“They’re easy as the alphabet to recall,” Mae said with forced mirth. “Oldest to youngest, there’s Alexander, Bennett, Cassandra, Dierdre, and Euphemie. Jon has plans to finish with Z.”
“Six and twenty?” This elicited a rare smile from Coralie. “He’ll have to build a fort, not a farmhouse! And we mustn’t forget his long-suffering wife who’s survived the ordeal five times now.”
“Remember the Vassal family of New York has one and twenty children and the Fishers in Massachusetts have the same.”
“’Twould be just like Jon to try and best them.” Coralie waved away a mosquito. “Just so you know, I apologized to James for my outburst back in Morristown.”
Had she? “I’m glad. Did you share your plans?”
“Not yet.” Coralie looked at the ground. “Jon and James are a pair in their dislike of Eben. Neither will be pleased at my becoming Mrs. Gibbs.”
“Be that as it may,” Mae reassured her, “we want the best for you, and if you feel marrying him is what you want, then who are we to naysay the match?”
Oddly, her gracious words seemed only to nettle Coralie. Standing, she handed Mae her empty cup. “I’m too weary to talk about this anymore tonight.”
Mae watched her return to the wagon at the edge of the woods. James took her place, sitting down on the same hollow log. He tossed a handful of moss and sticks into the struggling fire as if to coax it to life. Mae looked down at her muddy hem, the rock beneath her as uncomfortable as the saddle. She’d misplaced her woolen blanket. She regarded James through the smoke as he took out his pipe, trying to gauge his current temper.
“How fares you, Sister?”
“I’m well.”If I could just bathe ... relax in an upholstered chair ... have a proper cup of tea.Suddenly even talking seemed to require effort. “And you?”
“Tolerable.” He drew on his pipestem a considerable length of time, so like their father that Mae’s eyes watered. “You’re holding up well under the circumstances. Never a cross word. I can’t say the same about our sister.”
Had there been another spat she didn’t know about with the officers’ wives? “Coralie has always been the tetchy one.”
“You’ve been her mainstay on this journey, which is no easy task. Thankfully we’re nearing Fort Montgomery.”
“We’ve come safely through New York’s disputed territory so far.”
“Four hundred or so rifles keep things quiet. I won’t rest till you’re within fort walls, though I’ll not lie to you. All of New York is something of a powder keg.”
And she’d thought them somewhat safe. “I’d rather hear the truth than lies or empty assurances.”
“If there’s any trouble, take cover as best you can.” He stopped smoking and knocked the dottle into the fire. “The threat of ambush is at every turn.”
twenty-four
I was more dead than alive, though not so much on account of our own danger, as for that which enveloped my husband.
Baroness Riedesel
They were pushing harder now despite the challenging terrain. The very air seemed to bristle with tension. Stops were briefer, talk terse. To anchor herself amid the rising heat and swirl of insects, the plunging valleys and pulse-pounding climbs, Mae kept her gaze on Rhys. He frequently rode at the head of the column only to circle back as rear guard. Though he claimed to be aware of her, how could he be? His vigilance seemed obsessively single-minded, so dedicated to the slightest aberration in his surroundings that even one look at her might spell ruin.
Her own mouth was slightly agape as New York’s wonders unfolded around them. Jersey seemed rather tame with its subdued pastures and farms and wooded foothills. New York was raw, shocking wilderness, another world entirely, every mile imprinted in her head and heart in fresh ways.
On the next Sabbath, they halted in a forested area by a small river that bled into the more formidable Hudson in the Highlands region they sought. A chaplain gave a timely message that spurredthem on to look ahead—not backward like the fear-ridden, faithless Israelites—with God as their guide. Mae sat with Rhys and listened apart from the rest, the rush of the water an unceasing song.
“Now seems the time to tell me about your sister and this British officer,” he said quietly when the sermon ended, turning his cocked hat in his hands.
She paused, not wanting to worry him. “She’s known Eben Gibbs since childhood, though his Loyalist family left Chatham for New York City some time ago. They exchange letters and plan to marry, but I wonder if that will ever happen.”
“Because of the war?”
“Because Eben is rather like a weather vane, shifting this way or that, never able to stay the course with much of anything. I do wonder what my sister sees in him.” She took a breath. “How far is Fort Washing—Knyphausen?”
“The captured British garrison? Fifty miles or so of hard marching from Fort Montgomery.”
“I ask because Lieutenant Gibbs is there—or was.”
