They continued together, auld Dan asking questions and Jamie replying as briefly as good manners—and his real affection for Morgan—would allow. They hadn’t met since Saratoga, where he’d served under Morgan as an officer of his Rifle Corps, and there was a good deal to say. Still, he was glad of the company, and even of the questions; they distracted him and kept his mind from catapulting him again into fruitless fury and confusion.
“I suppose we must part here,” Jamie said, after a bit. They were approaching a crossroads, and Dan had slowed his pace a bit. “I’m bound into the city myself.”
“What for?” Morgan asked, rather surprised.
“I—to see my wife.” His voice wanted to tremble on the word “wife,” and he bit it off sharp.
“Oh, yes? Could you maybe spare a quarter hour?” Dan was giving him a sort of calculating look that made Jamie instantly uneasy. But the sun was still high; he didn’t want to enter Philadelphia before dark.
“Aye, maybe,” he replied cautiously. “To do what?”
“I’m on my way to see a friend—want you to meet him. It’s right close, won’t take a moment. Come on!” Morgan veered right, waving at Jamie to follow, which, cursing himself for a fool, he did.
Number 17 Chestnut Street
I WAS SWEATING as freely as the duke was by the time the spasm eased enough for him to breathe without the positive-pressure exercise. I wasn’t quite as tired as he was—he lay back in the chair, exhausted, eyes closed, drawing slow, shallow—but free!—breaths—but close. I felt light-headed, too; it’s not possible to help someone breathe without doing a lot of it yourself, and I was hyperventilated.
“Here, a piuthar-chèile.” Jenny’s voice spoke by my ear, and it was only when I opened my eyes in surprise that I realized they’d been closed. She put a small glass of brandy in my hand. “There’s nay whisky in the house, but I expect this will help. Shall I give His Grace a dram, too?”
“Yes, you shall,” the duke said, with great authority, though he didn’t move a muscle or open his eyes. “Thank you, madam.”
“It won’t hurt him,” I said, drawing myself up and stretching my back. “Or you, either. Sit down and have a drink. You, too, Mrs. Figg.” Jenny and Mrs. Figg had worked nearly as hard as I had, fetching and grinding and brewing, bringing cool cloths to mop the sweat, spelling me now and then with the counting, and, by combining their not-inconsiderable force of will with mine, helping to keep him alive.
Mrs. Figg had very fixed notions of what was proper, and these didn’t include sitting down to share a dram with her employer, let alone a visiting duke, but even she was obliged to admit that the circumstances were unusual. Glass in hand, she perched primly on an ottoman near the parlor door, where she could deal with any potential invasions or domestic emergencies.
No one spoke for some time, but there was a great sense of peace in the room. The hot, still air carried that sense of odd camaraderie that binds people who have passed through a trial together—if only temporarily. I gradually became aware that the air was carrying noises, too, from the street outside. Groups of people moving hurriedly, shouts from the next block, and a rumble of wagons. And a distant rattle of drums.
Mrs. Figg was aware of it, too; I saw her head rise, the ribbons of her cap atremble with inquisitiveness.
“Baby Jesus, have mercy,” she said, setting down her empty glass with care. “Something’s coming.”
Jenny looked startled and glanced at me, apprehensive.
“Coming?” she said. “What’s coming?”
“The Continental army, I expect,” said Pardloe. He let his head fall back, sighing. “Dear God. What it is . . . to draw breath.” His breath was still short, but not very much constrained. He raised his glass ceremoniously to me. “Thank you, my . . . dear. I was . . . already in your debt for your . . . kind services to my son, but—”
“What do you mean, ‘the Continental army’?” I interrupted. I set down my own glass, now empty. My heart rate had calmed after the exertions of the last hour but now abruptly sped up again.
Pardloe closed one eye and regarded me with the other.
“The Americans,” he said mildly. “The Rebels. What else . . . would I mean?”
“And when you say, ‘coming . . .’” I said carefully.
“I didn’t,” he pointed out, then nodded at Mrs. Figg. “She did. She’s right, though. General Clinton’s . . . forces are with . . . drawing from Philadelphia. . . . I daresay Wa . . . Washington is . . . poised to rush in.”
Jenny made a small sputtering noise, and Mrs. Figg said something really blasphemous in French, then clapped a broad pink-palmed hand to her mouth.
“Oh,” I said, doubtless sounding as blank as I felt. I’d been so distracted during my meeting with Clinton earlier in the day that the logical consequences of a British withdrawal had not occurred to me at all.
Mrs. Figg stood up.
“I best go and be burying the silver, then,” she said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “It’ll be under the laburnum bush by the cookhouse, Lady John.”
“Wait,” I said, raising a hand. “I don’t think we need do that just yet, Mrs. Figg. The army hasn’t yet left the city; the Americans aren’t precisely snapping at our heels. And we’ll need a few forks with which to eat our supper.”
She made a low rumbling noise in her throat but seemed to see the sense in this; she nodded and began to collect the brandy glasses instead.