Whispers from the Shadows (17 page)

Though Gwyneth tried to stand, her knees buckled, and she sank back onto the mattress. “You are right.” Why had she not considered that? She squeezed her eyes shut, but the accusation still wagged its gruesome finger at her, shouting that she was an idiot, had made a mull of everything. “They would have caught him. Then Uncle Gates would be in Newgate and I—”

“Mr. Gates?” Claws dug into her shoulders and shook until she opened her eyes, looking straight into Mrs. Wesley's blazing ones. “What do you mean by such slanderous rubbish? Your uncle is a good, God-fearing man, and I'll not suffer you speaking so of him.”

Gwyneth recoiled and shoved her hands into the mattress to keep them from shaking. “I saw him, Mrs. Wesley. I saw him run Papa through with a sword.”

“I am to trust what
you've
seen? Like the monsters on the ship, the teeth you cried out where gnashing at you?” A derisive snort fouled the air. “More ravings of a madwoman.”

“It isn't.” Her voice emerged as naught but a squeak. If Mrs. Wesley, who had known her all her life, did not believe her, then perhaps she had been wise not to go to the authorities after all. “They were arguing, Papa accused him of greed, Uncle demanded something, and when Papa refused, he…he—”

She was cut off by the connection of Mrs. Wesley's bony hand with her face. The slap was not hard; it scarcely stung her flush. But the shock of it stole her breath, her words, her will to recover from it.

The woman's brown eyes threw sparks. “Your sainted father deserves justice that you have denied him. And your uncle—he is a
man of heart and purpose. He is the one who recommended us to your father when he and your precious mother set up house. He always, always took the time to speak with us, to ask after John as well as your family. But
you
.”

Gwyneth drew her knees to her chest and buried her face in them, but could not stop her ears against the words. Nor insulate her mind from the new pounding of fear. What had he asked the Wesleys about them? What had they told him, never suspecting him to be an enemy? What did he know from their lips that could be her undoing?

“You are a stranger. Not the child I knew all these years, and I don't much like the creature I see in her place. Selfish and cruel and...and unhinged.” A sob interrupted, though Gwyneth daren't look up. “To think of how I've served you these months, with you lying about everything. Snapping and biting at me—and now this? You have betrayed your family. Your country.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, squeezed her eyes shut.

A slight breeze moved over her exposed wrists and toes, and footfalls moved to the door. No longer shuffling, nay. Now heavy and brisk. Furious. The door whooshed as it opened, but the expected slam didn't immediately follow.

“Mr. Wesley has a cousin in Canada. We will make our way to him, and from there go home whenever we may. Rest assured we will take no more coin than is rightfully ours. We want nothing of yours.”

She winced as if the door
had
slammed—directly onto her fingers. She had thought yesterday's bout would be all she could possibly cry in the span of a few hours, but no. The tears rolled down her cheeks, scalding and sticky. Filled her throat so that it was all she could do to keep them silent.

They were the only link she had to home, and they were abandoning her.

Of course they were. Why would they stay when they realized she had lied to them for months? About something as important as her father's murder? They wouldn't trust her anymore, couldn't. They
ought
to leave. Go home and see their son, their friends, find employment elsewhere and…and…

And they would likely go straight to Uncle Gates and tell him what she had said. Where she was. Everything. He would laugh with them, shake his head, call her a madwoman, and promise to look into
an asylum for her.

Then he would come.

Fire licked at her nerves and sent her scrabbling for the edge of the bed, her brine-filled eyes focused upon her trunk. She must leave, must escape before he could find her. Before he could kill the Lanes for harboring her.

Her feet tangled in the hem of her nightgown, and rather than leap to the floor, she fell to it. Pain bit at the rap of her knees, but what did it matter? She rolled onto them and fought her nightgown into place. And then she swallowed another sob when a brown skirt filled her vision and a brown hand reached to wipe away her tears.

“Don't you fret none about the Wesleys.” Rosie put a finger under her chin, bidding her to look up. Where Mrs. Wesley's eyes had shown a dark eruption, Rosie's were as calm and gray as a morning fog. “Folks deal with loss in their own way. Hers is getting angry, with you the only one she has to blame. You just let her go. Let them go home, or at least make a start for it before they come to their senses. We'll take care of you.”

Perhaps that advice edged out the panic. Yet when emptied of that, 'twas just a return to yawning nothingness. She pulled her chin away. “They will tell my uncle, the man who killed my father, where I am. He will come for me.”

“Not today he won't.” Rosie lifted her apron and used the material, worn soft and thin, to clean Gwyneth's face. “I have been helping Thaddeus long enough to know how long it takes to cross the Atlantic and come back again. We got four months at the least before he could get here. More likely six or seven, taking into account that they won't have an easy time of finding a ship home, 'specially if they mean to go to Canada first.”

Six months. Half a year. Gwyneth's shoulders sagged. Far better, then, to let them get well on their way before she devised any plans. Plans they couldn't be privy to. Time to prepare. Time to pray they would change their minds and not go to England yet. Stay in Canada. Return to Baltimore.

Forgive her.

Fourteen

T
had let his horse have her head over the last open stretch between Washington and Baltimore and wished he were the one pounding the ground until he made thunder rumble beneath him. Happy as Electra may have been with the gallop, it did nothing to relieve the frustration boiling up inside him.

Nothing new upon a return from Washington. But worse than usual.

“Whoa.” He reined her to a halt when his city appeared over the rise. So many familiar streets and well-known buildings. All the avenues and alleys he had prowled with Arnaud, hunting up any tidbit of information that could prove useful. The Chesapeake's harbor glistening in the sun, Fort McHenry looming in the distance.

Exposed. Ill-prepared. All because the blasted politicians would take no action. Thunder and turf, a more pigheaded lot he had never encountered. He had thought for sure the news from the ambassador in Belgium would have convinced them, but no. The cabinet had all dismissed the president's concerns this morning when he demanded action.

The British care only for Canada
, they had said.
There's no tactical reason for them to attack us.

“You are all a bunch of dunderheads,” Thad muttered under his breath, hoping the wind would carry the sentiment back to the capital. Had they a lick of sense, they would realize this was neither about military tactics nor logic. This was about revenge for the Revolution. It was about men now admirals whose fathers had been killed here a generation before. It was about hatred.

Thad twisted the reins around his hands and clicked Electra up into an easy trot. At least the president had been alarmed by the news from Europe, but to launch an effective campaign against the British, secretaries Jones and Armstrong had to take action.

And from what he had seen, that was unlikely.

Heat welled up inside. 'Twas like April 1810 all over again. That dread expectation. That
knowing
he had been right but without the power to change anything. And then looking into the hollow eyes of a weary sailor and hearing the words that sealed his future.
Arnaud is dead
.
Barbary pirates took his ship and killed everyone but me.

Now the harried script of the ambassador in Ghent.
There is an
outcry for vengeance. With France surrendered, the populace of England is now demanding they teach America a lesson. That they burn our cities and punish us for our audacity. Our shores will soon be covered in Redcoats again.

Four years ago, there was nothing he had been able to do. He could not go back in time and tie Arnaud to a chair to keep him from taking that voyage. He had been able only to go to his widow, hat in hand, and tell her his premonition had been right. Watch as the pain shattered her gaze and then bent her back, sending her into labor with Jack. Swear to her he would keep them safe.

He clenched his teeth together as Electra clopped her way from dusty road to cobbled street. He would not sit idly now and be ignored. He would not merely utter a prayer and then dismiss that tug in his spirit that cried
Do something!

He would act.

Mother's face filled his mind, her emerald eyes sober and gleaming with purpose. He could see her once again handing over the crate filled with their legacy. The codes she and Father had rewritten. The invisible ink they had perfected.

The mantle.

“Welcome to the Culper Ring,” she had said that day in 1811, when war was still but a whisper on the lips of sailors enraged by the impressment. “You will answer to Congressman Tallmadge, code-named John Bolton. He will refer to you as Samuel Culper III. Whenever you bring someone into the Ring, assign them a designation, either a name or numeral. But Thaddeus.”

She had gripped the crate tighter rather than releasing it. “This is no game. Only those you trust most implicitly can know about the Culpers. Anonymity is the best tool in this box.”

With that advice he had never wanted to argue. It was her next directive that had grated.

“We do not take direct action. We merely put information into the hands of those who need it.”

We do not take direct action
. Thad had known that was one tenant he could not obey. It had proven itself right for Mother and Father, when action had nearly undone them, but he had learned his own lessons about what one could lose when one did not act.

The key, in either case, was to obey that Voice in the spirit, of the Spirit. That whisper that said
go
or
stay
.
Act
or
wait
. That murmur
that told him now the fate of his nation could not be left solely to the politicians.

He turned down the road that was the most direct route home—and pulled Electra to a halt when he spotted the Wesleys rolling his direction in an unfamiliar wagon. “Mr. Wesley?”

Though his wife merely folded her arms and averted her face, Mr. Wesley regarded him wearily. “We are going to Canada, Captain Lane. If we can without passes. And from there, home.”

Thad's horse shifted. “You are abandoning her?”

“'Tis hardly abandonment.” Mrs. Wesley huffed and lifted her chin. “She is safe enough, though cold-hearted and cracked in the nob.”

“Now, Georgetta—”

“The girl left her father to die, Marcus, and now she is trying to blame it on her uncle.” The woman's sniff seemed to be holding back tears. “Next you know, it'll be us she turns on and leaves slain somewhere.”

Mr. Wesley sighed. “I admit she ain't been right since we got on that ship. But—”

“I'll not stay with her, Marcus. When I think of how she ran out of that house and never once hinted at what she left behind her—” Mrs. Wesley pressed a hand to her lips, but it did nothing to contain the sob. “The poor general.”

Thad drew in a long breath as the rope within him went taut. One side pulled him to help, to calm them, to offer them whatever support he could. To convince them Gwyneth had not hurt
them
; she had been hurt herself. But he saw no crack in their armor. Getting through to them would take more time than they would grant him.

And he must hurry home. Gwyneth was no doubt hurting anew too.

“Here.” He reached into a saddlebag, drew out a piece of paper, and handed it to Mr. Wesley.

The man didn't so much as unfold it. “What is this?” Suspicion saturated his tone.

“A pass to get you into British-held territory in the north. You shouldn't encounter any problems until you near the Canadian border.”

The suspicion traveled from voice to eyes. “Why do you have one of these?”

“Apparently for such a time as this.” He urged his horse forward until he was just past the wagon's bench. “She is not the one to blame for this, my friends. Her father was already dead. There was nothing she could have done. Nothing but obey the last words he spoke to her.”

The woman stared straight ahead. “Let us away, Mr. Wesley, before we lose any more daylight.”

Mr. Wesley tucked the pass into his pocket and picked up the reins again. Snapped them. But he at least met Thad's eyes again and nodded.

Not enough, not nearly enough to compensate for what they were doing by leaving.

Electra snorted as he clicked her up again. “I agree, girl.” He patted her neck and let her head toward home. “It was a mite crowded anyway.”

Once he reached his house, he entrusted Electra to a grim-faced Henry, grabbed his saddlebags, and ran toward the kitchen door.

Rosie met him, a spoon in her hand and her mouth in a thin line. “You see them leaving?”

“I did.” He patted her arm and eased past her so he could put his things away before she scolded. “I gave them my pass.”

She tossed the spoon into the sink. “You should have let them get stopped. Serves them right, taking their grief out on that poor girl like they done.”

With a sigh he put a hand on Rosie's shoulder and gave it an encouraging squeeze. “I did it not for them, Rosie Posy, but for Gwyneth. She needs nothing more to cause her worry.”