From the Prologue and Chapter 2
As Mercy reached the chapel doors with her cousins, the tenor of the small crowd changed sharply. Mercy craned her neck to see ahead of them to no avail. “What is it?” she asked David.
“Soldiers.” He lifted his voice to the crowd in front of him. “Pardon me. I’ll handle this.”
He’d handle soldiers? David might have been a lieutenant with the Light Horse, but surely he didn’t mean to singlehandedly battle British Regulars in the middle of a wedding party. Cassandra and Mercy pressed after him through the parting crowd.
Everything that Mercy had heard and feared about the invading army seemed confirmed by the scene before her. At least a dozen soldiers in red coats stood in the narrow eastern churchyard. Two had taken hold of the Reverend Mr. Duché’s arms, and he struggled against his captors. “Unhand me, fiends!”
“Sir.” A redcoat, an officer who seemed to command the others’ respect, stood tall in front of the vicar. “Please allow us to treat you with the courtesy you deserve.”
Mr. Duché set his jaw but stilled himself. And steeled himself.
The officer looked to a subordinate. “The other name?”
The subordinate pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it. “Henry Crofton,” he announced.
The wedding party turned as a body to the bridegroom. Verity’s scream rent the air, and even Mercy found herself shouting at the soldiers to stop. Three soldiers gave them no heed, seizing upon Henry’s arms, and a fourth shoved Verity aside.
“Don’t you touch my wife!” Henry roared.
Verity cried out again and flung herself at the soldiers arresting her husband, and another soldier elbowed her away.
“Have a care!” The officer in charge arrived in time to keep Verity from either falling to the ground or attacking his men again. “We have no need of making this any more difficult.”
Mercy would have done more than shout had David not clamped down on her elbow. “Go to Verity,” David instructed Mercy. “Let me handle them.”
She barely glanced at her cousin-in-law — very like him to attempt to solve every crisis — before she hurried to catch Verity mid-swoon as the officer released her. “Bear up,” she murmured. “David is here.”
The thought seemed to help Verity rally for a moment, and she grasped Mercy’s arms. “But they’ll kill him,” Verity whispered. “Both of them. All of them.”
Had any circumstance been different, Mercy might have thought this was just more of her most dramatic sister’s dramatics, but she would not put it past the British Army. She practically dragged Verity over to Cassandra, and then Mercy Hayes marched straight past David for the officer in charge. “You miserable cur!”
David’s hand shot out the instant he caught up with her and he stopped her short. “Remember what happened the last time you confronted a man twice your size.” David’s tone was lined with steel.
Mercy resisted the urge to hug her arm to herself. The healed fracture hardly ever hurt her now, and one almost couldn’t tell where her nose had been broken two years ago. But now she felt just as powerless as she had before that man, cowering and crushed.
Cassandra and Verity joined her as David stepped up to the officer with a warm greeting: “Lawrence.”
David . . . knew this man? Mercy looked to the officer. Beneath his cocked hat, his dark curls were tied back in a neat queue. His olive complexion and serious brows gave him gravitas, but as he attempted to contain his surprise at seeing David, he didn’t seem unkind. At least not unkind enough to arrest a man on his wedding day.
The officer — Lawrence — settled his gaze on Mercy, and something in his brown eyes seemed to shift. If he weren’t the devil himself, he might have been roguishly handsome. Then again, it would have been very like the devil to be that bewitchingly good looking.
“I see you’ve been returned to your lines,” David continued. “Excellent. We need good men like you.”
“Lieutenant?” Lawrence attempted.
David’s return smile was taut. “Lord,” he corrected.
Mercy snapped around to look at him. Even Verity, in Cassandra’s arms, paused in her wailing.
“Lord David.” Lawrence bowed to him.
Mercy looked at her cousin’s husband as if with new eyes. As the son of a marquess, David Beaufort could never have hidden his aristocratic upbringing, but he’d disavowed his courtesy title shortly after he’d arrived in the colonies, now seven years ago. Why was he suddenly using it again, and not the rank he prized so highly in the Philadelphia Light Horse?
A terrible, sinking feeling swept over Mercy beholding her cousin’s husband’s fine crimson silk velvet coat and matching breeches, trimmed in gold and spangles. He had never dressed less fine, but he couldn’t possibly . . . not David —
“Come, Lawrence,” David was saying. “Surely you can’t mean to arrest our own vicars. Everyone knows they’ve sworn loyalty to the church and the king — and it is Mr. Crofton’s wedding day.”
Verity renewed her sobs, and Mercy reached for her sister’s hand.
Lawrence gestured for the paper in his subordinate’s hand. He glanced at the sheet and then offered it to David. “Our orders are clear.”
Henry pulled an arm free of one of his captors, but three more swarmed him. For a moment, they seemed poised to hurt him, but Lawrence stepped away from Lord David. “Hold!” he barked, and his subordinates instantly obeyed.
Henry regarded Lawrence like a caged beast would his captor.
Lawrence’s visage held no rancor. “We would not do you harm. Let us all be civil.”
“As you civilly arrest a man of the cloth? On his wedding day?”
“If you haven’t noticed,” Lawrence said, “these colonies are in rebellion. Our orders are clear: there is serious doubt as to the loyalties of this parish’s clergy, and for the peace and safety of the people, we’re to take you into custody until we can be certain of your allegiance.”
Only through considerable effort — and David’s hand heavy upon her shoulder — did Mercy not advance on him again.
“Come, Lawrence,” David tried again. “Men of the Church of England? Anyone may know where their loyalties lie.” He glanced heavenward.
His appeal to a higher power seemed to mean nothing to the officer in front of him. Of course not. The officer looked away. “It is for the safety of all the people. That’s why we’re here.”
“Your parents —”
“My parents taught me to obey orders with exactness.” Though the words did not carry a challenge, Lawrence’s chin angled ever so slightly, as if defying David to contradict him.
David stepped closer, but Mercy, Verity and Cassandra edged closer as well. “And they encouraged you to make an exception. For me. Out of kindness.”
“We’ve all learned the price of disobedience.” Lawrence glanced at his men. “Would that I may be in a position to help you again, one day. Today, I am not.” His lips compressed as if that served as an apology, before he signaled his men to march their prisoners off.
David gaped after him, utterly at a loss. Mercy could hardly blame him — she couldn’t imagine he’d ever been ignored in such a way.
The crowd slowly began to disperse, but Mercy, Cas¬sandra and Verity fell into step with David, resolutely pursuing the retreating soldiers.
“How do you know him?” Mercy asked David.
“His parents served mine. In Dorset.” His answer was clipped, as with every answer he gave related to his family.
David quickly outpaced them, and Cassandra hung back. Mercy turned to her and Verity. “Explain, please.”
Cassandra turned back toward her home. “David has only one brother left, and Edward has no heir. If — when — he dies, David will be the marquess.”
Verity sniffled. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Quite a bit,” David’s voice came from behind them. “Unfortunately. Mercy, you must go back to Columbiafield this instant. It’s too dangerous for you to remain in the city.”
“What about you?” Surely David was in even more danger than she was.
“I’m not the one who just tried to fling myself at a troop of dragoons.” David cast her a pointed look. “I’ll handle it.” He pronounced each syllable as if he hadn’t just used those same words as a shield, twice — and as if he hadn’t just failed.
Mercy looked to Cassandra, who gave a single nod.
Six Months Later
Mercy Hayes might have returned to occupied Philadelphia to help Cassandra. She might have returned to live under the same roof as two British officers. But she had no intention of visiting with Captain John André. She turned on her heel, but another officer stepped into the doorway of David’s drawing room, blocking her path. This redcoat stood in front of her with full confidence, from his cocked hat to his hand resting upon the pommel of his sword. She could not forget a man that handsome — especially not after he’d been the one to arrest her brother-in-law. On his wedding day.
“Ah,” Captain André greeted the newcomer. “Miss Hayes, please allow me to present —”
“A miserable cur,” the officer finished with a wicked grin.
It appeared he also remembered their last meeting.
An American patriot in occupied territory, Mercy finds herself falling for an enemy officer.
Will she choose her country or her heart?