William uttered a noise that he’d meant to be a laugh, and she raised a palm to suppress him, continuing serenely, “And then, if the child were to be a girl, I should simply come back with the little darling (for I’m sure any child of yours would be adorable, William) and announce that a good friend of mine had died in childbed and that I had adopted her daughter, out of charity, of course, but also to give my darling Trevor a sister.”
She lowered the palm and widened her eyes at him.
“That’s one way. I can think of others, if you—”
“Please don’t.” He didn’t know whether to laugh, shout at her, eat a grape, or just leave. Before he could decide, she’d done her illusion again and was pressed lightly against him, her hands on his shoulders, face beguilingly turned up.
“But you see,” she said reasonably, “there isn’t really any risk. To you, I mean. And you might”—her hand cupped his cheek, brief and cool as rain, and her forefinger traced his lips—“just possibly enjoy it.”
47
Tace Is the Latin for a Candle
JOHN HAD KNOWN THEY’D have to talk about Percy, but he’d succeeded in avoiding Hal until the next day, by the simple expedient of leaving his coat and gorget with Prévost’s cook and going down to the harbor while Hal was still talking to Old Bullet Head. There he hired a boat to take him fishing in the marshes. His guide, a local by the name of Lapolla, was very knowledgable, and John came in after dark, smelling of mud and marsh grass, with a sack full of redfish and a large, horrible thing called a horseshoe crab, which they had discovered—fortunately dead—on a tiny islet composed entirely of oyster shells.
He had eaten some of his fish, broiled over a fire on the beach and utterly delicious. Then, slightly drunk, he had stolen into Hal’s room around midnight and left the dead crab on the bedside table beside his sleeping brother, as a symbolic comment on the situation.
What with one thing and another, though, he didn’t encounter a conscious Hal until late the next afternoon, following a harrowing tea party at the home of a Mrs. Tina Anderson, who, while herself a tall, statuesque blond beauty possessed of great charm, was also possessed of a horde of chattering friends who had descended on him en masse, affectionately clinging to his sleeve or fingering his gold braid while expressing their gratitude for the army’s presence and their admiration of the courageous soldiers who were saving them—apparently—from mass rapine.
“It was like being pecked to death by a flock of small parrots,” he told Hal. “Screeching, and feathers everywhere.”
“Never mind parrots,” Hal said shortly. He’d been out himself, to a more formal—and doubtless less noisy—gathering at the home of a Mrs. Roma Sars, where he’d talked to some of the politicals who’d been at Prévost’s luncheon.
“I was hoping to talk to Monsieur Soissons and find out how the devil bloody Percy comes to be here, when he’s supposed to be dead—or at least decently pretending to be—but Soissons wasn’t in the way,” Hal replied shortly. He’d got his stock off, and the dark-red mark across his neck suggested that he’d been choking back words of one kind and another all afternoon. “Where was it you said you’d met the fellow last?”
John undid his own leather stock and closed his eyes, sighing with relief.
“I met him at the American camp in a place called Coryell’s Ferry, just before Monmouth. I told you about that.”
Hal wiped his face with a discarded towel, evidently used previously for blacking boots, and tossed it into the corner.
“And how the devil did he come to be there, for that matter?”
John shook his head. What did it matter now, after all? Still, he wasn’t going to explain just how it was that Percy had escaped being hanged for the crime of sodomy; he’d rather Hal didn’t expire of apoplexy just yet.
“About how you got yourself arrested by the Americans, escaped, and showed up after the battle in camp with a homicidal Mohawk Indian purporting to be James Fraser’s nephew? More or less,” Hal said, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Mostly less, I imagine. You didn’t mention Percy, at any rate.”
John blinked in a noncommittal sort of way and tilted his head toward the door. Brisk footsteps were coming down the corridor; doubtless Hal’s valet, coming to extract Hal from the bondage of his dress uniform.
To his surprise, however, the footsteps belonged to William, mildly disheveled but evidently sober.
“I need to find Banastre Tarleton,” he said, without preamble. “How do you suggest I do that?”
“What d’you want him for?” Hal inquired, sitting down in a wooden chair. “And if you want help, turnabout’s fair play—help me get these bloody boots off. They’re John’s, and they’re killing me.”
“It’s not my fault you’ve got bunions,” John said. “Totally fitting for an infantry commander, though, you’ll admit. No one can say you don’t do your job thoroughly.”
Hal gave him a mildly evil look, then put his hands on William’s head to brace himself as William wrestled one boot loose.
“Do you know where Tarleton is?” he asked John, who shook his head.
“Neither do I,” Hal said, addressing the cowlick on top of William’s head, which swirled neatly clockwise before sticking up. Just like his father’s, John thought.
“Clinton’s chief clerk would know,” Grey said, and cleared his throat. “His name’s Ronson—Captain Geoffrey Ronson, if you please.”
“Fine.” William jerked the boot off and nearly shot backward off the campaign chest he was sitting on. He tossed the muddy boot on the hearth rug and inspected his chest, to be sure his beetles had suffered no damage. “Where the devil is Sir Henry keeping himself these days?”
“New York, for the moment,” Hal said, sticking out his other foot. “I’d bet reasonable money that Tarleton is still with him. Tarleton’s cavalry riders were Clinton’s new toy at Monmouth, and I doubt he’s had all his fun with them yet.”
William grunted as the second boot came off, and laid it with its fellow on the rug.
“So, shall I write to Tarleton directly, care of Sir Henry?”
John and Hal exchanged glances.
“I think I would,” Hal said, with a slight shrug. “Just don’t put anything in the letter that you don’t want the world to know about. Some clerks are discreet and a hell of a lot of them aren’t.”
“Speaking of which,” John said, eyeing his son. “Would it be indiscreet of us to ask why you want to find Banastre Tarleton?”
William shook his head, then smoothed the dislodged cowlick back into the dark mass of his hair.
“Denys Randall told me at the luncheon yesterday that it was Ban Tarleton who first got the letter from Middlebrook Encampment about Ben dying there. He evidently gave it to Ezekiel Richardson, and thus—” He made a spiraling gesture indicating the letter’s eventual arrival to Hal’s hand. “So I want to know why Tarleton got it, and how.”
“Very reasonable,” Hal agreed. “But I doubt it’ll be that easy.” He lowered his brows and stared at William, very directly. “What I tell you goes no further, William. Not to your Indian friend, your lover—if you have one, and no, I don’t want to know—or anyone else.”