Chapter 36
Boston, Massachusetts
August
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Gareth Andrews stopped in front of the Boston Public Library. A second before, he’d been walking next to her, holding her hand. Now he hovered over her. He was taller by eight inches.
Three people walked by. Each stared for a moment, maybe wondering if they were about to witness domestic abuse. Then they looked away as if Gareth’s glare discouraged them from interfering.
At seven in the evening, the temperature was in the mid-nineties with ninety percent humidity. Daphne carried a sweater folded in front of her, a woolen shield. The couple were planning to eat at Legal Seafood in Copley Place. Daphne knew the restaurant would be air conditioned to meat-preservation levels … thus the sweater.
Gareth had not been there before, but she and Florence DuBois had eaten lunch there the previous week to discuss their project, which was progressing faster and better than she could have imagined.
Until a few minutes ago, she hadn’t told him about the depth of the project. The mere hint she alluded to, had caused him to throw a wobbly. The time had never been right for her to discuss what he had forbidden her to pursue. Gareth was too tired after his workday. During the weekends he might be more receptive, but he still allowed work worries to creep into what could have been positive time.
Okay, so workload at the consulate was overburdening him. Part of his problem was replacing staff. Too many had quit under his predecessor. Those that remained had little motivation and changing the atmosphere of a workplace took time. New staff sometimes lasted less than three weeks.
Daphne was happy that he hadn’t take her up on an offer to help. He was demanding to the point that he wanted his underwear folded a certain way in his dresser. His shirts needed to be lined up by color. He didn’t like the way the cleaning woman polished his shoes. Her sympathies had shifted from him losing staff to the women, and they were always women, who found the paycheck wasn’t worth it.
Daphne had carefully planned tonight as the time she would tell him.
On Saturdays there was no alarm. Check.
She’d made love to him first thing. Check.
She’d made a full English fry up for breakfast. Check.
When he disappeared into his office, she’d brought him tea. Check.
It had been too hot to suggest sightseeing. Gareth, who happily went to museums with her in the beginning of their relationship, hadn’t shown any desire to do so now, air conditioned or not.
As for movies, their tastes were far too different, but last night she willingly sat through an old James Bond film, hoping it would put him in a good mood for her lengthy explanation of why she was spending so much time with Florence when he expressed disapproval of the that woman. She even made popcorn and brought him a beer. Although he poo-pooed many American things, he did like Sam Adams beer. He didn’t get her remark that the beer was the name of an early patriot who helped rout the British. He was well read on history of the last fifty years or so, things that might affect the U.K.’s current policy. Anything before that he called “ancient history and a waste of time” unless there was a direct correlation to now.
Gareth and she had made love a second time, before taking a nap. Naps were the ultimate luxury in her husband’s opinion. After he woke, he suggested Legal Seafood. Although she had eaten a fruit salad while he was asleep, she quickly agreed.
Maybe she should have waited until they had ordered their meals rather than springing it on him as they walked past the BPL. “I’m not at all insane.”
“She’s the French Consul General’s wife.”
“I know that.”
“Well, you can’t. I already told you.”
“There’s no money involved, just my time, although if it works …”
“What’s the expression … cockamamie?”
“There’s nothing cockamamie about a series of historical comic books. We are going to concentrate on before and during the first battle at Lexington.”
“And you think anyone would listen to a Brit and a Frog? You’ve no credentials.”
“I read history at Edinburgh University. She is a graphic artist.”
“One doesn’t read a subject in the United States. They study it.”
“Same thing. She went to art school. Those are good credentials, but it isn’t the credentials, it’s the product.”
Florence had told her how she wanted to go to art school, but her father refused to pay for what he claimed was a useless degree. She worked days and took classes at night concentrating on computer graphics.
Then she married. Ongoing art classes were scattered between their relocations and caring for her stepchildren, Fanny and Yannick.
“We want to show how ordinary people — not just well-known historical figures —really lived,” Daphne said. the wording, and Florence would create the artwork.
A
lot was still undecided. W
“Let kids know what it was like to live in Colonial times.” She’d begun spending time at either the BPL or out at Minute Man National Park, where it seemed as if the park rangers knew the people who had lived in Colonial times personally. The women had agreed that once they had the base concept, Daphne would do the core story and would be a boy and a girl. One book or two? They weren’t sure. What if there were two books with the girl in the boy’s story and vice versa. They could overlap.
Daphne could not remember being so excited over a work project since the day she’d discovered a treasure trove of 1801 letters from the second head of Scottish Tweed to his son, who was about to take over the business. They were like reading a novel. She’d rushed to the CEO. He was as excited as she was and gave her free rein with the material. It had been a good balance compared to looking over old accounting books. When she finished, the book had sold well in the gift shop. Excerpts from the letters had been used in an advertising campaign.
“I told you earlier, I forbid it.”
The word forbid had never been a good one to use with Daphne. As a child once forbidden to do anything, she would do it, even if she hadn’t wanted to. Over the years, she’d mellowed a bit, but the word still activated every bit of her rebel DNA.
Why had she married Gareth? Was it triggered by her friend Phillipa who asked, “What’s wrong with you? You’re the only one in our group not divorced yet.”
It was true. Almost all the women she’d studied with at university had married immediately after graduation, but most of those marriages had floundered. If they hadn’t divorced, they wanted to.
Had she met someone she wanted to marry before meeting Gareth, she too might be divorced. Most of the men who asked her out were money and/or sports obsessed. They didn’t share any of her interests or her theirs.
Gareth had been different. Because he worked in the diplomatic corps, he was interested in politics, not just current politics, but the interconnecting lines. He loved reading. They would often read parts of books to each other. He could be funny. He was good in bed.
His good qualities seemed to override his bad, although his desire to control everything around him seemed to be getting worse. When preparing for their move to Boston, Daphne had left him in charge since he didn’t like the arrangements she’d made.
He hadn’t reached the OCD stage and insisted all the cans in the cupboard be lined up exactly like in that movie Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia Roberts. He wanted to know what she was doing with her day. Mostly she would give her destination which was often the BPL. He hadn’t thought anything of it, nor had he asked her why so often.
He would plan everything in advance and was uncomfortable when plans changed, which surprised her when he suggested they go out to eat after his nap after saying it didn’t interest him earlier.
“Do we go eat or not?” Daphne hated that people who walked by them tried not to stare unsuccessfully. “There’s two lobsters with our names waiting for us.”
Gareth sighed. “All right. I could use a good gin and tonic, but we aren’t through discussing this.”
Yes we are, because I’m not going to stop, Daphne thought. She would try to play the card that she needed something to keep her mind occupied: her duties as his wife were too few to do that. A couple of times, he’d mentioned starting a family. She wasn’t sure she was ready or if it were right to bring a child into their relationship as it was.
Chapter 37
Boston
December 1774
“WHAT ARE YOU doing in civilian clothes?” Sally Brewster asked. She put down her brushes and stood in front of the table where she had been painting a leather bucket. Her expression was neither hostile nor friendly.
James Holloway had just entered her father’s bucket shop. Brushes from what looked like a pen point to one as large as his thumb were in front of her. Dishes were filled with ground something or other. Metals maybe?
The leather bucket she was painting was maybe two feet high and a foot across. It was larger than some of the buckets on display outside the shop.
“Soldiers can have a day off,” James said. He didn’t say that the General wanted him in civilian clothes. His orders were to walk around the city to integrate with those who might have connections to the rebels.
“I can’t expect you to find the people who stole the cannons or the missing powder,” the General had said. “But maybe you can eliminate where not to look.”
James had thought that he had no idea how he would be able to do that: at the same time, he knew he would try his best.
His first stop at the bucket shop wasn’t just because of Sally. Her father who was the owner was rumored to be a Sons of Liberty. John Brewster was suspected of having participated in the second Boston Tea Party in February, when rebels threw thirty-five boxes or so off the decks of the Fortune into the harbor. That was less than the first Tea Party almost a year ago today, but it had added to the anger in London against the Bostonians.
It wasn’t the father but the daughter that interested James, but there was the saying of killing two birds with one stone, not that he wanted to kill either father or daughter.
The General had received orders from London to do whatever was necessary to bring the rebellion under control. Whatever was necessary included increasing the drills. Bullets were still too precious to have regular target practice, but the speed of loading the Brown Bess weapons had increased through extra drills. Searches for stolen ammunition increased. Surveillance on potential troublemakers had increased.
Between his work for the General and normal duties, James felt stretched. He was slower than many in loading his weapon because he practiced when he could instead of several hours daily. He marched less than the others, although he still did guard duty nights after the General released him for the day.
Today was his first day on civilian surveillance. He had wanted to go with Thomas and several of his company into the woods while they searched for a defector. Private Isaac Thompson had been missing for two days. He was tagged a runaway, heading west.
James wondered what the western part of the colony was like. He had been north, south and east, at least to the sea. Because he was accompanying the General, he was most often on horseback, which had improved his riding.
He’d been up the coast to Salem so many times with the General that he knew when to expect the next farmhouse to come into view. He’d visited Woburn, Winchester, Arlington. Mostly he had seen farms with stretches of woods and a few village buildings.
He’d heard the further west one went, the more unsettled it became. Villages gave way to farms then to forests with a few scattered farms with primitive cabins.
And if you went far enough there were Indians. Someone said they were Nipuc. The Pennacok were to the north. How could you tell one Indian from another, he wondered. He knew how to tell a Frenchman from an Irishman from a German by accents. It was possible to recognize a Scot from someone in Ely by their accents and their red hair and beards on some. But an Indian?
He was sure he had passed Indians on the street based on coloring and long black hair. Negroes were easier. Their skins were light brown to so black they were like staring into a forest on a moonless night. Their hair was tightly wound. Some, he knew, were slaves. Some were free men.
A Negro had been killed during what the propagandists called the Boston Massacre, five years ago this next March. James only knew about it because rebels kept talking about it at the Green Dragon.
Today James wasn’t worried about Negros or Indians. He wanted to make a good impression on Sally, but if she was a patriot sympathizer, which she probably was, he might be considered a traitor if he courted her.
A private had no business looking for a wife. William always accused him of living in an unreal world. Damn it. Why was William still bothering him?
“That looks fascinating, he said to her. Can you tell me more of what you’re doing?”
“Mixing paint, putting it on the buckets.”
“I can see that.”
John Brewster came through the door backwards. He carried large pieces of leather in his hands and had to use his ass to prop the door as he entered. The leather was deposited in a corner of the shop next to the fireplace.
He glared at James. “I’ve seen you with the soldiers at the Green Dragon. Unless you want to buy a bucket, you aren’t welcome here.”
James debated buying a bucket, but they were too expensive for his meager salary. “I was interested in the painting. Your daughter is talented.” He picked up one that had a village house burning and a line of men with buckets trying to put it out.
“Aye, she is. Which is why I’m the most successful bucket maker in Boston.”
Before James could say anything, Brewster continued, “She is a respectable young woman, and shouldn’t talk to a British soldier in or out of uniform.”
“I meant nothing by …”
“I suggest you leave.”
“Papa …”
“Quiet, Sally.”
Out on the street, James realized the only thing he had learned was the degree of antipathy for the soldiers on the part of one patriot.
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