The Turncoat

Book 1: Renegades of the American Revolution

by Donna Thorland

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

They are lovers on opposite sides of a brutal war, with everything at stake and no possibility of retreat. They can trust no one—especially not each other.

Major Lord Peter Tremayne is the last man rebel bluestocking Kate Grey should fall in love with, but when the handsome British viscount commandeers her home, Kate throws caution to the wind and responds to his seduction. She is on the verge of surrender when a spy in her own household seizes the opportunity to steal the military dispatches Tremayne carries, ensuring his disgrace—and implicating Kate in high treason. Painfully awakened to the risks of war, Kate determines to put duty ahead of desire and offers General Washington her services as an undercover agent in the City of Brotherly Love.

Months later, having narrowly escaped court martial and hanging, Tremayne returns to decadent, British-occupied Philadelphia with no stomach for his current assignment—to capture the woman he believes betrayed him. Nor does he relish the glittering entertainments being held for General Howe’s idle officers. Worse, the glamorous woman in the midst of this social whirl, the fiancée of his own dissolute cousin, is none other than Kate Grey herself. And so begins their dangerous dance, between passion and patriotism, between certain death and the promise of a brave new future together.

Release date: March 5, 2013

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 432

Sample

PRAISE FOR

THE TURNCOAT

“A stay-up-all-night, swashbuckling, breath-holding adventure of a novel…an extraordinary book about an extraordinary heroine.”

—Lauren Willig, national bestselling author of the Pink Carnation series

“Very entertaining.”

—Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I

“One of the great joys of historical fiction is that it can carry you into another world, submerge you in its trappings, capture you in its conflicts, and let you experience history as it is lived. One of the great joys of reading is to find a new author who creates strong characters, builds vivid scenes, and writes with the assured confidence of an old pro. So allow me the great joy of introducing you to Donna Thorland and her fabulous first novel, The Turncoat. Let Donna sweep you back to the American Revolution, into a world of spies, suspense, skullduggery, and sex. You won’t want to stop reading. You won’t want to come back to the present.”

—William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Back Bay and Citizen Washington

“Set in a fascinating and turbulent time in America’s history and featuring an extraordinary heroine, The Turncoat is a wonderful debut. It’s a trip into the dangerous past from the comfort of your reading chair, filled with romance, authenticity, and great storytelling—the very best of what historical fiction can be.”

—Simone St. James, author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry Into Love and Death

the

Turncoat

RENEGADES OF THE REVOLUTION

DONNA THORLAND

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

Table of Contents

One

The Jerseys, August 1777

Kate didn’t like Mrs. Ferrers. Something about the beautiful young widow was off. To exclude the newcomer on account of such vague feelings, however, would not be Quakerly, so Angela Ferrers, along with every other woman in Orchard Valley, was at Grey Farm that sweltering morning, packing supplies for the Continental Army.

“Yet Colonel Donop still refused to divulge the lady’s name at his court-martial,” Mrs. Ferrers said to her spellbound audience. “For all the good it did him. When the disgraced Hessian returned to find his lover—seeking vengeance, explanations, or further dalliance, who can say?—I’m told he discovered nothing but a cold hearth and an empty house.” The Widow folded back her fine cotton sleeve and reached for the pickle jar.

“Mrs. Ferrers, please don’t.” Kate tried for a note of polite deference and decided that polite frustration would have to do. “If you put your fingers in the jar, the brine will spoil.”

They were gathered in the kitchen, painted terra-cotta pink by Kate’s classically minded grandmother, around the pine worktable where she had learned to roll piecrust, pluck fowl, hull beans, and keep careful record of household stores.

Kate handed Mrs. Ferrers a ladle. The Widow cradled it like a royal scepter and went on with her story, the pickle jar entirely forgotten.

“But tell us, Mrs. Ferrers, about your late husband.” Mrs. Ashcroft was a dour Quaker matron of the old school, but today she sounded like a five-year-old asking for a bedtime story.

“Peter was a born Friend, like myself, and after our marriage we farmed his father’s land in Rhode Island,” Mrs. Ferrers began, “where we had, two years ago in the spring, the most extraordinary incident with a cow…”

The woman was an expert tale spinner, but she talked more than she worked.

Kate tried to be fair-minded. It was Mrs. Ferrers, rising from her bench beneath a rather convenient ray of sunlight during the Sunday meeting, who had convinced the congregation that Arthur Grey’s proposal to offer supplies did not contradict their Quaker pacifism. It was Mrs. Ferrers who argued that their goods would not prolong an already bloody war, but would save the lives of the men and boys starving in the Continental Army. Aiding the Rebels was an errand of mercy. The town drove cattle all the way to Boston when the British blockaded that city. They could certainly spare a few wagonloads of grain for men starving almost on their doorstep.

Angela Ferrers’ Quaker demeanor was pitch-perfect. She thee’d and thou’d when appropriate. She conformed to the Society of Friends’ preference for plain dress. She wore no lace, no gaudy colors, no frills, yet she stood out among the other ladies.

Her skirts were hemmed to show a tasteful, but well-turned, hint of ankle. Her bodice was expertly tailored. The beige cotton of her ensemble set off her hair and eyes. Peeking out from her collar, cuffs, and lacings were a chemise and stays of the most impeccable white. Even her teeth gleamed.

She fooled the other ladies because they wanted to be fooled, because they saw in her an ideal reflection of themselves. But she did not fool Kate.

The pickle jar was just the latest of her mistakes. Earlier that day she had stepped into the fireplace in the summer kitchen without hitching her skirts high enough. Only timely intervention from Kate had prevented the Widow’s skirts catching fire. Her pockets, though, clinched it. She didn’t have any: not a single one in her fitted skirts, jacket, or stays. The impracticality of it was astounding.

Kate left the women packing salt pork into the last of the barrels and debating the merits of linen versus cotton baby swaddling, and went to find her father at his secretary in the back parlor. It was dark and cool there, and she welcomed the relief from the sticky heat of the kitchen. She shut the door behind her.

It was her favorite room in the house, where she played the harpsichord in the evening and indulged her father’s un-Quakerly taste for ballads. Floored with Brussels carpet, painted in hues of sea blue and wheat gold, hung with classical scenes and furnished with a set of horsehair lolling chairs that bristled like angry porcupines, it served both as the Greys’ private sanctuary and their preferred place to entertain guests.

At sixty, Arthur Grey was still a vigorous man. The years had softened his hawklike features, but his eyes burned bright and his frame was lean.

“Are the wagons packed?” he asked.

“Almost. What will you do when Reverend Matthis discovers the contents of the last wagon?”

“What kind of an unmannerly oaf do you take me for, young woman? I will offer him one of your excellent pies, of course.”

“I meant the contents under the pies,” Kate persisted.

“That would be blueberries?” He turned from his secretary to cast a merry eye on his daughter.

“That would be rifles, sixty, with shot.”

“You disapprove.”

“I’m afraid for you.”

“Be afraid for the Regulars. I’m still a damned good shot.”

“You mean to stay with Washington, then.” She tried to hide her disappointment. Her father had been an officer in the French and Indian War; a man, at one time, of violence; and a close friend of the Virginian who now commanded the Continentals.

“These may be the times that try men’s souls, but our masters in London have tried my patience. I didn’t fight in the last war to put up with a standing army on my doorstep.” He pressed his seal into the wax pooled on the envelope. It bore no address.

“It’s your soul that Reverend Matthis will think the worse for wear. He’ll read you out of the meeting.”

“Would that be so terrible, Kate? I wasn’t born a Friend. I was convinced. Largely by your mother. She was a damned sight better-looking than Matthis, in any case.”

Kate laughed out loud. “I give up. Go and frustrate King George…How long will you be gone?”

He rose without answering and slid his hand along the mantelpiece, fingertips flying over courses of dentils, acanthus, frieze, and metope, to rest upon the stalk of an exquisitely carved pineapple. A tiny door swung open, revealing a cubby. He held up the letter. “For our friends in Philadelphia, by the next courier,” he said, and slipped the missive into its hiding place. When he closed the panel, between the acanthus-twined pilasters, the joint was invisible.

“Before you began writing treasonous letters to Rebels, what did you use that hidey-hole for?” Kate asked.

“Tobacco. Your mother hated me to smoke in the house. And it’s a Committee of Correspondence with like-minded gentlemen, not treason. Still, it wouldn’t do us any good to let the Regulars get hold of any of my letters, particularly that one. It’s important. I’m informing Congress that I will accept their commission and have tendered my advice on whom they might consider sending to Paris.”

“Mrs. Ferrers says that Howe has landed at Head of Elk and will begin arresting Rebels.” Everyone feared they would soon march on Philadelphia, de facto seat of the rebellion since the first Continental Congress had convened there three years ago.

“Then you’ll be safer with me away.” He handed her a heavy purse of golden guineas.

“What is this for?” she asked.

“Uncertainties.”

A suspicion formed in the pit of her stomach. “How long will you be gone?”

“That’s one of the uncertainties. I’m sorry, Kate.” He capped the inkpot, closed the doors of the secretary, and put his arm around his daughter.

“I’ll be lonely without you.”

“Then marry, Kate.”

“Never. ‘For I’ve been warned, and I’ve decided, to sleep alone, all of my life.’”

“Don’t put your faith in maudlin ballads. I seem to remember that one containing a philandering father.”

“A handsome devil of a philandering father.”

Arthur Grey grunted. “Well, they got that half right.” He paused, and something in his manner made Kate recall the time when she was a little girl and contracted a hoarse, bellowing cough. She had rebelled against taking the ichorous green tonic prescribed by the doctor, but every morning Arthur Grey had talked her into swallowing the draught.

“What?” she asked.

“I’ve asked Mrs. Ferrers to stay with you until Howe goes to ground for the winter.”

“No! I’m fine by myself. The Regulars know that Quakers are pacifists.”

“Tired, hungry soldiers don’t always trouble to pay for food, or firewood, or to discuss politics with the people they rob. Regulars or Continentals, for that matter. Mrs. Ferrers is staying.”

“She’ll drive me mad.”

“She is a sensible lady of great experience. Provided she doesn’t set herself on fire, you should have a quiet few weeks, and she’ll be gone by the first snow.”

*   *   *

By late afternoon, Kate was longing for snow.

The wagons departed in good order, though Silas Talbert, their neighbor to the south, returned an hour later when his horse went lame. This was generally perceived as the signal for the ladies to depart, though Kate found herself wishing that they had stayed later, both to occupy the chatty Mrs. Ferrers and to put the house to rights.

Kate spent the early afternoon scrubbing tables, sweeping floors, and taking count of their provisions. During these activities, Mrs. Ferrers was, not surprisingly, nowhere in sight.

They had sent away more than half their stores with the men. It would be a lean winter for Kate, Mrs. Ferrers, and Margaret and Sara, the two young girls who helped with the house and lived in the room above the winter kitchen.

Kate was in the cold room counting apples when the rider broke through the line of trees at the end of the barley field. She could see him from the second-story window, crossing straight over the meadow.

It was Silas Talbert again, but this time his horse was very definitely not lame. He was shouting. Kate lifted the sash and leaned out the window, wishing for a breeze to break this dizzying heat, and finally his words reached her.

“Regulars. Cavalry. Heading north. They’ll be on the house any minute.”

Kate stepped back from the window. Below she could hear Talbert riding away, his message delivered, his own family and farm to think of.

Her father’s words came back to her: it wouldn’t do the Greys any good if his letters fell into British hands. And no matter how he made light of them, those letters were treason.

Kate wasn’t certain if the distant thunder she heard was horsemen or the blood pounding in her ears. Hungry soldiers, who wouldn’t stop to ask their allegiance or talk politics. The thunder grew louder, and Kate looked back out the window. The road was hidden by a long stand of elms, but the sound of hooves carried over the field, and the branches shook with their passing.

She ran down the stairs and into the back parlor.

Kate expected an empty room and a cold grate. Instead, a woman stood at the fire, her back to the door, negligently feeding the contents of the secretary to the flames.

“Mrs. Ferrers?”

The woman turned. Gone was the plain young Quaker widow of the morning. In her place stood a powdered, perfumed, bewigged lady in silks and satins. Her dress was closely fitted, and the oyster pink satin shimmered in the firelight. Her wig was tinted the same soft pink, pale curls piled high on her head. She wore a diamond around her neck on a silky ribbon, and rings on her manicured hands.

Her cheeks were rouged, her skin powdered porcelain white, her eyes rimmed with kohl. The entire effect was stunning, particularly to a girl like Kate, raised in a community that eschewed such finery.

At a loss, she said, “There are men on the road. Cavalry. Regulars.”

“Yes. I know. A day earlier than I expected. Thirty men, I should say, in scarlet with buff facings, two pistols each, a carbine, and a saber. The man who leads them is tall, has fair hair that he does not allow to grow past his shoulders, blue eyes, and rather full lips.”

Stunned, Kate stepped farther into the room. “How do you know all this? They haven’t even reached the drive.”

As she spoke, the jingle of spurs came distantly from the road.

“Because,” said Mrs. Ferrers, closing the secretary and smoothing her spotless pink satin, “I’ve been waiting for him. Colonel Sir Bayard Caide commands a battalion of His Majesty’s horse in these, his Colonies, and has systemically murdered, robbed, and raped civilians in the execution of his duties. I have come, my dear child, to destroy him.

“Now,” Mrs. Ferrers went on coolly, “you are my niece. I am your dear aunt Angela from Philadelphia, staying with my dull Quaker cousins in the country. I will dazzle the colonel and persuade him to spend the night. You will see that a fit dinner is laid on for him and his officers. Is that clear?”

Kate found her voice with difficulty. “I’m not going to help you a kill a man. It’s not our way.” It sounded prim even to her own ears.

Mrs. Ferrers laughed, deep and throaty, a genuine sound, quite different from the hollow simper she had used in front of the ladies that morning. “My dear girl, I’m going to destroy him. You don’t have to kill a man to do that. Caide is a sybarite, a sadist, and above all things, a soldier. The cavalry is perhaps the only place where men like him can exist within the confines of the law. He thrives on violence with a bit of style. And what, after all, is an army in the field? I don’t need to kill him. I need only ruin him.”

She paused, abandoned her pose of elegant bravado, and spoke with chilling seriousness. “General Howe has landed at Head of Elk with eighteen thousand Regulars and Hessian mercenaries. He means to march on Philadelphia and take Congress and the capital. There will be arrests, hangings. Caide carries the plans for this attack, the routes, troop placements, and supply lists, from Howe to his subordinate General Clinton in New York. If I can relieve Caide of these dispatches, the colonel will be disgraced. At the very least, he’ll lose his commission. And in one move we can disarm a man who has caused us no end of trouble and gain an advantage over our enemy on the march—perhaps even have a chance to stop the British before they reach Philadelphia.”

“I can’t help you. I’ve sworn not to intervene in the conflict. We all have. You too…” Kate trailed off. “You’re not really a Quaker, are you?”

Mrs. Ferrers shook her head. “I’m sorry, Kate, but it was safer, until now, to keep this from you. I have known your father since the last war. I came here to convince him to join Washington. And I have remained to lie in wait for Bayard Caide.”

“But how did you know this…this…Caide man would come here?”

“Your house is the biggest estate in the county. It’s on the main road north. He was bound to stop here, but he’s too close on the heels of your father and the other gentlemen. Kate, you must help me. Your father will be traveling slowly. The wagons are heavy. If Caide doesn’t stop here tonight, he will overtake your father. Caide would give no quarter to Rebels carrying supplies for the Continentals.”

Kate could hear the men in the yard. Thirty mounted soldiers made a good deal of noise. She must think. She must decide. She must go out and speak to these men, and, it was becoming all too clear, she must lie.

“Kate.” Mrs. Ferrers spoke urgently now. “Are there any other papers in the house that could incriminate your father? You must show me.”

She remembered the letter in the mantel. “No.” The panel was well hidden, the letter safe, and Mrs. Ferrers was clearly not to be trusted.

“Good. Now.” She took Kate’s hand in her own and led her to the front of the house. “We go to meet the enemy.”

The two women emerged into the afternoon sunlight and Kate was blinded by the glitter of polished spurs and weaponry. The man who slipped lightly from his horse and took the steps two at a time to bow deeply before Mrs. Ferrers was tall and broad-shouldered. Kate found herself watching the play of muscles beneath his closely fitted cavalry breeches. Slim, erect, he did indeed have blue eyes, and was most certainly an officer, but his lips were thin, and his hair was neither fair nor short, but long and black, and encased in a tightly wrapped silk queue. He was not, in short, Bayard Caide.

Two

Peter Tremayne was saddlesore, hungry, and acutely aware of the picture he must present to the locals. There was a reason why the British Regulars were so easily caricatured: the stereotype was often true. They were rough men, badly supplied, and far from home. His own mother wouldn’t have let them past the door in their faded regimentals, and yet the colonists were required to quarter soldiers in their homes.

Today Tremayne carried General Howe’s plans for the campaign against the Rebel capital, Philadelphia, in his dispatch case. He had hoped to join John Burgoyne on the expedition north but instead had endured a month at sea with hesitating Howe and his fractious military family, a tedious, hot journey plagued by bad winds all the way from New York. These prolonged a ten-day cruise into a one-month ordeal. Galloway and the other Philadelphia Tories had seduced the general south with promises of a country teeming with Loyalists, but Tremayne failed to see how a territory such as the Jerseys, so hostile that the British could not march their army through it and were forced to approach by sea, would yield up a groundswell of support for the Crown. His horse had died on board ship, and the heat and the unfamiliar mount were adding to his bad temper.

He very much wanted a hot bath, a soft bed, and gentle company, but he was resigned to accept a cold basin, clean straw, and the grateful affection of his horse, if any of these things were to be had. His troop had been sniped at all the way from Head of Elk. The grannies of Pennsylvania were disturbingly good shots, and they seemed to spend more time loading rifles than embroidering cushions. America was the stuff of a career soldier’s nightmare, a morass becoming deeper by the day.

The neighborhood they were passing through promised somewhat more hospitality. He had met Quakers in England and America and found them kind and generous, if naive and somewhat dour folk, and they were largely if not Loyalists, then at least pacifists.

Despite the rigors of travel, he was glad to be out of the city. He had been raised in the country, and on long rides he found he rather liked the American landscape. He could forget, for a time, the halfhearted manner in which his superiors were prosecuting this conflict, the lives and fortunes being poured into this pointless war.

The manor house was well sited, built in the classical style, and if its proportions and ornament were fifty years out of date in England, its scale promised some modicum of wealth and comfort. Five windows across and two stories high beneath a graceful dormered roof, with granite stairs rising to a pillared porch, and red brick on a foundation of local stone. Charming.

The lady who greeted him at the top of the stairs was certainly the most decorative Quaker he had ever seen, resplendent in up-to-the-minute shell pink satin. She would put half the women of King George’s court to shame. He bowed, kissed her hand, and said something polite in passing to the niece, who looked as plain a piece of country business as he’d ever set eyes on.

The lady, Mrs. Ferrers, immediately put the girl to heating water for a bath. The size of the house promised beds, for himself and his officers, and something about the lady’s too-familiar gaze told him that gentle company might be his for the asking.

*   *   *

When will General Howe invest Philadelphia with his troops, Major? We hear the army has disembarked at Head of Elk. A glorious victory, to win back the Rebel capital, surely,” Mrs. Ferrers flattered.

Kate tried to hide her amusement by taking a sip of watered rum. The glass sweated in the August heat and dripped onto her apron. She should have taken it off, as a mark of respect for their visitors, but she found she had precious little respect to spare for Redcoats.

They were seated in the back parlor, along with a young man introduced to Kate as Lieutenant Phillip Lytton. He divided his time between shifting uncomfortably on the frayed horsehair chair and glancing surreptitiously at Kate.

Her seat in the corner of the room, wedged between the harpsichord and the sewing table, allowed her the luxury of studying the major. Peter Tremayne, Viscount Sancreed, had at least one quality that Kate approved: he was immune to the charms of Mrs. Ferrers. He must, she decided, be a few years past thirty. Tall, lean, correct but not ostentatious in his tunic, he had wiped his boots carefully outside and wisely chosen the lolling chair with a slipcover.

“It will be a victory by default, and hardly glorious,” he replied. “Philadelphia is open on all sides. It has no defenses. Congress will flee, along with most of the Rebel population.”

“Then you must be looking forward to winter quarters in the city. I hear that General Howe keeps merry company.” Mrs. Ferrers, Kate was realizing, had taken the wrong tack with Peter Tremayne. Prepared to dazzle quite another man, one amenable to flattery and enamored of high living, she had no notion how to seduce a sober, tired aristocrat with a long road in front of him.

Tremayne didn’t answer, only smiled thinly and sipped his rum.

Phillip Lytton, looking painfully young and decidedly uncomfortable, rushed to fill the silence. “Yes, it will be very gay. Captain André—he is on the general’s staff and much admired—has already planned a masque for next week. I hope we’ll be back in time to take part.”

“What you hope for, Lytton, is a swift end to this pointless conflict.” Tremayne put his empty glass down. “Howe has the advantage. He should press it, and take Washington while he can. Any general but Howe would have beaten Washington by this time.”

Lytton began to stammer his apologies.

Kate, used to discoursing on matters political with her father, spoke before thinking. “And any general but Washington would have beaten Howe, I believe is the opinion of the London Times. But you and they are wrong.”

Lytton stopped fidgeting. Mrs. Ferrers closed her fan. And Peter Tremayne, for the first time all afternoon, looked less than bored. He sat up in his chair.

Mrs. Ferrers, desperate to break the tension, moved to fill Tremayne’s empty glass. He laid his hand over the cut crystal without looking up at her.

He fixed his cold blue eyes on Kate. “Miss Grey, do you mean to tell me that you have discerned a strategy in Washington’s tactics?” Tremayne’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I can think of no successful general in history to equal him for retreat and failure.”

“My niece means no such thing. She’s just going to check on dinner.”

Kate ignored Mrs. Ferrers. Like her father, she enjoyed few things more than getting to grips with a noble argument. “I hesitate to correct you, Lord Sancreed, but I can. Fabius Maximus, sometimes called Cunctator—the Delayer. He hindered and harassed an enemy superior in numbers until that enemy’s strength was eroded. His tactics during the Second Punic War helped Rome defeat Carthage.”

Peter Tremayne smiled, an openmouthed, crooked expression of genuine delight that made Kate flush. Lytton and Mrs. Ferrers were quite forgotten. “You know your military history. But Fabian tactics won’t answer here. Rome had a trained army of veterans. Men sworn to twenty years’ service. Washington has only poorly armed militia, whose enlistments are about to expire.”

“Yes,” Kate said, undeterred, “he has something remarkable indeed. A volunteer army.”

Mrs. Ferrers stood up. “Mr. Lytton, will you help me bring up a butt of wine?”

Kate barely noticed their departure. Tremayne abandoned the lolling chair to perch on the harpsichord bench beside her. She was scarcely conscious of his proximity, so determined was she to hear what he might say next.

“Volunteer or no, Miss Grey, you are dependent on Britain for manufactured goods. Where the might of armies may be insufficient, simple economics will prevail.”

“We rely upon you for goods, Lord Sancreed, because you legislate that we must do so.”

“Granted. You might build your own industries. But where will you turn in the short run for powder and shot, ordnance, and the machinery of war?”

Kate opened her mouth, but realized she couldn’t speak the word that rose naturally to her lips. There was only one answer to Tremayne’s question: to France, of course. Up to this point, they had been talking tactics. To answer his question would be to talk treason.

Kate, used to plain-speaking farm people, realized that she had been skillfully led into betraying herself. Her lips remained open, and her tongue felt strangely dry, as she experienced a tiny epiphany: the world beyond Orchard Valley was very complicated indeed.

She became aware of his physical closeness and stifled an urge to shrink back. She could not stop herself from looking at the secret panel on the mantel, just behind Tremayne.

Treason. To speak the name of France, where no doubt Congress was already begging powder, shot, and ordnance, was to speak treason. And behind a slender walnut panel, folded, signed, and sealed, was also treason.

She willed herself to look away and to answer the man looming over her. “Quakers are pacifists, Major. I’ve no notion where to acquire such things.”

*   *   *

A quarter of an hour of Mrs. Ferrers’ company in the parlor convinced Peter Tremayne that he would be better off with the affections of his horse. Her manner was polished and charming. She laughed prettily at his jokes. She paid him deft compliments and asked a steady stream of flattering questions. She would have been at home in any London drawing room, and like most of the English ladies of her class, s