The Secrets Of Catie Hazard. Miranda Jarrett

Frantically Catie plunged against him, struggling to break free, but the man only tightened his grip further, pinning her arms against her sides. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger, and, terrified, she instinctively seized the one defense left to her: as hard as she could, she bit the palm of his hand.

      With a yowl of pain, the man released her. Stumbling forward, Catie grabbed the rolling pin from the table and wheeled round to face him.

      “For God’s sake, Catie, did you have to bite me?” demanded Jon Sparhawk indignantly as he cradled his wounded hand.

      “Did you have to scare me out of my wits?” Catie glared at him, the rolling pin still in her hand. In all the time she’d known Jon, he’d never dared treat her this way, and she didn’t like it, not at all. “With everything else that’s happening in this town, I certainly don’t need you creeping about my house playing footpad!”

      “I’m not ‘playing’ at anything, Catie. No one in Newport is.” He scowled down at the bright red marks Catie’s teeth had left in his hand. “I didn’t want you to scream and raise a fuss, that was all. Did you know your yard is full of those British bastards?”

      “They’re in my yard, my attic, and my best bedchambers,” said Catie with disgust. She tossed the rolling pin back on the table, dipped a rag in the water bucket and held it out to Jon for his hand. “They’re probably under the very bedsteads, as well, if I cared to look. How else would I know your cousin is one of them?”

      Jon looked up sharply. “Then it is Anthony?”

      “Of course it is,” said Catie, praying she’d be able to keep her voice even. Though she had known Jon for years, he had never made the connection between Ben Hazard’s wife and the nervous serving girl she’d been at the Crossed Keys, and she had no wish for him to realize it now. “I wouldn’t have sent the message to you if it wasn’t your cousin. There is, you know, a certain family resemblance.”

      “Oh, aye, no doubt of that,” he said. “Even though Anthony’s turned traitor, his face would still mark him as a Sparhawk.”

      He dropped into the chair beside the table, the skirts of his coat falling back so that Catie could see the pistols in his belt, silver-mounted and deadly elegant.

      Purposefully she looked away. No matter what the circumstances, she didn’t approve of guns in her house, but she didn’t wish to challenge Jon on it now. “He thinks we’re the ones who are the traitors, Jon.”

      Wearily Jon shook his head. His jaw was stubbled black, his eyes ringed from sleeplessness, and his clothes so rumpled that Catie doubted he’d been home to sleep since the British landed.

      “Anthony wouldn’t say that if he’d stayed here at home, where he could see how bad things have become. He’ll come round to our side. You’ll see. Once he learns how Father’s been driven away—”

      “He knows already.” Catie’s hands tightened into fists at her sides. “Though he pretended not to, and tried to trick me into saying more. Not a quarter hour past, he left for the general’s headquarters.”

      Jon swore, long and furiously. “To my father’s house, you mean.”

      Catie nodded. “The only loyalty your cousin has now is to that blessed red coat of his.”

      “Then they’ve poisoned him against his own people,” he said flatly. “There’s no other explanation. I cannot believe—”

      “Believe it, Jon, for it’s true,” said Catie vehemently. “Two minutes in your cousin’s company and you’d see for yourself. He’s not an American any longer. He’s one of them now, the worst kind of arrogant British officer, and he doesn’t care a fig for what happens to you or your parents.”

      Jon’s expression hardened, the lines carved deep on either side of his mouth. “Then we’ll have to treat him with the same high regard, won’t we?”

      He lowered his voice to a conspirator’s rough whisper. “As long as he’s under your roof, Catie, I want you to watch him. Listen to his conversations, note who comes to see him, charm him into trusting you. Then tell me whatever you learn.”

      Startled, Catie drew back, her hands clasped tightly together at her waist She hadn’t expected Jon to ask her to do that, and she didn’t want to, not at all. To charm Anthony Sparhawk no, she couldn’t do it.

      “I can’t, Jon,” she said, faltering. “I just—I can’t.”

      “Oh, aye, you can, Catie, and you will,” said Jon firmly. “You’ll have chances to be near him that none of the rest of us will. It’s not that much to ask. Think of all the men risking their very lives for the cause.”

      But if she did as he asked, her own life would be at stake, too. Already Anthony had nearly recognized her. The more time she spent in his company, the more likely it was that he’d be able to remember who she was. And once he did, her carefully ordered world would collapse like a wobbly house of playing cards.

      “You don’t know what you ask, Jon,” she said miserably, unable to explain. “I can’t—”

      “You will do it, lass,” said Jon, and the harsh edge in his voice warned Catie to obey. “Not just for the cause of freedom. You’ll do it for my father and my mother, as well. After all my family’s done for you, Catie Hazard, you will do this for us.”

      Her conscience twisting the fear around her heart, Catie stared down at the pistols at his waist. Such guns weren’t an affectation with Jon; he’d use them if he had to. She thought again of how he’d trapped her earlier, and now she shivered at the thought of what he could have done. This was the other side of the Sparhawk family, the ruthless, violent side that she’d heard whispered of, but had never seen in the front room at Hazard’s, the side that had made them their fortunes as privateers and in a score of other risky ventures.

      Including, she realized now, her own.

      Her shoulders drooped, and she touched the locket with her daughter’s picture. For Belinda’s sake, she didn’t want to do as Jon asked, but for Belinda’s sake, too, she knew she had no choice.

      “Very well,” she said softly. “But I’ll send word to you, mind? You must promise me not to come here again. It’s too dangerous.”

      Jon’s heavy brows curled down with contempt. “War is dangerous, Catie. If I hadn’t wanted to do what I could against the British here in Newport, why, I would have taken the children and scurried off to Providence with my parents.”

      “I almost wish you had,” said Catie wistfully, thinking not only of Jon’s family, but of Belinda, too. His three children had dozens of doting aunts, uncles, and grandparents to watch over them, but she and Belinda had only each other. “You know that’s what Betsey would have wished.”

      His face grew studiously emotionless, the way it always did when he spoke of the pretty young wife he’d lost in childbirth two years before. “Betsey wished for many things.”

      “This is one wish you could grant her,” said Catie gently. “All I’m saying is that I—that we—must be careful, Jon, very careful. Your cousin Anthony is not a man to take lightly.”

      “And you be careful, too, Mrs. Hazard.” Unexpectedly he smiled, almost ruefully. “I know what I’m asking, Catie, and what it must cost you. You’re the most kindhearted woman I know, and here I am trying to turn you into a low, sneaking spy.”

      But Catie’s smile in return was bleak. He didn’t know what he asked, and, God willing, he never would. As for being low and sneaking, she’d crossed that boundary long ago.

      “It won’t be that hard for me, Jon,” she said softly. “I’m wonderfully good at keeping secrets.”