He laughed. "My dear girl that is why I want you to go, so I will not be so bored. But I have to go, make no mistake; it’s part of my duty. You entertain me, and I mean that in the best possible way. Come now, Katie, have pity on the old man."
Ambrose Standish was only about ten years older than Kate, but he looked much more. I hope he looks older anyway, she thought, given what she’d been through recently. She touched her face and tried to remember the last time she had seen him this close. It had been years.
His waist was now flabby and hung out between breeches that were too tight and a waistcoat that was cut too short. He had a double chin, as always, for it ran in his family. His eyes were very dark, almost black, like his grandmother. They were large eyes, but he had a way of looking at you that made them slant nearly shut.
His fine, thin skin seemed stretched too tight on his face, and it brought out the pink of the jagged scar on his neck and one near an ear. She had known him since childhood; still she didn’t know how he had gotten them.
He had sparse eyebrows and white lashes, and his long ginger hair was grey at the temples. The effect made it seem like his hair wasn’t there. It also made his face look too big.
But he had good teeth, big and yellow, except for one missing toward the back on each side. That, combined with his black eyes and the smile that seemed wide and constant, but rarely sincere, made his head appear to look just like a jack o'lantern sometimes.
Kate didn't like to look at him for too long. She didn't actually dislike him. Sometimes he made her laugh, but sometimes he made her feel homesick. Her feelings were not strong either way, so she never made a point to avoid him, nor find him anywhere either.
He noticed the bottle of liquor she had left nestled in the hay near the trunk.
He pointed to it and said, "Hello, where did you get the Scotch?"
"How did you know it was Scotch?"
"My dear, please." He patted his chest and shook his head in wonder at her doubt.
She shrugged. "I stole it from the captain's cabin aboard His Majesty's frigate, the Stalwart."
"Very funny. Fine, don't tell me. Is it too early for a nip, do you suppose?"
"Depends on whether you think it's already this morning’s work or still last night’s revels. Perhaps I’ve already spent too much time around our fine friend, the earl."
He studied her for a moment, and then went for the bottle. He pulled off the stopper, and his eyebrows rose as he took a great sniff. He took a swig and swished it around in his mouth.
"Eighteen years old if even a day, and I’ll wager it’s never been kissed."
Ambrose Standish had a healthy appreciation for the finer things in life. More times than not, they were the finer things of someone else's life, but he was not a man to let that stop his pleasures.
Kate said, "My conscience should be bothering me for the thief that I am, but it isn't and that's all there is to it."
She wrapped her arms around herself as her stomach growled again. She hadn't eaten last night. All she had for lunch the day before were some of the berries and seeds gathered in the park.
"Do say you'll come tonight," he said.
"I'll come, but only because I'm hungry."
He picked up one of her mother's journals and slowly turned the pages. He didn't seem to notice as she stiffened. Standish didn't look up as he said lowly, "Did you get the thing that you went looking for?"
She swallowed and pulled her arms around herself even tighter. For some reason, she felt cold. She replied, also very low, "I’m not sure that I did."
He snapped the book shut, or tried too. It only gave a dull thud. "You look a little worse for the wear. Who caught you this time, the Republicans or the Royalists?"
"Does it matter?" It didn't surprise her that he might already know the whole story. It wouldn't surprise her either if he had something to do with her release.
He put the book down. "It does if they recognize you again. You might not be safe, Kate. I know this wasn’t the first time and maybe it won’t be the last."
She gathered up the books and put them in the trunk. Then she began folding the quilt.
"Kate?"
She stopped and spoke to him with her hands on her hips. "The first time doesn’t count, we got away well enough. And the last time doesn’t matter now. They let me go, Ambrose. They didn’t say why, or goodbye, just like they didn’t say hello when they caught me. Why would they care now where I go or what I do?"
But she knew he would keep asking her until he found out something. He was like a little dog digging at a weasel’s den. The notion brought a picture to mind that made her cringe, for she knew what it was like to be cornered that way. Kate held back a sigh, for the recent experience was too raw and still confusing in her mind.
"They didn’t bother to knock, they just broke down the doors. It was less than an hour’s fast trot to Paris, but it took us much longer to reach the city for the roads on the way were crowded with people traveling in to watch the latest spectacle. More executions, I assumed.
“We had already been held for many days, weeks maybe, when an officer in the regular army discovered us. It seems he was a soldier first, a Republican second, and quite disturbed by the turn of his beloved revolution.
“He made them let me go. I don’t know why or how. Perhaps he had not intended for there to be so much blood on anyone’s hands. I could tell that he was wanting to be out of the fray. But it was too late for Louis by then. He died while they were still arguing over our fate. Perhaps that was how it was meant to be."
Ambrose said carefully, "So it goes, but he knew—“
"My mother’s cousin didn't have to die, Ambrose. He was just being stubborn. I don't believe that he knew what they were asking of him, just like I know nothing now. But he didn’t tell them that—not even that. Perhaps he figured if they were focused on him, somebody else would get away."
Ambrose Standish studied her for a moment. It seemed to be a habit of his. Finally, he offered, "Some might call him a patriot in his own fashion."
She knew he was thinking about his father’s own Tory allegiance in the American Revolution. She pushed him aside and put the quilt in the trunk. When the lid slammed shut, dust flew away and more rodents scampered.
She said, "No man deserves to die that way, patriot or traitor, hero or coward. Even a Frenchman."
"Do you really believe that?" When she didn't answer, he shrugged and continued, "Louis knew the price and the prize, even better than you. It was a gamble, he knew that too. Katie, your mother’s cousin chose his path. His way was laid out clearly for him to see. You have to believe that yourself or you'll go mad for the guilt."
She shook her head. "You believe in birth right and social order more than I do, Ambrose. I still have too many memories of frontier savagery to care about those things. Life is cruel enough without us helping it along with our false aspirations. It’s just an excuse we call civilization."
"That's what you say, Katie, and maybe your mother came to think that way too. But her bloodlines put you in France in the first place. Old relatives, new ties, trade. It comes full circle, and there’s no getting around destiny, especially your own."
After her experience of last night—especially with meeting a particular British captain—she could not disagree. But Standish didn’t have to know about that.
He added, "I believe, as many still do, that kings rule by divine right as well as their wits."
On that, she disagreed, and he knew it.
She said, “All the kings in our family died a long time ago, and whoever was left to carry on our line down through the centuries were bastards, younger sons, and useless girls.”
Her stomach grumbled, and this time it also answered itself.
"Come," he said, "before your rumblings scare the livestock."
The old man didn’t look surprised as they climbed down the ladder. Money and more interesting bribes worked everywhere. The old man had a fond
ness for toffee and cigars from the Caribbean. He didn't say anything, just nodded as the two Americans walked along the manure trough as if it were the promenade in Plymouth’s town square. The carriage horses neighed as Kate came near. She stopped to stroke a few noses.
She murmured. “Good morning, Dandy.” As Kate untied the knot in her skirt, the horse chewed gently on her sleeve.
"Another conquest, Katherine?" Ambrose said.
She glanced back. He wasn't smiling. She didn't quite understand the look in his eyes. He had never called her that before, at least to her remembering. Katherine was her mother’s name.
Of course, her father called her Katherine when she had done something only a boy was supposed to do. Or when she had done something a girl was not supposed to do. No one else called her that. Or if they had, she wasn't used to it and never noticed enough to answer.
At the warehouse door, Ambrose pointed down towards the quay. They started walking together in a stroll, but not arm in arm.
"I need a bath," she said. "I feel like I've been sleeping in a hay mound all night."
"You really don't have a room somewhere?"
"Actually, I was staying on the Wilde until a few days ago, but now it’s too dusty. I meant to get a room and a bath, but I was too busy."
Translation: The pickings in the park were too distracting. She had new bark and berries and some nice leaves too that needed proper drying time. Not to mention the liquor, which had medicinal purposes as well. What came in-between park and loft, well, he didn’t need to know that either.
He said, "So you do have a social calendar? I was lucky that you were free for dinner."
He was grinning as he opened the door to the Blue Dolphin Inn. Kate ducked inside. There were several sailors around the side tables and a few officers standing around the fire, smoking. Ambrose raised his hand to catch the innkeeper's attention, and then he pointed out a table. Kate noticed it was the farthest away from the British officers and the closest to the door.
"Are you enjoying your chosen profession," Kate asked to change the subject.
He thought for a moment, and then set his hat on the table. "Yes, I believe it's my proper calling, though the pay is something frightful."
A young woman brought them a pot of tea and two cups. Ambrose wiped them out with his handkerchief before he poured. Kate tried to fight the cringe crawling up her spine. She was sure that it showed on her face. His clothing was not so clean, and on the downwind, Ambrose smelled like the old mash left in Dandy's feeding bucket.
She lifted the cup to sip, but exclaimed in her best Indies-tainted lament, "Oh look, have a see, that’s a bug there in my own cup of tea. Miss, could you bring me another? That’s a good girl, m’dear."
Kate heard some swearing, but the woman brought another cup. The woman flipped the tea from the first cup onto the floor as she walked away. Some officers at the fireplace swore as it splashed them. Then the place went back to the same gentle drone of conversation as before.
Ambrose leaned over his cup, using it to hide his mouth as he spoke. "So, I can rest easy now?"
"Louis didn't give me any sort of papers, Ambrose. Maybe there are none, I don’t know why you feel so sure."
"But I thought—"
"You and the French think too much. If he had anything to leave me, maybe he left it somewhere else. He never told me where. I think he suspected trouble, and he was right. He did it to protect me."
Standish swore in French.
Kate felt a twinge of guilt. Drawing a map wasn’t the same as telling the tale, nor was one page really papers, so it wasn’t really a lie. Still, she didn’t mention the map at all. Kate didn't know why, but she didn't feel right spilling Louis's last secret to anyone just yet. True, the British captain had seen the map, but she doubted that he knew what it meant. He would not have left her so free to come and go if he knew.
The British were still smarting from the American victory. A few pages of subversive plans in the wrong hands could damage the future of the United States before it really took hold as a separate nation.
There were rumblings that some in England thought it might be worth taking the colonies back again. America’s former colonial allies, the French, were now distracted in civil war. French pirates were ravaging trade convoys at will, and the new country knew it was vulnerable. The United States, such as it was, had now formed its own official navy—including five commissioned frigates that were rumored to be formidable.
Standish said, "We must get those papers back, Kate. If the Republicans learn that powerful people in the United States are considering support of the Royalist cause, it will be trouble on the continent. England would love to see us fighting with the French, and the Spanish are itching, just itching."
He was talking about the North American continent. America wasn’t the only force in the region. Besides what were called the Indian Nations, whose numbers and intent were still mostly unknown, there were also other European powers with interests there, including Spain and France.
British companies were pushing their fur trade in the north to the western reaches of the continent through Canada, but the United States was growing too. They needed territory to expand—land that was already claimed. Land could be taken by war or settlement. The quickest ways to encourage settlement was the promise of land or quick wealth through trade and exploitation of natural resources.
There were plenty of natural resources on both American continents, but profit in trade was still mostly from exports to more populated areas where the goods could sell. For that, a country needed roads and wagons, rivers and boats, seas and ships—and sometimes troops and guns to protect them.
It was a notion in which the Senlis Family Trust was well versed.
But to Kate, it seemed like a sentimental gesture for some Americans to offer sympathy to the Royalist cause, for the now-executed French King’s treasury had been drained supporting the American Revolution. But many people back home did not agree with the civil unrest now inside France. Turning against a tyrant across the sea, as the American colonists did, was much different from turning against your own at home. The bloody result in France had become a vicious cycle of politics and payback in the name of independence and counter-revolution.
But America, the country, was trying very hard to stay neutral.
Kate didn't care much for politics or revolution. She worried for the family she had left. Nor did she care to see anyone else hurt over a piece of paper that may be damning if it fell into the wrong hands. But she had promised Louis Dumars . . .
No, fate had put her in the middle of this, and she continually asked herself: What would my mother do?
The innkeeper brought their food. More officers came in and sat too close. This discussion was over and the two Americans ate their meal with small talk and gossip.
When Ambrose rose to leave, he kissed her hand. "Early this evening, Kate. I will come in a carriage and pick you up. Where?"
"I will be on the Wilde, I suppose, or near enough. I don't have any other place as yet. I have to see to the work today anyway. What shall I wear?"
"Full petticoats, no knots in your skirts, and you may not bring a pistol, a knife, or a bag of weeds for the sour stomachs of all the old men. And try to keep the hay out of your hair and the burrs from your stockings."
"So it's formal then. Hmm, I may change my mind."
He chuckled. "Too late, I will see you later."
He left, and she examined her brew. Tea leaves. She inhaled deeply with her nose down in the cup. Tea like this could be used to . . .
If only I could remember, she thought. Kate absently rubbed at her forehead, then pulled at the burr still left in her stocking.
“Tea leaves steeped in a poultice plain,
to stop up bleeding and calm the flame.
Use the leaves or flowers, but never the stems . . .”
She thought for a moment, but it didn't come. The smell was common enough. The feel of th
e slippery wetness of the leaves between her fingers was familiar. But she couldn't remember the rest of the rhyme.
“Well, waste not, want not. Did old Ben say that, I wonder?”
Mr. Benjamin Franklin had many such sayings. Of course, he was dead now and not saying much at all anymore. He died in 1790, but had the good sense to leave France well before then. And he was still an influence in his new country, if for nothing more than his clever turn of a phrase.
Kate took out her handkerchief, but paused for a moment in thought. Lace was not good for straining. She folded it over a few times, and began to slowly pour the tea, catching the leaves in the layers of fine linen fabric.
“Yes, very nice leaves,” she murmured.
Large, good color, she noted, fresh shipment from Malaysia perhaps. This inn obviously served many naval officers here. She took another healthy sniff.
“Possibly India, probably southern slope, I should say.”
That last part made her giggle, for she hadn’t seen India in a good many years, and remembered very little about how to grow tea. Still, a little ignorance didn’t have to stop dining room conversation, she thought, glancing around the room.
Kate strained the remains of Ambrose's cup, and then checked the pot to see if there were any choice specimens left. There were. She tipped the pot to the side to drain it without using the spout.
The inn was strangely quiet.
“Why have you all gone quiet?” she whispered.
She looked around. They were staring at her—all of them, officer and innkeeper alike. Kate quickly adjusted her expression from one she thought was obviously industrious to one she assumed an affronted lady might wear. She grabbed her handkerchief and left.
Outside, she heard their laughter. Kate started running toward the Wilde and the familiar. That she tripped on the way and the handkerchief slipped from her hand and into a mud hole was just injury to their insult.
On her knees, she checked the leaves, but decided she didn't really want them now. Mud was one thing; quay filth was another. Nor do I want the handkerchief, she thought, but knew all it needed was a good boil in some really strong suds.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 5
