Read Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution for Free Online

aren't happy here."   He grasped
her shoulders again.   "You've never
tasted fine wine or felt silk against your skin.   You've never been to the Drury Lane theater or heard a
symphony.   I'm offering you a way to
experience all that."
    She considered
treasures beyond her economic reach: fine wine, silk, symphonies, the
theater.   She also thought of the times
she'd collapsed into bed, bone-tired from a printing run.   Edward's offer provided splendid passage out
of Alton, a dream women in her position would lunge for with no
reservations.   It was just the
opportunity she'd been waiting for, wasn't it?
    What would
happen if her intellectual parity with him didn't survive crossing the
Atlantic?   She sighed, still
disoriented, confused.   "I shall
consider it."
    "What's to
consider?   Ah, you don't love me, do
you?"   He paused, reflecting.   "It's hard to love in circumstances
where you're preoccupied with survival.   If you freed yourself from those fears, you might grow to love me.   And with that thought —"   He kissed her left hand again.   "I shall bid you good night."
    The rain had
slackened, so Edward retrieved his hat, and she walked him out the front
door.   Halfway back to the pressroom,
she paused, sniffed, and frowned at the faint redolence of squashed
strawberries.   When she groped her way
into the dining room, her shoe skidded on something slippery.   She fumbled a lantern lit and held it up to
view the bowl of strawberries she'd put on the table earlier and at least a
dozen berries on the floor.   With the
lantern held high, she headed for the stairs.   At the foot of the stairs she spotted a man's boot print: a man who had
stepped in strawberries.
    Her stomach
tensed, and her gaze leaped up the staircase.   "Father?   Are you
there?"   Receiving no answer, she
returned to the dining room and noticed another boot print.   An explanation spiked a chill through
her.   Burglary!   During the dance, the thief had entered
through the back door, bumped into the table, spilled strawberries, and
proceeded to the stairs, leaving two strawberry boot prints behind.
    And for all
she knew, he might still be in the house with her that moment.
    Chapter Four
    SOPHIE RUSHED
TO the front door and flung it open, but the soldiers had already ridden off
into the steamy night sprinkle.   After
shutting the door, she braced herself against it until her knees stopped
knocking.   Then, anger coating her fear,
she squared her shoulders, marched into the pressroom, and flung open the
cabinet where Will kept one of two sets of pistols in the house.   No thief was going to steal her family's
property.
    At the foot of
the stairs, she reexamined the print, made by a man with larger feet than her
father's, so the culprit had probably been taller.   The lantern held aloft, she crept to the landing, loaded pistol
ready, her breath sucked in soft gasps.
    For a dozen
heartbeats, she listened to the sough of wind, creaking boards, and raindrops
spattering the roof from branches of fruit trees.   Then she nudged bedroom doors open, one by one.
    No one jumped
at her from the four bedrooms.   However,
someone had searched her room and her father's room — drawers left ajar with
their contents jumbled, furniture repositioned, beds mussed.
    Loath to verify
the plunder of her mother's jewelry in her own room, she found it untouched, as
were Spanish doubloons and two century-old horse pistols in her father's
room.   Baffled, she lit Will's bedroom
lantern.   What was he searching for, the
stranger who violated their privacy earlier that night?
    Instinct wailed
that something was missing, something small but not insignificant.   She glanced over the nightstand and retraced
steps she'd made earlier, when she'd shut her father's window before leaving
for the dance.   Her gaze returned to the
nightstand.   Had a peculiar book been
sitting there?   Confessions by
St. Augustine, a gift her father mentioned receiving