Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution Read online

  Bearing the smile of a diplomat, tall, blond Edward Hunt met her halfway to the sidelines. "Good evening. You look lovely tonight." He took her hand and escorted her off the dance ground, the scarlet of his uniform like a beacon. People gawked at them and whispered, grinding grist in the gossip mill.

  The mayor's voice cleared the hubbub. "The second one is a minuet. Grab your partners, friends, and let's get started."

  Edward clasped her hands in his. "I'd dearly love dancing with you, but I fear my schedule doesn't permit it."

  "No? You've given your men leave to attend the dance."

  His sapphire-hued gaze roved over her bosom before returning to her face. "Good soldiers, each of them deserving of a few hours leisure."

  "And you don't deserve such leisure?" Fairfax drew up at attention behind the major, a hound awaiting the command of his master in the shadows, and just close enough to hear their conversation.

  "Commanding officers see little of leisure." To her surprise, he lifted her hand to his lips. "I shall return later, perhaps in time for the final dance." He released her hand, bowed, and pivoted toward the lieutenant. The two stepped over straw sheaves, headed out of the torchlight toward the horses. Still bemused by Edward's kiss, Sophie remained where she stood, her ears trained on his query to Fairfax: "MacVie?"

  "Nothing. Just like St. James." No emotion colored Fairfax's voice.

  "Carry on. With good fortune, we shall have all we need by midnight."

  "Sir."

  Their voices dwindled, and the sputter of a torch swallowed the rest of their conversation. She chanced a look at them, but they'd already passed from silhouettes into secrecy. We shall have all we need by midnight. Anxiety parched her mouth and fluttered her stomach. She paced the sidelines and searched the crowd. Where was Will St. James?

  Chapter Two

  JACQUES TROTTED OVER for the second dance, his expression stern. "Belle Sophie, there you are, and finally free of the company of pigs." A beguiling smile creased his face. "Let us make merry, eh? I will show you how the French dance a minuet."

  Popular "Jacques-Lore" held that decades earlier, before bandits butchered his parents and a Creek family adopted his young sister, Madeleine, the Frenchman had learned his dancing in Paris. Jacques decorated Sophie's minuet with wild swings and twirls, leaving her laughing and breathless. Clearly, some lore about him must be true.

  For the third tune, she found herself appointed David's partner by virtue of her ability to pick up dance combinations quickly. They demonstrated a dance called a "waltz" that he'd seen in Williamsburg. Couples joined in. When she could spare a moment, she glanced over the crowd. Three rebels present at the previous night's printing run had disappeared, and Will was still absent.

  The waltz wound down, and several fellows thumped David on the back with approval, their faces flushed with dancing and ale. David nodded at them, then he led Sophie to the sidelines, where he pitched his voice low. "You really stir matters up with Major Hunt."

  "Too many people have nothing better to do than mind my business. Have you seen Father in the last quarter hour?"

  "Forget about the old man. You wouldn't be vexed so by gossip were you on a course that carried your heart with it."

  "Hearts." His sober expression drew a chuckle from her. "Hearts have nothing to do with this."

  "To the contrary, it's clear the major's quite taken with you."

  "Oh, poppycock."

  "Join me for a short walk."

  Her hand on his elbow, she strolled with him toward Zeb's barn, aware that Lieutenant Fairfax watched them leave together. They passed a dozen men near the barn shrouded by night and the haze of tobacco smoke. One said, "Buford surrendered. That scum Banastre Tarleton butchered men who lay down their arms."

  "They were asking for it up there in the Waxhaws," said a second man.

  "Asking for the likes of 'Tarleton's Quarter'? Bah! Who expects no quarter after surrendering? I tell you, carnage like Buford's Massacre will continue."

  "Buford's Massacre" they'd labeled the military action on May twenty-ninth, five days earlier. How orderly had Continental Colonel Buford's surrender been? Sophie suspected that news of the massacre disturbed a few redcoats, too. More unsettling was the fact that it had occurred in neighboring South Carolina. Was Georgia next?

  David steered her away from politics and around the corner of the barn, where he regarded her in the darkness. "If Major Hunt isn't your beau, what do you expect from his attentions?"

  "Intelligent conversation. A glimpse of someplace — anyplace — other than Georgia."

  "And what does he expect from you?"

  "A reasonably challenging chess game. Discussions on Plato, Socrates, and expense accounting."

  "Good gods!" David howled with laughter. "He's positioned for a grand look at the operations of the printing press."

  "Naturally. But never fear, I'm thirty-three years old and immune to the follies of girlish infatuation."

  "Let us hope so."

  "And I don't care what color coat he wears. He's a hundred times more interesting than the men of Alton and Augusta."

  "Of course he's more interesting than Georgia stock, but you aren't in love with him."

  "What of it? He isn't in love with me, either."

  "You're certain of that, are you?" Concern clipped David's tone. "Look at you. That jacket compliments your figure so well, and with Mother's garnets at your ears and throat, you look positively elegant. I've watched you turn the heads of half the men of Alton tonight. Everyone's smitten, Sophie. Are you going to tell me you dressed up just to improve your mood?"

  "Yes, I did dress up to improve my mood. As I said earlier, it's a pleasure to wear something other than ink."

  "Major Hunt wasn't ogling ink when he kissed your hand. Suppose he declared his love for you and offered to take you away from Alton to his estates in Hampshire? You'd be guaranteed to wear something other than ink there."

  Sophie found it easy to dismiss similar sentiments expressed by her sister and father. However, David wasn't a raving rebel, so his intimation sent her reexamining the situation. Given the academic and business topics of their conversations, Edward had to be just passing his time in Georgia in the company of an intelligent woman. He wasn't about to make any grandiose offers to her. Not with the class distinction. She shrugged off her disquiet. "Your question is hypothetical, so I'll answer hypothetically. If he fell in love with me, I might fall in love with him, too."

  "You?" Her brother snorted. "No. You'd be feeling gratitude, not love."

  She scowled. David understood her just a little too well. She'd read every book she'd gotten her hands on, so she knew there was a big, bold world out there. Too bad she couldn't see more of it than the Georgia colony. "Faugh, managing our business and extra projects out of Augusta and Savannah is sheer drudgery! I'm sick of Alton. It's little more than stinking swamp. The men gripe about whiskey and livestock, and the women natter on and on about babies and baking. I want something else. I want life! I've never seen mountains or the ocean. I'd give anything to travel the way you've done, and pluck purses over piquet, but women aren't supposed to gamble or travel —"

  "Or operate printing presses?" His teeth shone in a brief grin. "Come now. You know most women, especially Susana, envy you for running that press. To be sure, they consider you eccentric and too independent, but don't believe for a moment that all they want from life is babies and baking."

  She swatted at a whining mosquito. "I daresay if women ran the world, there'd be far fewer wars."

  "Undoubtedly. But you shan't stop this war by dallying with a nobleman you don't love. Your good fortune has been to outlive not one, but two undesirable spouses." He paused. "I've never faulted you for sending Betsy to grow up with Sarah and Lucas in Augusta. But I often wonder how you've kept yourself these seven years since she went away, particularly now that she and Clark are expecting. Don't you want to play the doting grandmother come Christmastime?"

/>   Sophie had just about convinced herself that seven years of alone wasn't so bad because she'd grown accustomed to it. But David's words raked over and exposed an ancient ache in the cellar of her heart. She'd never enjoyed living a day's travel away from her only child, even though she'd seen it as a necessity seven years earlier, when she'd fostered Betsy with her cousin. "Well, yes. Yes, of course I look forward to being a grandmother." And being with Betsy again, sweet Betsy. The ache compressed her heart.

  "Sophie, you're lovely and vivacious. You've intelligence and wit. Living with the old man and his crazy notions day in and day out, running the press, keeping the accounts straight — how does that feed your soul?"

  Amazed, she blinked up at him. In the St. James family, certain sentiments weren't vocalized easily. "It — it doesn't."

  "What does feed your soul?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Well, perhaps you'd best think on it. I shan't lecture you about duty. The gods know what a pimple Alton is on the arse of civilization, and I'm the last person you'd hear advising you to remain here out of duty." He paused again in search of words, and she sensed him fidgeting. "To be sure, Major Hunt is a fine fellow. But if ever you truly love a man, I shall encourage you to follow your heart." Dancing had loosened hair from the purple, silk ribbon at the nape of his neck. He tucked the errant strand behind his ear and edged back toward the barn's corner. "Now, I've a widow to dazzle tonight. Shall we return?"

  "You go. It might do me well to stand out a dance." He nodded and headed back for the torchlight.

  With a sigh, she waved off the query of another mosquito and scratched behind the ears of one of Zeb's hounds that trotted over to check on her. Then she ambled further around the barn, flitting fireflies her escort, her heartache subsiding into disillusionment and dissatisfaction. Where was her place in the world? With her seventeen-year-old married daughter in Augusta, awaiting grandmotherhood? At the printing press in Alton, growing more distant from her father the longer they lived together? Sophie didn't feel like she belonged anywhere anymore.

  A man's murmur delayed her turning the corner. She didn't want to interrupt a lovers' tryst. In the next instant, she realized that the man wasn't speaking English, so she pressed herself against the rough siding of the barn and peeked around the corner. Overcast sky silhouetted five shapes of darkness — four bare-chested, top-knotted Creek warriors, their earrings and nose rings tinkling in the muggy breeze, the fading light glinting off their shaven heads, and a fifth man in colonial dress, his back to her.

  She squinted. Was one of those warriors the horse trainer, Runs With Horses, adoptive cousin to Mathias? The racket from the crowd prevented her identifying a voice, so she withdrew. Only Jacques and his nephews spoke Creek well enough for lengthy conversations. So who was out there with the Creek? And why?

  Hairs on the back of her neck prickled, the feeling she got when someone watched her. She retreated along the barn, turned the corner, and almost collided with Lieutenant Fairfax. "Ah, madam. Your brother returned without you. I thought to assure your safety."

  Sure he did. "Thank you, Lieutenant." Since he didn't budge, she maneuvered quickly around him toward the dance ground.

  Inside the ring of torchlight, the back of her neck prickled again. Fairfax snarled, "I would speak with you, Mrs. Barton."

  She whirled on him with the haughtiness she invoked to bring a peddler's price down. "Speak with someone else."

  His eyes took on the appearance of pale green hailstones hammered from the heart of a thunderstorm, and he towered over her, not at all possessed of a peddler's suggestibility. A thousand times worse than a live lizard down her shift, the seethe of inhumanity in his eyes made her want to cower. Somehow she found the strength to jut her chin.

  To her astonishment, MacVie bounded over, grabbed her hand, and dragged her after him. "She promised me this dance." They tacked onto the middle line, her rescuer pale despite whiskey on his breath. He darted a glance over her shoulder. "Ghoul."

  On the sidelines, Fairfax cornered another rebel crony, Sam Fielding. The redcoats must have kept the shop under surveillance all night. If Fairfax singled her out, he'd interrogate her in much the same manner. Rather than rescuing her out of kindness, MacVie schemed to keep her apart from the lieutenant.

  Her gaze on the hog farmer sharpened. Will was still absent, as were several accomplices from the previous night. "Where's my father? I've not seen him since you two argued."

  "I don't know." Nonsense. Her father, Jonah Hale, and the gods only knew who else were up to no good. Fairfax was there to gather leads. The other soldiers were there in case trouble erupted. And Edward — was he off tracking down rebels who operated a printing press in the middle of the night? The swarthy man flashed sharp, yellow teeth. "But take my advice, Mrs. Barton, and stop asking so many questions."

  "But Mr. MacVie, I'm full of questions."

  "Aww, just like the child who questioned what was down the well, leaned over too far, fell in, and drowned."

  Was that MacVie's idea of a threat, patriot-style? She sniffed. "I can swim." He bared his teeth again and stubbed the toes of her left foot three times before the dance was over.

  While the mayor talked the mob through a circle dance, and the pathetic hornsmith prowled for a partner, Sophie skirted the ground to where Mrs. Reems and David huddled, enmeshed in each other's gazes. Just before she reached them, David trailed his fingers down the widow's forearm.

  "David," she whispered from behind.

  He sighed and faced her with a waxen smile. "Make haste."

  She launched into a summary of the evening's weird events. After five seconds of it, David patted her shoulder. "Relax and enjoy yourself." He waved to someone. "Would you be so kind as to partner my sister for this dance?"

  The hornsmith bounded over and proffered his nail-gnawed hand. "Mrs. B-Barton, I'm d-delighted to be your p-partner."

  She forced a smile at David, who turned his back on her and re-engaged Mrs. Reems, and then at the hornsmith, who guided her onto the grounds. Not soon enough, the dance ended and she hobbled off, both feet bruised. The mayor's voice boomed: "Next one's a quadrille. Sets of four couples." Quadrilles could be complicated. Her punished feet begged her to rest.

  Her brother-in-law, John Greeley, stomped over. "Susana reminded me you and I haven't had a dance, even though a bloodyback is courting you."

  Dousing her retort was the sight of Fairfax tracking her. Like the folk-tale girl who danced to death in a pair of magic slippers, she took John's hand. He trotted her out, and his meaty, cooper's hands routed her through the dance with all the subtlety of maneuvering tobacco hogsheads and corn barrels.

  When the tune was over, Sam Fielding interposed himself between her and Fairfax. "How about our dance, Mrs. Barton?"

  By then, she knew the script. "Of course, Mr. Fielding."

  Fairfax knew the script, too. His eyes iced over again. "May I have the next dance, Mrs. Barton?"

  "My apologies. I'm taken for the rest of the evening."

  Jacques focused on her for the following tune and honed his flirting skills. Laughing, forgetting her sore feet, she danced up the line with him, and at the top, Fairfax and a townswoman jumped to become their neighbors for the next thirty seconds of music.

  The lieutenant emerged from an allemande with Jacques and caught Sophie up into a swing. "Where is your father at this moment, Mrs. Barton?"

  "Isn't he here? If not, I've no idea where he is."

  "What did you print last night on the press?"

  "I printed nothing."

  "Do you expect me to believe you were asleep all night?"

  Her mouth tightened. "I don't care what you believe."

  A smile devoid of warmth rippled his mouth. "Major Hunt has a blind spot when it comes to you. I suffer no such affliction."

  "How reassuring."

  His smile lingered when he handed her back to Jacques. Not once had his stare strayed to her bosom. "Such a pleasure
dancing with you at last, Mrs. Barton."

  Chapter Three

  DURING THE BREAK, people thronged to the beverage table to slake thirst or bolster inebriation. Everyone ignored lightning undulating on the western horizon and a thunderstorm grumbling in the swamps, threatening to roll east to the Savannah River and give them a good soaking down. The air stank like the yeasty insides of a cattle farmer's boots. Fanning away gnats, Sophie discussed her garden with Widow Flannery, who promised to send over some potted herbs.

  With Mrs. Reems ornamenting his elbow, David meandered Sophie's way. "Huzzah! You're enjoying yourself."

  Sweat gleamed on Widow Reems's big breasts, pressed so high in her bodice they looked ready to explode, a feat all the boning in the world would never accomplish for Sophie due to lack of volume. She aimed a tart smile at her brother. "I'm having a delightful time."

  "Jolly. And don't worry about the redcoats. Fairfax is interested in two Spaniards who came to the dance looking for the old man."

  "Spaniards? Where?" She looked around, noting the absence of Fairfax and all but five redcoats.

  David shrugged. "We've probably seen the last of those Spaniards."

  As if adventuring with rebels wasn't enough, Will St. James must also dabble in dealings with Spaniards. With Spain having declared war on Britain, small wonder that Fairfax bayed out his pursuit. She scanned the crowd again and turned back on David.

  "Now, now, let's banter about the possibilities on the morrow. I've other thoughts to occupy me tonight." Smiling down Mrs. Reems's cleavage, he kissed her hand before strolling her away.

  Soon after the dance resumed, an empty-handed Fairfax returned with his men, sweat streaking their scarlet coats. Preoccupied, the lieutenant paid only cursory attention to the return of several Safety Committee members and spent the rest of the event conferring with soldiers and studying the crowd.