He chuckled, his watery blue eyes glancing around the room, past Anthony, with smug pleasure. “And I ask you, Major, have you ever seen more handsome quarters! A house fit for a gentleman, this one, even an English gentleman, eh?”
Anthony nodded curtly, not trusting himself to say or do more. The house that the general had appropriated for his headquarters was the grandest one in town, as was proper. The pale winter sun filtered through tall windows hung with red damask that matched the coverings on the chairs. The mahogany tea table was set with a delicate service of Canton ware, the translucent porcelain rimmed with gold, and more of the china filled the two tall cupboards that flanked the fireplace. The wall paneling and the mantelpiece were the finest work of Newport woodworkers, as was the stairway in the front hallway, where candles had already been lit in the polished brass sconces.
Without doubt, the house was as fit for an English general as it was for an English gentleman, the best of everything. As it should be, Anthony told himself grimly. As it must be.
“Pity to think of all this wasted on a rebel rascal,” continued Ridley. “Too bad we let the old rogue slip away from us, else I would have packed him off to London for trial. Still and all, he won’t be able to cause us any more trouble here. His name was Sparhawk, too. Kin of yours, y’think?”
“A distant connection,” said Anthony, as evenly as he could. “An uncle.”
Blast it all, the Hazard woman had been right. How could a man who had served the king as well as had Gabriel Sparhawk—a man who’d fought under the British flag in at least three wars—now join with that ragtag pack of rebels? And what in blazes had become of his aunt and cousins? Unconsciously Anthony gripped the carved arm of his chair, struggling to control the emotions that roiled within him.
Ridley grunted, idly rubbing his thumb across one of his waistcoat buttons. “Uncle, eh? Someone told me he’d been a privateer in the old Spanish war. Damned successful at it, too, from the look of this place.” The general’s gaze wandered beyond the top of Anthony’s head. “You know my wife’s parlor in Bath. Do you think she’d fancy that looking glass there, the gilt one with the gewgaws on the top? There’s a dispatch ship sailing for home tomorrow, and I thought I’d send dear Chloe a little gift to keep me well in her thoughts.”
Anthony twisted in his chair to look over his shoulder, more to mask his feelings than to appraise the looking glass. Though Ridley’s own orders had been explicit about looting, he wasn’t overparticular about helping himself. It was common enough knowledge among the other officers, and cause for more than a few jests, about how crowded dear Chloe’s parlor would be by the end of the war.
But this time Anthony wouldn’t be among those laughing, not when his aunt Mariah’s looking glass was to be the plunder. Damnation, they must have fled with only the clothes on their backs, for everything else in the house to have been left exactly as he remembered it.
But would good could come of remembering? Better, so much better, to forget his uncle’s desk as it had been, piled high with shipping manifests and bills of lading, and how Uncle Gabriel would always find the time to break away from his work to talk to him and to Jon, to show them some rare coin from China or explain how the jiggling needle of a compass worked, the three of them standing there together, with the summer sun slanting in through the tall window and the sweet fragrance of Aunt Mariah’s gingerbread drifting up from the kitchen.
“Yes, I do believe the looking glass would suit Chloe,” the general was saying. “It’s nearly a match for the one I sent her from Boston.”
Slowly Anthony turned back in his chair. How that woman at the tavern must be laughing by now, her silver-gray eyes fair bubbling over with mirth at his expense. She’d been right about his aunt and uncle, of course, while he’d been appallingly wrong in his assumptions. What a pompous, blustering, ignorant fool he must have seemed to her!
Abruptly he shoved back his chair and rose, his sword swinging back against his thigh. “I’m certain Mrs. Ridley will be most pleased with whatever gift you make to her,” he said with a curt bow. “But if you’ll be so good as to excuse me, General, there are a good many other matters that need my attention.”
Ridley’s brows rose toward the front of his wig with mild surprise. “I’d say that such matters are my decision, sir, not yours.” He waved his hand back toward the chair. “And I say you stay until I dismiss you. Unless in your present choler you find my company intolerable, eh?”
It was all the reproof Anthony needed. He’d always been known as a moderate man, one who kept his temper in check. At least he had been before now. Swiftly he bowed again and sat, mentally cursing the woman who’d let him make such a fool of himself. If she’d been more honest with him, if only she hadn’t been so damnably coy, then perhaps—
“You’d do well to watch yourself, Sparhawk,” continued the general, subtly replacing the air of a genial country squire with something harder, sharper and far more astute than his enemies would have dreamed possible. At once Anthony was on his guard. Off the battlefield, Ridley seldom showed this side to his subordinates, and its appearance now could mean nothing good.
“Sir,” said Anthony. It was the only possible answer.
“Sir yourself, man, and listen to me.” Impatiently he drummed his thick-knuckled fingers on the top of the desk. “You know I trust you, Sparhawk. You’ve been with me for more years than I care to count, damn me if you haven’t, by my side through all the worst of this wretched campaign. Breed’s Hill, Long Island, especially that miserable showing at Lexington—not once have you given me cause to doubt your loyalty.”
“Yes, sir,” said Anthony stiffly, already guessing what was coming. “Thank you, sir.”
“Why else d’you think I’ve made you my adjutant here, eh? But there’s plenty of others here who say otherwise, and I can’t say I fault ‘em for it.” He leaned forward, his gaze shrewdly appraising. “You don’t want me in this house, do you, Major? You’re thinking I don’t belong here. You’re thinking I’m taking the place of that blackguard uncle of yours, and you’re thinking of him instead of your king.”
“But, sir, I can—”
“No, sir, you hear me out,” ordered Ridley, each word crackling with authority, and antagonism, too. “I was sent here to put down this rebellion, and I mean to do it. But, by harry, how can I be expected to subdue these damnable colonials when I’ve someone who sympathizes with the bloody rascals in the fore of my own regiment, eh?”
Anthony inhaled sharply. “Are you challenging my honor, sir, or my loyalty to my king?”
“What, and have it said that I’d called out one of my own officers?” retorted Ridley. “I’m too clever for that nonsense, Sparhawk, and so are you. But what else will people think, eh? This town as much as belonged to your people, scoundrels that they are, yet you turned your back on them as pretty as kiss-myhand. Who’s to say you won’t do the same to us in return?”
Anthony lunged forward, the rank between them forgotten as his long-simmering temper finally boiled over, and he struck his fist down hard on the desk, inches away from the general’s face. “I say it, and to hell with the man who dares say otherwise!”
“How dare you—”
“Sweet Mary, Ridley, if you slander me and then can’t explain your meaning any better than that, then I—”
“Remember yourself, Sparhawk!” barked Ridley. “At once, sir!”
The order shattered Anthony’s anger, years of training racing to silence him. Orders were to be obeyed; every good