Free A Marked Man by Barbara Hamilton Page A

promptly. Drat the man . . . “So to the regiment of problematical Mainers whose wives and sweethearts Sir Jonathan has spent the past ten days debauching, we might add any farmer or villager between here and Lynn, wives and sweethearts ditto—without coming anywhere near Sir Jonathan’s missing memorandum-book or Harry Knox’s unfortunate decision to get an unobserved night’s sleep.” She stepped down from the tall stool on which she’d sat and readjusted her scarves—the only outer garments of full-out protection against the weather that she’d been even slightly tempted to loosen the entire time she had been in the fort. “If you would be so good as to tell me, Lieutenant Coldstone, what it is that I and my husband and Harry’s friends need to discover in order to convince Colonel Leslie of Harry’s innocence, I would very much appreciate it. Because as it is, we’re put in the position of proving a negative, difficult even without the Colonel’s hopes that Mr. Knox may accuse others of sedition—in which he is not involved—in an effort to save his own skin, or Mr. Fluckner’s objections to seeing his daughter marry a man who is of no social use to him .”
    Coldstone, who had risen when she did, stood before her for a moment without replying, without giving the slightest indication that he heard his two office-mates arguing with and harassing Sergeant Muldoon in the corridor, or the sharp clatter of weapons-drill in the parade-ground. Abigail wondered whether Harry could hear these camp-noises in his cell, and how long it would take him to read The Persian Wars , and whether this would distract his mind from the thought of the twenty minutes or so that it took a man to strangle, once he had been hoisted on the gallows.
    She looked up at Coldstone’s face, cold as a marble angel’s. The servant of the King, whose job was defined by the crimson uniform he wore: first serve the King, then seek Justice . . .
    Provided, as he had said, one could define the word.
    What did he hear, or think about, as he lay at night in this dank brick fortress set in the midst of the ocean, waiting for word to come from his master about how to punish rebel colonists for defying the King’s commands?
    At length he said, “If you would be so kind, m’am—What you can discover is who else might have seen Sir Jonathan after his debarking from the Hetty on Saturday morning, and who in Boston might also have wished to do him harm. Mr. Knox’s defense is based upon the proof of a negative and I cannot do anything about that, and for that I am sorry. However much I am dissatisfied with the case against Mr. Knox, Colonel Leslie finds little amiss in it. My superior officer, Major Salisbury, has instructed me to draw up an accusation. When the Incitatus arrives here from Jamaica next week, unless some new evidence is found, Mr. Knox will be taken to Halifax and tried before an Admiralty Court for conspiracy and treason.”

Six

    J ohn said, “That’s ridiculous!” and slammed his hand down on the top of his desk, making the standish jump. “To convict a man on the perjured evidence of a clerk frightened for his position and the word of rich man who’ll do anything to keep his daughter from wedding a poor one—”
    “I suspect Lieutenant Coldstone would remark that you’re making a bit free with the burden of proof as to Mr. Fluckner’s motives—”
    “Damn the burden of proof!” John pulled off his wig and hurled it against the opposite wall of his study. “You know, and I know—”
    “And the Provost Marshall does not know.”
    “Does not wish to know, you mean!” Red-faced with wrath, John looked around him, as if seeking something else small enough to fling that wouldn’t leave the books in the shelf splattered with ink or sand. Abigail fished in her pocket and handed him her pocket memorandum-book. He flung it with a satisfying smack. “Damn the man!”
    In the hallway behind her, Abigail heard the faint