I opened the book, read a page without taking in a word of its meaning, and closed it again. It didn’t bloody matter. Whether by Frank’s intent—malign or not—or only a figment of Jamie’s imagination, stimulated by the pressure of current events or the stirrings of a mistaken sense of guilt … Jamie thought what he thought, and nothing short of Divine Revelation was likely to change that.
I closed my eyes and sat still. We didn’t yet own a clock, and yet I could hear the seconds tick past. My body kept its own time, between my heartbeat and the pulsing of my blood, the ebb and flow of sleep and wakefulness. If time was eternal, why wasn’t I? Or perhaps we only become eternal when we stop keeping time.
I’d nearly died three times: when I lost Faith, when I caught a great fever, and—only a year ago!—when I was shot at Monmouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember, but I remembered only small, vivid flashes of each experience. I felt very calm, thinking of death. It wasn’t something I was afraid of; I just didn’t want to go while there were people who needed me.
Jamie had come to the verge of death more frequently—and a lot more violently—than I had, and I didn’t think he was afraid of it, either.
But you still have people who need you, dammit!
The thought made me angry—at both Frank and Jamie—and I got up and shoved the book back behind the ledgers. Even without a clock, I knew it was nearly suppertime. I had a sort of chowder going, made with potatoes and onions and a little dried corn, but it wasn’t very good … Bacon! Yes, definitely bacon.
I was coming out of the smoke shed with several rashers on a plate when a bit more of what I was determinedly not thinking about bubbled up. Bree had told me—and Jamie—about the letter Frank had left for her. An extremely disturbing letter, on multiple levels. But what was echoing in the back of my mind just now was the last paragraph of that letter:
And … there’s him. Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her—and you. She thought that he died immediately afterward. He did not. I looked for him, and I found him. And, like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing—as he knew of me—that he will protect you with his life.
For the first time, it occurred to me that even if Jamie was right, and Frank was making an attempt to tell him something—it might be a warning, rather than a threat.
118
The Viscountess
Savannah
WILLIAM DIDN’T GO DIRECTLY to Lord John’s house when he arrived in Savannah. Instead, he stopped at a barber on Bay Street and had a much-needed shave and his hair trimmed and properly bound. That was as much as he could do for the moment, bar digging a halfway-clean shirt out of his saddlebag and changing into it in the shop. Face raw and stinging with razor burn and bay rum, and deeply aware of his own residual stink beneath it, he left his horse at the livery, walked to Oglethorpe Street, and after a moment’s thought circled his father’s house and walked into the cookhouse out back.
Lord John was out with his brother. Gone to the camp, the startled cook informed him. And the viscountess? In the parlor, doing needlework.
“Thank you,” he said, and went into the house, pausing briefly to kick his boots against the step, in order to knock off some of the dry mud.
He made no attempt to quiet his footsteps; they hit the painted floorcloth in the hallway with the regular thump of a muffled drum. When he reached the parlor door, she was sitting bolt-upright and wide-eyed, a large piece of half-embroidered white silk spilling over her lap and a needle threaded with scarlet floss motionless in her hand.
“William,” she said, and cocked her head to one side. She didn’t smile; neither did he. He leaned against the jamb and crossed his arms, looking steadily at her.
“I found him.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head violently, as though attacked by gnats.
“Where?” she asked, her voice a little husky, and he saw that her free hand had closed on the silk, crushing it.
“A place called Morristown. It’s in New Jersey.”
“His grave? That was in New Jersey, but you said he wasn’t in it …”
“He’s definitely not in his grave,” he assured her, not trying to keep the cynical tone out of his voice.
“You mean … he’s … alive, then?” She kept her face under control, but her cheeks were pink, not white, and he could see the thoughts darting like minnows at the back of her changeable eyes.
“Oh, yes. But you knew that.” He considered her for a moment, then added, “He’s a general now. General Raphael Bleeker. Did you know that?”
She took a long, slow breath, holding his eyes with hers.
“No,” she said at last. “But I’m not surprised.” Her lips compressed briefly. “He’s with Washington, then,” she said. “Father Pardloe said the rebels had gone to winter quarters in New Jersey.”
She’d dropped the silk; it slithered to the ground, unregarded. She stood up abruptly, fists closed at her sides, and turned her back on him.
“He said it was your idea,” William said mildly. “That he should pretend to be dead.”
“I couldn’t stop him.” She spoke to the yellow toile de Jouy wallpaper, through her teeth by the sound of it. “I begged him not to do it. Begged him.” She turned around then and glared at him. “But you know what they’re like, these Greys of yours. Nothing matters to them when they’ve made up their minds—nothing. And nobody.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” William said. His heart had slowed down a bit after his first sight of her, but it was speeding up again. “It’s true that you can’t change their minds—but they do care, sometimes. Ben cared.” He cleared his throat. “For you.” He had the bruises to prove it.
And still does. He didn’t say it out loud, but he saw from her face that he didn’t need to.
“Not enough,” she said shortly, though there was a quiver in her voice. “Not nearly enough. It was only my telling him what it would do to Trevor—having a traitor for a father—that finally made him agree to disappear quietly, instead of having a blazing row with his father and stamping off to glory with his precious rebels. That’s what he would have liked,” she added, with a twitch of the mouth that might have been either bitterness or reluctant amusement.
There was a moment’s silence in the room. William could hear footsteps somewhere upstairs, and muffled yelling that was undoubtedly Trevor. Amaranthus’s eyes flicked upward, but she didn’t move. A moment later, the footsteps evidently reached the little boy, because the yelling stopped abruptly. Amaranthus’s shoulders relaxed a little and he noticed for the first time that she wore dark blue and wore no fichu, so the curve of her full breasts showed white above the cloth.
She saw him notice and gave him a direct look.
“I wanted a coward, you know,” she said. “A man who’d stay away from danger and blood and all those things.”
“And you thought I might be one?” He was curious, rather than offended.
She made a small puffing noise and shook her head.
“At first. Uncle John said you’d resigned your commission, and I could see that he and Father Pardloe were bothered that you did.”