It was just before breakfast, four days after the ball at the Newsome house, when the first letter arrived. Nelly brought it to Virginia on a small silver plate: a crisp white bit of parchment, neatly folded and sealed. Across the face, in a bold and elegant, though not at all feminine hand, the words Mrs. Virginia Biddlecomb.
Virginia thanked Nelly and took the folded paper, perfectly aware of who it was from despite the lack of any return address. She broke the seal and unfolded the page.
Mrs. Biddlecomb…she read.
I thank you again for the honor you did me in accompanying me to the ball at the Newsome’s house the other night. If you found even a fraction of the delight in the evening that I did, I shall count it a success. The chief of my conversation these days is among my fellows in the military line, and it can get tedious in the extreme, I assure you. I found our discussions to be like a warm spring breeze on the heels of a cold winter’s gale.
“Indeed, sir?” Virginia said out loud, her eyebrow cocked in skepticism, but she read on.
I hope that I properly expressed to you the pleasure I took from our discourse in matters equine. Your knowledge and insight in most remarkable indeed. That said, I wonder if you would not be interested in some actual riding, rather than the mere theoretical consideration of it? I know the weather is not all what one might ask, but I can easily procure for us most suitable mounts and it would be my sincere pleasure to escort you through some of the less settled parts of this city.
If this is agreeable to you, and tomorrow mid-morning an acceptable time, then you would do me further great honor in accepting my invitation. I will send a man by later for your reply, but whatever it may be, please believe that I remain,
Your obedient, humble servant,
Richard Dexter, Esq.
Virginia put the note down and regarded herself in the mirror, then picked up her brush and resumed brushing her hair, which she had been doing when Nelly knocked on the door.
Oh, dear… she thought as she stared at her reflection. She felt like a woman sitting in a window and looking out at a storm building on the horizon. She could see all of the roiling emotions inside her like black skies in the distant, but they felt far off, something to observe but not feel.
Her mind moved to the practical, as it usually did: it was who she was, and thinking about practical things spared her from thinking about the other, much more complex and potentially troublesome matters.
She looked over at baby Jack, mercifully asleep in his crib. The wet nurse they had brought in so that Virginia might attend the ball seemed willing enough to come when needed, and Jack seemed to take to her admirably. That thought gave Virginia a stab of guilt, just one more of dozens such pinpricks. It was absurd, she knew, no reason at all to feel guilty for turning her baby over to a wet nurse for a few hours—many women of her station did not nurse at all—but guilt and logic were rarely bedfellows.
Next, she considered her wardrobe. She had riding clothes, and breeches as well if she had to opportunity to ride astride, which she preferred, to riding aside on a side saddle. So there was no concern in that regard.
This is a most excellent opportunity, she thought. Most of the British troops, those for whom they had yet to find more suitable housing, were bivouacked on the outer fringes of the city. Troop logistics would be a natural point of discussion. From there, Virginia could find out more about victualing, supply lines, potential troop movements, offensive maneuvers, where Lord Howe most feared an attack. A ride with Dexter could be very profitable indeed, from an intelligence standpoint.
She sighed. “You are such a damned liar,” she said out loud. She knew perfectly well why she was tempted by Dexter’s invitation, and it had nothing to do with victualing or troop bloody logistics. She enjoyed his company. She would never, ever, even entertain the notion of being unfaithful to Isaac—and she knew that to be the truth—but she nonetheless enjoyed the company of Richard Dexter; droll, urbane, and intelligent.
I would never rut with another man, she thought as she drew the brush through her hair, but am I not still being unfaithful? Allowing myself to be charmed by Richard Dexter? Captain Richard Dexter, of His Majesty’s Seventeenth Regiment of Foot?
She threw the brush on the table and looked away from her reflection in the mirror. She missed her husband terribly. There was no question in that regard. But she was lonely. And bored.
And there was yet another aspect to this. She really, genuinely, wished to go riding, whether it was with Captain Dexter or Beelzebub himself. She sighed again, then stood and crossed over to the small desk on the other side of the room. She spread a sheet of paper in front of her and dipped her quill into the ink.
Captain Dexter…she wrote, I would be very pleased to accept your kind invitation to an afternoon of riding in the city…
Virginia hurried through the reply, eager to be done with the task of which she was still uncertain. She blotted the ink, folded and sealed the note, and was half finished with dressing when Jack woke, his gurgling escalating quickly to the sort of demanding cry that only his mother could satisfy. She scooped him up from the crib and settled down to nurse, letting her mind wander off to the autumn fields and well-bred stallions of her home in Bristol, Rhode Island. Fine times. Simple times. When war had not yet come to those United Colonies.
Once Jack was done, Virginia stood with him in his arms, a familiar bundle, and stepped out into the hall. She moved three doors down the carpeted hall and rapped lightly at Susan’s door.
“Come!” Susan called and Virginia swung the door open and stepped inside. Susan was still at her mirror, still hard at work on her hair.
“Oh, Virginia, dear, don’t you look particularly beautiful this morning!” Susan gushed, regarding Virginia in the mirror. “And you’ve had a letter, I understand!”
“Indeed,” Virginia said. She had long suspected that Susan slipped Nelly the odd guinea to keep her informed of everything that transpired in the house, or wherever the girl was able to insinuate herself.
“From that handsome Captain Dexter?” Susan asked.
“Yes, from that handsome Captain Dexter,” Virginia agreed. “He asks me to go riding with him on the morrow.”
“Oh, marvelous!” Susan said. “Even something so loathsome as riding a horse might be tolerable in that gentleman’s company.”
“The thing of it is,” Virginia said, “I had quite hoped you would join us. Perhaps you and Captain Cornwall. I don’t think it would be quite the thing for Captain Dexter and I to go off on our own.”
“Oh, my dear, you are such a country mouse!” Susan said, turning and looking at Virginia directly. “Of course, I would never make so bold as to ask Captain Cornwall myself, but if he were to ask me to go along on your little outing, I will promise to accept. Even if it means getting on top of some beastly horse.”
“Thank you,” Virginia said. “And do you think he might ask?”
“I’m all but certain of it,” Susan said with a knowing smile.
Breakfast passed pleasantly enough. Virginia knew better than to wear any sort of shawl or bed jacket to the meal, as Mrs. Williams was certain to have the fire built up to a great inferno to preserve Jack’s apparently tenuous life, which indeed she did. There was considerable talk concerning which officers were quartering with which families, and of upcoming balls or theatrical productions, or who stood the chance of marrying whom, and the price and scarcity of groceries, but it passed right through Virginia’s head as if there was not the least impediment between her ears.
She was back in her room, rocking a sleeping Jack with her foot and working a piece of embroidery on a hoop when Nelly knocked again.
“A letter has come for you, Missus,” she said when Virginia called her in. Again she held out the small silver tray with an envelope sitting on top. Virginia frowned. Captain Dexter’s man had not yet come for her reply, she would not expect further word from him. But she could see that this letter was considerably more battered and road-weary than the crisp note that Dexter had sent.
“Thank you, Nelly,” Virginia said and she picked up the envelope. Across the face of it, she read, Mrs. Virginia Biddlecomb, c/o Mrs. Temperance Williams, Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. That was all, but she gasped when she saw the writing.
“Isaac…” she said, her voice just a whisper.
“Missus?” Nelly asked.
“Thank you, Nelly, that will be all,” Virginia said, but her eyes did not move from the faded ink. She heard the servant cross the room and close the door and for a moment more, Virginia just sat, rocking her baby—their baby—and staring at the envelope.
“Isaac…” she said again, and she felt a flush of guilt, a sensation of confusion and uncertainty. Then with a sudden rush of need, she tore the seal open and unfolded the letter.
My Beloved Virginia, she read, and from there her eyes flew over the words, racing along the familiar handwriting, barely taking its meaning as she did. She was eager, desperately eager, to consume every bit of it, in the same way she would have torn at Isaac’s clothes, eager to consume his person, had he been there in the flesh.
She reached the end of the text, the letter half-digested, and only then did she understand the other reason she had read it that way—she was looking for bad news, for some word that he was hurt, captured, sick. She was frantic to know, but the letter contained nothing like that.
“Oh, Isaac…” she said softly. She closed her eyes for a second, let her thoughts settle, then began again from the salutation, reading slowly and carefully, letting the images her husband had crafted with his pen form in her mind. The fight with the cutting-out party on the river, the desperate gamble sailing through the British fleet, the race up the coast, fearful that any moment a British cruiser might appear over the horizon.
I dare not tell you where we are now sheltered, for fear that this letter will go astray, Isaac had written. We are vulnerable in the extreme, and there are many who are very eager indeed to gain possession of this fine ship, not least the King’s officers under whose very noses we slipped away. I dare say our escape caused some considerable consternation in the great cabins of His Majesty’s ships at anchor in the Delaware Bay. I will say only that we are now at the place where poor David Weatherspoon met his untimely end last autumn. Dear Lord, it seems a hundred years ago.
Virginia stared off into the distance. David Weatherspoon… She remembered it perfectly, as if the fight was a painting, she had been staring at all her life. Charlemagne’s final act, driven ashore to keep her out of British hands. The red-coated marines and British sailors landing on the beach, her husband’s men hunkered down behind the dunes. The bursts of gun fire, the hand to hand fighting. Her attempts at surgery in the aftermath.
Young David Weatherspoon, midshipman, shot down in the sand, a pistol ball through his throat.
Great Egg Harbor, Virginia recalled. That was where it had taken place. They had lodged at the tavern there, after the British had been driven off and the local militia had come to their aide. Virginia could picture the waterfront where they had purchased a half-rotten schooner, which Isaac’s men had christened Lady Biddlecomb. She could imagine the great bulk of the Falmouth frigate tied up at the end of that long wharf.
Virginia looked back at the letter, her eyes resting on the words but not reading them.
So there it is… she thought. Word at last, nearly two months since she had heard anything from her beloved Isaac. As of that writing he was safe and all but trapped at Great Egg Harbor. But was he still there? Still safe? She did not know. The letter was dated October 30 and it was now the twenty-sixth of November. Everything Isaac had written might already be moot.
She was vaguely aware of something going on below stairs, someone at the door, it seemed, but she gave it no thought. And then she realized who it must be – Captain Dexter’s man come for her reply. And with that realization came the understanding that she could not possibly accept Dexter’s invitation now, now that she had received word of Isaac, now that her husband was suddenly no longer an abstraction but a real presence in her life once again, even if only through his written word.
Virginia jumped to her feet, raced across the room, and pulled the door open. Ten strides and she was down the hall and at the head of the stairs. Four steps down the staircase and she could see the front entrance at the end of the foyer on the first floor, just in time to catch a glimpse of a red uniform on the stoop outside as Nelly closed the heavy door. In Nelly’s hand was the small silver tray, empty.
Damn it… Virginia thought. Her mind raced through the options: chase after Dexter’s man, send another note rescinding her acceptance, feign illness when Dexter arrived.
Damn, she thought again. It was too late. There was no gracious way out of it now. She would have to go.
She could still, of course, gather intelligence that might be of use to the Patriot cause. And she might even find some pleasure in being on horseback once again. That last part, she suspected, would be the one most easily accomplished.
The wet nurse arrived the following morning at 9:30 promptly, and Virginia was able to act pleased at how easily Jack took to her, despite the fact that she found it vaguely annoying. With the nurse and Jack ensconced in a chair at the far side of the room, Virginia dressed herself in her riding clothes: breeches worn under a skirt, which looked perfectly normal but was in fact divided into two legs for riding astride, if Captain Dexter were to bring a mount with such a saddle. She wore as well a short, padded riding jacket and a small cocked hat, pinned to her hair.
When she was done dressing, she made her way down the hall to Susan’s room. Mrs. Williams had thankfully gone out for the day, sparing Virginia her cloying concern about the prudence of a young mother going riding on a cold, late fall morning in the city. Susan had not yet emerged from her room, and Virginia assumed she too had been making ready for the day’s activities.
“Come!” Susan called in her sing-song voice at Virginia’s knock. Virginia opened to door to find Susan at work at her hair, still wearing her shift and bed jacket. On the bed was a blue and white silk gown, a lovely garment but hardly one fit for riding.
“Susan, dear, the gentlemen will be here directly,” Virginia said, “and you don’t seem quite ready.” The words were a formality, nothing more. Virginia knew from the moment she walked in the room that Susan had something in mind that did not involve horses. In truth, Virginia had suspected from the moment Susan agreed to go riding that she would find some means of slipping off that hook.
“Oh, Virginia, dear, I’m so sorry,” Susan said. “When I woke this morning, I could just feel the beginnings of a wicked cold coming on. I swear it would be the very death of me if I were to go riding on so bitter a day as this. You hardy country gals can endure such things, I know, but I’m sure I could not.”
“Captain Cornwall will be ever so disappointed when he gets here,” Virginia said.
“Oh, never fear. I sent him word earlier. When I realized that I felt unwell.”
“I see,” Virginia said, and she did. She would be out of the house for most of the day. Susan’s mother was out of the house. Susan was spending a lot more time on her hair than one would expect for a woman taken with illness.
Undoubtedly her note to Captain Cornwall did not suggest that he stay away, but simply that he wait until the coast was clear.
“But Captain Dexter will be here, certainly,” Susan said. “And you should never cancel your plans with him out of any concern for me! I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Indeed,” Virginia said. “So you’ll be taking to your bed when I’m gone?”
“Oh, I should think so,” Susan said.
“I would think so as well,” Virginia said. With that, she left Susan to her hair and made her way below stairs. In the back room found her cloak and riding gloves.
There was a knock at the door at exactly 10:30. Nelly opened it to reveal Captain Richard Dexter, a wool cloak partially obscuring his flawless red uniform with its white facings, his waistcoat and breeches also white, like new-fallen snow. He gave the servant girl a courteous nod of the head and looked past her to where Virginia stood under the arch that marked the foyer’s end.
“Ah, Mrs. Biddlecomb!” he said, bowing more formally. Nelly opened the door wider and Dexter came sweeping in. “I was sorry to hear that Miss Williams is ill disposed,” he continued. “If you would like to forgo today’s excursion, I certainly understand.”
“No, no, Captain,” Virginia said. “We’ll soldier on, as it were, and leave Miss Williams to whatever entertainments she manages to find.”
Dexter smiled. “Excellent,” he said. “If you’re ready, please come and inspect the mounts I’ve brought.” He half turned and gestured toward the open door. Virginia crossed the foyer and stepped out onto the stoop. Three horses stood on the street below, their reins held by two men in the uniform of privates of the Seventeenth Regiment of Foot.
“Three horses and two foot soldiers,” Virginia commented with a raised eyebrow as Dexter stepped up beside her. “It seems one too many for the two of us.”
“Well, here’s my quandary,” Dexter said. “Generally, most woman of my acquaintance prefer to ride aside on a suitably quiet mare. But seeing as you are a rider of such experience, I thought perhaps you would prefer to ride astride.” He indicated two saddles resting on the ground. “So I brought mounts with either saddle, so that you might choose.”
Virginia nodded. She was impressed with the thoughtfulness. Very impressed. All the same, she was aware of the necessity for respectable behavior – even if dear Susan was, apparently, not. She smiled, indicated her clothing. “I thank you for the courtesy of choice of saddle, sir, but as you see, I am suitably dressed for riding aside. Perhaps the temperament and conformation of the horse will decide me?”
Dexter also smiled, nodded. He too was impressed.
Virginia approached the first horse, a striking dark bay gelding of about sixteen hands. She patted his neck and ran her palm across his shoulder and down his foreleg, picked up his foot, inspected how well he had been shod. Nodding satisfaction she straightened, stood back a little and assessed him. Quality breeding, good conformation, but he looked strong—a man’s horse.
She smiled and went to the next, a gray mare with a silver-black mane and tail, slightly smaller than the bay. Large, kind eyes, good feet. The mare nudged her with her muzzle and Virginia laughed, rubbed the mare beneath her forelock.
Dexter chuckled. “She’s always liked being scratched just there!”
The third horse, another mare, the smallest of the three, stood around fifteen hands. A chestnut, nearly the same color as Virginia’s hair, with a diamond-shaped white star on her face and one white sock on her near hind. The mare snorted, tossed her head, and laid her ears back as Virginia approached.
Virginia ignored the grumpy temper and scratched with her nails along the gleaming coat of the mare’s neck, crooning quietly under her breath as she did so. The mare twitched her ears forward, then back again, listening. Running her hand along the topline of the horse’s rump, Virginia made to walk behind the mare intending to inspect her offside.
Dexter started forward, anxious. “Careful,” he said, “this one’s a bit touchy about her rear end; she’s been known to kick. I didn’t actually want her, but…”
“But,” Virginia answered, and left it at that. She stepped back a few paces to assess all three horses from a yard or two distant. “There are scars on the chestnut’s legs, and one on her flank. She has not been well treated.” Virginia turned to Dexter. “Not, I trust, by you, sir!”
“Not by me, I assure you!” Dexter said. “We do our best for them, but they’re army mounts, after all, and they can see some hard use. There’s nothing for it.”
Virginia nodded, cocked her head slightly to one side, patted one finger against her chin, considering. The bay was obviously his horse. Would he mind if she chose that one? She was a good rider, could control a strong horse—but a good rider also knew her limitations. The gray was a pretty, willing-looking mare who would go for miles without falter or fuss, but the chestnut…?
Virginia smiled. The chestnut was full of spirit and capable of standing up for herself: an ‘I’ll kick you before you kick me’ attitude. Virginia could appreciate that.
“The chestnut, with the side saddle, please,” Virginia said, decisively. She looked at Dexter, curious as to how he would react, but the young officer just smiled slightly and indicated for one of the men to saddle the horse.
He knew I would pick the chestnut, and that saddle, Virginia thought as she pulled on her riding gloves. She was not certain whether she was annoyed or flattered by that.
“Excellent choice,” Dexter said with no hint of coyness in his voice. He stepped over to the chestnut’s side and cupped his gloved hands to assist Virginia to mount. She thanked him as she put right boot in his hands, and as he effortlessly boosted her upward, settled herself sideways into the saddle.
The chestnut shifted nervously under her, a little unused to the lighter weight, but Virginia, holding the reins and the riding cane in one hand, scratched the animal’s neck once again and made her soft crooning sound and the horse seemed to calm a bit.
Virginia smiled at the private holding the horse’s bridle, brought her left leg back slightly. “Might I trouble you to shorten the stirrup leather one hole? It’s a little long for comfort.” The private blushed slightly as he moved aside the skirt of her habit, and altered the stirrup quickly. Again Virginia thanked him and settled the reins in both hands, ensuring the extra loop flicked over to the right-hand side of the horses neck so that it would not catch in the toe of her booted foot.
She looked around as Dexter mounted the bay with practiced ease, and she had the sense from the way he sat the horse that he was indeed as good a rider as his talk suggested he was.
“Is all well, Mrs. Biddlecomb?” he asked.
Virginia shifted slightly in the saddle to correct a slight feel of imbalance. It had been a long time since she had seen the world from the height of eye that a horse provided, a long time since she had felt a spirited animal moving under her. All of those sensations, so familiar and yet so removed from her life this half year past, all came flooding back. And despite the uncertainty she felt, the gnawing sense that this was all entirely inappropriate, the guilt and worry, and the hundred other conflicting feelings, she smiled.
“Yes, Captain,” she said. “Very well, indeed.”
“Excellent!” Dexter said, smiling back at her. “Then let us be off!”