Richardson seemed to find that amusing.
“No,” he agreed. “You don’t. But you do, I suppose, wonder why I propose to kill you.”
“Not really.” This was in fact true, and the disinterest in Grey’s voice needed no dissimulation. If Richardson truly meant to kill him, he’d already be dead. The fact that he wasn’t meant that Richardson had some use for him. That, he wondered about, but chose not to say so.
Richardson drew a slow breath, looking him over, then shook his head and chose a new tack.
“One of my great-grandmothers was a slave,” he said abruptly.
Grey shrugged. “Two of my great-grandfathers were Scotch,” he said. “A man can’t be responsible for his ancestry.”
“So you don’t think the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children?”
Grey sighed, pressing his shoulders against the chair to ease the stiffness in his back.
“If they were, I should think humanity would have ceased to exist by now, pressed back into the earth by the accumulated weight of inherited evil.”
Richardson shrugged slightly, whether in acknowledgment or dismissal of the point, Grey couldn’t tell. Richardson turned to the wall of glass panes and looked out, presumably to give himself time to think up a new conversational gambit.
The sun was sinking and the light from the big stern window glittered from a million tiny wavelets, coruscating across the glass, the ceiling—did you call it a ceiling, in a ship?—and across the table at which Grey sat. It flickered over his hands, which were still rather the worse for wear. He flexed them, slowly, considering various nearby objects in terms of their effectiveness as weapons. There was a rather solid-looking clock and the bottle of brandy, but both were some distance away, on the far side of the cabin … God damn it, that was his bottle of brandy! He recognized the handwritten label, even at this distance. The bastard had been burgling his house!
“I beg your pardon?” he said, suddenly aware that Richardson had asked him something.
“I said,” Richardson said, with a pretense of patience, “how do you feel about slavery?” Not getting an immediate response, he said, much less patiently, “You were governor of Jamaica, for God’s sake—surely you’re well acquainted with the institution?”
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question,” Grey said, gingerly touching the healing but still-swollen laceration on his scalp. “But if you insist … yes. I’m reasonably sure I know a great deal more about it than you do. As to my feelings regarding slavery, I deplore it on both philosophical and compassionate grounds. Why? Did you expect me to declare myself in favor of it?”
“You might have.” Richardson looked at him intently for a moment, and then seemed to come to some decision, for he sat down across the table from Grey, meeting his eyes on the level. “But I’m glad you didn’t. Now …” He leaned forward, intent. “Your wife. Or your ex-wife, if you prefer …”
“If you mean Mrs. Fraser,” Grey said politely, “she was in fact never my wife, the marriage between us having been arranged under the false impression that her husband was dead. He’s not.”
“I’m well aware of it.” There was a note of grimness in that remark, and it gave Grey an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The clock on the distant table uttered a clear ting!, then did it four more times, just to make its point. Richardson looked over his shoulder at it and made a displeased noise.
“I’ll have to go soon. What I want to know, sir, is whether you know what Mrs. Fraser is.”
Grey stared at him.
“I realize that being struck over the head has somewhat impaired my thought processes … sir … but I have the strong impression that it’s not I who am suffering from incoherence. What the devil do you mean by that?”
The man flushed, a strange, patchy sort of flush that left his face mottled like a frost-bitten tomato. Still, the look of displeasure on his face had eased, which alarmed Grey.
“I think you have a good idea what I mean, Colonel. She told you, didn’t she? She’s the most intemperate woman I’ve ever met, in this century or any other.”
Grey started involuntarily at that, and cursed himself as he saw the look of satisfaction in Richardson’s eyes.
What the devil did I just tell him?
“Ah, yes. Well, then—” Richardson leaned forward. “I am also—what Mrs. Fraser, and her daughter and grandchildren, are.”
“What?” Grey was honestly gobsmacked at this. “What the devil do you think they are, may I ask?”
“People capable of moving from one period of time to another.”
Grey shut his eyes and waited a moment, sighed deeply, and opened them.
“I’d hoped I was dreaming, but you’re still there, I see,” he said. “Is that my brandy? If so, give me some. I’m not listening to this sort of thing sober.”
Richardson shrugged and poured him a glass, which Grey drank like water. He sipped the second, and Richardson, who had been watching him patiently, nodded.
“All right. Listen, then. There is an abolitionist movement in England—do you know about that?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, it will take root, and in the year 1807, the King will sign the first Act of Abolition, outlawing the slave trade in the British Empire.”
“Oh? Well … good.” He’d been covertly looking for an avenue of escape ever since he’d awakened on deck and realized that he was on a ship. Now he realized that he was looking at it. The windows in the lowest row of that great wall of glass were hinged; two of them were in fact open, allowing a cool breeze to come in from the distant sea.
“And in 1833, the House of Commons will pass the Slavery Abolition Act, which will outlaw slavery itself and free the slaves in most of Britain’s colonies—some eight hundred thousand of them.”
Grey was a slender man, and not tall. He thought he might be able to squeeze through one of the panes. And if he could drop into the river, he was fairly sure he could swim ashore, though he’d seen the river’s currents …
“Eight hundred thousand,” he said politely, as Richardson had paused, evidently expecting a response. “Very impressive.” He was managing the glass of brandy well enough with his wrists bound, but swimming was another matter … He glanced briefly at the rope. Chew one of the knots loose, perhaps … Ought he to wait until he was out in the water, in case someone came in and caught him gnawing, though?
“Yes,” Richardson agreed. “But not nearly as impressive as the number of people in America who will not be freed, and who will continue to be enslaved, and then to suffer …”
Grey ceased listening, recognizing that the tone of Richardson’s speech had shifted from conversation to lecture. He dropped his hands to his lap, pulling inconspicuously to test the stretch of the rope ….
“I’m sorry?” he said, noticing that Richardson had stopped talking for a moment and was glaring at him. “My apologies; I must have dozed off again.”
Richardson leaned over, took the brandy glass from the table, and dashed the dregs in his face. Taken unaware, Grey inhaled some of the liquid and coughed and spluttered, eyes burning.