~*~
I had given Bess some corn and was trying to wipe her dry when Mathew rushed into the barn.
“Mr. Jones!” Mathew strode over to Jonah then shook his hand. “Mrs. Jones was inquiring after you. I think she wanted you inside for something.”
Mr. Jones, like the newlywed that he was, raced out of the barn faster than a fox’s run in a henhouse. I chuckled and shook my head.
“Was it Mrs. Jones wondering where Mr. Jones was or you wanting everyone inside on this rainy day? Why are you released from congress so early?”
Mathew walked to me, and kissed my forehead over Bess’s stall door. “Have I told you yet that you look lovely?”
I pursed my lips and stole a glance at a strand of my hair that hung limp and wet over my left cheek.
“I like that wild hair as is, so don’t glare at it anymore,” Mathew chided with an enormous smile.
I couldn’t help but softly chuckle again. “Or what? What can you do to me, Mr. Adams, that would scare me enough to stop scowling?”
Mathew arched his dark blond brows, apparently liking the challenge. “Why, Miss Buccleuch, I would kiss you in earnest, I would.”
I feigned a frightened pose and fluttered a hand to my heart. “My, what a threat. Pray, what are my eyes doing now?”
Mathew laughed as I bore down on the black wave of hair in my periphery.
“Miss Buccleuch, I am a man of my word.”
“I do hope so.”
He kissed me over the stall’s door. He’d been so busy with the Provincial Congress these last couple weeks that I hardly got to see him. When I had, he’d been so exhausted that most of the time he couldn’t piece together coherent sentences. He’d fallen asleep on our couch several times. But this kiss would wake the dead.
His lips held the perfect amount of fierce ardor yet sensible fragility. His lips melded with mine, blended, then adjusted again. He placed a warm hand on my stone cold cheek, pulling me closer. I balanced on the stall’s door that barely hung on from a homemade hinge, but it held me up as my head spun. The warmth from his face, from his lips made my body react. I wanted more. He slipped his tongue along my bottom lip, and I achingly opened to him. Gently he invaded my mouth, caressing, loving.
But it reminded me of another kiss, another’s pent up passion.
Jacque.
My whole body winced in the agony of the memory.
Mathew released the kiss and looked down at me with a glimmer of concern. “Are you worried about Hannah?”
I nodded, relieved he couldn’t see me interiorly, couldn’t see my traitorous thoughts. I was a wicked woman. I may have decided to triumph above my affections toward Jacque and turn away from him, and him me, but my heart was still his. Jacque’s name was burnt into my flesh, the memory of his touch invaded the sinew of my body making me weak and want to flop on the ground in tears. I was a turncoat of the emotional kind, the worst kind.
Mathew nodded too. “Yes, Hannah had me read the letter from her lieutenant.”
I shook my head from my self-loathing and to appear to be involved in the conversation. I needed to be involved. Hannah was in pain, and I was too busy in my own to pay proper attention. I exhaled, hoping in the breath to eliminate all my selfish designs. “Do you think him a fortune hunter? Surely, he would have known by now that Hannah has no substantial money for a dowry.”
Mathew sighed himself, placing his long fingers on top of the gate. “I can only assume that’s the game he’s playing. I don’t know. Much of the letter I believe to be a lie, but I’m not sure what he’s trying to get from Hannah. Surely, I too thought of money first, but there is more to the letter that seems strange. I just can’t put my finger on it. Jacque said he’d investigate this Lieutenant Kimball, but since he’s had a death in the family, he’s been . . . grieving.”
I nodded and swallowed, hoping I wouldn’t betray any emotion.
“Anyhow,” Mathew smiled, his face urging me to be full of cheer too, “let’s try to distract Hannah for the time being, until we know more about this soldier of hers.”
I nodded again, thinking how sage the advice was, but not sure how I could distract the world’s most preoccupied young lady from her own engagement.
“Mathew? You still haven’t told me why you’re out from congress so early? Here it is the mid-afternoon.”
“Ah, yes, I was distracted with how beautiful you looked with your hair wet from the rain and a blush on your cheeks from the weather. Or could I pride myself that the rouge arose from seeing me?”
I smiled and let my fingers glide between his on the gate.
Mathew stared at our embracing fingers. “’Tis my distant cousin that is driving some of the other Provincial’s away from congress. There was hardly half of the congress showed up, so we cancelled today’s session. The missing congressmen all said they are sick, but we’ve caught those ‘sick’ men plowing their fields, like you just were, my love. I think they want to get away from Mr. Sam Adams’ incessant talk about mustering an army.”
“An army? An army for Massachusetts?”
“Sam’s true purpose is to make a Continental army. He thought he could convince the Massachusetts’ politicians first, then he’d go to the Continental Congress that is to meet soon in Philadelphia with the request to have all the colonies join in a unified army. He keeps raving about Salem, how it won’t be the last time the Regulars come marching down the road looking for arms or to arrest him or Mr. Hancock. Lord, he is a vain man.”
“Mr. Hancock?”
Mathew nodded. “I’ve never met a more self-serving individual in my life.”
“Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that you were star-struck while talking about Mr. Hancock?”
Mathew’s smile widened, yet his eyes looked down sheepishly. “I’m rather impressionable, aren’t I?”
I pressed more into our interlaced fingers while grinning, not about to answer.
Mathew’s own smile slowly faded. He looked at our joined hands. “Violet?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you remember a couple weeks ago seeing some redcoats riding their horses about in the country? Specifically here to Concord?”
I thought back through my haze of the last few weeks. “It was warmer then, not raining yet.” I nodded. “Yes, I do remember. I believe they were all officers out riding their horses.”
“Do you remember if they were . . . armed?”
“They couldn’t be.” I shook my head. “’Tis a rule of Governor General Gage’s. The Regulars out on a holiday ride in the country cannot be armed.”
Mathew’s fingers tightened in their grip. “Yes, I know. But do you remember if they were armed?”
I remembered riding in the black Landau with my sister and mother as we ventured to Boston. I’d asked for the window screens to be up as I adored how the sun felt on my skin while I slept. I woke with a start because Hannah had screamed something about soldiers in their bright and glorious uniforms. The officers stopped to talk to us in the carriage. Then I remembered wondering about a bulge at the side of a smiling captain, who kept staring at my chest.
I shook my head. “I can’t be for certain. Why?”
“I’m sure it’s only propaganda that my distant cousin is trying to stir, but he’s called a few people in to testify to seeing those same officers armed. Like you mentioned, the officers cannot be out of Boston and carrying weapons. No soldier can. An enlisted man would get flogged. I don’t know what they would do to an officer—make him drink his tea without cream for a day.” I silently snickered at Mathew’s sarcasm. He just continued though, as if on a mission. “I doubt that the lobsterbacks were really carrying pistols. Unless, of course, they were ordered to ride with guns.” Mathew sighed, but then plucked one side of his face in a blooming smile. “I think, I hope, Sam’s trying in any way possible to get his army.”
I nodded, but couldn’t stop my memory from recalling the smiling officer and the way something had
protruded under that thick red coat very similar to the butt of a pistol.