“Et tu, Brute?” I said rather curtly, and, when he blinked, added more civilly, “I mean—does everyone know what I’m thinking, all of the time?”
“Oh, I doubt it,” he said, and grinned at me. “If they did, I expect a number of them would take a deal more care in what they said to thee.”
I rode in Denny’s wagon with Dottie and Rachel, Clarence pacing stolidly along behind, tied to the tailboard. Dottie was flushed with heat and excitement; she had never been near a battle before. Neither had Rachel, but she had helped her brother during a very bad winter at Valley Forge and had much more idea of what the day might hold.
“Does thee think perhaps thee should write to thy mother?” I heard Rachel ask seriously. The girls were behind Denny and me, sitting in the bed of the wagon and keeping things from bouncing out when we hit ruts and mud bogs.
“No. Why?” Dottie’s tone was wary—not quite hostile, but very reserved. I knew she had written to tell her mother that she intended to wed Denzell Hunter, but she hadn’t received a reply. Given the difficulties of correspondence with England, though, there was no assurance that Minerva Grey had ever read the letter.
It occurred to me, with a sudden qualm, that I hadn’t written a letter to Brianna in several months. I hadn’t been able to bear to write about Jamie’s death, and there hadn’t been time since his return even to think about it.
“It is a war, Dottie,” Rachel said. “Unexpected things may happen. And thee would not wish thy mother to . . . well . . . to discover that thee had perished without some assurance that she was in thy heart.”
“Hmm!” said Dottie, clearly taken aback. Beside me, I felt Denzell shift his weight, bending a little forward as he took a fresh grip on the reins. He glanced aside at me, and his mouth turned up in an expression that was as much grimace as smile, acknowledging that he’d been listening to the girls’ talk, too.
“She worries for me,” he said very quietly. “Never for herself.” He let go the reins with one hand to rub a knuckle under his nose. “She has as much courage as her father and brothers.”
“As much pigheadedness, you mean,” I said under my breath, and he grinned, despite himself.
“Yes,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder and so did I, but the girls had moved to the tailboard and were talking over it to Clarence, brushing flies off his face with the needles of a long pine twig. “Does thee think it a familial lack of imagination? For in the case of the men of her family, it cannot be ignorance of the possibilities.”
“No, it certainly can’t,” I agreed, with a note of ruefulness. I sighed and stretched my legs a little. “Jamie is the same way, and he certainly doesn’t lack for imagination. I think it’s . . .” I made a small helpless gesture. “Perhaps ‘acceptance’ is the word.”
“Acceptance of the fact of mortality?” He was interested and pushed his spectacles back into place. “We have discussed that—Dorothea and I.” He nodded back toward the girls. “Friends live in the certain knowledge that this world is temporary and there is nothing to fear in death.”
“Some of that, perhaps.” In fact, almost everyone in this time had a very matter-of-fact acceptance of mortality; death was a constant presence at everyone’s elbow, though they regarded that presence in a variety of ways. “But they—those men—what they do is something different, I think. It’s more an acceptance of what they think God made them.”
“Really?” He seemed slightly startled by that, and his brows drew together in consideration. “What does thee mean by that? That they believe God has created them deliberately to—”
“To be responsible for other people, I think,” I said. “I couldn’t say whether it’s the notion of noblesse oblige—Jamie was a laird, you know, in Scotland—or just the idea that . . . that’s what a man does,” I ended, rather lamely. Because “that” was plainly not what Denzell Hunter thought a man should do. Though I did wonder a bit. Plainly the question troubled him a little.
As well it might, given his position. I could see that the prospect of battle excited him and that the fact that it did troubled him a great deal.
“You’re a very brave man,” I said quietly, and touched his sleeve. “I saw that. When you played Jamie’s deserter game, after Ticonderoga.”
“It wasn’t courage, I assure thee,” he said, with a short, humorless laugh. “I didn’t seek to be brave; I only wanted to prove that I was.”
I made a rather disrespectful noise—I wasn’t in either Jamie’s or Ian’s class, but I had picked up a few pointers—and he glanced at me in surprise.
“I do appreciate the distinction,” I told him. “But I’ve known a lot of brave men in my time.”
“But how can thee know what lies—”
“Be quiet.” I waved my fingers at him. “ ‘Brave’ covers everything from complete insanity and bloody disregard of other people’s lives—generals tend to go in for that sort—to drunkenness, foolhardiness, and outright idiocy—to the sort of thing that will make a man sweat and tremble and throw up . . . and go and do what he thinks he has to do anyway.
“Which,” I said, pausing for breath and folding my hands neatly in my lap, “is exactly the sort of bravery you share with Jamie.”
“Thy husband does not sweat and tremble,” he said dryly. “I’ve seen him. Or, rather, I have not seen him do such things.”