Devil's Embrace (Devil 1)

He shrugged. “Jennifer Lacy. She and her father are loyalists and friends of mine.”

“You must tell me about her sometime,” Cassie said.

Edward gazed down at Cassie’s proud, classical profile. He could not converse with her even about the most mundane, trivial matters as if nothing had ever occurred. Important things, painful things, kept cropping up, willy nilly. Dear God, he thought, I don’t even know what happened to her.

It was as if Cassie had become as uncomfortable as he. “There is much to tell you, Edward.”

“Yes, I know.” He drew in his breath and kept walking.

But she did not intend to tell him that this vast, uncivilized land made her feel she had been transported to the very ends of the earth. She glanced up at him and smiled. She had known Edward all her life, trusted him implicitly and loved him. Yet she felt afraid and terribly uncertain, at a moment when her happiness should have been complete. It would have been complete, she told herself angrily, if it had not been for him.

“We will soon be at my lodgings.”

She marveled at his dispassionate tone, as if she were a soldier in his command about to provide him with a report. Yet she knew that it was just his way. She had expected him to try to protect her from his own sense of shock and confusion.

She felt nervous, and said aloud her first inconsequential thought. “Everything looks so new, so unfinished.”

“Yes. Shortly after we took New York from the rebels and their General Washington, there was a huge fire. It is likely that the rebels started it. Unfortunately, the rabble had stolen all the church bells so there was no way to raise the alarm. The fire began in a sailors’ brothel, down near the Battery, at Whitehall Slip. It spread rapidly, for there was little water and practically no equipment to fight it with.”

“You were here in the fire?”

“I was, but there was little to be done. A good third of the city burned. Even the beautiful Trinity Church was gutted.” He paused a moment and waved his hand. “This is a fortunate section of New York. All is finally rebuilt here, thank God. The New Yorkers are sturdy folk, and the rebuilding continues. I fancy that the Great Fire of London in the last century was no more devastating than was this one.”

“I did not worry much for your safety, Edward. And yet you were here, during the fire and during all the fighting.”

To her surprise, Edward laughed grimly. “That I was. It has been a winning display of military strategy on both sides. Had General Howe but given the order during the battle for New York, we could have cut the main body of General Washington’s army to shreds. But he did not act. He is always one to ponder, to mull over every alternative, pertinent or not, to stroke his fat chin and do nothing. This rebellion is being conducted by amateurs, Cass, but I begin to believe there are a greater number of fools in the English command than in the American ranks.” Edward drew to a stop, thankful that he could at last stop blabbering at her.

“This is where I live, Cassie. Not Delford Manor or Hemphill Hall, I’m afraid, but still sufficiently comfortable.”

The King George Inn on William Street had no graceful elm trees to gentle its gaunt lines. Like many of the buildings they had passed, the King George was spanking new, yet it looked as raw and as unfinished as the bare ground on which it stood. Winter had prevented even the grass from growing back. There was no foliage to soften its stark façade, no flowers. Flowers. For God’s sake, Cassie, that is another world, only a bad memory. I never wanted it, never wanted him.

“Are you all right, Cass?”

Cassie raised dazed eyes to his face. “Yes, Edward, quite all right. I am tired, that is all.” I must forget him, else I’ll never know peace. But she knew, had known for some time, that she would never be able to push him from her thoughts.

Cassie gingerly picked up the skirts of her muslin gown and walked up the unpainted steps of the inn. Edward gave over Delila’s reins to the stableboy and joined her, bearing her portmanteau.

“Ah, Captain Lord Delford. I had not expected you until this evening.”

Cassie attended to a short, monstrously fat man with a face like a full

moon and small eyes of sparkling light brown. He wore a huge white apron around his considerable waist, an apron that looked well used. His strange, twangy accent brought a smile to her lips. Did all the colonials talk like this?

“I would like you to meet my wife, Mr. Beatty. She arrived just this morning to join me.”

The light brown eyes narrowed upon her face for a moment. A dimpled smile appeared.

Mr. Beatty had not known the captain to have a wife, but then again, he thought it just like a very proper English gentleman to speak little of his personal life.

“I regret, sir, that I have no other accommodations to offer you and your lady wife.”

“I know there is not an inch of extra space in the city, Mr. Beatty. Please bring her ladyship’s portmanteau upstairs. And tea, Mr. Beatty.”

I do not like tea. Why does Edward not remember?

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

Cassie had been in an inn but once or twice in her life. She climbed the solid oak staircase, uncarpeted and unadorned. The odor of raw wood, ale, and sweat reached her nose. Like New York itself, it was both intriguing and discomfiting. Everything seems so unfinished, even the people.