Joshua’s muscles tensed.Hold your tongue,Juliet. To argue with a man who likened himself to a heavenly body was useless. Yet he held her in secret admiration as she met her cousin’s glare unflinchingly.
“Bah,” Faulkner scoffed. “The promiscuous association between the classes must not once be tolerated. The nobility knows what is better for the lower classes and should rule over their ignorance.”
Juliet pressed home her advantage. “What of Saratoga? The colonials won. Are not the Americans an example?”
“An accident. Rabble winning their rudderless war.”
“There.” She dabbed her linen napkin on her lip and glanced down the table. “For someone who usually has something usually to say, I’d say you are fairly quiet, Mr. Hansford. After living these years in the Colonies, do you have an opinion?”
Joshua inhaled. He avoided unwanted attention. He must not be suspect. Hanging existed the punishment of a spy. “If I may speak, Lady Juliet. Correcting legend is a very different and freakish pastime of making saints out of satyrs and satyrs out of saints, by which certain easy reputations have been won.”
Juliet sniffed at his condescension. “I could point out your opinion could be viewed by both Patriot and Loyalists.
“Joshua is obviously loyal in his contention and his opinion is intelligent,” the colonel said. “I agree with him. In time, the legend of General Washington will reveal the man’s faults and frailties along with his mislead followers,” said Colonel Faulkner, breathing heavily from the exertion of his speech.
Joshua smiled without mirth. “That is to flatter me beyond all I deserve.”
“What does it mean that the French have entered the war?” Juliet asked.
An uneasy silence settled over the room. The yellow-faced scarecrow of a sergeant smacked his lips with Juliet’s sacrilegious comment while the lieutenant gasped for air. The rest of the officers gave her a patronizing smirk.
The colonel brushed at a nonexistent piece of lint on his shoulder but his voice cut across the room like a whiplash. “Politics are not for your sex. Women are far too delicate.”
The colonel used a roll to maneuver food on his plate to sop up the gravy. “Captain Sunderland, I think it would be gracious of you to invite my cousin for a tour of the fort, maybe even a picnic on the lake. She has gone through an ordeal, reducing her to feminine vapors. The exercise will help refresh rational thought.”
Joshua shook his head to warn her to remain quiet. She tossed her head and sipped her wine. No doubt, it rolled sour over her tongue.
The colonel narrowed his eyes. “What do you think, Joshua? You have been with my…cousin.”
Faulkner circled like a dog tormenting sheep, a master at casting doubt by endeavoring to entrap Joshua and besmirch Juliet. To place a well-aimed fist through the colonel’s drooping face would satisfy immensely. The sooner he put Juliet out of harm’s way the better. By Sunderland’s veneration of her, she would live well with a devoted husband. The captain’s fervor cemented Joshua’s decision.
“Captain Sunderland, hosting a picnic for Lady Faulkner might be the thing to clarify her thoughts.”
He didn’t look at Juliet. He had to give up the greatest gift of his life. He’d stay with her forever if he could…wrapped in her arms. He dreamed his best when she slept with him, curling up to him close and dear. Sometimes he’d lie there watching her. She’d wake for the briefest moment, gaze at him, smile and go back to sleep…and he was home.
Maybe all that was a dream too. He was a man stuck with the nightmare of his Sarah Thacker. He didn’t want to see the hurt or the fury in Juliet. He cursed. Never should he have touched her.
Whatever his feelings were toward Juliet he didn’t not live up to the principles ingrained in him since birth—to protect those for whom he was responsible. His shameful neglect left him flawed and undeserving. If he’d been closer to Sarah, not left her alone and vulnerable, perhaps he might have prevented her death. And therein lay the problem…if he wasn’t away at war.
Chapter Nineteen
The next day, numb and emotionless, Juliet stopped beneath an alcove in the courtyard near the officers’ quarters and pulled in her billowing skirts. How stiff and confining the dress felt compared to the soft doeskin. She placed her palm on the coarse hand-hewed log wall. Patches of splintery bark abraded her fingertips, and she shifted them across the cool rough chinking, still irked by Joshua’s callous dismissal of her.
She watched him as he leaned indolently against the corner. A warm land breeze ruffled his dark hair and, for a moment the thick waves rippled as if tousled by the fingers of an invisible lover. How she yearned to run her fingers through his hair…to keep on touching him.
No. She couldn’t afford to care or indulge herself in emotions that would lead to nowhere. Keep the relationship on an impersonal level. That was the best way to deal with matters.
Unaware of her presence, he stood alone looking up at the fort’s parapets, the frontiersman whose fame and marksmanship garnered respect across the Colonies. How strange his observant activity. Things didn’t add up. The questions he asked at dinner the evening before were carefully constructed. An offer in sympathy to the Loyalist cause? Or was it?
She tapped a finger on her lips. Was his friendly chatter and worthless information used to worm-out secrets under the guise of conversation? How his questions probed yet didn’t probe and how he seemingly hung back in the shadows.
For encouraging Captain Sunderland, she took a step toward him to give him a piece of her mind, but stopped. Held herself back. Aphrodite, Joshua had called her, now that unfettered creature, imprisoned in a dark cell like a butterfly pinned under glass. It was pathetic, appalling—and she held thoughts of retaliation against the man who had reduced her to this dreadful feeling. He had made clear his intentions. Or had he? She saw how his eyes followed her during the dinner when he thought she wasn’t looking. How his hands fisted and unfisted when other men paid attention.
A soldier came up to Joshua, bowed formally and addressed him, practically genuflecting. Why such reverence? Juliet did not hear what he had to say, but Joshua looked around worried. He placed his hand on the soldier’s shoulder, and faintly she overheard him say, “Keep quiet.”
Keep quiet?Regarding what? How peculiar.
Joshua stepped off the porch and joined Two Eagles where he had set up their furs amidst a knot of raw, uncouth traders, haggling over their pelts. She lifted her nose with the smell of them. How long had it been since they bathed? A month? A year?
