Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (5 page)

His nod was
curt.
 
"That's all that need be
said about it."

"They're
calling the engagement a massacre because Buford's men were supposedly cut down
after they'd surrendered.
 
Why did that
happen?"

"I wasn't
there.
 
Without details, I cannot
presume to know what invokes specific decisions of my superior officers."

"Could
something like that happen here?"

"I've no
comment."

"But would
you cut down men who had surrendered?"

His smile was
meant to be reassuring.
 
"You're
speculating, making yourself uncomfortable.
 
We protect our colonies.
 
We
don't slay the King's friends."

Yes, it made
her uncomfortable, but it made Major Edward Hunt uncomfortable, too.
 
Buford's Massacre could happen
anywhere.
 
Were conditions right, it
could happen in Alton, under his command.
 
He was, after all, a soldier, and soldiers did what they were told.
 
Her responsive smile felt wooden.
 
"You're right, of course.
 
It's foolish for me to alarm myself."

From the way
his shoulders relaxed, she knew she'd said what he wanted to hear.
 
He approached her, his expression
agreeable.
 
"I've never told you
before, but the hue of your eyes reminds me of dawn in Hampshire."

A flush tingled
her cheeks.
 
No one ever said things to
her like that.
 
Most of the men from
Georgia were so ordinary.

"Perhaps
even the luster of silver."

How charming,
especially when her father had once told her that all his children had eyes the
color of common slate and hair like coal.
 
"You flatter me, sir."

He leaned over,
extinguished the lantern, and captured her hands in his, brushing his lips over
her fingers.
 
"Edward," he
whispered.
 
Then he kissed her palms and
wrists.
 
His lips delivered intriguing
moisture and softness between her forefinger and thumb, the sensation
contrasting with memories of two husbands' clumsiness.

A thunderclap
faded, and a horse nickered.
 
He
murmured, "My darling, you have enslaved me."

She swallowed,
uneasy at his departure from their intellectual relationship, her stomach
fluttering again, and withdrew her hands to fumble for the lantern.
 
"I must make sure the windows are
—"

"I'm sorry
about tonight."
 
He recaptured her
hands and reeled her to him, just the outline of his face visible.
 
"I wanted to dance with you."

"You had
your priorities."
 
Her unease
deepened.
 
Where was this leading?

"I shall
make it up to you.
 
My temporary
assignment in Alton is over.
 
I'm
returning to England.
 
Come with
me.
 
Let me take you away from all this
barbarism."

She gaped at
him in the darkness.
 
Disbelief and
instinct almost caused her to recoil.
 
"This comes as quite a surprise."

"Have you
misunderstood my attentions?"
 
He
grasped her shoulders.
 
"I'm in love
with you."
 
He slid his hands down
her arms and around her waist.
 
After
brushing his lips over her collarbone, he trailed them down where her shift
peeked from the neckline of her jacket, and his hands guided her hips against
his.
 
"Kiss me."

Her lips opened
for his, and from the way his loins performed with hers, she fancied he knew
far more of the act than porcine grunting atop a woman.
 
Mechanical response stirred within her body,
too long asleep, and her initial shock ebbed, but her brain nagged that his
charm obscured something.
 
She turned
her face aside.
 
"You're going
home?"

His lips
pursued her throat.
 
"When my
replacement arrives."

"But this
war is far from over."

"My elder
brother died.
 
I've inherited the family
estates."

The slow
percussion of raindrops pattered the roof while kisses traveled to her
temple.
 
She frowned.
 
He must be feigning his fondness, hoping
she'd tell him about rebel printing runs.
 
"Surely the Crown can ill afford to lose your military
expertise.
 
And I really must close all
the windows."

He pressed her
hips to his again.
 
"The Hunts are
well-regarded in Parliament."
 
Translation: He, like other officers weary of a war with no end in
sight, had used wealth and Parliamentary connections to buy his way out of the
American conflict.
 
"Let me show
you what civilization is.
 
Come with
me."

One little
detail hadn't yet been discussed.
 
"As your wife."
 
She
made it a statement, not a question.

"Ah."
 
The tempo of his kisses slowed, even as the
rhythm of raindrops quickened.
 
"Well,
there's a financial empire at stake with my fifteen-year-old cousin, Beatrice,
having come of marriageable age, and —"

"Wait a
moment."
 
She wiggled out of his
embrace.
 
"You're saying you want
me with you as your
mistress
."
 
Certainly not a slight to a woman's worth, and a more desirable
arrangement than matrimony when the man was grateful to be in the company of
his mistress, having come from a shrewish wife and whining offspring.
 
But Sophie's thoughts spun.
 
How in the world could she have so misread
him?
 
Worse, had she misread herself?

"Not to
worry.
 
I shall arrange a fashionable
townhouse in London for you."
 
He
nibbled the knuckles of her right hand.
 
"My duties in Parliament will take me there at least twice a
month.
 
We can be together during those
nights."

Edward did
indeed sound as though he belonged among the "grateful."
 
Plus, two mediocre marriages, eight years of
widowhood, and a measure of financial independence had made Sophie indifferent
toward matrimony.

But anxiety
lurched around in her stomach.
 
In the
American colonies, where a woman could manage a plantation or operate a
printing press, weren't she and Edward sharing an illusion of equality created
by their intellectual relationship?

And there was
the matter of that age difference between Edward and Beatrice.
 
"How happy will you be married to a
girl who's younger than my daughter?
 
You've almost a quarter-century more life experiences than she.
 
Believe me, I know.
 
My first marriage was at fifteen."

"That's
why I need you.
 
You and I discuss Plato
and Euclid and Shakespeare."
 
He
kissed her left palm.
 
"You
understand what operating a business is about.
 
Operating estates is like that, but on a grander scale.
 
Beatrice and I have little in common."

"Except
consummating a financial empire and placating friends in Parliament."

"Sophie,
would you stay here running the press for the rest of your life?
 
Between the Creek, Spaniards, French, and
roving outlaws, Alton could be a pile of rubble within five years."

"Within
five years, your cousin will have borne you children, and you'll have that bond
with her.
 
Where will I be?"

"I know
you aren't happy here."
 
He grasped
her shoulders again.
 
"You've never
tasted fine wine or felt silk against your skin.
 
You've never been to the Drury Lane theater or heard a
symphony.
 
I'm offering you a way to
experience all that."

She considered
treasures beyond her economic reach: fine wine, silk, symphonies, the
theater.
 
She also thought of the times
she'd collapsed into bed, bone-tired from a printing run.
 
Edward's offer provided splendid passage out
of Alton, a dream women in her position would lunge for with no
reservations.
 
It was just the
opportunity she'd been waiting for, wasn't it?

What would
happen if her intellectual parity with him didn't survive crossing the
Atlantic?
 
She sighed, still
disoriented, confused.
 
"I shall
consider it."

"What's to
consider?
 
Ah, you don't love me, do
you?"
 
He paused, reflecting.
 
"It's hard to love in circumstances
where you're preoccupied with survival.
 
If you freed yourself from those fears, you might grow to love me.
 
And with that thought —"
 
He kissed her left hand again.
 
"I shall bid you good night."

The rain had
slackened, so Edward retrieved his hat, and she walked him out the front
door.
 
Halfway back to the pressroom,
she paused, sniffed, and frowned at the faint redolence of squashed
strawberries.
 
When she groped her way
into the dining room, her shoe skidded on something slippery.
 
She fumbled a lantern lit and held it up to
view the bowl of strawberries she'd put on the table earlier and at least a
dozen berries on the floor.
 
With the
lantern held high, she headed for the stairs.
 
At the foot of the stairs she spotted a man's boot print: a man who had
stepped in strawberries.

Her stomach
tensed, and her gaze leaped up the staircase.
 
"Father?
 
Are you
there?"
 
Receiving no answer, she
returned to the dining room and noticed another boot print.
 
An explanation spiked a chill through
her.
 
Burglary!
 
During the dance, the thief had entered
through the back door, bumped into the table, spilled strawberries, and
proceeded to the stairs, leaving two strawberry boot prints behind.

And for all
she knew, he might still be in the house with her that moment.

Chapter Four

SOPHIE RUSHED
TO the front door and flung it open, but the soldiers had already ridden off
into the steamy night sprinkle.
 
After
shutting the door, she braced herself against it until her knees stopped
knocking.
 
Then, anger coating her fear,
she squared her shoulders, marched into the pressroom, and flung open the
cabinet where Will kept one of two sets of pistols in the house.
 
No thief was going to steal her family's
property.

At the foot of
the stairs, she reexamined the print, made by a man with larger feet than her
father's, so the culprit had probably been taller.
 
The lantern held aloft, she crept to the landing, loaded pistol
ready, her breath sucked in soft gasps.

For a dozen
heartbeats, she listened to the sough of wind, creaking boards, and raindrops
spattering the roof from branches of fruit trees.
 
Then she nudged bedroom doors open, one by one.

No one jumped
at her from the four bedrooms.
 
However,
someone had searched her room and her father's room — drawers left ajar with
their contents jumbled, furniture repositioned, beds mussed.

Loath to verify
the plunder of her mother's jewelry in her own room, she found it untouched, as
were Spanish doubloons and two century-old horse pistols in her father's
room.
 
Baffled, she lit Will's bedroom
lantern.
 
What was he searching for, the
stranger who violated their privacy earlier that night?

Instinct wailed
that something was missing, something small but not insignificant.
 
She glanced over the nightstand and retraced
steps she'd made earlier, when she'd shut her father's window before leaving
for the dance.
 
Her gaze returned to the
nightstand.
 
Had a peculiar book been
sitting there?
 
Confessions
by
St. Augustine, a gift her father mentioned receiving that afternoon from his
friends in Philadelphia.

She searched
the floor around the bed to no avail, still wondering whether she remembered
seeing
Confessions
there at all.
 
When she straightened, fear and anger ebbed, replaced by a muddle of
emotions.
 
Why would an intruder steal a
book?
 
More perplexing, why would Will
tolerate such a book when he didn't even keep the family Bible in his
bedroom?
 
With titles such as
Common
Sense
by Thomas Paine and
On Secular Authority
by Martin Luther
dominating his library of revolutionary thought, a book about self-denial
looked mighty odd.

The major question
of the night resurrected itself.
 
Where
was Will St. James?

Voices out
front drew her to her bedroom window.
 
John trundled down from the driver's seat of the Greeleys' wagon, parked
in the muddy street.
 
Leaving the loaded
pistol behind, she trotted downstairs and opened the front door.
 
In slogged Mary the servant, bronze hair
plastered over her jacket and down her back.
 
"Got caught in the rain, Mrs. Barton."