The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (59 page)

As he assisted the widow into the coach, it occurred to him that Gil had deliberately raised the subject of his limp in order to minimize it; keep it from being an additional source of tension during the rest of the evening. Climbing into the coach himself, he realized with relief that Peggy McLean didn’t appear to be the least repelled by his disability. In fact, as the coach set off, the driver hallooing to warn a crowd of urchins out of the way, she put Philip further at ease by saying:

“This printing business which the Marquis mentioned—I assume it’s located here in the city, Mr. Kent?”

“Yes, that’s right. My firm’s a modest one so far. Broadsides, advertising notices—”

“But I agree with the marquis—printing
is
a craft of great worth to society in general. Especially in these times, when all the states depend on the printed word for encouraging news.”

“It is the owner of the firm who is modest,” Gil broke in. “Philip has just published a very handsome library edition of Mr. Paine’s
Crisis
papers.”

“Indeed! I’ve read several of them. I admire the content as much as the prose. Is your edition doing well, Mr. Kent?”

“Not as well as I’d like. I’m preparing a circular to promote its sale by post to booksellers in other cities—”

“Perhaps I could take a quantity back to Virginia with me. I have friends in both Richmond and Williamsburg, and I’m sure I could prevail on them to place the circulars in the proper hands.”

Despite himself, Philip smiled. “Why, that’s very kind. I understand you do travel between your state and ours occasionally.”

“Yes, when the weather’s favorable and the seas reasonably safe. Tell me, what’s the name of your firm? Is it a family firm?”

“Well, I have a young son, named Abraham after my late wife’s father. Of course I entertain some hope that he might continue in the business. For that reason I christened the establishment Kent and Son.”

“I wish both Kents much success and prosperity,” Peggy McLean said, returning his smile with warmth.

Philip felt a peculiar sensation then. With a touch of surprise, he realized what it was. He was enjoying this young woman’s amiable and literate conversation as he’d enjoyed nothing else in months. He even caught himself eyeing the swell of her figure beneath her cloak.

That produced another severe twinge of guilt. It was embarrassing to find himself responding to widow McLean’s presence with even a flicker of physical pleasure—

Perhaps the evening wouldn’t be so disastrous as he’d imagined.

Gil tapped Philip’s shoulder, interrupting his reverie:

“By the by, my friend. That signboard for your doorway—have you made plans yet to put it up?”

“No, I—”

He cut the sentence off abruptly, realizing how skillfully he had been maneuvered into a trap. But Philip couldn’t be angry. Behind Gil’s smile and apparently innocent question lay genuine concern.

“I have been too busy to think much about it,” he resumed. A moment later, the decision was made:

“I expect to call for the sign and have it erected within a week, though.”

“First-rate! I’m sorry I shan’t be here to watch.”

Peggy McLean said, “Most business signboards here in Boston seem to have distinctive designs, Mr. Kent. Is that true of yours?”

“It has a design. Whether it’s distinctive, I can’t say. Just the name, Kent and Son, lettered in gold, Kent at the top, the other two words at the bottom. In between, there’s a green bottle painted black for about a third of the way up. The black represents tea. I was present at Griffin’s Wharf when—”

“When Mr. Adams held his famous tea party,” Peggy nodded. Her stock rose immediately with Philip, for whatever else she might be, she was no empty-headed beauty languishing disconnected from the world.

Sitting forward on the coach seat, aware that he was looking at her with perhaps too great a degree of interest—and sinfully enjoying it!—he went on:

“Yes, exactly right. During the cutting and dumping of the tea chests, my shoes got filled with the stuff. I put some in a green bottle to save it. I have it as a souvenir at home. I like the bottle’s symmetry, but more important, I like what it stands for. So I chose the bottle for the signboard instead of something more typical such as a press or a book—”

He realized the coach had stopped. A large, impressive house loomed outside. All the downstairs windows were aglow with candles, and the rooms themselves shed brilliant lamplight into the street. Liveried servants sprang to the coach door. Glancing out the other side, Philip saw they had returned to the vicinity of the Common.

One of the servants handed Peggy McLean out. Philip followed, alighting with only a slight awkwardness. He was feeling less self-conscious by the moment.

Moving to Philip, Peggy McLean said, “I will need to pick up those circulars before I sail home, Mr. Kent.”

“I can have them brought around to you.”

“But I’ve never seen a printing shop. I should like an invitation to visit yours.”

“You may have it, of course.”

“I hope you don’t think me too forward. Since my husband was killed some years ago, it’s been necessary for me to involve myself in many areas not normally considered proper for a woman. With my overseer’s assistance, I manage my own plantation, for example. I’ve found I have an interest in commerce—even a certain small aptitude for it. I like to broaden my knowledge of all areas of business—”

“Then you’ll surely be welcome at Kent and Son, Mrs. McLean.”

“Wonderful! We can work out the details over supper. And on my next trip to Boston, I’ll give you a report on my success with the circulars.”

“You’ll be coming back reasonably soon?”

“Yes, Mr. Kent, most assuredly.”

Standing perhaps a foot from him in the glare of a torch held aloft by one of the host’s footmen, Peggy McLean looked at Philip a moment longer. Color rushed to her cheeks. She glanced away, adding:

“I wonder if I might have your hand to climb the steps—?”

Philip smiled. “Certainly.”

When he lifted his arm and she touched him, there was a peculiar prickling all along his spine. And, within him, only a vestige of guilt.

Philip couldn’t see the Marquis de Lafayette smiling broadly as he followed the couple up the stairs in the shifting light of the windblown torches.

O
N THE NINETEENTH OF
October, 1781, some eight thousand British and German troops laid down their arms outside the tiny tobacco port of Yorktown in the state of Virginia, in token of the surrender of their commanding officer, General Charles Cornwallis, Earl of Cornwallis, to the combined American and French forces under General Washington and his ally, Count Donatien de Rochambeau.

The Hessians who had been besieged in Yorktown, trapped between the American army and the French fleet of Admiral de Grasse, stacked their arms with phlegmatic resignation. The British were a shade less gallant; embittered redcoats were seen to crack the butts of their muskets on the ground, and regimental musicians staved in the heads of their drums. Lord Cornwallis himself pleaded indisposition, sending a deputy to the ceremony.

General Washington refused to treat with the deputy. He insisted that Cornwallis’ alternate speak with
his
alternate, an American general of lesser rank, Benjamin Lincoln.

During the unit-by-unit abandonment of arms and musical instruments, the British bands played a peculiar assortment of music. Few were marches; some were airs with a distinctly melancholy strain. One, a popular nursery tune entitled
The World Turned Upside Down,
seemed ironically appropriate to the failure of the last thrust of the army of His Majesty. The army had swept up along the southern coast of the United States, hoping to win the victory that had eluded the British in the north.

At Sermon Hill, Caroline County, Donald Fletcher heard the story of the siege and surrender not many days later, from relieved residents of the district. There had been an ominous period of several months in which all the farmers and planters along the Rappahannock had feared they would be fighting redcoats from their own fields and verandas.

News of the surrender brought jubilation. And word of the playing of that particular children’s melody tickled Donald’s fancy as very little did any more.

Donald felt his age. His gouty leg kept him in constant pain. He did leave Sermon Hill occasionally, but not without enormous effort.

Donald’s stomach had swollen to immense proportions from his continuing refusal to cease his excessive eating and drinking. The task of operating the plantation after his father’s death from a paralytic seizure in mid-1780 had become a burdensome routine without real purpose; only massive meals and massive quantities of port and claret could relieve the lonely sameness of his days.

So he enjoyed hearing every detail of the humiliation of Cornwallis, a humiliation most interpreted as the end of hostilities, even though peace was by no means official as yet.

Before the year was out, the gentry along the Rappahannock found their own world turned topsy-turvy by other unexpected happenings. Hints of the first one circulated about Thanksgiving time, and Donald, through his house blacks, soon managed to confirm that the rumors had a factual basis.

Williams, the overseer who had helped Seth McLean’s widow keep her plantation operating as efficiently as was possible during the war, had been authorized to place the property on the market.

The actual owner, Peggy Ashford McLean, was away on one of her frequent trips to the city of Boston when the estate went up for sale. She returned to Caroline County in early December—and to the astonishment of Donald and everyone else in the district, she brought with her a new husband, plus two children.

One was her bridegroom’s son by his first wife. The second was a little girl a few years younger, who was supposedly related to Peggy’s distant kin in New England.

There were no fetes, no gala balls to welcome the new couple, because they had expressed their desire for privacy, keeping to their great house except for Sunday worship at the little Presbyterian church six miles from Sermon Hill. The children were not present on those occasions.

Like most other persons of substance along the river, Donald at first harbored private reservations about the fellow Peggy McLean had married. A mere tradesman, it was said; a printing-house owner! Neighbors who came to visit Donald stated unequivocally that the Bostonian had to be a fortune-hunter. The opinion was widely held until Williams gradually let slip certain details to disprove the charge.

According to the overseer, Mr. Philip Kent had some wealth of his own, due to successful investment in a privateering enterprise. His printing business was, if not yet overwhelmingly prosperous, at least successful.

And he had important personal connections.

He was a good friend of a wealthy Jewish merchant of Boston—there were several thousand Jews in America at the time, many quite affluent—and Kent’s friend, Selwyn Rothman by name, was said to have been one of those who had quite literally helped stave off the total collapse of America’s finances during the war. He and others had advanced the government huge sums from their personal treasuries. Rothman, it was reported, had given nearly as much as the Polish-born Haym Solomon and, like Solomon, had not demanded any definite terms for repayment.

Further, Donald learned that Rothman had helped Peggy McLean’s new husband through his first difficult days of establishing the firm called Kent and Son. But what gave final approval to Kent’s credentials was his widely discussed friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette. The Frenchman was a heroic figure in the eyes of Virginians, both because General Washington thought so highly of him, and because of his presence during the fighting at Yorktown.

Curious about the new liaison that was to result in Peggy Ashford McLean Kent’s removal to a new home in the North, Donald made a difficult trip to worship services one drizzly Sunday morning. He noted that Peggy looked radiantly happy as she entered the tiny church on the arm of her new husband—who, Donald saw with some astonishment, was a good half a head shorter than his wife. Also, he limped noticeably.

Yet the Bostonian had a rather cocky bearing, and a certain pugnacious set to his dark features. To Donald he appeared a man of determination and quiet vigor.

In the churchyard afterward, Donald had a chance to greet the New Englander. He found Kent to be well educated, at least superficially. What continued to impress Donald the most, however, was Kent’s steady, almost bold stare—as if he would cheerfully thrash any person who dared to question his right to marry a woman of such impeccable background as Peggy.

All smile and blushes—looking healthier, in fact, than he’d seen her in many a year—Peggy invited Donald to call at the McLean house that afternoon. He accepted.

In the carriage on the way back to Sermon Hill—Donald could no longer exert the effort or withstand the pain of riding horseback—he lingered on some far-from-godly thoughts which had teased his mind throughout the tedious sermon.

Peggy certainly seemed pleased with her new spouse. But Donald wondered about the more intimate details of the marriage. Having endured the nightmare of the uprising of ’75—been raped, was the long and short of it—would she be capable of fulfilling what were euphemistically known as wifely duties?

And had the groom known the quality—or should one say “limitations?”—of the goods he had acquired?

Donald realized he’d never know the answers, and supposed they were none of his business. But he wondered all the same.

At the McLean house, he visited for an hour while the drizzle continued to fall from the December sky. He found himself enjoying conversation with this Kent chap, who had served with the American army for several years, and been mustered out after Monmouth Court House, where he had received the wound that crippled him. At one point, their talk was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the two children.

One was a rather stocky, dark-haired boy of about six. The other was a bad-tempered but lovely little girl of about three.