“If you tell me Daniel is at Kingston, and it is not true,” she interrupted smoothly, “know that I will not forgive you for it.”
William stopped. He looked at her a moment longer. Then, like the negotiator that he was, he walked around the question. “Why would he not be at Kingston?”
She was not about to play that game. “Is he at Monte Christi?”
“If he is, why should it matter?”
“You know why.” She let the words hang there reproachfully between them, leaving space for his apology.
But he did not apologize. He shrugged off her discovery of the fact that he and Daniel were engaging in illegal trade with, “Honestly, it is no crime.”
“The king may view it differently.”
“The king’s ships also trade at Monte Christi,” he replied, “though they are free to sail from England with provisions for the Mount and take back sugar and molasses without being charged the tariffs that we must pay here. It’s the tariffs,” he said, “that are criminal. All of these acts passed in Parliament telling us where we may sell our provisions and where we may buy our molasses and setting high tariffs that only apply to our cargoes, not theirs, so their ships out of English ports can reap the riches of trade in the Indies while our New York ships are harassed on the seas, seized, and sold in their admiralty courts. It is not to be borne, Lyddie. No, any act passed in Parliament should apply equally to all the king’s subjects, not seek to raise one and lower the other. That is unbearable.”
“So you would trade with the enemy.”
“I trade with Spain. What Spain does with the cargoes I sell to it, I can’t control.” While his words had the strength of defiance, his gaze could not hold hers.
She felt calm in her anger. “You know where those cargoes are sold. Does it not even bother your conscience that those same provisions are sent to support and feed those who killed Moses? Who nearly killed Joseph?” Her voice nearly broke and betrayed her then. “William, how could you?”
“You don’t understand.” His tone was gentle. “It is business. War affects it less than you might think. Those men in Parliament in London, they are lining their own pockets by this same trade with the French. It’s not our politics that trouble them,” he told her, “it’s our profits.”
She cared nothing for his profits. “There are laws for a reason.”
He shrugged. “When a law is unjust it becomes a man’s duty to stand and oppose it.”
“Then stand and oppose it alone,” she shot back, “but give thought to the people you force to stand with you.”
His frown told her he wasn’t following, so she collected her temper before she said, “Father sent Benjamin down to meet Daniel. Do you know why? Benjamin wanted to go, and he asked me to help persuade Father, so that’s what I did.”
“Lyddie.”
“So now that’s on my account, too,” she told him, “what happens to Benjamin.”
“Nothing will happen to Benjamin.”
“How do you know? Henry said the admiral means to stop the Monte Christi trade, which means there will be men-of-war patrolling there. How do you know that Benjamin won’t suffer for it? Had he gone to Kingston he’d be fine, but if he’s found at Monte Christi, William, he could well be pressed into the navy, and what then?” She knew he’d heard the stories told by New York men who had been taken up and forced to work on ships of war, and none of them were pleasant.
William only asked her, “Henry knows this?”
“What, that you and Daniel have been trading with the French? Of course not. All he did was tell me how the Monte Christi trade works, and the rest I reasoned for myself.”
“And Father?”
“No, of course he doesn’t know,” she said, impatient. “It would kill him. Nor does Joseph know that he is working to repair a ship that will be carrying provisions to the men who stole his life.” She straightened in her chair and faced him, firm. “And he will never know this, because you are going to stop it.”
“Lyddie.”
“I am not a fool,” she said. “I don’t pretend to think our family matters to you half as much as do your profits.”
“Lydia.”
“But,” she told him, “you must give your promise that the Bellewether will never sail to Monte Christi harbour. You must promise, William. Joseph needs this. You know how he needs to do this work. But if you sail that ship to Monte Christi, then you might as well destroy him and be done with it.”
He met her gaze again and this time held it. “Fine.”
“I have your word?”
“You have my promise.”
“I intend to hold you to it. And we’ll have to hope that Joseph does not learn of you and Daniel by some other means.” A sick thought struck her, and she asked, “Does Silas know?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I shared a bottle of Madeira last night with him for that very purpose, to discover what he knew. Our cousin does not hold his drink well,” he said. “It deprives him of caution and inflates his arrogance, and you can then learn whatever you like before he even realizes he’s being questioned.”
She noted that William was speaking now in a confiding way he’d never used with her, and that emboldened her to ask, “And why were you questioning him to begin with? Why last night?”
He paused. Perhaps because he felt some guilt for lying to her earlier, or for exposing all of them to dangers they did not deserve, his next words had the simple ring of truth. “There’s an informer in our city, named George Spencer, who would see us all arrested and claim his reward.”
She remembered Henry telling her that advertisements had been posted lately in the papers for informers to come forward to report on any merchants who were trading with the enemy.
“I’m not alone in what I’m doing, Lyddie. Even the governor—well, let us say if George Spencer comes forward without any penalty, it will affect half the men of New York. So last night we all met at the coffee house. That’s where I was over supper.”
“And why you told Deborah to make certain Silas stayed here.”
“He would have followed me otherwise. You know what Silas is like.”
“Yes.” Of course, she thought, William would never have thought what effect it might have upon her, upon Deborah, to have to bear Silas’s company for all that time.
William carried on, “Silas has been a great nuisance since taking up lodgings in Sloat Alley, and it occurred to me he, like George Spencer, might have been too close to our warehouses, so when the meeting was over a few of us thought it was best to find out. That’s when I came back round here to fetch him.” He shrugged as though that were the whole of it. “And he knew nothing.”
“For now.”
“True, but after today, any would-be informers will think twice before coming forward.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “we mean to make such a spectacle of Mr. Spencer that none will forget it. Don’t look like that. He’ll not be harmed much, just shaken.”
“For telling the truth.”
“There are times when the truth would be best left untold.” William’s eyes warmed until they became once again the same eyes of the brother she’d long known and loved. “You are young.”
She did not feel young. She stood. Smoothed her skirts. “It must be time for breakfast.”
“Most likely.” He seemed to be faintly aware something vital had shifted between them, and much like a plasterer seeking to smooth over a tiny crack, sought to pay her a compliment. “You’ve changed the way that you’re wearing your hair, I see. It’s quite attractive.”
He was the first of her family to notice, although she’d been wearing it this way for nearly two weeks. Since the day Mr. de Sabran had complimented her on it, and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said. She paused. “Where is this house where the injured French soldier is billeted?”
“Only a few streets up, near Coentjes Market.” He twisted around in his chair to glance back at the clock on the mantel. “I nearly forgot about that. I’m supposed to be taking your officer there at ten thirty.”
“I’ll take him.”