For Love of Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

whale oil street lamps lining Main Street had been extinguished two hours earlier, but the dim glow of a three-quarter lambent moon was sufficient to guide them past Old Ship’s Church to South Street, then left toward their modest two-story cedar-shingled house located a cable length
down the road. At the front door, Katherine scooped Jamie up from the baby buggy and carried him inside. Richard followed close behind carrying Will.
    â€œI’ll see to them,” Katherine insisted once Richard had Will stretched out on the bed next to his brother’s. “You’re exhausted, Richard. Anyone can see that. Go to bed. I’ll be in shortly.”
    Richard did not protest. When Katherine crept silently into their bedroom a few minutes later, she saw what she had expected to see: her husband stretched out supine on the edge of the red-and-yellowcheckered bed cover. His breathing was already heavy, and his right leg dangled off the side, his foot on the floor, as if he had intended to snatch but a brief respite.
    Settling her candle on a bedside table, she lifted his leg up onto the coverlet next to the other and removed his silver-buckled shoes. She managed to get him to move sideways a bit before repositioning the pillow under his head. She then sat quietly on the edge of the bed, gazing down at him, occasionally smoothing back his thick yellow hair and running her fingertips ever so delicately over the scar high on his forehead, the result of a riding accident years ago near her home in Fareham, England, where they met and fell in love. Thinking to make him more comfortable, she unbuttoned his waistcoat and began loosening the strings at the neck of his cotton shirt and the waist of his trousers. Her ministrations caused him to stir and to reach out for her from the deep well of sleep.
    She took his hand in hers, kissed it, and laid it back down on his stomach. “No, my love,” she said, her lips close to his ear. “Sleep now. We have tomorrow, and the next day. We have so many days.”
    â€œI want you so, Katherine,” he murmured, his tone throaty and distant, as if he were pleading not to her but to an image faraway in a dream.
    â€œI know, Richard. I know, my love. I want you just as much. But sleep is what you need now.” She unrolled a blanket, tucked one end under the foot of the bed and drew the other up over his chest. She gave him a final look as he drifted back into the deep abyss and then blew out the candle.
    â€œSleep well, my darling. You’re home. With me. Safe.”
    Â 
    SLEEP HE DID, until almost 10:00 the next morning. He awoke with a start, feeling remarkably refreshed. His first coherent thought was not how absurdly late the hour must be but how quiet the house was. How
had Katherine managed that? As a ship’s master he was, as much by definition as by nature, a light sleeper, ever susceptible to a sudden heel in a gust of wind, a whine of warning in the rigging, a sudden patter of bare feet on the deck above. If such fleeting phenomena could awaken him, how could two little boys playing downstairs not?
    As much as Richard would have preferred to linger at home that morning, he knew his father was expecting him at the Cutler & Sons office at Baker Yard to itemize the accounts of cargo off-loaded in Bridgetown and Boston. Richard planned to tell him some of what he and Robin had discussed, but he would save the finer details for an upcoming family conference that would include Thomas’ brother, William Cutler. Richard had learned to his great joy the previous evening that his uncle would soon be sailing from England to Boston on his first trip to America. He had also learned, to his greater joy, that Williams’s daughter Elizabeth would accompany him.
    â€œHard to imagine Lizzy being here,” he said to Katherine that evening. They were sitting alone in the dining room off the kitchen, the leaf of the table removed to provide greater