Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution Read online

  Paper Woman

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  She expected the redcoats to solve her father's murder. The redcoats and her father had other plans.

  In early June 1780, the village of Alton, Georgia, is rocked by the triple murder of the town printer and one of his associates, both outspoken patriots, and a Spanish assassin. Alton's redcoats are in no hurry to seek justice for the murdered men. The printer and his buddies have stirred up trouble for the garrison. But the printer's widowed daughter, Sophie Barton, wants justice for her father. Under suspicion from the redcoats, Sophie sets out on a harrowing journey to find the truth about her father—a journey that plunges her into a hornet's nest of terror, treachery, and international espionage.

  Acclaim for Suzanne Adair

  Paper Woman

  winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literature Award

  "...a swashbuckling good mystery yarn!"

  —The Wilmington Star-News

  The Blacksmith’s Daughter

  "Adair holds the reader enthralled with constant action, spine-tingling suspense, and superb characterization."

  —Midwest Book Review

  Camp Follower

  nominated for the Daphne du Maurier Award and

  the Sir Walter Raleigh Award

  "Adair wrote another superb story."

  —Armchair Interviews

  Regulated for Murder

  "Best of 2011," Suspense Magazine

  "...Driven by a desire to see justice done, no matter what guise it must take, [Michael Stoddard] is both sympathetic and interesting."

  —Motherlode

  Books by Suzanne Adair

  Mysteries of the American Revolution

  Paper Woman

  The Blacksmith's Daughter

  Camp Follower

  Michael Stoddard American Revolution Thrillers

  Regulated for Murder

  Paper Woman

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Copyright © 2006 by Suzanne Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eBook conversion November 2009

  Excerpt of The Blacksmith's Daughter © 2007 by Suzanne Williams

  Cover design by Pat Ryan

  Acknowledgements

  I receive help from wonderful and unique people while conducting research for novels and editing my manuscripts. Here are a few who assisted me with Paper Woman:

  The 33rd Light Company of Foot, especially Ernie and Linda Stewart

  The Sisters in Crime Internet Chapter, especially Lonnie Cruse, Marja McGraw, and Jeri Westerson

  The folks in the print shop at Colonial Williamsburg

  The Atlanta chapter of ABANA, especially Tom Davanhall

  Dr. Larry Babits

  Carl J. Barnett

  Marg Baskin

  Barclay Blanchard

  Karen Breasbois

  Dr. Ed Cashin

  J. B. Cheaney

  Larry Cywin

  Bonnie Bajorek Daneker

  Peggy Earp

  Mike Everette

  Jack E. Fryar, Jr.

  Tom (Blue Wolf) Goodman

  Mark and Sherilyn Herron

  John (Winterhawk) Johnson

  Nolin and Neil Jones

  Geoff Kent

  Henry Kinard (a ghost)

  Isabel Alcobas Kramer

  Judith Levy

  Gerry Marcin

  John Millar

  Patrick O'Kelley

  Dr. Betty Owen

  John Robertson

  Dr. Anthony J. Scotti, Jr.

  Dr. Christine Swager

  Elaine Terna Weller

  Joyce Wiegand

  John Mills Williams, Sr.

  Mike Williams

  Paper Woman

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Chapter One

  IN THE JUNE twilight, Sophie Barton stopped strolling with her brother to assess the number of soldiers present by the blaze their scarlet uniforms made along the perimeter of the crowded, open-air dance ground. One of those redcoats' musket balls could be destined for her father. More likely, Will St. James would end his life in the customary manner for rebel spies: his body swaying from a noose, his face an indigo twist of agony. Either prospect gave her a bellyache the size of a cannonball.

  If she kept an eye on him, maybe she'd limit his antics for one night. She craned her neck in search of him. Burning pine knots in metal baskets on poles frisked mystery across the faces of soldier and civilian, merchant and farmer, musician and servant. There was her sister, Susana, brewing tattle into gossip with the help of several other goodwives. But Will was nowhere in sight.

  Beside her, David aped an accent straight from Parliament. "Madam clearly prefers a sedan chair to walking amongst the vulgar herd." Sophie rolled her eyes. "Or perhaps Madam prefers a candlelit ballroom on the Thames?" Mischief reigned in the handsome face of her tall, lanky brother.

  "You silly goose." Who wouldn't prefer London to Alton, Georgia? Still, she'd never turn her nose up at one of Zeb's dances, guaranteed to enliven a Saturday night. She'd even worn her favorite blue wool jacket for the occasion, the one with enough boning to make her look buxom.

  David scanned her up and down. "By Jove, you do clean up nicely."

  "The first such compliment ever you've paid me."

  He dropped the accent. "You don't dress like this to pull the press. What's the occasion?"

  There Will was, but damnation, he was talking with stout Zack MacVie, his assistant chairman for the Committee of Safety. Never mind that Will had formed the Committee to maintain a militia and promote local trade. Put MacVie and her father together, and sedition happened. "I'm weary of dressing in ink." Seizing David's hand, she towed him after her.

  Near straw sheaves along the perimeter, they caught up with Will. MacVie saw them coming and slipped away into the crowd, a scowl on his swarthy face. Ignoring sweat that escaped her mobcap into a wisp of dark hair on her neck, Sophie prodded trim on her father's green silk waistcoat. "Remind me on the morrow. I shall mend that."

  "Thank you." His voice was taut. Supervising one of his "special editions" at the printing press all Friday night with his rebel friends had transformed him into a grizzled and winter-worn wolf — gaunt, yet potent for his small stature, and gray-eyed like his son and two daughters.

  The fresh lampblack and varnish on his hands might as well be blood. She resisted glancing at her own hands, likewise stained from setting type on composing sticks and fitting lines and woodcuts into galleys.

  Across the dance ground teeming with townsfolk, committee treasurer Jonah Hale signaled Will. Annoyed and alarmed, she turned and grasped his shoulder. "You know, I'd so enjoy the first dance with my father." Warmth replaced the hunted look in his eyes, and hope leaped to her heart. Not long ago they'd listened to each other, supported each other's ideas. Alas, they hadn't discussed much of anything in recent months. They had to live under the same roof. The war. The damned, wretched war. "Please," she whispered. "Lie low tonight."

  Stubbornness sealed his expression and drove out the warmth. He passed a critical eye over her attire.
"Where's your beau?"

  Her blank look transcended to vexation. How exasperating that both her father and sister read courtship into chess games and business discussions. "Major Edward Hunt isn't my beau."

  With a grunt, he shrugged off her hold and strutted for the company of Jonah, skeletal fingers of bitter black smoke from a nearby torch grabbing for and just missing him. David occupied the void beside her, but it didn't dull the despair filling her soul. "Father despises me."

  "Nonsense. The old man doesn't hear me, either. Take my advice. Don't cluck over him tonight."

  "But —"

  "Enjoy yourself. He's going to do what he damned well pleases." David's voice dropped in disgust, and shadows darker than his hair roamed his expression. "What fools in the Congress and Parliament."

  "Yes, how unfortunate they won't listen to each other."

  "Four years after fifty-six congressional peacocks strutted around their imagined independence, it's become a cause of holy proportion for both sides." A roguish grin dispelled the gloom on his face. "But I know I can dance a tune with the prettiest lady in Alton, even if she's my big sister."

  What a sight they'd make, too, with David dressed the dandy in lace and fine linen, and she in her mother's garnets.

  "Hah! Quit wrestling that smile off your face. Makes you look like you've eaten pickled turnips." David glanced to the right. "Guess who's back in town."

  The glee on his face was a clue. "Uncle Jacques?" Many of the townsfolk called the old Frenchman "Uncle." She darted a look around, her heart lightening. "Here at the dance tonight?"

  David aimed her for the sidelines. "With Mathias and Mrs. Flannery." At the sight of the wiry gnome standing near a sheaf of straw, Sophie tidied her apron, petticoat, and jacket, self-conscious that she'd flushed. David chuckled. "Do hurry. You just might claim him for a dance."

  Jacques le Coeuvre packed the Red Rock Tavern to capacity whenever he turned up, for the community was eager to hear the latest installment of his wild and often preternatural excursions. Starting with the Indian massacre of redcoats at Fort William Henry back in '57, he'd landed himself in the middle of more adventures than any man ought to. In July of '77, he'd finagled his way in to witness the nineteen-year-old Marquis de Lafayette volunteering his services to a skeptical and chilly Congress in Philadelphia. Six months later, he'd enthralled listeners with tales of bloodying his tomahawk at Saratoga.

  Sophie kept her skepticism about scrappy Jacques's "spying" to herself. People who'd lived as long as he had deserved to embellish their youthful years. Just before she reached Jacques and his half-Creek nephew, elderly Widow Flannery took her leave of them. A grin split the Frenchman's weather-beaten face. "Sophie, belle Sophie!"

  After exchanging an embrace with Jacques, who smelled of brandy, garlic, and dusty hunting shirt, she winked at Mathias Hale, a blacksmith like his two half-brothers. He looked quite polished that night in a fine brown wool jacket, waistcoat, and breeches. "Your uncle hasn't changed a bit."

  "He boasts of a new scar." Warmth softened the obsidian of Mathias's eyes. "Jonah brought me his horse earlier and said he was too busy to replace a shoe, so I shan't have your hoe and pot repaired until Monday."

  But he'd walk all the way across town to give her back the hoe and pot. Sophie returned the warmth of his serene smile.

  "So David is just back from Wilmington today. How was his trip?"

  Wry amusement brushed her lips. "The master of piquet and one and thirty has new tales of glory for you."

  "I shall look him up tonight." Perhaps Mathias had spotted David charming a smile from a shapely, young widow, because his tone became droll. "Or tomorrow. Sophie, may I have a dance with you later?" She smiled and nodded assent. "Thank you." He grinned and bowed, then sauntered off.

  She inspected Jacques from head to toe. A bit more gray at his temples. "You slunk into town two days late for Elijah Carey's funeral but just in time for another dance."

  "We French have such instinct about parties, non? But had I attended the funeral, I am afraid my respect for Monsieur Carey might have been outweighed by memories of the — er — masquerade."

  She laughed. "My goodness, Susana and I thought about it during the funeral, and the Careys admitted they did, too!"

  "There, you see? The town biddies milled the prank to such extent that Carey and your father are now legend. You have to admit it would not have smelled so scandalous had Madame Carey not taken two hours to realize that it was Will in her husband's clothing."

  Sophie, David, and Susana had hooted together over the "masquerade" for months, wondering whether their father would have pushed the joke so far as to climb in bed that night twenty years earlier with the wife of miller Elijah Carey. They finally decided that although their father had his share of vices, Mrs. Carey hadn't been one of them. No, Will St. James, now a widower for a decade, still wore his wedding band.

  Will. She glanced over the grounds without seeing him. By then, more than half of Alton's forty-man garrison of redcoats was present for the dance. Fiddle scratch from two players warming up atop a wooden platform rose above the buzz of folks on the dance ground already surrendered to the lure of liquor and long shadows.

  Jacques slipped his hand into hers, reclaiming her attention. Black eyes aglitter, he took his leisure inspecting her from head to toe. "Like fine wine, you grow more delectable with each passing year."

  She smiled. Typical Frenchman. "Pshaw. You've just come from a bottle of brandy at the Red Rock."

  "Mais oui! It does my old heart good." His gaze took in her bosom, and his smile became a leer. "I suppose I am too late to claim a dance from someone as slender and graceful as you."

  "Not at all, but my father has the first dance."

  "Of course. May I have the second dance, then?"

  "You may."

  "And perhaps the sixth also?" He wiggled his eyebrows. "And the twelfth? I feel the most fortunate man alive."

  She laughed and hugged him again. "I'd love to dance with you all night."

  "Ah, for a moment, I thought the whispers I heard were true, that an English is courting you." Misinterpreting the exasperation on her face, he gripped her hand. "Non, non, not an English pig, Sophie! Tell me it is not so."

  Behind her, she heard Susana's squeal. "Uncle Jacques!"

  He released her hand, and while he and Susana embraced, Sophie slipped into the crowd. She didn't enjoy watching her younger sister favor Jacques. It came too close to ingratiation, as if Susana imagined the Frenchman had a fortune stored somewhere, and she could earn some of it by flattering him. And when it came to Edward Hunt, she knew Jacques wouldn't accept her explanation of chess games and business discussions either.

  From the platform, the mayor's voice boomed across the crowd. "Welcome everyone to Zeb Harwick's fifteenth dance. Let's thank our fiddlers for coming." Applause followed. "And let's thank Zeb for making all this possible." More applause and enthusiastic shouts of "Huzzah!" The wealthy cattle farmer had given them all a magical three-hour reprieve so they could forget debt and disease and the frightening way Loyalists and Whigs were bashing each other's brains out in neighboring South Carolina. "First tune tonight is a reel. Grab your partner!"

  Noise escalated as people swarmed from the sidelines to the dance ground, rousing the smells of dung and straw, rosewater and sweat, and onions and whiskey. Sophie searched in vain for Will. One of several British privates standing near the ale scored a fourteen-year-old girl for the first tune and guided her to a line with a flourish.

  Sophie smiled at the girl's blush, remembering being fourteen, remembering her wedding the following year to blond-haired, blue-eyed Jim Neely, the apothecary's apprentice. The year after that, she'd borne her daughter Betsy, and her first husband lay in his grave, dead of pneumonia.

  The town hornsmith stuttered out an invitation to dance, and she glanced at his fingernails. She couldn't help it. No one else chewed fingernails to nubs the way he did. She thanked him and declined
. His bow spasmodic, he hastened on to the next eligible female.

  Across the ground, two more soldiers found partners. Then Lieutenant Dunstan Fairfax strolled into view. Hands clasped behind him, the russet-haired young officer assumed position well away from the beverage table to interrogate the crowd with his stare. By convention, officers didn't mingle with their men during social occasions. But one look at Fairfax, who displayed all the sentiment of a suspicious swamp cat, convinced Sophie that the dance didn't constitute a social occasion for him.

  The mayor began walking three lines of dancers through steps. Privates escorted women out to the dance ground past her father, who was conversing with MacVie. Sophie had best grab Will for the dance.

  Within twenty feet of the two men, she realized they were arguing and halted in time to hear MacVie snarl to Will, "...just you and Jonah, eh?" A warning look from Will silenced his associate. Both turned, MacVie sneering at her, Will tense.

  Awkwardness squeaked her voice. "The first dance, Father."

  MacVie gestured beyond the straw sheaves and stalked off the dance ground. Regret wove through Will's tension. "I apologize. Something's come up." He spun on his heel and followed his cohort, leaving Sophie speechless.

  She whirled about in a huff. By then, just about everyone was lined up with a partner. Fairfax caught her eye and started toward her, and she cast about in panic. Gods, no. She didn't want to talk with him, and she sure hoped he didn't want to dance with her. Handsome as he was, the thought of him getting too close reminded her of the way she'd felt when David dropped a live lizard inside her shift years ago at the fair.

  She signaled a fifteen-year-old lad to join her in the line closest to the ale. Seeing her partnered for the dance, Fairfax retreated, and the fiddlers fired up an introductory four measures. Ten minutes later, after Sophie and the boy traveled up the line and then halfway back again, the fiddlers wound down the tune. People applauded, thanked partners, and scrambled about for the next dance, merry and flirtatious.

  Sophie spotted David in conversation with Widow Reems. David sure did like widows. Will had vanished. So had Jonah Hale. She noticed even more redcoats on the grounds. Lieutenant Fairfax was questioning MacVie, who often whittled woodcut artwork for the newspaper. Interrogation couldn't have happened to a nicer person; in MacVie's world, women should be silent and servile — probably a factor in his failure to find a wife. Still, her uneasiness returned. A charred woodcut had been left in the fireplace after last night's print run. With hindsight, she wished she'd insisted that her servant clean the fireplace that afternoon.