Miranda Jarrett - The Secrets Of Catie Hazard

To her joy, Belinda was outside, helping Abigail Piper draw a bucket of water from the well. Catie called her name, and the little girl’s head rose at once, her face was so bright with the same excitement that Catie herself felt that she could have wept with joy. Only three days they’d been apart, but that was three days longer than they’d ever been separated before.

“Belinda, here!” she shouted, dropping the basket to the grass to wave her hands. “I’m over here!”

Without another glance at Abigail, Belinda began to run to Catie, her skirts flying high around her legs and her white linen cap falling back from her hair. She threw herself into Catie’s outstretched arms like a small, wriggling puppy, linking her arms tightly around her mother’s waist and burying her face against her breasts.

“Oh, Mama, you said you’d come, and you did!” she cried, her words tumbling over themselves with happiness. “Mrs. Piper said you wouldn’t, not for a fortnight at least, but I knew you wouldn’t leave me that long, and you didn’t! You didn’t!”

She shoved herself back, impatiently shaking her hair back from her face. “You have been feeding the cats, Mama, haven’t you?” she asked, her heart-shaped face turning serious. “You made certain the little ones got their share, too? The Pipers have cats here in the barn, but they’re so fat from mice that they pay no mind at all to the scraps I bring them.”

“Of course I feed them,” said Catie promptly. “I even give them extra to make up for their disappointment at not seeing you. Hannah scolded me for it.”

“Well, good.” Belinda beamed. “I mean to make Hannah cross at me, too, starting first thing tomorrow morning. Now I’ll go fetch my things from the house so we can leave.”

“Belinda, sweet, wait a moment.”

“Why should I?” The girl’s smile widened to show the gap where she’d lost her last baby tooth. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll be home. You’ll see, Mama, I kept everything neat in the bag, all folded tidy and neat, the way you did. I wouldn’t take anything out, even though Mrs. Piper said I should, because I knew I’d only have to put it back when you came for me.”

“Oh, Belinda,” murmured Catie, her heart sinking. “We must talk.”

How could she tell her the danger wasn’t past, that she’d only come to visit? Gently she reached out and took the girl’s rough little hand, smoothing back a lock of Belinda’s hair. Her daughter’s hair was so different from Catie’s own, not fine and silvery, but thick and gold and full of sunshine.

Her father’s hair, thought Catie wretchedly. Her father’s hair, and his green eyes, with their impossibly long lashes, and the same bowed curve of his smile, too, all of it unmistakably Anthony’s. Lord, was it only her shame that made her find his mark everywhere on her daughter’s innocent face, or would others see the resemblance, too?

“I can’t take you home, lamb,” she said as gently as she could. “Not just yet, though I promise—”

“But why not, Mama?” cried Belinda, stunned enough that her voice squeaked upward. “You said it wouldn’t be long. You said I’d only have to stay here until Newport was safe again!”

“And it’s still not, Belinda, not yet,” said Catie hurriedly, hating herself for the pain she saw in her daughter’s eyes. “You’re much better off here with the Pipers, away from all the trouble in town.”

“But I don’t care, Mama,” said Belinda urgently. She was trying so hard to be brave and not cry, her fingers clutching around Catie’s. “I don’t care about the Pipers and I don’t care about the trouble. I want to go with you. I want to go home!”

Catie sighed unhappily. “I’m sorry, love, but I can’t take you just yet. You’re much safer here. The town’s too full of redcoats, hundreds and hundreds of them, plus Hessians—Germans—besides. Why, there’s even a good score of Britishers in our own house, thumping up and down the front stairs as if it’s their private parade ground.”

But Belinda scarcely heard her, her face crumpling with fear and disappointment and resentment, too, as she jerked her hand away from Catie. “You don’t care what happens to me, not really! You say you want to keep me away from the soldiers, but there’s been soldiers here, too, bunches of them, and you don’t even care!”

Catie looked at her sharply. “Soldiers here, Belinda? When?”

“Yesterday noon, Mrs. Hazard.” Abigail Piper joined them, the musket slung across her back in grim counterpoint to her welcoming smile. The Pipers had three sons serving in the south with General Greene. Abigail often vowed she would have gone for a soldier herself if Owen would let her, and somehow Catie didn’t doubt it. “A whole party of the nasty devils came poking about.”

“Oh, Belinda, forgive me, I didn’t know.” Gently Catie drew her daughter back into her arms, and with a little sigh Belinda pressed her head against Catie’s side.

“She was safe enough, Mrs. Hazard,” said Abigail, shifting the musket butt from her shoulder to the ground, leaning on the long barrel like a staff. “And brave as can be into the bargain. We were both sick abed and powerfully ill, weren’t we, Belinda?”

Catie frowned, slipping her hand beneath Belinda’s chin to feel if she was warm. “Ill?”

“We were only playing, Mama.” Belinda sniffed loudly, and she smiled in spite of herself. “When the redcoats tried to come into the house, Mr. Piper told them that Mrs. Piper and me were sick.”

Abigail chuckled. “Nothing an army fears more than a good dose of smallpox sweeping through the camp,” she said cheerfully. “Owen met them at the door, all harried and long-faced, while Belinda and I lay beneath the coverlets upstairs and moaned as if our last hour had come. We had our faces all dabbed with flour-paste sores, too, in case they dared come peek. Not that they did. Lord, you should have seen them turn tail and run, Mrs. Hazard!”

“But they could come back.” Protectively Catie tightened her arms around Belinda. The Pipers’ ruse had been a clever one, more clever than any she’d have invented herself—in peacetime the Pipers had been smugglers, accustomed to outwitting the authorities, which was one of the reasons Catie had trusted Belinda to them in the first place—but still she couldn’t help half considering taking Belinda back with her to Newport after all.

“Nay, they won’t come back, not once the word goes round their camp,” declared Abigail. “You’ll see. The pox is better than a score of muskets.”

Yet her smile faded. “But you, Mrs. Hazard. Coming out here all by yourself—that wasn’t wise, ma’am, ‘specially not if things are as bad in town as we heard. Don’t want to consider what those redcoats might do to a lady like yourself.”

Catie felt how Belinda shrank closer. Automatically she hugged the girl for reassurance, though she couldn’t have said which of them was the more comforted.

“I didn’t see a soul the whole way out here, Abigail,” she said, as much for her daughter’s benefit as for the other woman’s, “and I doubt I will on the walk home, either. As for us in town—true, it seems they’ve put half the infantry under my eaves, but I’ve officers staying with me, as well, and I pray those fine gentlemen with the gold lace on their coats will make their men behave.”

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