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Back The Ninth Daughter
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

“He has asked that I be present at the interview—at a sufficient distance that conversation in a low voice should be private enough if you choose,” he added, anticipating Abigail’s protest, though in fact what she felt was relief that she would not be obliged either to broach or explain the matter of his presence herself. “And he has requested that you be searched.”

Abigail stopped short under the low brick tunnel of the gate. “Searched?”

“With all due decency.” Coldstone’s voice, like his features, seemed wrought of polished marble, ungiving and absolutely smooth. “I have asked the wives of five of the sergeants major here: respectable women, and honest. You may choose which of them you will, to perform the office. He would not meet you, else.”

Abigail opened her mouth, outraged, then closed it again. Why would he ask that? Her eyes searched the face of the man before her. “He sounds like a man in fear for his life.”

“Were he not,” replied Coldstone civilly, “he would not be living in a single clerk’s room on this island. Nor would any of the other lawyers, Crown officers, merchants, and their families currently eating Army rations. Your husband is, I might remind you, known as one of the leaders of the Boston mob—”

“He is not!”

“Forgive me for contradicting a lady, m’am, but he is indeed known as such, whatever his true position might be. And if he will take such a position, his wife must needs suffer for it, even as Mrs. Oliver and Mrs. Fluckner and the Apthorp ladies do—and, I might add, suffer to a considerably lesser degree. Will you agree to submit to the conditions?”

Abigail smiled. “I would not miss it for worlds.”

The wives of the sergeants major were red-faced, thick-armed, good-natured-looking women of the kind one would meet in the marketplace any day, not the slatternly trulls described in pamphlets from one end of New England to the other (I have been listening to too many of Sam’s diatribes). Abigail selected the one who looked most talkative, and remarked, as they retired behind a screen (there being no spare rooms in the fortress at all besides this single office), “I had no idea I was considered so formidable. Does Mr. Pentyre truly expect me to assault him?”

“That I don’t know, mum. He’s sure no so fussy about others that see him—and his poor wife did come to a terrible end.”

“Were you acquainted with her, Mrs.—?”