Mistress Firebrand (26 page)

“He comes home at midday to share his meal with Frances,” said Jenny. “They are devoted to each other. Fairchild is why I cannot ask her to leave.”

Devere sighed. “Fairchild
is
the best of men, though right this moment I wish he was not half so good, because it means I must
deal
with John André.”

“André has no reason to suspect Aunt Frances right now, does he?”

“No.”

“And no reason to suspect me either.”

“He will if my trunk turns up.”

“Then we must find it first,” said Jenny, sitting up. “And my aunt and I are safe for the moment, although I suppose I must have someone else copy out my next manuscript before I transmit it to the duplicitous Mr. Rivington.” The little braziers were no longer glowing and the room was starting to cool.

“Jenny, there can be no more manuscripts from Cornelia. It is too dangerous.”

“They can only hang me once, and I am already on their list with Adams and Hancock and the like. It is an honor I would choose over ranking first on Garrick’s
Critical Balance of the Performers at Drury Lane.
I would be a fool to stop now.”

“Are you mad? I didn’t come back to see you hang,” he said with sudden vehemence. “Not for words on paper.”

“It’s more than that now,” she said. “And less, in one sense, because the paper no longer matters. Rivington could never print another copy, and the play will still exist in people’s minds. When all I wanted was my plays performed on the London stage, the best I could hope for was the patronage of an important man and the laughter of a multitude. Now British generals want to hang me, armies march to ditties cribbed from my prologues, and recruiting sergeants quote me to drum up enlistments.”

“But I love you, damn it.”

“And I love you, Severin, but I have seen love up close now, and I will not settle for the kind that limits and diminishes me. You are capable of more than killing. I am capable of more than domestic devotion. I do not wish the kind of love that reduces over time who
we each are. I want the kind that makes the whole of us greater than the sum of our parts.”

*   *   *

Severin let Jenny out the little hedge door without convincing her to give up Cornelia. They both knew that it was too dangerous to meet again until the threat André posed could be neutralized. Severin had, in a desperate moment, gone to his knees and proposed marriage. They had both burst out laughing.

“It is a better performance than Bobby gave,” she’d admitted. “But poor stuff all the same. Ask me again when it is not just a means to a specific end.”

It left Devere in an impossible position. He did not know how to protect her. He could not predict André’s next move, could not find or even determine if his dangerous box full of possessions still existed, and she would not let him fix this for her as he had fixed the problems of powerful men, by deceit and murder.

A month passed in which he no more than glimpsed her across a room or from the boxes in the John Street Theater. And after four weeks of careful investigation Devere was no closer to finding his damned trunk and its damning contents, but he had discovered a great deal more about André, none of it good. He had begun his discreet inquiries with the staff and former staff he could locate at the King’s Arms, and—as his quest had taken him from the vendue masters of the coffeehouses to the fences who dealt stolen goods in the canvas town that had sprung up in the wake of the fire—he had also gathered information on his dapper adversary.

As Jenny had said, John André was a talented artist
with a passion for the theater. As he had revealed to Severin, the man had been a prisoner of war for nearly a year himself, an experience that had left him with little love for American Whigs. More important, he spoke fluent French and German and had made himself useful to Howe by translating for the commanders of the Hessian mercenaries now flooding into New York. He drew excellent maps and likenesses of people, and had compiled an encyclopedia of valuable intelligence on Rebel possessions while he was in their power.

His past commissions in the army were murky. He had traveled far too widely in the early stages of the war, and with far too much autonomy, for a simple lieutenant, and he had likely been grooming himself—or someone had been grooming him—for a career in espionage for a very long time.

André was also reputed to be an excellent shot and a formidable swordsman. Even a passable boxer.

March and April of 1777 brought first a thawing and then rain and finally spring in the first grass-scented week of May. Vauxhall and Ranelagh opened, and Devere could not keep away because he knew that Jenny strolled the gardens on concert nights with her aunt and Courtney Fairchild.

He encountered her at Ranelagh twice, and the second time his self-control failed him. “Meet me,” he said out of the hearing of her companions.

“Have you discovered something?” she asked.

“Yes. That I cannot live another day without you.”

A wry smile quirked the corners of her mouth. Her smile, he realized, was charmingly lopsided. He wanted to discover something new about her every day.

“You should be careful what you say to a writer,” she warned, “or it will end up in a play.”

“The words I plan to use shortly would not make it past even the liberal censors of New York.” He leaned forward and spoke them in her ear, and her face flushed and her skin heated, and he could feel the very air warming between them. “Behind the greenhouse,” he said.

“It is too public. We could be seen.”

“There is a cart selling masks at the entrance to the maze. Buy one, and find me when the music starts.”

*   *   *

The concerts were given on a lawn bordered by box hedges and furnished with little gilded chairs. Courtney Fairchild found one for Frances, but Jenny said she preferred to stand and her aunt made no protest. Nor did she or Fairchild appear to notice when Jenny slipped out of the green enclosure and away.

She knew she should not go to him. It was dangerous. They might be observed together. But her desire was as strong as his, and all their care wouldn’t mean a damn if Devere’s possessions turned up in the wrong hands: because then she would hang. Facing such a prospect, she was resolved at least to die with no regrets.

Jenny found the cart at the end of the path and bought a simple
moretta
mask, the kind shaped like an egg, in black silk velvet, with a little cord attached to the mouth and a paste jewel meant to be held between the teeth like a bit. It would give her an excuse for not stopping to speak with anyone on her way to
the fountain, and unlike the fanciful cat and peacock masks, it should attract little attention.

She heard the musicians strike up as the pretty brick greenhouse came into view, and she realized that the structure lay just on the other side of the concert lawn, separated only by a tall line of beeches. Miss Wainryte’s voice, familiar to Jenny because she had been employed often to sing at the John Street before the British commandeered the theater, floated through the trees, one of Haydn’s Scottish songs.

O Sandy, why leav’st thou thy Nelly to mourn?

Thy presence could ease me,

When naething can please me:

Now dowie I sigh on the bank of the burn,

Or thro’ the wood, laddie, until thou return.

There were fires still burning in the greenhouse even at this time of year to keep the orange and lemon trees warm, their leaves waxy green in the flickering light, their fragrance drifting over the lawn.

Tho’ woods now are bonny, and mornings are clear,

While lav’rocks are singing,

And primroses springing;

Yet nane of them pleases my eye or my ear

When thro’ the wood, laddie, ye dinna appear.

Devere was waiting for her around the back, leaning against the brick wall, where empty clay pots were stacked in neat rows and benches too weathered to use in the garden were stored. She could still hear the music, which meant that they could be heard, so she tried
to pick her way silently across the gravel, but that proved impossible.

He looked up when he heard her approach, and his eyes widened and gleamed black in the reflected light when he caught sight of her mask.

She lifted a hand to remove it, but he stepped quickly to forestall her, capturing her wrist and holding it away from her face. “No,” he said, speaking softly. “Leave it on. It will help us . . . focus on discretion.”

That I am forsaken, some spare not to tell:

I’m fash’d wi’ their scorning,

Baith ev’ning and morning;

Their jeering gaes aft to my heart wi’ a knell,

When thro’ the wood, laddie, I wander mysel.

Inside they might be overheard, might already have been seen. The windows were large and the fires bright, and the whole of the orangery interior one open space dotted with trees. Devere drew her into the shadows of the little walled enclosure, her shoes crunching over bits of broken pottery, and he bade her lean back against the brick.

She wanted to kiss him. She was conscious of the jeweled bit between her teeth, its contours smooth against her tongue, keeping her mouth slightly open but making speech impossible. He surprised her by dropping to his knees in front of her and lifting her hem. Up and up it went like a stage curtain until it met her hands. “Take it,” he said, pressing bunches of silk into her palms. She grasped the stuff in handfuls, gown and petticoats and chemise all together, cool air swirling around her ankles, calves, and knees.

He placed his hands on her thighs. “Higher,” he said.

Then stay, my dear Sandy, nae langer away,

But quick as an arrow,

Hast here to thy marrow,

Wha’s living in languor till that happy day,

When thro’ the wood, laddie, we’ll dance, sing, and play.

She drew the curtain up, up, up until the edges of her stays were visible and so was everything else: her own coppery curls, his thumbs parting them, her pink flesh, and his pinker tongue swiping her center.

The strangled sounds in her throat died behind the closed mouth of the velvet mask, the jeweled bit and the silken cord stilling her tongue.

He
was not silent. He laughed a little, then licked her again, then described for her in perfect detail what it was like to do this to her, how much he enjoyed this little game.

It did not last long.
She
did not last long. When her climax took hold of her, she lost her concentration and her mouth opened. The jewel fell out. The mask dropped from her face. Devere caught it deftly. He sat back on his heels and looked up at her with a hint of smug satisfaction.

“I would kiss you,” he said, “but then you would carry the scent with you all night, instead of being able to hide it here.” He touched the part of her that was still trembling, and she convulsed again. Then he stood and tugged her skirts out of her hands, which were curled like claws around the silk. He smoothed
her gown until she looked almost presentable. She stepped away from the wall on unsteady legs.

“I must leave,” he said, “or it will be obvious what I have been about . . . But I hope you will think of me as you stroll through the garden.”

She would, of course. Her thighs were slick with what they had just concluded. When she took her seat next to her aunt and the man who shared her aunt’s life but not her bed, she felt a pang of longing. She knew from their example that love could survive without passion, but she wondered how long passion could abide without intimacy.

*   *   *

Devere left Ranelagh savoring his encounter with Jennifer Leighton. It occurred to him only in the street afterward that tonight he had not said he loved her. An appalling omission. He must see her again and tell her. It could be arranged. They had managed it tonight.

His optimism faded as he walked home past the defenses that Howe was building to keep possession of Manhattan, and looked out over the water where on the opposite shore Rebel fires still burned. By the time he reached his lodgings at the King’s Arms, he was wondering how long this idyll could last.

He got his answer the next day, when John André joined him at his evening meal in the taproom.

“I hope,” said André, drinking ale and making himself entirely at home at Severin’s table, “that your return to civilization has improved your memory in regards to the Merry Widow’s associate.”

“I seem to recall that you promised me Cornelia in exchange,” hazarded Devere. “Until I can lay hands on
the playwright, I don’t see why I should give you the Widow’s conspirator.”

John André inclined his head. “Just so. That is why, Colonel, I shall exert myself to deliver you Cornelia tonight. And tomorrow you will give me the Widow’s compatriot.”

Fear twisted in his guts. “Do you have a piece of writing for me to compare?”

“Nothing so tenuous,” replied André smoothly. “I have received information that our man ‘Cornelia’ will attend a clandestine performance of his
Miles Gloriosus
tonight. There is a group of students from King’s who play it twice monthly in a burnt-out building in canvas town. We have been allowing this gathering to grow—and it has now become a large net we can draw closed around a significant school of traitors. I’m told the play now attracts a crowd of five hundred at each performance—many of them almost regular attendees—including the rebellious sons of some very wealthy loyalists. Men Howe believes will feel obliged to put their money behind raising soldiers for the Crown, if their heirs are threatened with a spell on the
Jersey
.”

The British prison hulk was reputed to be as bad as the Rebel-run mine, with the commissioner of prisoners starving the wretches confined there and lining his pockets with the money meant to purchase their victuals. And Simsbury served as a justification for it.

“That tactic will turn known allies into secret enemies and potential plotters,” said Severin, with the bitter wisdom of experience.