“I didn’t, either,” he said, and, putting the cup aside, coughed again and lay back against the heaped pillows. “The War Office decided to send my regiment to support Clinton when the new strategy was decided upon; there wasn’t time to write.”
“Which new strategy is this?” I asked, only mildly interested.
“To sever the southern colonies from the north, suppress the rebellion there, and thus starve the north into submission. Keep the bloody French out of the West Indies, too,” he added as an afterthought. “You think Dottie might change her mind?” He sounded dubious but hopeful.
“Actually, no,” I said. I stretched and ran my fingers through my damp hair, which had settled softly on my neck and shoulders, curling light and tickling round my face. “I wondered whether it was you or your wife she took after in terms of willfulness, but the instant I met you, it was clear.”
He gave me a narrow look but had the grace to smile.
“She does,” he admitted. “So does Benjamin—my eldest son. Henry and Adam are both like my wife in terms of temperament. Which does not mean that they aren’t capable of seeking their own way,” he added thoughtfully. “Only that they’re rather more diplomatic about it.”
“I’d like to meet your wife,” I said, smiling, too. “Her name is Minnie, John said?”
“Minerva,” he said, his smile growing more genuine. “Minerva Cunnegunda, to be exact. Couldn’t call her ‘Cunny,’ could I?”
“Probably not in public, no.”
“Wouldn’t try it in private, either,” he assured me. “She’s very demure—to look at.”
I laughed, and darted a glance at the brazier. I hadn’t thought the active principle in ganja would be very strong, burned as an atmospheric rather than smoked directly. Still, it was obviously having a beneficial effect on Hal’s mood as well as his asthma, and I was conscious of a slight feeling of well-being beginning to creep into my own outlook. I was still worried about Jamie—and John—but the worry had lifted from my shoulders and seemed to be floating a little way above my head: still visible, and a dull purple-gray in color, but floating. Like a lead balloon, I thought, and gave a small, amused snort.
Hal was lying back, eyes half lidded, watching me with a sort of detached interest.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said, sounding faintly surprised. “Not demure, though,” he added, and made a low chuckling noise. “What could John have been thinking?”
I knew what John had been thinking but didn’t want to talk about it—for assorted reasons.
“What did you mean earlier,” I asked curiously, “about making bargains with God?”
“Ah.” His eyelids closed slowly. “When I arrived at General Clinton’s office this morning—God, was that only this morning?—he had rather bad news for me—and a letter. Sent some weeks ago from New Jersey, forwarded eventually to him through the army post.
“My eldest son, Benjamin, was captured by the Rebels at the Brandywine,” he said, almost dispassionately. Almost; there was enough light for me to see the bulge of his jaw muscle. “There is at present no agreement with the Americans involving the exchange of prisoners, so he remains in captivity.”
“Where?” I asked, disturbed at the news.
“I don’t know that,” he said shortly. “Yet. But I shall discover his whereabouts as quickly as possible.”
“Godspeed,” I said sincerely. “Was the letter from Benjamin?”
“No.” His jaw tightened a little further.
The letter had been from a young woman named Amaranthus Cowden, who informed His Grace the Duke of Pardloe that she was the wife of his son Benjamin—and the mother of Benjamin’s son, Trevor Wattiswade Grey, aged three months. Born after Benjamin was captured, I thought, and wondered whether Benjamin knew about the baby.
The young Mrs. Grey found herself in difficult circumstances, she wrote, owing to her husband’s sad absence, and therefore proposed to go to her relatives in Charleston. She felt some delicacy in approaching His Grace for assistance, but her state was such that she felt she had little choice in the matter and hoped that he would forgive her forwardness and look kindly upon her plea. She enclosed a lock of her son’s hair, feeling that His Grace might like to have such a keepsake of his grandson.
“Dear me,” I said. I hesitated for a moment, but the same thought must surely have occurred to him. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
He sighed, a mixture of anxiety and aggravation.
“Almost certainly she is. My wife’s maiden name was Wattiswade, but no one outside the family would know that.” He nodded toward the wardrobe where Mrs. Figg had hung his uniform. “The letter is in my coat, should you wish to read it.”
I waved a hand in polite dismissal.
“I see what you meant about making bargains with God. You want to live to see your grandchild—and your son, of course.”
He sighed again, his lean body seeming to diminish slightly. Mrs. Figg had undone his queue—much against his will—brushed out his hair, and tied it in a loose tail that now fell over his shoulder, a soft dark brown shot with streaks of white that glinted red and gold in the fire glow.
“Not precisely. I do want that, of course, but—” He groped for words, quite unlike his earlier elegant loquacity. “You’d die for them, happily. Your family. But at the same time you think, Christ, I can’t die! What might happen to them if I weren’t here?” He gave me a wry and rueful smile. “And you know bloody well that you mostly can’t help them anyway; they’ve got to do it—or not—themselves.”