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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

“Sorry, m’am.” He stepped in front of her. “Just but family permitted in.” His English was one step from Gaelic, and not much of a step at that. “Lieutenant’ll be done in a minute—”

“I am Mrs. Adams.” Abigail handed him her shopping basket and the pumpkin. “If you would be so good as to carry this in for me?”

The young man cast a disconcerted glance back over his shoulder, and the older one waved him impatiently, adding, “And keep hold of your damn musket!” when he would have set it against the wall.

“Yes, sorr. Sorry, sorr.” With his weapon tucked awkwardly under one arm, the pumpkin under the other, and the heavy basket in both hands, he followed Abigail around to the yard and the kitchen door.

“Put it there.” Abigail nodded toward the broad table of scrubbed oak in the center of the big room: kitchen, workroom, dining-hall, nursery, schoolroom, and stillroom combined, the warm heart of the house where everything of importance was accomplished. When the children were in bed it was here she and John would work on pamphlets, letters, reports to the Committees of Correspondence in other colonies, and it was here, upon occasion, that members of the small, unofficial committee that headed up the Sons of Liberty sometimes met as well.

At the moment Pattie, bless her faithful heart, was finishing with the lamps for the day, setting the cleaned tin triangles aside on their shelf—wicks neatly trimmed—to await the fall of night. This task she abandoned, face flooded with relief, at her mistress’s entrance. “Oh, Mrs. Adams—!” At the same instant three-year-old Charley—ordinarily the household’s most outspoken supporter of the Sons of Liberty and Death to King George—flung himself against Abigail’s skirts and buried his face in her cloak, clearly not up to the task of fighting full-grown British soldiers after all. Tommy, sixteen months old and Charley’s most loyal follower, wasn’t far behind.

“Flogged them, have you?” Abigail pressed both fair little heads reassuringly, and regarded the abashed soldier with a chilly eye.

“M’am, I swear—”