Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (3 page)

"Asking
for the likes of 'Tarleton's Quarter'?
 
Bah!
 
Who expects no quarter
after surrendering?
 
I tell you, carnage
like Buford's Massacre will continue."

"Buford's
Massacre" they'd labeled the military action on May twenty-ninth, five
days earlier.
 
How orderly had
Continental Colonel Buford's surrender been?
 
Sophie suspected that news of the massacre disturbed a few redcoats,
too.
 
More unsettling was the fact that
it had occurred in neighboring South Carolina.
 
Was Georgia next?

David steered
her away from politics and around the corner of the barn, where he regarded her
in the darkness.
 
"If Major Hunt
isn't your beau, what do you expect from his attentions?"

"Intelligent
conversation.
 
A glimpse of someplace —
anyplace — other than Georgia."

"And what
does he expect from you?"

"A
reasonably challenging chess game.
 
Discussions on Plato, Socrates, and expense accounting."

"Good
gods!"
 
David howled with
laughter.
 
"He's positioned for a
grand look at the operations of the printing press."

"Naturally.
 
But never fear, I'm thirty-three years old
and immune to the follies of girlish infatuation."

"Let us
hope so."

"And I
don't care what color coat he wears.
 
He's a hundred times more interesting than the men of Alton and
Augusta."

"Of course
he's more interesting than Georgia stock, but you aren't in love with
him."

"What of
it?
 
He isn't in love with me,
either."

"You're
certain of that, are you?"
 
Concern
clipped David's tone.
 
"Look at
you.
 
That jacket compliments your
figure so well, and with Mother's garnets at your ears and throat, you look
positively elegant.
 
I've watched you
turn the heads of half the men of Alton tonight.
 
Everyone's smitten, Sophie.
 
Are you going to tell me you dressed up just to improve your mood?"

"Yes, I
did dress up to improve my mood.
 
As I
said earlier, it's a pleasure to wear something other than ink."

"Major
Hunt wasn't ogling ink when he kissed your hand.
 
Suppose he declared his love for you and offered to take you away
from Alton to his estates in Hampshire?
 
You'd be guaranteed to wear something other than ink there."

Sophie found it
easy to dismiss similar sentiments expressed by her sister and father.
 
However, David wasn't a raving rebel, so his
intimation sent her reexamining the situation.
 
Given the academic and business topics of their conversations, Edward
had to be just passing his time in Georgia in the company of an intelligent
woman.
 
He wasn't about to make any
grandiose offers to her.
 
Not with the
class distinction.
 
She shrugged off her
disquiet.
 
"Your question is
hypothetical, so I'll answer hypothetically.
 
If he fell in love with me, I might fall in love with him, too."

"
You
?"
 
Her brother snorted.
 
"No.
 
You'd be feeling gratitude, not love."

She
scowled.
 
David understood her just a
little too well.
 
She'd read every book
she'd gotten her hands on, so she knew there was a big, bold world out there.
 
Too bad she couldn't see more of it than the
Georgia colony.
 
"Faugh, managing
our business and extra projects out of Augusta and Savannah is sheer
drudgery!
 
I'm sick of Alton.
 
It's little more than stinking swamp.
 
The men gripe about whiskey and livestock,
and the women natter on and on about babies and baking.
 
I want something else.
 
I want
life
!
 
I've never seen mountains or the ocean.
 
I'd give anything to travel the way you've
done, and pluck purses over piquet, but women aren't supposed to gamble or
travel —"

"Or
operate printing presses?"
 
His
teeth shone in a brief grin.
 
"Come
now.
 
You know most women, especially
Susana, envy you for running that press.
 
To be sure, they consider you eccentric and too independent, but don't
believe for a moment that all they want from life is babies and baking."

She swatted at
a whining mosquito.
 
"I daresay if
women ran the world, there'd be far fewer wars."

"Undoubtedly.
 
But you shan't stop this war by dallying
with a nobleman you don't love.
 
Your
good fortune has been to outlive not one, but two undesirable
spouses."
 
He paused.
 
"I've never faulted you for sending
Betsy to grow up with Sarah and Lucas in Augusta.
 
But I often wonder how you've kept yourself these seven years
since she went away, particularly now that she and Clark are expecting.
 
Don't you want to play the doting
grandmother come Christmastime?"

Sophie had just
about convinced herself that seven years of alone wasn't so bad because she'd
grown accustomed to it.
 
But David's
words raked over and exposed an ancient ache in the cellar of her heart.
 
She'd never enjoyed living a day's travel
away from her only child, even though she'd seen it as a necessity seven years
earlier, when she'd fostered Betsy with her cousin.
 
"Well, yes.
 
Yes, of
course I look forward to being a grandmother."
 
And being with Betsy again, sweet Betsy.
 
The ache compressed her heart.

"Sophie,
you're lovely and vivacious.
 
You've
intelligence and wit.
 
Living with the
old man and his crazy notions day in and day out, running the press, keeping
the accounts straight — how does that feed your soul?"

Amazed, she
blinked up at him.
 
In the St. James
family, certain sentiments weren't vocalized easily.
 
"It — it doesn't."

"What does
feed your soul?"

"I'm not
sure."

"Well,
perhaps you'd best think on it.
 
I
shan't lecture you about duty.
 
The gods
know what a pimple Alton is on the arse of civilization, and I'm the last
person you'd hear advising you to remain here out of
duty
."
 
He paused again in search of words, and she
sensed him fidgeting.
 
"To be sure,
Major Hunt is a fine fellow.
 
But if
ever you truly love a man, I shall encourage you to follow your
heart."
 
Dancing had loosened hair
from the purple, silk ribbon at the nape of his neck.
 
He tucked the errant strand behind his ear and edged back toward
the barn's corner.
 
"Now, I've a
widow to dazzle tonight.
 
Shall we
return?"

"You
go.
 
It might do me well to stand out a
dance."
 
He nodded and headed back
for the torchlight.

With a sigh,
she waved off the query of another mosquito and scratched behind the ears of one
of Zeb's hounds that trotted over to check on her.
 
Then she ambled further around the barn, flitting fireflies her
escort, her heartache subsiding into disillusionment and dissatisfaction.
 
Where was her place in the world?
 
With her seventeen-year-old married daughter
in Augusta, awaiting grandmotherhood?
 
At the printing press in Alton, growing more distant from her father the
longer they lived together?
 
Sophie
didn't feel like she belonged anywhere anymore.

A man's murmur
delayed her turning the corner.
 
She
didn't want to interrupt a lovers' tryst.
 
In the next instant, she realized that the man wasn't speaking English,
so she pressed herself against the rough siding of the barn and peeked around
the corner.
 
Overcast sky silhouetted
five shapes of darkness — four bare-chested, top-knotted Creek warriors, their
earrings and nose rings tinkling in the muggy breeze, the fading light glinting
off their shaven heads, and a fifth man in colonial dress, his back to her.

She
squinted.
 
Was one of those warriors the
horse trainer, Runs With Horses, adoptive cousin to Mathias?
 
The racket from the crowd prevented her
identifying a voice, so she withdrew.
 
Only Jacques and his nephews spoke Creek well enough for lengthy
conversations.
 
So who was out there
with the Creek?
 
And
why
?

Hairs on the
back of her neck prickled, the feeling she got when someone watched her.
 
She retreated along the barn, turned the
corner, and almost collided with Lieutenant Fairfax.
 
"Ah, madam.
 
Your
brother returned without you.
 
I thought
to assure your safety."

Sure he
did.
 
"Thank you,
Lieutenant."
 
Since he didn't
budge, she maneuvered quickly around him toward the dance ground.

Inside the ring
of torchlight, the back of her neck prickled again.
 
Fairfax snarled, "I would speak with you, Mrs. Barton."

She whirled on
him with the haughtiness she invoked to bring a peddler's price down.
 
"Speak with someone else."

His eyes took
on the appearance of pale green hailstones hammered from the heart of a
thunderstorm, and he towered over her, not at all possessed of a peddler's
suggestibility.
 
A thousand times worse
than a live lizard down her shift, the seethe of inhumanity in his eyes made
her want to cower.
 
Somehow she found
the strength to jut her chin.

To her
astonishment, MacVie bounded over, grabbed her hand, and dragged her after
him.
 
"She promised
me
this
dance."
 
They tacked onto the
middle line, her rescuer pale despite whiskey on his breath.
 
He darted a glance over her shoulder.
 
"Ghoul."

On the
sidelines, Fairfax cornered another rebel crony, Sam Fielding.
 
The redcoats must have kept the shop under
surveillance all night.
 
If Fairfax
singled her out, he'd interrogate her in much the same manner.
 
Rather than rescuing her out of kindness,
MacVie schemed to keep her apart from the lieutenant.

Her gaze on the
hog farmer sharpened.
 
Will was still
absent, as were several accomplices from the previous night.
 
"Where's my father?
 
I've not seen him since you two
argued."

"I don't
know."
 
Nonsense.
 
Her father, Jonah Hale, and the gods only
knew who else were up to no good.
 
Fairfax was there to gather leads.
 
The other soldiers were there in case trouble erupted.
 
And Edward — was he off tracking down rebels
who operated a printing press in the middle of the night?
 
The swarthy man flashed sharp, yellow
teeth.
 
"But take my advice, Mrs.
Barton, and stop asking so many questions."

"But Mr.
MacVie, I'm full of questions."

"Aww, just
like the child who questioned what was down the well, leaned over too far, fell
in, and drowned."

Was that
MacVie's idea of a threat, patriot-style?
 
She sniffed.
 
"I can
swim."
 
He bared his teeth again
and stubbed the toes of her left foot three times before the dance was over.

While the mayor
talked the mob through a circle dance, and the pathetic hornsmith prowled for a
partner, Sophie skirted the ground to where Mrs. Reems and David huddled,
enmeshed in each other's gazes.
 
Just
before she reached them, David trailed his fingers down the widow's forearm.

"David,"
she whispered from behind.

He sighed and faced
her with a waxen smile.
 
"Make
haste."

She launched
into a summary of the evening's weird events.
 
After five seconds of it, David patted her shoulder.
 
"Relax and enjoy yourself."
 
He waved to someone.
 
"Would you be so kind as to partner my
sister for this dance?"

The hornsmith
bounded over and proffered his nail-gnawed hand.
 
"Mrs. B-Barton, I'm d-delighted to be your p-partner."

She forced a
smile at David, who turned his back on her and re-engaged Mrs. Reems, and then
at the hornsmith, who guided her onto the grounds.
 
Not soon enough, the dance ended and she hobbled off, both feet
bruised.
 
The mayor's voice boomed:
"Next one's a quadrille.
 
Sets of
four couples."
 
Quadrilles could be
complicated.
 
Her punished feet begged
her to rest.