IN THE END, it was half a day, rather than half an hour, before John saw Hal again. He found his brother, quite by chance, standing by the road that led northward, watching the marching columns go past. Most of the camp had already left; only the cook wagons and laundry kettles were trundling past now, the disorderly sprawl of camp followers spreading out behind them like the plague of lice over the land of Egypt.
“William’s gone,” he said to Hal without preamble.
Hal nodded, face somber. “So is Richardson.”
“Bloody hell.”
Hal’s groom was standing by, holding two horses. Hal jerked his head at a dark-bay mare and took the reins of his own horse, a light-bay gelding with a blaze and one white stocking.
“Where do you think we’re going?” John inquired, seeing his brother turn the gelding’s head south.
“Philadelphia,” Hal replied, tight-lipped. “Where else?”
Grey could himself think of any number of alternatives, but recognized a rhetorical question when he heard one and contented himself with asking, “Have you got a clean handkerchief?”
Hal gave him a blank look, then rummaged in his sleeve, pulling out a crumpled but unused linen square.
“Apparently. Why?”
“I expect we’re going to need a flag of truce at some point. The Continental army lying presently between us and Philadelphia, I mean.”
“Oh, that.” Hal stuffed the handkerchief back up his sleeve and said no more until they had negotiated their way past the last trailing remnants of the horde of refugees and found themselves more or less alone on the road leading south.
“No one could be sure, in the confusion,” he said, as though he’d last spoken ten seconds before. “But it looks very much as though Captain Richardson has deserted.”
“What?!”
“Not a bad moment to choose, really,” Hal said reflectively. “No one would have noticed he was gone for days, had I not come looking for him. He was in camp last night, though, and unless he’s disguised himself as a teamster or a laundress, he’s not here any longer.”
“The contingency seems remote,” Grey said. “William was here this morning—both your orderly and his young grooms saw him, and so did a Colonel Tarleton of the British Legion, who breakfasted with him.”
“Who? Oh, him.” Hal waved off Tarleton as a distraction. “Clinton values him, but I never trust a man with lips like a girl’s.”
“Regardless, he seems to have had nothing to do with William’s disappearance. The groom Baragwanath thinks that William went off to see about a couple of . . . young women among the camp followers.”
Hal glanced at him, one brow raised.
“What sort of young women?”
“Probably the sort you’re thinking,” John replied, a little tersely.
“At that hour of the morning, after being bashed on the head the night before? And young women, plural? The boy’s got stamina, I’ll say that for him.”
Grey could have said a number of other things about William at this point, but didn’t. “So you think Richardson’s deserted.” That would explain Hal’s focus on Philadelphia; if Percy was right and Richardson was in fact an American agent, where else might he go at this point?
“It seems the most likely possibility. Also . . .” Hal hesitated for a moment, but then his mouth firmed. “If I believed that Benjamin was dead, what might I be expected to do?”
“Go and make inquiries into his death,” Grey replied, suppressing the queasy feeling the notion induced. “Claim his body, at the least.”
Hal nodded. “Ben was—or is—being held at a place in New Jersey called Middletown Encampment. I’ve not been there, but it’s in the middle of Washington’s strongest territory, in the Watchung Mountains. Nest of Rebels.”
“And you’d be unlikely to undertake that sort of journey with a large armed guard,” John observed. “You’d go alone, or perhaps with an orderly, an ensign or two. Or me.”
Hal nodded. They rode for a bit, each alone with his thoughts.
“So you’re not going to the Watchung Mountains,” Grey said at last. His brother sighed deeply and set his jaw.
“Not immediately. If I can catch up with Richardson, I may find out what’s really happened—or not happened—to Ben. After that . . .”
“Do you have a plan for proceeding once we reach Philadelphia?” Grey inquired. “Given that it’s in the hands of the Rebels?”
Hal’s lips compressed. “I will have, by the time we get there.”
“I daresay. I have one now, though.”
Hal looked at him, thumbing a hank of damp hair behind his ear. His hair was carelessly tied back; he’d not bothered to have it plaited or clubbed this morning, a sure sign of his agitation. “Does it involve anything patently insane? Your better plans always do.”
“Not at all. We’re certain to encounter the Continentals, as I said. Assuming we aren’t shot on sight, we produce your flag of truce”—he nodded at his brother’s sleeve, from which the edge of the handkerchief was drooping—“and demand to be taken to General Fraser.”
Hal gave him a startled look.
“James Fraser?”
“The same.” Grey’s knotted stomach clenched a little tighter at the thought. At both the thought of speaking to Jamie again—and the thought of telling him that William was missing. “He fought with Benedict Arnold at Saratoga, and his wife is friendly with the man.”
“God help General Arnold, in that case,” Hal murmured.
“And who else has a better reason for helping us in this matter than does Jamie Fraser?”
“Who indeed?” They rode for some time in silence, Hal apparently lost in thought. It wasn’t until they paused to find a creek and water the horses that he spoke again, water streaming down his face where he’d splashed it.
“So you’ve not only somehow married Fraser’s wife, but you’ve accidentally been raising his illegitimate son for the last fifteen years?”
“Apparently so,” Grey said, in a tone that he hoped indicated complete unwillingness to talk about it. For once, Hal took the hint.
“I see,” he said, and, with no further questions, wiped his face with the flag of truce and mounted up.