The Turncoat by Donna Thorland Read Free Book Online Page B

flanks. Branches whipped her face, tore at her clothes. She crouched low over her mount as she jumped a broken tree stump and skidded downhill to emerge, after what seemed like an eternity, on the road below the house.
    Angela Ferrers was beside her. She flashed Kate a quick, pleased smile, which faded when the dragoons broke through the trees.
    “Whatever happens, whatever you hear, just keep going .” The Widow spurred her horse to a gallop. Kate followed. She had never ridden so fast. She’d always been a poor horsewoman, but desperation freed a certain grace. They were swallowing the road in great plunging strides, but still the dragoons came on. And they were closing on them.
    She’d been told to ride, but she didn’t know how they could possibly outpace professional soldiers on first-class mounts. Or what they would do when the men overtook them. The men who had taken Milly to the barn.
    Kate risked a quick glance, and discovered the Widow now had possession of her pistol. Before Kate’s amazed eyes, the woman loaded, primed, and cocked the gun in a series of deft, purposeful movements. Difficult to do in the dark. Trickier mounted. Almost impossible on a galloping horse at night. And done in the twinkling of an eye.
    Then Angela Ferrers fell back, twisted gracefully in the saddle, and fired.
    The first dragoon jerked like a marionette. His gun flew up in the air, spun, and fell to the ground. His horse slowed, and his body, caught fast in the stirrups, bobbed along with it, a cork on the seas.
    The second dragoon pulled back on his reins, checking his mount. He was unarmed. The man who’d left his carbine leaning against the barn. His wide eyes followed the ghastly progress of his dying comrade’s horse, moved to where Mrs. Ferrers now stood her own mount to reload, flicked over his shoulder to check the route back through the woods.
    There was a moment, as the Widow tamped and primed the pistol, when Kate realized she ought to object.
    Then the Widow fired. The second dragoon tumbled from his horse to land with a sickening crack on the packed-dirt road.
    Then Angela Ferrers was beside her again, galloping into the dark night with the pistol tucked into her saddle. She met Kate’s heartsick stare with a level gaze and said, “I told you not to look back.”
    After that they left the road and cut across country.
    Dawn was close when they reached Wilmington. Dead horses were the first indicators of the Continental presence. The smell was the second. Thousands of unwashed men were camped in sorry disarray around the small Dutch-roofed house. Here and there were pockets of order—small, disciplined bands led by commanders with some training or aptitude—but mostly it was chaos, and the contempt in which Peter Tremayne held the American militia appeared well earned.
    They were challenged twice. The first sentry had no shoes, the second no shirt. Both times Mrs. Ferrers spoke a password, and they were allowed to continue.
    The farmhouse was ancient; men, trestles, maps, and chairs were crowded to the walls of the structure by the massive central chimney. Clerks sat two to a stair on the narrow flight that buttressed the door, hunched over ledgers balanced on their knees. The east side of the house was serving simultaneously as a hospital and a common room, with instruments and bandages heaped together with cooking utensils. Kate stifled her impulse to tidy it.
    Mrs. Ferrers kept her hood on, and drew Kate to a corner of the parlor to wait.
    A meeting was breaking up in the room next door. Kate studied the men as they filed out. The officers of the Continental Army looked like farmers, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and trappers, because that was what they were. Kate recognized the quiet desperation of men who have gone too far down a dangerous path to turn back. If the war went badly, these men would all hang. And so would her father.
    The house emptied, became quiet. Then they were summoned.
    Sitting before a