Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (44 page)

Minutes
passed.
 
Music and crowd-noise from the
dance flitted, disembodied, out to them.
 
Damp seeped into Helen's feet and ankles, and dew clasped her cheeks.

Hannah clutched
her forearm and pointed.
 
A man of
medium height darted across the trail from behind a tree and into their
campsite carrying a covered lantern.
 
Helen stared, trying to resolve more of his features before he ducked
into her tent.
 
Cocked hat over dark
hair, another redcoat — but not of the Seventeenth Light dragoons.

Lantern light
blossomed within her tent.
 
Hannah
whispered, "He's thieving from you!"

"Be
still.
 
Watch."

Soon the light
extinguished, and the man emerged.
 
As
he retied tent flaps, motion on the trail caught Helen's gaze: a lone woman
strolling south.
 
Helen held her breath.
 
Unaware that the woman walked his way, the
man shot from the campsite out onto the road.
 
They collided.

The woman
squeaked in fright, and he grunted in surprise before grasping her upper
arm.
 
"Madam, I do apologize.
 
I didn't see you out here.
 
Are you injured?"

Yorkshire
accent
, Helen thought.

"No, but
you gave me quite a scare."
 
That
was Margaret's voice.
 
"I'm looking
for a friend of mine.
 
She might have
passed this way shortly before me with her maid.
 
Did you see her?"

Helen's eyes
widened.
 
Margaret was looking for
her
.
 
Fairfax had sent her after them.

The man
released Margaret.
 
"I did
not.
 
Excuse me —"

"Say, I
know you.
 
Stafford is your name."

"You've
mistaken me for someone else, madam."
 
He sounded annoyed.
 
"Good
night."

Margaret
snapped her fingers.
 
"Camden, in
August, at the Leaping Stag.
 
You
questioned me about Lieutenants Neville and Fairfax, and that young woman who'd
lived in the inn with us."
 
Margaret offered a deep-throated laugh.
 
"Alas, I didn't get
your
kind often enough.
 
Just wanting to talk, you know, Mr. Stafford
— no, that's not your name.
 
It's
Stoddard.
 
Lieutenant Stoddard."

"You're
looking for two women, correct?
 
Now I
remember.
 
I saw them walking south not
a minute earlier."
 
The dark-haired
man twisted and pointed.
 
"If you
hurry, I'm sure you'll catch them."

"Thank
you, Mr. Stoddard."
 
Satisfaction
purred in Margaret's voice.
 
"There's jollification and merriment in the north field.
 
Do join us.
 
I'll dance with you."
 
She
curtsied and hurried south.

Lieutenant
Stoddard sprinted across the trail and vanished.
 
Helen doubted he'd turn up at the dance.
 
At least now she knew who "S,"
"F," and "N" were.
 
Why was Neville exchanging secret messages about Fairfax with this
Lieutenant Stoddard?

She insisted
upon another visit to her tent before they returned and, with Hannah waiting
outside, confirmed that the uncoded message was missing from the second
compartment.
 
"What did he
steal?" muttered Hannah while Helen tied up the tent.

"Nothing,
just as I expected.
 
You saw nothing,
Hannah, nor did you hear anything, unless I ask you to remember what you
witnessed."

The blonde
lifted her chin.
 
"Yes, madam.
 
I saw and heard nothing.
 
We returned to your tent to fetch your
fan."

Helen popped
open the fan.
 
"Precisely."

They reentered
the festivities through a cluster of servants and slaves beyond the sidelines
who swayed, clapped hands, and stomped feet to the music.
 
Helen waved off Jonathan's "Where have
you been?" expression and sneaked around the perimeter, spite curling her
lips at the thought of Fairfax sending Margaret after her.
 
A fiddler botched a measure, and sweat
beaded foreheads of dancers.
 
The
current tune was the final one before the break.

Fairfax's
scrutiny of the crowd was so intense that she startled a jump from him when she
sidled up next to him.
 
"My
goodness, it's warm after you've danced a few tunes."
 
She fanned herself.

He
scowled.
 
"Where the devil have you
been for half an hour?"

"Half an
hour?
 
Poppycock.
 
Hannah and I slipped out for five minutes so
I could fetch my fan.
 
Hmm.
 
It looks as though Margaret isn't here.
 
Rotten luck for you."

"Why
should I care?"

"Earlier,
she rushed past my tent toward the lower camp.
 
My impression was that she knew exactly where to find entertainment
there far more appealing than waiting on
your
favor."

The vacuum
Fairfax created when he departed sizzled with his wrath.
 
Watching him thread his way south out of the
crowd, Helen allowed the wicked smile full sway across her face and murmured,
"What a shrew you can be, Helen."
 
Perhaps next time, Margaret would employ discretion before agreeing to
spy for Fairfax.

Chapter Forty-Four

THIRTY-SEVEN
PEOPLE ATTENDED the chaplain's sermon on drizzly Christmas morning.
 
The faint headache pressing Helen's temples
led her to conclude that everyone else was too hung over.
 
She'd rather not have left her tent, except
that some Londoners might find coverage of a Christmas service picturesque.

Officers,
including Fairfax, comprised much of the congregation.
 
Considering his religious persuasion, Helen
wondered how many other officers were just putting in time on the Anglican
Church's calendar.
 
How Tarleton managed
to drag himself to the sermon after his revelry the night before amazed
her.
 
Also, he appeared to be paying
more than lip service to the chaplain's message.
 
Remarkable, in light of the rebels' attempts to depict him a
godless heathen.

Tuesday morning
the twenty-sixth, an express rider galloped in from Winnsborough.
 
Within a quarter hour, intelligence penned
by Cornwallis swept camp like fire in a drought-stricken forest, confirming
earlier rumors.
 
Six days before,
General Greene had marched the bulk of the Continental Army to the Cheraws in
South Carolina, about fifty miles northeast of Camden.
 
And General Morgan had already crossed the
Broad River with militia and William Washington's cavalry.

The logic of
why Greene divided his army, inferior to that of Cornwallis, into two smaller,
even more inferior forces, eluded Helen.
 
She and Jonathan spread his map of the Carolinas open upon the table
and, with the Pearsons watching, positioned pebbles to mark Crown forces spread
in an imposing arc from George Town to Ninety Six, as well as the armies of
Greene and Morgan.
 
Jonathan stepped
back to study the big picture.
 
"Interesting.
 
Very
interesting."

Roger
laughed.
 
"We'll grind them to
stubble if they push south."

"Perhaps."
 
Jonathan rested the tip of one forefinger on
Greene's pebble and the other on Morgan's and dragged them downward at a
diagonal to converge on and pinch the Cornwallis pebble in Winnsborough like
two halves of a tongs.

Helen's
eyebrows rose.
 
"Jonathan, if
you
can see that as an option —"

"Then
Cornwallis sees it, too."
 
His eyes
twinkled.
 
"You'd hoped to write
action into your feature, my dear.
 
You
may soon get it."

In the
marketplace that morning, more sutlers, peddlers, and merchants had descended
upon the camp and opened for business, divining that off-duty legionnaires were
willing to splurge.
 
Unmistakable, the
bright eyes of legionnaires, their swaggers and rough laughter.
 
After a month of inaction, the men thirsted
to be about their business, subduing insurrection and ensuring the safety of
their homes.

A milliner was
doing brisk business among the officers' ladies, and Helen spotted Margaret
posing before a mirror with a stylish hat upon her head.
 
Camp women crowded three peddlers: a
paunchy, loquacious fellow who brandished bolts of fabric, a redhead with dried
herbs to sell, and a third hawking well-cured deer hides.
 
As fast as they could sell their
merchandise, their assistant, a gangly, hunched man with a gray beard and
filthy, floppy hat, was there to replace a satchel of herbs or a hide or some
fabric.

Entertained by
the haggling, Helen's regard returned to the old man.
 
Something about him seemed familiar.
 
His hands.
 
They bothered
her.
 
Odd.
 
They weren't the knobby, vein-protruding hands of an old man, but
those of a man much younger.

He angled his
head up long enough for gray eyes to become visible beyond the brim of the hat,
his gaze piercing straight into her.
 
She drew a breath of sheer horror.
 
Hot and cold spun her.

Oh, no, dear
gods, no — David St. James.

"Mrs.
Chiswell, good morning!"

She jumped what
felt like a foot in the air before pivoting to spot Tarleton dismount, swan
feathers aflutter, buttons and braid agleam, and strut for her with the playful
grin she'd seen a great deal of during Yule.
 
Handsome, handsome.
 
Her back to
David, she felt his stare incinerate a hole through her cloak and gown and
burrow to her heart.
 
You will send
for me immediately, won't you, if St. James's son pays you a visit in camp?

Tarleton caught
her hand and kissed it.
 
"God's
foot, you've lost the color in your face.
 
You aren't going to faint, are you?
 
Whose ghost have you just seen?
 
Not mine, I trust."

"Oh,
goodness, no, you — you startled me, sir."
 
David was close enough to hear the exchange.
 
She tried to withdraw her hand, but Tarleton
had a good grip on it, so she gestured with the other hand.
 
"Your lady's over there in the
milliner's.
 
She's found herself an
adorable hat —"

"Splendid.
 
Ride with me again."
 
One eyebrow wiggled.

Half-request,
half-command, whole double entendre.
 
Yes, he'd surmounted the sibling issue, or perhaps Fairfax had dispensed
with her cover as his sister.
 
Helen
worked her mouth but couldn't get a word out.
 
A kind man whose love she'd never been able to return watched them with
his heart breaking in two.
 
And Fairfax
was dancing
all
his poppets on the stage that moment.

Her hesitation
invigorated Tarleton.
 
He jerked his
head in the direction of the milliner's stall.
 
"Let's have a look at those hats."

Oh, no, now he
was trying to buy her.
 
"Er, what
day did you have in mind for the ride?"

Eyes
glittering, he closed in.
 
"Day
after the morrow.
 
Three o'clock.
 
Supper afterwards, in my marquee."
 
His thumb massaged her fingers.

Was he
dismissing Morgan's army, due north?
 
What invincible arrogance.
 
Conquest of any sort must be such fun for him.
 
If there was a wager out as to how soon he'd boot Daniel Morgan
in the arse, there was a wager out that he'd bed Helen Chiswell, too.

She reassembled
her brains and attempted to pull her hand away, again without success.
 
Maybe she could arrange to fall ill the day
after the morrow.
 
Maybe a blizzard
would dump a foot of snow on the Carolinas.
 
"Those rebels to the north may decide to attack by then."

"We shall
trounce them, and I shall return for our ride."

Agamemnon,
Odysseus, Hercules.
 
From his
expression, her dithering heightened his interest and increased his stakes in
the game.
 
He leaned forward, smiling in
anticipation, ready to parry her next objection with ease.

Helen knew with
whom Margaret would be occupied during that supper.
 
The only question was whether the four of them would dance a
double
pas de deux
in Tarleton's marquee later, but that was too much
for her mind to fathom with David privy to the whole earthy mess.
 
"A ride, then.
 
Perhaps supper, but I may be too fatigued by
then."
 
That gave her forty-eight
hours to concoct an eloquent refusal of the enterprise that would offend no one
except Fairfax.