I ought!”
The man shuffled disconsolately away, and William felt a small pang of regret, but there was in fact little he could do. Even had he felt able to stretch a point in the merchant’s favor, once a bribe was offered, he had no choice.
Even if it were true, how would Fraser have discovered it? Surely Lord John wouldn’t have been foolish enough to tell him. No, it must be something else that was delaying Papa’s return—doubtless the muddle of people leaving Philadelphia; the roads must be choked. . . .
“Yes, madam. I think we have room for you and your daughter,” he said to a young mother, very frightened-looking, with a baby clutched against her shoulder. He reached out and touched the infant’s cheek; she was awake, but not troubled by the crowd, and regarded him with soft brown long-lashed eyes. “Hallo, sweetheart. Want to go on a boat with your mummy?”
The mother gave a stifled sob of relief.
“Oh, thank you, Lord—it is Lord Ellesmere, is it not?”
“It is,” he said automatically, and then felt as though someone had punched him in the belly. He swallowed and his face burned.
“My husband is Lieutenant Beaman Gardner,” she said, offering the name in anxious justification of his mercy, and bobbed a short curtsy. “We’ve met. At the Mischianza?”
“Yes, of course!” he said, bowing, though he didn’t recall Mrs. Lieutenant Gardner at all. “Honored to be of service to a brother officer’s wife, ma’am. If you will be so good as to go on board directly, please? Corporal Anderson? Escort Mrs. Gardner and Miss Gardner on board.”
He bowed again and turned away, feeling as though his insides had been scooped out. Brother officer. My lord. And what would Mrs. Lieutenant Gardner have thought if she’d known? What would the lieutenant himself think?
He sighed deeply, closing his eyes for an instant’s escape. And when he opened them, found himself face-to-face with Captain Ezekiel Richardson.
“Stercus!” he exclaimed, startled into his uncle Hal’s habit of Latin denunciation in moments of extreme stress.
“Indeed,” Richardson remarked politely. “May I have a word with you? Yes, just so—Lieutenant!” He beckoned to the nearby Rendill, who was eyeball-to-eyeball with an elderly woman in black bombazine with no fewer than four small dogs yapping at her heels, these held by a long-suffering small black boy. Rendill made a quelling motion to her and turned to Richardson.
“Sir?”
“Relieve Captain Lord Ellesmere, please. I require a moment of his time.”
Before William could decide whether to object or not, Richardson had him by the elbow and was towing him out of the scrum and into the lee of a neat little sky-blue boathouse that stood on the riverbank.
William breathed deep with relief as the shade fell upon him but had by then gathered his wits. His first impulse had been to speak sharply to Richardson—followed perhaps by knocking him into the river—but wisdom spoke in his ear, advising otherwise.
It was at Richardson’s instigation that William had become for a short time an intelligencer for the army, collecting information in the context of various journeys and delivering this to Richardson. On the last of these missions, though, a journey into the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia, William had had the misfortune to become lost, be wounded, and suffer a fever that would certainly have killed him had Ian Murray not found and rescued him—in the course of the rescue informing William that he had almost certainly been gulled and sent not into the bosom of British allies but into a nest of Rebels, who would hang him should they discover who he was.
William was of two minds as to whether to believe Murray or not—particularly after the arrival of Jamie Fraser had made it patently clear that Murray was his own cousin but hadn’t felt it necessary to apprise him of the fact. But a deep suspicion of Richardson and his motives remained, and it was no friendly face that he turned on the man.
“What do you want?” he said abruptly.
“Your father,” Richardson replied, causing William’s heart to give a great thump that he thought must be audible to the other. “Where is Lord John?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” William said shortly. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday.” The day my bloody life ended. “What do you want with him?” he asked, not bothering with any semblance of courtesy.
Richardson twitched an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise respond to his tone.
“His brother, the Duke of Pardloe, has disappeared.”
“The—what?” William stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending. “His