and for a moment, behind the wary anger in them, she thought she saw fear.
Why fear?
“I’m sorry that I could not be of more assistance.” He was on his feet. At the other side of the office, looking the tiniest bit surprised, Coldstone rose from his chair.
Hamlet, or Viola, or the wily Odysseus, would have had precisely the right question to call the merchant back, to pique his vanity or his curiosity or his fear of what she might know and thus elicit further revelations . . .
And all she, Abigail Adams, could do was incline her head, and say, “I thank you for your trouble, sir—and for the information you have given me.”
Would a murderer have turned back, asked in not-quite-concealed concern, And what information was that, pray, my dear Mrs. Adams?
Richard Pentyre got out of the room as promptly as he was able—she had the impression he only barely kept himself from backing from her presence.
“Please wait here, Mrs. Adams.” Coldstone favored her with a slight bow, and followed him out.
Abigail folded her hands, her heart beating hard. She had touched him on the raw, beyond a doubt; frightened him. It crossed her mind to wonder what he was going to say to Coldstone, who might very well have seen or heard something. Or would it suffice merely to play his trump card: I am the Governor’s friend. The law does not apply to me.
In certain matters it didn’t. The fact that the Governor’s friends, like the King’s, could get away with financial peculation and chicanery with the customs was one of the things that most maddened Sam, and John, and others. In a question of murder, however, he was likely to find matters less amenable to influence.
Or was he? The thought was a disconcerting one. In Pamela, as John had derisively pointed out, the lustful and demanding Mr. B held his power precisely as Governor Hutchinson held it: because every man’s livelihood depended upon his whim. No one considered a servant girl’s honor more important than keeping a roof over one’s own head or food on one’s family table.
The door opened. Abigail got to her feet, lips parting to ask Coldstone what Pentyre had said—
Only it wasn’t Lieutenant Coldstone in the doorway, but a tall, buxom, black-haired young girl in an overly colorful parakeet green dress.
In fact—Abigail belatedly identified the newcomer—it was the Royal Commissioner’s daughter, Miss Lucy Fluckner.
“Mrs. Adams?” The girl’s husky hesitancy, Abigail guessed at once, was not her usual habit. “We need to speak to you. I-I think it’s on a matter of life and death.”
Twenty-two
The Fluckners had two rooms in what was clearly the officers’ quarters of Castle William: Abigail wondered who had been displaced to make way for them. The suite had obviously been intended to house an officer and his servant, for a door connected its rooms, and in addition each had a door and a window looking out onto the parade ground. A light burned in the window of the smaller chamber, an uneasy reminder that, though daylight remained in the sky, evening was coming on fast. The wind, which, as she had prayed it would, had slackened for her crossing, was now getting up again, and whistled shrilly around the fortress walls. It would be a bitter night for those lodged under canvas. As she crossed the parade in Miss Fluckner’s wake, Abigail checked her watch, reflecting that she had best hold fast to what she had instructed Thaxter to tell Lieutenant Coldstone: that she would return in one hour.
The Lieutenant’s probable reaction, when he returned to the office and found John’s clerk there instead of herself, she put from her mind. Instead she mentally marshaled the arguments she’d have to present to this decisive-looking young lady—or her irascible father—about where she, Abigail, was supposed to spend the night—
And tried to salve her conscience about playing sleuth-hound on the Sabbath yet again.
A matter of life and death?
“No one will believe Philomela when she says she’s in danger,” said Miss Fluckner—who was, Abigail was pleased to see, one of the few women of her acquaintance who walked as briskly as she did herself. “They say—Papa says—she just doesn’t want to be sold, because I indulge her and she’s afraid that another master wouldn’t.” Though Colonel Leslie had clearly given orders that the open parade in the center of the fort was to remain open, all around its edges pens had been set up for sheep, cows, pigs. As they approached