“But I needn’t now,” he concluded firmly, and put it away again. “It’s only saying what I’ve already told you.” A slight flush touched his cheekbones, though, and he avoided John’s eye, turning instead to Hal.
“I’ll go and find out about Ben,” he said simply. “I’m not a soldier any longer; there’s no danger of my being taken up as a spy. And I can travel much more easily than you can.”
“Oh, William!” Dottie took the handkerchief from her father and blew her nose with a small, ladylike honk. She looked at him with brimming eyes. “Will you, really? Oh, thank you!”
That was not, of course, the end of it. But it was no revelation to Grey that William possessed a stubbornness so obviously derived from his natural father that no one but Hal would even have thought of arguing with him. And even Hal didn’t argue long.
In due course, William rose to go.
“Give Mrs. Figg my love, please,” he said to John, and, with a small bow to Dottie, “Goodbye, cousin.”
John followed him to the door to let him out, but at the threshold put a hand on his sleeve.
“Willie,” he said softly. “Give me the letter.”
For the first time, William looked a little less than certain. He put his hand to his breast, but left it there, hesitant.
“I won’t read it—unless you don’t come back. But if you don’t . . . I want it. To keep.”
William drew breath, nodded, and, reaching into his coat, removed a sealed cover and handed it over. Grey saw that it had been sealed with a thick daub of candle wax and that William hadn’t used his signet, preferring instead to stamp it with his thumbprint, firm in the hot wax.
“Thank you,” he said through the lump in his throat. “Godspeed. Son.”
THE SENSE OF THE MEETING
THE METHODIST CHURCH was a modest wooden building with plain glass windows, and, while it did have an altar, might otherwise easily have passed as a Quaker meetinghouse, bar three framed cross-stitched samplers bearing Bible verses that hung on one wall. I heard Rachel let out her breath as she stopped just inside, looking around.
“No flowers?” Mrs. Figg had said the day before, scandalized. “I understand plain, but God made flowers!”
“A Friends’ meetinghouse would not have flowers,” Rachel had said, smiling. “We think them somewhat pagan, and a distraction to worship. But we are thy guests, and surely a guest must not tell his host how to keep his own house.”
Mrs. Figg blinked at the word “pagan,” but then made a low humming noise and settled back into benignity.
“Well and good, then,” she said. “His lordship has three good rosebushes, and there’s sunflowers in every yard in town. Lot of honeysuckle, too,” she added thoughtfully. There was; everyone planted honeysuckle by the privy.
As a nod to the Quakers’ sensibilities, though, there was only one vase of flowers—a very plain glass vase—between the two wooden benches that had been set at the front of the room, and the faint perfume of honeysuckle and pink cabbage roses mingled with the turpentine smell of hot pine boards and the pungent scents of fairly clean but very hot people.
Rachel and I stepped outside again, joining the rest of what I supposed might be called the wedding party, in the shade under a big lime tree. People were still arriving in ones and twos, and I caught a good many curious looks directed at us—though these were not aimed at the two brides.
“You are being married in . . . that?” Hal said, eyeing Dottie’s Sunday-best gown of soft gray muslin with a white fichu and a bow at the back of the waist. Dottie raised one smooth blond brow at him.
“Ha,” she said. “Mummy told me what she wore when you married her in a tavern in Amsterdam. And what your first wedding was like. Diamonds and white lace and St. James’s Church didn’t help all that much, did they?”
“Dorothea,” Denzell said mildly. “Don’t savage thy father. He has enough to bear.”
Hal, who had flushed at Dottie’s remarks, went somewhat redder at Denny’s and breathed in a menacing rasp, but didn’t say anything further. Hal and John were both wearing full dress uniform and far outshone the two brides in splendor. I thought it rather a pity that Hal wouldn’t get to walk Dottie down the aisle, but he had merely inhaled deeply when the form of the marriage was outlined to him and said—after being elbowed sharply in the ribs by his brother—that he was honored to witness the event.
Jamie, by contrast, did not wear uniform, but his appearance in full Highland dress made Mrs. Figg’s eyes bulge—and not only hers.
“Sweet Shepherd of Judea,” she muttered to me. “Is that man wearing a woolen petticoat? And what sort of pattern is that cloth? Enough to burn the eyes out your head.”
“They call it a Fèileadh beag,” I told her. “In the native language. In English, it’s usually called a kilt. And the pattern is his family tartan.”
She eyed him for a long moment, the color rising slowly in her cheeks. She turned to me with her mouth open to ask a question, then thought better and shut it firmly.
“No,” I said, laughing. “He isn’t.”
She snorted. “Either way, he’s like to die of the heat,” she predicted, “and so are those two gamecocks.” She nodded at John and Hal, glorious and sweating in crimson and gold lace. Henry had also come in uniform, wearing his more modest lieutenant’s apparel. He squired Mercy Woodcock on his arm and gave his father a stare daring him to say anything.