“Not half so afraid as I was that night we went back to Charlestown to dig up the silver,” Gerry said.
They stood in the highroad in front of the old Royall House where Colonel Stark had his headquarters. In a few moments they would go in. Gerry would confess that he was not a New Hampshire man who had got knocked on the head at the rail fence and couldn’t remember what company he came from. He would admit that he was Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. But they would not go in just yet. It was a soft summer night with the fragrance of garden flowers in the air. He drew her down beside him on the low brick wall.
“What were you afraid of that night?” she asked him. “When we went to The Sign of the Sun to get a pass from the British major so we could go into town, I thought he seemed like a very kind man.”
Gerry grinned down at her. “He was kind to you, certainly. From the look in his eye, he’d have given you Boston Common and Long Wharf too, if you’d asked for them. You’ve a way with us menfolk, Kitty.”
Kitty let her long lashes fall across her cheek, then she looked up at him suddenly and smiled. “Do you know, it’s the strangest thing, I do seem to have a way with them lately. But before I knew you, I never had any way with them at all.”
He cleared his throat and looked away from her. “Yes, you’re blooming out, my girl,” he said.
Kitty sighed happily. “Oh I do hope so! For so many years nobody noticed me at all beside Sally Rose.”
“Ah, Sally Rose!” he muttered. “Honestly, I feel guilty there. How am I ever going to tell her that I—that I—have taken a fancy to you, Kitty?”
“Is a fancy all you’ve taken?”
“A deep down kind of fancy.”