together, ambling through the fields. Walking behind with Eleanor, he'd found the sight of their pleasure added a conviction to his own. He'd assumed he and Eleanor, too, would share a spiritual and physical unity, which would last forever.
It had all been a house of cards. But it seemed he must try again. For months, years, he'd asked himself if he were willing to chance such happiness a second time. Yet now, he knew that losing even a portion of the closeness he felt for the woman beside him was unthinkable. He must do whatever he could to keep her affection, and slowly add to it. And he had better begin soon, he decided.
Charlotte imagined her neighbor was about to add something, perhaps of a more personal nature. He bent a little, and she suddenly felt his lips on her own. They lingered, and she began to suppose he offered her a new sort of endearment, a different kind of beginning. In a few moments, she drew a long breath, and thought she saw him smile in the faint light.
“But in any case,” he told her, “I don't believe you should continue to worry about Ned Bigelow, or Lem… or anyone else who may have vexed you lately. Now, will you stay with me tonight? Good. Let's go in and try a bottle of old port, one of my best. I've asked Cicero to bring a pair up from the cellar. May I walk you home, madam?”
“Please, sir,” she replied, rising and pulling her cloak more tightly about her. Then, with his arm at her waist to guide her, they walked out into the ancient magic of a starlit night, making their way toward a glow of candles across the yard.
Chapter 31
THE ORMOLU CLOCK on Longfellow's mantel struck.eight. Yet not one of the four friends sitting around the study fire made any sign to say that it was time for bed. Each couple seemed lost in private speculation, as they recalled the events of the day.
Diana Montagu fingered an attractive volume on the subject of Roman history, one her brother had set down some time before.
“There is much, I suppose, to be learned from the past,” she said, wondering if anyone would comment. “And yet most of the time it only confuses one, and can have little to do with the present, after all.”
“Ancient history perhaps,” her brother replied. “Though I find it restful to be reminded that our own troubles are scarcely new.”
“What do you think, Edmund?” his wife asked, hoping to draw the captain from his own musing.
“I think,” he answered her, “that history makes us what we are. But I was pondering something of recent history, shown to me last week at Town House. You might be familiar with the story, Richard, as a Bostonian. Do you recall Owen Syllavan?”
“Indeed I do,” said Longfellow, re-crossing his long legs. “A most dedicated moneymaker.”
“I was given a copy of a remarkable document published in Boston ten years ago, taken from his own words. Though self-taught, it seems he succeeded in making above fifty thousand pounds in counterfeit money, spread about for him by a network of unscrupulous men.”
Charlotte raised her eyes, for she'd been thinking of Lem's involvement with Ned Bigelow, in what appeared to be a plot fostered by John Dudley. Had he always been as drunk as he seemed, these many years?
“Didn't Syllavan begin with Boston bills of credit?” Longfellow asked.
“With one Spanish dollar, actually—molded for amusement, he claimed, while he worked as a silversmith. He was earlier a seal cutter, and before that an armorer in the King's service, where he learned to engrave. During his later career he was imprisoned regularly, but still managed to create new bills while in jail—each by hand! For some reason, they would not bring him a rolling press.”
“There is often, I fear, a certain laxity in such places,” Longfellow replied to this irony.
“So it would seem! For he would also escape regularly. Even when he had been pilloried, branded on both cheeks, and had his ears cropped, he continued—though legally he could have been hanged years before. I doubt he would have had such an illustrious career in England.”
“Money is a sensitive subject with our juries,” Longfellow said helpfully. “Perhaps because most who sit have rarely seen much of it.”
“What has happened to him?” Diana inquired. “By now he must be a rich man.”
“He was hanged in New York, having copied bills of that province, and of New Hampshire