“In Fish Street, at about ten this morning when I was doing the marketing.” And thank goodness that, like King Solomon, this impeccably uniformed young man knew nothing about housekeeping and would be unlikely to ask why a woman whose home was as neat as Abigail’s would leave her marketing until so advanced an hour.

“Fish Street doesn’t lie between here and the market,” pointed out Coldstone.

Not so ignorant, after all. “Mrs. Malvern is a close friend. Situated as she is—obliged to teach a dame school, and without a servant—I went there to ask if there were anything I could obtain for her. Thank you, Pattie—”

The girl came in, laid the tray with its three tall beakers of cider on the parlor table, cast a glance at Coldstone as if she expected him to arrest her as well, and ducked from the room.

Coldstone ignored the cider. “Did Mrs. Malvern ever speak of Mrs. Pentyre? To your knowledge, were they acquainted?”

“They may have known one another by sight,” responded Abigail, still trying to take it in, that the young and lovely wife of one of the richest merchants in Boston had known Rebecca well enough to have her throat cut in her kitchen. She stammered a little: “Mrs. Malvern had left her husband by the time Mrs. Pentyre—Miss Parke, as she was then—married Richard Pentyre. Coming as she did from Baltimore, and Mrs. Pentyre from New York, I doubt Mrs. Malvern would have known Mrs. Pentyre as a girl.”

Perdita Pentyre!

The silk dress. The diamond earrings. It made sense. Richard Pentyre, every inch the picture of an English gentleman, was bosom-crony to Governor Hutchinson and recipient of every favor and perquisite available to a loyal friend of the King.

And why not? His young and lovely wife was mistress to Colonel Leslie, commander of the garrison on Castle Island.

Her hand did not move, but she could almost feel through the fabric of her pocket and petticoats the note she had taken from the woman’s dishonored body. The Linnet in the Oak Tree. Cloetia.

One of ours, Dr. Warren had said.

Perdita Pentyre, an agent of the Sons of Liberty.

Who would have thought it?

“I beg your pardon.” She was aware that Lieutenant Coldstone had said, Mrs. Adams? with a note of interrogation in his voice. “My mind was otherwhere. Mrs. Malvern is, as I said, a close friend to our family. She lived with us, when first she was obliged to leave her husband’s house—”

“So she is close to both your husband and yourself.”

His eyes were on John as he spoke, and Abigail, with a warning ringing oddly in her mind, like the smell of smoke in the night, glanced swiftly at John’s face. He wore an expression of wariness, such as she’d seen on him when he played chess with an unfamiliar opponent. Only grimmer.

She answered, “Yes.”