Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (42 page)

His eyes
watered in the light.
 
"I feel
strong loyalty to the king."

"Admirable,
idealistic.
 
Here's the reality.
 
Hundreds of legionnaires in camp have
undergone months of training.
 
You have
not.
 
Many are battle-hardened.
 
You are not.
 
If the Legion is attacked, odds are great that you, as a raw
recruit, will be one of the first to die.

"How is
that more important than giving Hannah the security and love she needs?
 
Bringing a child into this world and helping
it thrive and grow is a far greater challenge to a man than stepping out onto a
battlefield and pointing his musket at an enemy."
 
Sourness dripped into her tone.
 
"Could it be that's why some men run
away and play soldier — because they're not quite grown up, not up to the task
of raising a family?"

A snarl rippled
over his lips.
 
"Oh, now, see here
—"

"Exercise
your choice to leap out of my employment into the waiting arms of the Legion,
and they'll gladly install you on the front line.
 
But before you do that, think hard on prior promises you made to
Charles and Hannah.
 
What does the
Legion give you that you lack within yourself?
 
What defines your integrity?"

She returned to
the table spread with breakfast.
 
Jonathan bowed.
 
"Porridge
and toast with coffee, madam."
 
He
pulled a bench over for her.

Shoulders
slumped, Roger passed behind Jonathan to his tent.
 
"Keep food warm for the Pearsons, Jonathan," she
murmured.
 
She seated herself, and at
the smell of the meal, snatched a buttered piece of toast and tore into it with
her teeth.

"Yes,
madam."
 
Jonathan's electric blue
eyes twinkled.

***

Half an hour
later, the Pearsons emerged from their tent.
 
When Helen peeped out at them, Roger was serving Hannah breakfast.
 
Helen returned to her writing.
 
Ross, who'd drilled Roger on the Santee
Road, showed up to remind the locksmith about a practice.
 
Roger declined to attend.
 
Helen exhaled relief.
 
It felt good to have a united team again.

While the men
cleaned up after breakfast, the women combed market for a desk.
 
The tanner caught Helen's eye and shook his
head when she passed his stall.
 
He
hadn't seen a desk.
 
No desk would
appear before Christmas Day, but she'd keep looking.

She overtook a
gaggle of officers' wives and bade them good morning, fancying a certain
reserve about them.
 
True, she hadn't
spent time in their company since Woodward's and had yet to visit the marquee
set up at Daniel's for their convenience, so just after noon, she headed there
with Hannah to embroider.

Coolness from
the ladies met her when she entered.
 
They stopped talking to stare while she settled.
 
When their natter resumed, whispered, she
realized they had been gossiping.
 
About
her.

In Wilmington,
wealthy women had kept a discreet distance from her after her fortune turned,
but the Legion's officers weren't from high society.
 
They were wives of middle-class farmers, artisans, and
merchants.
 
Helen ignored them.

Margaret
sashayed over.
 
"May I see the
piece you're embroidering?
 
Daisies, how
lovely."
 
She whispered,
"Yesterday's incident with the rank and file."

"Why,
thank you."
 
Helen pasted on her
polite smile.
 
Such stupid, small-minded
sows.

Margaret left
the marquee, and the buzz among the ladies elevated, availing Helen of snatches
of conversation.
 
"Unnatural."
 
"A
woman her age still widowed."
 
"No children."
 
"Not with
my
husband."
 
Twice she nudged Hannah to head off a scowl on the younger woman's
face.
 
From Hannah's expression, she
would have delighted in giving the women a piece of her mind.

One of
Tarleton's batmen entered the marquee and glanced around.
 
When he spotted Helen, he strode over and
inclined his head.
 
The hens
hushed.
 
"Mrs. Chiswell, good
afternoon.
 
Colonel Tarleton requests
the honor of your company for a ride to hounds at one-thirty."

She heard her
own surprise echoed in the silence of the wives and imagined them collecting
their jaws off their laps.
 
"One-thirty."

"In about
half an hour, madam.
 
My apologies for
short notice.
 
I couldn't locate you
earlier."

Stares reigned
among the wives.
 
Questions crowded
Helen's head.
 
She'd wanted the chance
to exercise Calliope.
 
Whatever
Tarleton's motive for requesting her company, it offered her another excellent
opportunity to interview him, even to sketch him, so she'd take her desk in the
canvas carrier she'd hastily sewn for it.
 
But she mustn't provide more grist for the gossip mill.
 
"Can suitable mounts be found for my
three attendants by one-thirty?"

He inclined his
head again.
 
"We shall make it
so."

"Very
well, I accept."
 
The batman bowed
and strode out, and Helen and Hannah scooped up their belongings.

As soon as they
left the marquee, conversation exploded from the women inside.
 
One woman's petulance rose above the
babble.
 
"He's never asked for
my
company on a ride!"

Helen smirked.

***

Across rolling
fields, Tarleton jabbered about London's theater, the political scene, and what
Helen suspected was a "ladies'" version of his escapades at Oxford,
where he'd studied law.
 
He timed their
return for tea, his talk of horses and hounds, held still long enough for her
to sketch him, and seemed pleased with the outcome.
 
Then he capped off the afternoon with a gallant kiss upon her
hand.

Exceptional
fodder for her feature story.
 
Guaranteed, a solid block of writing time.
 
On the walk back to their campsite, she chatted with Jonathan and
the Pearsons.
 
However had she managed
to obtain an uninterrupted afternoon with busy Colonel Tarleton?
 
What good fortune!
 
Journalists on both sides of the Atlantic would steam with envy.

Fairfax was
waiting at their campsite with Kennelly.
 
The Pearsons and Jonathan filed past him.
 
The lieutenant bowed to Helen.
 
Pleased to have the Spanish desk concealed in canvas, she quipped,
"Have you been waiting long?"
 
Whatever his business was, she hoped he'd waited quite awhile.

His gaze
wandered the length of her, and that faint smile permeated his expression.
 
"How was your ride with Colonel
Tarleton?"

"Very
informative.
 
He —"
 
Comprehension smacked her.
 
"
You
arranged it."
 
So she'd have no lack of material to write
about and not feel inclined to sneak back to the camp women.
 
Plus, her absence had given him ample time
to search their tents.

Fairfax
shrugged.
 
"He leaped at my
suggestion with such enthusiasm that it was obvious he'd been pondering exactly
how to initiate the opportunity on his own."

Fairfax studied
each of his subjects until he knew the exact chords to strike to make them
vibrate and dance.
 
A composer
experimenting with harmonics, he'd played her all along the Santee Road.
 
He manipulated Tarleton over her with such
finesse that the colonel, a renowned womanizer, wasn't even cognizant of
it.
 
How that could possibly bode well
for the Legion, she couldn't imagine.
 
Her premonition from the morning resurfaced, climbed into her throat.
 
"Something horrible is going to happen
to the Legion," she muttered.

His study of
her sharpened.
 
His humor vanished.
 
"What was that?"

Embarrassment
flooded her at having thought aloud.
 
"Nothing."

"Colonel
Tarleton is Cornwallis's finest cavalry commander.
 
What except good can happen to the Legion?"
 
He gripped her upper arm, expression intense.
 
"You've received intelligence
otherwise."

"Bah!"
 
She shook him off and lowered her
voice.
 
"You're manipulating
Tarleton over me."

He
relaxed.
 
"Hardly.
 
Unless you dosed him with aloofness, he'll
likely inquire after your company again.
 
As I commented once before, you're a delectable piece of
work."
 
His gaze strolled over her,
and she remembered the way he and Badley had ogled her in the publisher's study
after exercise had brought color to her cheeks and lips.
 
"You're welcome, darling," he whispered.
 
After inclining his head, he walked off,
Kennelly following.

Chapter Forty-Two

SATURDAY THE
TWENTY-THIRD, no military rumors circulated, no desk appeared in market, and
Helen avoided officers' wives.
 
She'd
stumbled across a smaller secret compartment in the desk the night before.
 
The entire day she wrestled with the urge to
send an anonymous note to Tarleton: "Beware.
 
Fairfax manipulates you."
 
But there were far easier ways to commit suicide.

The morning of
the twenty-fourth, day of the Yule celebration, she awoke to the aroma of
roasted hog and root vegetables, slow-cooked the night before in pits.
 
Mid-morning, while she was reinforcing
stitches on the canvas bag she'd sewn for her desk, Hannah came to the door of
her tent.
 
"A message from the
lower camp, madam.
 
A tanner says an
item you were looking for in market has arrived, and he's secured it for
you."

"I'll be
right out."
 
Astounded, Helen
jammed her sewing kit together and shoved the desk in the bag.
 
Shawls thrown on, they hastened for the
lower camp.

Camden and
Ninety Six were close enough to receive Neville's express request for a desk,
but Helen doubted that Ninety Six commanded a ready stock of pretty, portable
desks.
 
Even assuming one could be found
in Camden was a stretch.
 
If Treadaway
appeared in camp that day, she'd know who had planted the desk for Fairfax to
find.

The tanner
turned business over to his assistant as soon as he spotted her.
 
All smiles, he led her to the booth of a
pewterer where, to their surprise, they were in time to see the pewterer hand a
portable mahogany desk over to Fairfax.

"Hullo,
what do you think you're doing?"
 
Scowling, the tanner stalked over to the pewterer and shoved him in the
chest.
 
"I paid you to hold that
desk for
my
customer, not to steal my money and sell the desk to
your
customer, you greedy bastard!"

"Watch
your tongue, cheap bugger."
 
The
pewterer shoved the tanner back.
 
"I'll tell everyone here about them inferior hides you was passing
around beginning of the month."

The tanner lunged
for him.
 
Fists swung.
 
Patrons, Helen and Hannah included, rushed
from the marquee.
 
The provost's men
stormed in and hauled the merchants apart, but they kept threatening each
other.
 
Helen peered around the fracas
to discover that Fairfax had never left the marquee.
 
Unperturbed, he inspected the desk with the same concentration
that he'd lavished on her broken window and journal.
 
She circled the crowd to him.

He didn't pause
his inspection.
 
"Darling, look
what I found."

"Wrong.
 
I found it.
 
The tanner set it aside for me.
 
You owe me seven and a half shillings."

"Wrong.
 
I owe you nothing."
 
He turned the desk upside down.
 
"Do you suppose it contains a false
bottom?"

"You son
of a jackal."

He
snickered.
 
"So I've been called
before.
 
Something tells me that this
isn't the desk for me, although I shall purchase it anyway, just to be
certain."

She flounced
from the marquee, poor pregnant Hannah jogging to keep up with her.
 
Too well, Helen knew what a dancing poppet
felt like, and she'd grown weary of it.

Closer to her
campsite, Fairfax rode up, dismounted, and handed over the reins to Kennelly so
he could walk beside her.
 
"Ire
brings such a magnificent flush to your face."
 
She kept walking and looked straight ahead.
 
"I suppose this means you won't dance
with me tonight."
 
Not even if he
was the only man on the dance ground, which he wouldn't be.
 
She continued to ignore him.
 
"I'm not sure how much you agreed to
pay the tanner, but he was delighted over the nine pence I gave him.
 
I never expected such effort on your part to
locate the desk.
 
You've redeemed
yourself greatly in my sight."