Freedom's Ring (Sisters of the Revolution Book 3) Page 4

  That was the only route Owen was certain was wrong altogether. They couldn’t win a civil war. They could only wear out their resources and their lives fighting the greatest army and navy on Earth.

  Owen peered out the windows but saw no one headed his direction.

  Hayes had it right: everyone in Philadelphia knew the only sensible thing to do was reconcile with their motherland. Yes, Boston had been mistreated over the last year, but they’d been through such things before and managed to mend relations. They could do it again. They had to.

  Just as Owen finally settled at a table to try to work on his case, the door opened. Lord David stepped in, alone.

  “Did Hayes go home?” Owen asked.

  “Yes.”

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and they turned to see Lord David’s wife descending with their daughter. “There you are, dearest. I was starting to worry.”

  “Worry for our country, not for me,” he muttered.

  Lady David handed him the baby. “I’m needed on a call with Dr. Drinker.”

  “Dr. Drinker?” Lord David objected.

  She popped up on her toes to kiss his cheek and murmur something — was that French? “Be good for Papa.” She kissed the baby and wrapped her cloak around herself. “Stay out of trouble, if you please.”

  “You know I always try.” Lord David followed her to the door, looking very much like he wished to stop her, but he didn’t, other than one more lingering kiss before she stepped out.

  Whatever his wife had said to him must have had its intended effect. “I didn’t know you spoke French,” Owen commented.

  Lord David shrugged with Gallic insouciance.

  “What did she say?” Owen hoped his impertinence wouldn’t offend. Temperance had asked him to ingratiate himself with Lord David, and he meant to fulfill her charge to the best of his abilities.

  Lord David took a seat at the table closest to Owen’s. “She said jealousy doesn’t suit me.” He smiled down at his daughter and shook his head. “I don’t know about that,” he said to her as if it were a great joke. “The only thing that doesn’t suit your papa is the color brown.”

  She laughed as though it were quite funny, so perhaps Owen was the one without a sense of humor. He stood and walked around to meet the baby’s wide blue eyes. “Remind me, what’s her name again?”

  “Elizabeth, after Cassandra’s late mother.”

  “Lovely,” Owen remarked. “And how old is she?”

  “Eight months. And a half.” Lord David looked up at him. “She hates when I forget that,” he confided with a self-deprecating smile. “Would you like to hold her?”

  “Ah, certainly.” The thought hadn’t truly crossed his mind, but he quite liked children. Owen took his seat again, and Lord David handed over his daughter. Owen bounced her on his knee, and she clapped.

  “You’re a natural,” Lord David said. “Better than me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve just had plenty of practice with my sisters.” Owen pulled a face for Elizabeth, and she squealed and stuck her fingers into her mouth.

  Lord David settled in his chair again, pensive. “So you’re in favor of reconciling.”

  “Of course. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m in favor of Parliament respecting our rights.”

  Owen chose not to take offense at the implication he might feel otherwise. “As am I.”

  “Naturally. We can all agree on that.” Lord David leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his embroidered coat falling around him. “We can’t seem to agree on how, though.”

  “That is the harder question.”

  “I wish it weren’t my responsibility to answer. I know what I’d say for myself, but —” He looked to Elizabeth. “I’m not speaking for only myself.”

  “Can’t say I envy you.”

  Lord David sat back in his chair. “Do you know why I was elected a delegate?”

  “The Assembly voted for you?” It was the kinder answer than because you’re the richest man in town.

  He smirked. “Yes, I suppose that has something to do with it.”

  “Do you think your title influenced your selection?”

  He snorted. “Of course. Ridiculous.” He checked the front window and the rapidly darkening street. “It’s the reason why the loyalists voted for me,” he said in an undertone. “I don’t mean to let that change my vote, but I know that my personal beliefs have nothing to do with why I’m there. Nor do they reflect most of the city or colony.”

  Owen studiously avoided Lord David’s gaze, trying to make Elizabeth smile again. “You would go against your principles for the vote, then?”

  “Never. But is it better to go against the principles the people wish me to express?” He sighed.

  Elizabeth reached for her father, and Owen rose to return her. Lord David took her and put on an exaggerated expression of mirth. “Pah-pah,” he said.

  “Bah,” the baby returned.

  “Good girl, almost there. Pah-pah.”

  She tried again. “Mah.”

  “No, no, no. Don’t let your mother hear that.”

  Owen laughed. “Where are your principles now?”

  “This is bald self-interest, Randolph. Owen, isn’t it?” He addressed his daughter to encourage her again. “Oh, oh.”

  She stared at her father, lips forming into a circle.

  “Oh,” Owen tried. He wasn’t above self-interest, either.

  Elizabeth looked up at him and broke into a grin.

  Owen had to return the smile. “She seems like a very happy child.”

  “As long as it isn’t bedtime.” Lord David sighed wearily. “I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from your work.”

  “Not at all.” What could Owen do to get him to stay longer? “Tell me more of Congress today.”

  Lord David frowned. “We’re decided on a Declaration of Rights,” he said.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I simply don’t believe Parliament cares even a little bit about our rights.”

  “But we must try to come to an accord, mustn’t we?”

  Lord David nodded, focused on his daughter. “I just worry that we’re already too far down this path. Parliament has gone too far; they won’t back down now.”

  “They could. They don’t want to lose us.”

  “They hardly think that could happen.”

  Owen couldn’t argue against that. He’d just been thinking the same thing himself. They had no hope of prevailing in an armed conflict. They had to reconcile, and he told Lord David so.

  The nobleman nodded, his gaze fixed in the middle distance. “I don’t suppose you’d know what it’s like —” He broke off and stood, shifting his daughter to his hip. “Let’s hope the king will listen. I’ll leave you to your work.”

  Owen felt his opportunity slipping through his fingers. “Didn’t you mention a meeting the other day?”

  Lord David lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say you weren’t interested?”

  “I . . . I’m curious.” That wasn’t entirely untrue. He was very curious about Lord David. He just couldn’t interrogate him about Winthrop’s death without having established trust first. That was possibly the most important lesson he’d learned from Josiah Hayes.

  “Well, there’s a meeting tonight.” Lord David studied at the ceiling. “I suppose Peggy and Westing have left for the night.” He turned back to the baby playing with the buttons on his coat. “We must find you a new nursemaid.”

  “Perhaps my mother or sisters could help,” Owen offered. Surely this would be even better to make his way into Lord David’s good graces.

  “Lead the way.”

  He hadn’t hesitated to think it over? He must be desperate. Owen grabbed his great coat and led him through Hayes’s study to the servants’ entrance. “I promise, my mother and my sisters are all very good with children, very responsible —”

 
“It’s all right.” Lord David opened the door and pulled his cloak tight around his daughter. “I know you well enough to trust your mother is a good woman.”

  Owen warmed despite the autumn chill in the air. That was a compliment to both him and Mother. He led the way through the backways, the quickest route to their small home. It was only a ten-minute walk to their blind alley, but the law office where he worked felt like a different world than the rented basement rooms where he lived. He was grateful for the shadows that hid any shame he might feel. Lord David really was the richest man in town, even if he lived in Hayes’s upstairs apartment. Would Lord David still trust and respect him once he saw how Owen lived?

  At home, the floor was swept, and a stew burbled over the fire. Most of the bedclothes were folded and tucked away, so Lord David couldn’t have told how many members of the family slept before the fire each night. Three pairs of blue eyes looked up at them from the mending Mother had taken in. Meg must have been at the bakery still.

  “Good evening, ducklings. Mother!” Owen called. “Will you be at home tonight?”

  His mother whistled to him from the back room. “One moment,” he bid Lord David.

  Owen crossed to the other room of their home. “Mother, can you tend a child for me?”

  That caught her attention, and she straightened from where she’d been folding linens. Straightened as much as she could, that was. Her back was prematurely hunched more from hard work than long years. “Where on earth did you get a child, Owen?” she asked in her broad accent of southern England. Another thing he hoped Lord David might be willing to overlook.

  “My . . . associate’s child.”

  “Ah.” She gestured for him to either lead the way or get out of it. He walked with her back to where Lord David waited by the door. At the sight of his fine apparel, Mother dipped into the best curtsy she could manage. “Lord Beaufort.”

  Lord David bowed. “Please, that’s not necessary.”

  Clearly he needed no introduction, so Owen did the honors in the other direction. “Lord David, my mother, Leah Randolph.”

  “How do you do, sir?” she said.

  “Well, thank you. May I present my daughter Elizabeth?” She laid her golden curls on her father’s festooned waistcoat and watched Owen’s mother.

  “How do you do, there, missy?” Mother began to reach for her. “Where are you fellas off to tonight?”

  “A meeting, for about an hour.” Lord David’s easy tone almost covered for his evasive answer. “Where are you from?” he changed the subject.

  “Cornwall.” Between the dim light and Mother’s sunbeaten skin, Owen could just barely detect the hint of a blush.

  “I thought as much.” Lord David laid his free hand on his chest. “Dorset.”

  “You don’t say. We were practically neighbors, then.”

  “Right next door, were it not for Devonshire.”

  Mother made a mock scowl. “Devonshire.”

  Lord David passed off his baby, who looked back at him with uncertainty. He kissed Elizabeth’s forehead and murmured to her, but the baby kept her gaze fastened on her father until they were out the door.

  They walked back toward the office in silence, awkward for Owen. Should he apologize for his mean circumstances? Assure him Elizabeth would be well cared for? Promise . . . what?

  That he was better than the home he’d just seen.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed. “I know my home isn’t much.”

  “Randolph,” Lord David said just before they emerged onto the lantern-lighted streets again. “You didn’t choose where you come from any more than I did. I see no reason why it should bring me credit and you shame.”

  Owen stared at the cobbles. Whether Lord David saw it or not, a man with money and a title would always be treated better than one from a hovel. But if Lord David wouldn’t look down on him for it, he certainly wouldn’t say anything against him.

  Lord David led the way to City Tavern and a long meeting room upstairs. The air of secrecy among the men here was unusual, a contrast from the open spirit of meeting and study and debate he’d found on his infrequent visits to the coffee room and subscription rooms below. Lord David vouched for Owen and introduced him around, though the only name that stuck in Owen’s mind was the renowned Dr. Benjamin Rush.

  No one said the words, but Owen was certain this was a meeting of the Sons of Liberty.

  A speaker got up and droned on about Whig ideals. Owen had had enough politics and more than enough talk of how their rights had been trampled. All this complaining wouldn’t change a thing in London. Meanwhile, not a man here acknowledged the fact that Britain had borne the costs of fighting multiple wars against the French and Indians on their frontiers, protecting colonists from incursions. Mob violence and destroying property wasn’t about to change Parliament’s mind, as they’d well seen over the last year.

  Besides, King George would surely help them. He couldn’t let Parliament trample their rights any more than Lord David would ignore his daughter or Owen one of his sisters.

  Owen pretended not to notice how Lord David observed his reactions to key arguments from the speaker, but he fought to keep his features impassive. Was there any other way he could hope to gain Lord David’s trust? Violating his own principles wouldn’t do that.

  At long last, the speaker sat down. The men seemed to be preparing to discuss a course of action, but Lord David tapped the table in front of Owen. “Shall we leave?” Lord David said.

  “I wouldn’t want to tear you away from your meeting.”

  “Do you know what my wife would do if she arrives home before I get Elizabeth there?”

  Owen cringed for him. He imagined it didn’t involve reassurances in French. “Right you are.”

  On the return trip, Owen spent many long minutes trying to figure out how he could still ingratiate himself to Lord David without attending another Sons of Liberty meeting.

  He couldn’t think of a single thing.

  Lord David remembered the route to Owen’s home, even in the full dark. They were nearly there before Lord David spoke. “Do you own a horse?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I can see you weren’t interested tonight, but I thought you might like to go hunting sometime.”

  Owen gaped at him. How — why —? “I shall have a horse, you let me know when.”

  “There’s a hunt in the morning.” Lord David began making plans for the outing with his club, but Owen was making plans of his own. It had only been six years since he’d been a stable boy; surely he could convince old Woodson to give him use of a horse for the day. He might have to pay rent, but if it made his old friend Temperance happy, he could find a few pence, within reason.

  They found his sisters asleep before the fire, his mother rocking Elizabeth in her arms, peacefully slumbering. “Fresh whittle on her before she fell asleep,” Mother reported in a whisper. Owen had no idea where they would have gotten anything to diaper a child, but he knew his mother to have worked larger miracles.

  Lord David gingerly collected his daughter, who nestled her cheek into her father’s chest. He tucked his cloak tight around her.

  Owen watched him a moment. Tonight he’d heard the man lament upholding his principles, and yet take no offense when he saw Owen did not share them. He’d complimented Owen’s mother even after he’d seen how they lived. He’d not treated Owen one whit differently upon seeing the two meager rooms he’d always called home. He’d been respectful of Hayes, jealous of his wife’s time or perhaps company, and tender with his daughter.

  Was Temperance quite sure this man was a cold-blooded murderer?

  Owen would have to find out.

  “You are an angel,” Lord David said to Mother, also whispering. “We shall have to employ your services again.”

  “Nonsense, any mother would do this for someone so distinguished.”

  Lord David was well bred enough not to disagree
with Owen’s mother. “I’ll call on you for the hunt tomorrow, then?”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Lord David could have no idea how much.

  It had only been one day, but Temperance had full confidence in Owen. Saturday morning, she left soon after Papa to walk to the office. The walk was only a mile, but Papa had to take the coach more and more these days, so surely he’d arrived before she did.

  She wasn’t even certain Owen would be at work, but there he was, behind his usual table, scratching away. The bothersome clerks were out. “Good morning, Owen,” she called.

  He raised his head, and his face lit up. “Good morning.”

  “Have you anything to report?”

  “It’s only been a day.”

  Though she had no intention of using stratagem upon Owen, Temperance fixed him with an arch expression that had frequently gotten Winthrop to relent and even give her a gift once, a lemon tart that had been quite bitter. The look had the desired effect now, too, as Owen scrambled to his feet and hurried across the room to her. “I did get to spend some time with him last night.”

  “And?”

  He couldn’t explain himself for a moment. “You don’t ask a man if he murdered someone while your mother is watching his baby.”

  Temperance scowled. What did that have to do with anything?

  The door behind them opened, and Lady David stepped in. What on earth was she doing coming home so early? She looked a wreck, as if she hadn’t slept all night, hair falling down in places, gown exceedingly plain.

  Temperance shouldn’t have been gratified to see her cousin, her own blood, in such a state. And yet she was.

  Let someone else suffer for once.

  Lady David noticed them there. “Good morning, Temperance, Mr. Randolph.”

  Temperance barely acknowledged her; Owen gave her a bow. Was it Temperance’s imagination, or was worry written across Owen’s brow?

  Before Temperance could ask, raised voices carried from Papa’s study, followed by a baby’s cry. Temperance and Owen glanced at one another. Lady David pushed between them and ran to open the study door. Temperance and Owen followed close behind.