Authors: Leigh Greenwood
“Numerous people have seen that list,” Nathan pointed out. “Names have been crossed out and added several times.”
The doors opened, and Lester followed Delilah into the room with ale and mugs.
“Lucius Clarke thinks you took a list from my desk,” Nathan said to Delilah as she set the tray of pewter mugs down on a gateleg table.
“I never took anything from your desk,” Delilah said, looking at Nathan rather than Noah. “How could I, without a key?”
“It was a list of the insurgent leaders.”
“I don’t know the contents of any such list.” And she didn’t. She had refused to even look at the piece of paper before she’d thrust it into the small drawer in the drum table next to her bed.
“It doesn’t have to be Delilah,” Nathan said.
“Who else could it be?” demanded Noah.
“It’s possible your spy is either misinformed or lying,” Nathan said. “If he’s lying to Shays, he could be lying to you as well.”
Lucius and Asa Warner couldn’t ignore the logic of Nathan’s argument, but Noah would have none of it. “I’ve known this man since he was born. He’s as loyal as anybody in this room.”
“Who is he?” Nathan asked.
“I won’t tell, not even if Delilah and your man there were to leave. I don’t trust you, and I don’t care who knows it.”
“What reason would I have to help Shays?”
“What reason do you have to keep visiting all those farmers? Most of them are insurgents.”
“I’ve figured out how they can pay their debts and make a little money for me at the same time.”
“I don’t believe it,” Noah said. “Ain’t nobody paying debts.”
“How?” Asa asked.
“By making use of what they can do,” Nathan explained. “I suspect the source of Noah’s distrust has to do with my taking over Gilbert Eells’s credit and demanding payment in cash.”
“You tried to ruin me,” Noah cried.
“What did I do that you haven’t done to dozens of others?”
“This isn’t solving the question of who’s spying on us,” Lucius said.
“I don’t think there is any question of spying, not if that list is all you’ve got,” Nathan said. Noah tried to protest, but Nathan cut him off. “Everybody knows the rebel leaders by now. Lucius has accosted most of them in the street. Maybe that’s what Shays meant.”
Nathan’s argument was too logical to ignore. Talk had been general between both sides for months.
“Besides, what would be the point of giving Shays a list of his own men?”
“He’ll know who we suspect,” Noah suggested.
“He knows that already,” Asa insisted. “As Nathan said, they don’t hesitate to show their faces. I say we forget about spies. The more important question is what are we going to do about Shays’s call to arms.”
“I say we ask the governor to raise the militia,” someone said. “And they got to come from the eastern counties. Nobody’s going to fire on relatives and friends. We’ve already seen that.”
The discussion was joined. Nathan relaxed and turned to Delilah. He winked surreptitiously. She turned away to fill more mugs rather than let anyone see the answering smile she knew danced in her eyes. Her eyes gleamed with admiration for the way Nathan had handled Noah’s accusation, and her heart swelled with pride.
It also beat so hard it seemed to throb in her throat. She had to find a way to return that paper tonight. She couldn’t go through another evening of tension like this.
The drawing-room doors opened with such a resounding crash that the discussions, several of them quite heated, stopped in mid-sentence. Serena Noyes stood in the doorway, a look of triumph transforming her from a defeated middle-aged woman into a gloating witch. One hand held a piece of paper aloft. The other clasped a bent knife.
Delilah stood as though turned to stone. She knew what was written on that piece of paper. A glance at Nathan told her he did too.
“I hold the proof right in my hands that this Jezebel has betrayed those who clothed and housed her,” Serena announced, her voice shaking with emotion.
Noah Hubbard snatched the note from Serena’s hand. “Where did you find this?” he demanded, when he had read it.
Serena pointed dramatically at Delilah. “In a drawer in the table next to her bed.”
Nathan turned to Delilah, the shock of betrayal distorting the features she knew so well. She wanted to suspend time so she could explain, she wanted to remove that horrible expression from his face. But events rushed forward carrying her along.
“Haw do we know it’s the right list?” Asa asked.
“All the names are on it,” Serena said.
“But who wrote them? She might have been making a list of the names she heard us mention.”
“Is that your hand?” Noah demanded of Nathan.
Nathan continued to stare in Delilah’s direction. Yet she could tell his gaze wasn’t focused on her; rather, he was looking at something only he could see.
“Is it your handwriting?” Noah asked again.
For a moment it seemed Nathan still hadn’t heard Noah, but then he turned to look at the paper held up before him. He nodded his head.
“There!” Serena was triumphant.
“Did you give it to her?” Asa asked.
Nathan turned toward Delilah once more. For one horrible moment she thought he was going to lie to protect her.
“No one gave it to me,” Delilah said, tearing her gaze away from Nathan’s. “I found it.”
“Where?”
“She got it from Nathan’s desk,” Serena cried. “I found this in her room, too.” Serena held up a knife with a bent blade.
“What’s that for?” Noah asked.
“Come, I’ll show you.”
Everyone poured out of the drawing room behind Serena. Delilah didn’t know what would be found, but she knew it would be something to damn her even more thoroughly, if that were possible. She looked at Nathan, but he wasn’t looking at her now. He was staring at the people streaming out of the room in Serena’s wake.
“Nathan, I didn’t lie. I didn’t take that list.”
He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. He was in the grip of a rage at once more powerful and more all-consuming than the fury that had consumed him for months after Lady Sarah Mendlow’s betrayal. Every piercing emotion, every stab of pain, every agonizing moment of that time years before swept over him, suffocating him like the incoming tide. It blocked his ability to think, destroyed his reason, and deadened him to anything but his own great suffering.
“Look at me,” Delilah begged when he acted as though she hadn’t spoken.
But the look Nathan turned in her direction made the next words die in her throat. She had never seen such a blaze of fury in anyone’s eyes. It was as though he hated everyone in the world, as though he wanted to kill every person he could get his hands on, himself included.
Delilah didn’t know what to do, what to say to reach him. The fire in his eyes told her she couldn’t, to stay away. It warned her he was dangerously close to losing control.
Delilah had never been more terrified in her life, but when he turned from her to follow the others into the library, she ran after him. She wouldn’t hang back like a coward.
The sight that met her eyes shocked her. Someone had used a knife to hack a way into Nathan’s desk.
“Priscilla!” The word escaped involuntarily as she whipped around to seek out Serena’s daughter. Priscilla stood just behind her mother, a dogged look of surprise on her face.
“Did you do this?” Noah demanded.
Nathan seemed to struggle a moment before he could drag his mind from its dark thoughts. “This is my house,” he said in a soft but dangerous voice. “No one interrogates my servants.”
“I didn’t do it,” Delilah stated. The look in Nathan’s eyes was tearing her apart.
“Did you take the list from my desk?”
Delilah wanted to keep her promise to Priscilla, but she was fighting for her happiness. Besides, Priscilla had already broken their agreement by ruining the desk and telling Serena about the note.
“No. I have never been in your desk.”
“But Serena found it in your room,” Noah burst out.
One look from Nathan quelled Noah.
“After all that talk of spies last night, I couldn’t sleep,” Delilah explained. “I came down to the library to get a book to read. I heard someone coming after me, and I hid behind the settle. It was Priscilla.”
“Liar!” cried Serena.
“I never left my room,” Priscilla said.
“She took a paper from an inner drawer. I followed her when she left the house. She took it to Hector Clayhart.” Delilah had to raise her voice to be heard over gasps of surprise, murmurs of disbelief, and the shuffling movement of nervous people ill at case. “Hector wanted something in your handwriting so Shays would trust him.”
“Aha! We’ve got you there,” Noah shouted with glee. “Hector is our spy, has been from the first. He’s the one who told us the leak was coming from this house.”
“Of course he did. Priscilla’s taking him information. He’s spying for both sides.”
The clamor of astonishment and skepticism grew louder.
“How can you let that girl vilify your awn flesh and blood?” Serena exclaimed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nathan asked.
He didn’t believe her. He wouldn’t let himself. Delilah could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, see it in the rigidity of his stance.
“I wanted to, but you left before I woke. Besides, I thought it would be better if I just put it back. As long as no one knew, no one would be hurt. It wasn’t the information they wanted, just something in your handwriting.”
“Why should Priscilla do a thing like that for Hector?” “She’s going to marry him,” Delilah said.
“She is not!” Serena declared over the hiss of whispered exclamations. “You have my oath Priscilla hasn’t set eyes on Hector Clayhart in two years. I won’t allow my daughter to throw herself away on a penniless farmer.”
“Hector’s been making up to Miriam Dickinson,” Tom Oliver said. “Her ma said he’s been haunting her doorstep for a month.”
“I’m not in love with Hector,” Priscilla said, “and I didn’t leave the house last night.”
“She’s lying,” Delilah said as calmly as she could. “I followed her down the river path. She met Hector in one of his cabins.”
“Nathan, are you going to stand here and let that
female
accuse your cousin of having midnight assignations?”
“But I saw them,” Delilah insisted. “She was there”
“I never left my room,” Priscilla repeated.
Delilah sensed that Nathan didn’t believe her. Priscilla had trapped her so effectively her story sounded false.
That made Delilah so angry she started to shake. Though why she should waste her time getting furious over Priscilla’s treachery when her whole life was disintegrating right in front of her she didn’t know. Nothing Priscilla could do mattered when Nathan stared at her as if she were something to be trod underfoot.
How could he love her as much as he’d said he did and not believe her? She had always thought when you fell in love, you had complete, unquestioning faith. She felt that way about him. Why couldn’t he feel the same way about her?
His disbelief hurt more than she could ever have imagined. But with the pain came anger. She didn’t deserve this. If she hadn’t been trying to protect him, none of this would be happening. If he believed her, it still wouldn’t be happening.
“How do you explain the desk?” Nathan asked. His eyes were cold, empty, the eyes of a stranger.
“Why ask me?” She couldn’t keep the angry edge from her voice. “You don’t believe anything I’ve said.”
“There’s too much evidence against you,” Noah said.
“Why can’t you trust me?” Delilah asked Nathan.
Trust her! God help him, he had trusted her. He had believed in her implicitly, had offered to give up everything he possessed for her. He had gambled everything on her love, her loyalty, her truthfulness. Once again he had been made to look a fool.
Nathan could almost hear Lady Sarah Mendlow laughing at him. He shook his head, but he kept seeing her, hearing her false accusations, feeling the bitterness of ostracism. Anger spurted in him like a hot geyser. He’d never trust a woman again.
Struggling to put aside his personal emotions, he strove to see Delilah’s treachery in the same light as the others. His private anguish must remain buried forever in his heart.
“You once said you would choose Reuben over me,” he said, addressing Delilah as soon as he had himself under control. “I didn’t hold that against you, but this goes beyond repeating information you might overhear. You’ve lied, stolen, destroyed property, and tried to ruin the good names of others. I can’t have anyone in my home who would do that.”
His words stunned her. Somehow she had thought she would have a chance to talk with him alone, to convince him she was telling the truth. To have everything between them severed with such horrifying finality pierced her to the core.
“Nathan, please …”
But he didn’t hear her; he didn’t see her. The wall of anger rose between them until he stared straight through her as though she no longer existed.
“I will, have Jacob Pobodie take you home first thing tomorrow morning. Be ready at daybreak. Until then, stay in your room.”
“Nathan …”
The cry came from the depths of her soul, but Nathan hardened himself against it. He had thought nothing could be worse than the agony he suffered, but the look of pain and despair in Delilah’s eyes before she turned and ran up the stairs was almost more than he could bear.
The worst irony of all was to be forced to play out this comedy of errors, this tragedy of spirit, before Serena and Noah Hubbard. All the people who disliked him, despised him for being British and owning more of their country than they did, could enjoy seeing him made the fool. He who was so shrewd, who thought he knew Americans better than the Americans themselves. Well, they had their laugh now.
Nathan schooled his features to a look of indifference. He hadn’t been brought up in England for nothing. He hadn’t suffered more grief than any of them without learning to show an impassive face to the world. He would play out this scene without letting them know he was dying inside if it cost him every ounce of will he had left.