Chapter 1

"You're goin' where?" Ginny asked, raising her head on her elbow, arching a furry eyebrow and blowing coppery hairs from her sweaty face. This was in late October 1780, Arnold's treason had been revealed, shocking almost every patriot as well as a good many Tories, and the American army in the Carolinas had been destroyed for the second time in less than six months thereby putting Horatio Gates in the same leaky boat as Benajmin Lincoln. Lincoln, many said, was probably living better as a prisoner than most of Washington's army. These developments had helped bring me back to New Jersey after a long visit home to get in the harvest and see a few friends of both sexes.

Men's souls were certainly on trial, but for the last few hours I had been much too busy to be thinking about the Revolution for more than the odd moment or two. I had not been thinking about anything at all, in fact, except why I had stayed away from this big old bed and handsome young mother for so long.

"South, I told you, down to the Carolinas. Me and General Greene's gotta go clean up after Gates and them poor fools down there or all the hard work we done up here'll be wasted. You know what I did to that showoff Lord Cornwallis last time I took him on single handed." I grinned at my own boast trying to forget what it cost me.

"Oh, yes, that's jes' fine," Ginny said, looking disgusted but with bushels of evil humor showing in those dark green and devilish eyes. "I thought you was gonna marry me and stay right here, raise a big family, build me an' my momma a nice home. Didn' you promise back when you finagled me into taking over Susie's spying job for you? I thought you was finished with this fighting."

"Me! I never said that, Ginny. Where'd you get that idea. I'm not marrying nobody, not me." I knew she was just fooling, but it still raised the hairs on my arms and put a knot in my cowardly guts.

"You're back here jumping in my bed every time I turn around, horny as a billygoat, an' just about as smelly, scaring all the nice boys away, fooling with my poor body an' not helpin' me a single bit, not a farthing much less a quid. Air puddin's all we get from you. You ain' worth tu'pence."

"What nice boys? You mean them randy cavalrymen, those scummy Redcoat dragoons I see hanging around, snortin' and pawin' when they're 'spose to be out scouting for us rebels and stealing from their friends?"

"Well, girl's gotta live." She put her face down on her limp pillow but her bare back shook with silent laughter.

"Your momma's the best cook in all of West Jersey. Don't the tavern do well enough?" I patted her firm, round bottom and made her wiggle by tracing the deep line of her spine while a part of my mind was busy checking on the condition of my equipment and finding most of it still completely inoperative. I sent my mental maintenance crew to look for spare parts and combustibles.

"Have you seen the money they're usin'?" She lifted her head again, angry and serious, slapping my hand away as I reached for her upright breast. When it came to money, Ginny did not fool around. "Can't buy nothin' with that worthless paper. You heard folks say 'not worth a Continental' didn' you? Well, British military script's jus' as bad. I swive's for gold now, only, well, gold or silver. No hard money, no pussy, no kisses, no suckin', no nothin'." She lifted her chin and put on a determined look, one of the best in the county, a guaranteed blood freezer and pecker melter.

"And?" I asked as I lay back with a sigh, knowing she was a long way from finished with this fiscal tirade. She scribed a line down the middle of my body with her long fingernail, plowing through the hair and scars, tongue stuck in the corner of her soft mouth, apparently concentrating for all she was worth on making it straight and deep, trying to cut me neatly in half.

"And we won't starve, that's what. My child's goin' on five, and he eats like a young horse, but we won't starve. I'm lending out paper sums at ten percent; they pays first of every month, or I calls the loan and takes a few a'their acres, make 'em start over, gotta be some sort a'penalty don't there?"

"So you're a damn profiteer, that's what. War's going to end some day. Have you thought about the next step?" I tried to wiggle her away from my navel where she had decided to do some heavy excavating or exploratory surgery.

"Then I'll quit whorin' an' settle down, make Momma an' myself both happy. Shoot, I'm only twenty-one now. Find me a rich man that can keep me happy, one with a tool a lot bigger n'this limp pecker and get going on with some more children. Won't be you, you big, ugly, hairy, tore up, bad smellin' cocksman n' lazy, evil whoremonger. There's only one part of you that's worth saving, an' that's ugly as sin an' only half as good as it used to be." She flicked the insulted part with her finger. It felt like a bee sting but somehow seemed encouraging.

"I like children, but I got to admit babies ain't much fun. Thought you might be the one, back a while, when I was a lot younger and dumber and you looked some better an' had ten fingers and a fairly upstandin' member now and then 'stead this limp ole thing, this here noodle." She shook it and then dropped it in disgust, but now it was at least semi-conscious. "'Sides that, I figured out that Mrs. Snyder's got her mark on you?"

"Felicity? Oh no, she's got much higher ambitions than my poor body or meager purse. If she marries again, it will be to someone of means, a man with many servants and hundreds of acres. If I were someone like Lord Sterling, I'd be on the lookout. You're wrong there. We're jus' friends."

"You don' go see her as much as you used to, do you? How come? She toss you out a'her nice soft bed, find herself a real man?" Ginny's finger nail went back to work, stirring me to feeble life as she scribed between my thoroughly-exhausted stones, tossing them right and left carelessly.

"Ivy," I said, grabbing a breath as she started back the other way, scratching at the underside of my prod after she stretched it out on my belly. "She's the reason. Have you seen her? She's about seventeen now, frisky as a colt an' 'bout as long-legged. Her momma would kill me dead if I mounted her, draw and quarter me if I so much as kissed her, and the damn girl's all over me when I visit. Tries to trap me in a corner. She thinks I'm somethin' special even if you don't. She's been like that for years, like she's in heat or somethin'. So I gotta see Felicity late at night or not at all. It was hard enough when we was at Morristown, even 'fore that damn mutiny."