Fate and Fair Winds

Philadelphia, July 10, 1776 Rebecca sat down at the river to clear her head. Lovely ships, their sails and lines speaking of faraway places, drew her in and let her forget how angry she was. She opened her book and started sketching the graceful Queen Bess. She was a three masted merchantman with a fantastic figurehead of a beautiful red headed mermaid. As she finished, a shadow fell over her work. She looked up to see a tall man with ice blue eyes staring over her shoulder. He offered to buy her sketch, and to take her to lunch. Might he also offer something else? A way to captain her own fate - if only in a small private way? John FitzSimmon had been touring America at his leisure. He found it a remarkable place, ripe with promise and beauty. On his way from the southern ports of Savannah and Charleston to his regiment and assignment with the British Army in New York, he stopped at Philadelphia to rendezvous with his brother, and their ship. The sketch of the Bess was good, but the soft blond hair escaping the demure white cap - the gray-blue eyes searching his own from the clear, earnest face were beautiful. Over the next days, this Columbia will challenge John to help her attain a tiny slice of independence, to give her one night of passion before she is forced to warm a drunken widower's bed. Ready to face life apart, war and circumstance bring John and Rebecca together under the same roof, but as enemies. Will it be possible for a British lieutenant to make a safe home for an American patriot when the road is blocked from all sides? IN A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN, THE ONLY RIGHT - MAY BE LOVE.