bay had never visited.

Caide, now deep in his cups, was oblivious to the charged environment. “Never been there. Full of filthy Rebels.” He slipped his arms around Kate from behind and drew her back flush against him, burying his face in her elegantly mounded hair.

It was a gesture Tremayne had seen before. When they were boys, Bay was fiercely attached to his mother. He would flee to her for protection from their outraged tutor, or Tremayne’s father, whichever one had caught them at their latest exploit. Bay would wrap his arms around her, nestle his cheek against her shoulder in the curls of her wheat-colored hair, and beg her to intercede for them.

But the hands now clasped around Kate’s waist were the same hands that had held the farmer’s wife down that morning, in the pretty clapboard house with the stone-walled kitchen.

“Bay,” she murmured in his ear, “I’m tired. I want to find Peggy’s mother and go home.”

“No, you mustn’t go.” He released her and swung her round him like a child. “Peter’s only just arrived. And I’ve promised Robert a rematch.”

“There will be other nights.”

“I’ll take her to find her chaperone,” Tremayne offered. “I’ve had enough carousing myself.”

Caide rolled his eyes at his cousin, as he had done since they were twelve and he first began cajoling Tremayne into wilder and wilder adventures. “My cousin, the Puritan.” Bayard pulled Kate to him and kissed her possessively, then turned to Tremayne. “Off you go, then. Take her and join the other women.”

*   *   *

K
ate faced a dilemma. To remain was to risk exposure: public, devastating, deadly. To be left alone with Tremayne put her at equal risk. She had ruined his life. He might do anything.

When in doubt, Kate reflected, go on the offensive. “I believe the last time we met I asked you to deliver a letter for me, Major Tremayne.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I still have it.” He touched the breast of his tunic, indicating the presence of the letter. “I’m afraid I was forced to open it, when I couldn’t determine its direction.” His manner was genial, courteous.

This time she used her fan to hide her face from him, flicking the rice paper and rosewood open with a practiced gesture. “It’s nothing but old news now, I expect. I shall take it back.” She struggled to sound as languidly disinterested as he did, and dared to hope for a moment that he might indeed return her father’s letter.

“On the contrary. I found it very illuminating.” He offered her his arm instead, and Kate took it. She had learned from Mrs. Ferrers to distrust the timbre of a man’s voice, the set of his shoulders, how he used his hands. All these could be schooled, controlled, practiced. The eyes, though, rarely lied.

Peter Tremayne had mastery over his voice. His posture was relaxed, his hands moth-light upon her arm. But his eyes were cold.

“Really? Did others find it so?” Kate risked a quick glance at her fiancé, already to grips with his opponent, a circle of gamblers surrounding the match, as Tremayne led her from the room.

“Let’s find your chaperone, shall we?” His grip was light but firm. She had no choice but to follow.

She paid little attention to the direction he took until a short, sharp tug pulled her out of the crowded hall and into a darkened room. The chamber was tiny, barely big enough for the two of them. Tremayne threw back the shutters, flooding the room with moonlight.

“Hello, Kate,” he said, his bitterness unmasked. “Or is it Lydia? I should have guessed. The heroine in Lytton’s awful play.”

“Lydia is my middle name. I’m Katherine Lydia—”

“Grey.” He cut her off. “Yes. I know. I read your father’s letter to Congress. You are the daughter of Arthur Grey. The Grey Fox. An old friend of Washington’s, and now one of his most trusted commanders.”

“I thought I would never see you again.” She attempted to keep all emotion out of her voice.

“You certainly saw to it that my return to Philadelphia was unlikely.”

“I thought you would be court-martialed,” she explained.

“I was, thank you. My cousin interceded for me. Damn it, Kate. Who the hell are you? The farm girl, or this…bird of paradise…who would marry a man like Bayard Caide?”

“He’s your cousin.”

“Yes, and I probably know him better than any living man. I can tell you that he is no fit husband for a woman like Kate Grey. But for this creature I see before me, he may be very fit indeed.”

He was angry, as Kate had never seen a man angry. Mrs. Ferrers had been right to bring her away that night.

“Will you expose me?”

“We had a bargain.” He spat the words. “The letter in exchange for your company.”

“You never gave me the letter.”