The Tory Widow Read Free

As Jack Hampton disappeared amid the raucous throng, Anne felt her heart spin away and clatter, like a bucket lost down the depths of a deep, deep well.
    No. It was never in her nature to own that kind of reckless courage.
    Anne flinched when Peter Merrick grasped her by the shoulder.
    â€œCome along, Mrs. Merrick . . . your father assures me you’ve a deft hand at setting type. We’ve work to do today—a special edition at the least.”
    Anne took her husband’s proffered arm and he led her beyond the joyous din to begin her new life.

PART ONE
    Revolution
    By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
    RALPH WALDO EMERSON

CHAPTER ONE
    Oye that love mankind!
Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny,
but the tyrant, stand forth!
    THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense
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    May 1775
New York City
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    A strong breeze blowing in off the bay caught in the black wool of her skirts, propelling Anne Merrick across Broad Way at a smart pace. Dodging carriages and carts, she clutched the jute string wrapped around the package with her right hand, kept the plain cotton bonnet from flying off her head with her left, and zigzagged a path across the cobbled thoroughfare.
    Anne was not in the habit of making deliveries, but her pressman, Titus, was busy finishing a print run, and Sally, her servant girl, was late in returning from the ink seller. The rector at St. Paul’s paid a premium to have copies of his latest sermon delivered by Evensong, and times being what they were, Anne could not afford to lose yet another customer.
    Merrick Press & Stationers was located at the tip of the island off the corner of the narrow alley connecting Duke and Dock streets, and Anne did not often find reason to stray to the west side of town. With French heels tapping a brisk rhythm on the redbrick walk, she coursed a straight path past a row of stately mansions, noting many were shuttered and deserted by their owners. When news of Lexington and Concord galloped into town, more than a few Loyalist New Yorkers fearing Patriot malcontents closed their homes and boarded the first available packet bound for England.
    Patriots and Loyalists . . .
    How quickly the tides had shifted. Rebels and Englishmen was how Mr. Merrick would refer to them if he were yet alive. Her husband’s Loyalist sentiments had earned him the custom of a likewise devoted clientele and he prospered by his beliefs. A staunch supporter of the Crown until his dying day, Merrick was.
    Anne had once been avid to follow the politics of the day, collecting pamphlets and broadsides, always combing the papers for the latest news from London, Boston and Philadelphia. She weathered several of Merrick ’s stern rebukes in regard to her pro-Whig sympathies, and quickly learned to keep her reading material and her opinions to herself. After Jemmy was born, Anne found little opportunity to indulge in clandestine intellectual pursuits, and her interest in current events waned.
    In truth, the simultaneous loss of both her husband and her little boy to smallpox three years before sapped Anne of ardent feeling for anything—politics in particular. On most days, it was all she could do to swing legs from bed and tend to her printing business, much less give a fig for the ever-fickle ideologies of men. Anne lifted her skirts and picked a path through a rank pile of dung occupying the center of the walk. Loyalists and Patriots . . .
    The city teemed with newly professed Patriots who’d not a month before boasted lifelong fealty to their Sovereign. It was beyond her ken as to who were the worse—those with ideologies malleable enough to bend with whatever wind enriched their purses, or the fanatics, who by threat and violence forced their unyielding notions down the gullets of all.
    Taxation, tyranny, the rights of free