Benjamin Franklin's Bastard by Sally Cabot

Author:Sally Cabot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

BY THE TIME ANNE reached the shop she was shaking so hard that only a touch of her knuckles on the glass rattled the pane. She tried to see into the dark and seek out Peter’s form, but she could make out nothing of the floor at all. She clenched her fist and rapped harder on the glass—once, twice, a third time—but the light that finally came at her came from the stairs that led to Grissom’s rooms and not from the shop at all.

Grissom loomed behind the lantern, hair flying loose, shirttail dripping out of his breeches, legs bare; he peered out, fumbled the latch, threw open the door. “God in heaven! What have they done to you? Get in, will you, before the whole street wakes.”

Anne didn’t—couldn’t—move.

Grissom reached out and caught her by both arms, half lifting her into the shop and ahead of him up the stairs. In his kitchen he pointed her to the chair near the banked fire and gave it a stir with the poker; he climbed the stairs to his chamber and returned with a blanket and, remarkably, a woman’s flannel gown and shawl. He left the room and Anne changed into the dry clothes, transferring her money pouch from neck to pocket. When Grissom returned he’d done something better with his own attire, but his hair still flowed loose, glinting like escaped flame in the light of the fire. He sat across from her and studied her in silence for a time.

“How is it you come here in this state?” he said at last. “Must I assume things did not end well?”

“They did not.”

“The boy?”

“His father caught up with us at the ship and took him home.”

“The ship!”

Anne said nothing, but Grissom went there on his own. “A ship. Yes, that would have been your only course. And then?”

“I was bid to go on to Boston and become a mantua maker.”

“But you didn’t care to.”

“I didn’t.”

Grissom pondered her some more. “You’re wet.”

“I was forced to swim ashore.”

“Swim ashore!”

“I’d been taught.”

“I see.”

For reasons Anne couldn’t entirely unravel she found herself unable, for the first time in a very long time, to meet a man’s eye. She tipped her head forward and allowed her hair to cascade in front of her face, nearer to the fire, as if shaking it out to dry. Grissom allowed her a reasonable space of time, but when he might have expected her to straighten up and she didn’t, he reached out and swung the curtain of hair aside, drawing her face up.

“What else? What else happened? Something’s changed you since yesterday. Something that’s driven you here. Why did you come here? ’Tis nine months you’ve been gone. If you came after your old place—”

Anne jerked her face away. “I did not come after my old place. I came here to discover why you sent Franklin after me at my sister’s. I know why my sister sent him after me at the ship, but not why you—”

“I didn’t send Franklin to your sister’s.

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