Turncoat by Don Gutteridge Page A

now.”
    â€œThat you have,” Durfee said, but his watchful eye suggested otherwise. “Now you best be trottin’ across to the miller’s. The handsome Miss Hatch don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

    AS WINNIFRED H ATCH POURED HER GUEST his second cup of tea, she watched the hot liquid flow into the china cup as if it might, unfettered from her strict supervision, dash off towards some other cup. The tea settled obediently where it was directed. Miss Hatch had, of course, asked the table if it would prefer another round—“You’ll have another cup, then?”—but it was only nominally a question.
    Thomas Goodall—the angular young man who, Marc learned, assisted in the milling during the season and managed the modest farm as a sharecropper—swallowed his second cup in two gulps and said, “Well, I’ll be off, then. Got three cows to milk.”
    The chatelaine of the house stopped the progress of her own teacup several inches below her thin, unrouged lip.
    â€œIf you please, ma’am.” Thomas dropped his eyes and slid noisily off his chair.
    â€œFor God’s sake, man, go to your cows.” Hatch laughed. “They’ll be popping their udders.”
    Mary Huggan, the Irish serving girl who had, in the strange custom of the country, joined them after her initial duties, giggled into her apron, then sneezed to compound her embarrassment.
    â€œAs you can see, Ensign Edwards, we don’t often have ladies or gentlemen in to dine,” Winnifred said.
    â€œOne lady in the house is more than enough,” Hatch said with a grin.
    â€œThat was as fine a meal as I’ve had since I arrived in York,” Marc said.
    Winnifred Hatch accepted the compliment with a curt but not ungracious nod. Either she had not bothered to change her clothes following her return from the quilting bee near Port Hope, or she always dressed in a manner designed to display her widely acknowledged handsomeness. Her magenta blouse, of silk or some such frilly fluff, hugged her tall, Tudor neck almost to the chin, flaring downward around long and elegant arms and outward to suggest subtly the curving of a robust bosom. Her purple, fluted skirt was pleasingly cinched at the waist by a lavender sash that might have seemed overly bold, tartish even, were it not for her regal bearing.
    â€œAnd just how long have you been with us?” she said in a voice that a Milanese contralto might have envied.
    â€œAbout eight months,” Marc said. “I arrived at Fort York last May.”
    â€œAnd you have been discovering some of our quainter customs, I trust?”
    The miller’s eyes were dancing delightedly at this turn in the conversation. His daughter, meantime, let her considerable gaze linger on their guest, expecting, it appeared, something more than a polite reply but giving no intimation on which side of the question she herself was situated.
    Marc smiled in what he took to be his most winning manner (the one that had such a volcanic effect on thefemale gentry of Toronto) and said, “I am a soldier, ma’am. A man of action. We have little time to concern ourselves overly much with the manners and deportment of His Majesty’s subjects, scattered as they be over the whole of the globe.”
    Hatch chortled, but he was brought up short by a glance from his daughter. The quickened anger in her reproof, followed immediately by a softening look that bespoke daughterly indulgence and forbearance, roused in Marc another sort of quickening. An image of the handsome Winnifred—her burnished mahogany hair loosed from its coiled bun, her Spode-white flesh gleaming in the moonlight—popped lasciviously into his head and made him feel foolish and abashed.
    â€œWe are doubtless a source of constant chagrin—and some sport, I suspect—for those raised within calling distance of the Throne.”
    â€œI was raised in the