The Tory Widow (45 page)

Anne picked up the plate by the edges. “Let's press a sheet and see how it pleases us.”

“Gather round, mates, and see how it's done.” Jack waved them all to the press. “With two plates, we will work in turn—while one plate is being run through the press, the other plate is being inked. With diligence, we will have three hundred impressions by midnight—three thousand pounds!”

“You and Mrs. Anne should ink the plates,” Titus suggested. “Tully and I can work the wheel. Sally and the Quaker will see to maintaining a ready supply of paper, and to the drying of the finished bills.”

Anne laid the inked plate upon the press bed, faceup. Titus positioned a sheet of damp paper square over the plate. Jack piled three thick layers of felt atop paper and plate. Tully turned the wheel, and the bed moved forward. The entire assemblage—plate, paper and felt—was wrung between the heavy rollers, squeezing the page to the incised design on the plate. Once through the wringers, Sally removed the felts, and the Quaker carefully peeled the paper free.

They all gathered around the compositor's table while Jack examined the finished ten-pound note with a magnifying glass. “Without flaw!” he proclaimed. “Let's get busy.”

The team fell into working in concert, keeping the flow of inked plate, paper and press constant, turning out notes with such speed, Sally and the Quaker resorted to stringing a line across the width of the room, and hanging the wet pages with clothes pegs. Before the midnight hour tolled, over three hundred impressions had been struck.

“A good night's work!” Jack proclaimed. “Let's tidy up.”

Sally rotated the few still-damp sheets closer to the heat of the fire. Tully gathered the few wasted and spoiled sheets and fed them to the flames. Anne and Jack cleaned the plates and the tools with a wash of turpentine, while Titus and the Quaker stacked the dry notes on the press, inspecting each through a glass for quality.

“Once trimmed and forged with the bankman's signature, it will take a better eye than mine to discern counterfeit from genuine.” Titus slapped the Quaker on the back, knocking him a step forward. “You are a man of uncommon talent.”

Jack agreed. “Our success has exceeded my hope, due in large part to the Quaker's skilled engravings.”

The Quaker blushed and mumbled, and began to dig in his breast pocket, unearthing a leathern flask. “Armagnac,” he said. “May I propose a toast to our mutual endeavor?”

“French brandy?” Tully rasped, throwing an enthusiastic arm about the engraver's shoulders. “We have ourselves a wet Quaker!”

“But I'm
not
a Quaker, wet or dry . . .”

Sally set six teacups out on the press, and the meticulous engraver distributed equal amounts of brandy into each, emptying his flask. He raised his cup high.

“I am a simple man—I lack a voluble tongue, and am not prone to flam or gasconade—but I will adventure to say this, my dear friends . . .” He gazed about the table, his eyes bright with pride. “Man or woman, there is not a faint heart among you. May justice support what courage has gained! Here's to Liberty and these United States of America!”

“Hear! Hear!” Titus and Tully pounded fists to the press.

“To liberty!” Jack tapped his teacup to the Quaker's.

Anne and Sally aped the men, and to the cheers of their fellows, the women tossed back their spirits in one gulp along with much coughing and sputtering.

Tully began to douse the lanterns. “We best jump ship afore the bloodybacks come home and spoil our party.”

Anne took a broom to the floor, and Jack stored the tools and paraphernalia. The Quaker wrapped the copper plates in a soft cloth, and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Sally packed three thousand pounds' worth of banknotes into a wooden box.

Titus and Tully were charged with delivering both the crate of counterfeits and the Quaker to the Thimble and Shears, where they would spend the rest of the night trimming the notes to size while the engraver added the finishing touch, forging the bankman's signature with red ink.

“I'll meet you at Mulligan's within the hour,” Jack promised, bidding the men good-bye. Sally checked up and down the lane and determined Titus, Tully and the engraver might egress safely via the front door, rather than deal with getting the Quaker and the cash up and over the garden wall.

Holding the last lit lantern aloft, Jack came back to methodically pace the floor, checking for any printed notes that might have gone astray. “We can't afford to be careless . . .”

“Well, I'm to bed.” Sally yawned. She unbolted the front door, left a lit candle on the newel post and headed up the stair. “Dinna tarry overlong, you two. The Redcoat bastards can be back at any moment.”

“Don't worry, Sal.” Anne paused in working her broom. “I'll be up as soon as I finish the sweeping.”

“Aye.” Sally nodded, and winked. “Finish yer sweepin' . . .”

As Sally's footfalls faded, Jack set the lantern on the press, and removed his apron. “Sal's right, Annie, we've no time to tarry.” Smile wide, he opened his arms. “‘
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
. . .' ”

“You
do
know how to recite pretty poetry!” Anne laughed, putting her broom aside. She pulled the mobcap from her head, let her careless hair fall to her waist and skipped into the wonder of his embrace. Slipping her hands beneath his loose shirt, she pressed her ear to his heart. “Stay the night . . .” she whispered. “Titus will see to finishing the notes . . .”

Jack kissed the top of her head. “We need all hands at work to finish the notes in time for the meeting with Patsy's quartermaster tomorrow.”

“I'll be very glad when we're done with this business. I'm grown weary of deception, tired of worrying and heartily sick of paying court to Redcoats.” Anne heaved a sigh. “I just want to be with you . . .”

Jack found her lips with a warm and tender kiss. “After Friday, I will carry you away from here and we will be together always.”

Anne leaned over and blew out the lantern. But for the candle Sally left behind on the stair, the shop was thrown into darkness. Her hands against his chest, Anne pressed forward two paces, pushing Jack back against the composing table. “Stay . . .” Her bold finger blazed a zigzagging path, connecting the two rows of buttons securing his drop-front breeches.

Jack grabbed her by the wrists as she undid the first few buttons. “
Annie
. . . there's no time . . . the dragoons are due back . . . we
can't
. . .”

“We
can
! We've plenty of time . . .” She twisted free from his halfhearted grasp, and slipped a questing hand inside his breeches. “They won't be back for an hour, at least.”

Jack groaned, and grabbed her round the waist. Lifting and spinning around in one motion, he set Anne atop the engraving press. Their lips met in a fervent kiss, while Anne pulled at her skirts, and Jack pushed through the fabric.

Grabbing hold of Jack 's shoulders, Anne dug her fingers into the recesses where taut muscle met hard bone. Big, strong hands found soft, round hips—pulling her forward as he pushed inward—and they joined as one.

In an exchange of haphazard kisses and stifled moans, the tin lantern inched along the smooth bed of the press, jostled forward by the motion of two moving in time, bodies parting and meeting again and again, until coming, at last, in an “Oh!” of sweet fury and wondrous release.

Gasping for breath, Anne relaxed her grip on his shoulders and leaned back on one palm, swiping back long swaths of hair from her face.

“I must say, Mrs. Merrick.” Stumbling back a step, breathing heavy, Jack fastened his breeches. “You are, by far, the most accommodating devil I have ever worked with . . .”

“I should hope so!” Anne smiled, tugging at her skirts.

The shop door slammed open, and the three dragoons stumbled into the room, each with an arm thrown about the other's shoulders, they burst out in song:

Anne hopped down from the press, falling into a crouch beside Jack, knocking the tin and glass lantern to the floorboards at the same moment. Together, they lunged forward to stop the lantern's clattering trajectory. The crash put a sudden end to the merrymakers' song.

“What was that?” Edward Blankenship peeled away, taking a few steps toward the back end of the shop. In answer, Wemyss and Stuart struck up another loud chorus:

“Pipe down, you drunken sods!” Blankenship ordered.

“
Wheesht,
Wemyss,” Stuart chided. “Our brave captain's stalking a possible intruder.”

Wemyss giggled, and began singing in an exaggerated whisper:

“Quiet!”
Blankenship ordered, the zing of sharp steel whisked from its scabbard shrill in the dark.

At the approach of the dragoon's boot steps, hard and brisk on the floorboards, Anne and Jack hunkered down, creeping around the engraving press, hiding in the deepest shadows at the short end.

Blankenship came to a halt with heels crunching on shards of glass at the opposite end of the press. He picked up the broken lantern and set it on the press, calling, “Stuart! Bring the light over.”

The back of the shop brightened as Stuart drew near, candle in hand, and the glint of Jack's dagger being inched from his boot caught the corner of Anne's eye. She popped up to a stand, her hands flying up over her head.

“Pray, Edward—put by your sword!” Anne rushed around the press. “I had only just doused the light when your boisterous entrance startled me so—I dropped the lantern and . . . and . . .” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob, shoulders shaking, whimpering, “Friend or foe? I could not tell. Instinct bade me hide . . . Marauders, thought I!”

“My poor Anne,” Edward sheathed his sword, immediately contrite. He moved in to encase her in consoling arms. “I thought—well, I am so sorry to have frightened you so . . .”

Jack's scent ripe upon her skin, and his seed seeping sticky from between her legs, Anne could endure the Redcoat's embrace for only the briefest moment. Pulling away, she snatched the candle from Stuart and led the huddle of Redcoats from the press Jack crouched behind, to the stairway.

“You all ought to be ashamed,” she sniffled. “Officers in the King's Army—reeking of rum—behaving no better than common enlisted men on a carouse.”

“You are correct, madam.” Blankenship offered her an apologetic bow. “Please accept our apologies.”

Stuart grumbled, “It is Wemyss's fault—him and his singing . . .”

“Can you ever forgive me, Mrs. Merrick?” Wemyss blubbered. “I certainly meant no harm . . .”

“I am spent.” Anne trod up the stairs, dragging along the trio of chastised, drunken dragoons. “It has been, all in all, a very trying day . . .”

Quick and quiet, Jack stepped to the back door and worked the latch, slipping out to disappear over the garden wall.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THOMAS PAINE,
Common Sense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIDE BY SIDE amidships, Tully and Titus bent their backs to the oars, becoming the human engine that propelled their flat-bottomed craft upriver in the light of the rising moon.

At the back end of the pettiauger, Jack sat at the edge of his seat, his right hand light on the rudder, his left comforted by the smooth butt of the loaded pistol tucked into the satin sash at his waist. The breast pocket of the fine frock coat Mulligan dressed him in was bulging heavy with counterfeit banknotes—fifteen hundred pounds to purchase hard-to-come-by trade goods the Continental Army desperately needed if it meant to survive another winter.

Steering an upriver course parallel to the city's shoreline, the pettiauger cruised by a dark, saw-toothed skyline of steeples, pitched rooftops and ships' masts—the silhouette studded here and there by a pinprick of lantern light, or the soft golden glow of candlelit windows left open to catch a fair night wind.

The shush of muffled oars dipping into the water and the forlorn howl of a far-off hound enhanced the peaceful curfew-quiet. Soothed by a fresh breeze off the water, Jack tried for a moment to forget his city was overrun by a careless occupying force, and mired in a sickly stench of fish offal, rotting carcasses and pig dung simmering and stewing the day long in the summer sun. In truth, the omnipresent reek was far worse than any description he could ever contrive.

A bad smell . . . smells bad.
Jack heaved a sigh, reminded of another, more bothersome indescribable gnawing at the back of his brain.

The counterfeits were printed and finished, and the particulars of the meeting were arranged to each party's satisfaction, yet something about the scheme did not smell right, and Jack could not shed the feeling that somehow, something had been overlooked. While donning his disguise at the Thimble and Shears earlier, he'd put a voice to his indefinable concern, only to be fobbed off by his fellows.