“It began, ‘My dear,’ instead of ‘Dear Mother’—that’s why I didn’t know it was for Gran, and I kept on reading. He said ‘I’m worried about our little girl.’”
Kitty paused, and Sally Rose did not question her any further just then. Both girls looked through the window, over the roofs of the town, at the wide dark waters of the Merrimack flowing seaward.
Fifteen years ago, about this time of the year, Caleb Greenleaf had taken his wife, Becky, and his married sister, Anne Townsend, for a little jaunt on the river in the April sunshine. The young mothers had left their baby girls with Granny Greenleaf, and gone happily aboard his small fishing boat, and no one had foreseen the sudden mad wind, the squall of snow that would engulf them. Afterwards, Granny had brought up orphan Kitty, but Job Townsend had taken his motherless daughter back to Charlestown to his own people. The tragedy had brought him close to his mother-in-law, however, so that he still addressed her as ‘My dear,’ and spoke of ‘our little girl,’ and there had been much going back and forth between them.
For a long moment now, the girls stared at the dark river. Kitty was the first to take her eyes away. She did not refer to the old, sad loss, of which she knew they were both thinking.
“Your father wrote that he was sending you to stay with us for a while,” she said quietly, “to get you away from that British officer you’ve been stealing out with. He said this—this enemy—puts on a homespun shirt and leather breeches, pretends to be one of our lads, and goes wherever he likes, on all the roads round Boston.”
Sally Rose gave a soft little laugh. “Yes,” she said, “Gerry does that sometimes. But I like him better when he wears his scarlet coat and his sword. He’s sure handsome enough to make any girl forget about Johnny Pettengall.”
There was a prideful note in Sally Rose’s voice as she shook back her yellow hair.
“But he’s British, Sally Rose! He’s one of the King’s men who’ve captured Boston, and closed the port, and made so much trouble for the people who live there. Dick says they’ll march out and start shooting at us any day now. You’d be better off with a New England lad—even that logger.”
Sally Rose sighed. “I know,” she said. “Wars are hard on a girl, Kit. I know I’m supposed to hate the British, but how can I, when they are so handsome—when they have such gallant manners! I’ll bet wars don’t mean a thing to those cupids round the mirror. Love doesn’t know Whig from Tory. But why does he have to be—”
Three sharp taps sounded on the other side of the bedroom wall.