I drained the last of my tea and set the cup back with a faint chime of bone china.
“Sorry,” I said apologetically. “I don’t believe I’m hungry, either.”
Jocasta neither moved nor changed expression. As I left the room I saw Myers lean over from his chaise and neatly snag the last of the scones.
* * *
It was nearly noon before we reached the Crown’s warehouse at the end of Hay Street. It stood on the north side of the river, with its own pier for loading, a little way above the town itself. There seemed little necessity for a guard at the moment; nothing moved in the vicinity of the building save a few sulphur butterflies who, unaffected by the smothering heat, were diligently laboring among the flowering bushes that grew thick along the shore.
“What do they keep here?” I asked Jamie, looking curiously up at the massive structure. The huge double doors were shut and bolted, the single red-coated sentry motionless as a tin soldier in front of them. A smaller building beside the warehouse sported an English flag, drooping limply in the heat; presumably this was the lair of the sergeant we were seeking.
Jamie shrugged and brushed a questing fly away from his eyebrow. We had been attracting more and more of them as the heat of the day increased, despite the movement of the wagon. I sniffed discreetly, but could smell only a faint hint of thyme.
“Whatever the Crown thinks valuable. Furs from the backcountry, naval stores—pitch and turpentine. But the guard is because of the liquor.”
While every inn brewed its own beer, and every household had its receipts for applejack and cherry-wine, the more potent spirits were the province of the Crown: brandy, whisky, and rum were imported to the colony in small quantities under heavy guard, and sold at great cost under the Crown’s seal.
“I should say they haven’t got much in stock right now,” I said, nodding at the single guard.
“No, the shipments of liquor come upstream from Wilmington once a month. Campbell says they choose a different day each time, so as to run less risk of robbery.”
He spoke abstractedly, a small frown lingering between his eyebrows.
“Did Campbell believe us, do you think? About her doing it herself?” Without really meaning to, I cast a half glance into the wagon behind me.
Jamie made a derisory Scottish noise in the back of his throat.
“Of course not, Sassenach; the man’s no a fool. But he’s a good friend to my aunt; he’ll not make trouble if he doesn’t have to. Let’s hope the woman had no one who’ll make a fuss.”
“Rather a cold-blooded hope,” I said quietly. “I thought you felt differently, in your aunt’s drawing room. You’re probably right, though; if she’d had someone, she wouldn’t be dead now.”
He heard the bitterness in my voice, and looked down at me.
“I dinna mean to be callous, Sassenach,” he said gently. “But the poor lassie is dead. I canna do more for her than see her decently into the ground; it’s the living I must take heed for, aye?”
I heaved a sigh and squeezed his arm briefly. My feelings were a good deal too complex to try to explain; I had known the girl no more than minutes before her death, and could in no way have prevented it—but she had died under my hands, and I felt the physician’s futile rage in such circumstances; the feeling that somehow I had failed, had been outwitted by the Dark Angel. And beyond rage and pity, was an echo of unspoken guilt; the girl was near Brianna’s age—Brianna, who in like circumstances would also have no one.
“I know. It’s only…I suppose I feel responsible for her, in a way.”
“So do I,” he said. “Never fear, Sassenach; we’ll see she’s done rightly by.” He reined the horses in under a chestnut tree, and swung down, offering me a hand.
There were no barracks; Campbell had told Jamie that the warehouse guard’s ten men were quartered in various houses in the town. Upon inquiry of the clerk laboring in the office, we were directed across the street to the sign of the Golden Goose, wherein the Sergeant might presently be found at his luncheon.
I saw the Sergeant in question at once as I entered the tavern; he was sitting at a table by the window, his white leather stock undone and his tunic unbuttoned, looking thoroughly relaxed over a mug of ale and the remains of a Cornish pasty. Jamie came in behind me, his shadow momentarily blocking the light from the open door, and the Sergeant looked up.
Dim as it was in the taproom, I could see the man’s face go blank with shock. Jamie came to an abrupt halt behind me. He said something in Gaelic under his breath that I recognized as a vicious obscenity, but then he was moving forward past me, with no sign of hesitation in his manner.
“Sergeant Murchison,” he said, in tones of mild surprise, as one might greet a casual acquaintance. “I hadna thought to lay eyes on you again—not in this world, at least.”
The Sergeant’s expression strongly suggested that the feeling had been mutual. Also that any meeting this side of heaven was too soon. Blood flooded his beefy, pockmarked cheeks with red, and he shoved back his bench with a screech of wood on the sanded floor.
“You!” he said.
Jamie took off his hat and inclined his head politely.
“Your servant, sir,” he said. I could see his face now, outwardly pleasant, but with a wariness that creased the corners of his eyes. He showed it a good deal less, but the Sergeant wasn’t the only one to be taken aback.
Murchison was regaining his self-possession; the look of shock was replaced by a faint sneer.
“Fraser. Oh, beg pardon, Mr. Fraser, it will be now, won’t it?”
“It will.” Jamie kept his voice neutral, despite the insulting tone of this. Whatever past conflict lay between them, the last thing he wanted now was trouble. Not with what lay in the wagon outside. I wiped my sweaty palms surreptitiously on my skirt.
The Sergeant had begun to do up his tunic buttons, slowly, not taking his eyes off Jamie.
“I had heard there was a man called Fraser, come to leech off Mistress Cameron at River Run,” he said, with an unpleasant twist of thick lips. “That’ll be you, will it?”
The wariness in Jamie’s eyes froze into a blue as cold as glacier ice, though his lips stayed curved in a pleasant smile.
“Mistress Cameron will be my kinswoman. It is on her behalf that I have come now.”
The Sergeant tilted back his head and scratched voluptuously at his throat. There was a deep, hard-edged red crease across the expanse of fat pale flesh, as though someone had tried unsuccessfully to garrote the man.
“Your kinswoman. Well, easy to say so, ain’t it? The lady’s blind as a bat, I hear. No husband, no sons; fair prey for any sharpster comes a-calling, claiming family.” The sergeant lowered his head and smirked at me, his self-possession fully restored.
“And this’ll be your doxy, will it?” It was gratuitous malice, a shot at random; the man had scarcely glanced at me.
“This will be my wife, Mistress Fraser.”
I could see the two stiff fingers of Jamie’s right hand twitch once against the skirt of his coat, the only outward sign of his feelings. He tilted his head back an inch and raised his brows, considering the Sergeant with an air of dispassionate interest.
“And which one are you, sir? I beg pardon for my imperfect recollection, but I confess that I cannot tell you from your brother.”