Lydia had witnessed this for all her life, in small ways and in greater ones, and knowing well the hold her uncle had upon her father—upon all of them—it brought her pain to notice that her father was too bitter and ashamed to meet her eyes.
He said, “The magistrate’s boy came this morning, before you had wakened. He did not say why, only that I was wanted. And when I arrived, I found them. And the magistrate holding a letter from Reuben assuring him I’d volunteered for the honour.” He frowned at the floorboards. “What else could I do?”
“Nothing.” Lydia, turning her anger away from her father to where it belonged, reached to take her spare apron down from its hooked peg on the wall at her side, and with calm, careful movements, she pinned it in place so it covered the less perfect folds of her gown. “You could do nothing, and neither can we, but endure what my uncle seems wholly convinced we cannot.”
Over their heads, from the little room under the eaves just above, came the creaking of bed ropes and then the soft thud of bare feet being swung to the floorboards.
Lydia looked to her father, who’d noticed as well.
With a nod to the back stairs he said, “You had best go warn Violet, before she comes down. Reassure her there’s nothing to fear. They are gentlemen.”
Lydia clamped her mouth hard on the truth she knew well: that no Frenchman could ever be counted a gentleman. But as she turned from her father she heard the sharp edge to her voice, like the blade of a knife not yet drawn from a wound, as she answered him, “Then let us pray, for our sakes and their own, they take care to remember it.”
Jean-Philippe
She wanted them dead. Not just elsewhere and out of that house, but beneath the ground, dead, or else strung from the nearest available tree. He’d encountered such hatred before, but from men he had recently captured or wounded. This was the first time he’d met that same look in the eyes of a woman.
In truth it had caught him off guard, when she’d first met his gaze—and she hadn’t done that till he’d thanked her for taking the justacorps from him to dry by the fire. Beforehand and after, she’d seemed most determined to act as though he were invisible. He’d found that annoying. It wasn’t that he was so vain as to think every woman should show him attention, nor even that he was accustomed to getting it, but for some reason he would have liked hers.
For his part, he’d had trouble noticing anyone else since she’d burst in upon them, her hair falling free of its pins underneath the plain cap that was soaked through in spots from the force of the rain, like the bright yellow gown with its hem rather more wet than rain could have made it. He’d thought of a morning, more years ago now than he cared to remember, when he had been left at the edge of the woods to keep watch in the deadly grey hours before dawn, and all in his view had been dreary and dark, and the chill and the damp had crept through him so deeply he’d felt he might well turn to ice. And then sunrise had come—not a gradual brightening, but all at once, unexpectedly, piercing the clouds in a single, straight, glorious beam of clear light that had warmed him and brought his cold limbs back to life.
He’d felt that again at the moment she’d come through the door of the kitchen.
It could have been none other than his woman from the water, for the colour of the gown was unmistakable. She’d been young—hardly out of her girlhood. Her feet had been bare and her cheeks had been bright and her smile had been wide, but the instant she’d caught sight of him and de Brassart, that smile had died.
He had not seen it since.
He had found that annoying as well, though he hadn’t known why, so he’d focused his thoughts and attention where they should most properly be, on her father and brothers—for, given the likeness in feature and colouring, they were all clearly one family. And while the father appeared to be friendly, the brothers were yet unknown entities.
Jean-Philippe’s life and career had depended for so long upon his ability to gauge the minds and intentions of men, that the measure he took at first meeting a stranger was usually true, but he trusted it more if he tested that first swift impression by careful and calm observation.
The younger brother had the air of recklessness that came with youth and arrogance. The way he’d stepped towards his sister when she’d first come in might have appeared to some a gallant move to place himself between her and potential harm, yet Jean-Philippe had seen it as a move designed to stop the woman in the yellow gown from interfering in a situation that the younger brother was enjoying. Not from cruelty or from spite, but in the way a hound kept tightly leashed enjoys the scent and promise of a new pursuit and new adventure.
He was taller than his older brother, with a cleaner line of jaw and eyes that held a quick and keen intelligence. A young man Jean-Philippe might have not minded having under his command a few years hence, once time and life had taught him caution.
But it was the elder brother with the lighter hair, the one who’d stood beside the hearth while they were in the kitchen, who would most need watching.
There was something in his quiet, steady gaze that was unsettling. Jean-Philippe had often seen that same expression—or more properly, the absence of it—in the eyes of soldiers who had faced the darkness of a battle and been lost to it, consumed by it. Such men were unpredictable. Such men, in his experience, were dangerous.
At dinner in the afternoon the elder son had held his silence, although in all fairness it had been a mostly silent meal. Uncomfortable.
It had been, for Jean-Philippe, a disagreeable discovery to see this family kept a slave. He knew it was as common here as in Quebec—perhaps more common—but from the opinion he had formed of Monsieur Wilde he’d hoped . . .
But there she’d been, a tall girl with a slender build and deep brown skin, her hair bound tightly back beneath a cap that matched her mistress’s. She, too, had barely met his eyes, but when she had, it had been with a guarded watchfulness. She’d carried out the common dish of vegetables and meat at dinner but had set it down with a hard thump before retreating to the kitchen, where she’d stayed, leaving the family and their “guests” to serve themselves, which he had done with little confidence.
Nothing he’d eaten thus far in this province had led him to think that the food would be good. And observing how fiercely the woman in yellow had frowned while she’d seasoned it over the hearth, he’d been doubly wary. He’d tasted his dinner with caution . . . and found it surprisingly excellent. She’d cooked with wine, which he hadn’t expected.
But then, there were many things here that he hadn’t expected.
His mind, so used to danger, might indeed see threats where there were none. And yet, no man could live a day ahead of death for all the years he had without gaining the sense to know when things were wrong. There was something at play here, some deep current running a turbulent course through this house that had been here before their arrival, and as when he faced a new river he found himself seeking to study that current, the better to steer in it.
Over dinner it had become clear to him that he was not the only one there keeping a close watch upon the elder brother. Nor was he the only one relieved when, at the ending of the meal, the elder brother had done nothing more than push his chair back and excuse himself and gone upstairs in private.
Jean-Philippe had marked the sound and the direction of the footsteps as they crossed the floor above, and while he did not know the layout of the upstairs rooms he knew the elder brother’s was the room directly over the small chamber off the kitchen that he would himself be sharing with de Brassart.