“Josh says Angelina says the ghost was comin’ out of old Mr. Hector’s tomb,” he said.
“I expect Mr. Buchanan just walked round it, and she saw him coming along the side, and thought he was coming out of it,” she said, carefully avoiding any question as to why a middle-aged Scottish gentleman should be walking round tombs in his nightshirt; obviously, that wasn’t a notion that struck Jemmy as odd.
It did occur to her to ask just what Angelina was doing outside in the middle of the night seeing ghosts, but on second thought, better not. The most likely reason for a maid’s stealing out at night wasn’t something a boy of Jemmy’s age needed to hear about, either.
Her lips tightened a little at the thought of Malva Christie, who had perhaps gone to a rendezvous of her own in Claire’s garden. Who? she wondered for the thousandth time, even as she automatically crossed herself, with a brief prayer for the repose of Malva’s soul. Who had it been? If ever there were a ghost that should walk . . .
A small shiver passed over her, but that in turn gave her a new idea.
“I think it was Mr. Buchanan Angelina saw,” she said firmly. “But if you ever should be afraid of ghosts—or anything else—you just make the Sign of the Cross, and say a quick prayer to your guardian angel.”
The words gave her a slight sense of dizziness—perhaps it was déjà vu. She thought that someone—her mother? her father?—had said exactly that to her, sometime in the distant past of her childhood. What she had been afraid of? She no longer remembered that, but did remember the sense of security that the prayer had given her.
Jem frowned uncertainly at that; he knew the Sign of the Cross, but wasn’t so sure about the angel prayer. She rehearsed it with him, feeling slightly guilty as she did so.
It was only a matter of time before he did something overtly Catholic—like make the Sign of the Cross—in front of someone who mattered to Roger. For the most part, people either assumed that the minister’s wife was Protestant, as well—or knew the truth, but were in no position to make a fuss about it. She was aware of a certain amount of muttering amongst Roger’s flock, particularly in the wake of Malva’s death and the talk about her parents—she felt her lips press tight again, and consciously relaxed them—but Roger steadfastly refused to hear any such remarks.
She felt a deep pang of longing for Roger, even with the worrying thought of potential religious complications fresh in her mind. He’d written; Elder McCorkle had been delayed, but should be in Edenton within the week. A week more, maybe, before the Presbytery Session convened—and then he’d be coming to River Run for her and Jem.
He was so happy at the thought of his ordination; surely once he was ordained, they couldn’t defrock him—if that’s what happened to miscreant ministers—for having a Catholic wife, could they?
Would she convert, if she had to, for Roger to be what he so clearly wanted—and needed—to be? The thought made her feel hollow, and she put her arms round Jemmy for reassurance. His skin was damp and still baby-soft, but she could feel the hardness of his bones pressing through, giving promise of a size that would likely one day match his father and grandfather. His father—there was a small, glowing thought that calmed all her anxieties, and even soothed the ache of missing Roger.
Jemmy’s hair had long since grown again, but she kissed the spot behind his left ear where the hidden mark was, making him hunch his shoulders and giggle at the tickle of her breath on his neck.
She sent him off then, to take the paint-stained shirt to Matilda the laundress to see what might be done, and went back to her grinding.
The mineral smell of the malachite in her mortar seemed vaguely wrong; she lifted it and sniffed, even as she did so aware that that was ridiculous: ground stone couldn’t go bad. Maybe the mixture of turpentine and the fumes from Mr. Buchanan’s pipe was affecting her sense of smell. She shook her head, and scraped the soft green powder carefully out into a vial, to be mixed with walnut oil or used in an egg tempera later.
She cast an appraising eye over the selection of boxes and pouches—some supplied by Aunt Jocasta, others courtesy of John Grey, sent specially from London—and the vials and drying trays of the pigments she’d ground herself, to see what else might be needed.
This afternoon, she’d only be making preliminary sketches—the commission was for a portrait of Mr. Forbes’s ancient mother—but she might have only a week or two to finish the job before Roger’s return; she couldn’t waste—
A wave of dizziness made her sit down suddenly, and black spots flickered through her vision. She put her head between her knees, breathing deep. That didn’t help; the air was raw with turps, and thick with the meaty, decaying animal smells of the stables below.
She lifted her head, and grabbed for the edge of the table. Her insides seemed to have turned abruptly to a liquid substance that shifted with her movement like water in a bowl, sloshing from belly to throat and back, leaving the bitter yellow smell of bile at the back of her nose.
“Oh, God.”
The liquid in her belly rushed up her throat, and she had barely time to seize the washbasin from the table and dump the water on the floor before her stomach turned inside out in the frantic effort to empty itself.
She set the basin down, very carefully, and sat panting, staring at the wet blotch on the floor, as the world beneath her shifted on its axis and settled at a new, uneasy angle.
“Congratulations, Roger,” she said out loud, her voice sounding faint and uncertain in the close, damp air. “I think you’re going to be a daddy. Again.”
SHE SAT STILL for some time, cautiously exploring the sensations of her body, looking for certainty. She hadn’t been sick with Jemmy—but she remembered the oddly altered quality of her senses; that odd state called synesthesia, where sight, smell, taste, and even sometimes hearing occasionally and weirdly took on characteristics of each other.
It had gone away as abruptly as it had happened; the tang of Mr. Buchanan’s tobacco was much stronger, but now it was only the mellow burning of cured leaves, not a mottled green-brown thing that writhed through her sinuses and rattled the membranes of her brain like a tin roof in a hailstorm.
She had been concentrating so hard on her bodily sensations and what they might or might not mean that she hadn’t really noticed the voices in the next room. That was Duncan’s modest lair, where he kept the ledgers and accounts of the estate and—she thought—went to hide, when the grandeur of the house became too much for him.
Mr. Buchanan was in there with Duncan now, and what had started out as a genial thrum of conversation was now showing signs of strain. She got up, relieved to feel only a slight residual clamminess now, and picked up the basin. She had the natural human inclinations toward eavesdropping, but lately, she had been careful not to hear anything but what she must.
Duncan and her aunt Jocasta were stout Loyalists, and nothing she could say by way of tactful urging or logical argument would sway them. She had overheard more than one of Duncan’s private conversations with local Tories that made her heart go small with apprehension, knowing as she did what would be the outcome of the present events.
Here in the piedmont, in the heart of the Cape Fear country, most of the solid citizens were Loyalists, convinced that the violence taking place to the north was an overblown rumpus that might be unnecessary, and if it was not, had little to do with them—and that what was most needed here was a firm hand to rein in the wild-eyed Whigs, before their excesses provoked a ruinous retaliation. Knowing that exactly such a ruinous retaliation was coming—and to people she liked, or even loved—gave her what her father called the grue: a cold sense of oppressive horror, coiling through the blood.
“When, then?” Buchanan’s voice came clearly as she opened the door, sounding impatient. “They will not wait, Duncan. I must have the money by Wednesday week, or Dunkling will sell the arms elsewhere; ye ken it’s a seller’s market the noo. For gold, he’ll wait—but not for long.”
“Aye, I ken that fine, Sawny.” Duncan sounded impatient—and very uneasy, Brianna thought. “If it can be done, it will be.”
“IF?” Buchanan cried. “What is this ‘if’? ’Til now, it’s been, oh, aye, Sawny, nay difficulty, to be sure, Sawny, tell Dunkling it’s on, oh, of course, Sawny—”
“I said, Alexander, that if it can be done, it will.” Duncan’s voice was low, but suddenly had a note of steel in it that she had never heard before.
Buchanan said something rude in the Gaelic, and suddenly the door of Duncan’s office burst open and the man himself popped out, in so great a huff that he barely saw her, and gave her no more than a brusque nod in passing.
Which was just as well, she thought, since she was standing there holding a bowl full of vomit.
Before she could move to dispose of it, Duncan came out in turn. He looked hot, cross—and extremely worried. He did, however, notice her.
“How d’ye fare, lass?” he asked, squinting at her. “Ye’re that bit green; have ye eaten aught amiss?”
“I think so. But I’m all right now,” she said, hastily turning to put the basin back in the room behind her. She set it on the floor and closed the door on it. “Are you, er, all right, Duncan?”
He hesitated for an instant, but whatever was bothering him was too overwhelming to keep it bottled up. He glanced about, but none of the slaves was up here at this time of day. He leaned close, nonetheless, and lowered his voice.
“Have ye by chance . . . seen anything peculiar, a nighean?”
“Peculiar, how?”
He rubbed a knuckle under his drooping mustache, and glanced round once more.
“Near Hector Cameron’s tomb, say?” he asked, his voice pitched only just above a whisper.
Her diaphragm, still sore from vomiting, contracted sharply at that, and she put a hand to her middle.
“Ye have, then?” Duncan’s expression sharpened.
“Not me,” she said, and explained about Jemmy, Angelina, and the supposed ghost.
“I thought perhaps it was Mr. Buchanan,” she finished, nodding toward the stair down which Alexander Buchanan had vanished.
“Now, there’s a thought,” Duncan muttered, rubbing distractedly at his grizzled temple. “But no . . . surely not. He couldna—but it’s a thought.” Brianna thought that he looked very slightly more hopeful.
“Duncan—can you tell me what’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath, shaking his head—not in refusal, but in perplexity—and let it out again, his shoulders slumping.
“The gold,” he said simply. “It’s gone.”
SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS in gold bullion was a substantial amount, in all senses of the word. She had no idea how much such a sum might weigh, but it had completely lined Jocasta’s coffin, standing chastely next to Hector Cameron’s in the family mausoleum.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” she blurted. “All of it?”