The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 32

  Cheeks red, Captain Stark bowed to Anne. “Your servant.” With another glare at Philip, he stalked off.

  Anne released Philip’s arm, laughing delightedly. “Insufferable asses! They think their uniforms and their elegant manners make them the catch of the day. Our thanks to you, Mr. Kent. We simply couldn’t get rid of him, even with outright rudeness.”

  Philip said, “I’m happy to make some slight amends, for yesterday.”

  The meaning of that went right by Lawyer Ware. He stuck a pinch of snuff up his nose, inhaled and blinked his frog’s eyes. “Annie’s run into Stark before. I have it on authority that the man’s a whoremaster of the worst sort. Beg pardon, Annie—”

  She shrugged, not the least shocked by her father’s choice of languages. Her reply struck Philip as equally typical of her unusual personality:

  “The term is accurate, I imagine. I’ve heard the same thing. Captain Stark reportedly prides himself on the quantity of his conquests, quality being immaterial. And he has a filthy temper.” To Philip, with a genuine smile: “So I do appreciate your playing my little game. Nothing’s ever devastated him quite so completely before.”

  Somewhat annoyed that he’d been deliberately used, Philip didn’t remain annoyed for long. He couldn’t. The warmth of Anne Ware’s expression pleased him. He found himself glancing down at the scooped neckline of her sprigged yellow gown. How well the color went with her healthy, tanned skin—

  Anne noticed where his gaze had wandered. Her brown eyes frosted just a little. She released his arm.

  Reaching for his pocket, Philip said in a lowered voice, “I’ve brought the proofs, Mr. Ware. But this seems the wrong sort of place—”

  Ware waved. “Ah, the red-coated fops who hold levee here every morning have nothing on their minds except their Tory lady friends. They’ll think I’m reading a brief.”

  As he accepted the galleys, Ware added, “Annie tells me you pore over everything you set and print for Ben Edes.”

  “Yes, sir. Because I’m interested in colonial affairs.”

  Anne had returned to her examination of the display of Hill’s mad-dog nostrum. Did she act a bit self-conscious, to be revealed as having talked about him? While Lawyer Ware examined the first galley, Philip went on:

  “I was a little surprised by one of the closing lines in your article, Mr. Ware. The one expressing hope that the sword of the parent would never be stained with the blood of his children.”

  “Adams would have me strike that out,” Ware said. “But some sops are needed to satisfy the less intemperate advocates of liberty. Johnny Hancock and Sam’s cousin John, for instance. I’d remove the line myself, except for one consideration. We are not yet ready to strike a blow in return.”

  “Will the colonies ever be ready for that?”

  “If the ministerial troops and that truckling Hutchinson don’t change their ways, yes.”

  “When do you think it will happen, Mr. Ware?”

  “Hard to say. If not this year, perhaps next. It’s what Samuel’s counting on—along with some of the rest of us,” he added with a steady look that somehow removed all traces of the grotesque or the comical from his appearance.

  Ware’s statement jibed with the atmosphere that permeated Edes’ print shop. Philip had the impression that certain members of the liberty faction would not be satisfied with anything less than open rebellion—were, in fact, striving to manipulate events to achieve that end. Perhaps they were right in doing so. Philip had so far formed no final opinions. He did realize that such a turn would bring a halt to his own ambitions, though.

  But such abstract subjects didn’t linger long in his mind with Anne Ware nearby.

  Her father stumped to the back corner of the Book-Store, muttering phrases in Latin like any good attorney. He hardly attracted a glance from the socializing soldiers and ladies. Philip took the moment to approach Anne.

  He indicated the portly Knox up near the front door. “Is that fellow partial to the Tory cause?”

  “By no means.”

  “But he’s certainly friendly with the officers. Look at him showing off his books.”

  Anne Ware’s brown eyes grew serious. “Like my father, Henry believes a military confrontation is, if not yet totally inevitable, then certainly possible. Henry’s a fox, Mr. Kent. He very cleverly picks the brains of the best officers who stop in here. Encourages them to do so, in fact. He draws them out on the pretext of exchanging opinions about military strategy and tactics. Henry’s never served in a military unit. But he wants to be prepared. He’s especially interested in the use of artillery. So he allows this place to become more Tory than Whig.”

  For a moment Philip experienced sharp uncertainty. Surely George III would never permit the situation in the colonies to deteriorate to armed conflict.

  And yet, when he recalled the hard-learned lessons of England, the kind of people who held positions of authority there, he was not so sure.

  “Mr. Kent?”

  Startled, he realized Anne Ware had put her hand on his arm again.

  “Yes?”

  “I do thank you once more for rescuing me from a most objectionable situation. More important, I want to offer a complete and sincere apology for my own bad behavior yesterday.”

  Philip smiled, said, “I owe you the same kind. Will you accept it?”

  “Of course.”

  He feigned a frown. “There is one small point—”

  Despite herself, she bristled. “Concerning what?”

  “You did tell Stark that you kept company with mechanics. Since I fall in that classification, I intend to take advantage of your admission. May I call on you some Sunday? Perhaps for a walk on the Common, or—”

  “God’s truth,” she laughed, “you are without a doubt the most forward printer’s boy I’ve ever met. I’ve trapped myself, haven’t I?”

  “Indeed so, Mistress Anne.”

  She challenged him with her brown eyes. “Depending on degree, Mr. Kent, audacity can be an admirable quality in a man. Or an annoying one.”

  As he’d done yesterday, she was teasing—but fully so? He couldn’t be sure.

  “Which is it in my case?”

  “Frankly, I haven’t as yet decided.” She glanced at his clothes. “Do you have a decent suit?”

  “No. But I’ll get one. I already made up my mind to that.”

  “Oh? When?”

  “After you walked out yesterday,” he lied. “Having taken me for an apprentice.”

  “There is really something unusual here, Mr. Kent,” she said. She sounded neither antagonistic nor approving, only speculative.

  “Care to expand on that for me, Mistress Ware?”

  “Well, for one thing, you spoke to the grenadier as if you considered yourself his equal.”

  “I am his equal,” Philip said. “What’s unusual is a woman making that same declaration.”

  “Oh,” she said with a smile, “I thought if the boor had any sort of education at all, the mere mention of John Locke would infuriate him.”

  “But you were quoting with feeling—and application to yourself.”

  “So I was. Are we discussing me, sir?”

  “I thought it was Locke. I’ve read some of his writings—”

  She looked surprised. “No wonder you took on so about being classed as an ordinary apprentice. What do you think of Mr. Locke’s ideas?”

  “Sometimes I think what he said was very correct.”

  “Not all the time?”

  Philip frowned. “No. Not all the time. Finish what you started to say. You called my behavior unusual because I took that captain for an equal. Why not? Isn’t that one of the central beliefs of your father’s group?”

  “Yes, but it was more than that. A look, a haughtiness—oh, I can’t properly explain it. All smeared with ink, you still carry yourself almost like a lord. Perhaps—” She paused, that challenge in her gaze again. “Perhaps that’s why I would be intrigued to have you cal
l. Provided you can indeed afford a proper broadcloth.”

  He stared her down. “Be assured I’ll steal one if I can’t.”

  Her breasts rose sharply as she drew in a breath. Was that heat coloring her cheeks? Strange, prickly girl, he thought, feeling physical attraction and something more. He admitted privately that he’d enjoy confronting her with the facts of his origins. How would she treat him then? How would she react? He looked forward to finding out—

  “All in order,” Lawyer Ware said as he bustled up to them. He pressed the proofs into Philip’s hand. Anne said to him:

  “Mr. Edes’ assistant has asked for permission to call, father.”

  “Annie,” Ware said with another sigh, “that prattle from Locke, Esquire, about a ‘standing rule’ is all very nice. But ever since your dear mother died, it’s been increasingly obvious that I have no voice in such matters. I wish you luck, Mr. Kent. If she takes a mind, my daughter can be quite like gentle Shakespeare’s beautiful shrew.”

  “I’ll stand the risk with pleasure, Mr. Ware,” Philip answered, touching his forehead to the lawyer and directing a last bold glance at Anne as he turned to go. This time, she didn’t seem to mind; she was watching him as if she still didn’t know what to make of him.

  On that score, he thought, they were decidedly even.

  The last thing he heard as he passed through the door of the London Book-Store was the jovial Knox asking two artillery officers about the most effective ranges for mortar fire.

  vi

  Philip followed the events of November 1772 by means of the stories he set and printed in the Gazette.

  To the fury of Governor Hutchinson at Province House, Samuel Adams’ town meeting convened on the second of the month, established a standing Committee of Correspondence and urged that similar committees be set up all over Massachusetts. Express riders pounding out across Roxbury Neck bore the news to other population centers.

  By November’s end, the Boston committee had begun to churn out a blizzard of position papers, which the Gazette duly summarized.

  Adams himself penned a State of Rights of the Colonists. Dr. Joseph Warren, perhaps the most popular physician—as well as the most eligible and handsome bachelor—in all the town contributed a List of Infringements and Violations of Those Rights. Soon reports began to filter back into Boston that other committees were indeed being set up throughout Massachusetts, as well as in the large cities down the coast.

  The men who tramped through the early winter snowfalls to meet up in Edes’ Long Room were elated that they had opened permanent communications with men of like temperament in other colonies. Their excitement brought to mind Warren’s quotation of Franklin’s remark about thirteen clocks striking as one. If the clocks were not yet chiming in harmony, certainly they were all ticking.

  Besides keeping track of political developments, Philip had more personal interests. He hoarded his shillings, visited tailor shops to price merchandise and finally, impatient, asked Edes for an advance against wages that would put him in the printer’s debt for nearly half a year.

  A few days after the bells in the steeple of Christ’s Church had rung the New Year of 1773, he was suitably outfitted in a modest but neat brown suit of broadcloth, his outfit complete with snowy neckcloth, hose and buckled shoes. On a Sunday afternoon of thaw and mellow sunshine, he turned into Launder Street to call the bluff—if bluff it had been—of Mistress Anne Ware.

  As he climbed the stoop of the handsome house, a cloud crossed the January sun. In the brief, chilly shadow, he thought of Alicia. He thought of her with sadness—and a question.

  Was his interest in the attractive and somehow formidable lawyer’s daughter only a convoluted way of circumventing memories of Alicia? Memories that still disturbed him?

  Finding no ready answer within himself, he knocked at the Wares’ front door.

  CHAPTER III

  September Fire

  i

  LOOKING SERENE AND BEAUTIFUL in a white gown, Anne Ware sat waiting in the parlor to which Lawyer Ware ushered the young caller. The afternoon sunlight slanting through the front bays from Launder Street lit her skin and made it glow like dark amber.

  She gave Philip a cordial smile that might have concealed just a tiny bit of amusement at his expense. Philip’s new clothing itched. His fidgeting showed it.

  “Good afternoon, Mistress Ware,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse.

  She inclined her head. “Good afternoon, Mr. Kent. Won’t you be seated?”

  He rushed to one of the chairs with embroidered cushions placed around the room. Lawyer Ware acted almost as nervous as Philip himself, rubbing his hands, shifting his weight from foot to foot and blinking his pop eyes. He hurried to the hall door, saying:

  “I’ll see whether the tea’s ready. We serve nothing stronger in this house on the Lord’s day.” With that, he vanished.

  Dust motes swirled slowly in the sunbeams falling athwart Anne’s white lap, where her hands lay folded, composed. She continued to regard Philip with that faintly amused expression.

  “Your suit is quite handsome,” she said finally. “I did wonder whether you’d keep your vow.”

  “When the goal’s worth gaining—always.” Damn, how the girl unsettled him!

  Was this merely a charade on her part? A little diversion, to be joked about with friends later? He could almost hear her describing how a bumpkin of a printer’s boy had twitched and quivered in her parlor, ill at ease and more than slightly red-faced. The angering thought produced a rash promise. He’d see that tanned and softly rounded body revealed—and submissive to him—before he was done.

  Matching her smile as best he could, he asked, “I trust you had a pleasant Sabbath morning?”

  “If you call a one-hour prayer and a four-hour sermon pleasant,” she sighed. “We’re Congregationalists. I think our preachers don’t believe in overcoming sin so much as in making the faithful too exhausted to be able to think about it. Do you profess or practice a faith?”

  “No, neither. My mother was French. Born Catholic. But because of her—her early career, she was excluded from the rites of the church. She was an actress in Paris,” he added, with unmistakable pride.

  “An actress! How fascinating. I’ve begged Papa to let me go see the traveling troupes that play Boston. But such entertainments are considered wicked worldliness in our denomination—”

  “I thought you did as you pleased, Mistress Anne.”

  She colored just a little. “So I do—up to a certain point.”

  “And what determines that point, may I ask?”

  “Prudence. Common sense. You expressed it a moment ago. Is the goal worth gaining?” Her quick glance held a meaning he didn’t fully understand. “Is it worth going beyond “the prescribed limit? Risking turmoil, disapproval—?”

  As if she didn’t like the path the conversation was taking, she veered off: “You mentioned Paris. I thought I detected a touch of an accent in your speech. I recall you said you came to the colonies from France—”

  “After some difficult months in England. I was trying to claim an inheritance—”

  “Where did you learn the language so well?”

  “In Auvergne. My mother hired a tutor. He was the one who introduced me to Locke’s writings. And Rousseau’s. The preparation was wasted, though. My father was a member of the nobility. But he—” Well, why not admit it? “—he never married my mother. So his family—” Another wary pause “—refused to honor the claim. When they caused trouble for me, I took a ship here to start a new life.”

  He expected her to mock him with laughter, or at very least with the amusement which came so readily to her brown eyes. So he was unsettled even further when it didn’t happen. Instead, she clapped her hands together and cried softly:

  “You’ve just explained the very cloud of mystery I said hovered around you! The way you faced that loutish grenadier—the way you strut a bit—” She extended one hand quickly. The gestur
e tautened the white fabric across her breasts. “Please, I don’t intend that in an insulting way. You have a pride about you that sets you apart. That’s good. I’d love to hear more about your adventures in England. How do they color your outlook toward what’s happening here? The agitation against the Crown, I mean?”

  Quietly, Philip said, “I despise my father’s family and everything they stand for. They destroyed my mother’s health and peace of mind.”

  “Was she with you in England?”

  “Yes. She died on the ship that brought us to Boston.”

  “Oh, I’m indeed sorry.”

  “If I could, Mistress Anne—”

  “We can use first names, can’t we, Philip?”

  A stiff nod. Then: “If I could, I’d go back to England and take everything that’s mine. And I’d cause the family pain doing it.”

  Anne studied his stark face a moment. All trace of her earlier amusement was gone. She asked:

  “I don’t quite understand. Do you want to be one of them? Or do you simply want to see them brought down? Humiliated?”

  “A little of both, I think.” It was the most honest answer he could give. And for a moment it produced troubling memories of pledges made to Marie. Pledges now almost completely forgotten.

  Anne pondered his reply, said, “Even with your explanation, you’re still a puzzle, Philip.”

  “In what way?”

  “You work for Ben Edes, who is certainly no partisan of the aristocracy. Yet you suggest that if given the opportunity, you’d return to England—”

  “Oh, there’s no real possibility of that. I’ve made up my mind to find my place here.”

  “Out of desire? Or necessity?”

  “I’ll give you the same answer as before. A little of both.”

  “That kind of position may not be tenable much longer, you know.”

  “Because of the trouble Mr. Adams keeps predicting? And trying to bring about?”

  She nodded. “He’s only hastening the inevitable. The people of these colonies are going to have to make a decision. The King is determined to work his will. And for all his questionable methods, I think Mr. Adams is correct about one thing. A small oppression only precedes a larger one. A small nibbling away of liberty will only encourage King George’s ministers to take a larger bite. And another, and still another. That’s what the Committee of Correspondence is trying to impress on the other colonies—what happens in Boston could very well happen to them. So we must stand together.”