The Secrets Of Catie Hazard

He glanced at her skeptically and tugged his neckcloth loose with his thumb. “How do I know you won’t put arsenic in the dressing, and thus be rid of one more wretched redcoat?”

“You don’t know. You’ll simply have to trust me.” Without waiting for an answer, Catie went to one of the wall cabinets and took down a wooden box filled in readiness with neatly rolled bandages and lint, scissors, needles and waxed thread. Next she hung a kettle of water over the coals to boil, and laid a clean towel and a dish of soap on the table beside Anthony.

Yet as Anthony watched her preparations, his doubts grew. The only other woman to nurse him had been his own grandmother, when he was still a boy. And considering how this woman had practically spat at him this afternoon, trusting her now hardly seemed wise.

He pushed himself up from the chair, leaning heavily on the edge of the table. “A lady such as yourself needn’t do such—such tasks.”

“You won’t escape that way, sir,” she said softly. How could a man as tall and strong as this one be so clearly terrified of her? Jon had been right when he’d called her kindhearted. Perhaps because she’d been something of a stray herself, no mongrel was ever turned from her door without a plate of scraps. She’d always been tender that way, and she doubted she could ever bring herself to harm any creature, beast or man, enemy or not.

Yet even so, the hazy reality of what he was to her pricked uneasily at her conscience. Was she being kind to him only because he was a man in sore need of her help, or in spite of it?

Anthony thought of the long retreat from Lexington to Charlestown, when he first learned that the people they’d come to protect didn’t want protecting. The rebel marksmen had stayed hidden in houses and behind walls, like the one who’d fired at him tonight, and like that unseen man, the Massachusetts rebels had almost always found their mark. His regiment had formed the rear guard of the retreat, and over the musket fire and screams of the wounded and dying he had shouted at his men until he was hoarse, to hold their lines steady, to reload, to fire, to be brave.

But by the time they reached Charlestown, more than two hundred British soldiers had been wounded or killed outright, and those marked as missing, those left behind, had found no mercy at all at the hands of the enemy, even hands that seemed as gentle as Catharine Hazard’s. Better to leave now, to find Routt. Aye, Routt he could trust.

“Mrs. Hazard,” he protested weakly, trying to rise. “Please, ma’am, I’d prefer—”

But at once he began to sway, and barely in time Catie grabbed his uninjured arm to guide him back down into the chair.

“I’ve tended far more grievous efforts than your piddling little scrape, Major Sparhawk,” she said, with more gentleness than she’d intended. With his handsome uniform disheveled and stained with blood and his face taut with pain, he bore little enough resemblance to the proud, haughty officer who’d belittled her hospitality earlier. “You’re hardly the first gentleman that’s sat there begging to keep his sins secret. When a woman runs a tavern, sir, there’s nothing she won’t see.”

“Nothing?” His upper lip beaded with sweat, Anthony smiled faintly, mortified by his own weakness. “I thought this was a respectable house.”

“It is,” she said promptly as she rolled up her cuffs. Though she knew he was only half listening, she continued talking, hoping that it would help take his mind off the pain. “You won’t find any more genteel than Hazard’s in all Newport County. But the better-bred the custom, the greater the mischief. Gentlemen are always getting into scrapes of one sort or another beneath my roof, and then begging me to keep the scandal down. And I do. Can you take off your coat yourself, sir, or shall I help you?”

She would have bet the tavern that he’d do it himself, and he did, working so hard to master the pain that by the time he’d finally eased the tattered sleeve from his wounded arm, she was certain he was going to faint. Most men she’d known would have. But he didn’t, and grudgingly she gave him credit for being able to back up his bravado.

“Now, this sorry rag I will leave to your man to put to rights,” she said as she took the blood-soaked coat from him.

With his face rigid with hard-won control, all Anthony could do was nod.

“Then what can I fetch you from the bar? We’ve brandy, sack, canary, whiskey, peary—”

“Rum.” The single word came out as a harsh growl, and Catie realized that his fainting was still a definite possibility. She hurried to the taproom, filled a tankard with more rum than water, and put it into his hand. “There you are, the best Rhode Island rum there is. At least your taste’s still Yankee even if your colors aren’t.”

He closed his eyes and drank deeply, and while he did, Catie ripped away the linen of his shirt’s sleeve. The ball had gone straight through his arm, and though the swelling and bruising made for a hideous-looking wound on both sides, it did not take her long to clean and cover it with an oiled poultice to help drain away the poisons.

Though the rum was strong and she worked as swiftly as she could, she knew she’d hurt him further. There wasn’t any way to avoid it. Yet not once had he cried out or complained, his only sign of pain the way his fingers whitened around the tankard of rum.

“You’re a fortunate man,” she said softly as she wrapped a linen bandage around and around his arm. “Another inch to the side, and the ball would have struck the bone.”

He sighed—an exhausted, drawn-out exhalation— now that the worst was past. “Another eight inches, and it would have found my heart. I’ll warrant that’s where the bastard was aiming, and lucky I was that my horse shied when he did.”

Automatically Catie’s glance shifted to the broad expanse of his chest, trying to imagine the heart beneath it stilled forever. For the first time, she noticed the little silver circle, unlike any official medal or badge she’d seen, pinned to the breast of his waistcoat.

“What is that?” she asked curiously. “I’d say it was perilously close to a stout Yankee eagle, save that it’s worn on a British uniform.”

“Yankee, yes, but a hawk, not an eagle.” He took another long drink from the tankard, grateful for the way the rum eased the pain. “It’s the Sparhawk mark that my grandfather used on all his dealings with the Indians. He gave the pin to me when I was a boy, and I’ve kept it since as a kind of charm. Not that it brought me much luck this night.”

“Oh, but it has,” said Catie quickly. “Think of how close this shot came to being mortal!”

“You believe in degrees of luck, then?” he asked wryly. “Too bad I was shot, but at least I wasn’t killed outright?”

He looked at her over the rim of the tankard. Now that the task of cleaning the wound was done, she was once again achingly aware of him as the man who had haunted her thoughts and dreams for so many years. But reality was so different from dreams: reality was the curling gold hair on the muscled forearm that rested so close to hers, reality was the stubble of beard above the lips that had once kissed hers, reality was the blood-spattered uniform that made him her enemy.

“You were riding when you were struck?” she asked, striving to turn her thoughts back to where they belonged. At least this might be something that would interest Jon.

He sighed ruefully, rubbing his palm across his forehead. “What an easy mark I must have been, too, there in the moonlight with the sea around me. I was south of the town, near a place called Damaris Point. Or so it was called once. Do you know it?”

She nodded, her throat constricting. Of course she knew it. Damaris Point was Sparhawk land, land that Jon would know even better. Could Jon have done this, then, aimed and shot to kill his own cousin?

Not his cousin, but a Tory officer. Not another Sparhawk, but the enemy. Remember that, Catie, remember, or else you’ll be lost once again!

“Ah, forgive me, Mrs. Hazard,” he said softly, misunderstanding her silence. “I forget myself. Of course you’d know Damaris Point. A good tavernkeep knows everything, doesn’t she? All the better to advise her guests, even the ones who don’t wish to be advised.”

Swiftly she turned away, busying herself with washing her hands. “You’re not forgetting yourself, Major, as much as speaking nonsense.”

“It wasn’t nonsense when you told me about my uncle,” he said. “I didn’t believe you, perhaps because I didn’t want to. But you were indeed right about his…his allegiances. I wonder, Mrs. Hazard, did you laugh at me behind my back as I left for the general’s headquarters?”

“Oh, no,” she said, remembering how she’d watched him leave, with Belinda’s picture clasped tight in her fingers. “However could I laugh at such a thing?”

“No?” He turned his head to look at her, his green eyes searching and his expression quizzical, and she almost gasped aloud. That expression, the angle of his jaw as he leaned his head to one side to study her, even the small hint of a smile that curved the corners of his mouth—all of it was so much like her dear little daughter that she could have wept.

No, Catie, not your daughter alone. His daughter, too, the daughter you made together…

“No,” she said, as firmly as she could. She pushed her stool away from him and rose, bundling the soiled linen in her hands. “You need your rest, Major. Shall I fetch Mr. Routt now to help you up the stairs to your room?”

“Stay a moment,” said Anthony softly, and before she could pull away he had covered her hand with his own. Such a little hand, he thought, for all the work it must do. She didn’t look like the stern tavernkeeper now, not with her pale eyes so full of sadness. What could make her so unhappy? Had she a lover fighting far from home, or was this still grief for her husband? In all the years he was a soldier, he’d never stayed in one place long enough for any woman to mourn his leaving with genuine regret. What would that be like, to have a woman like this one waiting and worrying for him?

She tugged her hand free, curling it against the other as if to protect it. From him, he thought grimly, from him, and wisely, too. He was here beneath her roof expressly to betray her, and he couldn’t have sworn that she wouldn’t do the same to him.

“It’s late, Major Sparhawk,” she said, avoiding his gaze as she restlessly fingered the heart-shaped locket. “You should rest.”

“Am I not permitted, then, to thank you for what you’ve done?”

She bent to bury the coals in the fireplace for the night, her face in profile against the glow of the dying fire, and once again he tried to think of where he’d known her before.

“I told you, sir, what I’ve done for you I’ve done for many others, as well. I’ve looked to your wound the best I can, but you must still guard against a fever or putrid discharge.”

He smiled, as much to himself as to her, as he accepted her rebuff. “You sound more like a surgeon than a tavernkeeper.”

“A good hostess must be many things to prosper,” she said, her expression carefully composed as she turned toward him again with the black iron shovel still in her hands. “If there’s nothing else you wish from me, sir, I’ll bid you good-night and fetch your Mr. Routt.”

His smile faded. “No, ma’am, that is all,” he said softly. “That is all.”

Chapter Four

Catie pulled her cloak more tightly around her shoulders, the cold air hitting her face as soon as she stepped out the kitchen door. In these short days of December, dawn was still a good two hours away, and the courtyard remained every bit as dark as it had been at midnight. She knelt to set the wooden trencher down, gently rapping it three times on the paving stones, the way she did every morning. But before the second tap the cats had already begun to appear, quick gray and black shadows racing toward the dish of scraps.

“There now, you greedy kits, there’s enough for everyone,” she scolded fondly as two of the cats tussled over a piece of turkey skin. “Don’t I always see that there’s plenty?”

She smiled wistfully, imagining how Belinda would have insisted on true justice, swatting the quarreling pair apart with a broom and awarding the turkey to a third, meeker cat instead. Fairness was very important to Belinda’s eight-year-old idea of how the world should be, almost as important as rising so early every morning to be here at her mother’s side.

Every morning, that is, until this week, thought Catie wretchedly. Nothing fair about that, or this war, either.

“You’ll be singin’ a different tune before this winter’s out, mistress, see if you won’t,” grumbled Hannah behind her, thumping a heavy iron kettle for emphasis. “You won’t be tossin’ good food out for those wicked beasts once all them filthy lobsterbacks pick this poor island clean.”

“And I say the British will be gone long before that happens,” said Catie as she came back inside. “Why should they stay? There’s no other army here for them to fight, and no American ships will be foolish enough to wander into a harbor full of British frigates. I say they’ll stay here only long enough to boast that they’ve conquered us properly, and then they’ll be off to fight somewhere else.”

Hannah scowled and shook her head, unconvinced. “Beggin’ pardon, mistress, but them soldiers are a mean, ugly lot o’ men, an’ I can see ‘em stayin’ here forever, just to be contrary.”

“Well then, Hannah, I’ll pray that you’re wrong and that I am right.” Though hadn’t she already done exactly that all this long sleepless night, praying that one red-coated officer in particular would leave? With a sigh, Catie pulled the hood of her cloak over her cap and looped the covered basket with the jam cakes over her arm. “If anyone asks for me, Hannah, you haven’t the faintest notion where I’ve gone.”

“But I do, mistress.” The cook’s scowl deepened into a frown of unhappy concern. “Anyone who knows you can guess you’re off t’see Belinda. Them jam cakes only make it certain.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Catie, “and I’ve no intention of telling you any more, one way or the other. That way, you can answer truthfully if you’re asked.”

Briskly she pulled on her mittens, hoping the gesture would mask the dismay she felt. Was she really so dreadfully transparent? Three days ago she’d been determined not to risk visiting her daughter for a fortnight, or at least until the situation here in town was more settled. But then, that had been before Anthony walked through that door, needing her help, needing her—

No. He had not sought her, nor had he wanted her assistance. She was the one who hadn’t been able to resist forcing her care, her concern, upon him. And he wasn’t Anthony. He was Major Sparhawk, a Tory officer cantoned in her home, an enemy she’d promised to spy upon. The sooner she remembered that and forgot everything else, the better for her, and Belinda, too.

She gave her head a little toss, trying to shake away the shameful memory. “You’ll have to make do with what we have in the cellar, Hannah, at least until the market opens again. Not that we’ll have that many guests—paying guests—at table. Still, I’ve every intention of returning to greet them all at dinner, and so you may tell them if they ask.”

But Hannah refused to let Catie change the subject. “I do wish you’d be takin’ one o’ the lads from the stable with you, mistress. The notion o’ a lady like you alone in the street with all them soldiers—well, it chills me t’ the quick. At least a pistol, mistress. Take one o’ the master’s old guns to protect yourself.”

“Oh, yes, and shoot myself for good measure. All the king’s men would quiver with terror at the sight of me with a gun, that’s for certain.” Catie smiled grimly. “This is my town, Hannah, my home, and my life, and none of it is King George’s affair. I refuse to let myself be cowed into hiding by a great pack of bullying Tories.”

Brave, patriotic words indeed, thought Catie proudly as she closed the door after her. But with each hurried step through the dark, deserted town, the bravery evaporated and the patriotic words faded into no more than an empty bluff as her heart pounded and her hands grew damp inside her mittens.

Patriot or not, she wasn’t a complete fool. She knew what she was doing was impulsive at best, sliding down the scale to out-and-out dangerous. She kept to the narrower side streets and hugged the edges of the houses and shops, where her footsteps would make less sound than on the paving stones, sometimes so close to the walls that her skirts brushed the clapboards and snagged against the bricks. Twice she heard men’s voices and a clanking of muskets that she guessed belonged to the British sentries, and both times she managed to dart through alleyways to avoid them.

By the time she finally reached the edge of town, dawn was a pale glow through the bare trees on the horizon, and Catie quickened her steps with a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of Newport. The little gossip she’d heard said that the British troops were concentrated in the town and around the harbor, and that they weren’t bothering with the more isolated farms scattered across the island.

But to be certain, she decided to leave the road and cut across the fields instead, and with her skirts bunched in one hand and the basket in the other, she climbed over the low stone wall that marked the boundary of the Arnold farm. The stubbled grass glistened with the heavy frost, crunching brittle beneath her feet as she cut out across the empty fields.

When at last she saw the smoke curling from the old stone chimney of the Pipers’ house, the sun had risen and stretched into a lemon-colored band across the pale winter sky. Catie’s fingers and toes were numb from the cold and her cheeks stung with it, but she was nearly running the final steps through the orchard, almost desperately eager to see her daughter again.

To her joy, Belinda was outside, helping Abigail Piper draw a bucket of water from the well. Catie called her name, and the little girl’s head rose at once, her face was so bright with the same excitement that Catie herself felt that she could have wept with joy. Only three days they’d been apart, but that was three days longer than they’d ever been separated before.

“Belinda, here!” she shouted, dropping the basket to the grass to wave her hands. “I’m over here!”

Without another glance at Abigail, Belinda began to run to Catie, her skirts flying high around her legs and her white linen cap falling back from her hair. She threw herself into Catie’s outstretched arms like a small, wriggling puppy, linking her arms tightly around her mother’s waist and burying her face against her breasts.

“Oh, Mama, you said you’d come, and you did!” she cried, her words tumbling over themselves with happiness. “Mrs. Piper said you wouldn’t, not for a fortnight at least, but I knew you wouldn’t leave me that long, and you didn’t! You didn’t!”

She shoved herself back, impatiently shaking her hair back from her face. “You have been feeding the cats, Mama, haven’t you?” she asked, her heart-shaped face turning serious. “You made certain the little ones got their share, too? The Pipers have cats here in the barn, but they’re so fat from mice that they pay no mind at all to the scraps I bring them.”

“Of course I feed them,” said Catie promptly. “I even give them extra to make up for their disappointment at not seeing you. Hannah scolded me for it.”

“Well, good.” Belinda beamed. “I mean to make Hannah cross at me, too, starting first thing tomorrow morning. Now I’ll go fetch my things from the house so we can leave.”

“Belinda, sweet, wait a moment.”

“Why should I?” The girl’s smile widened to show the gap where she’d lost her last baby tooth. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll be home. You’ll see, Mama, I kept everything neat in the bag, all folded tidy and neat, the way you did. I wouldn’t take anything out, even though Mrs. Piper said I should, because I knew I’d only have to put it back when you came for me.”

“Oh, Belinda,” murmured Catie, her heart sinking. “We must talk.”

How could she tell her the danger wasn’t past, that she’d only come to visit? Gently she reached out and took the girl’s rough little hand, smoothing back a lock of Belinda’s hair. Her daughter’s hair was so different from Catie’s own, not fine and silvery, but thick and gold and full of sunshine.

Her father’s hair, thought Catie wretchedly. Her father’s hair, and his green eyes, with their impossibly long lashes, and the same bowed curve of his smile, too, all of it unmistakably Anthony’s. Lord, was it only her shame that made her find his mark everywhere on her daughter’s innocent face, or would others see the resemblance, too?

“I can’t take you home, lamb,” she said as gently as she could. “Not just yet, though I promise—”

“But why not, Mama?” cried Belinda, stunned enough that her voice squeaked upward. “You said it wouldn’t be long. You said I’d only have to stay here until Newport was safe again!”

“And it’s still not, Belinda, not yet,” said Catie hurriedly, hating herself for the pain she saw in her daughter’s eyes. “You’re much better off here with the Pipers, away from all the trouble in town.”

“But I don’t care, Mama,” said Belinda urgently. She was trying so hard to be brave and not cry, her fingers clutching around Catie’s. “I don’t care about the Pipers and I don’t care about the trouble. I want to go with you. I want to go home!”

Catie sighed unhappily. “I’m sorry, love, but I can’t take you just yet. You’re much safer here. The town’s too full of redcoats, hundreds and hundreds of them, plus Hessians—Germans—besides. Why, there’s even a good score of Britishers in our own house, thumping up and down the front stairs as if it’s their private parade ground.”

But Belinda scarcely heard her, her face crumpling with fear and disappointment and resentment, too, as she jerked her hand away from Catie. “You don’t care what happens to me, not really! You say you want to keep me away from the soldiers, but there’s been soldiers here, too, bunches of them, and you don’t even care!”

Catie looked at her sharply. “Soldiers here, Belinda? When?”

“Yesterday noon, Mrs. Hazard.” Abigail Piper joined them, the musket slung across her back in grim counterpoint to her welcoming smile. The Pipers had three sons serving in the south with General Greene. Abigail often vowed she would have gone for a soldier herself if Owen would let her, and somehow Catie didn’t doubt it. “A whole party of the nasty devils came poking about.”

“Oh, Belinda, forgive me, I didn’t know.” Gently Catie drew her daughter back into her arms, and with a little sigh Belinda pressed her head against Catie’s side.

“She was safe enough, Mrs. Hazard,” said Abigail, shifting the musket butt from her shoulder to the ground, leaning on the long barrel like a staff. “And brave as can be into the bargain. We were both sick abed and powerfully ill, weren’t we, Belinda?”

Catie frowned, slipping her hand beneath Belinda’s chin to feel if she was warm. “Ill?”

“We were only playing, Mama.” Belinda sniffed loudly, and she smiled in spite of herself. “When the redcoats tried to come into the house, Mr. Piper told them that Mrs. Piper and me were sick.”

Abigail chuckled. “Nothing an army fears more than a good dose of smallpox sweeping through the camp,” she said cheerfully. “Owen met them at the door, all harried and long-faced, while Belinda and I lay beneath the coverlets upstairs and moaned as if our last hour had come. We had our faces all dabbed with flour-paste sores, too, in case they dared come peek. Not that they did. Lord, you should have seen them turn tail and run, Mrs. Hazard!”

“But they could come back.” Protectively Catie tightened her arms around Belinda. The Pipers’ ruse had been a clever one, more clever than any she’d have invented herself—in peacetime the Pipers had been smugglers, accustomed to outwitting the authorities, which was one of the reasons Catie had trusted Belinda to them in the first place—but still she couldn’t help half considering taking Belinda back with her to Newport after all.