WILLIAM SPENT A wakeful night, between bedbugs, inquisitive moths who seemed intent upon exploring his nostrils, despite these orifices lacking any light whatsoever, and his thoughts, which were undefined but active.
“You go into a situation with an expectation,” his uncle Hal had told him once, during a discussion of military tactics. “You should know what you want to happen, even if what you want is no more than your own survival. That expectation will dictate your actions.”
“Since,” his father had neatly interposed, “you might do something different, if you only wanted to get out alive, than you would if your primary desire was to keep a majority of your troops alive. And something else again, if what you wanted was to defeat an opposing commander and damn the cost.”
William scratched his middle, meditating.
Well, so … what do I want to happen?
On the face of it, he’d already achieved the stated purpose of his expedition, that being to discover where Amaranthus was and her circumstances and general well-being. Well, fine. She was with her father, which is where she’d said she was going, and was plainly neither ill nor injured, judging by the speed with which she’d left the premises.
What William wanted to know at the moment was whether or not she was wearing her wedding ring. Unfortunately, he couldn’t decide what either its presence or its absence might signify. He also couldn’t decide which condition he’d personally prefer. Would the sight of her ringless hand fill him with pity, sympathy, satisfaction—or excitement? He felt all those things, imagining it … You couldn’t miss it: a thick gold band with an ovoid swelling cut with a deep crease, in which was embedded a large diamond, flanked by pearls and tiny beads of Persian turquoise.
He yawned, stretched, and relaxed, so far as was possible; the inn’s bed was Procrustean for someone of his height, and he was lying with his knees raised, a dark double hillock under the blankets. He’d have to find better quarters if …
If what?
What, indeed? It wasn’t in his orders to drag the woman back to Savannah. He needn’t hang about in order to try to convince her to go with him. But what about Trevor?
Uncle Hal’s message—which had been dictated by Lord John, who said that Hal’s normal style of correspondence would drive any sane woman to instant flight—made it clear that he regarded her as a daughter and that she would always find protection and succor under his roof, for herself and her son.
Is she sane, I wonder …?
He was growing sleepy, but felt a distant throb at the thought, which had brought her suggestion regarding his personal difficulties to mind …
“You might … just possibly enjoy it.”
He’d rolled sideways, his legs folded up, and now pulled the pillow over his head to muffle the sounds from the bar below, where the singing seemed to be accompanied by someone beating a bass drum.
“You might, too,” he murmured, and slept.
AT THREE O’CLOCK the next afternoon, he presented himself at the bookshop. Mr. Cowden was standing behind his desk, writing in a large ledger. He looked up at William’s entrance, regarded him with a beady eye, and then pulled out a shallow drawer, from which he removed a single golden guinea and placed it precisely in the center of the desk.
“She’s in the courtyard out back,” he said, and returned to his accounts. William picked up the guinea, bowed, and went out.
The so-called courtyard was a small, fenced plot of ground, but had been designed by someone—probably Mr. Cowden—with a fine eye for a garden and a diverse taste in plants. It took William a moment to spot Amaranthus, even though he was looking for her. She was seated on a stone bench in one corner overhung by a rose trellis—not blooming, but lushly leaved, the foliage tinged with red. A small stone fountain bubbled in front of her; that’s why he hadn’t seen her at once.
She wore black, which didn’t become her, and her hair was pinned up under a cap with a tiny bit of lace edging. She still wore her wedding ring, and he felt a small twinge of what might be disappointment. Then he saw that while she still wore the ring, she’d changed it from her left hand to her right.
He stopped just by the fountain and bowed to her.
“So you’re not afraid of anything, now?”
She looked him over, soberly, then lifted her eyes to meet his. Pale blue, translucent.
“I wouldn’t say that. But I’m certainly not afraid of you.” It might have been a challenge or a sneer, but it wasn’t. It was just a statement of fact and rather warmed him.
“Good,” he said. “Why did you run when I came yesterday, then?”
“I panicked,” she said frankly. “I’d put away all thought of—of Father Pardloe and Lord John and Savannah—”
“—and me?”
“And you,” she said evenly, “and after a bit, it all began to seem unreal, like the sort of fantasy you have when you’re reading a good book. So when you popped up like the Demon King in a pantomime—” She flicked a hand. After a moment’s pause, she asked, “Do you want to sit down?”
He sat beside her, close enough to feel the warmth of her—it was a small bench, and William was a large young man. He wasn’t sure quite what to ask. Yet.
“You’re a widow, then?” he said at last, and picked up her hand, examining the ring.
“Yes, I am,” she said coldly.
“Really? Or only so far as your father—and Philadelphia—know?”
She gave him a narrow look, but she didn’t pull her hand away, and she didn’t reply at once, either.
“Because,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, “if Ben’s really dead now, you haven’t any reason for not coming back to Savannah with me, do you? Don’t you want to see Trevor? He misses his mama.”
“You bastard,” she hissed. “Let go!” He did, folding his hands on his knees.
There was no sound for several minutes, save the rattle and hum of traffic in the street and the plash of the fountain. The smell of the garden was strong in the air, and while it was by no means as lush as the southern scents of Savannah, it was pungent enough to stir the blood—and memories of Mrs. Fleury’s garden, with its cold wet stone and the silent witness of a black-eyed toad.
“I’m the only one you can tell,” he said at last, quietly. “I don’t expect your father knows, does he? What happened to Ben?”
She laughed, short and bitter, but a laugh.
“‘What happened to Ben,’” she repeated. “Not, ‘What Ben did’? General Washington didn’t come and kidnap him, you know. He went. He did it all, all by himself!”
“You went to him, though, didn’t you?” This wasn’t entirely a guess; he’d seen that her fingers weren’t shadowed with ink. Everyone who worked in a printshop or a bookseller’s eventually had smudged fingers; her father did. If hers weren’t, she hadn’t been here long.
She didn’t answer at once, but sat silently fuming, mouth pressed tight.
“I did,” she said at last. “The more fool I. I thought I could talk him round. I’d seen what happened during the siege, in Savannah. I thought I could convince him—for God’s sake, he was a British officer! He should know what the army’s like, what they can do!”