In case you don’t, I will be brief, and write another Letter later which you may receive, with such further News as I may have then.
For the Moment, I wished to tell you first, that we had a skirmish last week with the British, near a British fort called Stony Point, on the banks of the Hudson. We did not attack the fort but we made them run back into it right smart!
Second, I am very sorry to tell you that Doctor Hunter was captured in the course of the fight and he is held Prisoner in the Fort. He was not hurt, so far as I know, and I am sure that with him being a Doctor and also a Quaker who hasn’t fought against them, the British will likely treat him kindly and not hang him.
I know the Doctor is a good Friend to you and to Mrs. Fraser and you would wish to know what has befallen him. I keep you both in my Prayers at Night, and will so keep the Doctor and his Wife as well.
Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant （and Aide），
Judah Mordecai Bixby, Captain in the Continental Army
JAMIE TOOK THE LETTER back from me and read it over again, frowning. We were sitting on a log just outside my garden, and now I moved closer to him in order to look over his shoulder. My stomach had clenched into a knot at the word “captured” and rose into my throat at the word “hang.”
“Stony Point,” I said, striving for calmness. “Do you know where that is?” Jamie shook his head, eyes still fixed on the paper.
“Somewhere in New York, I think.” He handed me the letter. “His wife,” he said. “D’ye think Dottie kens where Denny is? Or d’ye think she’s maybe with him?”
“In prison?” I asked, incredulous. It had been nearly a year since we’d last seen Denzell and Dottie, and at sight of the words “Doctor Hunter” my hand had gone involuntarily to my side. The small scar where Denny had removed a musket ball from my liver after the Battle of Monmouth had healed well, but I still felt a deep twinge in my side when I turned to reach for something—and I still woke suddenly now and then in the middle of the night with a sense of deep confusion, my body vibrating with the memory of impact. The body forms internal scars as well as surface scars when a wound heals—and so does the mind.
“Perhaps.” The frown had faded, but he still looked troubled. “In the town, at least. She could help him,” he added, in answer to my puzzled expression. “Food, medicine, blankets. He got a message out, aye?” He waved the paper.
Dottie could be in the prison, at that, I realized, though probably not as a prisoner herself. It wasn’t unknown for wives—and sometimes children—to go to live with an imprisoned husband, going out by day to beg for food or perhaps to find a little work. Prisoners were normally fed poorly and sometimes not fed at all, being forced to rely on help from families or friends, or from charitably inclined souls in the community, if they were imprisoned far from home. Likely wives wouldn’t be allowed in a military prison, though …
“Have you got any paper in your study?” I asked, sliding off the log.
“Aye. Why?” He folded the letter, raising a brow at me.
“I’m going to write to John Grey,” I said, trying to sound as though this were both a simple and an obvious thing to do. Well, it was obvious. Or so I thought.
“No, you’re not.” He said it calmly, though his answer had come so fast, I thought he’d said it from pure reflex. Then I looked at his eyes. I straightened my back, folded my arms, and fixed him with a stare of my own.
“Would you care to rephrase that?” I said politely.
One of the benefits of long marriage is that you can see quite clearly where some conversations are likely to lead—and occasionally you can sidestep the booby traps and choose another path by silent mutual assent. He pursed his lips a little, looking thoughtfully up at me. Then he took a deep breath and nodded.
“Dorothea will write to her father, if she hasna done it already,” he said reasonably. He tucked Judah’s letter into his sporran and stood up. “His Grace will do whatever can be done.”
“We don’t know that Dottie can write to her father. She may not be near Denzell—she may not even know that he’s in prison! For that matter, we don’t know where Hal—er, I mean the duke—is, either,” I added. Bloody hell, I shouldn’t have called Hal by his first name … “But he and John can both be found, at least. The British army certainly knows where they are.”
“By the time I sent a message to Savannah or New York, Denzell will likely have been released, or paroled. Or moved.”