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had accepted his suit.  He kissed me then and promised to make me happy.”  Maud stared off into the distance, her eyes clouded with that old memory that obviously meant so much to her.
    “Did he?” Louisa asked.
    “Did he what?” asked the old lady, startled out of her reverie.
    “Make you happy.”
    “No child, he made my life a misery for over twenty years before he finally died with his mistress by his bedside, but at that moment in the maze, I was the happiest young girl in Christendom.”  Maud sighed and turned her attention to Louisa.  “And what are you doing here?”
    “I just like to walk through the maze.  I got lost a few times, but now I know the way.  Did you know that Theodore will be staying for a few days?” Louisa asked innocently.  “He’ll be tr aveling back to London with Uncle Kit on Sunday after church.”
    “Hm m, that’s welcome news.  He’s a good boy, Theo.  He was always Caroline’s favorite, you know.  She spoiled him if you ask me; mothered him too much since his father died when he was only a child.  A boy like him needed a firm hand to beat the nonsense out of him; that’s what I would have done.”  Aunt Maud slapped her hand against the bench for emphasis, obviously still reliving an old argument with her niece.
    “What nonsense, Aunt Maud?  He seems very serious to me.” Louisa turned her face to Maud, her mouth open with curiosity.
    “He was always soft-hearted that one.  Didn’t have the driving ambition of his brothers.  They will go far, just you wait and see.  They’ve already made advantageous marriages and gained the favor of His Majesty.  Theo, on the other hand, will find some damsel in distress and fall head over heels in love.  He always needed someone to rescue, and was dragging stray puppies and injured birds home to his mother.  She should have tossed them out, but she helped him take care of them, encouraging his weakness.  He fancied himself the patron saint of broken things.
    For a smart woman, Caroline was a terrible fool when it came to her youngest. I suppose she couldn’t resist his need for her.  Robin and Walter gravitated toward their father, but Theo only wanted his mother, sniveling like a girl.  He was her only comfort after his father died, until she took that young lover.  Now, that was a scandal in the making, but she wouldn’t hear a word against her new love.  Sure enough, he deserted her as soon as she became ill.  She’d outlived her usefulness.  I hear he married a girl just barely out of the nursery.  Must be a nice change after a woman nearly twenty years his senior.”  Aunt Maud sniggered, still annoyed with the niece who’d been dead for nearly two years.  Forgiveness did not come easily to her.
    “ Now, make yourself useful and help me to my feet.  Time I went back inside.  It’s getting unbearably hot out here.  You may walk me back,” she announced imperiously, taking Louisa’s arm. 
    “Of course, Aunt Maud.  It would be my pleasure.”  Louisa offered her arm to the old lady, smiling serenely.  She didn’t mind walking her back.  After all, she just told her exactly what she wanted to know, making her task that much easier.   Louisa glanced away as Maud’s piercing eyes skewered her face.  Had she known all along what Louisa was after?

August 1777
    New York
     

Chapter 14
     
    Abbie refolded the letter and sat wearily on the neatly-made bed of Captain Gordon.  It was barely mid-morning, but already the room was hot and stuffy, summer sun streaming through the uncurtained windows with relentless intensity.  The heat made Abbie feel faint, but that wasn’t what caused her to raise her palms to her burning cheeks.  What she felt was shame.  All her life she had thought of the British as the enemy, but she’d never actually had any dealings with them except for that horrible moment in the woods when Finn saved her from a brutal rape.  To her, all British soldiers were