Read Online Mistress Firebrand by Donna Thorland - Free Book Online

barrels were full to the brim. Someone expected a mob—whether because rumor whispered it on the wind or the word had been passed from friend to friend, Severin did not yet know.
    He could feel it in his bones, like an approaching storm. The whole of New York vibrated with quiet fear.
    It was not, in point of fact, his problem. His problemwas John Burgoyne, and the sabotaged
Boyne
and the recalcitrant merchants of New York. But trouble on the docks, a burnt warehouse or destroyed stores, could dash the
Boyne
’s fragile hope of sailing this week, so Severin continued to make his way along the docks, bartering for provisions and naval stores and keeping one ear to the ground.
    When his business took him as far north as John Street, he found himself straying from the docks toward the theater. The Divine Fanny kept a well-regarded salon in her chambers over the greenroom. He could present himself and listen to the gossip of the loyalists, discover if they were aware of the trouble brewing on their streets.
    And he could speak with Jennifer Leighton again, who would banter with him on equal terms. He had spent all day listening to differing assessments of the governor and the leading men of New York, some feeble and some astute, and he found he wanted to know what
she
thought of Tryon and DeLancey and the presence of the
Asia
in the harbor. He wanted to hear, filtered through the same wit that had written
The American Prodigal
, a canny opinion on the situation in New York to compare with his own.
    More, he wanted to talk theater and comedy and argue the merits of the
Mostellaria
and save her from an evening with the Miles Gloriosus he was charged with protecting.
    That was drink talking, too many glasses of beer and sangaree with the merchants of New York loosening his reason and tempting him to give in to his desires. And those desires made him no better than Burgoyne. Except that he had actually seen her playand admired its wit, and been moved by her impromptu performance. And he did not despise Americans, as Burgoyne did, as a race of clods and peasants, or view the first citizens of her thriving cities as somehow
lesser
than their counterparts in London or Bath or Bristol. The English had a peculiar notion that success in America was easier, that to carve wealth out of a wilderness was without toil, and indeed that the colonial atmosphere bred indolence and ingratitude.
    He knew, from experience, that it did not. His very first memories were of learning to hunt for his dinner. He did not think often of that time, those ten years in the wilderness, when he had been the favored son. Ashur Rice had taught both Devere boys to kill with the blade and the bow, how to line up a shot, gauge wind and distance with a rifle and wait for the right moment to fire. In England it had all seemed a remote dream, an Arcadian idyll long past recovering, but in America it seemed real once more, though still just out of reach.
    Like Jennifer Leighton.
    As with so many colonists, the girl very obviously felt the pinch of her status as a provincial, and admired all things English and “sophisticated.” It would be so easy to play on that, to manipulate her into his bed by preying on her insecurities. As he had been maneuvered, he fully realized, into his role as spy and provocateur to counter the stigma of his Indian blood. He had never been bitter about it before. Not until this trip to America. Not until Boston.
    He was not even certain it would be so very wrong to use his hard-earned status as an Englishman to attract her, because Jennifer Leighton’s American character wasa decided part of her appeal for Severin—but he was not in New York to indulge himself.
    And the girl was not for him. He fixed things for powerful men. Reordered some bothersome aspect of the world to their requirements or advantage. A part of him wanted to fix things for Jennifer Leighton, to warn her that Burgoyne was a brilliant soldier and a talented playwright,