Free The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution by Suzanne Adair

north.
    Clark's snores deepened.   Intermittent lightning flashes cast his skin
blue, almost the same hue as the cipher message.   When the storm abated, she reopened the window and crouched in the
cool moisture, reveling in raw scents of predawn, her hand stroking her
belly.   Several roosters crowed.   In the east, the sky had blanched.
    Clark coughed, and his murmur
sounded groggy.   "Betsy?"
    Glad for the cover of darkness, she
slid back in bed and began stroking his chest.   Sweat dampened the sheet beneath him.   "Hush.   Go back to
sleep."
    He yawned.   "Too much on my mind."
    No doubt.   She whispered, "Then let's play our game.   Tree."
    He sighed in deep contentment, eyes
closed.   "Sunshine."
    "Wine."
    "Purple."   He yawned again.
    "Bucket."
    He nodded at the edge of
sleep.   "Mmm.   Water."
    "Four hundred two."
    "Cornwallis."
    She didn't miss a stroke, despite
the fear that rammed her gut.   Charles
Lord Cornwallis ran the Crown's show in South Carolina.   What business did a shoemaker from Augusta
and residents of Spanish Havana have with a British general?
    Clark stiffened, and she saw him
stare at the ceiling, trying to decide whether he'd dreamed spilling the
information.   Then he pushed away and
stood.   "Damnation."   He stumped to the desk, lit the lantern, and
turned on her, his glare demanding an explanation.
    She rolled up and sat.   "Monday I received that box from a sea
captain named Arriaga.   His letter said
he gave the enclosed parasol and veil to my mother while she was on his ship,
and she lost them when the redcoats captured her in Havana.   So he sent them to me.   You and I didn't have time to discuss it
Monday.
    "Tuesday morning in the shop,
I saw a piece of paper in the heel of a cowhide boot.   When I held it close to the lamp, blue letters and numbers
appeared all over it."
    "Christ Jesus."
    "And again I didn't have time
to ask you about it because we had to clean 'Tory Scum' off our house.   I woke in the middle of the night and
overheard you talking with two Spaniards who were taking away the cowhide
boots.   Basilio, you named one of
them.   The dogs never barked at
them.   They knew them from previous
visits, same way they know Sooty Johns."
    "Ah."   Clark rubbed his eyelids.
    Betsy scrubbed her hands together,
the rasp of nervous energy amplified in the quiet house.   "Yesterday afternoon, Lieutenant
Fairfax came here to the shop to post a letter.   He recognized the parasol and veil from when he was in Havana and
concluded that my aunt and I were spies.   I denied involvement, but I'd swear he knew I had Arriaga's
letter and your message."
    Clark paced the length of the room
in his shirt.   Panic thrashed his
expression.
    "Husband, rebels write between
the lines of letters with invisible ink that turns blue when heated, the way
letters and numbers appeared on your message from the boot heel."   She kept her voice low, conscious of the
servant in the bedroom across the stairway.   "The same way letters and numbers appeared on Arriaga's letter last
night when I exposed it to heat.   Between the two, I noticed the number 402 several times, so I knew it
had to be significant.
    "How many times have Basilio
and his partner visited you in the middle of the night?   Did they supply you with the Cordovan
leather?   What's a Loyalist doing in
secret meetings with men from a country at war with Britain?   To whom are you sending secret
messages?   Did Sooty paint the slur on
our house, and if so, why?   What has all
this to do with Lord Cornwallis?"   She drew a deep, shaky breath.   "Are you spying on the redcoats for the rebels?"
    He kept pacing.   "I cannot tell you."
    "Or you will not?"   At his silence, she
intercepted him, planted her feet, and braced her fists on her hips, her body
quivering with betrayal.   "How dare
you conceal all this from me?   Does this
baby mean nothing to you?   Think , man!   Do you want me widowed, or —"   She