Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (4 page)

The eerie humor
on Badley's face chilled her worse than any fog.

His plump forefinger
stroked the third teacup.
 
"Alas,
he was unable to attend today.
 
King's
business, his note said.

"The
gentleman is a regular in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons.
 
He helps train Legion recruits at combat and
horsemanship.
 
In his mid-twenties, aristocracy,
perfect age to pass for your little brother."
 
Badley leaned forward in conspiracy.
 
"He's from Wiltshire."

Wiltshire.
 
Redthorne.
 
The procurement.
 
Silas
Chiswell.
 
Her pulse hopped in chaos,
just as it had done more than twelve years past, the morning she'd been sold —
as if she'd been transported back to that parlor.
 
Flustered to find her professional composure wobbly in Badley's
company, she made for the window and stared out at his garden.

In his
mid-twenties, aristocracy, perfect age to pass for your little brother
.
 
Now, there was an intriguing puzzle.
 
Lord Ratchingham's youngest son was in his
forties, too old to portray her little brother.
 
Did she
know
this fellow from twelve years ago, before he
was an officer, before he was even a man?
 
She faced the publisher, her expression stone.
 
"What is the officer's name?"

He'd risen
also, gloating.
 
"Great Zeus, I've
piqued your interest in the assignment!
 
I shall invite him to tea on the morrow at three.
 
Return then and meet the fellow.
 
Agreed?"

A fabulous
feature she'd landed, yes, but every nerve in her body warned of murkiness in
Badley's motivation.
 
Long ago, she'd
made it a personal rule to neither accept nor reject an offer from him up
front.
 
It prevented his knowing exactly
how to manipulate her.

But how he'd
fired her curiosity.
 
With Wilmington
under control of the rebels, by necessity, the redcoat would disguise himself
as a civilian — just as the unfortunate Major John André had done before his
capture by Continentals.
 
Either the
officer from Wiltshire was quite courageous to duplicate the deceit that had
earned André execution, or he was quite mad.
 
Either way, she must meet him.

She pursed her
lips at Badley.
 
"Agreed."

Chapter Three

IN THE FOYER,
Badley wished her a good day and toddled for his study.
 
Charles bustled forward with Helen's
cloak.
 
"Madam, I —"
 
He cut himself off, and Helen realized that
Badley stood near the door of his study examining a portrait of some corpulent,
lace-endowed ancestor.
 
Charles
coughed.
 
"Er — your permission to
call upon Mrs. Jones on the morrow, the eighteenth, at one o'clock in the
afternoon."

Her
preoccupation over the new assignment rifted.
 
Charles Landon knew he didn't need her permission to call upon
Enid.
 
He had something to say to Helen,
and he didn't want Badley's household privy to it.

What troubled
Charles that he couldn't speak of it before Badley?
 
His sunken eyes shot concern through her heart.
 
She cared about him the way she'd have cared
about an uncle, if she'd ever known one who didn't stink of rum or beat
her.
 
"Enid will be
delighted."

Relief sagged
his shoulders.
 
He bowed and opened the
front door for her.
 
A second later, the
publisher entered the study and grunted at someone waiting.
 
"You're early, old boy."
 
Before he shut himself inside, Helen
glimpsed his visitor and gritted her teeth.
 
She wasted no time letting the dreary afternoon reclaim her.

No mistaking
Badley's pear-shaped guest: Maximus Prescott, her former attorney, the devil
himself.
 
As long as she worked for
Badley, she'd encounter Prescott.
 
For
nine years, she'd suspected the two had swindled Silas's money from her,
leaving her near destitution with the meager dower she'd scraped from the
estate settlement.
 
Alas, the legal
system offered scant justice to poor widows.
 
And she'd no energy to fritter away on what she couldn't change.

She proceeded
home on Market Street, the pulse of Wilmington all around her — laughter from a
tavern, the drill of militia, a barrel's rumble on a wharf.
 
A wagon of spars and yards creaked past, its
driver a huddle of greatcoat in the mist, the fragrance of new-hewn lumber
trailing.
 
Chickens and goats scattered
before the wagon, and a scrawny cur chased it, his bark swallowed in fog.

Mist clung to
her eyelashes and drifted a film onto her cheeks.
 
She ignored the weather, her thoughts again shuffling.
 
What was she to make of the assignment
dangled before her nose?
 
How easily she
could be killed in the backcountry following Tarleton's dragoons.
 
The challenges, the dangers.
 
Dared she venture into a domain almost
exclusively masculine?
 
What different
kind of story would a woman's voice tell of war?

But her
instincts vibrated at the memory of Badley's smug expression.
 
The officer from Wiltshire was in on the
dangerous ploy with him.
 
Why wasn't he
a guest in the publisher's home?

Near her brick
house on Second Street, the fishy odor of the fog blended with the bitter and
sweet smells of turpentine, tar, pitch, and lumber.
 
Enid had a fire built in the parlor and took Helen's cloak.
 
"Some wine for you by the fire,
mistress.
 
You mustn't catch cold."

Helen headed
for her chair and a mug of mulled, cheap wine made palatable with spices.
 
Enid tucked a quilt over her lap and
presented her with two letters.
 
The
commissioned embroidery piece due on the morrow — a petticoat hem — hung on a
stand nearby, but she deferred embroidering until she'd read the day's post.

Afterwards, she
slapped the letters on the table and swigged wine, irked.
 
No employment was available with the publishers
she'd queried in Williamsburg and Charles Town.
 
She'd received a similar response days earlier, from a publisher
in Savannah.
 
If she wanted to sever the
degenerate umbilicus that bound her to Badley, she must query publishers in
Boston, Philadelphia, and New York for employment.

Of course, with
a feature about the Legion to her credit, she'd have far more to bargain
with.
 

"Everything
all right, mistress?"
 
From the
parlor doorway, Enid's Welsh accent was audible, harbinger that she'd picked up
on the tone of Helen's thoughts.

Enid Jones had
stayed by her side when she sold the plantation and later, the carriage,
horses, furniture, and most of her jewelry and wardrobe, then terminated
employment of the townhouse servants, including Charles.
 
No point in troubling Enid.
 
Grafting a smile of confidence to her lips,
Helen swiveled to one asset she'd refused to give up.
 
"Quite."

Enid's plain
features brightened.
 
"Good."
 
She
straightened her apron.
 
"How is
Charles?"

What the devil
was bothering Charles?
 
Helen maintained
her smile despite her unease.
 
"He
asked to call upon you on the morrow at one."

"Well,
now.
 
Right good of him."
 
The Welshwoman glanced away to hide the
gleam in her dark eyes.
 
Her accent had
subsided.
 
She and Charles, both in
their late forties, had lost spouses to malaria.
 
In October, they'd strolled the autumn fair arm-in-arm.
 
"I shall heat soup for supper,
then."
 
Her footsteps faded toward
the rear of the house.

Helen took up
needle and embroidery thread to her client's petticoat hem but paused to regard
the room: a chair, couch, table, and mantle clock.
 
All other furnishing had been sold.
 
Much of the empty space was occupied by her watercolors and
sketches of Wiltshire and the Salisbury Plain.
 
The parlor had begun to resemble an artist's gallery.
 
She'd considered hosting a show, selling her
artwork, and making money off the rebels, but few of them had more than two
pence to rub together.

At dusk, the
embroidery finished, she and Enid drew drapes throughout the house, secured the
doors, and ate pork and barley soup in the dining room.
 
Upstairs, heat from the first floor warmed
the bedrooms.
 
Enid assisted Helen out
of her gown, petticoat, and stays and into an old wool shift.
 
While the Welshwoman banked the fire in the
parlor below and made a final round of doors and windows downstairs, Helen
washed her face and hands and cleaned her teeth.
 
She crawled into the bed she'd seldom shared with her husband,
read Homer a few minutes, and blew out the candle.

She'd been
asleep but a few hours when Enid awakened her, a hand on her shoulder.
 
"Sorry to startle you,
mistress."
 
The lines on the
housekeeper's face softened.
 
"He's
here, waiting in the parlor.
 
We chatted
a bit while he had some bread, cheese, and wine, and —"

"
Who
is here?"
 
Helen struggled up on
her elbows, still negotiating the sleep-to-wake transition.

Enid's
expression grew tender.
 
"That
dear, sweet Mr. St. James."

Helen's heart
skipped a beat.
 
Then she rolled out of
bed, shoved her feet in slippers, and draped a shawl about her shoulders.
 
On her way to the stairs, she took Enid's
candle.

Upon her
entrance to the parlor, tall, dark-haired David St. James straightened from
inspecting a watercolor and bowed.
 
In
the seconds that she set down her candle and crossed the floor to him, she
noticed that he'd grown hollow-eyed and lankier in the six months since his
last visit.
 
But it didn't stop her from
embracing him.

The warmth of
his hands wandered from the shawl over the small of her back to her shoulders,
and he separated from her just far enough to grasp her hands in his and kiss
them as he always did when he first greeted her.
 
Along the way, his fingers roamed her wrists, assessing in the
silence and semi-darkness her own loss of weight.
 
When he took her face in his hands and kissed her lips, the
half-year separation diminished.

A few minutes
later, Enid buzzed in with wine and a steaming bowl of soup.
 
"Is that for me?"
 
David disentangled from cuddling Helen on
the couch.
 
"Enid, you're too kind,
but I cannot stay."

"Pish-posh."
 
She set the bowl on the table and spread a
cloth napkin in his lap.
 
"From the
looks of it, you seldom slow down enough to enjoy a decent meal."

"Oww!"
 
He rubbed his bicep playfully where she
pinched it.

"I hope
you've the sense not to be living on brandy at them card tables.
 
There's your spoon.
 
Eat."
 
The housekeeper bustled out.

His familiar
jaunty smile in place, he eyed Helen, jest parting his lips.
 
She imitated Enid's scowl.
 
"No talk.
 
Eat!"

He saluted and
obeyed, and she studied him, puzzled by his worn appearance.
 
As always, he was well-groomed and clothed —
fine wool for his mauve coat and matching waistcoat, silk for his shirt and
stockings, a silk ribbon pulling back his long hair.
 
His cocked hat, held in her hands, was so new that the label was
legible on the inside — a prestigious hatter in New York.
 
Whatever trials David endured hadn't
affected his purse, or his appetite.

Still, he
looked like a hunted man.
 
Was someone
after him?
 
An irate debtor from the
card tables who didn't understand that David loved reading the cards far more
than winning the money?
 
Or perhaps some
wealthy widow's jealous beau?

The spoon
clacked in the empty bowl.
 
He wiped his
mouth, swigged wine and winced at the poor quality — David the wine connoisseur
— tossed the napkin beside the bowl on the table, and called his thanks to Enid
over his shoulder.
 
Gaiety departed, and
his voice lowered.
 
"For my safety,
I'd decided earlier to pass through Wilmington without visiting you."

"Your
safety
?"
 
Why did David believe his safety was
compromised?

He nodded.
 
"But I spotted Charles at White's
Tavern, drunk."