Love in the time of Hamilton…
On October 14, 1781, Alexander Hamilton led a daring assault on Yorktown's defenses and won a decisive victory in America's fight for independence. Decades later, when Eliza Hamilton collected his soldiers' stories, she discovered that while the war was won at Yorktown, the battle for love took place on many fronts...
PROMISED LAND by Rose Lerner
THE PURSUIT OF... by Courtney Milan
THAT COULD BE ENOUGH by Alyssa Cole
Summary:
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happily-ever-after…
On October 14, 1781, Alexander Hamilton led a daring assault on Yorktown's defenses and won a decisive victory in America's fight for independence. Decades later, when Eliza Hamilton collected his soldiers' stories, she discovered that while the war was won at Yorktown, the battle for love took place on many fronts...
Donning men's clothing, Rachel left her life behind to fight the British as Corporal Ezra Jacobs--but life catches up with a vengeance when she arrests an old love as a Loyalist spy.
At first she thinks Nathan Mendelson hasn't changed one bit: he's annoying, he talks too much, he sticks his handsome nose where it doesn't belong, and he's self-righteously indignant just because Rachel might have faked her own death a little. She'll be lucky if he doesn't spill her secret to the entire Continental Army.
Then Nathan shares a secret of his own, one that changes everything...
Summary:
The Worth Saga #2.5
What do a Black American soldier, invalided out at Yorktown, and a white British officer who deserted his post have in common? Quite a bit, actually.
•They attempted to kill each other the first time they met.
•They're liable to try again at some point in the five-hundred mile journey that they're inexplicably sharing.
•They are not falling in love with each other.
•They are not falling in love with each other.
•They are… Oh, no.
The Pursuit Of… is about a love affair between two men and the Declaration of Independence. It’s a novella of around 38,000 words.
Summary:
Mercy Alston knows the best thing to do with pesky feelings like "love" and "hope": avoid them at all cost. Serving as a maid to Eliza Hamilton, and an assistant in the woman's stubborn desire to preserve her late husband's legacy, has driven that point home for Mercy—as have her own previous heartbreaks. When Andromeda Stiel shows up at Hamilton Grange for an interview in her grandfather's stead, Mercy's resolution to live a quiet, pain-free life is tested by the beautiful, flirtatious, and entirely overwhelming dressmaker.
Andromeda is a woman who knows what she wants and resolutely overcomes anything that tries to stop her. She’s a seamstress, shopkeeper, and soon to be owner of her very own boarding house—if she doesn’t get distracted by Mercy, a luminescent woman furiously trying to dim her own light. Andromeda is intrigued, and when Mercy declares that she doesn’t believe in love—well, Andromeda does love a challenge.
They find in each other both friendship and a fierce attraction that won't be denied. Mercy begins dusting off the parts of herself she'd locked away for safekeeping, and Andromeda finds in Mercy something more fulfilling than the thrill of the chase. Neither is prepared for love, though, and both must learn to trust in the possibility that it will be enough.
Promised Land by Rose Lerner
Chapter One
October 3, 1781
Outside Yorktown, Virginia
Rachel’s messmate Scipio was writing a letter by the faint light from the open tent flap. The light was growing stronger; the drummer would beat the reveille soon. Scipio frowned over his paper. “Last night I dreamed about Anna Maria, but I can’t decide if I should mention it to her or not.”
Rachel laughed as she combed the snags out of her thick brown hair. Even with pomade, it wasn’t easy to keep Jewish hair smooth and neat enough to suit their captain’s ideas of the example a noncommissioned officer should set for his men. “Why? Did you dream you were quarreling?”
“She was setting a hot johnnycake on the table, and I could smell the maple sugar,” Scipio said ruefully. “It’s not very romantic, is it?”
“A hot johnnycake sounds damned romantic to me.” Rations hadn’t exactly been plentiful the last month. To speak truth, rations hadn’t exactly been plentiful the last four years.
Bugger this knot. Rachel dug her fingers through her hair, finding the stubborn tangle and carefully dismantling it. A clump of strands had to be sacrificed, crusted with old pomade. She shook them off outside the tent with a grimace. “I think Anna Maria would want to know the truth,” she said decisively. “That you were thinking about her.”
In case she never sees you again, she didn’t say, but they both heard it in the distant boom of the enemy’s cannon, firing on the Allied camp. The British wouldn’t give up Yorktown without a fight.
Rachel felt a little hollow, and not just from hunger. Of the other three junior NCOs of the First New York light company, Corporal Scipio Coffin had Anna Maria waiting to marry him when he returned to Albany with his freedom; Corporal Tench Goodenough and his wife had already left the tent to sneak a few minutes alone; and while Sergeant Zvi Hirsch Philips had no mistress, he wrote his bosom friend Daniel twice a week and talked of him unceasingly the other five days.
If Rachel died in the assault on Yorktown’s defenses, who outside her regiment would mourn her?
Uniforms were scarce in the Continental Army, so soldiers were stripped before burial. Would everyone be angry when they realized she was a woman? Would they remember her fondly as a fallen comrade, as they would have remembered Ezra Jacobs, or would they only remember that strange creature who tricked us and was most likely a whore besides?
She thought often of the glorious future when there would be ballads written in her honor. The moment of discovery itself she shied away from.
Despite some teasing about her beardless face, no one had guessed the truth yet. Either she would be found out by accident or she would know when the moment was right to reveal herself. Neither could be prepared for, so why think of it?
“Will you plait my queue?” she asked.
Scipio obliged. He himself had given up trying to make his tight black curls meet regulations; his wig rested atop his knapsack in the corner.
Her queue neatly tied off, Rachel put on her hat and poked her head out of the tent. The reveille was beat when a sentry could clearly see a thousand yards distant, which was bound to be any minute now. She’d better make sure their drummer was awake.
Checking that the ribbon she wore around her neck was securely beneath her collar, Rachel shouldered her musket and stepped into the frigid morning air, wishing her uniform were less threadbare. She eyed with envy the warm, thick coat of a civilian making his way through the sleeping camp.
He wasn’t the only one stirring: picket guards patrolled the avenues between tents; a few soldiers shaved and cursed their gooseflesh; and a woman carried a kettle towards the smoke rising from the kitchens. But her eyes lingered on him. Was it only because of his coat? Or did she know him?
He glanced about him, head turning towards her. She saw half his face beneath his broad-brimmed hat.
Recognition shook Rachel to the soles of her boots. Her heart pounded.
Nathan.
He disappeared behind the next row of tents, evidently not having spotted her. What was he doing here?
But even as she thought it, she knew there was only one answer. Glad her musket was unloaded—for God’s sake, she couldn’t shoot Nathan—she ducked between two tents and ran after him.
And here it is, she thought. The moment of discovery. There was no hope Nathan wouldn’t reveal her sex. Maybe she should shoot him after all.
Quashing the thought, Rachel put on a fresh burst of speed. “Loyalist spy! Stop that man!”
Heads poked out of tents, and a few men stumbled forth in their stocking feet, blinking gamely about. She was already past them, gaining on him. “British spy!”
He glanced back, looking mildly curious. She was almost on him. Wasn’t he going to run? If he did, a picket guard might shoot him. Her breath came short and blood roared in her ears.
Nathan stepped politely aside to let her pass.
Abruptly furious, she changed course and barreled into him, bearing him to the ground. He landed flat on his back with Rachel sprawled on top of him.
This was the strangest moment of her life, yet it felt familiar—Nathan’s neat shoulders and narrow chest, their legs tangled together. His hat had landed a few feet off, and unruly curls fell across his face and straggled on the ground. He hadn’t bothered to pomade his hair.
He stared up at her, and for a second she thought, I’ve changed. He doesn’t recognize me.
He went white as one of the commander in chief’s fine bedsheets. His lips parted, his dark eyes widened, and his body trembled beneath her. The drummers began to beat the reveille; at first she thought it was her heart.
“Rachel?” he whispered. His mouth opened and closed, as if he was trying to think of something to say. “R—Rachel?”
She felt awful for a moment that she’d made him unhappy, and that was how she knew she hadn’t changed after all. Still the same weak Rachel. She should have shot him.
She wanted to scramble away. Instead, she checked that the sentries had arrived and were pointing their muskets at Nathan. Then she stood, brushing mud off her elbow as best she could. Just focus on the next thing, and the next, and wait for him to let the cat out of the bag.
She was so rattled that the adjutant’s name flew right out of her head. But she took a sharp breath, and it came back to her. “Privates, help me escort this man to Major Fish for questioning.”
They fixed their bayonets and stepped forward, a small glorious miracle that banished her nerves. Her deception hadn’t suddenly become obvious only because Nathan was here. She was yet a soldier, and she would act like one.
Squaring her shoulders, she met Nathan’s eyes. “Get up,” she said curtly, for he had stayed on the ground, gaping at her with stunned, accusing eyes.
He’d put his hat back on, though. A good Jew should never go bareheaded. Rachel fought the urge to dive for her own hat and clap it on her head like a scolded child.
Damn Nathan anyway. She kicked him, not as hard as she wanted to. “Stand up.” Backing away, she motioned her men back too.
Still staring, Nathan stumbled to his feet. There was a small pleasure in remembering she topped him by an inch or two.
“Keep your arms out of his reach. You, kindly search him for weapons. Be careful.” Despite the warning, she didn’t expect Nathan to have anything bigger than a pocketknife, and she was right.
It wasn’t the walnut penny knife she remembered; somehow that rankled. Rachel freed the blade from its cheap bone handle and tested the edge. Dull. What business did he have in an army camp?
Shutting the knife and dropping it in her pocket, she retrieved her hat with deliberate carelessness. “Follow me, Mr. Mendelson.” To the escort, she added, “If he runs, shoot him.”
She wheeled on her heel with precision, as she’d trained for hours to do, and marched off towards the regimental colors marking the adjutant’s tent.
As soon as Rachel’s name left his mouth, Nathan had felt like an idiot. Of course it wasn’t her. It was some Jewish boy from New York who happened to share her accent and the shape of her chin. He braced himself for a puzzled sneer.
But when the soldier sneered at him, there was nothing puzzled about it. She wasn’t surprised to be called “Rachel,” because it was her name. That was Rachel. Rachel’s angrily furrowed brow, the proud tilt of Rachel’s head and the curl of her mouth. The familiar curve of Rachel’s shoulders forced into a new military posture. It had been so long that he couldn’t even be sure her beautiful voice was pitched lower than it used to be.
Nathan followed her. Well, he had no choice, did he, if he didn’t want to be bayoneted. Honestly, at the moment, maybe he did want to be bayoneted, because at least then he wouldn’t be miserably realizing that…
No. No, he refused to be sad about this. She was alive, and not dead of yellow fever and buried in Philadelphia. That was a good thing.
He couldn’t make up a story for how she’d got from there to here. Had she…done it on purpose? How could she have managed that? Had she ever really been sick?
Was it a miracle direct from HaShem?
She knew perfectly well who Nathan was, though. She wasn’t born again. She hadn’t suffered a loss of memory and forgotten her old life. She’d chosen to let everyone go on thinking she was dead.
Actually, he didn’t care about “everyone.” She’d chosen to let him think it. That wasn’t such a good thing. It felt—he didn’t know what it felt like, other than Not Sadness. Like a sizzling ball of something eating away his guts.
It was almost nice to feel something this powerfully that wasn’t fear. He’d spent a lot of time being afraid since last he saw Rachel.
He was seeing Rachel.
In a three-cornered hat instead of a cap, with a severe wool-wrapped queue marching down the back of her neck—but it was the same sweet nape of her neck. Tanned and thinner, maybe, but he’d know it anywhere.
Given the choice, he’d follow it anywhere. And since she’d ordered him to do so, for once they were in agreement.
He’d always known in his heart that given the choice, she would pick the Revolution over him, this new country of goyim over her own people. But even in his moments of bitterest resentment, he’d never imagined this. How could he—Rachel, a soldier?
Rachel, a soldier. Ah yes, there was the fear after all, fresh and bright and new again. The British were desperate. They wouldn’t yield the town without a fight. How many of the men in this camp would be alive at the end of the week? He’d just found her! He couldn’t lose her again. He couldn’t. His body wasn’t strong enough to bear such a terrible strain twice over.
She was taking him to her superior officer right now. If he told the truth, that she was a woman, she’d be safe. Safe, and angry at him—angrier, anyway—and humiliated, and he couldn’t do it. He’d learned the value these last years of keeping dangerous secrets, and the peculiar depth of affection it took to watch someone you liked run a terrible risk and not stop them.
Drums started beating at one end of the camp and spread. Men poured out of their tents, making escape easier and harder at the same time. He tried to think, tried to do his job again. Better to brazen it out, he decided, than attempt to outrun an army of men in better condition than he was. Which meant he could keep following Rachel.
They reached a marquee tent with flags stuck in the ground before it. A slight, boyish figure in buff and blue, with a colonel’s sash across his breast, was just going in. Nathan winced as the young man took in the situation and came towards them.
“Who is this, Corporal Jacobs?”
Nathan winced again, this time at Rachel’s alias.
Stepping smartly forward, she stood at attention. “Colonel Hamilton, sir, I have reason to think this man a spy employed by the British.”
Nathan’s expression could probably have been described as a grimace by now. No—what was worse than a grimace? He cringed as Colonel Hamilton gave him a sharp glance.
“What reason is that, Corporal?”
Abruptly, Nathan straightened, eager to hear what she’d say.
She didn’t hesitate. “This man is Nathan Mendelson, known to me from before the war. We shared a faith and a synagogue, and many times I have heard him speak ill of the rebels. When the British occupied New York City and the Patriots among our congregation fled, he remained. As late as a year ago I had news of him working for a supplier to the British troops of that city.”
She’d been listening for news of him? Another fiery rush of unidentifiable feeling.
Hamilton nodded. “Bravely done, Corporal. Has he been searched for weapons?”
“Yes, sir. He carried a pocketknife only.”
“May I have it?”
To Nathan’s surprise, she paused before reaching in her pocket. But she laid the small knife in Hamilton’s palm.
The colonel examined it and then eyed Nathan. “I’d better check him again. If he knows anything, the general will want to hear it immediately.”
Nathan submitted to being searched a second time, wishing Rachel were doing it.
“I commend you for your swift action, Corporal. You may return to your company for parade. On your way, kindly alert the commander of the guard that I have borrowed his sentries.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Again, Rachel paused. “Will you let me know if—I should want to—” She fumbled for words. “If he is to be executed, sir, I should wish to be present, and convey the news to his family.”
Hamilton’s face softened. “If it comes to that, Corporal, I will notify you. You’re dismissed.”
She saluted and marched off without a backward glance. Nathan watched her go, feeling a little panicked. How would he manage to see her again?
“Mr. Mendelson,” Colonel Hamilton said sharply. “If you would be so good.”
Flanked by sentries, Nathan followed the officer, only glancing back nine or ten times at Rachel’s retreating back.
Rachel’s battalion had been ordered to an early mess; they would spend the evening and most of the night providing cover for troops working on the fortifications. Rachel gulped down her food and took hasty leave. She couldn’t possibly leave camp for the night without knowing if Nathan would keep quiet. About her secret, anyway—really quiet would be like wishing for the moon.
She presented her permission to the guards. With a roll of his eyes, one of them unlocked the door to the tiny room serving as Nathan’s cell. “A friend of yours, eh? He hasn’t stopped making noise all day. Will he listen to you if you tell him to shut his mouth?”
Nathan looked up from the pencil drawing he was making on the wall, vibrating with nervous energy. He had a split lip and a reddish, swollen place on his left cheekbone.
“It looks like you boys shut it for him,” Rachel said grimly. “The fair treatment of our prisoners ought to be a shame and an example to our foes.” She plucked the pencil out of Nathan’s hand, trying not to let the heavy shackles on his ankles disturb her. “He’s a spy and you didn’t take his means of writing away? What’s your name, Private?”
The soldier stiffened in surprise.
“Coburn,” Nathan supplied helpfully.
Rachel didn’t look at him. “Is that correct?”
“Yes, Corporal,” Coburn said through gritted teeth.
“Would you like to tell me who struck the prisoner, Mr. Coburn, so I can include it in my report to Colonel Hamilton?”
In the very short time since his appointment to a field command in the Light Division, everyone had been made extremely aware of how the colonel felt about the just treatment of prisoners. Even ones who would probably be hanged. Even though the division was on edge and furious because Colonel Scammell—darling of the light infantry and the only man who could make George Washington laugh until he cried—lay dying at Williamsburg, shot in the back by the British after he surrendered to one of their patrols last week.
“It was him,” Nathan said with edgy cheerfulness.
Rachel couldn’t think about him being executed. He’d probably try to tell the hangman a joke. “I’m ready to hear your side of the story,” she told the sentry.
“He wouldn’t shut up, and he insulted Irish cooking.”
Rachel bit her lip hard to keep from smiling. “He goaded you past the limits of your endurance, I see. Don’t let it happen again. That will be all, private.”
Coburn went out and shut the door.
“Can I have my pencil back?” Nathan said in Yiddish.
“Of course not,” she snapped in the same language. “What is wrong with you? You spent all day antagonizing armed men while entirely unable to defend yourself because…?”
“Because I had nothing else to do. I can’t even pace in these things.” One of his legs began to vibrate; the shackles made an awful clanking noise. “I tried to buy a book, but the only one any of them knew of the existence of was Pilgrim’s Progress, and I haven’t yet grown that desperate.”
He’d picked the buttons off his cuff. Rachel’s hand went to the needle and thread she carried in her pocket—but she quashed the impulse. “Have you eaten?” Not much better.
He stared at her in disbelief, leg still bouncing. “Have I eaten? Rachel, who cares?” He’d lowered his voice to protect her secret. Did that mean he wasn’t planning to tell? Why not? “You’re alive?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Obviously.”
“I sat shiva for you,” he said intently. “I said Kaddish for you. I’ve remembered your yahrzeit three times. How can you be alive?”
That startled her. She’d never thought about Nathan mourning her, past the first few weeks. He’d observed the anniversary of her death?
She remembered lighting a candle on her mother’s yahrzeit, tears blurring the flame. Every year at synagogue she’d sobbed brokenly in the women’s gallery, listening to the mourners’ Kaddish being recited below. Had Nathan cried for her?
Well, of course he had, he cried over everything. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Rachel,” he burst out, lurching to his feet, “what if I had remarried?”
The Pursuit of . . . by Courtney Milan
Yorktown, 1781
In the heat of battle, Corporal John Hunter could never differentiate between silence and absolute noise. Years had passed since his first engagement, but every time, the sheer discord of sound blended together. The cry of bugles sounding orders, the clash of bayonets, the rat-tat-tat of firearms somewhere in the distance, the hollow concussion of the cannons—each one of those things heralded someone’s doom. To take heed to any of it was to fall into fear. To fear was to make mistakes; to err was to die. No matter the odds, the sounds of battle were so overwhelming that they were no different than silence.
Yorktown was just like any other engagement.
Oh, the strategists might have begged to differ. There were more clouds, more night. Less frost than some of the battles he’d taken part in. Someone had talked prettily at them about how the freedom of this nascent nation was at stake and some other things John had listened to with his hands curling into fists. The colonies didn’t care about John’s freedom, so he returned the favor by not caring about theirs.
In the end, all battles were smoke and shit and death, and John’s only goal was to see the other side of this war without being forcibly acquainted with the Grim Reaper. Fight. Survive. Go home to his family. The most basic of needs.
The night was dark around him and his fellow infantrymen. The spiked branches of the abatis had left scratches on his arm; the charge up the scarp had John’s heart pounding.
They’d crept through the ditch and were approaching the final defenses of Redoubt Ten—a wall of sharp stakes, somewhat battered. A group of fools ahead of him was negotiating how best to storm the parapet. John held back. Apparently, the idiot in command of this maneuver wanted to lead the charge. Sutton, one of the other black men assigned to storm the redoubt, was hoisting him up.
Nothing to do but join them and hope for the best. Nothing to do but survive, fight, and return to his family before anything ill happened to them. Fight, survive—
John stilled, the chant in his head dying down.
There was a reason he let the background noise of battle fade to nothingness in his mind. It left room for wariness and suspicion. There. Behind them, back toward the abatis—there was a shadow.
It moved, man-shaped.
The person behind them was large and almost invisible, and he lay in wait. John’s comrades hadn’t noticed him. In their haste to get in, they’d all left themselves vulnerable.
All of them but him.
Damn it all to hell.
Silence and noise mingled in John’s head. Perhaps the gunfire from the feint on Fusiliers Redoubt a ways off was loud; perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps the man he saw screamed in defiance as John turned toward him; perhaps he was silent.
Fight. Survive… Damn it.
There was no hope for it. John couldn’t wait to see what would happen. He lowered his weapon, said a prayer for his sister, should his soul become irreparably detached from his body, and sprinted back toward the shadowed branches of the abatis.
The man’s head tilted. John braced himself, waiting for the man to fire a weapon or raise a blade, but instead the fellow just waited in silence. One second. Two.
John crashed into him at full speed, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest. God, the other man was huge. The impact traveled bruisingly through his body. Still, John wasn’t exactly tiny himself. They fell together, hitting the ground. It took one moment to get his bayonet into position, another to drive it forward, blade seeking the other man’s belly.
It didn’t make contact. Instead, the fellow hit John on the head with the butt of his musket. John’s head rang; he shook it, pushed the echoing pain aside, and rolled out of the way of the next bayonet strike.
There was no time to think, no time to come up with any plan except to survive the next instant, then the next. No room for fine blade work, either; John swung his musket like a staff.
The other man blocked the strike, and the force of gun barrel meeting gun barrel traveled up John’s arm. The battle had all but disappeared into a pinprick, into this moment between two men.
“God,” the other fellow said. “You’re strong.”
John refused to hear his words.
John had neither energy nor emotion to waste on conversation. Fight. Survive the war. Go back to Lizzie and Noah and his mother. He’d promised them he would—stupid promise, that—but he’d break the entire British Army before he broke that promise. Men who let their attention slip perished, and he had no intention of perishing. He gritted his teeth and tried to smash the other man’s head.
The other man ducked out of the way. “Nice weather for a siege, isn’t it?”
John’s almost perfect concentration slipped. What the devil was that supposed to mean? Nice weather for a siege? Did that mean the weather was good—it wasn’t—or that bad weather was preferable during a siege? And what did preferable even mean between the two of them? Siegers and the besieged had different preferences.
Ah, damn it.
This was why John couldn’t let himself listen to battle. Anything—everything—could be a distraction. He shook his head instead and threw his entire weight behind his next strike.
It wasn’t enough; the other man was taller and heavier, and their bayonets crossed once more. He was close enough to see features—stubble on cheeks, sharp nose, the glint of some distant bombardment reflected in the man’s eyes. They held their places for a moment, shoulders braced together, their heaving breaths temporarily synchronized.
“It’s your turn,” the man said with an unholy degree of cheer. “I remarked on the weather. Etiquette demands that you say something in return.”
For a moment, John stared at the fellow in utter confusion. “I’m bloody trying to kill you. This is a battle, not a ball.”
He pivoted on one foot, putting his entire back into whirling his weapon. This time he managed to whack the other man’s stomach. A blow—not a hard one, he hadn’t the space to gather momentum—but enough that the fellow grunted and staggered back a pace.
“Yes,” the man said, recovering his balance all too quickly, “true, completely true, we are trying to commit murder upon each other. That doesn’t mean that we need to be impolite about it.”
Fucking British. Would he call a halt to take tea, too?
“If you prefer,” the man continued, sidestepping another blow, “you could try, ‘Die, imperialist scum.’ The moniker is somewhat lacking in friendly appeal, but it has the benefit of being true. I own it; we are imperialist scum.”
What the hell?
“But aren’t we both?” The conversation, like the battle, seemed interminable. “You colonials are displacing natives as well. I will give you this point. You’d be quite right not to use that particular insult. It would be rather hypocritical.”
Not for John, it wouldn’t. His presence in this land could not be put down to any volition on the part of his black mother, who was the only ancestor the colonials counted. But now was not a time for the fine nuances of that particular discussion. It was not, in fact, the time for any discussion at all.
He swung his musket again, heard the crack of the weapon against the barrel of the other man’s musket.
“It just goes to show. Politics is obviously not a good choice of conversation among strangers, I suppose. My father always did say that, and damn his soul, he is occasionally right. What of books? Have you read anything recently?”
There were still a few soldiers making their way through the abatis, streaming past them. One went by now, glancing in their direction.
“Can’t we try to kill each other in silence?” John snuck out a foot, attempting to trip the other man. His enemy danced away.
“Ah, is that it?” The man brightened. “I see. You can’t fight and talk at the same time? My friend, Lieutenant Radley, was exactly the same way. I drove him mad, he used to say.”
Used to? Ha. As if anyone could ever become accustomed to this jibber-jabber.
“He died in battle,” the other man continued, “so possibly he was right. You probably shouldn’t listen to my advice on this score. I don’t have the best record.”
Their weapons crossed again.
“Except”—unbelievably, he was still talking—“I obviously should not have told you that. I’ve given away an important advantage. Damn it. My father was right again. ‘Think before you speak,’ he always used to say. I hate when my father is right.”
John didn’t want to think of this man as someone with family, with friends. War was hell enough when you were just killing nameless, faceless individuals.
There was nothing to do but get it over with as quickly as possible, before he started thinking of his enemy as a person.
He threw himself forward, caught the other man’s shoulder with his, and managed to send him off balance. A moment, just a moment; enough for John to clip his hand smartly with the butt of his musket. The weapon the man had been holding went flying. John hooked one foot around the man’s ankle; his opponent landed flat on his back. John pushed the tip of his blade into the man’s throat.
The man’s hands immediately shot above his head. “I surrender the redoubt!”
John froze in place. “Have you the authority to do that?”
“No,” the other man answered, “but let’s be honest, it’s only a matter of time, don’t you think? Excellent tactics on your part. I almost didn’t see you coming. Somebody ought to surrender it eventually. Why not me?”
“Sorry,” John said, and it was quite possibly the first time he’d ever apologized to an enemy on the battlefield. “I’m going to have to kill you.”
“Ah, well,” the other man said. “You know your duty. Be quick about it, if you must. Better me than you, don’t you think?”
Literally no other person had ever said that to John on the battlefield. John frowned down at the man in front of him, and…
And, oh Christ. He suddenly realized that he’d heard of this man. His friend Marcelo had mentioned something about encountering him before. British officer. Tall. Meaty. Blond. He’d chalked the tale up to campfire boasting. When he’d heard there was a madman who couldn’t stop talking, John had imagined something along the lines of a berserker, frothing at the mouth. He hadn’t expected a mere prattle-basket.
“I think it’s better me than you,” John said, frowning down at the man. “You can’t possibly agree.”
A flare from the battle reflected in the other man’s eyes, temporarily illuminating him. John didn’t want to see his face. He didn’t want to see the haunted expression in his eyes. He didn’t want to remember him as a person. He should never have let the clamor of battle give way to the sound of conversation, because he suspected that the tone of this man’s voice—all gravel and regret—would stay with him all the rest of his days.
“Don’t make me go back,” the man said, so at odds with his cheery conversation on politics. “I can’t go back to England. Dying is not my preferred form of non-return, but for the past months it’s the only one I’ve been able to think of.”
John tightened his grip on the musket. He couldn’t listen. He couldn’t think. In battle, he could only allow himself to be a husk, an automaton. Fight. Survive. Killing was a necessary part of war. He’d learned not to look too hard at his enemies, not to ask too many questions. He’d learned not to let himself dwell too much on the men who perished at the other end of his musket.
It was always a mistake to listen during battle. Here he was, hesitating, when it was either John or the man who’d asked him about books and the weather. He could make it painless—as painless as death by bayonet ever was.
The man gave him a sad smile. “It’s nice weather for dying, isn’t it?”
He was lying. He had to be lying. This was the sort of thing for a lying officer to do—to converse politely, as if manners meant a damned thing on the battlefield. John pushed his bayonet down a quarter inch.
“Go on,” the man said.
His permission made it even harder. John didn’t want to do it, but it was John or the prattle-basket, John or the prattle-basket, and John had come too far to perish now.
A bugle sounded.
John looked up into chaos. He could hear cheers, could see the lieutenant colonel in charge of this attack—Hamilton, was it not?—clapping one of the soldiers on the back. Ah, the idiot in command had survived storming the parapet after all. While John had been fighting, his fellow soldiers had stormed the redoubt and taken it.
It was done. They’d won.
He eased up on the bayonet. “It’s your lucky day. You’re a prisoner now, instead of a dead man.”
“No.” The man’s hand clasped around the musket barrel, holding the bayonet in place. “No. You have to do it.”
“What?” John stared at him.
“You have to do it,” the man instructed. “Do you understand? If you Americans take the redoubt, Yorktown falls. If Yorktown falls, the war is over. If you don’t kill me now, they’ll make me go back to Britain, and I can’t go back.”
“Can’t?” John swallowed and looked down.
“Can’t.” The man shut his eyes.
They’d called him a madman, and John had imagined a demon on the battlefield, not a man who talked of politics.
Perhaps it was mad to prefer death to a return to a place that could never be called home, but if that was madness, it was a madness John knew. He’d once been enslaved. He knew what it was like to yearn for freedom, to prefer death to a return to a state that robbed him of choice, of freedom, of humanity. The fellow was obviously given to dramatics. John doubted anything so horrid waited for him back in England. Still… He understood.
He didn’t want to have anything in common with a blond British officer…but he did.
He should take the man prisoner. Should call for reinforcements. Who knew what this man would do if John gave him the opportunity?
“I can’t go back,” the man said again.
John should never have listened. Damn it, damn it, damn it. He swore and threw down his weapon.
The man struggled, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Then don’t.” John took off his coat. “Here.” He held the garment out.
It wasn’t much—a bit tattered, and God knew what it smelled like; John couldn’t detect the stench any longer.
The man stared at it.
“It’s not red.” John shook the coat. “It’s a mess out there as it is. Get muddy enough and nobody will know who you are. If you don’t want to go back to Britain, turn into an American. You talk enough; I’m sure you can come up with a believable lie. Get out of here. Don’t go back.”
The man stared at him. “Why would you let me go? I’m the enemy.”
“Enemy?” John rolled his eyes. “Take a good look at me. I have little love for…what did you call them? The colonial brand of imperialist scum. I have no enemies, just people I fight on a battlefield.”
The officer sat up. Looked at John. John knew what he was seeing—not the broad shoulders, not the determination John knew flashed in his own eyes, nor the set of his square jaw. No, this blond prattler who talked of manners and politics would see only the brown of his skin.
John was an idiot to offer anything. But he knew too well what it was like to have no hope of help and to find it anyway.
Here, he thought to the woman at the well who had shaken her head, denying his existence to the man who sought John. John had crouched hidden behind the bushes until the threat had passed. She’d looked at him then. She hadn’t spoken; she’d only nodded and left, as if she hadn’t changed his life with that simple denial. Here. I’m paying you back for that after all.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” John said. “I don’t want to be your friend. I’ll kill you on the battlefield if I have to. But if you’re desperate enough to die, you’re desperate enough to abscond. If you don’t want to go back, get rid of your damned officer’s coat and take mine.”
The man stared up at him. He looked at the coat, at the musket that John had tossed aside.
Slowly, he took John’s coat. “I won’t forget this,” he said. “I’ll pay you back someday.”
John had heard that particular promise before. He’d heard it when he saved his father from being crushed by a falling mast. He’d heard it when he’d rescued another man in the Rhode Island First on the battlefield. Half the time, white men didn’t even bother with empty words to assuage their consciences—at least not to the likes of him. The other half? They never remembered their promises. They didn’t have to.
John shook his head. “Don’t bother.”
“John?” Elijah’s call came from further in. “John, is that you down there? Are you wounded?”
He turned, leaving the British officer alone with his coat. He was already faintly regretting his choice—the late-autumn night was cold enough that he’d want that coat before morning struck.
He would never see the man again.
In the dark of the night, the man had no idea what John even looked like. Even if it were day, he’d never be able to distinguish John from any other black man. White men rarely could.
“I’m Henry,” the officer called after him. “Henry Latham, at your service.”
Henry Latham no doubt thought he was an honorable fellow. He’d tell himself that one day he’d return the favor, just as he assiduously avoided contact with anyone who looked like John. There was little use puncturing his illusions.
John knew that the roll of his eyes was hidden by the night, so he took care to imbue an extra dose of sarcasm in his tone. “I’ll be sure to remember that.”
“John?” Elijah was coming closer. “John, are you well?”
“I’m alive,” John called in return. “Alive and unharmed.” His body was already protesting the unharmed designation, his shoulder twingeing, his head still hurting.
Ha. He had already forgotten the name. He’d never hear from the man again.
That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole
Mercy knew better than to indulge in activities like observing a woman's shapeliness, but her gaze still clung to the stranger like damp cheesecloth, molding to her curves.
She decided to turn back, to flee belowstairs where she belonged, when the woman looked in her direction. Their gazes caught, and even from that distance Mercy felt the tug of attraction.
No. No, no, no.
The angel began walking toward her. Marching, more like, if marching could be imbued with sensuality.
Large amber eyes set in a deep brown face; a smile that managed to be overfamiliar and curious at once. Those two features jumped out at Mercy, slammed into her with a nearly overwhelming force.
Not again.
Mercy raised a hand to the ache in her chest. There'd been a time when she'd felt beautiful things acutely. Felt them in her body and heart and soul. A flower pressed between the pages of a book had given her sustenance that even food could not. She'd shed tears at the sight of a bird with a ribbon streaming from its beak, flying toward its nest. She knew better than to expose herself like that now; years of experience and heartache had cured her of those naive tendencies. But the angel before her stirred that familiar sense of awe, of want, despite Mercy?s hard-earned knowledge.
Mercy dropped her hand. Swallowed. Remembered who she was and what she was about.
"Are you being helped, miss?" she asked frostily. "It's rather early for uninvited guests; for those with manners, that is."
The smile didn't leave the angel's face. It shifted slowly, subtly, in a way that made Mercy reassess her first impression. This was no angel. The woman was most certainly a devil, come to tempt Mercy to wickedness. Lucifer had been the most beautiful angel of all, had he not? She'd read that in a poem, but Mercy couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than the woman approaching her.
The curve of the woman's lips was mocking, and the light, feminine sway of her hips took on a sudden, pendulous swagger. She approached loose-limbed and fearless, making Mercy's rigidity more stark, more embarrassing.
Mercy had to look up a bit to meet the woman's gaze. Tension crept up her neck, spread over her scalp, as the woman stared down at her.
"Ahhhhh. You're one of those, are you?" the woman asked. Her voice was smooth and assured.
One of what? Mercy felt suddenly exposed. She tried so hard to keep her desires hidden, but it seemed this woman could see right through her. Her face grew hot and her breathing lost its rhythm so that she was suddenly aware that her body was doing it; for a moment, she forgot how to inhale.
The woman kept smiling, and assessing, and Mercy finally pulled in a breath.
"I am simply fulfilling my duty and trying to ascertain who you are." She tried to keep her tone firm and serious, as if she hadn't just gasped ridiculously like a trout at the seaport market.
The woman took a step forward, that teasing smile still on her lips, and Mercy saw that it hadn't been the effects of the morning sun casting the stranger in a good light; she was even lovelier up close.
"No," the woman said. "You were simply trying to put me in my place."
Mercy stared past the woman's shoulder, unable to look her full in the face. A wild sensation swelled in her chest; this beauty was painful. Mercy wanted to beat her fists against a wall, to scream. She'd thought herself done with such surges of emotion. She imagined this was the betrayal an old fisherman felt when a wall of water suddenly appeared on seas that had always been calm for him.
There was a brush against Mercy's face, and then the bare skin of the woman's thumb and forefinger pressed lightly into Mercy's jaw, guiding her face so that their gazes met. Better than you have tried, friend. But if you'd like a go, I welcome the sport.
Rose Lerner writes historical romance with strong heroines and adorable heroes, as well as doing freelance book doctoring, editing, and research assistance. She has taught craft and research workshops for conferences, libraries, and writers’ groups. Her small-town Lively St. Lemeston series has been featured in NPR’s Book Concierge and Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. Her most recent novel is the Audible Original The Wife in the Attic, an f/f Jane Eyre retelling (also available in ebook and print).
When she’s not writing or researching, you can find Rose reading, watching, cooking, doodling, rambling, and daydreaming in Philadelphia.
Courtney Milan writes books about carriages, corsets, and smartwatches. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. She is a New York Times and a USA Today Bestseller.
She lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband and an exceptionally perfect dog.
Before she started writing romance, Courtney got a graduate degree in theoretical physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. After that, just to shake things up, she went to law school at the University of Michigan and graduated summa cum laude. Then she did a handful of clerkships. She was a law professor for a while. She now writes full-time.
Alyssa Cole is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of romance and thrillers. Her debut thriller When No One Is Watching was the winner of the 2021 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Paperback Original and the Strand Critics Award for Best Debut. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018, and her contemporary royal romcom A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018. Her books have received critical acclaim from the New York Times, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, Booklist, Jezebel, Shondaland, Vulture, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets. When she’s not working, she can usually be found watching anime or wrangling her pets.
Rose Lerner
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EMAIL: rose@roselerner.com
Courtney Milan
The Pursuit of . . . by Courtney Milan
That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole
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