Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution Read online

  Camp Follower

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  A deadly assignment. A land poisoned by treachery and battle. She plunged in headfirst.

  Late in 1780, the publisher of a loyalist magazine in Wilmington, North Carolina offers an amazing assignment to Helen Chiswell, his society page writer. Pose as the widowed, gentlewoman sister of a British officer in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, travel to the encampment of the British Legion in the Carolina backcountry, and write a feature on Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. But Helen's publisher has secret reasons for sending her into danger. And because Helen, a loyalist, has ties to a family the redcoats suspect as patriot spies, she comes under suspicion of a brutal, brilliant British officer. At the bloody Battle of Cowpens, Helen must confront her past to save her life.

  Acclaim for Suzanne Adair

  Paper Woman

  winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literature Award

  "...a swashbuckling good mystery yarn!"

  —The Wilmington Star-News

  The Blacksmith’s Daughter

  "Adair holds the reader enthralled with constant action, spine-tingling suspense, and superb characterization."

  —Midwest Book Review

  Camp Follower

  nominated for the Daphne du Maurier Award and

  the Sir Walter Raleigh Award

  "Adair wrote another superb story."

  —Armchair Interviews

  Regulated for Murder

  "Best of 2011," Suspense Magazine

  "...Driven by a desire to see justice done, no matter what guise it must take, [Michael Stoddard] is both sympathetic and interesting."

  —Motherlode

  Books by Suzanne Adair

  Mysteries of the American Revolution

  Paper Woman

  The Blacksmith's Daughter

  Camp Follower

  Michael Stoddard American Revolution Thrillers

  Regulated for Murder

  Camp Follower

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Copyright © 2008 by Suzanne Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eBook conversion December 2009

  Excerpt of Regulated for Murder © 2011 by Suzanne Williams

  Cover design by Karen Lowe

  Acknowledgements

  I receive help from wonderful and unique people while conducting research for novels and editing my manuscripts. Here are a few who assisted me with Camp Follower:

  Mary Buckham and her January 2007 online course on "The Hero's Journey"

  The Guppies October 2005 "Chocolate Challenge"

  The 33rd Light Company of Foot, especially Ernie and Linda Stewart

  Carl Barnett

  Lonnie Cruse

  Bonnie Bajorek Daneker

  Marg Baskin

  Howard Burnham

  Larry Cywin

  Mike Everette

  Jack E. Fryar, Jr.

  Nolin and Neil Jones

  Rhonda Lane

  John Robertson

  John Truelove

  Dr. Alan D. Watson

  Camp Follower

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Chapter One

  Wiltshire, England — 1768

  NELL CLENCHED HER petticoat and followed the maid down the oak stair at Redthorne Manor. Her burgundy silk gown whispered elegance. Since she'd been a little girl, she'd dreamed of wearing just such a lady's gown. A mirror in the maid's attic bedroom had implied a magical transformation with the borrowed clothing.

  But apprehension agitated her pulse and yanked her attention off the luxurious brush of silk upon skin. Procured to be the wife of a merchant: Nell entertained no hopes for a better lot in life. Earlier that year, another girl her age was sold to a bordello to ease her father's debts. A second girl, indentured as a servant in London, had brought her widowed mother a healthy purse. In the village, Nell's future meant more thrashings from drunken parents and marriage to a local lout.

  She murmured pleas for succor from the Great Lady and the Lord of the Wild Beasts. The maid threw a backward glance at her. Annoyance soured her appealing features. "Hurry up, you."

  At the foot of the stairs, Nell stumbled and righted herself. Three centuries of nobility smirked disdain from portraits on the walls. She caught up with the maid, each breath sliced into gasps by stays laced tight to swell her bosom. Thoughts leapt and tangled in her head.

  Nose in the air, the maid opened the parlor doors. "In there."

  Two men in their early thirties turned from the fireplace to regard her: Lord Ratchingham's youngest son, Dick Clancy, and a shorter, rounder fellow with brown eyes and a powdered wig. Their leers flushed Nell's veins with panic, fired her instinct to flee. The maid shoved her farther inside. "Get on with you!" Then she closed the four of them into the parlor, curtsied to the men, and assumed her post on a stool near the doors, leaving Nell standing.

  Tow-headed Clancy approached, and his leer sprouted teeth. "She cleaned up well, Annie. Another shilling for your efforts."

  The maid caught the coin flipped her way. "Happy to be of assistance, sir."

  He grasped Nell's chin and tilted her head higher. "Seventeen years old. I fancy 'em your age. Little girls are a waste of my time." He released her and trailed fingers across her left breast, and she flinched. "Now, now, don't you worry. If Silas Chiswell doesn't want you, you shan't go to waste." Her pulse beat staccato revulsion. "But I believe you'll dazzle Chiswell. Here, say good morning to Mr. Tobias Treadaway, the procurer for this arrangement."

  She shrank at his approach, at the memory of a darkened tool shed, and batted back the six-year-old nightmare. After today, maybe she'd never see Treadaway again. No telling what else he procured, besides young women.

  He showed no sign of recognizing her. "What's your name, wench?"

  "N-Nell Grey."

  Treadaway coughed. "Nell Grey? Sounds like a horse's name. That won't do. I shall change it to something striking, cultivated. Let me think. Nell is derivative of Helen, isn't it? Helen. Hmm. Rare, but I rather like it. Helen of Troy and so forth. Very well, your name is Helen from this point forward. Understand?"

  They were changing her name? She glanced from Treadaway to Clancy. They expected compliance. Her confusion was immaterial. She blinked back tears and nodded.

  Beneath his wig, Treadaway's dark eyebrows met in scrutiny. Clancy laughed. "Very well, she isn't quite the blonde you requested. More like honey, but still lovely, what hey? I like honey-colored hair on a pretty woman."

  "I've seen her somewhere before."

  Apprehension curdled in her gut. Treadaway recognized her.

  "Of course you've seen her before, covered with a commoner's filth and hardly worth notice. This is Chiswell's first look at her, though. He'll find her irresistible. Smile, Helen." When her lips were slow to comply, Clancy gripped her upper arm, hauled her toward him, and snarled. "Smile, damn you. Don't ruin this by sulking."

  Nell — no, she was Helen now — grunted in pain. Clancy's thumb dug into a weal her mother had made with a leather belt. She forced a smile to her lips. More tears stung her eyes. In the world of procurement, a wife wasn't so very different from a servant. Or a prostitute.

  "Look there, Treadaway. She has all her teeth, and they're white. What do you say?"

  The procurer walked away to pace near the front window. "She carries herself like a commoner."

  Clancy shoved her away and whirled on Treadaway. "I gave those drunken parents of hers six pounds to pay off their debts, and I'll be compensated for it, by god. Show her to Chiswell. Let him make up his own mind. If you back out on me, I shall see to it that you never again use Redthorne for your client meetings while my father is away." Harsh laughter erupted from him. "Besides, after Chiswell finds out how my stepmother educated her, he'll buy, oh, yes. A common wench who reads, writes, and ciphers! You want polish, I give you polish!"

  Carriage axles squeaked from the direction of the front driveway. Treadaway ceased pacing and lifted the heavy velvet drape aside a few inches to peer out the window. Then he allowed the drape to fall back into place. "My client has arrived."

  Clancy clapped his hands once. "Excellent."

  Treadaway massaged his temple. "You don't see the enormity of the problem. Chiswell's mother, Agatha, expects the daughter of a merchant when he arrives with his bride in Boston."

  Boston, in the North American colonies? Her lot couldn't be better in America. The land was full of savages who scalped women and skewered babies on branches.

  Clancy sneered. "I'd like to see you find a merchant's nubile get on such short notice."

  "You want a commission, Clancy? Sit beside your friend the maid and follow her example of silence. I shall manage this muddle, although I doubt it's salvageable." He strode over, grasped Helen's forearm, and towed her to a plush chair in a shadowy corner. "Sit. Straighten your ba
ck. Fold hands in your lap. That's it. Keep your chin up. Good. You can be trained."

  A wife was expected to be trained, obedient. Still, desolation bruised her soul, just as each inhalation aggravated a bruise on her ribs, delivered two days before during her father's tirade over how long she took to scrub their cottage steps. She made her breaths shallow to compensate and remembered how her parents bartered her price up with a lie that a small landowner like them planned to wed her. Then they'd lunged for the money like feral dogs after a pig.

  Foisted off on a Colonial merchant to a land of bloodthirsty Indians, famine, and plague. Anxiety ground at her gut.

  The procurer assessed her. "I know I've seen you around somewhere, girl." The leer returned to his mouth, and his fingers tickled her chin.

  She jerked her face from his touch. Girl. The tool shed. Bound wrists. Nauseated, she slammed the memories away with greater resolve. Forget. Must forget.

  Treadaway strutted for the parlor doors and conversed with the butler in the doorway. Then he shook hands with two well-dressed men and led them into the parlor. Faux-joviality creased his face. "Brandy for either of you gentlemen?"

  "I'll take a brandy," said one. From halfway across the room, he stank of spirits, and Helen implored the gods that he not be her future husband. His bloodshot brown eyes, sallow complexion, and disheveled graying hair — it all repulsed her. She'd seen plenty of the pain that drove people to drink that way. Being drunk gave them an excuse to visit their agony on others.

  She glanced at the second fellow. No gray streaked his brown hair, caught back neatly with a silk ribbon. Except for crows' feet at his eyes, his handsome face was devoid of wrinkles. He might have been any age between thirty and sixty. Serenity suffused him, absent from the demeanors of the other men in the room. Absent from most men she knew, in fact.

  She bit her lip. Which man was Chiswell? Who was the other fellow?

  Treadaway handed a half-glass of brandy to the man who'd requested it. Then he aimed a polite smile at the drunk's companion. "A brandy for you, too, Mr. Quill?"

  Quill. Then the sot must be her future husband, Chiswell. Helen's spirits plummeted further.

  "Not this morning, thank you." Quill inclined his head to Treadaway.

  She regarded the first man, who belted down brandy as if it were tea and deposited the glass beside a crystal decanter. He looked to be in his early forties but was probably younger. Excessive consumption of spirits aged people. More revulsion rolled through her.

  Treadaway continued to address Quill. "Well, then, why don't you make yourself comfortable in the library while Mr. Chiswell and I transact our business here?"

  Chiswell cut the air with his hand. "Jonathan stays. He'd be bored in Ratchingham's library. His family imported silk and porcelain from China, and he's traveled the world collecting books. South America, Africa, Asia."

  Dazed, Helen studied Quill again. Jonathan Quill. Who was this man to travel the world collecting books? Then she spied the clench of frustration in Treadaway's jaw and grasped reality. The procurer might have played up her physical attributes to pass her off on Chiswell, but Quill, with the wisdom of the world, wouldn't be duped. The deal would collapse. Worse than marrying a drunk, she'd become the sport of Treadaway and Clancy. Dread danced specks through her vision.

  "All right, where is she, Treadaway? I rose an hour early this morning to squeeze in this meeting. I'm a busy man. I won't be kept waiting."

  Treadaway gestured to her. "I present Miss Helen Grey. Miss Grey, Mr. Silas Chiswell."

  She gawped at the fine Persian carpet beneath her slippers, appalled by heat and brutishness in Chiswell's eyes. A chuckle like a bear's growl issued from him. "Bloody hell, you found a docile one. Is that why you thrust her back in the shadows, like a harem wife?"

  Treadaway's obsequious tone brandished renewed enthusiasm. "I complied with your wishes. She's the eldest daughter of a merchant who died earlier this year, leaving the widow in debt. If she's what you fancy, she can easily become your harem wife."

  "Heh heh heh. Harem wife. She literate?"

  Treadaway placed an opened Bible in her lap and pointed out a verse. "Read it."

  Her hands shaky, Helen cleared her throat. "'Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.'" Odd. She'd read that very passage years ago in the parlor, for the vicar.

  Chiswell strode forward, snatched the book away, flipped to another section, and handed it back to her. "Miss Grey, read that passage so I know Treadaway hasn't made you memorize verses to simulate reading."

  A reasonable request, considering the reputation of men like Treadaway. But Chiswell, perhaps aroused by the idea of bedding his own harem wife, had selected the sensuous Song of Solomon. Helen's ears burned with modesty as she read. "'O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.'"

  Over Chiswell's shoulder, Quill watched her. His blue eyes resonated with neither heat nor brutishness. Seldom did she encounter a man not ruled by lust. Some of her jitters calmed. What would it be like to travel the world, as he had done? Her hands stopped shaking.

  Treadaway yanked the Bible away. "Yes, yes, arise my love. Song of Solomon segues nicely into a discussion of her physical attributes. Stand, Miss Grey, and turn slowly for Mr. Chiswell."

  Humiliation flushed Helen's face. Was this what captured Africans felt like, forced to strut upon the auction block? Chiswell's leer cavorted from her bosom to her slender waist. The only difference between him and the local louts was that Chiswell had money.

  But Quill's mouth tightened, and she realized that he'd noticed the way she clambered to her feet like a commoner. In haste, she straightened her back, as Treadaway had instructed.

  The procurer beamed. "Smile, Miss Grey. She has excellent teeth, does she not?" Chiswell licked his lips. "And teeth being an indicator of overall health, I venture to say that if you apply yourself to task, within a year, you'll have that heir your mother has been nagging you about."

  Without taking his eyes off her, Quill said, "The plantation, Silas."

  "Eh? Oh, yes. Treadaway, I told you I need a wife who can help manage the books for my turpentine plantation in North Carolina. Computational skills."

  Treadaway cocked an eyebrow at her. "Miss Grey, what is seventeen multiplied by six?"

  She pondered a second. "One hundred and two."

  Chiswell grinned. Quill pursed his lips and said, "Twenty-three multiplied by fourteen."

  She pondered several seconds longer. "Three hundred twenty-two."

  Chiswell's grin enlarged. "God's foot, she's docile, comely, and intelligent."

  Quill said to Treadaway, "Allow Mr. Chiswell and me five minutes complete privacy with the young woman."

  "Of course." Treadaway signaled the maid and Clancy, and the three left the parlor.

  Chiswell slapped his knee. "By god, this timid creature is perfect, Jonathan. I shall purchase her and marry her, and Mother will finally cease badgering me."

  Alarmed that she'd slumped without realizing it, Helen straightened her back. Quill marked her posture correction again. "Miss Grey, what is the capitol of China?"

  World geography hadn't been a topic the vicar taught her. She stared at Quill. He intended to prove her a fraud. If Chiswell failed to purchase her — her heart stammered several beats. Would life with the merchant be an improvement over her current situation? Perhaps she could dance around facts. "I-I'm nervous and cannot seem to recall, sir. Bombay?"

  "Bombay is in India. François-André Danican Philidor is a French composer of opera and comedies. For what other discipline is he famed?"

  An opera composer? The only tunes she knew were folk ballads. It dawned on her that there was much more to education that reading, writing, and ciphering. Exploring the breadth of the world, for example. What was it like to travel?

  Quill cleared his throat. He expected an answer. Her palms sweated. "Um, he studies the stars?"

  "Chess, Miss Grey. Philidor is a chess master."

  With ease, he'd exposed her lack. Despair clogged her soul.

  "Bah, Jonathan, only a chess devotee like you would give a damn about Philidor."

  "Miss Grey isn't who Treadaway claims she is, the daughter of a merchant."

  "So what? She's not a whore, either."