“And then what? After you have made me disappear . . . then what?”
He ground his teeth in protest of my description, but he did not argue my point. “When I have been released of my command, we will go to Lenox.”
“Oh, John,” I mourned.
“What, Deborah? What?” He was growing increasingly vexed.
“I don’t think you understand,” I whispered.
“What don’t I understand?” he hissed back. “Do you think I don’t know exactly who you are?”
I closed my eyes and breathed him in for a moment, allowing myself to bask in his affection before I warned him away. “In Middleborough, and probably Taunton and Plympton too, Deborah Samson is a laughingstock. No one knows what I’ve done, but they know what I tried to do. They know I put on men’s clothes and tried to enlist. They know I drank too much in Sproat’s Tavern, and my name was taken off the rolls of both churches.”
He grinned and threw back his handsome head, laughing silently, but his smile faded when he saw my anguish.
“Perhaps it is you who doesn’t understand,” he murmured. “You won’t have to go back. Ever. You will come home with me. You will be Deborah Paterson. You will be my wife.”
“But I won’t ever cease to be Deborah Samson. Eventually someone will make the connection. It is the same colony, after all. People will talk about Deborah Samson, the woman who dressed up like a man and tried to join the regimentals. The men you have served with will find out. People in Lenox will find out, and they will shun me. They might shun you. They might shun your children.”
That gave him pause. He stared down at me, suddenly bereft.
“Have I not given enough for my country?” he asked. “Must I have nothing for myself?”
“Have they—have your children—not given enough? Do you want your children to have me as a mother? Do you want your family to have me as a sister?”
“Yes,” he retorted. “I do.”
“Oh, John. You don’t have to do this. I am not your responsibility.”
“Is that what you think this is? You think I am being selfless? You think I feel responsible for you?” He stretched out atop me, his big body covering mine, his arms braced on either side of my head. I could not breathe, I could not escape, and I did not want to. He kissed me then, suckling my lips as if he would draw submission from my throat.
“You do,” I panted against his mouth. “You feel responsible.”
“Deborah,” he warned, withdrawing enough to shake his head. “Cease this.”
“It is an admirable quality. And one I understand.” I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his throat, nuzzling the hollow I’d longed to kiss a hundred times. It tasted of leather and salt. It tasted of him, and I loved him so much it was all I could do not to sink my teeth into him and swallow him whole.
He groaned into my hair. “So it is all well and good if you take on every responsibility. It is nothing that you constantly shoulder more than you should be able to carry, that you’ve done so all your life, and done it well. I love you, desperately, but somehow it is wrong if I also feel responsible for you?”
“It is enough for me that you love me.”
He reared back onto his knees, breaking my embrace, depriving me of the weight and the press of him, the flavor and the heat. And he glowered down at me.
“It should not be. It should not be enough for you, Samson. It is certainly not enough for me.”
I reached for him, but he shook his head in warning. “Stay there, dammit.”
He fisted his hands in his hair and closed his eyes. I was convinced he prayed, though his mouth didn’t move and his head didn’t bow.
“We will marry,” he said when he finished, resolute.
“General . . .”
“You will marry me, Deborah Samson. So help me God.”
“That is really what you want?” Joy and trepidation filled my chest. “Truly?”
“I have never wanted something so much in all my life.”
25
THE NECESSITY WHICH CONSTRAINS THEM
We arrived on the morning of October 3, fifteen hundred men from four regiments, along with General Howe and his aides, only to learn that the mutineers had been dispersed and the conflict was over. We rode into the city to survey the damage, but left the troops camped at the edge of town. I would have liked to explore, but the general was immediately swept into meetings, and I attended at his side, marveling at his patience and the respect he commanded.