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exchange with the sea captain—that matters might not permit her to do as she wanted, as she felt she had to. And to force it would cast herself and others into danger.
    “Oh, Gordon, I don’t know how much—”
    The sound of footsteps scraped across the cottage’s front porch. A knock at the door, and Gordon said, “Enter.”
    The young officer would have been fresh faced, save for the saber scar across his forehead. “Commandant’s compliments to the harbormaster, sir. He requests your company for dinner.”
    “When?”
    “This very hour, if you please.”
    “My thanks to the commandant. My fiancée and I shall await his pleasure before the watch changes.”
    “Very good, sir. Ma’am.” He bowed out the door.
    “Gordon, I can’t—”
    “Think of it this way, dear Nicole. At least there will be chance of a decent meal. And news that has a hope of being true.”
    She did not object further, drawn as she was by both prospects. As she wrapped her shawl more closely about her and permitted Gordon to usher her from the cottage, she could not say which held the greater appeal.

Chapter 4
    Boston had always seemed a stern and hardfisted city to Nicole. She would have vastly preferred to reside across the river in Cambridge and held a quiet hope of one day owning a small home there. But as Gordon was apt to say whenever the village was mentioned, Cambridge held neither an adequate harbor nor an easily defensible position. Which was why, once the British had retreated south to New York, the American garrison had moved across the river and encamped.
    Another reason, of course, was the public triumph of retaking the city in this most public of manners. The papers smuggled in from England, four months old and full of more dismal news from the south, had declared the city’s fall a tragedy. Which had given the American colonists great reason for celebration in the midst of the bleakest winter in their short history.
    One bright spot of an otherwise difficult season had been Gordon’s appointment as the Boston harbormaster. Up to that point, Nicole had known weeks of silent anxiety. Gordon had proven his worth to the garrison officers, and there had been several small coastal vessels lacking experienced commanders. She knew his yearning to be seaborne once again, doing his part for the effort, yet she dreaded the thought of seeing him depart. Still she had said nothing, for they remained surrounded by the tensions of war. She had been nearly afraid to pray, for there remained the question of what God intended.
    She wanted to believe the dear Lord would not tear them—and her heart—asunder. Yet she only needed to observe her beloved’s face whenever he walked along the harbor quayside as he studied the wind and the tide and the set of ships upon the waters, or see the way his features worked when discussing the seaborne world with other officers, to know how much it cost him to be landlocked. Especially now.
    Gordon’s appointment as harbormaster had been one enormous relief to Nicole. And she secretly hoped that the proximity to the sea would be of at least some satisfaction to Gordon.
    The hillside leading up to the commandant’s private quarters was lined with tightly packed row houses. Most were of timber and wattle, but some of the stodgier neighbors were dressed with close-cut stone. The candlelight from their windows gleamed wet upon the cobblestone and the surrounding wrought-iron fencing. In the night’s rising chill, in what seemed a stubborn and endless winter, the warm colors burning ruddy against the windowpanes left her with the faint promise of something beyond the woes of war. She glanced into the passing windows and imagined that one day there would be for her as well a home and family and comfort. She held more tightly on to Gordon’s arm. Would that it indeed come, and soon.
    As they approached the hill’s crest there came the sound of rolling thunder. “A storm? Now?” Nicole