A Marked Man

promises—” Mrs. Sandhayes broke off, started back for a moment as Abigail poured out the un-Sabbatical tea: “Chamomile?”

“Would you prefer mint?” Abigail inquired serenely. “I know some people think mint is rather everyday.”

“Oh, dear me, I completely forgot.” She laughed, the silvery sweetness accompanied by a dismissive wave. “The notorious tea fracas! Don’t tell me you subscribe to the boycott, Mrs. Adams? La, such a to-do dear Lucy makes of it, and all just to annoy her Papa, as girls will—especially girls whose Papas insist they marry dreadful little snirps like Sir Jonathan, nihil nisi bonum and all that, of course . . . Please do read Miss Lucy’s letter.”

The outer note enclosed a thicker inner packet, sealed but unaddressed. A blotted scribble implored:

Mrs. Adams,

Got your note! What luck that you’ll see Harry! I beg you, put this into his hand! Philomela and I will go walking on the Common Tuesday 10 o’clock . . . I beg of you, meet us there, away from prying ears! I am consumed with envy—will you go disguised as a boy?

Lucy

William Shakespeare, Abigail reflected, had a great deal to answer for.

“The poor child.” Mrs. Sandhayes heaved a deep sigh. “I positively weep for her, but of course one understands one can’t have one’s daughter marrying a bookseller. But I’ll swear the boy is no fortune hunter.”

“Of course he isn’t!”

“No of course about it, my dear Mrs. Adams.” Mrs. Sandhayes took a sip of the chamomile tea, politely suppressed a grimace, and set the cup aside. “Mr. Fluckner’s ships, cargoes, and property in Boston are worth a hundred and twenty thousand pounds if they’re worth thruppence, not to speak of proprietary rights to over a million acres in Maine, wherever Maine is”—she laughed again, dismissively—“once the title is confirmed. It has a very French sound, don’t you think? And say what you will about the French, they may be our enemies and Catholics and all that, but they cut a dress in a way that no Englishwoman ever could, not if she lived to be a hundred. I had a mantua-maker in London—”

“And I’ll swear”—Abigail returned to the subject under consideration—“that Lucy hasn’t formed an attachment to Mr. Knox simply to disoblige her father.”

“What? Oh, dear, no.” Mrs. Sandhayes folded her lovely hands. “I think that’s why dear Lucy was so taken with Mr. Knox: because they’d met half a dozen times, and talked of books and battles and horses and dogs, before Harry ever knew who she was or that the man who won her should be rich for life. That he was taken with her, she said, and not with her dowry, which is a great deal more than could be said about Sir Jonathan Cottrell. It was really very sweet.”

“’Twill be a good deal less sweet if Harry is taken for a military trial in Halifax and hanged for it,” replied Abigail grimly. “Was Sir Jonathan wealthy?”

“My dear Mrs. Adams, the King does not have penniless friends.” Disconcertingly after her babble of mantua-makers and fashionable preachers, a flash of worldly wisdom glinted from the Englishwoman’s green eyes. Even with the last of the evening light fading from the windows, and the gentler glow of candles and the parlor hearth concealing the details of the day, Abigail could see that however fashionable the cut of Mrs. Sandhayes’s clothing, the fabric itself was faded, and the lace and ribbons that decked her bony bosom either clumsily refurbished or repaired. At the meeting-house that morning Lucy had spoken of her chaperone as her social equal, her mother’s “friend who is staying with us,” but now it occurred to Abigail to wonder if this were not simply a polite fiction. Had Mrs. Sandhayes delayed borrowing her hostess’s carriage to deliver Lucy’s message until a time when she knew that the light would be kinder to a gown that had seen better days? The pearl earrings and the Medusa-head cameo at her throat were old and probably valuable—this was a woman who wouldn’t wear trash. But they were also the jewelry she’d had on earlier in the day.

“It’s surprising,” the woman went on, “the number of people who subscribe to the belief that just because a man has a respectable fortune, he isn’t going to pursue a woman with a larger one. I use the word pursue advisedly,” she added drily. “Sir Jonathan adhered to the Kiss-Me-Kate School of wooing and seemed to think that a girl of Lucy’s boisterous temperament would find violence of conduct as well as sentiment appealing.”

Abigail’s thoughts snapped back from consideration about who it was who might have left Margaret Sandhayes penniless, and said, “Toad.”

“Well, to be perfectly accurate, my dear Mrs. Adams, weasel would be le mot plus bon—though it is not a terribly nice thing to be saying about either toads or weasels, poor things. A little spindle-shanked fellow with a voice like a mouse at the bottom of a barrel and a nose like one, too, always aquiver for what would benefit him. Or for a well- turned ankle, I’m afraid, though he managed to convince Mr. Fluckner of his respectability. Do you make this marmalade yourself? You colonials are positively astonishing! Please tell me the oranges were smuggled from Spain! I must be able to write my friends in Bath and tell them I’ve supped on smuggled goods with a patriot who refuses tea on political principle! La, I shall be the envy of Abbey Crescent!”

“Was Miss Fluckner aware that her father was going to announce her engagement to Cottrell at the Governor’s ball?”

“Dear, me, yes, and such an uproar as there was over it! With Miss Lucy vowing one moment she wouldn’t go at all, and the next, that she’d slap Sir Jonathan’s face before all Boston and spring up on a chair and denounce him for a blackguard, and Mr. Fluckner bawling at the top of his lungs he’d throw her into the street for a disobedient trull, and her poor little sisters crying! Like a bear-garden, it was! I suggested that the best thing she could do would be to speak to her host about the matter when they arrived, for the dear Governor would know better how to get ’round Mr. Fluckner than poor Lucy, and he’d never have permitted the announcement in his house against her will, you know. Such a gentlemanly man—not at all what one expects in the colonies—and perfectly good ton! Shocking, how the lower orders here have treated him!”

“Perhaps they don’t care for the spectacle of every paying position in the colony being handed to members of His Excellency’s family.”

“I don’t see what business it is of theirs.” Mrs. Sandhayes frowned. “Though come to think of it, that’s just what Lucy is always saying.” She considered the matter for all of about a second and a half with the expression of one trying to make out an inscription in Chinese, then shrugged. “Well, however it was, the Governor, I understand, agreed to intercept Sir Jonathan the moment he stepped into the house and speak to him—”

“I thought Sir Jonathan was the Governor’s guest?”

“And so he was.” The tall woman’s hand strayed toward the teacup, then she glanced at its despised contents and returned the hand to her lap. Because of the boycott on British tea—and the truly shocking expense of the Dutch tea that Mr. John Hancock and others smuggled in defiance of the King’s efforts to control colonial trade—Abigail had poured out warmed cider for John and Sam rather than break the Sabbath by the making of coffee, but with water kept hot in the kitchen boiler, a tisane was also possible. Peppermint and chamomile were poor substitutes for bohea and oolong, as far as Abigail was concerned, yet annoyance flashed through her at her guest’s politely veiled contempt. “But Sir Jonathan had been gone for ten days in Maine—Where is Maine?”

“’ Tis the northern district of the colony that borders on Canada,” Abigail explained. “’ Tis where we get most of our ship timber from. There’s very little there beyond that. Why Sir Jonathan would go there to search for ‘rebels and traitors, ’ as Lucy said, and not return ’til the very eve of his own engagement-party—”

“But without Sir Jonathan’s journey to Maine, there would be no engagement-party, you see.” The chaperone cocked her head, beaky as an absurdly crested bird’s in the elaborate rolls and poufs of her heavily powdered hair. “Apparently there’s some sort of question about title to part of the lands, and Sir Jonathan had agreed, when he returned to England, to speak to the King about settling it in Mr. Fluckner’s favor, if Mr. Fluckner agreed to the match with Lucy. But Sir Jonathan insisted upon seeing the lands—since a portion of them will comprise the bulk of dear Lucy’s marriage-portion—to see what he’d be up against, I daresay. It seems there are tenants living on them that nobody wants there, what are they called? Oh, I know—squatters! Such names you