Part One

Massachusetts

Chapter One:

Stoughton

1774

When news that Thomas Braxton had returned to Stoughton reached Abigail Brewer she went immediately to his estate on the edge of town. Gloves on, bonnet fastened tightly around her head, she arrived out of breath with flushed cheeks, unsure if she would even be admitted entrance into the man's previously abandoned manse. She knocked and waited, a cool chill coursing through her and erupting in a little fit of shivers. Winter would be coming soon and she was quite sure that the snows would fall within the next month or so. As a child she had always loved the fall season, but now she saw it only with foreboding reluctance.

The door swung open and she turned, ready to introduce herself to the servant, but she was surprised to find Braxton's personal manservant standing there. He raised his eyebrows and said nothing, noting her dress with barely concealed contempt. He was an older man, one she had seen often when Thomas Braxton was still a man of prominence in the town.

"I… I've come to speak with Mr. Braxton," she said and the man quirked an eyebrow. Abraham Walsh was his name she suddenly remembered. Always curt with the town's people the man had been born, raised and trained in London and considered himself, as all the British seemed to, above the lowly provincials he was now forced to deal with due to an unfortunate series of circumstances he had never shared in any real detail with anybody.

"Mr. Braxton is not receiving visitors," he answered shortly and moved to shut the door.

"Please, sir, it is very important that I speak to him," she pleaded and he lowered one eyebrow so he could quirk the other.

"I have my instructions," he answered and without another word the door was shut, the wood grazing her nose with a loud thud and she stood there a moment completely and utterly stunned. Never had she been treated, despite her birth, with such a lack of manners. Mr. Braxton, at least before the unfortunate incident, would have been horrified if he had seen the way in which she had been treated by a man in his employ. Mr. Braxton had always been the most courteous of gentleman, always stopping to speak with the townspeople, no matter what their standing.

She considered knocking again but knew the door would now remain unanswered. She wondered why Abraham Walsh would answer the door and not a doorman. Mr. Braxton's home had always been bustling and beautiful, servants running about to manage the household. He always had guests and visitors and he loved to entertain. Now the house looked grim, cold and austere and it looked like not a single person stirred inside.

She sighed, feeling her hope come dashing down around her feet, and she walked down the steps. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her as another cold breeze came swirling up around and she looked back at the house before making the long, cold walk back home. She wondered if her father deserved the death he received or if it was merely a tragic coincidence. She could not help but feel though, that his death, coming so quickly and so poetically after Mr. Braxton was taken to Boston, that it was God's punishment. She could only pray, and she did every night, that her father had paid the price for both he and her brother and that he would not die fighting in a rebellious army.

She was about to turn away, wondering how she was going to feed her younger brother and sister tonight when she saw movement on the third floor window. She frowned and squinted, trying to better see what was stirring behind the window pane. Another breeze wracked through her and she tightened her cloak around her but she did not move her gaze from the window.

She saw a silhouette, undoubtedly the silhouette of a man. It was tall and looming in the window, looking down at her and she knew it was Mr. Braxton. Walsh was not nearly tall enough to leave such a silhouette in the window and she remembered Mr. Braxton before it happened. He had been tall and broad, a man in wonderful shape. She remembered how childish she had been when she first saw them strip of his jacket and vest, leaving him in just his breeches and shirt. She had blushed and giggled, hardly understanding, until the taunts turned more vicious and a club came crashing down on the top of his head. Now when she thought of the sight of his lean body being ripped of all his clothing from the waist up, it was not with childish or girlish thoughts but those of horror.

The screams when the hot tar was poured over his body. The only thing she could take comfort in was the fact that her father had not poured it over his head, but over his shoulders, chest and back. The feathers had brought about laughs and tears and when he they finally let him drop from the rough, wooden bar they had forced him to ride, dark, red blood had pooled on the breeches of his inner thigh, and he clutched at it was feeble hands. It was with shame that she remembered her bother delivering one of the kicks to the face that rendered him unconscious. Were it not for Abraham Walsh and the town magistrate running to his rescue, he would have been beaten death where he lay, bleeding, burned, and unconscious.

"The skin is falling from his back in strips," the doctor sent for from Boston had been heard saying at the tavern the next day. "Once he is able, I think it is in his best interest to go to Boston for better treatment."

She kept looking up at the window, the sound of him screaming returning to her. Slowly she raised a hand but did not wave it. She hoped that at the very least he could see that she did not think what had been done to him was justified, that she was sorry and she would take it back if she could. Instead she watched the curtain fall and the silhouette disappear. Feeling totally dejected and hopefully she turned to leave and headed back home to prepare for a long and possibly deadly winter.

O

She had been leaving the tavern where she had been begging Mr. Mathews to let her work even a day or two for a little coin, just during the summer, when Mr. Walsh appeared driving a carriage, hat on his head, thick coat on his shoulders and reigns held in hands clad in real leather gloves. She had looked at him a moment and turned to walk further down the street when he called her name and she turned, as confused as she was surprised. When he informed her that if she still required an audience with Mr. Braxton she would have to be at his home no later than twelve o'clock on Saturday she made sure that she arrived precisely at eleven o'clock.

Mr. Walsh brought her into the home and she found it freezing cold and though still fully furnished, empty. There was not a sound save the sound of Mr. Walsh helping her from her cloak and hanging it by the door. A shiver coursed through her but she did her very best to mask it.

"Where are the servants?" she asked Mr. Walsh but he did not answer her. Instead he motioned for her to follow and began walking up the steps. She followed, knots forming in her stomach as she thought about facing the man her family had done such terrible wrong to and then asking him such an unbelievable favor. She only hoped that his good will and kindness had not been morphed, warped and twisted into anger and a desire for revenge.

Walsh stopped them on the third floor and brought her down the hall to the last room. She noted that the room she was brought to would have been the very same room that she had seen the silhouette watching her from a few days before. She followed Walsh inside and found herself met with an empty room. When Walsh opened his mouth and announced her she looked around in confusion.

It was not until she saw an arm raised to the arm of a chair and Mr. Braxton leaned forward to look around the chair he was seated in that she saw him. The room, unlike the rest of the house, was warm, incredibly warm, and she could not help but think he must be hot sitting there so close to the fire. His eyes found her, dark brown eyes hard and cold, and she felt her breath leave her a moment. It was not until he turned back to the fire and once against disappeared from view that she sucked in another breath.

"Thank you, Abraham," he said and his hand came into view long enough for him to wave a hand dismissively. Silence consumed the room as Walsh left, closing the door behind them, and she waited. The silence stretched on for what felt like an eternity and she licked her lips nervously, wondering if he was waiting for her to speak or not. Still, her vocal cords would not work and she waited, staring into the fire. Her heart pounded, palms sweated, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard him shift and he pushed himself to his feet by the arms of the chair.

He was taller than she had remembered and she credited it to the look on his face. He was so morose that he seemed like a dangerous animal and she flinched when she glared at her, grabbing his cane and using it to slowly limp over to the window. His limp was pronounced and she saw the blood once again staining his tan breeches of his inner thigh as he lay in the dust, burned and swollen, covered in feathers, jeers being called to his unconscious body. He held his body oddly, his torso slightly turned to the side, but other than those to attributes he looked the same.

He would be thirty three now and but looked the same as the day he before his attack. Handsome with wavy brown hair and brown eyes, fair skinned, though not excessively pale. Harvard educated and a degree in law, he had been the pride of their small community before he made his public proclamation that he would forever be loyal to King George III and added that anyone that questioned an act of parliament was a traitor to his nation.

"Well, Miss Brewer," he said, voice deep baritone and grating. He wore a simple black suit, though well made, and his collar was worn high, cravat puffed up to cover most of his neck, and she could see no signs of the burns that supposedly covered the man's torso.

"It is so good to see you well, Mr. Braxton," she stared and he waved a dismissive hand at her and turned to gaze out the window, holding the curtain back.

"Your purpose here, Miss Brewer. State it or leave me in peace of your mindless prattling."

She colored but nodded, wetting her lips with her tongue before she continued.

"I have come to ask a favor of you, sir."

It was the strangled, contemptuous chortle, that had her frightened to go on. She stared at his broad back and then looked down to his calves as they flexed underneath his white stockings.

"What do you require of me then, Miss Brewer?" he asked and still staring out the window.

"My father his dead," she said and ignored his satisfied "humph". "My brother has left to join the rebellion. I… I have run out of means to feed Charlotte and George."

He turned his head at that, but he did not yet look at her. Instead she got a view of his profile but he made no sign he was going to speak and she continued.

"I can cook and clean. I have been running my house since my mother died. I know it is not nearly as grand as this house, but I have experience. And… and with only Mr. Walsh in the house… that is to say. I can do laundry as well."

"You come to me with this favor," he mused more to himself than to her. A few long moments passed and she waited, throat tight and aching.

"Leave."

The single word hit her hard in the face and she felt like the wind was knocked out of her. She had expected it, and yet she was shocked he was going to send her away. Mr. Braxton had never been this cold, this unfeeling.

"Mr. Braxton, please I am begging you," she said, tears in her eyes. "George is five. Charlotte is eight. I can't feed them."

"That is no concern of mine," he said and her lips parted.

"But… you have the means… I am willing to work. I will work very hard," she said, lips trembling. He turned and she paused, hope budding in her chest, but he only limped over to his desk and rang a bell. Walsh came in seconds later and she felt her heart break.

"Remove her from my presence," he said and began moving back to her chair.

"Miss Brewer," Walsh said and waited for her to leave the room with him. She paused a moment, staring at the chair that hid Mr. Braxton from her view, and she refused to let her tears fall.

"Neither I nor George, nor Charlotte, ever meant you any harm," she said softly. She waited, wondering if there would be any sign of movement, a noise, or even a grunt in response, but nothing came. Slowly she nodded and looked to Walsh. He looked down as they made eye contact and she left the house, a lump in her throat. As she made to walk home she did not turn to look, but she could feel his eyes on her as she left the house.

O

A/N: I've been struggling immensely with writer's block. I'm in a Loyalist American class right now, and I tend to be inspired by what I am learning about in school or what I am reading.

Hopefully people will stick with me in the meantime.

Feedback really get's the juices flowing. Hopefully you will enjoy it, but let me know what you think.