The Rebellion of Jane Clarke by Sally Gunning Page B

thing it is to have my sister here in town, although I’d like to know what our father was thinking to set you loose here just now.”
    At the word loose Jane looked over Nate’s shoulder toward her aunt, and Nate grinned. He understood her yet—nothing would be loose at Aunt Gill’s. Some of the hollowness that had filled Jane since she’d arrived in town evaporated. She opened her mouth to ask the first of her many questions lying in wait for her brother, but she was too late—the inquisition had begun. How like her father her aunt was, Jane thought—so uneasy over the subject of politics and yet unable to leave it alone, batting at it again and again as a cat might bat a string.
    The questions went on and on. What did Nate think of Mr. John Adams? What case did he work on? Had he met any of the other influential people in town—James Otis, perhaps, or John Adams’s cousin Sam, or the wealthy John Hancock, the one they called the rebels’ milch cow? Nate answered it all, sounding like the lawyer he’d not quite become, so much so that Jane found herself looking at him again and again, losing the brother again and again; the talk went on so long she itched to send her aunt from the room, her aunt whose kindness alone could account for her brother’s being there at all. But just as she feared her impatience had begun to show, Aunt Gill called for Martha, pleaded an old woman’s fatigue, and asked to be taken to her room. Intentional or no, it was a double gift the old woman left Jane—to have the long-absent brother to herself at last, and to have been excused her nightly duty besides. For the first time, something of Jane’s heart went after the old woman as she left the room.
    Jane’s trouble now lay in the fact that she’d built up such a great store of questions for her brother that they’d dammed up in her throat. She wanted to know of her brother’s health, of course; she wanted to know how he liked his rooms on Cold Lane; she wanted to know if he knew the John Adams that she felt she knew—the man who could cradle another man’s messy babe in his arms. She wanted to know if there was a lady in his life, and what about the qui tam, and whether he’d heard about Winslow’s horse. She wanted to know what he knew of Phinnie Paine.
    Such were Jane’s thoughts, but as well as she knew her brother it shouldn’t have surprised her—in truth it didn’t surprise her—that his thoughts would still be on the politics of the town.
    “Well, Jane, I suppose by now you’ve been able to observe for yourself what a fine prison these bloody soldiers have us in.”
    “I’ve only observed a few at their posts.”
    “ ’Tis enough, then. But we’ll get them gone.”
    “So you’re a ‘we’ now?”
    “And you’re not? Don’t tell me you take up our father’s view. But why shouldn’t you? You eat his food, why not his words? He won’t. Hah!”
    Jane smiled, not at the poor joke but at the hah, a perfect copy of their father’s. “You must give our father some credit, Nate. After all, he sent you to clerk for a man whose view he must strongly oppose.”
    “He sent me to clerk for the man he believes the best lawyer in town. He has his plans for me.”
    “He wants things for you, yes.”
    “He wants things from me.”
    Jane peered at her brother. How bitter he sounded! But then again, Jane might join him in that bitterness now. She need only tell him what their father had done to her over Phinnie and they’d be together again. But where to begin it? Jane thought back over the recent events and could think of nothing but the horse, which had nothing to do with Phinnie at all. But she said, because she couldn’t seem to move it out of the way, “Someone cut off the ears of Winslow’s horse.”
    It was as if Nate hadn’t heard. Was Satucket of so little concern to him now? He stood up. “Adams is on the circuit at Maine. I’ve his work and mine to tend. I must go. Keep away from the soldiers,