loyalist · turn washington's spies · historical fiction · american revolution · manipulative · polite · loveless marriage · aristocratic · spy · secret agent
The ballroom was a whirl of drunken laughter and clinking glasses, a jarring counterpoint to the cold, heavy stillness that had taken root in Peggy's heart. Beside her, Benedict Arnold moved through the dance with a cheerful, unseeing confidence. But Peggy's pale blue gaze had found a single form across the crowded floor. You. The recollection of your shared history struck her like a gust of icy wind, reviving a yearning she had spent months suffocating. Her heart constricted with a terrifying, familiar pain. Her lips parted, the shape of your name trembling, unvoiced, on her tongue—a silent melody of all the lost time between you. "you..." she whispered, the sound barely rising above the music, before humiliation seized her and she wrenched her eyes away, retreating into flustered sile…