The Turncoat Read Online Free PDF Page B

was pounding, her breath becoming short. She felt an unfamiliar heaviness at the apex of her thighs and found it thrilling and terrifying all at once.
    Tremayne lifted his head and drew back to look down at her, tipping her chin up with one hand and caressing her neck with the other. “Say yes, Kate. Or say no, and I’ll leave.” He dropped his hands and stepped back from her, withdrawing his warmth with his touch.
    He never heard her answer. The battering of the front door below drowned out her words, and the clatter of weaponry and opening of doors throughout the house signaled an end to their privacy.
    Tremayne heard Lytton hammering on Kate’s bedroom door. He reached out and pulled sharply on the ribbon that bound her shapeless jacket closed. The amateur embroidery came away in his hand. It seemed all the more intimate because the handiwork, though clumsy, was her own. He pressed it to his lips, sketched a small bow, and slipped from her room, before his presence there could cause her any embarrassment.
    Lytton, standing just outside her door, would not meet his eyes.
    Tremayne collected his kit and found the rider below in the kitchen. The man was lean, old, and wiry, dressed in fine but plainly cut brown cloth. “Rebels. A raiding party. They’re pillaging a farm on the West Road. They mean to burn it.”
    The man was obviously local and known to the Greys.
    “How many?” Tremayne asked sharply.
    “Forty. Maybe more.”
    “On foot?”
    The man shook his head. “Mounted. Well armed. Organized.”
    “Damn. Right. Lytton. Mount up. This is what we’re paid for.”
    Mrs. Ferrers arrived in the kitchen in a far more attractive, if less artless, state of dishevelment than the one in which he had left Kate. He wondered briefly what the girl would look like with a touch of her aunt’s polish and élan, and dismissed the thought just as quickly. Kate had her own charm, which needed no ornament.
    “What’s happening, Mr. Talbert?” the widow asked.
    The old man took his hat off. “Mrs. Ferrers. Ma’am. Rebels, attacking the farm to the west.”
    “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Ferrers.” Tremayne followed Lytton out into the hall and was about to dart up the stairs when he saw Kate, clutching her jacket closed, standing in the door to the parlor.
    Her ribbon was still in his hand. “Your Rebel friends are attacking a farm to the west,” he said to her.
    “Yes,” Kate said.
    “I must go. Protecting His Majesty’s loyal subjects and such.”
    “Yes,” she said again. He could see her chest heave and fall in the confines of her sensible cotton stays.
    “Miss Grey?” He cocked his head, realization dawning on him. “Is that your answer?”
    “Yes.”
    She bit her lip, and he could tell she wished to say more. He waited.
    “That is, you must understand, I have never said yes before. To anyone.” Then she laughed. “Not that anyone asked. But you are quite outside my experience, Major, in every way.”
    “I rather thought so. And I’m glad of it.” He stepped close to her but could not touch her here in view of so many. He spoke quietly, for her alone. “I won’t take the responsibility lightly. Wait for me.”
    The daunting prospect of an enemy engagement at night against men who knew the territory better than he dwindled to a minor impediment. He slipped her ribbon through the button loop on his sleeve and tied it, then bowed and was gone.
    *   *   *
    T he Miller house was already burning when thirty-odd mounted men thundered to a halt outside the place. There were no Rebels to be seen. The house was old, at least a hundred years, and flames had already engulfed the steep gables and melted the lead from the casements.
    “Waste. A vast, natural paradise. More land than anyone can settle. And this.” Tremayne spoke more to himself than to anyone else, but Silas Talbert, mounted on the horse that had earlier that day made a remarkable recovery, answered him.
    “It’s a rare man