It was midmorning when Sarah woke. The room was cool and dark, the shutters closed against the beating summer heat. One of Trent’s pistols lay on her bedside table. He had left it there when he said good night, as a precaution. He believed she would be more valuable to Graves alive, as a scapegoat in a show trial, but it was impossible to be certain how the admiral would take Sparhawk’s escape. And it would be all too easy to conceal a private murder in the actions of a Rebel mob.
She washed and dressed in one of the smart cotton jackets Trent had bought her when she had expressed a longing for clothing simpler than the fashionable gowns that now filled her closets. There was such a thing, she had explained to him, as too much luxury, particularly when it came in the form of unforgiving silk over stiff reed stays. After the night she had just experienced, a pair of soft leather jumps and a roomy caraco jacket offered simplicity and comfort, and she needed a little of both.
She was surprised to find the routine of the house unchanged when so much else, including she herself, felt transformed. Her brother had sailed for Portugal, Mr. Cheap with him. Ned was on the Diana. She had gone to bed with Sparhawk, and she could still feel the print of his hands on her body.
She had consented to marry Trent.
They could not speak of it yet, must move quietly and quickly so that the admiral did not learn of their plans to put Sarah beyond his reach. But Trent had agreed that they must speak with her father, and promised that he would do so first thing in the morning.
And then he would go out and begin to make delicate inquiries. A marriage outside the church might be open to legal challenge. A marriage inside the church required a license. They did not want the bans read. Nor did they want the admiral to learn of their plans. King’s Chapel was out of the question: too gossipy, too closely tied to the Loyalist community, too likely for word of their scheme to reach Samuel Graves.
“I hope to have a license in hand by the end of the week,” Trent had said. “If I cannot find a sympathetic cleric in Boston, then I will find one outside of Boston who can be persuaded to come to us.”
The Rebels, of course, held Cambridge and the college, but passes, as Sarah had discovered, were easy to obtain if you were rich.
Trent was already gone by the time Sarah came downstairs, so she went in search of her father and found him at the table in front of the windows in the Chinese parlor. The celadon damask upholstery and pale green walls glowed softly in the sunlight sparkling off the waters of the Back Bay. The model of the Sally lay on its side, a pot of gum and a pile of tiny copper foil plates, such as a goldsmith might use, beside her. Abednego’s paints and brushes held down the corners of an inscribed letter sheet, a receipt for ten ounces of copper, with the compliments of one Paul Revere.
“I presume your brother, Mr. Cheap and all”—and by “all” he meant Sparkhawk—“got well away last night,” said her father, not troubling to look up from his paintbrush.
“Benji got himself shot, but Sparhawk found him a doctor.” She felt a pang of the misery she had known walking home last night. “The bullet came out clean, and they are well away.”
He would not take me with him.
Her father looked up from his model. He had already laid a row of copper plates over the keel. “I was surprised when Trent spoke to me this morning. When you did not come right back last night, I thought you might have gone with James Sparhawk.”
Her father was too perceptive by half.
“Don’t you like Anthony?” she asked.
“I like him better than Micah Wild,” said Abednego Ward. “And he is well cut to be a husband.”
And Sparhawk, she knew, was not.
Sarah had discovered early on that there was very little to do in Trent’s well-ordered household. The cook might have welcomed the interest of a skilled chatelaine, but she had politely banned Sarah from the kitchen when she had seen what passed for toast in the Ward family.
Now, with Benji and Ned gone, there was even less for Sarah to do, so she turned to needlework, one of the genteel accomplishments of the dame school, to keep herself busy.
Embroidery had come easily to her in school. She had already known how to sew neat, even stitches in canvas, and how to tie complex sailor’s knots. Silk and wool, she had learned, were far easier to manipulate than tarred hemp. The preliminary sketches that stymied the other girls, copied from the dame’s precious collections of engravings, posed no challenges for Sarah. The Sallys had taught her how to transfer the images they found near to hand, playing cards and newspaper illustrations, onto far more difficult material like wood and whalebone. Sarah’s samplers, pillows, chairbacks, and fire screens had exceeded those of her classmates in design and execution.
There was a frame and a worktable in the large parlor looking out over the Common. Recalling Trent’s warning, she brought the pistol downstairs with her and stashed it in her sewing bag.
She drew Trent’s coat of arms from memory on a sampler canvas. Pleased with the result, she began selecting thread and making a list of colors to purchase at the market.
She’d run the first thread through the canvas when she heard the carriage in the street. The day was warm, but she felt chilled when she looked out and saw it come to a halt in front of Trent’s manse. Larger than the rig her host rented, it was black with gilding, drawn by a matched set of four. The servants who rode on the back were sailors in uniform.
The officer who alighted was a stranger to her, but his epaulets and the cockade in his hat told her he held the rank of captain, and she could think of no good errand a naval officer would perform at her house the night after she had helped Sparhawk escape.
Her maid appeared a few minutes later. Charles Ansbach, captain of the Hephaestion, hoped that she would receive him.
He was Trent’s friend, her brother’s lover, and until last night, Sparhawk’s jailer.
From the street she had seen that he was simply and soberly dressed, his shirt, breeches, and waistcoat cut from practical cream linen. No silk or gold-wire embroidery. His coat was dark blue wool with cream lapels, the gold lacing around his buttons narrow and discreet. Not one of the navy’s peacocks, then, like Sparhawk or Trent.
When he entered the room, she observed that he was handsome in a bluff and hearty way, with deeply tanned skin and blond curling hair. She tried to detect some resemblance to portraits of the monarch or George’s sister, Princess Charlotte, but found none.
He removed his hat and bowed low.
The dame had been a font of knowledge on protocol, on the correct way to greet everyone from one’s future mother-in-law through the royal governor. Sarah did not know, exactly, where Charles Ansbach fell on this spectrum, but she curtsied prettily as the dame had taught her and waited.
Ansbach received this stiffly, then shot an anxious glance at the door, where Sarah’s maid stood waiting. And Sarah realized something: Ansbach wanted to be alone with her.
Sarah sent the maid for coffee and closed the door.
“Thank you for receiving me,” said Charles Ansbach. “Your brother and I were acquainted in London. You and I should have met before now, but I was detained by duty in the harbor.”
“My brother,” she said, “has told me of your friendship.”
“Did he? I am glad of it. I was to dine with Benji today, but he did not appear at the appointed time, so I thought perhaps I had mistaken the place or the hour, and came here to inquire for his direction.”
That was an obvious lie.
Sparhawk had told her that Ansbach had seen and recognized Benji, and held off the marines on the Hephaestion. If this man had intended to expose her brother’s part in Sparhawk’s escape, he would already have done so. He would not have delayed the pursuit last night. And he would not have come here today on his own.
All well and good, but that did not mean she could trust him. Charles Ansbach might be willing to shield her brother from Admiral Graves and the justice of the Crown, but that did not mean he was willing to do the same for her or James Sparhawk.
“My brother has gone to Portugal on family business,” she said. It was true.
Ansbach stiffened. “He said nothing of this to me.”
Her brother had refused to embroil Ansbach in their scheme to free Sparhawk from his ship. That she had understood. But his connection to this man was of some duration; yet Benji had planned to leave the country for six weeks—possibly longer—without telling him.
Sarah resented the danger this man placed her brother in, but she had not intended to drive a wedge between them, had not considered that it would be impossible for her brother to tell Ansbach that he was making a powder run to Lisbon for the Rebels.
“I am sorry,” she said, at a loss. “I believe he felt the nature of the business might compromise your loyalties.”
“It vexes me to hear it. I have tried to tell your brother that I am not unsympathetic to American grievances, but I cannot support open rebellion. It is not only the navy that constrains me, but also family loyalties. You must tell me,” Ansbach said, no longer bothering to hide his distress. “Did you see your brother before he sailed? And was he well? I have reason to believe that he might have been . . . that is to say, I think his health may have suffered a blow, when last I saw him.”
That explained Ansbach’s anxiety. He knew that Benji had been shot; he was not, perhaps even now, certain that he lived.
“He did receive an injury, and that is why, I am certain, he did not write to you. He was out of danger when he embarked, but also dead drunk.”
Ansbach’s relief was palpable. “That does sound like Benji. Whatever else he may be up to, I am very glad to hear that he is well. And it may be for the best, this trip of his. If you write to him, you might advise him not to land in Boston, and to avoid, if he can, encountering any of the ships on this station.” He paused, then added, “Even mine.”
“I will do that,” she said.
Ansbach smiled. “Thank you.” He seemed at last to take in his surroundings. “And I am very grateful to Lord Polkerris for extending his hospitality to you and your family. Your brother and I are . . . very good friends . . . and it has distressed me that I was not able to come to your aid when your house was burned.”
“Trent has been most kind to us,” she said. Without thinking, she glanced down at the embroidery canvas.
Ansbach followed her gaze. “Forgive me,” he said, “but it seems that perhaps a closer connection between your families is imminent.”
She must make a decision, whether to risk trusting where her brother had not. Benji had been forced to learn the habit of caution, to hide his affections, whereas Sarah had only ever been hurt by concealment. “Trent is marrying me so that Admiral Graves cannot hang me. It would be poor payment for his hospitality if you were to let anyone know of our plans, as the admiral would see me shackled in quite a different way.”
It took Ansbach a moment to adjust to her candor. Then he said, “I am certain that is not the only reason that Trent is marrying you. And you are nothing like I thought you would be.”
“Really? Is it the embroidery?”
“In part,” he replied. “There is also the setting. Your brother described a tomboy who climbed rigging like a monkey, and here I find a very proper Boston lady ensconced in her fashionable parlor with embroidery silks and a sewing bag.”
“I have a pistol in the sewing bag, if that helps.”
“Good Lord, is that what women put in them? No wonder they’re so heavy.”
“Will you keep our secret?” she asked.
“I shall not breathe a word about pistols in sewing bags,” he said gravely. “Nor the other confidences you have vouchsafed me.”
She gave him coffee, and poured as she had been taught in dame school. He hesitated when she passed him his cup, no doubt forewarned of her handicap by Benji. “Don’t worry. Someone else brewed it,” she said.
He accepted the cup, and ate the entire plate of ginger cakes while they talked. She learned a little more of this man who had kept her brother in London for two long years. He was kind and gallant and amusing and knew ships and seamen. It was impossible not to like him, and equally impossible not to wish that Benji had never met him; that her brother might have come home and settled into a comfortable—if not wholly fulfilling—safe life.
“I am sorry your house was burned,” Ansbach said again, “but I am glad that you met Trent. He deserves a little happiness. His first wife died too young, and his second marriage was hell. He has spent the last fifteen years looking for a fight he could not win, and failed to find it. But he is different since he met you.”
She had known that Trent was widowed, but not that he had been married twice. She filed the information away for the future, when she could ask him more about his family.
Ansbach left just after noon, and a little later Trent returned.
“I have put our plans in motion,” he said, reading the letters that had arrived while he was gone. “This,” he added, passing her an opened missive, “will help us to fend off Graves in the meantime.”
It was an invitation, of all things, to dine that afternoon with Lady Frankland, whose name still caused Sarah to flinch. “I thought Lady Frankland lived in Hopkinton,” she said.
“She has a house in the North End as well,” said Trent. “I knew her and Harry in Lisbon. And I understand that she is sailing for England soon. She does not believe that Gage will be able to put an end to these troubles.”
“Must we go?” Sarah asked.
“We should. Even if Lady Frankland believes you are my mistress, she will not scorn you. Not only do you share a common childhood on the North Shore, but she was Harry’s mistress long before she was Harry’s wife. Now, of course, she is a respectable widow, and attending on her together will remind Graves that he cannot touch you without provoking me.”
“In dame school,” Sarah said, “the girls used to call me ‘Lady Frankland,’ because they thought me as uncouth as barefoot Agnes Surriage. Pregnant at fourteen with a bastard in her belly and no better than she ought to be.”
Trent’s black brows rose. “Do you know how barefoot Agnes Surriage got Harry Frankland, baronet, to marry her after ten years as his mistress?”
“No.” She had never thought to ask.
Trent smiled. “It is a tale worth telling. They were in Lisbon in ’fifty-five. Sir Harry had paid Agnes off with jewelry, intending to leave her in Portugal to find a new protector. He was on his way to the church to marry an English girl from a good family when the great earthquake struck. His horses were killed instantly, and Harry was buried alive in the rubble. His driver ran off. Agnes knew—as the discarded mother of his child, how could she forget?—where he was going that day, and she ran through the streets searching for him. She found the carriage, and not knowing whether Harry was alive or dead, with no thought to her own future, she used the jewelry Harry had bought her—her entire fortune, really—to induce the locals to dig him out. Your Marblehead serving girl was a heroine of sorts—certainly Harry’s. He married her the next day. And I will lay odds that not a single one of the sharp-tongued harridans who treated you cruelly in school has since traveled as far or lived as boldly as barefoot Agnes Surriage.”
She had never thought of it that way.
Lady Frankland’s home in the North End was a far grander structure than the modest house Sparhawk had bought her, but such was the motley heterogenous character of the neighborhood that it was only a few twisting blocks away. Three stories with a dormered fourth and a slate roof, it had to be one of the largest homes in Boston.
Lady Frankland herself was difficult to imagine as the saucy serving girl who had beguiled a baronet, though Sarah thought she might detect some of the fortitude of the heroine of Lisbon in her forthright manner. Near fifty, plump, and upholstered in an expensive but unflattering silk damask that made her look like a sofa, she was nothing if not comfortable in her skin. She ribbed Trent for not calling on her sooner, quizzed Sarah on their possible Salem and Marblehead connections, and complained mightily about the ungrateful Rebels of Hopkinton, who neglected work on her plantation and thought nothing of leaving their labor to play at revolutions.
“My income,” said the old lady, “is quite halved. I cannot live on it. There is no one left to plant at Hopkinton. And they wanted my butter and my beef for their ragtag army, but why should I sell it to them when General Gage will pay double for it? Of course the rabble will not let me sell to General Gage, and they threaten to take my property from me if I try to do so.”
“Rebels burned Miss Ward’s house down,” said Trent, by way of commiseration.
“They confiscated my nephew’s house,” said Lady Frankland, not to be outdone. “No small property either. You would know it, if you are from Salem, Miss Ward. A fine brick manse with much ornamental carving. Fourteen rooms, and every one of them with a fireplace. A very industrious young man. I did not even know of the connection until the poor boy turned up on my doorstep, with barely the clothes upon his back. These madcaps speak of the rights of Englishmen and then trample the right to the one thing they hold most dear: property. The local ‘Committee of Safety’ took his home and ships from him. All because he sold one vessel and a few spars to the admiral.”
Sarah knew before the door opened who this long-lost nephew must be.
Micah Wild was much as Sarah remembered him, and it was easy to see how he had charmed an old lady into believing him a relation. He had abandoned the Rebel rage militaire in favor of a silk suit in a becoming shade of cocoa, cut to flatter his compact, muscular frame. She took some satisfaction in his split lip and the cut on his cheek that he had tried to conceal with a strategically rolled curl.
If Trent recalled the name when Lady Frankland introduced her nephew, he gave no sign of it. Micah murmured something polite and noncommittal about knowing Miss Ward’s family. And Sarah nodded and murmured something equally civil and noncommittal about being sure that was so.
Lady Frankland told them how the Rebels had seized the powder and musket she had brought with her for protection while traveling, and professed her intention of trying to buy another off the starving soldiery, who were said to be selling their weapons to feed their families. Trent advised her against it. She waved this away and begged his counsel on how best to pack her household for the sea journey. He agreed to accompany her out to the barn, where her goods from Hopkinton were stored.
Naturally he offered the old lady his arm, and just as naturally she took it. Which left Micah Wild offering Sarah his arm. She was loath to suffer the contact, thought they should repel each other like two magnets—she and this man who had burned her house down—but they did not, and together they followed Trent and the former Agnes Surriage out into the muggy afternoon.
“Are you really her nephew?” she asked, when it became apparent the world would not stop spinning because his hand was at her elbow.
“Almost certainly, in a manner of speaking. Fifteen families settled Naumkeag. Go far enough back and we are all related.”
“That does not make every rich old lady north of Boston your aunt.”
“There are parts of India where any older woman in the village may be addressed as ‘Aunt’ as a sign of respect. An admirable practice we might do well to emulate.”
“Does Elizabeth call her ‘Aunt’ too?”
“Elizabeth went home to her family. It was her father who got wind that I’d sold the Cromwell to Admiral Graves.”
Sarah had given the information about the Cromwell to Angela Ferrers, knowing that Micah Wild would be hurt by it politically and financially. She had not considered that it would hurt Elizabeth Wild and their marriage as well—not fully considered, at least.
“I am sorry, Micah.”
“Don’t be. The Pierce family has excellent business sense. If I prosper with the friends of government, Elizabeth and her money will no doubt return. And if I don’t, she’ll divorce me, and I’ll be free to marry some Tory heiress. As you, it seems, are free to be passed from hand to hand around the fleet.”
It was galling that he still had the power to hurt her, but she would not be baited. “And how exactly do you expect to prosper with no ships, Micah?”
“Ships have a way of multiplying. I will have the Conant back within the week. She was only leased to Admiral Graves, and the lease has ended. In return for keeping quiet about the extraordinarily familiar gold he paid me for the purchase of the Cromwell, he has given me a letter of marque to recover the Sally.”
“So now you will be an open brigand,” she said, “rather than a covert one.”
“Privateering is perfectly legal, and in the case of recovering the Sally, the very purpose for which it was invented. Marque and reprisal. To take back that which is yours. The Sally has been mine since your father defaulted on his loan.”
“And what, assuming you can find the Sally, will you take her with, Micah? A pair of swivel guns and the power of your voice?”
“The Conant is no more a toothless merchantman,” said Micah Wild. “Admiral Graves returns her to me much improved, with reinforced decking, six four-pounders, and berths for forty men.”
Any sea voyage was dangerous. Storms, disease, the navy, and pirates all preyed on New England’s scrappy little merchant vessels. But being hunted by an armed marauder was an entirely different matter. Sarah had grieved after parting with Sparhawk, over the life they would never share in that snug little house. She had hoped in her most secret heart that he might be delayed by poor winds or a contrary tide, have time to rethink his decision, and send for her. Now, though, she prayed he had cleared Salem Harbor and reached the open seas, because if the Conant was armed and hunting her, the Sally could not sail far and fast enough.
• • •
The Sally had been refitted since Sparhawk saw her last. Her smart yellow stripe was gone, repainted bright blue. Her broken mast had been replaced, her standing rigging restored, and her gunwales pierced for cannon, though she carried nothing but her two rusted swivels at the moment. She rode a little lower in the water, hidden by the grassy slopes of Noddle’s Island, probably because her deck had been reinforced to withstand the recoil of her as-yet-theoretical guns.
Sparhawk remarked on these changes to the convalescent Benjamin Ward, who ordered a hammock strung for himself on deck and refused to retire to occupy the captain’s cabin until he was capable of taking command.
“Admiral Graves is pressing any vessel he can get his hands on,” said Benji. “We must buy guns in Lisbon. Without them, we might as well hand her over to the navy with our compliments.”
Which begged the question of what they would do if they encountered a naval vessel on the way to Lisbon.
“Outrun her,” said Benjamin Ward. “We sail in ballast. With no cargo, we can outsail anything big enough to outgun us. You only caught the Sally,” said Benjamin Ward, echoing his sister’s words on that occasion, “because Molineaux was a fool.”
Sparhawk could not argue with him.
Sparhawk checked the Sally’s provisions, her salt beef, her water, her peas, her little supply of powder and shot for the swivels, her spare cordage and spars and sails. Most of it was better than what the navy yard provided the king’s ships. Once he was satisfied that their stores were sufficient for the voyage to Lisbon, he left Benji in Mr. Cheap’s capable hands and rowed himself to the Winnisimmet ferry landing for his delayed meeting with the Rebels.
The admiral, James knew, had been routinely raiding Chelsea and the nearby Noddle’s and Hog islands for provisions for weeks. Now the landing was guarded by a company of militia under an elderly but formidable American, a Captain Sprague, who carried a Brown Bess of French and Indian War vintage and a wicked-looking club of polished maple inlaid with wampum that might easily have belonged to the Indian leader, King Philip, himself. Sprague declared Sparhawk’s pass from the Provincial Congress to be in good order and detailed two sturdy farmers with fowling pieces to conduct him to the meetinghouse.
He also, as it happened, admired Sparhawk’s velvet coat.
“Got married in one just like it,” said Sprague.
Which was probably sometime in the forties, thought Sparhawk. No doubt Red Abed had been quite the dandy.
The countryside, even to a sailor with an untutored eye for such things, was admirable. Lush marshes filled with game marched alongside well-watered fields, and a cool harbor breeze mitigated the summer heat. Sparhawk’s polite inquiries about the hunting, the fishing, the cattle raised there, and the general situation of the island were met by stony silence from the local militiamen, who did not relish the sudden interest being taken by the world at large, and the navy in particular, in their little paradise.
The meetinghouse was a simple, antique structure, clapboard, with a massive central chimney. The interior was cool and dark, and it took a moment for Sparhawk’s eyes to adjust. At the end of a long aisle formed by rows of rough-hewn benches, standing in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the pulpit window, stood Angela Ferrers, the Merry Widow. Her costume was at odds with the austere building, an elegant robe à l’anglaise cut from oyster satin and trimmed with wide bobbin lace engageantes.
“New England houses of worship are known for the thunder of their oratory,” she said, gesturing to indicate the ax-hewn timbers. “Not the splendor of their architecture.”
The wonder of God’s creation, Sparhawk could not help but observe, was indeed more manifest in this woman’s face and corsage than in the rude chamber. It was a studied effect—like a jewel against a square of plain black cloth.
“I understood that their preachers were ranked on the length, as much as the thunder, of their sermons. Seeing the furnishings, I would hold the shorter the better.”
“As a naval man,” said Angela Ferrers, “you must be used to discomfort.”
“I am used to discomfort with purpose.”
“And you have no purpose for the Divine.”
“On the contrary. I make use of his designs every day. Of the stars he has set in the sky and the angles and cosigns of his geometry. I find evidence of his works all around me on the open sea, but I see no sense in looking for him in a place like this. It is more secular evidence, against Admiral Graves, that I hoped to find here today.”
Angela Ferrers nodded. “We had expected you to meet us here to collect the papers last night. There was, I am credibly informed, some difficulty during your escape. Young Captain Ward has been injured.”
“Benji was shot by one of Graves’ marines. The ball is out and he is recovering.”
“Recovering, but not recovered. How soon will he be able to command the Sally?”
“You would have to speak with his doctor. But then, I believe you already have.”
“Just so,” admitted Angela Ferrers. “Dr. Warren tells me Benjamin Ward is unlikely to be fit for command for several weeks. A powder run to Lisbon was our condition for handing over the evidence we have gathered. It appears that condition will not be met.”
He had known nothing would be simple with this woman. “A delay of two weeks hardly signifies,” said Sparhawk. “A storm might add as much or more to the journey.”
“The army of the United Colonies has powder for twenty cartridges per man. We outnumber General Gage four to one, but if he learned of our situation, and broke out with his four thousand, he might destroy our force in an afternoon. Every day, every hour counts for us now. And you, sir, are more than capable of commanding the Charming Sally.”
“I am, but the navy frowns upon its officers making powder runs for its enemies. Even those on half pay.”
“It also frowns on fugitives from naval justice,” she replied coolly. “Your loyalty to the service has proved somewhat elastic. Tell me what would convince you to stretch it in this matter.”
He had already been tempted to stretch it when he saw the Sally again. In the navy, ambitious captains sidestepped promotion to flagships and ships of the line, the dull steady march toward empty rank and emptier pockets, in favor of smaller commands and the promise of action and prizes.
Schooners and frigates were what you wanted, small and fast, but there were precious few to be had, and often you chose a ship with more guns over a better sailor. The Sally, once she was armed, would offer no compromises. From the first time he had seen the trim little schooner with her lovely sharp lines, he’d wanted her. The thought of commanding her, of feeling her sails belly and stiffen and her hull thrum in answer to his orders, filled him with a desire similar to what he felt for Sarah Ward.
“Very well,” he said. “Get Sarah Ward away from Anthony Trent, and I will take command of the Sally as far as Lisbon. Sarah’s brother should be sufficiently recovered by then to oversee dealings in the port and command the return voyage.”
Angela Ferrers shook her head. “That would not be in our interests. Lord Polkerris is so deeply embroiled in the treasons of the Ward family, he is ripe for blackmail, and too well placed to lose as a possible source of intelligence.”
“He is a murderer,” said Sparhawk. “A monster. And it is Sarah’s life at hazard.”
“There are more lives in the balance than that of one sea rogue’s daughter. But I am not unsympathetic, Captain. If you are determined to spirit her away, you may find ample opportunity tomorrow, while the admiral celebrates his ascension to the white—and while we remove his naval stores, his hemp, his tar, his sails, and all the cattle and fodder from Noddle’s Island.”
“You mean to take on the British Navy in Boston Harbor?” Sparhawk asked, incredulous. “With Captain Sprague and a company of grandfathers?”
Angela Ferrers smiled. “I daresay Captain Sprague has a little life left in him yet.”
Sparhawk recalled the briskness of Sprague’s step and the war club hanging at the man’s hip, and decided she was probably right.
“Captain Sprague,” said Angela Ferrers, “will fight to protect his home and his family. If you are not willing to do the same for Sarah Ward, then she is better off with Anthony Trent.”
“You are determined to see me branded a Rebel,” said Sparhawk.
“I am determined to show you where your best interests lie. Step into the light, please,” she said.
He was not in a mood to indulge her, but his concern for Sarah overrode his resistance. He took a single step.
“Yes,” said Angela Ferrers. “I was right. The resemblance is not obvious, but it is there. You are Lord Polkerris’ missing son. He searched for you, across the Indian Ocean and through the Med, for two years.”
Sparhawk felt the old sick fear in the pit of his stomach. McKenzie had been right. His father had learned of his survival, and tried to finish the job. More than once he thought he might have been followed, that ordinary footpads might have had deeper designs against a teenage boy on the streets of Portsmouth, in the stews of Calcutta—and he had been right.
“If you know of my existence,” said Sparhawk, “then you also know of his crimes. He is a seducer, a bigamist.”
“To you,” said Angela Ferrers. “But to the world he is a decorated naval officer and a baron with a comfortable income who risks his life in the service of his country. Even his renown as a duelist—and what is dueling but private murder cloaked in ritual?—is admired by his peers. He is a generous philanthropist and a beloved friend of the king.”
“He killed my mother. He tried to kill me.”
“He did what privilege allowed him to do. You think your quarrel is with an individual man, but it is with an empire. One that uses nations the way Trent used your mother. The way Trent will use Sarah Ward. He has taken her under his roof. How long do you think it will be before he has taken her into his bed?”
The thought turned Sparhawk’s stomach. “I will save her from him.” As he had not been able to save his mother.
The widow looked pleased. “There will be an opportunity for you to reach her tomorrow night. I can tell you both the place and the hour. But know this: if you pit yourself against Trent, then you pit yourself against British rule in North America. Deprive him of his prize, and he will use all of the power at his disposal—including the king’s forces—to get her back.”
Angela Ferrers was almost certainly right, but there was no other course open to him, so he spoke the words she wanted to hear: “Tell me where to find Sarah Ward.”