The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (54 page)

Francisco dropped with a howl,
clutching his stomach, but his companions continued their sprint for her.
 
She heard the approach of a galloping horse
from the north, even while she hauled up Clark's fowler and fired at Basilio.
 
He shrieked and collapsed, blood spewing
from his chest.
 
The other two men had a
second to reorient their attention and scream before a blur of scarlet and
raised steel on horseback shot past Betsy and Clark and decapitated the men not
fifteen feet from where she stood.
 
Sunlight sparkled in twin geysers of crimson.
 
Their headless bodies toppled over.

"Christ Jesus!"
 
Still powered on fear and survival instinct,
Betsy flung down Clark's fowler and reached for her musket, realized no one had
reloaded it, and seized her cartridge box and bag of lead balls.
 
Seconds later, she'd performed her quickest
reload of a musket ever.
 
She raised it
to sight Lieutenant Fairfax, who trotted his gelding around for a more
leisurely reconnaissance with the Sheridans, his carriage confident, his
countenance enraptured and unearthly.

He reined back near where Basilio
and Francisco moaned and thrashed, whipped out a rag, and wiped the blood from
his saber.
 
"Such gratitude,
madam.
 
I save your life for the second
time, and you plan to thank me by blowing my brains out."

"I
will
blow your
brains out if you don't gallop out of here.
 
Now."

"Never underestimate a wounded
opponent."
 
He sheathed his saber
and put away the rag.
 
"These two
rebels are still alive."

"Not for long."

"I agree."
 
Before her heart hammered twice more, he
whipped out a pistol from his saddle holster and shot Basilio in the head.

Clark gasped out "Oh, my
god!" even as Fairfax dispatched Francisco with a shot from a second
pistol.

Horrified, Betsy stared down the
muzzle of a third pistol.
 
The
lieutenant had moved so fast that she hadn't seen him swap out the
weapons.
 
Sweat slicked her hands and
beaded between her thighs.
 
The
certainty rolled over her that his trigger finger was far quicker than hers,
and even though they held each other at gunpoint, the disadvantage was hers,
for he knew how to incapacitate without killing.

His smile softened.
 
"Drop the musket, or shoot me.
 
Your choice."

Normal
men used that tone to court
women.
 
She took several breaths and
felt her entire expression, even her eyes, harden.
 
If she didn't find a way to seize advantage, Fairfax would shoot
her, or the noise they were making would attract soldiers to his aid.
 
"Throw all your firearms on the
ground."
 
For seconds that stretched
like centuries, he stared her down.
 
She
tightened her lips.
 
"It appears
you've given up believing I can lead you to my mother."

"Your mother — ah, bloody
hell, now you've gone and called my bluff, you clever woman."
 
With a sigh, he tossed the pistol, three
others, and a musket on the ground near Clark and regarded her with an innocent
expression.

She suspected he had another
firearm hidden.
 
"Keep your hands
raised.
 
Throw down the other firearm,
the one you're planning to pull out as soon as you think I've dropped my
guard."
 
A surly expression
enveloped his face.
 
His right hand up,
he plucked out a civilian pistol from near the holsters, tossed it down, and
lifted his left hand again.
 
"Good.
 
Now head for the
road."

"So you can shoot me in the back?"

"That's an excellent idea.

"Without hearing what I have
to say?"

"I don't care what you have to
say."

"Oh, I think you do, but I
doubt your husband does."

Anger punctuated her
composure.
 
Clark hissed, "He isn't
going to let you go.
 
Give me your musket.
 
I'll keep him here as long as I can."

"How poignant, sir."

Another lump formed in her throat
at Clark's suggestion.
 
She clamped down
on grief and anger and glared at Fairfax.
 
"Get moving.
 
East."

He clicked his tongue, nudged the
horse about with his knees, and smiled back at her.
 
"Exhilarating, every moment of it, from the note you sent me
about van Duser and the furniture two weeks ago to the kiss you gave me last
night."

"Why, you son of a —"

"Betsy, watch out!"

Gambling on the distraction caused
by her outrage, Fairfax reached for something else near his saddle, twisting at
the same time she pulled the trigger.
 
Her musket ball clipped his left upper arm.
 
He sprawled onto the ground.

"Give me one of his
pistols!" Clark rasped.
 
"I'll
hold him off.
 
Go!"
 
Even through the haze of black powder smoke,
his lips looked gray.
 
She hesitated,
her heart aching as if it had fissured and hemorrhaged into her chest.
 
He coughed blood.
 
"Go!"

Fairfax, his back to them, had
risen to his knees.
 
Betsy shoved the
pistols over to Clark, not knowing which were loaded, scrambled into Lady May's
saddle with her empty musket gripped in one hand, and kicked the mare into
motion.
 
East across the cratered field
of death she rode, the wind whipping tears from her eyes, the vision forever
burned into her memory of Clark's final act as her rear guard, his face devoid
of color, his lifeblood draining into his punctured lung.

Tom.
 
She must find Tom.
 
Clark
had bought her that much.
 
She paused at
the road and scanned north, where hundreds of bodies cluttered road and field,
then south across the more ordered array of the British.
 
Tom was nowhere in sight.

A glance behind blasted panic and
grief through her.
 
His left arm stiff,
Fairfax was mounting his horse.
 
Clark
was either dead or unconscious.
 
She
galloped the mare southward, hoping to find Tom, hoping they could outrun
Fairfax.
 
He was, after all,
injured.
 
Maybe he'd lose blood in the
chase and pass out.

Faces whizzed by her, none of them
Tom.
 
She passed wagons of supplies and
injured men and headed downhill, alone on the road.
 
Gods, something must have happened to Tom.
 
She'd have to press on to Camden by herself.
 
She dared not pause even to load her
musket.
 
At least her mare was rested.

They slowed to ford the creek.
 
On the south side, Betsy glimpsed Fairfax
cantering downhill toward her, seeming unfazed by his injured arm.
 
Never underestimate a wounded opponent
.
 
She bent over to the horse's ear and stroked
her neck.
 
"Give me everything you
can, my lady."

To her credit, Lady May held the
gallop.
 
But after a minute, Betsy could
tell the gelding was gaining on them and knew she'd never make it back to
Camden before Fairfax overtook her.
 
Just as distressing: slow cramps had replaced the ache in her womb.

Around a bend, she spied a trail to
the right, reined the mare onto it, and trotted her back thirty feet, where
pines and undergrowth swallowed the trail.
 
After wheeling the horse around, she seized her ammunition and began
reloading her musket.
 
Horse and rider
thundered past on the road.
 
Then the
sound of the gallop ceased.
 
Fairfax
realized she'd left the road.
 
Her
breath drawn in gasps, Betsy fumbled a ball from her pouch but lost it on the
ground.
 
She reached for another ball,
the tremor of fatigue and fear in her hands, and dropped the entire bag.

Through the foliage, the scarlet of
his coat winked in and out of view.
 
With no time to retrieve the pouch, she pulled up the musket and aimed
at the entrance of the trail: Betsy Sheridan's brave, last stand.
 
Seconds later, Fairfax walked his gelding
down the trail, pistol held ready, and halted the horse about fifteen feet from
her.
 
"Ah, here we are again,
darling.
 
Shall we call it the second
verse of the same song?"

Chapter Forty-Four

BETSY JUTTED HER jaw with
confidence she didn't feel.
 
"Move
to the refrain, where I order you to drop your weapons."

Fairfax indicated the bag in the
pine straw.
 
"Were I a perfect
gentleman, I'd invite you dismount and fetch a ball for your musket.
 
I'm gambling that it isn't fully loaded, but
you've no idea whether my pistol is."
 
Midwinter built in his eyes.
 
"Drop your musket, or I
will
take it by force."

Firing her musket and igniting the
powder might buy a moment's distraction, but she wouldn't get far when he had
the faster horse.
 
And he was beyond
cerebral appreciation for heroic feints.
 
Her game was over.
 
Fatigue
poured into her arms.
 
She cast down the
musket.

"Dismount."
 
His pistol was trained on her head.
 
Legs and arms shaking, she lowered her gaze
and complied.
 
"Walk to me.
 
Keep your hands where I can see them.
 
That's far enough."
 
He dismounted and walked a full circle
around her before releasing the cock on the pistol and pushing it into his
sash.
 
"Look at me.
 
How did you get out of the cellar?"

Though she felt certain Tom
wouldn't be rescuing her, she saw no point in admitting she'd had an
accomplice.
 
"You left me plenty of
time, so I gnawed my way out."

Perhaps her chafed wrists conferred
credence.
 
His mockery subsided into
perplexity and metamorphosed into admiration, then sentiment hotter than
admiration.
 
Her skin crawled like a
drove of caterpillars homing on spring-green leaves.

He lifted his left hand and
caressed her cheek with his fingertips.
 
Alas, the injury to his arm must have been minor, for no pain registered
in his expression at the movement.
 
His
fingers wandered to her lips before stroking her chin and jaw.
 
She clenched her teeth against his scent.
 
In one motion, he yanked her linen tucker
out of her shift and jacket, leaving her shoulders and collarbone exposed.
 
Steel glinted in his right hand.
 
She flinched in anticipation of the blade on
her throat.
 
At least she wouldn't be
flayed alive or hacked to pieces.

"Well, then, I shan't bind you
with rope this time."
 
The knife
flashed.
 
Fabric rent.
 
He hauled her to a tree and pushed her back
against it.

Through fatigue and numbness, she
stared at Lady May while Fairfax tied her wrists behind the tree with shredded
tucker.
 
Then he blocked her view of the
horse and traced his forefinger across her naked collarbone.
 
"How wicked of the Fates to cast us as
opponents, Widow Sheridan."
 
He
grinned at her wince of grief.
 
"I
hope you don't think
I
killed him?
 
Thank his rebel allies for that.
 
I have, all except for Neville.
 
I suspect he may prove useful in the near future.

"As for your husband, he
expired on his own.
 
But not before
hearing my gratitude for your role in sparing Britons the rule of the
Stadtholder.
 
Since he was reluctant to believe
me, I told him of our rendezvous in the cellar and how we witnessed his
meeting.
 
I even recounted portions of
conversation.
 
I'm not certain which
concept upset him the more — imagining you'd betrayed his cause, or imagining
you as my willing mistress."
 
He
spread his hands.
 
"But he saw no
reason to linger after that."

No one would have lingered after
that.
 
Fairfax had conferred harsh
dignity upon Basilio and Francisco, shooting them and ending their agony.
 
But he'd eviscerated Clark with a weapon
that cut deeper than any spear or blade.
 
Detestation crackled in her voice.
 
"Go to hell."