The Turncoat by Donna Thorland

trestle covered with maps was a man Kate recognized from her father’s description, some twenty years out of date. Even seated, he towered over the other man in the room. Washington wore a dark blue velvet suit, well cut but bald at the cuffs and collar. Beside him, a slender, fair-haired youth sat copying orders.
    Both men rose when the women entered. Mrs. Ferrers, as Kate was learning, had a theatrical turn of mind. She threw back her hood and laid the packet on the table before the general with a flourish.
    The young man closed his book and prepared to leave, but Washington put a hand on his shoulder. “Stay.” He nodded to Mrs. Ferrers. “You were successful?” he asked, opening the packet. He scanned each page and passed it to the young man. “Have a look at this, Mr. Hamilton. You were quite right.”
    “Only partially,” Mrs. Ferrers admitted, drawing up a stool and seating herself. Kate followed her example. “Caide didn’t come. Peter Tremayne was the courier.”
    The young man blanched. “Caide is still at large?”
    “I’m afraid so, Alex. And there is worse. Howe is arresting members of Congress in secret. We encountered a party of dragoons riding with muffled spurs in the Jerseys, and I am sorry to report that they did not observe the niceties of war.”
    Kate fought nausea once more as she remembered the sounds coming from the barn. The niceties of war.
    Washington set the final page down and addressed Mrs. Ferrers. “Have you read this, Angela?”
    “Yes. Howe means to invest Philadelphia for the winter. He thinks he can end the war by taking the capital and holding it.”
    “He has the men to do it, too.”
    Washington’s secretary spoke. “Let the British have Philadelphia. Howe has mistaken a symbolic target for a strategic one. It’s not worth risking the army in an open battle.”
    Washington smiled thinly. “Congress will expect us to make a stand for Philadelphia.”
    “Then it’s a pity they haven’t given us the money or the men to do it,” replied Hamilton.
    “It is a fight we must make all the same.” Washington spread a map on the table. Running across the bottom was an engraving of the city as seen from the Jersey side of the river, a forest of steeples, masts, and brick. “Philadelphia lies in the fork of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. She is approachable by land only from the north. If we can hold the rivers and the roads to the north, we can cut off Howe’s supplies. With no food and no fuel he must surrender his army or march it through the Jerseys, where he has made no friends this past year.”
    “Philadelphia is not Boston,” Hamilton insisted. “There is no high ground on which to mount cannon. We cannot hold the river indefinitely. We don’t have the men to defend the forts. Mercer was built for a garrison of more than a thousand, and Mifflin is nearly as large.”
    Their argument reminded Kate of her own debates with her father. It obviously pained Hamilton to disagree with Washington, but he did it anyway.
    “You don’t need to hold the river indefinitely,” Kate interjected. “Only until it freezes.”
    “This is Miss Kate Grey, Arthur’s daughter,” supplied Mrs. Ferrers.
    If Washington was surprised by her presence, or her ready grasp of tactics, he didn’t show it. “You are correct, Miss Grey.”
    “Howe will understand the danger. He will do everything in his power to take the river,” Hamilton insisted.
    “Yes,” the general agreed. “That is why we must keep one step ahead of him.”
    “What of our agent in Boston?” Hamilton asked.
    “Still with Howe, but trapped like a fly in amber,” Angela Ferrers said. “And I can’t get near Howe. His intelligence officer, John André, knows me by sight.”
    “ Cinaedus ,” Hamilton said under his breath. A lover of men, Kate knew, though her knowledge was gleaned from an unusually thorough classical education, and not from hearing the insult hurled. Quakers were not inclined toward