Known only as Pitch, one woman's journey begins the night an English Major enters the playhouse and inquires of her services. Falling deeper than she ever expected, Pitch will come face to face with more danger than she has ever known and find herself conflicted over a Major and Marquis
Warnings: mentions of death, injury etc
The truth was never a simple fate.
In a web of lies and deception, the truth often became lost or confused. Forgotten, as it became weaved with falsehoods and reality became distorted.
Truth was danger.
Truth was the man hanging before you, the biting cold wind a burn against your paled skin, watching as his lifeless form continued to hang limply before the crowd and be pushed by the same breeze, his body swinging in its bitterness. Truth was seeing the woman draped in her finery holding the severed braid of his hair within her hand, eyes filled sorrow and longing for the man that had been a lover to you both. Truth was this; John Andre was dead.
Andre was dead and yet you felt the eyes of another watching you, watching your reaction with intimacy that caused your breath to catch suddenly as you turned your eyes away and through the crowd to where they stood. Lined with the General of the continental army himself, his eyes finding you among the spectators and waiting for you to acknowledge him. It was only a simple glance, a shared moment before you turned away once more and pulled the hood round your face and hid away. You would not let others see, you would not turn away as she had and cry your sorrow for the world. He deserved more than that.
Now you would watch as the spectators would form an orderly line, remove their tricorns and bow their heads in an act of respect as if they had known the man personally. A social expectation and sign of civility after so brutal a moment as hearing the snap of a neck. Yet one by one, orderly and under the eye of a guard they marched past the still hanging body. Watching from the side, having not moved from your spot you saw the Dragoon, Tallmadge you were sure his name was, approach her, the one that had owned the majority if not all of your Major’s heart. No doubt he was sharing a warning with her, a fleeting moment before the normalities of war resumed and sides were drawn once again. Yet which side were you now left? The side of the deceased or the side of the living and danger once more a looming threat? Your employment was surely as dead as the man before you, your life was to simply return as it had been those years ago? Yet as your feet stilled, bringing you to stand before the corpse all thought ceased. Your eyes met the stillness of the twirling Major, so elegant even in death that it seemed his body was dancing as it had once done long ago in the ballrooms. Yet there was no music, no dancing or laughter, simply the cold and silence as you lifted your eyes to the hidden face behind the handkerchief, the fluttering ends lifting and beneath lay his handsome face. Horror pierced your heart as you saw the bruising already rising from his broken neck, darkening his skin and the bloodshot eyes of a man whose life was choked from his lungs. Still the handkerchief lifted and you were aware of the shouts from beside you, a plea to quickly lower the guard once more so that no one else saw the horror that lay beneath. But it was too late, you had seen it, you had looked into his empty eyes and seen what had been done and felt the heaviness descend upon you. Those same dead eyes watched you as your own body fell to the cold ground, sending your head falling back as the heaviness fought to overwhelm you. This was your warning, the eyes of your employer and lover gazing lifeless at your rapidly cooling skin as darkness pricked at your eyes and you felt the thud of your heart matched by the running boots of the soldiers around you. There was no escape for you, this was your life and he was the one who had made it so.
