Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (142 page)

“I wouldn’t say that. But I’m certainly not afraid of you.” It might have been a challenge or a sneer, but it wasn’t. It was just a statement of fact and rather warmed him.

“Good,” he said. “Why did you run when I came yesterday, then?”

“I panicked,” she said frankly. “I’d put away all thought of—of Father Pardloe and Lord John and Savannah—”

“—and me?”

“And you,” she said evenly, “and after a bit, it all began to seem unreal, like the sort of fantasy you have when you’re reading a good book. So when you popped up like the Demon King in a pantomime—” She flicked a hand. After a moment’s pause, she asked, “Do you want to sit down?”

He sat beside her, close enough to feel the warmth of her—it was a small bench, and William was a large young man. He wasn’t sure quite what to ask. Yet.

“You’re a widow, then?” he said at last, and picked up her hand, examining the ring.

“Yes, I am,” she said coldly.

“Really? Or only so far as your father—and Philadelphia—know?”

She gave him a narrow look, but she didn’t pull her hand away, and she didn’t reply at once, either.

“Because,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, “if Ben’s really dead now, you haven’t any reason for not coming back to Savannah with me, do you? Don’t you want to see Trevor? He misses his mama.”

“You bastard,” she hissed. “Let go!” He did, folding his hands on his knees.

There was no sound for several minutes, save the rattle and hum of traffic in the street and the plash of the fountain. The smell of the garden was strong in the air, and while it was by no means as lush as the southern scents of Savannah, it was pungent enough to stir the blood—and memories of Mrs. Fleury’s garden, with its cold wet stone and the silent witness of a black-eyed toad.

“I’m the only one you can tell,” he said at last, quietly. “I don’t expect your father knows, does he? What happened to Ben?”

She laughed, short and bitter, but a laugh.

“ ‘What happened to Ben,’ ” she repeated. “Not,
‘What Ben did’
? General Washington didn’t come and kidnap him, you know. He
went.
He did it all, all by himself!”

“You went to him, though, didn’t you?” This wasn’t entirely a guess; he’d seen that her fingers weren’t shadowed with ink. Everyone who worked in a printshop or a bookseller’s eventually had smudged fingers; her father did. If hers weren’t, she hadn’t been here long.

She didn’t answer at once, but sat silently fuming, mouth pressed tight.

“I did,” she said at last. “The more fool I. I thought I could talk him round. I’d seen what happened during the siege, in Savannah. I thought I could convince him—for God’s sake, he was a British officer! He should
know
what the army’s like, what they can do!”

“I suppose he does,” William said mildly. “Rather courageous of him to go take up arms against them, isn’t it?”

She made a noise like an angry cat and flounced away from him.

“So he wouldn’t come back to Savannah with you. Why didn’t you just go yourself? You know the Greys would welcome you with open arms—if only because you’d take Trev off their hands.”

She breathed hard through her nose, then suddenly flounced back round to face him.

“I did see Ben. I saw him in bed with a black-haired whore who was sucking his—” Choler choked her as efficiently as Ben had likely choked his inamorata when he saw Amaranthus looming in the doorway.

William hesitated to say anything, for fear of making her leap up and run inside. Instead, he placed his hand on the bench between them, barely touching her fingers. And waited.

“He got up and pushed me into his dressing room and kept me from going back into the bedroom until she’d got up and run, the filthy twat.”

“Where the devil did you learn a word like that?” he asked, truly shocked.

“A book of erotic poetry in Lord John’s library,” she said, glowering at him. “I would have killed both of them, right there, if I’d had any bloody thing to do it with. You don’t go to a reunion with your estranged husband with a knife in your shoe, though, do you?” She stared down at her naked left hand. “I yanked my ring off and tried to make him swallow it. I almost managed, too,” she said, defiant. There were tears of rage slicked down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem aware of them.

“I’m sorry you didn’t,” he said, and took a careful breath. “I don’t excuse Ben, by any means, but…he’s a soldier, and he thought you’d left him forever. I mean, a—a casual liaison—”

“Casual, my arse!” she snarled, snatching her hand away. “He’s married her!”

The words struck him in the pit of the stomach. William opened his mouth, but found nothing whatever to say.

“That’s why I brought the ring away with me,” she said, looking at it. “I wouldn’t let
her
have it!”

Of course she’d also needed it for her widow’s imposture, but he rather thought that continuing to wear it—if even on the right hand—might be something in the nature of a hair shirt for her, but didn’t say that.

“Marry me,” he said, instead.

She was frowning at a bird that had landed on the edge of the fountain to drink—a dressy little creature with black-and-white wings and dark red sides.

“Towhee,” she said.

“What?”

“Him.” She lifted her chin toward the bird, who promptly flew off. She turned on the bench to look William full in the face, her own features more or less composed.

“Marry you,” she said slowly. A twitch she couldn’t control showed briefly at the corner of her pale mouth, but he didn’t think it was an impulse to laugh. Maybe shock, maybe not.

“Marry me,” he said again, softly. Her eyes were bloodshot, and now a cloudy gray. She looked away.

“You mean a
marriage blanc,
I suppose?” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “Separate lives, separate beds?”

“Oh, no,” he said, and took hold of both her hands. “I definitely want to bed you. Repeatedly. What sort of marriage do you call that?”

“Well, bigamy, for a start.” She was looking at him in a different way, though, and the blood was thrumming in his chest.

“We can discuss the details on the way back to Savannah.” Still holding her hands tightly in his, he leaned down and kissed her. Her mouth moved under his, more in shock than response—but response it was.

“I did
not
say I’d do it!” she said, jerking back. He let her go, noting with a distant satisfaction that she hadn’t wiped her mouth in disgust.

“You can give me your answer when we get to Savannah,” he said, and, getting to his feet, he offered her his hand.

IN A SMALL TOWN
to the south of Philadelphia, he’d hired them rooms in a decent inn and was pleased to find a small looking glass on the wall above his washbasin. He’d shaved carefully—Amaranthus had been first shocked and then amused by the discovery that his sprouting beard was a vivid dark red—and then dressed in his captain’s uniform, somewhat creased from being rolled up in his portmanteau, but clean.

She blinked when he got into the coach beside her and placed his hat on his knee.

“I thought you’d resigned your commission.”

“I did. I have. This is what you might call a
ruse de guerre,
” he said, gesturing at his scarlet coat. “Uncle Hal’s idea. He gave me a temporary captain’s commission, with orders for travel that would let me pass through any territory controlled by the King’s troops—which Richmond and Charles Town most assuredly are. I wasn’t joking,” he added gently. “He
was
worried about you and he does want you back.”

She glanced away, out the window, and bit her lip.

“I should have thought an earl would be shown a certain amount of courtesy, even without a uniform.”

“I’m not an earl, either,” he said firmly, and her head swiveled sharply round. She stared at him.

“I should have said, before,” he said. “If you were considering being a countess as part of the perquisites of marrying me, I’m afraid that’s off.”

“I wasn’t,” she said, and her mouth twitched slightly. She turned back to the window, through which the muddy streets of Richmond were giving way to equally rain-soaked cornfields.

“How did you manage it?” she said, not turning round. “I thought Father Pardloe told you a peer couldn’t stop being a peer without the permission of the King. Did you persuade the King?”

“I haven’t spoken to His Majesty yet,” William said politely. “But I shall. Still, it doesn’t matter what he says; I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not the Earl of Ellesmere anymore—if I ever was.”

That did make her turn around.

He felt a sudden rush of…something. Maybe fear but mostly excitement, as though he were just about to jump from a high cliff into the sea, not knowing if the water was deep enough and not caring.

“I’m a bastard,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and he felt sure it wouldn’t be the last, but he took a deep breath before going on. “I mean—I’m not legally a bastard, because the eighth earl and my mother were married when I was born. But the old earl wasn’t my father.”

She looked him slowly up and down, pausing at his face, her gaze traveling down and up again.

“Well, whoever he was, he must have been a, um…very striking gentleman. Is that where—” She pawed vaguely at her chin, still staring at him.

“Yes,” he said, not quite between his teeth. “And not ‘was’—he’s still alive.”

“You’ve met him?” She’d turned entirely to face him, her eyes alive with interest. He had the sudden illusion that he could feel the touch of her eyes on his face, tickling his skin.

“I have. He—knows me. And that I know about him.”

She didn’t say anything for a bit, but he could see her turning this revelation over in her mind. She still wore black but had taken to wearing a fichu of dark blue with it, rather than white; it made her eyes brilliant and warmed her skin. Plainly she knew it, and he hid a smile. She saw it, nonetheless, and leaned back, pursing her lips.

“Do you mean to tell me who this gentleman is?”

“I hadn’t,” he admitted. “But—if you’re to marry me…”

“I am
not
accepting your proposal. Not now. Probably not ever,” she added, giving him a look. “But even if I don’t, you should know that I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Good of you,” he said. “His name is James Fraser. A Highland Scot, and a Jacobite—or was, I should say. He has some land in North Carolina; I visited there when I was quite young—didn’t have the slightest clue that he was…what he is.”

“He’s acknowledged you?” Amaranthus had never been one to hide what she thought, and the direction of her thoughts just now was easy to make out.

“No, and I don’t want him to,” William said firmly. “He owes me nothing. Though if you’re wondering how I shall support you without the Ellesmere estates,” he added, “don’t worry; I have a decent small farm in Virginia that my mother—well, my stepmother, really; Lord John’s first wife—left me.” There was Helwater, as well, but he thought that might disappear along with Ellesmere, so didn’t mention it.

“Lord John’s
first
wife?” Amaranthus stared at him. “I hadn’t thought he’d been married at all. How many wives has he had?”

“Well, two that I know of.” He hesitated, but in fact, he rather enjoyed shocking her. “His second wife was—well, she still is—the wife of James Fraser, just to make things interesting.”

She narrowed her eyes, looking to see if he was making game of her, but then shook her head, dislodging a hairpin that poked suddenly out of her hair. He couldn’t resist plucking it out and tucking the liberated curl behind her ear. A faint stipple of gooseflesh ran down the side of her neck and she shuddered, ever so faintly, despite the humid heat inside the carriage.

Two weeks later…

EMERGENCE FROM THE
coach was like hatching out of a chrysalis, he thought, stretching his long-folded legs and his aching back before reaching to help Amaranthus out of their traveling womb. Air, sunlight, and above all, space! He yawned uncontrollably and air flooded into him, inflating him back to his proper dimensions.

He’d intended to take Amaranthus back to Uncle Hal’s quarters, and hesitated for a moment, but she said firmly that she’d rather go to Lord John’s house first.

“I trust Uncle John to listen,” she’d said. “And fond as I am of Father Pardloe—why are you looking like that? I
am
fond of him. I’m just never sure what he’ll do about things. And Ben’s his son, after all.”

“Good point,” William admitted. “Mind, I doubt my father knows what Hal will do, either, but he’s used to dealing with the effects, at least.”

“Exactly,” she’d said, and spoke no more on the drive through the city, only glancing at her reflection in the coach’s window and touching her hair now and then.

The door of Number 12, Oglethorpe Street opened before he could knock, his first inkling that something was wrong.

“Oh, you found her!” Miss Crabb was looking over his shoulder at Amaranthus, her lean face shifting between pleased relief and a desire to stay irritated. “The baby’s asleep.

“His Grace has gone to Charles Town,” the housekeeper added, stepping back to let them in. “He thought he’d be back within two weeks, but sent a letter that came two days ago that he was detained at my lord Cornwallis’s pleasure.”

Amaranthus had disappeared up the stairs in search of Trevor, so this explanation was delivered to William.

“I see,” he said, stepping inside. “Did my father go with His Grace?” It was evident that Lord John wasn’t in the house, because if he had been, he’d be present right now.

Miss Crabb’s abiding expression of discontent had shifted, showing something of uneasiness.

“No, my lord,” she said. “He went out day before yesterday, and he hasn’t come back.”