“Is it not obvious?” Coralie stared back at her in surprise. “He’s but a farmer, a marksman. You’re more gently bred.”
“Farming is an honorable pursuit,” Mae said. “Chatham is surrounded by respectable, prosperous farmers. Jon is even one.”
Coralie rolled her eyes. “Rebelfarmers, you mean.”
“So? As for the one you loathe, the man is ageneral.”
“But not a learned man like Father.”
“General Harlow is even more admirable given he’s self-taught. He owns a great many books.” Mae hated that she had to defend him. Coralie would never be convinced. “General Washington is much the same.”
“General Harlow is also of questionable lineage.”
It was Mae’s turn for eye-rolling. “His father is of Quaker stock, his mother Welsh. What’s so brow raising about that? Our own ancestry is quite scandalous if you recall.” She felt an almost venomous pleasure mentioning it. “Have you forgotten our mooncussers?”
Coralie recoiled. “What means you?”
“Mama’s family who cursed the moon for foiling their plundering, as they could only steal on cloudy nights?” Mae had always found their family history fascinating if dark. Early on, their colonial kin had been naught but rogues and thieves and worse, lining up and hanging lanterns from their saddles along the Jersey shore to lure unsuspecting ships to their doom.
Coralie closed her eyes in a theatrical moment. “Thankfully we descend more recently from a respected pastor, not water bandits and land pirates.”
“Besides, being a pastor’s wife is not for the fainthearted. Mama was held to an impossibly high standard, as if people expected her to walk on water.”
Coralie held fast to her dislike. “You would be a farmer’s wife instead.”
“I would be the wife of the man I love no matter his occupation, so long as it’s honorable.” Mae didn’t miss Coralie’s grunt of disapproval. “I don’t care for Pastor Heath in that way.”
“Many marry for practicality.”
“Speaking of practicalities, what will your lieutenant do once there’s no longer a war to wage?”
Coralie looked startled as if she’d thought no further than his epaulets.
“If he is awarded land by the British, he doesn’t seem the sort to farm,” Mae continued. “And New York is largely frontier, Jon told us, if you settle outside of the city.”
“Perhaps we could lease the land he’s to be awarded for his service and live in the nearest town. He could open a law office like his late father.” Coralie shrugged, clearly done with the matter. “We shall soon see.”
seventeen
I’ve neither reserve nor aversion to man. ... But to keep my dear Liberty, long as I can, Is the reason I chuse to live single.
Hannah Griffitts
In the privacy of his own Lowantica Valley cabin, hemmed in by melting patches of snow, Rhys examined a borrowed frock coat with a critical eye ahead of the ball. His worn buckskin breeches would have to suffice. The finest shirt he owned had been made by Mae.
Rummaging through a small trunk, he found a clean linen stock that begged for ironing alongside some stockings atop a pair of shoe buckles that wouldn’t shame him. There was a standing joke among Continental officers that they looked like threadbare scarecrows, but since the British weren’t invited they needn’t fret about their appearance.
He sat down in a chair by the fire, noting the time with his father’s pocket watch that still ticked on as stubbornly as the old man himself. Charles Harlow showed no sign of stopping at sixty, able to wield an ax and plow a furrow like men half his age. He had never fought in a war, his Quaker beliefs forbidding it, though he handled Rhys’s service well enough.
In the hubbub of the last few days brought on by the false alarm that General Howe was pushing through Jersey on his way to Philadelphia, Rhys had overlooked the latest letter from Virginia. With a swipe of his thumb he broke the blue seal. Liberty blue, his sister called it.
Bronwyn’s clear, flowing script was easy on the eyes, though she’d developed a maddening way of writing crossways on the paper due to the cost.
Dear brother,
’Tis hard to believe we have survived our second winter without you.
Virginia has seen much snow, which turns the farm and fields a pleasing white. Father continues to split wood despite his rheumatism and keeps the fires hot while I keep him content by making cawl and Welsh pancakes.
