“Aye, he is. Persistent wee sodomite,” he observed dispassionately. “He wrote out a detailed account of what he claims is the story of Fergus’s parents, wi’ the conclusion that Fergus is the heir to some great estate in France. Fergus says if it had been a romantic novel, it would have been criticized as too implausible and nay publisher would touch it.” He grinned at the thought, but then sobered. “Still. Fergus says he hasna the slightest intent o’ having anything to do with the matter, as even if it were true, he doesna mean to be a pawn for someone else’s interests—and if it’s not true, still less.”
“Hmm.” I had taken to simply eating the sugar lumps by now, rather than mixing them into the problematical coffee, and crunched one between my back teeth. “Why is he keeping that from Marsali, though? She knows about Wainwright’s earlier approaches, doesn’t she?”
Jamie drummed his hand on the table in thought, and I watched in fascination; he had been accustomed for a great while to drumming the two stiff fingers of his right hand when thinking—the middle and ring finger, which had been badly broken, crudely reset, and frequently re-broken, owing to the clumsy way it stuck out. But I had finally amputated the ruined ring finger after he’d had half of it sliced off by a cavalry saber during the first battle of Saratoga. He still drummed his hand, though, as if the finger were still there, though now only the middle finger struck the tabletop.
“She does,” he said slowly. “But Fergus said that there began to be that odd wee bit of . . . something . . . in Wainwright’s importunities. No quite a threat—but just things like an observation that, of course, since Fergus is the heir to the Beauchamp estate—if he is, in fact—then Germain would inherit the title and land after him.”
I frowned.
“I can see that being offered as an inducement—but why is it a threat?”
He gave me a level look over the coffee debris.
“If Germain would inherit this estate—Wainwright’s principals dinna really need Fergus, now, do they?”
“Jesus H. . . . Really?” I said. “You—or, rather, Fergus thinks Wainwright and company might kill him and then use Germain to get hold of this property or whatever it is they have in mind?”
Jamie gave the ghost of a shrug.
“Fergus hasna lived as long as he has without having a sense of when someone means him harm. And if he thinks there’s summat amiss wi’ this Wainwright, I’m inclined to believe him. Besides,” he added fairly, “if it makes him more willing to leave Philadelphia and come south with us, I’m no going to persuade him he’s wrong.”
“Well, there’s that.” I looked dubiously at the dregs of my coffee and decided against it. “Speaking of Germain, though—or, rather, the children in general—that’s actually why I was looking for you.” And, in a few words, I described the ladybird note and its effect on Marsali.
Jamie’s thick auburn brows drew together, and his face took on a look that his enemies would have recognized. I had last seen it in the light of dawn on a North Carolina mountainside, when he had escorted me through woods and meadows, from one cold body to the next, to show me that the men who had hurt me were dead, to reassure me that they could not touch me.
“That was what made me . . . er . . . indisposed in the street,” I said, rather apologetically. “It just seemed so . . . evil. But a sort of delicate evil, if you know what I mean. It—rather gave me a turn.” The dead had their own means of making you remember them, but I felt nothing at the memory of his vengeance beyond a remote sense of relief and an even remoter sense of awe at the supernatural beauty of carnage in such a setting.
“I do know,” he said softly, and tapped his missing finger on the table. “And I should like to see that note.”
“Why?”
“To see whether the handwriting looks like that in Percy Wainwright’s letter, Sassenach,” he said, pushing back from the table and handing me my hat. “Are ye ready?”
THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH
I HAD BOUGHT A striped bass nearly as long as my arm, along with a mess of crayfish and a gunnysack of oysters from the estuary, and the kitchen smelled delightfully of fresh bread and fish stew. This was a good thing, as stew can always be stretched, and Ian and Rachel, with Rollo in tow, had drifted into the printshop just before supper, so visibly in the throes of wedded bliss that it made one smile—and occasionally blush—to look at them.
Jenny did smile, and I saw her thin shoulders relax a little, seeing Ian’s radiant face. I gave the stew a quick stir and came over to stand behind her as she sat by the fire, laying my hands on those shoulders and kneading them gently. I knew bloody well what a day’s laundry felt like in the muscles.
She heaved a long, blissful sigh and bent her head to allow me to get my thumbs on her neck.
“D’ye think our wee Quaker lass is wi’ child yet?” she murmured to me. Rachel was across the room, chatting with the younger children and very easy with them—though her eyes kept turning to Ian, who was looking at something Fergus had taken out of a drawer in the sideboard.
“They’ve been married barely a month,” I whispered back, though I looked carefully at Rachel.
“It doesna take that long,” Jenny said. “And plainly the lad kens his job. Look at her.” Her shoulders quivered slightly with a suppressed laugh.
“A fine thing for a mother to be thinking about her son,” I said under my breath, though I could neither keep the amusement out of my own voice nor say she was wrong. Rachel glowed in the magic light of mingled dusk and hearth fire, and her eyes rested on the lines of Ian’s back, even as she admired Félicité’s new rag doll.