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Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

“I forbid you to go!” thundered Sam, and turned back to the fire. “John, I order you to bridle this wife of yours and keep her from interfering, either with our own men or with that damned cold-faced Provost! I will not have our endeavor jeopardized, and I warn you, John, kin or not, I’ll take whatever steps I need!”

And snatching up his hat and cloak from the sideboard, he strode to the door, and vanished into the night.

Twenty

Twenty

021

“Pa! Mrs. Adams is here.”

“I know fifteen Mrs. Adamses.” Paul Revere grinned, emerging in his shirtsleeves from the back room of his shop, an apron around his waist. “Yet somehow, I knew it would be you, m’am.” He winked at his son behind the counter, stepped aside to let Abigail past him, into the wide-windowed little workshop with its shelves and tools and blocks of wax.

“Because Sam has ordered you not to speak to me?”

“Of course. I have tea here—” The kettle was hissing and muttering to itself on the edge of a small forge near the back door. No need to ask whether so much as a farthing’s tax had been paid on it. “What do you need to know?”

It was midmorning, and wind blew icy across the harbor, rattling gently at the windows that formed a band of grayish light, halfway round the workroom. Abigail prayed it would grow less by three, when—with luck—Lieutenant Coldstone would meet her at Rowe’s Wharf. Even now it wasn’t bad enough to keep boats from passing over to the Island, but her stomach did anticipatory flip-flops at the thought of being on the water in such weather. “Were you acquainted with a woman named Jenny Barry?”

He started to make a good-natured grimace, a comment on the dead woman’s way of life: then she saw in quick succession recollection, angry horror, and sudden speculation fleet across his dark eyes at the name. “She was killed—” he began, and Abigail finished for him, “—eighteen months ago, give or take. Her body was slashed—”

“—like Mrs. Pentyre’s, after she was dead. Yes. I knew there was something . . . Another woman was killed that same summer, Zulie Fishwire—” His dark brows knit sharply down over his nose.

“I went to her house the day before yesterday,” said Abigail. “Spoke with her neighbors, which apparently the local constables barely troubled themselves to do at the time. Did you see either of their bodies?”