Mistress Firebrand (28 page)

“Twenty-five,” he said, scrutinizing her. The condescension chafed him. Jenny could see that much.

“Get out, André,” said Severin Devere. “And take your damned dragoons with you. There’s no proof that Frances Leighton is even acquainted with the Widow.”

“No,” said André smoothly. “There is no compelling proof. What of it? That is why men like you and I exist. To act where the evidence would never hold up in a court of law. Former royal mistresses, of course, are a delicate matter, though, and I could not rely on Mr. Hallam’s information alone.”

“Bobby wants the John Street back,” said Jenny. “He would say anything to secure it.”

“Indeed,” replied André, looking at Jenny and taking in her dishabille, the ancient pearl-crusted stomacher, the brick-stained silk of her petticoats. His smirk told her that he knew exactly what she had been doing an hour ago. “That is why I could not act on his testimony. I needed additional confirmation, and Colonel Devere provided it tonight, when he raced
here
after our dinner.” He turned to Aunt Fanny. “If it is any consolation in what is about to happen, I am a great admirer of your gifts.”

She raised an eyebrow, but did not stir from her chair. Fanny wore the calm smile of a medieval effigy. Jenny wondered at—and took heart from—her immaculate composure. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Captain,” drawled Frances Leighton, “but there is nothing you can do now that will induce me to speak of my friend. I am quite beyond your reach.”

Jenny felt Devere stiffen beside her, but she did not know why.

André’s expression darkened. He crossed the room and stood in front of Aunt Frances’ little card table. There was a blue glass vial on the polished surface that Jenny had not noticed before. The captain reached for it, then stopped himself. He plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it twice around his hand before gingerly picking up the tiny bottle. He sniffed it cautiously, then set it back on the table, staring at Frances Leighton with a mixture of profound disappointment and admiration.

“And now we understand each other,” said the
Divine Fanny to the splendid young man, a triumphant smile transforming her handsome face.

It was the performance of a lifetime, and every player’s favorite part: the death scene. Jenny’s chest constricted. She coveted the cautious hopefulness, the blissful ignorance she had known just moments before. She wanted to go back. She wanted the possibilities, the future, that had been alive the last time they had stood in this room. She wanted to deny what was plain before her, but the expression on André’s face, the little bottle on the table, the pressure of Devere’s hand upon her shoulder, all confirmed all her fears.

John André nodded and the world turned upside down for Jenny. It was more than an acknowledgment. It was a gesture of defeat. Aunt Frances had outmatched him. Jenny knew where the little bottle had come from: Fanny’s chest of “medicines.”

The Sweetheart of Drury Lane had taken poison.

“No,” said Jenny. “Not now. Not this way.”

“I am sorry, my dear,” said the woman, who had freed her from a life of domestic devotion and brought her to New York to make the world’s acquaintance, “but we have had a very good run here together, you and I. That is all any player asks, Jenny, and more than I dared hope for when I took ship for America.”

“No.” Jenny would not accept it. “There is ipecac in your medicine chest. You said you kept it in case anyone was poisoned.” She made for the box in the corner where Fanny kept her cures.

André stepped in front of her, blocking her path, his expression sober. He shook his head. “Ipecac will not answer, Miss Leighton. This particular tincture
cannot be readily expelled, or counteracted.” He turned to face Frances and said quite softly, “It is very rare.”

“It is,” Fanny agreed, as though they were discussing a bottle of Madeira. “I was saving it for a special occasion.”

“I am honored, then,” said André.

“Angela procured it for me,” she explained, “for Harry, when the pain became too much for him. We were going to take it together, and go out like Romeo and Juliet, but there was Jenny to think of. He never met you, my dear,” said Frances, looking straight ahead, her eyes too dilated to see. “But you were our daughter in spirit, if not in flesh, and we decided together that I should remain in the world a little longer to see that you had the opportunities you deserved.”

Jenny choked on a sob. She looked up at John André, still blocking her path.

“Get out of her way, John,” said Devere, behind her, in a voice that threatened violence.

André did not move immediately. He glanced around the room, as though confirming guards and exits, calculating. “It makes no matter now,” he said, finally, and stepped lightly aside.

But, impediment removed, Jenny did not know what to do. Frances was sitting so stiffly, staring so blindly, that she was almost afraid to touch her. Jenny knelt before her aunt’s chair and took the slender hands in hers. They were cold and trembling now, white as paper, chill as snow.

There was so little time, and so much to say. “I am glad you returned for me,” said Jenny, stifling her urge to sob. “If you had not come, I would still be in New Bumpkin.” The familiar nickname, their shared joke,
the thought of the dull gray life she might have had there broke her resolve, and the tears came, splashing over Fanny’s cold ringed fingers.

“What the devil is going on?”

Fairchild had entered unannounced, unnoticed by anyone other than the watchful dragoons. Jenny looked at him through eyes blurred with tears. He was disheveled from hard riding and glared at André with something close to murder in his eyes. “What are you doing in my house?”

“My job, Major,” said André, without inflection.

“On whose authority?”

Their voices dwindled like buzzing flies, small and unimportant. Fanny’s cold hands went boneless, her chest ceased to respire, and the quiet she left behind became deafening.

Frances Leighton, who had crossed an ocean to free the words in Jenny, had slipped silent from the world.

*   *   *

Devere could not grieve for Frances Leighton, but he did grieve for Jenny and Fairchild, who stood stranded in the middle of the room, gaping at his dead lover.

“Leave the body,” said André. “Search the house. Now. And take the girl to Dyson.”

Two dragoons grasped Jenny by the arms and hauled her to her feet. Her face was tear streaked. She looked bewildered. “Severin?” she said, her voice desolate and full of confusion.

Devere stepped forward. “What is the meaning of this,
Captain
?”

“Come, now, Colonel. We had a bargain, you and I. I
was willing to let you have ‘Cornelia’ if you gave me Frances Leighton. Now Frances Leighton is dead, and I have only the little playwright. And I must have
something
.”

“What makes you imagine Jenny is Cornelia?”

André produced a sheaf of papers from his pocket. With sinking heart, Devere recognized them for what they were: the contents of his missing chest.

“I have had this in my possession since December. Proof enough to hang her publicly,” said André. “But Howe will prefer to do it quietly, out of sight, aboard the
Jersey
. And she must be questioned before she goes to the noose. It is possible she will divulge what her aunt did not. I am not heartless, Devere. I know you’ve been fucking her. Dyson will handle any . . .
unpleasantness
. You need not see any of it.”

“You will not touch her.” He could feel Jenny behind him, her hand in his, trembling.

“Take her,” said André to the dragoons. “And restrain the colonel if he tries to stop you.”

Severin knew that he could not be in two places at once. He needed to speak to Howe, but he could not let them take Jenny to Dyson.

“Courtney,”
said Severin. “You must go with her.”

Fairchild looked up, his face a mask of grief, his wits disordered.

Devere spoke slowly and clearly. “You must go to the Middle Dutch Church with Jenny, old friend. See that Caide’s people do not lay a hand on her until I can speak with General Howe.”

Courtney looked at John André and the dragoons and then Jenny, then back to André. “You killed her,” he said coldly, his mind still fixed on Frances Leighton.

“Please, Major,” said Jenny, the panic rising in her
voice. “I very much fear what will happen if you do not come with us.”

Courtney blinked, seeming finally to see her—to recognize her. Then he nodded and stood up. He took his coat off and wrapped it around Jenny, then looked at Severin and said, “What will become of my Frances?”

“I will make sure that she is cared for,” said Devere. He turned to Jenny. “Don’t be afraid. No one is going to hurt you.”

“You are only making this harder for everyone, Colonel Devere,” said André when Courtney and the dragoons and Jenny had gone. “Better to get the business over with quickly so the girl suffers as little as possible.”

Devere didn’t answer him. He lifted the body of Jenny’s aunt from the chair and laid her carefully on the chaise opposite, closing her sightless eyes and covering her face with the silk robe that was hung on the back of the door. He did not think the Widow whom Frances had died to protect was worth the sacrifice, but there was no denying that the Divine Fanny had lived boldly and loved fearlessly, and up to the very last had made her own choices.

*   *   *

The meeting with General Sir William Howe took place in the wee hours of the morning because Devere knew that Jenny’s life hung in the balance. Gerardus Beekman’s mansion overlooking Turtle Bay and the East River had been built less than twenty years earlier in a consciously old-fashioned Dutch style. It sported the distinctive hipped roof and curled eaves found now only on the most antique buildings in New Amsterdam. The manse was as ludicrous an affectation as Ben
Franklin raising money at the Court of Versailles in his coonskin cap, and it did not strike Devere as charming or “eccentric” at all.

The carriage he shared in strained silence with John André traveled through an elaborate garden, past a greenhouse, and under the tree where Howe had hung an American spy last September—a spy whose people had at least
tried
to trade him back, unlike Devere’s. Neither he nor André remarked upon it.

Inside the manse all trace of rustic simplicity vanished. The staircase was wide enough for four to walk abreast, the banisters elaborately carved in three variations. The parlors were proportioned on a grand scale and fitted up with French pastoral wallpapers—all winsome beauties on swings and riverbanks, being courted by ardent swains. Devere could not look at them without thinking of Jenny in the custody of Caide’s dragoons with only Fairchild to protect her, while he stood here, beneath molded plaster ceilings in a room appointed with marble columns and Dutch-tiled fireplaces, waiting to bargain for her life.

And he had nothing—absolutely nothing—to trade.

Sir William Howe entered wearing a cotton banyan and a sleeping cap, his reluctance to take this interview plain on his face. Severin had never been able to see it before, but the general did not like dealing with men like him, or men like André. Devere supposed he’d prefer—really—that men like them didn’t exist at all. Billy Howe thought of himself as on the whole honorable. A conscientious member of Parliament, a loving brother, a devoted husband—at least according to his own lights.

There was a noise in the hall. Devere did not need
to look up to know to whom the gentle tread upon the stairs belonged: Elizabeth Loring—the Sultana of Boston, Howe’s mistress—reputed to be the most beautiful woman in North America, known equally well for her extravagance in dress as her passion for the gaming table. Her husband had been appointed to the lucrative post of commissioner of prisoners by Howe, evidently for his ability to sleep soundly through the night. The heart-shaped face made an appearance in the doorway, still bearing traces of fine cosmetics. She exchanged a sleepy smile with her lover, but when her eyes lighted on Captain André, her expression turned frosty and she retreated up the stairs.

The general spared a wistful glance at her departing form, its curves arresting in a light fitted banyan of her own. He returned to the business at hand without enthusiasm.

“The girl is guilty. Devere cannot dispute that,” said André, laying his evidence—Jenny’s letters and manuscripts—on the table before the general.

“I don’t dispute it,” said Devere smoothly. “I have known as much for months.”

“And done nothing,” said André, “because you were fucking her.”

“And done nothing,” said Devere, “because she was Burgoyne’s mistress.”

It was the second time that night that John André had been caught off his guard. He recovered nicely on this occasion. “And you were just keeping her warm for the general, were you?”

Devere shrugged. “I may have acted imprudently, but she was so very angry at General Burgoyne for not summoning her north, it seemed a shame to forgo the
pleasure. Regardless, surely that is between myself and John Burgoyne. Let us not confuse the matter. The point is that you cannot interrogate and hang a general’s mistress.”

He saw Captain André’s smile fade. Devere did not need to elaborate. He had been doing this longer than André and he was better at it. His calling was more than the collection of secrets and the peddling of lies. It was the weighing of men—and women. The careful analysis of character. It allowed a skillful practitioner to make guesses that came very close to divination.

Howe knew, as did Lord Germain at home and most of Parliament as well, that there was no love lost between the three commanders serving now in North America. He, Burgoyne, and Clinton disliked one another intensely. They disagreed on every point of strategy, and each thought he should have been appointed above the other two—or, in the case of Howe, whose seniority was not in question, that he should have been given the resources squandered on Burgoyne’s bold scheme to take Albany.

And all three men now gathered in the ludicrously rich room, with its wool carpets and damask chairs and soaring ceilings, knew also that Howe had no intention of supporting Burgoyne this summer, of marching north into the forests of New York to capture what he firmly believed were worthless outposts in the trackless wilderness. Not with Philadelphia, and the Rebel government, within reach.