“The—what?” William stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending. “His brother? Disappeared … from where? When?”
“Evidently from your father’s house. As to when: Lady John said that he left the house just after tea yesterday afternoon, presumably in search of your father. Have you seen him since then?”
“I haven’t seen him at all.” William felt a distinct ringing in his ears—probably his brains trying to get out through them. “What—I mean, I had no idea he was in Philadelphia. In the colonies at all, for that matter. When did he arrive?” Jesus, did he come to deal with Dottie and her Quaker? No, he can’t have, he couldn’t have had time … could he?
Richardson was squinting at him, probably trying to determine whether he was telling the truth.
“I haven’t seen either of them,” William said flatly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Captain …” There was a tremendous splash from the direction of the dock and a loud chorus of shock and dismay from the crowd. “Excuse me,” William repeated, and turned away.
Richardson seized him by the arm and made an effort to fix William with his gaze. William looked deliberately in the direction of his neglected duty.
“When you see either one of them, Captain Ransom, be so good as to send word to me. It would be a great help—to many people.”
William jerked his arm free and stalked off without reply. Richardson had used his family name instead of his title—did that mean anything beyond mere rudeness? At the moment, he didn’t care. He couldn’t fight, he couldn’t help anyone, he couldn’t tell the truth, and he wouldn’t live a lie. God damn it, he was stuck like a hog, mired to the hocks.
He wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve, squared his shoulders, and strode back into the fray. All there was to do was his duty.
AN ARMY ON THE MOVE
WE WERE JUST IN time. No sooner had I closed the bedroom door on Pardloe’s gentle snore than a knock came on the newly hung front door below. I hurried downstairs to find Jenny face-to-face with a British soldier, this time a lieutenant. General Clinton was escalating his inquiries.
“Why, no, lad,” she was saying, in a tone of mild surprise, “the colonel isn’t here. He took tea with Lady John yesterday, but then he went off to look for his brother. His lordship hasn’t come back, and”—I saw her lean closer, her voice lowered dramatically—“her ladyship’s that worried. Ye’ll not have news of him, I suppose?”
This was my cue, and I came down from the landing, rather surprised to find that I was indeed “that worried.” Tending Hal had distracted me from the situation temporarily, but by now there was no denying that something had gone seriously wrong.
“Lady John. Lieutenant Roswell, your servant, ma’am.” The lieutenant bowed, with a professional smile that didn’t hide the slight furrowing of his brow. The army was getting worried, too, and that was bloody dangerous. “Your servant, mum. Have you in fact had no word from Lord John or Lord Melton—oh, I beg your pardon, my lady, I mean from His Grace?”
“D’ye think I’m a liar, lad?” Jenny said tartly.
“Oh! No, mum, not at all,” he said, flushing. “But the general will want to know that I spoke with her ladyship.”
“Of course,” I said soothingly, though my heart was pittering in my throat. “Tell the general that I haven’t heard from my husband”—either of them—“at all. I’m most disturbed.” I wasn’t a good liar, but I wasn’t lying now.
He grimaced.
“The thing is, mum, the army has begun withdrawing from Philadelphia, and all Loyalists remaining in the city are being advised that they may wish to … er … make preparations.” His lips compressed for a moment as he glanced at the stairwell, with its ruined banister and bloody fist marks. “I … see that you have already experienced some … difficulty?”
“Och, no,” Jenny said, and with a deprecating glance at me, stepped nearer the lieutenant and put her hand on his arm, pushing him gently toward the door. He automatically moved away with her, and I heard her murmur, “… no but a wee family quarrel … his lordship …”
The lieutenant shot me a swift glance, in which surprise mingled with a certain sympathy. But the lines in his forehead eased. He had an explanation to take back to Clinton.
Blood flamed in my cheeks at his look—as though there truly had been a family row, during which Lord John had stamped out, leaving wreckage in his wake and a wife at the mercy of the Rebels. True, it was a family row, but the circumstances were more through-the-looking-glass than a matter of mere common scandal.
The White Rabbit shut our new door firmly on Lieutenant Roswell and turned to me, back pressed against it.
“Lord Melton?” she asked, one black eyebrow raised.
“It’s one of the duke’s titles, one he used before he became Duke of Pardloe. Lieutenant Roswell must have known him some years ago,” I explained.
“Oh, aye. Well, lord or duke, how long can we keep him asleep?” she asked.
“The laudanum will keep him out for two or three hours,” I replied, glancing at the gilt carriage clock on the mantel, which had somehow escaped the carnage. “But he had a very hard day yesterday and a rather disturbed night; he may well go straight off into a natural sleep as the drug wears off. If no one comes along to knock the house down round our ears,” I added, wincing at sounds of a violent altercation somewhere nearby.
Jenny nodded. “Aye. I’d best go along to the printshop now, then, to see what the news in the city is. And perhaps Jamie will ha’ gone there,” she added hopefully. “Not thinking it safe to come here, I mean, wi’ the streets full of soldiers.”
A spark of hope at the suggestion flared up like a lit match. Though even as I envisioned the possibility, I knew that if Jamie was in the city at all, he’d be standing before me right now. Possibly enraged, possibly disturbed, but before me.
With the army already beginning its withdrawal, and the concomitant public disturbances, no one would have time or inclination to notice—let alone arrest—a tall Scotsman suspected of nothing more than passing suspicious documents. It wasn’t as though there was an all points bulletin out on him—or at least I hoped not. William was the only soldier who knew that Jamie had taken Lord John hostage, and from his manner in leaving, I rather thought that the last thing William would have done was give a full report of the situation to his superiors.
I said as much to Jenny, though agreed that she ought to go back to the printshop, to check on the welfare of Fergus and Marsali’s family, as well as to find out what was going on amongst the Rebels in the city.
“Will you be safe in the streets?” I asked, unfolding her cloak and holding it up for her to put on.
“Oh, I expect so,” she said briskly. “No one much thinks to look at an auld woman. But I suppose I’d best put away my wee bawbee.” The bawbee in question was a small silver chiming watch, with a delicately filigreed cover, which she wore pinned to the bosom of her dress.
“Jamie bought it for me in Brest,” she explained, seeing me looking at it as she unpinned it. “I told him it was foolery; I didna need such a thing to ken the time, nay more than he did himself. But he said, no, I must have it, that knowing what o’clock it is gives ye the illusion that ye have some control over your circumstances. Ye ken how he is,” she added, putting the watch carefully away in her pocket, “always explaining ye to yourself. Though I will say as he’s no often wrong.
“Now, then,” she added, turning to me as she opened the door. “I’ll come back before him upstairs wakes up, unless I can’t, and if I can’t, I’ll send Germain to say so.”
“Why should you not be able to?” I asked, in some surprise.
“Young Ian,” she said, equally surprised that I should not have thought of this. “Wi’ the army leaving, he may have come back from Valley Forge by now—and ye ken, the poor lad thinks I’m dead.”
ROOM FOR SECRETS
In the forest, five miles from Valley Forge
“DO QUAKERS BELIEVE in he
aven?” Ian Murray asked.
“Some do,” Rachel Hunter replied, pausing to turn over a large toadstool with the toe of her shoe. “No, dog, don’t touch that one. See the color of its gills?” Rollo, who had come to sniff at the fungus, dismissed it with a perfunctory sneeze and lifted his snout to the wind in hopes of more promising prey.
“Auntie Claire says dogs canna see colors,” Ian remarked. “And what d’ye mean, ‘Some do’? Is there a difference of opinion on the matter?” Quaker beliefs puzzled him beyond measure, but he found Rachel’s explanations invariably entertaining.
“Perhaps they smell them instead. The dogs, I mean. But to return to thy question, we consider our life here on earth to be a sacrament, lived in the light of Christ. There may be an afterlife, but as no one has come back to say so, it’s a matter of speculation, left to each person individually.”
They had paused in the shade of a small walnut grove, and the soft green sun that fell flickering through the leaves gave Rachel herself an unearthly glow that any angel might have envied.
“Well, I havena been there, either, so I’ll no just say that’s wrong,” he said, and bent to kiss her just above the ear. A faint rush of tiny gooseflesh stippled her temple for an instant, and the sight touched his heart.
“Why does thee think of heaven?” she asked curiously. “Does thee think there will be fighting in the city? I haven’t known thee overly fearful for thy life before.” Valley Forge had been hoaching like a grain sack full of weevils when they left it an hour before, the soldiers salvaging what they could from the camp, molding fresh musket balls and packing cartridges, preparing to march on Philadelphia when the word was given that Clinton’s men had withdrawn.
“Och, no. There’ll be nay fighting in the city. Washington will try to catch Clinton’s men in retreat.” He took her hand, small and brown and work-roughened but the fingers reassuringly strong as they turned and clasped his. “Nay, I was thinking of my mam—that I should ha’ liked to show her places like this.” He gestured toward the little clearing in which they stood, a tiny spring of an improbably deep blue welling up from the rock under their feet, overhung by a yellow wild-rose brier, humming with summer bees. “She had a big yellow rose brier growin’ up the wall at Lallybroch; my grandmother planted it.” He swallowed a small lump in his throat. “But then I thought, may be as she’s happier in heaven with my da than she would be here without him.”
Rachel’s hand squeezed his, hard.
“She would be with him always, in life or in death,” she whispered, and stood a-tiptoe to kiss him back. “And you will take me someday to see your grandmother’s rose in Scotland.”
They stood in silence for a bit, and Ian felt his heart, clenched with a sudden grief at the thought of his mother, ease in Rachel’s sympathetic company. He hadn’t said it, but what he most regretted was not his inability to show his mother the beauties of America but the fact that he couldn’t show her Rachel.
“She’d have liked ye,” he blurted. “My mam.”
“I hope that she would,” Rachel said, though with a tinge of dubiousness. “Did thee tell her about me, in Scotland? That I am a Friend, I mean. Some Catholics find us scandalous.”
Ian tried to remember whether he had mentioned that to his mother, but couldn’t. It made no difference, in any case, and he shrugged, dismissing it.
“I told her I loved ye. That seemed to be enough. Come to think, though—my da asked all kinds of questions about ye; he wanted to know everything he could. He kent ye were a Quaker, so that means she kent it, too.” He took her elbow to help her down from the rock.
She nodded, thoughtful, but as she followed him out of the clearing, he heard her ask behind him, “Does thee think a married couple should be completely in each other’s confidence—share not only their histories, I mean, but every thought?”
That sent a qualm skittering down his backbone like a mouse with cold feet, and he took a deep breath. He loved Rachel with every fiber of his being, but he found her apparent ability to read him like a book—if not to actually hear his thoughts, and sometimes he thought for sure she did that, too—unsettling.
He had in fact suggested that they walk together to Matson’s Ford and meet Denzell with the wagon there, rather than ride with him from Valley Forge, so that Ian might have sufficient time and solitude in which to share a few necessary things with her. He’d rather be tortured by Abenakis than tell her some of those things, but it was right she should know them, no matter what the result might be.
“Aye. I mean … well, so far as one can, I think they maybe should. Not every thought, I dinna mean, but important things. Ahh … history, like ye said. Here, come sit for a wee while.” There was a big fallen log, half rotted and covered with moss and fuzzy gray lichens, and he led her to it, sitting down beside her in the fragrant shade of a big red cedar.
She didn’t say anything, but lifted a brow in question.
“Well.” He drew a deep breath, feeling that there wasn’t enough air in the whole forest for this. “Did ye ken … I’ve been marrit before?”
Her face flickered, surprise overcome by determination so fast that he’d have missed it if he hadn’t been watching so close.
“I did not,” she said, and began to pleat the folds of her skirt, one-handed, clear hazel eyes fixed intently on his face. “Thee did say been married. Thee isn’t now, I suppose?”
He shook his head, feeling a little easier—and very grateful to her. Not every young woman would have taken it so calmly.
“No. I wouldna have spoken to ye—asked ye to marry me, I mean—otherwise.”
She pursed her lips a little and her eyes narrowed.
“In point of fact,” she said thoughtfully, “thee never has asked me to marry thee.”
“I didn’t?” he said, staggered. “Are ye sure?”
“I would have noticed,” she assured him gravely. “No, thee didn’t. Though I recall a few very moving declarations, there was no suggestion of marriage among them.”
“But—well.” Heat had risen in his cheeks. “I—but you … ye said …” Maybe she was right. She had said … or had she? “Did ye not say ye loved me?”
Her mouth turned up just a little, but he could see her laughing at him at the back of her eyes.
“Not in so many words. But I did give thee to understand that, yes. Or at least I meant to.”
“Oh. Well, then,” he said, much happier. “Ye did.” And he pulled her into his one sound arm and kissed her with great fervor. She kissed him back, panting a little, her fists curled in the fabric of his shirt, then broke away, looking mildly dazed. Her lips were swollen, the skin around them pink, scraped by his beard.
“Perhaps,” she said, and swallowed, pushing him away with one hand flat on his chest, “perhaps thee should finish telling me about not being married, before we go further? Who was thy—thy wife—and what happened to her?”
He let go of her reluctantly but would not surrender her hand. It felt like a small live thing, warm in his.
“Her name is Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa,” he said, and felt the accustomed inner shift at the speaking of it, as though the line between his Mohawk self and his white self had momentarily disappeared, leaving him awkwardly suspended somewhere in between. “It means ‘Works With Her Hands.’ ” He cleared his throat. “I called her Emily. Most of the time.”
Rachel’s small, smooth hand jerked in his.
“Is?” she said, blinking. “Thee said is? Thy wife is alive?”
“She was a year ago,” he said, and, with an effort, didn’t cling to her hand but let her take it back. She folded her hands in her lap, fixed her eyes on him, and swallowed; he saw her throat move.
“All right,” she said, with no more than a faint tremor in her voice. “Tell me about her.”
He took another deep breath, trying to think how to do that, but then abandoned the effort and spoke simply.
“D’ye truly want to know that, Rachel? Or do ye only want t
o ken whether I loved her—or whether I love her now?”
“Start there,” she said, lifting one brow. “Does thee love her?”
“I—yes,” he said, helpless to speak other than the truth to her. Rollo, sensing some disturbance among his pack, got up from his resting place and padded over to Rachel. He sat down by her foot, making his allegiance in the matter clear, and gave Ian a yellow-eyed wolf look over Rachel’s knee that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the look in her own eye. “But …”
The brow lifted a fraction of an inch higher.
“She … was my refuge,” he blurted. “When I left my own family and became a Mohawk, it was as much to be wi’ her as because I had to.”
“Had to … what?” She looked baffled, and he saw her eyes drop a little, tracing the tattooed lines across his cheekbones. “Thee had to become a Mohawk? Why?”
He nodded, feeling momentarily on firmer ground. He could tell her this story; it was only what had happened. Her eyes went round when he explained how he and Uncle Jamie had met Roger Wakefield, not realized who he was and thought him to be the man who had raped his cousin Brianna and got her with child, had come close to killing him, but had thought better of the notion—
“Oh, good,” Rachel said, half under her breath. He glanced sidelong at her but couldn’t tell if she meant this ironically or not, so he coughed and went on, telling how they had instead given the man to the Tuscarora, who in turn had sold him as a slave to the Mohawk farther north.
“We didna want to risk him ever comin’ back to trouble Brianna, aye? Only then—” He swallowed, reliving in memory both the terror of his asking Brianna to marry him and the utter horror when cousin Bree had drawn a picture of the man she loved, the man she was waiting for—and the strong dark features of the man they had given to the Mohawk sprang into view.
“You asked thy cousin to marry thee? Did thee want to?” She looked wary; he supposed she must be thinking that he went about proposing to every third or fourth woman he met and hastened to correct this impression.
“Nay, I mean—well, Brianna’s a … well, I didna mind, ken, we’d ha’ got on fine, and she—well … I mean, no, not exactly,” he added hurriedly, seeing Rachel’s graceful brows draw together. The truth was that he’d been seventeen and Brianna several years older; she’d terrified him, but the thought of bedding her had— He choked that thought off as though it were a venomous snake.
“It was Uncle Jamie’s idea,” he said, with as much an air of casual dismissal as could be assumed on short notice. He lifted one shoulder. “To give the bairn a name, aye? I said I would, for the family honor.”
“The family honor,” she repeated, giving him a fishy look. “To be sure. But then—”
“But then we found it was Roger Mac—he’d taken back his own name of MacKenzie, is why we didna recognize him—that we’d given to the Indians by mistake, and so we went to retrieve him,” he said quickly. By the time he’d finished explaining all the events that had culminated in his volunteering to take the place of a Mohawk killed during Roger’s rescue, the washing of his body in the river, the Mohawk women scrubbing him with sand to remove the last trace of his white blood, the plucking of his hair and the tattoos, he thought his marriage to Emily might seem only one more picturesque detail.
But of course it didn’t.
“I—” He stopped dead, realizing suddenly that the conversation was about to become even stickier than he’d thought. He glanced at her apprehensively, heart beating in his throat and ears. But she was still looking back; the pinkness round her mouth showing more vividly because she’d gone a little pale—but looking, clear and steady.
“I—wasna a virgin when I wed,” he blurted.
The eyebrow went up again.
“Really, I am not quite sure what to ask,” she said, examining him in the way he’d seen his auntie Claire appraise some horrible growth—fascinated rather than repelled, but with a firm air of deciding exactly how best to deal with the offending bit. He hoped fervently she didn’t mean to cut him out of her life like a wart or amputate him like a gangrenous toe.
“I’ll … tell ye anything ye want to know,” he said bravely. “Anything.”
“A generous offer,” she said, “and one I shall accept—but I think I must offer thee the same accommodation. Thee does not wish to ask whether I am virgin?”
His mouth fell open, and her shoulders shook briefly.
“Ye’re not?” he croaked.
“No, I am,” she assured him, still quivering with the effort not to laugh. “But why should thee assume it?”
“Why?” He felt the blood rise in his face. “Because—anyone who looked at ye would know ye on the instant for a—a—a virtuous woman!” he concluded, with a sense of relief at having found a reasonable term.
“I might have been raped,” she pointed out. “That would not mean I was not virtuous, would it?”
“I—well. No, I suppose not.” He knew that a good many folk would think a raped woman was not virtuous—and Rachel knew that. He was on the verge of becoming completely confused, and she knew that, too; he could see her taking pains not to laugh. He squared his shoulders and gave a great sigh, then met her eyes directly.
“D’ye want to hear about every woman whose bed I’ve shared? Because I’ll tell ye, if so. I’ve never taken a woman unwilling—though they were mostly whores. I’m no poxed, though,” he assured her. “Ye should ken that.”
She considered that for a moment.
“I think I need not know the details,” she said finally. “But should we ever meet a woman thee has bedded, I wish to know it. Thee does not mean to continue fornicating with prostitutes once we are wed, though, does thee?”
“No!”
Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 13
