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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 wardly shaking from her interview with Malvern—and possessed by what she knew was a fantasy that she would reach home to find a dripping-wet Rebecca huddled beside her kitchen fire—Abigail forced herself to stop in the market on her way back to Queen Street. As surely as she knew her own name, she knew that once she reached her own house, no marketing would get done. John (surely John was home by this time—it was nearly noon by the clock on Faneuil Hall) would demand a minute account of what she had seen in Rebecca’s kitchen, and would also demand to know why she hadn’t stopped Sam, as if anything less than a nine-pound gun could stop Sam once he got going. Poor Pattie would be struggling to finish her own chores and Abigail’s neglected ones, and both Johnny and Nabby—usually at Rebecca’s dame school at this time of the morning—would be underfoot, not to mention the two little ones . . .

Life on Queen Street was one continuous domestic crisis, with brief breaks for meals and church on Sunday.

So while her mind tugged and tested at where Rebecca could have taken refuge, at who the dead woman was and how the killer could have gotten into the house, she borrowed a basket from one of the farmwives she knew at the market—her own having been set down at some point in the morning she could no longer recall—and filled it with squash and corn and beans, pears and the best of the available remaining pumpkins, two chickens, and a lobster. She also paid a farthing for molasses candy, for the children and as an offering to Pattie for running off and leaving the poor girl with the whole house to clean and the ironing.

Not that Pattie was ever resentful or sulky, thank heavens. The girl would never set the world afire with her wits, but when King Solomon had set a good woman’s value above mere rubies he’d clearly displayed his shortcomings as a housekeeper . . . A reliable servant’s is above the stars in the sky.

Which is what comes of having kings write scripture and not housekeepers.

I must remember to bake extra tomorrow, and send something to Orion.

She turned the corner into Queen Street, and saw bright as the blood-stream on Rebecca’s doorstep that morning the scarlet of soldiers’ coats.

Not for a second did she doubt at whose door the men stood.

John. There was a list that we didn’t find, and the Watch did . . .

Abigail went cold down to her toes.