Whispers from the Shadows Read online

  Her throat tightened. Where was his son? Out at some tavern, listening in on rum-loosened tongues, getting a feel for the prevailing state of mind of his neighbors? Or perhaps gone to make amends with Arnaud, who had charged out five minutes after he departed?

  Her eyes slid shut, though that scarcely added to the darkness. Why had she not seen it? Not made the connection? And why did it bother her so? She had known he was married before, had known the reasons.

  But somehow it changed it to know it was his friend’s wife. Not even because of the strangeness that came with Captain Arnaud’s return from the dead, but because she knew them. Arnaud and Jack. She saw Thad with them nearly every day, had made comments about Peggy that made it clear she had not made the connection—and he had left her with those misunderstandings. Left her in the dark.

  She had thought he trusted her. She had thought he wanted to involve her in his life. Was that not why he had told her about his Culper Ring? She had thought he, unlike her father, thought her worthy of the truth, able to handle it, able to help with it.

  The truth is too much for you. The thought came like a silent whisper in her ear. Your mind is too weak.

  She spun away from the window, flew to the door, and followed the sound of conversation down to the kitchen. Then she came to a halt at the sight of an unfamiliar woman within.

  At once she knew it must be Rosie’s Emmy. They had the same fog-gray eyes, the same shape to their faces. But Emmy’s skin was as near to Gwyneth’s cream as to Rosie’s brown, her hair a middling brown rather than black. And her face was even more stunning than Philly’s.

  No wonder Thad had said she would not forget an encounter with this woman. Her fingers ached for a pencil with which to put her likeness to paper. And her mind filled with questions.

  Rosie spotted her lingering in the doorway and waved her in with a smile. “Are we keeping you awake, Miss Gwyn?”

  As if she could have slept? Gwyneth returned the smile and shook her head as she eased into the room. The elder Lanes were both there; Winter at the table with a mug before her, and Mr. Lane pulling out a chair for her, his face somber.

  “Sit yourself down, and I’ll get you some lemonade.” Rosie nodded toward the stranger. “I don’t believe you have met my Emmy yet.”

  Her Emmy smiled, which made her even more beautiful. “I’ve scarcely gotten free of Henry’s sister all summer, Mama. Poor thing. But I’ve heard all about you, Miss Fairchild. And just how smitten Thaddeus is.”

  Heat surged into her cheeks as she sat. “Call me Gwyneth, please.”

  Emmy took a sip of water, her gaze not leaving Gwyneth’s face. “I meant to visit before now, but with Liza bedridden I have scarcely seen my own home since May, much less anyone else’s. Henry has been so worried I would overtax myself.” She patted her abdomen, which drew Gwyneth’s attention to its rounded state.

  An even more perfect picture. She needed a riot of blooms in the background, her standing in the midst of them with her focus downward, one hand on that expectant stomach. Dressed in something filmy and whimsical, with a breeze playing at the hem.

  Winter smiled and patted Emmy’s arm. “I am glad you will be with us for a while, Emmy, and I know Philly will be ecstatic to learn you are back home.”

  “Ah.” Mr. Lane brightened, leaning around his wife to grin at the young woman. “Will you be staying here with us, Em?”

  “Mm-hmm. Henry recommended it while he is away with Thad, and I thought it a fine idea. Better a few weeks with my favorite people than all alone at home.”

  Gwyneth had gripped the glass of lemonade that Rosie put before her but didn’t lift it. At the moment she needed no cool drink—her veins had filled with ice. “Away with Thad?”

  For a few weeks?

  Mr. Lane cleared his throat. “Congressman Tallmadge intercepted us on our walk, my dear. He needed Thad to sail immediately to Bermuda to see how many ships the British are sending here.”

  Her fingers loosed the glass, slid over the table, and tangled with the fabric of her dress in her lap. “But he left with nothing but a hat—”

  “He keeps the basics in his cabin on the Masquerade.” His smile was tight. “I am not certain why Ben did not give him any more notice than he did, but it was imperative he leave at once.”

  So he did. Without a word, without an apology, without an explanation after those kisses and then the confrontation with Captain Arnaud…he just left, because some politician told him to. On a mission to spy on her father’s friends in the navy. To put his life in the gravest of danger. To possibly never come back.

  She pushed away from the table, working hard to keep a smile upon her face. “I imagine if anyone can give the congressman the information he requires, it is your son. Now I am afraid I must beg your indulgence and promise to visit more in the morning. I have a bit of the headache.”

  Another chair scraped as she turned, and warm fingers touched her arm before she could make it through the doorway. “Gwyneth.” Mr. Lane’s voice was low, pleading. “He had little choice. Concerned as he was with how this would seem to you—and you were his first thought—’tis a matter of the safety of us all. Having this knowledge could make the difference between—”

  “I understand, sir. I grew up in a military home, remember.” Though Papa had never left without saying goodbye.

  Rosie elbowed Mr. Lane aside. “I’ll see after her. You go on and have some of that tea.” She guided Gwyneth forward, the untouched glass of lemonade in hand. “You may want this yet.”

  She didn’t want anything. Not lemonade, not company, not soft words from biased parents. She wanted only silence. From the talk, from the thoughts banging around her head like war drums. From the heart that said his name with every pulse. Thad, Thad, Thad.

  “I could smack that boy,” Rosie muttered, leading Gwyneth away from the stairs she’d intended to go back up. “Leaving now after upsetting you. And just when you had started feeling at home here too.”

  The sentiment eased her, yet it made her tongue jump to his defense. “He is doing what he must, Rosie. I cannot be his only concern.” Though when she saw that the housekeeper was leading her toward the drawing room, she dug in her heels. Thad, Thad, Thad.

  Rosie scolded her with a look. “You think you can avoid the thought of him anywhere in this house? Come on, now.” She pulled her inside.

  The same lamps were lit that had been two hours earlier, when she and Thad wandered in with her painting. It hung now over the fireplace as it had after their jesting. Thad, on his ship. His first love, he had called it. And back he had gone to her.

  Of course he did. His ship is freedom. You are shackles. A burden.

  She turned away from the painting. Rosie steered her across the room to her oasis of comfort, the secretaire that had been her home more often than not since she arrived. Where pencils were happily scattered and paper always freshly stacked. Where she could block out the rest of the world and make sense of it all through the order of black on white.

  She sat, pulled out what she would need, knew just what she would draw—Emmy. Though the vision made her pause. She looked up at Rosie as the woman put her lemonade on the corner of the desk. “Rosie, you have a beautiful daughter.”

  The stern brow softened, and a rare smile lit her face. “I know. She’s the only beautiful thing that came of that life.”

  “Is she…?” She could think of no delicate way to phrase the question.

  But Rosie’s eyes reflected no pain, no bitterness as she nodded. “My Uncle Free tried to buy my freedom time and again, but the master would never let him. And you can be sure my opinion was never asked, not about nothing. But he died when Emmy was a little thing, and the mistress was happy to get rid of us quick as she could. When Uncle Free asked me where I wanted to go, and the Lanes invited us to their home—it was the first time anyone ever asked me anything. So I told them. And I ain’t never stopped telling it like I see it since.”

  She leane
d forward and cupped Gwyneth’s chin with strong fingers. “Now listen, child. You fight for what you want, what you need. You fight whatever’s against you. Whatever’s been making you think you’re not safe unless he’s here. You are. You hear me? We’re gonna take care of you while he’s gone, and when he comes home—well.” She straightened, those gray eyes gleaming like silver. “Then you’ll show him it ain’t you who can’t live without him. It’s him who can’t live without you. Understand?”

  Gwyneth understood the words, yes, and the sentiment, and they brought a wave of determination through her. If she wanted this to be her home, if she wanted to make a life with Thad, she must not sit idly by, bemoaning his absence. She must be strong like Rosie. She must…she must…

  That whisper still filled her ear. You are shackles. You are a burden.

  She must find a way…she must be more than…

  Thad, Thad, Thad.

  “Fight it off, Gwyneth girl. Don’t give it purchase. Don’t let it win after you’ve come so far. Fight it off.”

  Her fingers curled around a pencil, willing it to be an anchor. “How?”

  Rosie shook her head. She pulled a sheet of paper forward for Gwyneth and patted her shoulder. “Draw it out. And pray. Pray and pray until the Lord grants your pleas just to quiet you up. And know I’ll be praying too.”

  All Gwyneth could do was nod and then put her pencil to the paper.

  But it wasn’t Emmy’s figure against a backdrop of flowers that took shape. It was Papa’s face in front of bookshelves. It was Thad’s beside it. And it was strange scalloped shadows she couldn’t explain.

  Halfway. Captain Yorrick said they were only halfway there, and Arthur felt a keen stab of fear that the ginger would run out before the ocean did. He gripped the rail and took a moment to be grateful for calm seas, a stiff wind in their sails, and a bright noonday sun.

  “I look forward to seeing you without that green cast to your skin.” Gates took up position at the spot beside him, looking chipper as a lark as he turned his face into the wind.

  Which helped with the queasiness, so Arthur followed suit. “I daresay I shall kiss the ground when we land.”

  Gates chuckled. “Ah, but if we find my niece quickly, we will quickly sail home. We could be back on the Falcon within a week of landing.”

  Funny how one could at once pray for a thing and dread it. “I hope we do, but I may require more than a few days ashore.”

  Still smiling, Gates braced his forearms against the rail. “My father was a ship’s captain before he inherited the earldom from his brother. Perhaps I inherited his sea legs.”

  “How fortunate for you.”

  The sarcasm seemed to roll right off him. “I, for one, will be quite happy if we can find Gwyneth and hurry home. Maryland is insufferable this time of year.”

  Arthur drew in a long, salt-laden breath, and told himself it steadied him. “Did you lose someone in the Revolution?”

  The man lifted a brow. “Pardon?”

  “It is just that you seem to have such a personal dislike for the Americans.”

  “One need not to have suffered the plague oneself to hate it.” Gates motioned westward. “America’s pride is based on nothing but petty rebellion cloaked with words like ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy.’ A deceptive disease, Sir Arthur, is the most dangerous kind.”

  Arthur hummed. He had no great fondness for the Colonies, but he had no great hatred of them either. They were, so far as he could tell, little more than capitalistic tradesmen who had won their independence solely because of the incompetency of the generals running the campaign thirty-five years prior. “I would not go so far as to call them a disease, but I doubt they will ever prove a strong force in the world.”

  Gates loosed a scoffing laugh. “Nay, never. I have gone several times to keep abreast of their politics, their growth. They are in their very foundation a house divided. If you ask me, it is a kindness to hasten their fall.”

  Arthur saw no reason to argue. If England could add the United States back to the empire… “I hate to think of Gwyneth there, though, with this war going on. The troops will not know who she is. They will not know to spare her if she is present during a battle.”

  Gates straightened again. “If the army draws near her location, let us pray she has the opportunity to flee to them. I daresay any of the generals would offer her sanctuary.”

  Something relaxed inside him, some tension he must have been carrying all along. “Of course they will.”

  “And as for my dislike being personal—perhaps it never used to be. But I am quite convinced it was an agent of the United States who killed my brother-in-law.” Gates straightened his waistcoat as his gaze went steely. “That makes it quite personal.”

  The tension came back tenfold. It was one thing for the man to suspect it, even to bandy it about in the gossip rags. But to say it privately? That spoke of honest concern, not just a theory that supported one’s politics. “You really think they have had spies in England?”

  “More, I think Fairchild knew who they were and had taken action to stop them, and that is why they killed him. I think he sent whatever information he had found away, quite possibly with Gwyneth.”

  Arthur had to clamp down on the rising fear and quell it before it could master him. He straightened as well. “Why, then, to America?”

  “The least likely of places, Sir Arthur. The least likely of places.” With a small smile upon his lips, Gates sauntered away.

  Arthur drew in a slow breath through his nose. And took accounts.

  One—if they had such trouble divining where Gwyneth had gone, then any American spy would have as well.

  Two—if said intelligencer had known Fairchild were on his tail, he would never think the general would use other Americans to protect her.

  Three—in only four more weeks, Arthur would be there, would find her, and would take her in his arms. And may God help anyone who stood between them.

  Twenty-Three

  Thad figured he was either daft or brilliant. As he lowered his spyglass and turned to Henry, he wasn’t sure which. All he knew was that if he got out of Bermuda alive and with none of his men impressed, it would be due solely to the Lord. And if he didn’t…then may his family remember him for how well he loved them and not for the madness of this endeavor.

  The Union Jack snapping in the balmy breeze on his mainmast, meant to give credence to his claim of being a British merchant, did little to put him at ease. Not given the fact that it was surrounded by twenty other identical flags on ships a great deal larger than his, all lined up prettily in Bailey’s Bay and filled to bursting with soldiers, marines, and sailors.

  Thad heaved a long breath and eased closer to Henry’s side. “Did anyone see you coming out here?”

  Henry smiled as if it were just another run out of the Chesapeake and lowered one of the sacks of flour he had carried aboard while more Negroes from a second rowboat brought up other supplies. “No one looks twice at a black man laboring like a black man does. Just like no one looked twice at me in that tavern, being as I had a broom in my hand.”

  Thad wanted to shudder but continued staring out as if unconcerned with anything Henry said. “If Emmy knew I let you go in there, she would skin me alive.”

  “Then tan your hide and make a pair of boots out of it so she could stomp on you. But Emmy don’t need to know.” He held out a hand. “You wanna pay me for these supplies, mister?”

  Thad folded his arms across his chest. “I appreciate the dedication to your cover, but try again. What did you learn?”

  Henry leaned in, as if arguing with him. “Captain Crofton of the Dictator been loose tongued enough that everyone knows the ships what arrived here a few days ago be bound to America. But there’s some kind of question of who’s in charge. See those ships coming in now?”

  See them? Thad had done little but worry over them since they had appeared on the horizon. Twenty vessels were already here, poised to d
escend on his country. Did they really need half a dozen more?

  “Word is they carry three Regiments of Foot under the command of a major general who outranks Ross, who came in with the first bunch. They intend to figure it out and meet with Cochrane on the Tonnant to plan and organize.”

  Thad glanced toward the newcomers again. Another hour, maybe two before they would set anchor. Then he had no doubt this major general would come quickly to shore to assert his authority. And that General Ross, whom Thad had already made it a point to identify, would be quick to try to maintain his.

  Some things were universal, no matter the color of coat one wore.

  “All right. Good work, Henry. When they make port, I shall happen to be ashore to overhear them.”

  Henry straightened again. “You need me to do any more, you let me know. I gotta go back with those fellas, but I’ll sneak onto the Masquerade after nightfall.”

  Thad nodded and strode away, his mind skipping over the sooner meeting in anticipation of the one further off. How was he going to discover what was discussed with Admiral Cochrane? He headed aft to the one spot on the Masquerade from which he could catch a glimpse of the vice admiral’s flagship. Tonnant sat at anchor on the other side of port, looking proud and stately and deserving of her name of “thundering.”

  Thad closed his eyes against the sea of red jackets milling about on the decks dotting the water. Father God, guide me along this perilous way. Put my feet upon each step You would have me take, and bar me from any against Your will. He savored the breath he drew in, heavy with salt and the tang of fish. God of my end, you know how I love my country, how I want to serve it in this way You have put before me. I believe with a whole heart that You have purpose yet for the United States that can be achieved only through the freedom to which we cling. So help me, God of my fathers, to help her. And bring me safely home again.