“I expect they were,” he said, careful to let nothing show in his voice.
“But it didn’t take long to see what you were. What you still are.” Her fists had gradually relaxed, and one hand absently gathered her skirt into folds.
He wanted to ask just what she thought he was, but that could wait.
“Ben,” he said firmly. “I have to tell Uncle Hal. But I—I mean, he has to know that Ben’s alive and where—and what—he is. But perhaps he needn’t know that … you knew about it.”
He hadn’t thought for a moment of concealing her knowledge from Uncle Hal until he heard the words coming out of his mouth.
Her face changed like a drop of quicksilver, and she turned round again and stood stiff as a tailor’s dummy. He thought he could see her heart beating, the tight blue bodice quivering ever so slightly across her back.
He realized suddenly that now he was standing there with his hands fisted, and made himself relax. A drop of sweat ran down the back of his neck—there was a fire and the room was warm. The ghost of bay rum lingered among the scents of burning wood and candle wax.
She made a tiny sound, perhaps a muffled sob, and crossed her arms, hugging herself convulsively.
He took a step toward her, uncertain, and stopped. What might Uncle Hal do, if he learned of her duplicity? He supposed that his uncle might be able to take Trevor away from her and send her away …
“They’ll hang him,” she whispered, so softly that for a moment he heard only the anguish in it, and that anguish made him go to her and put his hands on her shoulders. A deep shiver went over her as though she were dissolving inside, and his arms went round her.
“They won’t,” he whispered into her hair, but she shook her head and the shiver didn’t stop.
“Yes, they will. I’ve heard them talk—the officers, the politicals, the—the nitwits at parties—gloating at the th-thought of Washington and his generals hanging on a g-gibbet.” She took a deep, tearing breath. “Like rotten fruit. That’s what they always say—like rotten fruit.”
His stomach tightened and so did his arms.
“So you still love him,” he said quietly, after what seemed a long while.
Her head fitted neatly under his chin, and he could feel the heat of it and smell her hair; she was wearing his father’s Italian cologne. He closed his eyes and took one breath at a time, imagining cedar groves and olive orchards and sun on ancient stone.
And dripping water in a garden and a toad’s gleaming black eyes …
And a moment later, the door opened.
“Oh, William,” Lord John said mildly. “You’re back, then.”
WILLIAM STOOD STILL a moment longer, his arms round Amaranthus. He wasn’t guilty in this—well, not quite—and he declined to act as though he was. He stepped back and gave her arms a comforting squeeze before turning round to face his father.
Lord John was standing there in full day uniform, his hat in one hand. He looked calm and pleasant, but his eyes were clearly drawing conclusions, and probably the wrong ones.
“I found Ben,” William said, and his father’s eyes sharpened at once. “He’s alive, and he’s joined the Americans. Under an assumed name,” he added.
“Thank God for small mercies,” Lord John said, half under his breath, then tossed his hat onto one of the gilt chairs and went to Amaranthus, who was still facing the wall, her head bowed. Her shoulders were shaking.
“You should sit down, my dear.” Lord John took her firmly by one forearm and turned her round. “Go and tell cook we want some tea, please, William—and something to eat. You’ll feel better with something in your stomach,” he told Amaranthus, guiding her toward the settee. She’d gone the color of egg custard and had her lashes lowered—to hide her telltale eyes, William thought cynically. She wasn’t crying; there were no tears on her cheeks. He’d never seen her cry, and wondered briefly if she could.
“Where’s Uncle Hal?” he asked, pausing on the threshold. “Shall I go and fetch him?”
Amaranthus gasped as though he’d punched her in the stomach, and looked up, wide-eyed. His father reacted in much the same way, though in a more stoic and soldierly fashion.
“God,” William said softly. He stood quite still for a moment, thinking, then shook himself back into order.
“He’s on his way to Charles Town,” Lord John said, and blew out a long breath. “Going to have a look at the fortifications. He’ll be back in a week or two.”
William and Lord John exchanged a brief look, glanced together at Amaranthus, then back at each other.
“I—don’t suppose it’s news that will spoil with keeping,” William said awkwardly. “I’ll … just go and tell Cook about the tea.”
“Wait.” Amaranthus’s voice stopped him at the door, and he turned. She was still pale and curdled, and her hands were knotted just under her breasts, as though to keep her heart from escaping. She had regained her self-possession, though, and her voice trembled only a little as she focused her gaze on Lord John.
“I have to tell you something, Uncle John.”
“No,” William said quickly. “You don’t need to say anything right now, cousin. Just—just rest a bit. You’ve had a shock. So have we all.”
“No,” she said, and shook her head slightly, dislodging a few blond strands. “I do.” She made an effort to smile at William, though the effect was rather ghastly. His own heart felt like a stone in his chest, but he did his best to smile back.
Lord John rubbed a hand down over his face, then went to the sideboard, where he took down a bottle and shook it experimentally. It sloshed reassuringly.
“Sit down, Willie,” he said. “Tea can wait. Brandy can’t.”
WILLIAM WONDERED VAGUELY just how much brandy his father and uncle got through in a year. Beyond its social functions, brandy was the usual first resort of either man, faced with any crisis of either a physical, political, or emotional nature. And given their mutual profession, such crises were bound to occur regularly. William’s own first memory of having been given brandy dated from the age of five or so, when he had climbed up the stable ladder in order to get on the back of Lord John’s horse in its stall—something he was firmly forbidden to do—and had been promptly tossed off by the startled horse, smacking into the wall at the back of the stall and sinking, dazed, into the hay between the horse’s back hooves.
The horse had trampled about, trying—he later realized—to avoid stepping on him, but he still remembered the huge black hooves coming down so near his head that he could see the nails in the shoes, and one of them had scraped his cheek. Once he’d got enough breath to scream with, there’d been a great fuss, his father and Mac the groom rushing down the stable aisle in a clatter of boots and calling out.
Mac had crawled into the stall, speaking calmly to the horse in his own strange tongue, and pulled William out by the feet. Whereupon Lord John had quickly checked him for blood and broken bones, and finding none, smacked him a good one on the seat of his breeches, then pulled out a small flask and made him take a gulp of brandy for the shock. The brandy itself was nearly as big a shock, but after he’d got done wheeking and coughing, he had felt better.