Read Online The Turncoat by Donna Thorland - Free Book Online

almost musical—that of a man who expected to be heard and obeyed. He slid from his horse with the natural grace he had possessed since boyhood. The wind ruffled his wheat-colored hair, which curled around the collar of his jacket. His eyes, Peter had first noted as a child, were the same pale blue as his own.
    He looked up at Tremayne. “Don’t go offering to pay for the beer, Peter. Or anything else, for that matter. The brewer is a Rebel, and as such, his property is forfeit.”
    “How do you tell the Rebels from the Tories, Bay?”
    “The Rebel women are prettier.” He slapped Tremayne on the back and led him into the stone-walled kitchen.
    It was a well-scrubbed and busy room, with an ancient sideboard groaning under the weight of mismatched pottery. The two women standing behind the pitted trestle table were indeed unusually pretty. The older was no more than thirty, and her sleeves dripped with muslin frills and Mechlin lace. The mistress of the house, no doubt. The younger was barely out of her teens, and from her dated skirts and cheap leather stays, she must be the maid.
    Caide bowed politely to the lady. “Ma’am.”
    He reached for her hand, but she stepped back. Her black brows knitted, and an angry flush crept over her fair skin. “What do you want?” she asked.
    The maid, more attuned to Bay’s mood than her mistress was, sidled toward the low door. Lieutenant Dyson, a hulking brute from some northern factory town, and just the sort to toady to Bay, appeared in the doorway, cutting off her escape and blocking the light. He advanced, not on the girl but on the kegs racked against the wall.
    “Beer, to start with,” said Caide, but he wasn’t looking at the beer.
    The keg nearest the door was already tapped. Dyson turned the handle, and the beer pattered onto the floor and spread over the stone tiles.
    “You’re no better than thieves,” the lady said.
    Bay fingered the cord hanging from the clock jack on the mantel, and pulled a sprig of sage out of one of the bundles drying overhead. “Cooperation, second,” he said, inhaling the pungent herb, “or perhaps you would rather watch your livelihood run out over the floor?”
    Dyson took another tap from a set hanging on the wall, and hammered it into the next keg. The lady flinched at each blow, and the maid began sobbing.
    “What will it be?” asked Bayard Caide.
    Tremayne barely heard him. The structure possessed none of the classical elegance of Grey House. The woman behind the trestle was not poised or quick-witted, nor did she have pie crumbs in her hair, but the situation reminded him all too much of a Quaker girl he couldn’t get out of his head. The room seemed suddenly overpoweringly hot and close.
    Caide advanced on the women. “If you are loyal subjects, you will of course want to help His Majesty’s trusty servants in any way they might require.”
    Tremayne knew this preamble all too well. Once, he would have shared in it.
    “Excuse me. I think I’ll go see to the wagons.”
    Bay turned, the women forgotten for the moment. “Come on, Peter. It will be just like old times.” He scooped a tankard from the sideboard and held it under the spluttering tap, then offered Tremayne the beaker. “And there’s beer.”
    “I find I’m not thirsty.” He was parched, but he knew he would choke on that beer, and what would come after it.
    Caide shrugged and downed the beaker. “Suit yourself. Dyson, watch the door.”
    Out in the crisp air, Bay’s men were loading wagons with sacks of barley. From inside the farmhouse, Tremayne heard a loud crash. The trestle table, overturned. Then the musical note of a single, fine piece of china dashed against a wall, followed by the deeper chord of a shelf full of earthenware swept to the ground. The curtains rustled, and Tremayne knew that Bay’s ugly little drama had reached its climax.
    It would have been easier to bear if he had not been guilty of similar indulgences. Certainly, as a young