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May arrived with a welcome warmth and a profusion of flowers. The village wives, both Dutch and English, took great pride in their gardens. Yet no matter how abundant the blooms or how lovingly tended, not a single garden could come close to comparing with that of Ona Schoonmaker.
Ona's Holland tulips grew larger and brighter than anyone's, nodding noble scarlet heads in rows that flanked the broad shell walkway leading to the house, the advance guard for an army of yellow daffodils and white trillium lilies bringing up the rear.
Few visitors could resist lingering a moment or two to drink in the bright blaze of color, to savor the sweet fragrance that filled the air, before making their way to the door. Fallon was no exception. At last she tore herself away, hurrying up the walk to ply the iron knocker that graced the top half of the heavy Dutch door.
A few seconds later the door opened, and Vrouw Schoonmaker's round face appeared. "Fallon! How nice it is to see you. Come in, come in! I was just about to put the kettle on."
"I hope I'm not intruding."
"What? Intruding? Never!" The Dutchwoman raised her brows and peered intently at the basket slung over Fallon's arm. "What's dis you have here?"
"I found some clothing in a trunk in the attic and thought the children might like to have a look. The clothes are a trifle old-fashioned, but sturdily sewn." She handed the basket to Ona and asked, "How are the children, Ona? And Greetje? I remember them all in my prayers each night, but it feels so inadequate a gesture. I wish there were more that I could do."
"Talking with God is never inadequate, child. And whether you know it or not, your prayers have been answered."
Fallon glanced sharply up at her friend. "Has there been news of Jan?"
Ona shook her head, but her lips were smiling.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Fallon said.
"You will; now, come." Ona Schoonmaker led Fallon into the large, warm kitchen, whose interior was dark, compared to the brilliant day outside. At the table by the window sat Killian, pipe in hand, and Greetje. Alida hovered near her mother, darting surreptitious glances at the tall man who lingered in the shadows near the hearth. "Behold," Ona said with a flash of her dimples and a flourish of a plump hand in the man's direction, "our own ministering angel."
A dark angel, Fallon thought, standing silent sentinel over the Schoonmakers' humble kitchen. Conscious of the others watching, Fallon inclined her head deferentially. "Reverend Mattais, I didn't see you standing there."
His gaze, like pale green fire, flickered over Fallon. It was oddly caressing, from the crown of her bright head to the toes of her leather slippers peeping from beneath the hem of her skirt.
There was heat in that penetrating gaze, and heat bred heat. Fallon felt it rise from her toes into her trim ankles, creeping slowly, languidly, up her shapely legs and beyond. It curled and coiled in her belly until she unconsciously touched a hand to her waist and he slowly smiled.
"Mistress Deane," he murmured in reply. "What a pleasant surprise."
Pleasant for him, perhaps, Fallon thought. His presence, as always, was potent, and she felt it more keenly than she liked to admit, even to herself. It was difficult for her to look at him and fail to notice the air of menace that seemed so much a part of him, hard to banish the memory of a brace of lethal weapons lying on a stack of pristine linens in the rectory armoire, impossible to stem the flow of questions that his little inconsistencies raised—and that doubtless were destined to go unanswered.
Fallon tore her gaze from him and turned abruptly to Ona, who watched the exchange with ill-disguised interest. "The reverent stopped by to talk with Greetje about Jan," Ona said. "He has graciously offered to help, and Greetje has accepted, most gratefully."
Draegan inclined his dark head. "Mevrouw is exceedingly kind to make so much of the humble assistance I can offer."
Vrouw Schoonmaker clucked her tongue at his reply. "Och! The man brings us hope, unt calls it humble!"
"Hope?" Fallon's gaze slid from the Dutch dame to the enigmatic young minister, who looked slightly discomfitted.
"Well, it seems our Reverent Mattais has friends in prestigious places," Vrouw Schoonmaker said, "unt is going to enlist their aid in finding Jan."
"Indeed?" Fallon murmured, watching him through narrowed eyes. "How intriguing."
Her words prompted Draegan's smile. "One is given to wonder which intrigues you more: the fact that I have offered my humble assistance or that I actually have friends."
Fallon was swift to reply. "It is the caliber of those friends that intrigues me, sir. Your neutrality is widely touted; yet, unless I'm mistaken, the lists of Americans held prisoner are available only through military channels. Tell me, if you will, how a 'man of peace' comes to move in military circles?"
Draegan's smile deepened, and something flickered behind his pale, translucent eyes, something dark and dangerous, something that sent a chill up Fallon's spine. "What matters more to you, Fallon? The deed itself, or the method by which it's accomplished?"
Fallon lifted her chin. His reply had been smoothly uttered, but it was no less the verbal thrust. It had brought his point home quite clearly: he was doing Greetje a service, and inquiries as to his resources were unwelcome.
Ona served the raspberry-and-mint tisane that served as tea, and the conversation turned to other things.
Fallon did not take part, nor did she listen to what was being said. She finished her tea, and when Ona came again with the kettle, she placed a restraining hand over her cup. "Thank you, no. I really must be going. Zepporah came down with the grippe late last night, and I’m needed at home."
"Wilhemina did not come with you?" Vrouw Schoonmaker looked shocked.
"Zepporah needed her more than I did," Fallon explained.
"But a pretty young girl all alone, why, something might happen." She turned to Draegan, who had emerged from the shadows, the better to observe. "Reverend, tell her she must not go off alone, that it is not fitting!"
"I can tell her, Ona, but I doubt that she will listen. Mistress Deane has a will of her own, and if she has made up her mind to go, then nothing I say can stop her—"
"You needn't discuss me as if I'm not present," Fallon hissed at him, incensed.
Her protest had no effect; he blithely continued: "—and there is but one solution I can think of, if the young lady agrees." He paused, and in the interim Fallon uttered an exasperated sigh. "I'll take it upon myself to escort her home."
"There really is no need for this," Fallon said. "It's only a mile to the manor, a pleasant stroll this time of year. There is ample daylight left, and I found my way here unescorted. I can certainly find my way home!"
"Ah, ah," Draegan said, taking her arm in his firm grasp. "I insist."
"The perfect solution!" Ona clasped her plump hands together, beaming. "Fallon, be certain to tell Zepporah we will be thinking about her. Reverend, do take special care with our dear Fallon, unt get her home before de schemerlicht!"
"Rest assured, dear lady, she will be safe with me, and I shall have her home long before twilight." He bowed low over the Dutch vrouw's hand as Ona smiled and Fallon seethed, then he guided her through the door and into the slanting, late afternoon sunlight.
When they stepped onto the walkway, Draegan gave a low whistle. In a moment Fallon heard the plodding of hooves on soft earth, and the stallion ambled across the millpond yard like a huge white hound.
"Come," Draegan said, "I'll help you up."
But Fallon hung back. "Ride if you like; I'd rather walk."
He frowned at her. "Fallon Deane, you aren't afraid of horses, are you?"
"I am not afraid, specifically," Fallon said, gazing into the distance. The sun's rays were still bright, yet the great bulk of Blue Mountain looming in the near distance seemed hazy, shrouded in mystery. "It's just that I've never been terribly fond of horses. I suppose their size and power intimidate me."
"And then there was your uncle's accident."
"After that I had no wish to ride."
"What became of your uncle's stable?"
"We still have several animals. My mother had a passion for horses, as did Uncle, once." Her voice trailed away as the stallion shook his head, pressing his nose into Fallon's hand.
"Touch him if you like," Draegan said softly. "He's large, it's true, but relatively harmless."
She tentatively stroked the stallion's muzzle, marveling at its velvety softness. "He's a fine animal. How did you come by him?"
By unspoken agreement he took up the reins and they began walking down South Road. "He's called Banshee, and he was a gift from my father, Edmund."
"Your father is still living?"
"Indeed he is."
"Since you never mentioned him, I just assumed—"
"I don't see my parents often," Draegan interrupted.
"It must be difficult for you, being so far removed from family. Connecticut is far away."
"Not so difficult as you may imagine," he said with a grimace, "and not so far removed. Mother lives in Connecticut with her family, it's true, but Father resides in Albany. He's in the New York Assembly."
Fallon frowned up into his face, shocked by his admission. "They are parted?"
"For several years now," he explained. "Their marriage was always tumultuous, but in the early years they argued violently. Mother was strong-willed, bent on having her own way with everyone, and the moment Father left home on business, she would pack up the children and cart us all off to Connecticut, where we would stay until he came to bring us back again."
"Did he always follow?"
Draegan nodded. "And she always came back to New York once they'd reconciled."
Fallon frowned at him. "But you said you were from Connecticut."
"I was born in New London, on one of Mother's many sojourns," he admitted. "I haven't been back since the war began, but it's probably just as well. Mother has a shrewish bent, and I'm afraid we don't get on well."
"Why, Draegan Mattais! What a harsh thing to say of your mother!"
He smiled slightly. "If it's harsh, then I suppose I must be a harsh man. It's the truth."
Fallon stole a glance at him from under the curve of her lashes. He was a man who seemed to dwell in shadow, infinitely mysterious, closely guarded, and the secrets that he had were well kept. Yet for the moment he seemed almost open, and she was swift to press her advantage. "What else are you?"
His smile deepened into a grin, and his voice, when he replied, was beguiling. "Intrigued, my dear Mistress Deane?"
Fallon's pulse quickened. She remembered the way in which he'd assessed her in the Schoonmakers' kitchen, recalled his burning glance, and she felt the heat return to her cheeks.
Yet she kept on. "Call it what you will; there is much about you that I find—"
"Titillating?" Draegan supplied roguishly. "Stirring ... irresistible?"
"Disturbing," Fallon said, correcting him.
Draegan placed a hand upon his spotless linen breast and feigned a look of innocence, yet it was apparent from the unwavering light of suspicion in the golden eyes of Fallon Deane that he hadn't quite pulled it off. "I, a simple country cleric, disturbing? Fallon, I am crushed."
"You are not even fazed," she said. "And neither are you a simple country cleric. You play the rogue all too well, sir, for the other role to be convincing!"
"You wish me to don my most sanctimonious Sunday face for your benefit," he said. "How very dull."
"I wish you to be truthful."
"When have I been less than truthful?"
Fallon cast him a sidelong glance from beneath her lashes. "The untruth you told Cordelia leaps to mind," she said.
Draegan sighed. "You are a difficult woman, Fallon Deane."
"I am curious."
Draegan groaned inwardly. As far as he could tell, "difficult" and "curious" were the same thing. Doubtless she was filled with questions—troublesome, niggling, insignificant questions—questions he must answer with care and discretion if he were to lay her doubts, her innate curiosity, to rest.
He smiled wryly, and steeled himself to withstand the coming inquisition. "I swear, the words woman and curiosity are synonymous. It began in the Garden with Eve, and man has been in a veritable stew ever since."
She lifted her pert nose and slanted a look at him that was not quite approving. "Had someone bothered to explain matters to Eve, that whole unpleasant incident could have been avoided." She paused, and a tense silence stretched between them. When she spoke again, her tone was level, and it was almost as if they'd never argued. "I believe you mentioned siblings," she said. "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
"When Mother and Father were together, they were nothing less than prolific. There are nine of us living—there were twelve altogether. Three of my sisters died in infancy. My sister Claire is the firstborn, then came Clayton and Anna, the twins. I'm fourth in order of birth and the second son, followed by Lysander, Christian, Nathan, and Payne. My sister Ardis is the youngest. She just turned sixteen."
Fallon glanced at him and then away, and there was something wistful in her expression. "What is it like, I wonder—to come from such a large family?"
"Noisy," Draegan said. "Chaotic. But never uneventful."
"I used to imagine that Papa would remarry and I would have brothers and sisters."
"But he didn't."
Fallon shook her head. "I don't think he ever quite recovered from losing Mother. She died when I was small. I don't remember her, and Papa rarely mentioned her name in my presence. Uncle Lucien says it was too painful for him. I was thirteen when Papa died. He took a chill, developed a fever in his lungs, and simply slipped away...." She sighed and brushed back a gleaming strand of auburn hair that had escaped her neat chignon and fallen onto her brow. "I don't know what I would have done if not for Uncle Lucien. He has been a constant in my life, and I owe him more than I could ever hope to repay."
They had arrived at the manor, and paused by the garden gate to watch the sun set. The mountains to the west were a hazy lavender, and the sky above was awash with red and gold and soft violet- blue.
Fallon watched the colors deepen, and Draegan watched Fallon. He could not dispute the fact that she owed Lucien Deane a debt. Lucien had taken her in, given her a home and a family of sorts, and in return he received her gratitude, her love, her loyalty. Yet Draegan couldn't help but wonder, as he watched her, just how far that loyalty extended. Was Fallon a party to Lucien's treachery, or was she completely ignorant of it?
She claimed that she didn't like horses and preferred not to ride. But was her reticence genuine, or a clever feint by a wily little vixen specifically designed to throw any pursuing hound off the scent?
Draegan didn't know. He knew only that the figure on the road last night had known the countryside more intimately than he, that he or she had been slight and quick and agile. Concealed beneath tricorn and cloak and abetted by the inky darkness, it could have been a woman—could have been Fallon Deane.
"You are very quiet." Her soft, dulcet voice dragged Draegan from his dark musings into the pastel beauty of the Catskill sunset.
Leaning on the garden gate, he gazed down into her upturned face, and his doubts and suspicions began a slow retreat, leaving him standing in the twilight, a captivating young woman close by his side.
And she was captivating.
He leaned closer, catching the fragrance of lavender that clung to her skin, her hair, drinking it in as he murmured, “Inane chatter in the face of such exquisite beauty seems nothing short of blasphemous."
“It really is a lovely evening, isn't it?"
Draegan took her hand and drew her close. "It wasn't the evening to which I was referring, Fallon. 'Twas you."
She met his gaze, but briefly, before her glance again shied away. "You should not say such things," she said.
"Why not?" he wished to know. "Are you promised to another? You did not answer me before."
"No, I—"
"There is nothing, then, to prevent us." He brought the hand he held to his lips, kissing her fingertips. Turning it over, he pressed his mouth against her palm, and Fallon caught her breath.
His touch was fire—a blessed heat, radiant with life, seething with excitement, everything Fallon re-membered and more. She watched his lids lower slightly, masking the hard, bright gleam of his eyes, and she wondered for the thousandth time what it was that drew her to him, why she could not seem to resist the temptation and the imminent peril that were Draegan Mattais.
There was danger in him, of that Fallon was certain. Yet she could not spurn him. She could not snatch back her hand, denying him this liberty, as propriety dictated she should have.
Something kept her from it, kept her standing close to him long after she should have stepped away—so close that she could feel the heat of his body bathing hers in subtle warmth, even through the many layers of their clothing.
What would it be like, Fallon wondered recklessly, to peel away the layers of superfine and linen, of cotton and lawn, and lie pressed against his lean, hard length ... to feel his arms so strong about her ... to wake in his embrace?
The direction of her thoughts was new and wondrously exciting. Titillating...
He'd been teasing when he'd said that, but he'd also been correct. He did titillate her senses, her imagination, awakening within her a thirst for adventure she had not realized until this moment that she even possessed. Being with Draegan made her feel vibrantly alive, stirred her to an acute awareness, aroused within her soul a restlessness, a need she couldn't begin to comprehend and that she strongly suspected only he could satisfy.
Wordlessly, he closed what little distance remained between them. His dark head dipped, and Fallon knew that he would kiss her. Her lips parted slightly, and she waited for the searing warmth of his sweet possession, the intimate invasion of his tongue.... She waited, but the kiss never came, and when she chanced to look at him again she saw that he had straightened. He was watching a familiar twisted figure emerge from the shadows in-side the walled enclosure of the garden.
Garbed in a suit of deep brown worsted, which was ever-so-slightly out of fashion, Lucien Deane came slowly forward. His gait was awkward—sidling, almost—due to the deformity in his spine, which, combined with his emaciated state, lent his figure an air of frailty. "Ah, there you are," he said in his peculiar, creaking voice. "Zepporah has been working herself into a froth this past half-hour for fear that you'd come to grief on your way home. I tried to reassure her that such was not the case, but you know how the woman can be."
"I didn't mean to worry her," Fallon said. "But the evening was so lovely—I'm afraid I didn't think to hurry home."
" 'Tis no matter, child," Lucien said. "It's easy to see that you were in good hands."
Fallon felt her color rise and was infinitely grateful for the encroaching darkness. "Uncle, this is Reverend Draegan Mattais, our new pastor. Draegan, my uncle, Lucien Deane."
"Master Deane." Draegan inclined his dark head in a shallow bow. "Sir, it is a pleasure to meet you at long last."
Lucien smiled his crooked smile. "I assure you, Reverend Mattais, the pleasure is entirely mine. Fallon has told me a great deal about you, but I am afraid she neglected to mention that you were a connoisseur of horseflesh. An Irish hunter—lud, what a magnificent animal. Long of leg and deep of chest." Lucien sighed appreciatively. "Not planning any excursions to New York City, are you, Reverend? If you are, then take my advice, and leave the lad in the country. I hear that Sir Henry has as avid an eye for a handsome steed as he does for the ladies, and it would be a ruddy shame for you to lose him."
"There is little worry on that score, Master Deane," Draegan replied. "I've no interest in New York City; my present business is here, in Abundance."
"And what business is that, Reverend?"
Draegan smiled as he replied, but there was an underlying chill in his words that Fallon found confusing. "Why, salvation, of course."
Lucien's amber eyes glinted with some secret humor. "Tell me, Reverend Mattais, what think you of conscience? Does it truly exist? Or is it yet another fallacy invented by the early Church to keep the unwashed masses in line?"
"Uncle, please!" Fallon said. "It grows late, and I'm certain Reverend Mattais would very much like to return home to the rectory."
"Drat, Fallon!" Lucien said. "You spoil all my fun!"
Fallon took her uncle's elbow and bent near his ear. "We have tried these past three years to find a pastor worthy of the name, and now that we have, you wish to hold him at the garden gate to catch his death from chill, discussing conscience!"
Lucien sighed in defeat. "All right, then, miss. You shall have your head." He turned to Draegan. "My niece is appalled that I would keep you from your cozy bed to learn your views on conscience, and to please her I suppose I must relent, but not until I extract a promise that you'll join us for dinner some evening next week. By that time, Zepporah should be sufficiently recovered, and I shall have had ample time to consider which tack I wish to take for our discussion."
"I accept your invitation, sir," Draegan said. "And I greatly anticipate our discussion." Bowing again, he took up the stallion's reins and swung easily astride. "Mistress Deane, Master Deane. Good night to you both." He walked the pale stallion away from the garden gate and was soon gone from sight.
"I suppose I had better go in," Fallon said. "I really should look in on Zepporah before I retire. Are you coming, Uncle?"
"Do go on, my dear, and I'll be along in a little while. I thought perhaps I'd linger in the garden. The moon is on the wane, and it promises to be a fine night for star gazing."
"Good night, then." Fallon bent to kiss her uncle's weathered cheek, then hurried toward the house.
Lucien watched her go, a thoughtful expression on his lined countenance. How very strange that he hadn't truly realized what an exquisite young woman Fallon had become until he'd spied her standing with the handsome young cleric at the garden gate. She was all grown up, the very image of her mother.
At the thought of Sabina, Lucien felt the sluggish stir of emotions long suppressed. Sabina had been exactly Fallon's age when he'd first laid eyes upon her, Lucien thought with a sigh. More than twenty-one years had passed since that day, and the image of her standing with her sister Edith on the village green was still vivid in his mind. They'd been watching old Colonel Henry Brown put the young and untried lads of the newly formed militia company through their paces, and their attention had made Lucien unaccountably nervous. At each misstep he'd made, Sabina had burst into gales of girlish laughter. From that first moment, he'd thought her the most enchanting creature he'd ever seen.
Dear God, he had been so young, and so smitten! So eager to impress her. And for a time he had naively believed that she returned his feelings and would accept his suit.
Saying nothing of his plans to his father or to his younger brother, Osgood, Lucien had traveled to New York City, where he'd purchased a pigeon's blood ruby ring, a ring he had planned to give to Sabina upon their betrothal. He'd carried it in his breast pocket, close to his heart, all the many miles upriver to Kingston, dreaming of the day when he would bring Sabina to Gilead Manor as his bride.
Smitten, yes, Lucien thought, he'd been smitten. Too smitten to see that it was not he whom Sabina loved, but Osgood. Very soon after his return, however, the sad truth of his situation became apparent. Osgood had spoken to Samuel Woods, Sabina's father, who had given his approval to the match, and the preparations had begun in earnest for their wedding the following spring.
Lucien had been devastated; yet there was a small, bitter part of him deep down inside that had not been surprised that the fair Sabina preferred his brother to him.
Osgood, after all, was taller and straighter and more handsome than he. Osgood had a winning personality, a jovial wit, an easiness that was lacking in Lucien. Osgood, Lucien had thought, collected friends, while he himself collected specimens for his studies.
It had seemed only natural that Sabina should love Osgood, who had been given everything in life for which a man could ask. Because he was the younger son, he had wealth without the ever-increasing burden of the estate, he had prestigious friends in Philadelphia, New York, and London, and he had their father's unconditional love.
Lucien had gone on with his life, though he had never quite recovered from Sabina's rejection. Within the year, he had given the pigeon's blood ruby to Sabina's sister Edith, and they were wed in the library at Gilead Manor.
Edith, like Lucien, was the eldest child, and every bit as plain as Sabina was lovely. She was twenty and five when Lucien took her to wife, and twenty and six when he buried her in the family plot, alongside their stillborn son.
Lucien had not mourned Edith's passing. There had been no time to grow to love her; and the little contentment they had shared, seemed, in the light of her absence, somehow unreal. In their brief time together she had moved through the manor, quiet, shy, and reserved, a shadowy presence that had come into his life without altering it. She had departed it shortly thereafter in the same timorous fashion, leaving only two stone markers in the family plot, one large, one small, as tangible evidence that she had ever touched his life at all.
One month to the day after Edith's passing, Osgood had brought his bride to live beneath his brother's rooftree. At first, it had been painful for Lucien to dwell with Osgood's good fortune when his one chance at happiness had turned to dust, yet as time passed, the pain had eased somewhat, and Lucien had derived a certain pleasure in just being near the vibrant Sabina.
In the second year of Osgood's marriage, Sabina had presented him with a daughter, and Lucien with a niece. At the time of Fallon's birth, Osgood was away in Kingston, and so it was Lucien who paced the floor and prayed to the God he doubted existed, Lucien who received the swaddled infant from Zepporah's hands, Lucien who gazed with wonder into that tiny wrinkled visage and saw the beauty the child would someday achieve.
Four years later, Lucien had stood in the doorway of his brother's bedchamber as Sabina faded, as silent an observer of her death as he had been of her life. Osgood's grief had been terrible, while Lucien had mourned Sabina as he had loved her, unbeknownst to anyone.
The days had passed, the months, the years. Osgood had thrown himself into his political pursuits and traveled extensively. Because of Fallon's tender years, she was often left behind. In her father's absence, she spent her days in Zepporah's care and Lucien's company. Having given his heart to the mother, it was only natural that he adore the child.
As time passed, he thought less and less of Fallon as being Osgood's flesh and blood. In his mind, she was Sabina's, and he indulged her childish whims shamelessly.
Fallon alone had free access to his study, and quite often she interrupted his work to bombard him with endless questions. Her curiosity had always been boundless, her mind quick for a female, and since it pleased him to make of her a pet, Lucien had personally attended her studies.
He had taught her to read and write at an early age, then introduced her to Latin, Greek, and mathematics. By the age of twelve she'd exhausted the classics on Lucien's library shelves, having read Homer's Iliad several times through.
In the next year, the year of Osgood's death, she'd moved on to Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, and begun displaying a fascination for radical political theory that Lucien found disturbing.
His ties to England had always been strong, and as he began gaining recognition in influential circles for his work in the field of natural philosophy, they quite naturally grew stronger still. In 1773 he met Lord Lovewell Artemis Stone while Stone was visiting the Catskills.
Stone was an English nobleman who, like Lucien, had a passion for learning and a keen interest in botany. In August of 1773 Stone returned to England, but that wasn't the end of his association with Lucien. During the autumn and the early winter months he and Lucien kept up a steady correspondence; by the time spring's gentle hand touched the countryside, Lucien had sought and won Stone's patronage for an ambitious project he had long been planning, in which he would venture into the mountains to collect seedlings and cuttings of plants indigenous to the Catskill Mountains. In turn, the cuttings would be shipped to England for use in the decorative gardens that were currently in vogue with the English peerage.
Lucien sighed, remembering how elated, how certain, he had been that the dark cloud which had cast an ominous shadow over his life for so long was about to dissipate.
But he could not have been more wrong.
On his first day out, his mount was startled by a rattlesnake and plunged into a rocky streambed, where it lost its footing and fell, rolling onto its rider.
It took the servants two days to devise a litter and carry him back to the manor, and months for his broken body to heal. His dreams of success, of at long last achieving the recognition he deserved in his chosen field, seemed broken beyond repair, and Lucien greatly feared that he would pass from this life leaving nothing behind to prove that he had ever existed.
He began to walk again just as the hostilities, which for years had been simmering between Britain and her colonies, reached a full rolling boil. Lord Stone was among the first to offer his sword to the King, and as a result, the funding that had allowed Lucien to continue his studies without depending upon the estate for an annual income was suddenly withdrawn.
Yet as luck would have it, this was not the end of Lucien's association with the Englishman. Stone was assigned to a post at Fort Niagara in the northwestern wilderness, and after a few months, he contacted Lucien, assuring him that his interest in their joint venture had not died away completely; it had merely been supplanted by the unlawful insurrection being perpetrated against His Majesty the King by his American subjects.
When the hostilities were concluded in England's favor, Stone assured Lucien, they could return to business as usual. Stone's offer, however, was not without cost to Lucien. The Englishman implied that it would be to Lucien's credit if he disassociated himself from the Americans in some noticeable way and proclaimed his unswerving loyalty to the King.
As it happened, Stone's thinly veiled suggestion had spawned Sparrowhawk.
Oh, it had begun innocently enough, Lucien thought, gazing into the star-filled night—a regular correspondence between himself and a Tory named Trumbolt, who resided in the Mohawk Valley, to the north. Trumbolt had connections with Chief Joseph Brant, England's Mohawk ally, and Brant in turn passed the information on to Stone at Niagara, who, with Major John Butler, planned the strikes against the American settlements.
It had all come off so easily, and even Lucien's physical limitations had worked in his favor, for who would have suspected Lucien Deane, studious cripple, of being the infamous spy Sparrowhawk? He quickly learned to utilize his infirmity, and as he grew stronger physically, he was careful to keep his progress hidden behind a mask of pain.
With a sigh, Lucien turned back toward the welcoming lights of the house. As he reached it, his thoughts turned toward Fallon.
If the tender scene he'd interrupted a while earlier at the garden gate was any indication, then the girl was quite fond of the Reverend Mr. Draegan Mattais, and that fondness gave Lucien good cause for concern.
He knew now that Mattais had been the hell rider on the road the night before, but why had the fool been chasing him? What kept him abroad so late? And why had he come from the south, when the rectory lay to the north, between the manor and the village? Was it possible that Fallon was stealing from the manor to meet Mattais secretly? Or was there some other purpose behind the man's seemingly lunatic bent that sent him thundering after phantoms in the blackest hours of the night?
Lucien did not know, but as he ambled through the shadowy garden, he was exceedingly glad that he'd had the foresight to invite the young rector to dinner. They did indeed have a great many things to discuss.