Mae sat beside her and placed a hand on her shuddering back. “Sister, what has happened?”
Long moments ticked past as Coralie continued crying. “Eben wants nothing to do with me. I’ve come all this way only to hear him say his feelings have changed—that he refuses to marry into a family of Patriots.”
So he blamed them and their loyalties? “Are you sure you read it rightly?”
“He was quite clear.” Her embittered voice broke, and she shook Mae off. “You and James and Jon and Aaron are to blame!”
Schooling her tone, Mae forged ahead. “Best you find out now rather than later if he’s a wastrel and a rogue.”
“Oh? He’s neither, though I well know how you feel about him.” Coralie dug in her pocket for a handkerchief. “Leave me be—right now. I want to be alone.”
Mae stood, feeling helpless in the face of such an emotional storm, and returned to the kitchen. Her nieces had finished washingdishes and gone outside. Joanna waited, seated by her spinning wheel, her face full of questions.
“Lieutenant Gibbs has decided to end matters between them.”
“Jilted, then.” Joanna’s distress mirrored Mae’s. “She’s talked of little else since you left, forever waiting for a letter.”
Mae stood by as James entered the kitchen, returning his empty cider mug. “Why is Coralie crying?”
“You don’t know the whole story, but in a few words, Coralie has just been jilted by Lieutenant Eben Gibbs.” Mae gestured to the hearth’s fire. “She burned his letter she was so distraught.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised.” James looked at the dwindling flames, where only a blackened corner of the letter remained. “But I’m truly sorry for her misery, if nothing else.”
Jon entered next as sobbing was again heard on high. “All is not well, I take it.”
“A matter of the heart,” Mae told him, explaining it all over again.
“I wish she’d told us there was more to their arrangement than letter writing.” Her eldest brother took a seat at the empty table. “As for Coralie, she always did have the worse end of the staff.”
Guilt pricked Mae. That was the short of it. Coralie had always been in her shadow, the least of the sisters, or so Coralie said and believed. Less comely, less capable, less well in body. It had been a thorn betwixt them since childhood. And now this...
James looked at her in concern. “Although you may want to stay on and comfort her, we need to return to the fort.”
“I understand.” Mae removed her apron, feeling as much relief as sorrow. “In her current mood, my being here will only aggravate. My place is with Rhys.”
Rhys mounted Copper and extended a hand to Mae as she stepped from the mounting block. She swung herself into the saddle and smoothed her petticoats, keeping them free of the stirrups.With her arms anchored around his waist, he let James lead, Jon in the rear, all of them watchful with nary a word spoken.
Though he rued Coralie’s hurt, he was glad Mae wanted to return with him. Between anticipated raids on valley Patriots and the British advance down the Hudson, the farm was less secure than the fort. He was hours away from ordering his riflemen out to harass British patrols and scouts, including their supply lines. Washington’s latest orders had been clear. “Wear down, disrupt, distress, but avoid engaging in full-blown battle.”
He leaned out of the saddle far enough to snatch a wild rose. Mae took it, the delicate bloom fragile in her hand. He sensed her wordless pleasure as she leaned into him like a caress, her softness pressed to his straight back.
When the fort’s main gates appeared at the end of the rutted, dusty road, he let out a pent-up breath. Helping Mae dismount, the sun catching in her pale hair, he tried to push aside the nightmarish happening with Jane McCrea. He knew details few did. How violent the last moments of her life had been. How her hair had touched the ground, a yellow-gold torrent like Mae’s. News of her death had begun to spread like fire, many blaming the British for such brutality.
For now, Mae stood looking up at him, a light in her eyes that bespoke relief at their safe return. Yet he read sadness there too, a concern for her sister, who hadn’t the happiness they had.
“Where to now?” she asked as they cleared the front gates.
“Once I return you to our quarters, I’ll meet with Clinton and hear the latest intelligence.”
“Please don’t ride out on a patrol without telling me.”
“Never,” he vowed. “And you?”
“I shall finish that letter to Aunt Verity and see if Lucy is ready to begin cutting more cloth for officers’ coats.”
He pushed open the door to their quiet, spare barracks room, wanting to join her, a headache pulsing at his temples. “Till supper then.”
thirty-four
