“You have been saying that for far too long for me to harbour hope,” said Jane.
He’d smiled in quick appreciation of her wit. “But this time it is sure to happen, now the English have Quebec, though how they mean to hold it is a mystery. Come the spring, when the supply ships come,” he said, “we’ll have it back again. And in the meantime, they will have the winter to endure.”
Lydia had asked him, “Are winters in Quebec so very dreadful?”
He had answered with a sidelong glance. “I’d tell you stories, but I fear it would alarm the children.”
The young boy whose name she had forgotten spoke up from his chair across the room. “I’m not a child.” There was no accent to his English, making Lydia suspect that the de Joncourt children, just like Governor DeLancey, had been born here, in New York.
Captain Bonneau, whose English, even with its accent, was impeccable, assured the boy, “The winters in Quebec would frighten grown men as well. Ask the lieutenant, he will tell you. He’ll have better stories anyway than mine.”
The youngest daughter, gazing at the captain with adoring eyes, spoke up. “Your stories are the very best I’ve heard.”
“You’re kind to say so. But Lieutenant de Sabran is of the Troupes de la Marine, he’ll have had many more adventures. He was probably,” he told them, “raised by Indians.”
The boy appeared excited by this prospect, and Bonneau advised, “You ask him, when he comes downstairs.”
The boy had watched the stairs and waited with anticipation. He had waited even after Captain Wheelock had arrived, when chairs were shifted round and conversation in the parlour turned to news the English captain had brought with him from the Jerseys and the gossip of events he’d missed in New York while he’d been away.
But when Mr. de Sabran rejoined them, he hadn’t looked to be in any mood for conversation. When he’d taken Captain Wheelock to the side and spoken privately, the tension of his stance betrayed a barely contained anger, and his face had stayed grim as he’d taken his seat. Lydia had silently been willing him to turn and see the boy who sat beside him, fairly squirming with impatience. And at last he had.
As always, she was struck by how that single act of smiling, even faintly, so transformed his face, and though the smile was for the boy and not for her, she felt its strong effect. It was an effort to refocus her attention on the captain, and she did not fully manage it. He, too, was watching Mr. de Sabran and the de Joncourt boy.
“He must have sons,” he commented, “or brothers, at the least, to have such patience with the child.”
It never had occurred to her that Mr. de Sabran might be a father. Have a wife. It gave her a peculiar sort of feeling to imagine it.
That feeling, these past days, had not diminished.
She pushed it aside now and focused on drawing his shoulders.
There was nothing simple about that task, either, because she remembered too well how those shoulders looked, filling the field of her vision, close up. She remembered the stone-solid feel of them under her hands when she’d suddenly found herself swept from the street’s edge and into a doorway while Mr. de Sabran, his back to the rioting crowd, made his body a shield for her. Keeping her safe.
Later on, when the mob and its pitiful victim had moved down the street and the danger had gone, she’d been able to reason through what had just happened; to realize the name of the man that the crowd had been calling down curses and shame upon—Spencer—matched that of the man William had mentioned only that morning. The man who’d informed against those involved in the illegal trade. The man William and his merchant friends had decided to make an exhibit of, so none would dare to do likewise. All these things had been clear to her later.
But during those terrible moments, caught up in a whirlwind of panic and fear, her whole world had been tightly reduced to the calm sound of Mr. de Sabran’s low voice speaking comfort, the feel of his body pressed warmly on hers, and the sheltering strength of those shoulders.
She could have drawn them now from memory. Could have closed her eyes and called to mind that same confusing swirl of feelings that were nothing she had felt before. When Moses held her close, it had been comfortable. But Moses had been Joseph’s friend from childhood, she had known him all her life, and when he’d asked her if she’d marry him it had seemed a continuation of the course that had been set for both their families—she would marry Moses, and his sister Sarah would be Joseph’s wife. It had seemed natural.
And Moses had been kind. He had laughed often, and worked hard, and he’d been honest, and she’d liked him.
Those who’d killed him at Oswego had not only stolen one of the strong pillars she had leaned on day to day, they’d also stolen what she might have built together with him in the years to come—a home, and children, and a life she knew would have been good.
But he had never smiled like Mr. de Sabran. He’d never made her feel off-balance just by looking in her eyes. And she had never trembled at his touch.
She’d fought those feelings all she could, while standing in that doorway. She had told herself the trembling was from fear, and nothing else. But it had been an unconvincing explanation, and her heart had not believed it.
Hearts were stubborn things, and often inconvenient.
Hers had traitorously softened when she’d seen the streaks of mud and filth across the back of his white coat, mute witness to the brutal blows he’d taken while protecting her. He’d done his best to clean it but the telling tracks remained, and she could faintly see them even now as she sketched the shape of the coat.
She was shading the lining when Violet’s voice said at her shoulder, “You’ve made him too tall.”
The pencil skipped across the paper before Lydia regained control. “You startled me.”
“I wasn’t trying to be quiet.” Violet held up one fold of her heavy skirts in evidence. “You need to pay more attention.” She sat on the same log. “And Mr. Ramírez is not that tall.”
Lydia studied her drawing and privately disagreed, but she knew Mr. Ramírez had done or said something of late that had made Violet angry—she’d seen the way Violet’s jaw set when he passed and how Violet avoided his eyes—and not wanting to fan those flames Lydia only said, “I’m out of practice.”
“You could make your living drawing, if you needed to. My mother said so.”
“I suspect she only said it to be kind.”
That drew a smile from Violet. “Mama never wasted time pretending kindness. Every word she spoke, she meant.”
And Lydia, remembering, smiled, too. “I miss your mother.”
“So do I. Though I suppose His Highness ought to count his blessings she’s not here. She would have slipped some poison in his food by now.”
Lydia realized how thoughtless she’d been to leave Violet with Mr. de Brassart alone. “Did he bother you?”
“He only has to be breathing to bother me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should have stayed with you.”
Violet, although she was younger than Lydia, sent her a look that had lived lifetimes longer. “It isn’t your business,” she said, “to look after me. I can look after myself.”
The bay was beginning to freeze at its edges. The ice lay in thin clinging sheets on and over the rocks at the edge of the shoreline, veined with solid threads of white against the half-transparent surface, like the web of unseen spiders weaving frost.
Thoughts of Silas rose darkly in Lydia’s mind and she pushed them aside. “Did your mother really try to poison Uncle Reuben?”
“If she did, she didn’t get the dose right.” Violet looked to where the men were working. For a minute she was silent, then she said, “The Lord took her too soon, that’s what I tell Him every Sunday, but I feel her with me sometimes. Like He lets her come back down awhile and be with me. Do you ever feel your mother?”