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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

In certain matters it didn’t. The fact that the Governor’s friends, like the King’s, could get away with financial peculation and chicanery with the customs was one of the things that most maddened Sam, and John, and others. In a question of murder, however, he was likely to find matters less amenable to influence.

Or was he? The thought was a disconcerting one. In Pamela, as John had derisively pointed out, the lustful and demanding Mr. B held his power precisely as Governor Hutchinson held it: because every man’s livelihood depended upon his whim. No one considered a servant girl’s honor more important than keeping a roof over one’s own head or food on one’s family table.

The door opened. Abigail got to her feet, lips parting to ask Coldstone what Pentyre had said—

Only it wasn’t Lieutenant Coldstone in the doorway, but a tall, buxom, black-haired young girl in an overly colorful parakeet green dress.

In fact—Abigail belatedly identified the newcomer—it was the Royal Commissioner’s daughter, Miss Lucy Fluckner.

“Mrs. Adams?” The girl’s husky hesitancy, Abigail guessed at once, was not her usual habit. “We need to speak to you. I-I think it’s on a matter of life and death.”

Twenty-two

Twenty-two

023

The Fluckners had two rooms in what was clearly the officers’ quarters of Castle William: Abigail wondered who had been displaced to make way for them. The suite had obviously been intended to house an officer and his servant, for a door connected its rooms, and in addition each had a door and a window looking out onto the parade ground. A light burned in the window of the smaller chamber, an uneasy reminder that, though daylight remained in the sky, evening was coming on fast. The wind, which, as she had prayed it would, had slackened for her crossing, was now getting up again, and whistled shrilly around the fortress walls. It would be a bitter night for those lodged under canvas. As she crossed the parade in Miss Fluckner’s wake, Abigail checked her watch, reflecting that she had best hold fast to what she had instructed Thaxter to tell Lieutenant Coldstone: that she would return in one hour.

The Lieutenant’s probable reaction, when he returned to the office and found John’s clerk there instead of herself, she put from her mind. Instead she mentally marshaled the arguments she’d have to present to this decisive-looking young lady—or her irascible father—about where she, Abigail, was supposed to spend the night—

And tried to salve her conscience about playing sleuth-hound on the Sabbath yet again.

A matter of life and death?