Chapter 7

Anne sat cross-legged on her bed, wondering why Billy Fields had not written her any more letters after that fine first one she had enjoyed months ago and read a dozen times. She was not aware that her stepmother had read and burned a dozen short letters that managed to make it all the way down to Annapolis, generally by way of military or political messengers, young Whigs doing a fellow soldier a favor. In every one, Billy had said he loved her and missed her.

She nibbled on the corner of his one letter, and tried to recall Elizabeth, the indentured woman she had met on the Janet Lune. Anne and her sister had been on their way back from an extended stay with relatives in London and the young Cornish woman and her gaunt husband were part of the hundred or so indentured people living in the sprightly ship's fetid hold.

She remembered Elizabeth's face after Andrew had neglected to buy her indenture and then had seen the woman again down on her stepmother's farm in southern Maryland and even held her pink infant briefly. It took her some time to figure it all out, but she was sure that the baby, now dead of smallpox, was Margaret M'Kenna's grandchild. She sniffed and felt a tear on her cheek and wondered what she was so upset about, for whom she was crying.

And now Matthew, big, strong, plain-as-dirt Matthew, had gone to fetch her, to find her in Georgetown, to tell her she was free and give her the money her father had given him. Anne felt joy in that, believing she had helped convince her father to sign the contract despite her stepmother's admonitions. She sniffed and wiped the tear away, deciding that she was just feeling sorry for herself. Maybe Billy has forgotten me, she thought, has found another love, one of those camp-followers. She sighed, seeking a word for her condition and, after a few minutes, found "bereft." She savored it, trying it aloud, and enjoying the romantic sound of it.

Poor father, Anne thought, poor father. He looks so old and tired, and now he has done what he swore he would never do. After Sunday supper he had told her, in strict confidence, that he had signed the loyalty oath in order to save their new house. He looked shaken, very sad, and his hand trembled. And he made her swear not to tell anyone, even the servants. "Those damnable factors, mostly foul Scots you know, they're out there like vultures."

Anne had shaken her head, confused.

"They're buying up the property of loyal men, buying it for unpaid taxes, for a pittance, the scoundrels." Her father had slumped in his chair and his empty glass had fallen from his hand. "Bloody traitors. Oh, sorry. Sorry, child."

Anne thought of herself as a loving and loyal subject of King George III, her anointed liege lord who, she had been taught, was given power from above, the right and lawful ruler who would look after the welfare of all his subjects. That was how she had been reared. She had learned loyalty as she did her language, manners, duties and religion, and her belief in the king was as deeply ingrained as her belief in a just and merciful god. In her nightly prayers, she never forgot the king or her parents. She sometimes did forget her sister but usually remembered Billy.

Where is Billy? Why hasn't he written? Can he be dead? She pushed that thought away, shivering.

She could not recall any reports of serious fighting up around New York or Philadelphia, not since that pair of unbelievable battles in Trenton and near Princeton at Christmastime. Matthew had been in one of those. She looked again at the letter, now creased with many refoldings. He had been sick. Perhaps he died. Poor Billy. She rolled off her bed, took a deep breath, sat at her desk and found a sheet of paper.

Why am I writing him? He's a fool, a disloyal fool. She snorted and looked out the window. Someone was coming up the walk, a man in a fancy tricorne, a slim man with a bright purple coat and high boots. A fop, another one. Anne waited, heard the knock, listened for conversation, heard nothing and went into the hall and leaned over the railing. A door closed and then Phillipa was hurrying up the stairs.

"They wants you right now," she said, looking excited.

"Who is it?" Anne asked, going back in her room to find her shoes.

"A man, a man that's a calling on you. That's who it is. A pretty man. Yes'm."

"Tell him I said that I am not in, that I am not receiving. Ask him to leave his name."

"Oh no," cried Phillipa. "Uh uh. Not me, not me." And she fled down the carpeted stairway, hands fluttering.

Anne pulled on her slippers, pushed at the huge mass of auburn curls that threatened to inundate her shoulders since they were temporarily free of her heavy combs, yanked up the deep décolletage of her short, out-grown, everyday dress, took a breath and went down to see who was calling, determined to be impolite.

Her stepmother stood at the foot of the staircase. "Is that the best you could do?" she asked, looking unhappily at her floral printed linen gown. "Come and meet Mr. Frondly. He was a friend of my late son. His family is from St. Mary's County. Like us, they are loyal to the bone, to the very core."

Anne pulled up the puff sleeves of her loose-fitting dress, glanced at herself in the pierglass, made a face at her reflection, flicked an errant curl aside and followed her stepmother into the sitting room where big Matthew had sat and fidgeted a few days before. Her daytime dress, which had been made for the previous year, barely fit her and was one over which she often wore an apron or pinny. It was hardly the kind of gown in which a proper girl entertained gentlemen or met strangers, and it currently displayed a good bit of her lightly freckled and rapidly maturing chest.

The lanky young man stood as the women entered and bowed when he was introduced, making a clumsy leg. Anne managed a mock curtsey and sat on the sofa, tucking under her feet, lifting her chin and folding her hands. She gazed just above his head and tried not to blink. He looked, in some ways, like Andrew had the first time she had seen him, what people called macaroni, complete with lace at the deep cuffs bearing many golden buttons and a very fancy weskit, embroidered with gold and silver thread.