John Senior looked at his boots and nodded his head distractedly. He said, “I expect a word to the good with the governor.”
Buchan nearly smiled but thought better of it. “If a good word is ever necessary,” he said, “you shall have it.”
The two men carried on drinking through the evening. John Senior threw back shots of rum with the heartsick determination of a man trying to drown an animal he can no longer afford to feed. Buchan worked to keep up with him, as if everything he had accomplished that evening was tenuous and dependent on his ability to match the older man’s enormous capacity for alcohol.
He managed to make his way to bed without assistance and removed enough clothes to satisfy himself he wasn’t hopelessly drunk, but he fell into a stupor as soon as he lay on top of the sheets in the cold and didn’t stir until the gathering squall of nausea woke him. He stuttered downstairs as quietly as he could manage and pushed out the door into a gale of wind, running around the side of the building to vomit into the snow. He held his stomach and stamped his feet as the convulsions passed through him.
Cassie was kneeling beside the fireplace when he came back into the kitchen. She was stoking the small pyramid of coals that had been covered in ash and preserved beneath an overturned pot to start a new fire. The timid light moved across her features as she stared into it. She held a woollen shawl about her shoulders.
“I was hoping not to disturb anyone,” he said.
“I was lying awake anyway,” she lied. “You set yourself there —” she nodded towards the daybed with her chin. “I’ll get you a cup of something that’ll settle your guts.”
Buchan shook his head, the motion exaggerated and vehement. “I won’t have Mr. Peyton awake as well.”
“Naught but the Old Hag can shake John Senior out of the state he gets into when he’s sleeping. And we’d hear him over any racket we might be making, I can tell you. Sit,” she said. “It’ll only be a few minutes to boil the kettle.”
He sat on the narrow bed, holding a forearm across his stomach as if he’d been stabbed. “I’ve not been feeling well these last number of days.”
“There’s not many can keep up with John Senior on the bottle. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
He looked up at her quickly and she smiled at him with her lips pressed firmly together. A crooked smile, he thought. He shivered violently. He was wearing only his undershirt and a pair of long underwear, and he’d pulled his half-boots on over his bare feet. Cassie removed her shawl and wrapped it around his shoulders.
“Please,” Buchan said. He held a hand out to fend her off.
“Oh now,” Cassie scolded. “I’ve heard you retching outside in your small clothes in the middle of winter weather. You’ve no pride to protect around me.”
He nodded uncertainly. She showed an easy forwardness with him that belied her position in the household. Her lazy eye winked at him. “I’m somewhat partial to invalids, Lieutenant,” she admitted. “I should have been a nurse.”
When the kettle boiled she made tea and sweetened it with dark molasses. Buchan sat cradling the mug in his lap and she pulled a chair close to the fire to sit across from him. His face was chalky white, his eyes swollen to slits. He raised the mug towards her in thanks and then sipped at the hot liquid.
“The secret to drinking with John Senior,” she advised him, “is to be the one refilling the glasses. Less attention gets paid to how far behind you are.”
“I’d like to ask you something,” Buchan said suddenly.
Cassie waited for his question. He seemed to be struggling with the proper words, or to have forgotten himself completely. “Lieutenant?” she said.
He smiled but wouldn’t look at her. He said, “I’m afraid it may be somewhat indelicate.”
She shrugged. “There hardly seems a point to standing on ceremony from here.”
“That being the case, then,” he said. He looked unsteadily across at her. “I’d like to know why you are not yet married.”
“You make it sound inevitable, Lieutenant. Like death.”
“There are some that see it that way.” He closed his eyes. “And that’s not an answer to my question besides.”
She said nothing.
“Forgive my forwardness,” he said. And after a moment more of silence he said, “You’ve had proposals.”
“A number, yes.”
“And no one has suited you?”
“Every one of them has talked of taking me away from here,” she said. She looked about the kitchen.
Buchan followed her eyes. “From Mr. Peyton, you mean.”
She shrugged again, but she didn’t dispute the statement.
“Are you in love with him?”
“The thing I most appreciate about John Senior,” she told him, “is that he’s never talked to me about love.”
“I’m sure I don’t understand why that would endear him to yourself.”