FREE! In The Arms of My Enemy (Completed!) Book 1

A Spy Must Never Be Caught

Baltimore, June 21, 1812

Fidelia Atwell threw the lump of bread dough against her worn worktable, the force shaking the rickety wooden legs.

"How can you ask me to abandon my home?" she said as she dug the heel of her hand into the soft lump. She had worked bread at this table for nine years, and had worn a dent into the smooth brown surface.

Her family's tavern, an old wooden barn that her father had refurbished, was nothing posh. But the boards, smoothed by years of mist, still kept the family warm against the chill of Baltimore's harbor.

Charles, her elder brother, leaned against the table to steady it. "I'm not asking. I'm ordering."

Fidelia's copper curls were captured in a ragged scarf, but a strand had escaped to trail down her cheek. She pushed the rebel tendril out of her face with the back of her wrist and glared at him. "I am not a soldier like you."

"Which is exactly why you cannot stay." Charles' pale blue eyes, striking against his swarthy skin, warned her not to argue. "President Madison has just declared war against Great Britain. Riots rage in the streets. A man has died."

Fidelia ground the dough against the table again. The wood groaned in protest. It would give out any day now and she dreaded the cost to repair it.

After years of petty conflicts between America and her former master, Great Britain had had the audacity to force American sailors into the British navy and prohibit trade with Napoleon. President Madison had declared war against Great Britain four days ago, and that night some pro-war democrats had raided the printing office of the anti-war federalists. The printing shop had been burned, the federalists beaten in the streets, and one of the vandals had fallen out of a window.

Fool, Fidelia thought.

"We've survived riots before," she muttered as she furiously worked the dough. "Remember that riot over the doctor's learning surgery on cadavers? Many people died then and our tavern was fine."

"But now Father is gone, and this isn't like any riot we've lived through before." Charles' voice rose, and he slammed his hand on the table, "I must report to my regiment today."

Fidelia jumped. His tone sent a chill through her body and she dug her fingers into the soft lump to hide their shaking. Charles never yelled at her, not in all her 18 years.

She glared at him. "I know better than you that Father is gone. Who do you think has been feeding this family since he was killed?"

His eyes dropped to his dark blue trousers, his black suspenders hanging from the waist. It was the first time she had ever seen him in new clothes. But these were part of his military issued uniform and she wanted to retch at the sight. How could he leave them?

"All I ask is that you think of what's best for Lottie," Charles said, and his angry exterior faded away to the gentle, familiar older brother she so desperately adored.

Fidelia set the dough in a wooden bowl to rise and draped an old towel over top. Yellowed with age and fraying along the edges, her mother had used it like that when they first arrived in Baltimore ten years ago.

After peeling the dough scraps from between her fingers with her pale brown apron, she took a moment to scrape the dough from under her nails, then picked up a platter of food and shoved it into Charles' hands.

"Here," she said, "These are ready to go out." She lifted two more and followed him to the kitchen doorway, pausing to gaze through into the tavern beyond.

Her father had spent hours constructing tables of driftwood and collecting chairs cast off from ships. She could still see her mother flitting about, balancing platters full of food and rum on both hands. Fidelia blinked away the vision, her heart aching.