“Here?” she said. “I don’t suppose you could take him to . . . Well, no, I suppose not.” She took a deep breath. “All right. What can we do to help?”
The manservant coughed behind her in a meaningful manner, and she stiffened.
“My father would say the same,” she informed him coldly.
“Just so, miss,” he said, with a deference that wasn’t all that deferential. “But he might like to have the chance to say it himself, don’t you think?”
She shot him an angry glance, but before she could say anything, there was a grinding screech of wood as the window gave way to Jamie’s will, and everyone’s eye jerked to him.
“I dinna mean to interrupt,” he said mildly, turning round. “But I do believe the governor has come to call.”
JAMIE PUSHED PAST Miss Shippen and her servant before either could react. He ran lightly down the back stair and came through the house, startling a kitchen maid. Clearly the governor wasn’t going to be admitted by the kitchen door.
He reached the front door just as a firm knock sounded, and pulled it open.
“Miss Margaret!” Arnold pushed past Jamie as though he wasn’t there—no small feat—and seized Peggy Shippen’s hands in his. “I thought I must come—your cousin? How does he do?”
“He is alive.” Peggy swallowed, her face the color of the beeswax candle she was holding. “Mrs. Fraser is—she says—” She swallowed again, and Jamie swallowed with her, out of sympathy, knowing all too well what she was thinking of. Tench Bledsoe’s shattered leg bones, red and slimy as an ineptly butchered pig’s. The back of his throat was still bitter with the taste of vomit.
“I thank you so much for sending Mrs. Fraser to us, sir—I couldn’t think what on earth we were to do. My father’s in Maryland and my mother with her sister in New Jersey. My brothers . . .” She trailed off, looking distraught.
“No, no, my dear—may I call you so? It is my most fervent concern, to help you—your family, to . . . protect you.” He hadn’t let go her hands, Jamie noted, and she wasn’t pulling them away.
Jamie glanced covertly from Arnold to Peggy Shippen, then turned away a little, drawing back. It wasn’t hard for them to ignore him; they were focused on each other.
That made matters plain—or at least plainer. Arnold wanted the girl, and wanted her so nakedly that Jamie was slightly ashamed for the man. You couldn’t help lust, but surely a man should have enough control to hide it. And no just for the sake of decency, either, he thought, seeing a certain look of cautious calculation come into Peggy’s face. It was, he thought, the look of a fisherman who has just seen a fat trout swim right under the lure.
He cleared his throat in a pointed manner, and both of them jerked as though he’d run a drawing pin into them.
“My wife says it will be necessary to amputate the injured leg,” he said. “Quickly. She requires a few things—instruments and the like.”
“I need both the large saw and the small lunar one, the set of tenaculae—the long things that look like fishing hooks—and quite a lot of sutures . . .”
He was trying to keep the list in his head, though it made him ill to envision most of the items, thinking of the use they were about to be put to. Beneath the sense of revulsion and pity, though, was wariness—the same wariness he saw at the back of Benedict Arnold’s eyes.
“Does she,” Arnold said, not quite a question. His eyes flicked back to Peggy Shippen, who bit her lip in a becoming manner.
“Can ye maybe send your coachman to the printshop?” Jamie asked. “I can go with him and fetch back what’s needed.”
“Yes,” Arnold said slowly, but in an abstracted way, the way he did when he was thinking rapidly. “Or . . . no. Let us rather remove Mr. Bledsoe—and Mrs. Fraser, to be sure—to the printshop in my coach. Mrs. Fraser will have access there to everything she requires, and the assistance and support of her family.”
“What?” Jamie exclaimed, but Peggy Shippen was already hanging on to Arnold’s arm, her face transformed by relief. Jamie seized Arnold by the arm to compel his attention, and the governor’s eyes narrowed.
Jamie’s intent had been to demand rhetorically whether Arnold was mad, but the split second’s delay was enough to change this to a more politic “There’s nay room at the shop for such a venture, sir. We live atop one another, and folk come in and out all day. This willna be a simple matter; the man will need to be nursed for some time.”
Peggy Shippen made a small moan of anxiety, and it dawned upon Jamie that Tench Bledsoe was a hot potato, as much—or more—for Arnold as for the Shippens. The last thing Arnold could want, as military governor of the city, was public scandal and disorder, the remaining Loyalists in Philadelphia threatened and frightened, the Sons of Liberty seen as secret vigilantes, a law unto themselves.
Arnold must very much want the incident kept quiet. At the same time, he wanted to be the noble knight, riding to the aid of the very young and enchanting Miss Shippen by caring for her cousin while removing the potential danger he posed to her household.
By bringing it to mine, Jamie thought, his wariness beginning to turn to anger.
“Sir,” he said formally. “There is no possibility of preventing the matter from being known, should ye bring yon man into my son’s shop. And clearly ye ken the danger of that.”
The truth of this was evident, and Arnold paused, wrinkling his brow. But Jamie had fought with the man and kent him well enough; Jamie saw that, having made up his mind to relieve Miss Peggy’s concern, Arnold meant to do it, come hell or high water.