The windows in the sitting room were propped open to allow in the breeze, though it did little to dissipate the summer heat, even at the morning hour of ten o'clock. Bethiah did not mind the heat too much on most days, and she minded it even less as she read the paper's latest account of the aftermath of the great battle that had so recently taken place in New Jersey, near a place called Monmouth. She had been quite pleased to read of how General Washington's army had caught General Clinton's on its march from Philadelphia, and fought so bravely that the British had slunk away in the night to avoid battling again the following day. The papers called it a heroic victory, and she thought it was as well.

She had not truly despised the British army or wholly supported the American cause until that winter, when she and her father had been forced to flee to the home of a lately widowed aunt to avoid the occupation of the Philadelphia by the British army. Though her aunt's home had been pleasant enough, they had remained close enough to the city to have still felt the effects of the occupation. When they had at last felt it safe to return to the city after it had been abandoned by the British, they had found their home all but destroyed by whatever military men had taken it for their own for the winter. Many of the homes of those who had left the city had been found in a similar state, and the city had been in a general mess. As most businesses remained closed still, little had improved.

She had heard many tales of hardship and suffering recounted by those who had remained within the city during the occupation, and was all the happier to know the army that had caused so much difficulty had been bested in battle. Perhaps they had not been soundly defeated, but they had not been victorious. Citizens of Philadelphia had starved to feed the army, had been forced to open their homes to the soldiers and had been abused for them. The people of Philadelphia had been subject to the whims of the occupying British army. Even the Tories had endured shortages and difficulties, though it was partially hidden by distracting dances and plays, she had heard. Hearing of it all, and enduring what they had not far from the city, had caused Bethiah and her father both to begin embracing more rebellious sympathies. Writing to her fiancé in Boston, her dear friend Levi Finley, had only increased these sympathies, though she had never received a letter in response once the siege began. She hoped all was well for him in Boston.

Despite all this, she did not wish ill on the British soldiers themselves. She wished that their commanders and the king would see the barbarity of war and bring peace soon.

"And there is Miss Rogers, always reading the papers."

Bethiah was startled by the voice and stood, forcing herself to smile at Lucas Osborn, a friend of her father's and a lawyer as he was. He was nearly fifty years in age, dressed well despite the shortages in everything within the city, and wore a wig to hide the growing bald patch in his hair. He was also of a heavier weight than much of the rest of Philadelphia was after the winter of little food. Hosting a high-ranking officer had benefited him, it appeared. Next to him, her father was small and less gentlemanly in appearance. His suit was more worn, he was thinner, and he'd had his wig stolen by the officer who'd been staying at their house.

"Good morning Mr. Osborn," she said politely. "I didn't hear you come in."

He smiled. "We just arrived to discuss a case your father is assisting me with, as I value his opinion greatly." He stepped close and looked at the paper she had been reading. "Ah, I would not fret your pretty mind with such news of this war. It will all be over before too much longer. The French are of no concern and Washington's army of farmers will soon grow tired. All will be well enough here soon."

Bethiah supposed she should have known what his opinion of the war would be. "I thought you to be a man of reason," she commented coldly. 

He chuckled. "I am. Now, perhaps you should put away the papers and look for a husband instead, one who is quite a bit more fit than that Finley boy. You wouldn't feel so compelled to fill your head with nonsense if you had a child or two to properly raise. I have found my life quite empty since my dear wife died. Perhaps your father would think it wise for us to wed so that I may help you to end whatever delusions you might have about the future here."

Before Bethiah could slap him as she wished to, her father spoke.

"Bethiah is free to choose the husband she most desires, and I have already given my blessing to the future vows between her and Mr. Finley. I don't believe you are someone she considers an eligible suitor, were she to break the engagement. She has known you nearly all her life. You are nearly an uncle to her."

Bethiah grated out the words, "He is quite correct. Marrying an uncle would be rather strange for me."

"But I am not your uncle," Mr. Osborn replied. Then he sighed. "Very well, I will abandon the argument for the moment. I hope that no one else sweeps in before I can convince you that your current arrangement is a foolish one."

Bethiah was certain no one would convince her of such a thing, as she and Levi Finley had been engaged, in word at least, since they were children, and she doubted either of them would seek to change their satisfactory arrangement. She nodded to Mr. Osborn and her father, then gathered the papers and took them to her room to continue reading in peace.

Some time later there was a knock on her door and her father entered. He smiled when he saw her writing in her journal about the things she had read that morning, and the experience of learning for certain that Mr. Osborn was a Tory.

"Has he gone?" she asked, setting her writing aside.

"He has," her father replied. "I told him I did not appreciate him being so forward with you, as well. Attempting to break your engagement with Levi is ungentlemanly."

"I have never thought I would marry anyone but Levi," she admitted. "We have been friends since we were young."

"And neither of you desire children," he added, sitting down in the second chair at the room's small table. "You have made that clear from an early age. Unless your opinion has changed now that you are formally engaged?"

He sounded as if he were perhaps attempting to ask another question, but she could not explain more about the arrangement without betraying Levi's trust. She would never betray him.

Bethiah twirled her quill absently between her fingers. "I do still disagree with the idea of children. Marriage I could endure if my husband was kind, and Levi always has been. Mr. Osborn has never been truly kind to me. He has always wanted something from me, and I have never liked that. The way he looks at me is like a cat looking at a mouse it is about to toy with and then kill."

Her father sighed. "I would have broken off all my ties with him long ago if he were not such an excellent help in many of the cases I take. I would have reported his Tory leanings as well, but for my desire to see everyone given the freedom to follow whatever belief they have, be it religious or political. Though having him arrested would have kept him from bothering you and, to be frank, given me some small satisfaction."

Bethiah had always respected her father's steadfast holding to his personal beliefs in this regard, despite how vigorously the Pennsylvania leaders had attempted to end all Tory sympathies and enforce the rebel cause since the war had begun. In many ways, she agreed with his views, but in the specific detail of Mr. Osborn, she wished he would have been ensnared by the political workings long ago.

"Providing well for you has been my only concern since the day you came into my life and your mother left it," her father continued. "That is why I have refused all demands to join the militia and why I took you from the city when the British arrived, regardless of the costs."

She reached across the small table and tightly gripped his hand. All this talk of marriage had her wondering and wishing to change the focus of the conversation from herself and Levi. "Why is it that you never married again then?" she asked. "You've never truly told me."

He smiled and squeezed her hand gently. "Your mother was everything to me. To even consider sharing my life with another in her place was too unbearable a thought to me. Many women made the attempt to interest me, but I knew none of them could truly be a mother to you. I know many do not agree with me, but I believed it was a shame to her memory to expect another woman to raise you as a daughter. It is my duty alone to care for you, though your grandmother helped considerably when you were very young, and of course your aunt Maggie. I needed to continue working to have the money to give you all that you needed and they helped me more than I can ever repay."

Bethiah smiled. "Mother must have been quite wonderful for a man to remember her in such a way."

He nodded. "She truly was. I have never stopped loving her or missing her to this day."

"Is that why you have never encouraged me to marry the first respectable suitor to knock on the door and put aside the son of a smuggler?"

"Partly," he explained, smiling softly. "I wished for you to choose someone who would always be good to you, not simply one with means to give you what he supposes any wife would want. I also did not want to lose you quite yet, but I am prepared for when that day comes. You can't stay here forever if there is someone who you wish to marry."

He was quiet for a moment, then went on, "I also worry about you having children. You always said as a girl that you want none, but they tell me many women who say that while they are young and unmarried decide they truly do want children when they are older or married. And, of course, having a husband makes it more challenging to avoid having children. I don't wish to endure your loss as I endured your mother's. To see her fighting against death before my eyes while the doctor could do nothing for her is not a torture I wish any man to endure when the one before him is the woman he cherishes above all else in this world."

She squeezed his hand again when she noticed, as he looked away from her, the tears he tried to hide. He didn't often speak of her mother or how she had died, only that it had been related to Bethiah's birth. Her father had never done anything to make her feel that her mother's death had been her fault, only loved her without question, but now she felt a strange sense of guilt that she had never experienced before.

"I assure you, I will not be having children," she told him. "I would much prefer to establish a business or assist a husband with one, as I will be doing with Levi." And Jasper, she added to herself. "I've been learning much with Ms. Goodwell at the millinery. It makes for a good use of time until we're permitted to open again, which I hope is soon. She has made a good life for herself without a husband all these years." 

He smiled faintly at her, his eyes dry once more. "I pray Levi is forever a good man then, one who understands and accepts what you do and do not want."

She returned the smile in kind. "I will hope for the same."