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officer he had used his authority to commandeer supplies and other less tangible benefits. He knew all too well how it was done. You put the men to some heavy-lifting task, set a lackey to guard the door, demanded goods or information the locals were unlikely to have, then bargained, and finally threatened, until the line between coercion and force became indistinct.
    Before Kate, before Grey Farm, he might have done the same. Hell, at Grey Farm, truth be told, he had almost done so. Now, with little sound coming from the ravaged kitchen, all Tremayne could picture was Kate, plain, disheveled, disarmingly clever Kate, at the mercy of someone like Caide, at the mercy of someone like himself. He felt sick.
    He must have looked it, too. Caide emerged some time later, stooping from the low batten door, and rolled his eyes at Tremayne. “Developing a conscience, Peter? It won’t do you any good in this war. Dyson,” Bay called to the lieutenant idling beside the door. “Your turn.” Dyson smiled his vicious, heavy-lidded smile and ducked into the kitchen. There was no noise this time.
    “These people,” Caide said, turning his attention back to Tremayne, “won’t give up until they’ve been taught a lesson. You’ve said so yourself.”
    “Yes,” Tremayne said, placing his foot in his stirrup. “Only I’m not so certain of the pedagogy anymore.” Mounted on his horse, he continued. “Anyway, I thought you recently became engaged to some gilded Tory heiress. What do you need farmers’ wives for?”
    “Ah, well, that’s just the thing. I need farmers’ wives because I am engaged to the most dazzling creature in Philadelphia. And once married, I swear to you, I shall cleave to her bosom and forsake all others. But until then all she does is tease and leave me with an itch that needs scratching.”
    “Clearly your reputation has been slow to reach Philadelphia. I can’t think of a respectable matron in London who would allow you to marry her daughter.”
    “Well, fortunately, Lydia’s mother is respectably dead. And her father’s at sea. Sumatra way. Making a fortune in pepper or some such thing.”
    “You’d be wise to marry her before the blockade is lifted and her father gets a look at you,” Tremayne advised.
    “The thing is all sewn up. Aunt and uncle wrote to her father for consent. We’re to be married in the spring. Only waiting for her father’s return. Howe’s brother will issue a pass so he can land.”
    “With his fortune in pepper.”
    “I’d take her with two pecks of pepper. She’s magnificent. Chestnut hair like silk. Eyes so dark they’re almost black. Skin like new snow.”
    “If the thing is all sewn up,” Tremayne reasoned, “then there should be nothing to stop you from scratching your itch with her.”
    “No. I’d like to, and I daresay she’d let me, but no. In this, if in nothing else in my life, I’m determined to do the thing properly. I won’t bring my bride to the altar in an embarrassing condition, or my children into the world with questionable legitimacy.”
    Tremayne couldn’t argue with that. “What if she’s frigid?” he prompted.
    Caide cast a sly glance at Tremayne. “I said I haven’t bedded her. I didn’t say I haven’t sampled the vintage. In company, she’s a picture of grace and manners. In private, she’s got a wild streak a mile wide. She’s perfect .”
    “For you, certainly,” Tremayne replied. “I wouldn’t wish an innocent girl tied to you for life.”
    “That makes two of us, cousin.”
    They reached Germantown at dusk, where Howe was still encamped with the bulk of the army. “I’m for a glass of whisky and bed,” Tremayne said. He was staying with Caide until he could find his own lodgings in the city. He hoped that Philadelphia would prove more welcoming. Whatever the feelings of the people of Germantown had been before their home became a battlefield, they wanted the British gone now. The pretty stone houses that had once