In the few days they’d been here she’d noted some differences between the Frenchmen. The one who spoke English, Lieutenant de Brassart, at least seemed determined to try to be charming, as though he would have them think well of him, but the more silent Lieutenant de Sabran appeared to care nothing at all what they thought.
He was not impolite. He had manners. But while he was the first to tell them “Thank you”—in his language, not in theirs—he never said it with Mr. de Brassart’s gallantry, as if it mattered less how one delivered such a sentiment than that the words were said.
A strange sort of officer, surely. Like one of the stones that her father was digging this week from the orchard—unpolished, unyielding, and always unpleasant to find in your way.
She had to grudgingly admit he had the height and form and face to be a very handsome man. His nose was straight, as were his brows; his jaw was strong, his gaze was steady. But each time she met his eyes they held a hard expression that fell halfway between anger and impatience.
Had it not been a ridiculous notion, she might have thought she was annoying him.
And yet it was ridiculous, because their paths but rarely crossed.
He rose at dawn. She knew this because when she came downstairs each morning he was up and gone outside to walk, while yet his friend de Brassart lay abed. On their second day here he had asked, through translation, her father’s permission to walk in the woods and her father had granted it if he would promise to keep near the house, for the terms of the French officers’ paroles did not allow them to go farther than a mile from where they lodged without a magistrate’s approval.
On those walks, Mr. de Sabran wore his sword. Joseph had raised a grumbling protest but their father had replied that by the terms of their surrender the French officers had been allowed to keep their arms. “Our officers, when captured by the French,” he’d said, “are granted the same honour.”
“I’ve seen how the French treat their captives,” had been Joseph’s forceful reminder. “And honour did not enter into it.”
But as in all things, their father prevailed and his word was respected, and Mr. de Sabran had worn his sword.
He was wearing it now, as he paced at the side of the house with his head bent in search of that one errant button.
Lydia, reaching to harvest the beans from their trellis, glanced over a third time and drew the attention of both of her brothers who, just for this morning, were working together to mend the rail fence that encircled the garden.
Benjamin gave his quick grin. “Does he interest you?”
Joseph had once been the slowest of them all to show his anger. Now it flashed with violence as he set a post with force into the ground and asked his younger brother, “Do you ever think before you speak? She has an even greater cause than I to hate the French.”
“I spoke in jest,” said Benjamin. Already he was taking up the stubborn stance that meant he was preparing for a fight, or at the very least a war of words, and Lydia tried calming the unsettled moment as her mother might have done.
She told them, “Surely the offense, if there is any to be taken, would be mine to take. And I take none, for Benjamin is right. I find that officer of interest.”
Which instantly made both her brothers stop their quarrel.
“Not for the reason you’re thinking,” she added, for it was an easy thing to read their shocked expressions. “But because he is so different from the other one.”
Benjamin’s smile returned, teasing. “You’ve grown up with Father and William and Daniel and Joseph and me, and yet you can find it surprising all men aren’t alike?”
Joseph, in a former time, might well have teased her also. Now he only aimed a short nod at the pacing French lieutenant. “He’s a Canadian, that’s why he’s different. The other’s from France.”
“Really?” Benjamin looked, as well. “How can you tell that?”
“The one with the red waistcoat and the white breeches and blue on his collar, his regiment came straight from France. The La Sarre. But that uniform,” he said, and nodded again at Lieutenant de Sabran, “is not from any regiment. It’s worn by those who serve in the Marine, as they are called. Their rank and file they mostly bring from France, but all their officers, or nearly all, are born and bred Canadian.”
Lydia frowned. “The Marine? Do they serve in the navy, then?”
“No. They are land troops. They travel by water sometimes, but they guard the forts of the frontier and have a reputation, justly earned, for ruthlessness. It’s said they send their officers as children to the Indians to learn their ways of fighting, and in truth to fight them is like fighting shadows in the trees.”
She found this chilling, and yet curious. “Like Captain Rogers’s Rangers?”
Joseph shrugged and did a thing he rarely did: he spat upon the ground. “If Captain Rogers was the devil, and the men he led were criminals.”
He said no more, but drew back from the fence and went to fetch more rails.
Into the silence that was left behind him, Benjamin said thoughtfully, “Well, that at least explains why they aren’t friendly with each other.”
“Who?”
“Our two reluctant guests. You’ve surely noticed?’
She shook her head, hoisting the basket of beans on her hip.
Benjamin leaned on the half-mended fence. “For men who speak a common language, they say little to each other. Now I know why. Like ourselves and the British, they’re two different species of men altogether. And I’d imagine the French from France look on their loyal Canadian colonists with the same brand of disdain as the British do us.”
? ? ?
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. de Brassart proved that point with perfect eloquence.
In the parlour after dinner he arranged himself with practised grace in one of the two high-backed chairs set near the fireless hearth and looked around appreciatively. The ornaments within the room were spare, but of good quality: an eight-day clock that counted off the moments with authority, a candlestick of silver set beside the inlaid ink-chest on her father’s desk, and still more silver gleaming from the sconces on the plastered walls that had been painted, like the shutters and the wainscoting, a calming shade of blue.
Lydia, sitting in her own chair by the window where the filtered sunlight cast few shadows, had just set a fresh, new page of paper on the boards she used for drawing, and was fitting a new black lead pencil in its holder when de Brassart sighed and said, “I have so missed the company of cultured men.”
Lydia was clearly not included in that sentiment. She was the only woman in the room.
The only woman in the house, in fact, since Violet, having Sundays off, had gone as she did every week to the Cross Harbor meeting-house.
Lydia herself had been, like all the Wildes, baptized and raised within the faith her English forebears had brought with them to Long Island, though the nearest church of that Episcopalian faith was down in Hempstead, and her father did not think it necessary to make such a journey save at special times like Easter and Epiphany.
But Violet’s mother, while she’d lived, had been devoutly Baptist, and now every Sunday Violet carried on that same devotion, rising early, putting on her best blue gown, and joining Joseph in the small boat for the trip across the bay.
Joseph’s weekly visits to Cross Harbor had been going on for years as well, but for a different reason: he spent Sundays in the dining room and parlour over Mr. Fisher’s store, as he had done since he’d asked Sarah Fisher to marry him. She’d told him yes, and worn his ring of promise on her finger these four years, and written weekly to him when he’d gone to build ships at Oswego, and though Joseph had returned wrapped in a silence that had smothered all their talk of wedding plans, Sarah seemed prepared to wait.
That kind of patience was inspiring to Lydia, and totally beyond the reach of Benjamin, who even now was finding it impossible to sit still. He’d always disliked Sundays for their lack of entertainment, and he seemed to seize upon de Brassart’s comment as an opening for argument.