Soon we arrived at a cozy tavern with a door left open to the rainy night. Chatter and music poured out and only grew louder as we entered.

Inside, we found the bride thieves surrounding Liesje, who sat smiling and talking happily under their doting attention. Some of the other wedding guests had come from the Vissers’, crowding the little tavern, and I spotted Lieutenant Duncan right away. Just as earlier, his gaze hit me with a delicious warmth.

Casper Devoor strode right to Liesje, pulling her into a long embrace that raised a chorus of cheers.

“Oh my,” Lucy said. “I think Liesje was just rescued.”

Charlotte and I looked at each other and laughed.

We entered the fray holding our wineglasses high, my panniers squeezing and swinging in the tight press of bodies. Lucy and Charlotte stopped to talk with Rebecca, but I headed for Major André. By some miracle, a chair sat unclaimed beside him. I slid into it and found him in conversation with General Knyphausen, the Hessians’ most elevated commander. Knyphausen reminded me of Captain Jansen, due to the way he held his head slightly turned to one side on account of having a blind eye. Three years ago, in gratitude for his efforts in helping seize New York from General Washington’s army, the British had renamed Fort Washington after him. Another man was in the conversation as well—a civilian who was sweating terribly and whose jowls shook as he spoke.

“Ah, Miss Coates,” André said, breaking away for a moment to greet me. “My muse.”

“Here to inspire, Major.”

“As ever.” We spoke for a little while about the production of Macbeth he was staging at the Royal Theater; then he gracefully made his way back to the conversation he’d set aside for me.

The topic was the court martial trial against the American general Benedict Arnold, who’d been accused of using public items, like provision wagons, for his private gain. The trial had been all over the newspapers for weeks, though, so it hardly counted as secret knowledge. My attention shifted to Major André’s aristocratic profile. For the first time, I saw him as an adversary, truly connected to the atrocity of Wallabout Bay and Asa Lane’s impressment, the blockades, the unfair taxes. Connected to everything else that I believed unjust. And yet I was still fond of him.

Love thine enemy, the Bible taught. I’d never understood that till now.

“Be scarce, Grupe,” Lieutenant Duncan said, tapping the man in the chair beside me on the shoulder. Like that, the man left and Duncan took his place.

“Miss Coates, I don’t expect your forgiveness,” he said immediately. “But if you would allow me to, I would like to explain yesterday’s debacle by the river.”

“Certainly,” I said. With his brow furrowed in concentration and his posture straight, he looked very martial. Tense. “And good evening, Lieutenant.”