Miranda Jarrett - The Secrets Of Catie Hazard

Catie nodded, her smile tight. It wasn’t the score of rough men under her roof that she feared so much as the one very polished major. When two nights ago, at the first news of the invasion, she sent Belinda from Newport to stay with a married couple she knew near Nantasket, she’d had no idea how wise a precaution it would prove to be.

She rose briskly, determined to put aside her own worries. “Now, Hannah, I want you to make sure that you keep the cellar locked, and that you leave nothing— nothing —unattended in the kitchen as long as we must house these particular guests,” she warned. “While that puppy of a lieutenant assured me his men will receive daily rations from their quartermaster, I don’t believe for a minute they’ll be able to resist trying to steal a taste of your cooking.”

“Don’t know a man what can, mistress,” said Hannah proudly. “But any of them lobsterbacks come creepin’ into my kitchen, an’ they’ll answer to my cleaver.”

“We should have had you and your cleaver on the beach at Weaver’s Cove instead of that fool militia,” said Catie wryly, only half jesting. Certainly she and Hannah would have made a better show of defending their home. “Now, as for supper—”

“Beggin’ your pardon, mistress,” Hannah interrupted, “but Cap’n Jon’s still waitin’ downstairs at the back door. That’s why I came up here, to tell you.”

“Captain Sparhawk’s here? Now?” Without waiting for an answer, Catie gathered her skirts and hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen. Jon Sparhawk was known to be a brave man, a daring man, but he was tempting fate to come to Hazard’s when it was so full of British soldiers.

Yet when she reached the kitchen, the room was empty, Hannah’s pie crust sitting half-crimped in its pan on the table, the back door closed and latched. Puzzled, Catie went to bolt the door. Perhaps Jon Sparhawk had left to avoid one of the British guards, or perhaps, more likely, he’d simply realized how foolish it was for him to come to the tavern now.

The man’s hand closed over Catie’s mouth before she could scream, his other arm locking around her waist to drag her back from the door and window beside it. Frantically Catie plunged against him, struggling to break free, but the man only tightened his grip further, pinning her arms against her sides. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger, and, terrified, she instinctively seized the one defense left to her: as hard as she could, she bit the palm of his hand.

With a yowl of pain, the man released her. Stumbling forward, Catie grabbed the rolling pin from the table and wheeled round to face him.

“For God’s sake, Catie, did you have to bite me?” demanded Jon Sparhawk indignantly as he cradled his wounded hand.

“Did you have to scare me out of my wits?” Catie glared at him, the rolling pin still in her hand. In all the time she’d known Jon, he’d never dared treat her this way, and she didn’t like it, not at all. “With everything else that’s happening in this town, I certainly don’t need you creeping about my house playing footpad!”

“I’m not ‘playing’ at anything, Catie. No one in Newport is.” He scowled down at the bright red marks Catie’s teeth had left in his hand. “I didn’t want you to scream and raise a fuss, that was all. Did you know your yard is full of those British bastards?”

“They’re in my yard, my attic, and my best bedchambers,” said Catie with disgust. She tossed the rolling pin back on the table, dipped a rag in the water bucket and held it out to Jon for his hand. “They’re probably under the very bedsteads, as well, if I cared to look. How else would I know your cousin is one of them?”

Jon looked up sharply. “Then it is Anthony?”

“Of course it is,” said Catie, praying she’d be able to keep her voice even. Though she had known Jon for years, he had never made the connection between Ben Hazard’s wife and the nervous serving girl she’d been at the Crossed Keys, and she had no wish for him to realize it now. “I wouldn’t have sent the message to you if it wasn’t your cousin. There is, you know, a certain family resemblance.”

“Oh, aye, no doubt of that,” he said. “Even though Anthony’s turned traitor, his face would still mark him as a Sparhawk.”

He dropped into the chair beside the table, the skirts of his coat falling back so that Catie could see the pistols in his belt, silver-mounted and deadly elegant.

Purposefully she looked away. No matter what the circumstances, she didn’t approve of guns in her house, but she didn’t wish to challenge Jon on it now. “He thinks we’re the ones who are the traitors, Jon.”

Wearily Jon shook his head. His jaw was stubbled black, his eyes ringed from sleeplessness, and his clothes so rumpled that Catie doubted he’d been home to sleep since the British landed.

“Anthony wouldn’t say that if he’d stayed here at home, where he could see how bad things have become. He’ll come round to our side. You’ll see. Once he learns how Father’s been driven away—”

“He knows already.” Catie’s hands tightened into fists at her sides. “Though he pretended not to, and tried to trick me into saying more. Not a quarter hour past, he left for the general’s headquarters.”

Jon swore, long and furiously. “To my father’s house, you mean.”

Catie nodded. “The only loyalty your cousin has now is to that blessed red coat of his.”

“Then they’ve poisoned him against his own people,” he said flatly. “There’s no other explanation. I cannot believe—”

“Believe it, Jon, for it’s true,” said Catie vehemently. “Two minutes in your cousin’s company and you’d see for yourself. He’s not an American any longer. He’s one of them now, the worst kind of arrogant British officer, and he doesn’t care a fig for what happens to you or your parents.”

Jon’s expression hardened, the lines carved deep on either side of his mouth. “Then we’ll have to treat him with the same high regard, won’t we?”

He lowered his voice to a conspirator’s rough whisper. “As long as he’s under your roof, Catie, I want you to watch him. Listen to his conversations, note who comes to see him, charm him into trusting you. Then tell me whatever you learn.”

Startled, Catie drew back, her hands clasped tightly together at her waist She hadn’t expected Jon to ask her to do that, and she didn’t want to, not at all. To charm Anthony Sparhawk no, she couldn’t do it.

“I can’t, Jon,” she said, faltering. “I just— I can’t.”

“Oh, aye, you can, Catie, and you will,” said Jon firmly. “You’ll have chances to be near him that none of the rest of us will. It’s not that much to ask. Think of all the men risking their very lives for the cause.”

But if she did as he asked, her own life would be at stake, too. Already Anthony had nearly recognized her. The more time she spent in his company, the more likely it was that he’d be able to remember who she was. And once he did, her carefully ordered world would collapse like a wobbly house of playing cards.

“You don’t know what you ask, Jon,” she said miserably, unable to explain. “I can’t—”

“You will do it, lass,” said Jon, and the harsh edge in his voice warned Catie to obey. “Not just for the cause of freedom. You’ll do it for my father and my mother, as well. After all my family’s done for you, Catie Hazard, you will do this for us.”

Her conscience twisting the fear around her heart, Catie stared down at the pistols at his waist. Such guns weren’t an affectation with Jon; he’d use them if he had to. She thought again of how he’d trapped her earlier, and now she shivered at the thought of what he could have done. This was the other side of the Sparhawk family, the ruthless, violent side that she’d heard whispered of, but had never seen in the front room at Hazard’s, the side that had made them their fortunes as privateers and in a score of other risky ventures.