AN ARMY ON THE MOVE
WE WERE JUST IN time. No sooner had I closed the bedroom door on Pardloe’s gentle snore than a knock came on the newly hung front door below. I hurried downstairs to find Jenny face-to-face with a British soldier, this time a lieutenant. General Clinton was escalating his inquiries.
“Why, no, lad,” she was saying, in a tone of mild surprise, “the colonel isn’t here. He took tea with Lady John yesterday, but then he went off to look for his brother. His lordship hasn’t come back, and”—I saw her lean closer, her voice lowered dramatically—“her ladyship’s that worried. Ye’ll not have news of him, I suppose?”
This was my cue, and I came down from the landing, rather surprised to find that I was indeed “that worried.” Tending Hal had distracted me from the situation temporarily, but by now there was no denying that something had gone seriously wrong.
“Lady John. Lieutenant Roswell, your servant, ma’am.” The lieutenant bowed, with a professional smile that didn’t hide the slight furrowing of his brow. The army was getting worried, too, and that was bloody dangerous. “Your servant, mum. Have you in fact had no word from Lord John or Lord Melton—oh, I beg your pardon, my lady, I mean from His Grace?”
“D’ye think I’m a liar, lad?” Jenny said tartly.
“Oh! No, mum, not at all,” he said, flushing. “But the general will want to know that I spoke with her ladyship.”
“Of course,” I said soothingly, though my heart was pittering in my throat. “Tell the general that I haven’t heard from my husband”—either of them—“at all. I’m most disturbed.” I wasn’t a good liar, but I wasn’t lying now.
He grimaced.
“The thing is, mum, the army has begun withdrawing from Philadelphia, and all Loyalists remaining in the city are being advised that they may wish to . . . er . . . make preparations.” His lips compressed for a moment as he glanced at the stairwell, with its ruined banister and bloody fist marks. “I . . . see that you have already experienced some . . . difficulty?”
“Och, no,” Jenny said, and with a deprecating glance at me, stepped nearer the lieutenant and put her hand on his arm, pushing him gently toward the door. He automatically moved away with her, and I heard her murmur, “. . . no but a wee family quarrel . . . his lordship . . .”
The lieutenant shot me a swift glance, in which surprise mingled with a certain sympathy. But the lines in his forehead eased. He had an explanation to take back to Clinton.
Blood flamed in my cheeks at his look—as though there truly had been a family row, during which Lord John had stamped out, leaving wreckage in his wake and a wife at the mercy of the Rebels. True, it was a family row, but the circumstances were more through-the-looking-glass than a matter of mere common scandal.
The White Rabbit shut our new door firmly on Lieutenant Roswell and turned to me, back pressed against it.
“Lord Melton?” she asked, one black eyebrow raised.
“It’s one of the duke’s titles, one he used before he became Duke of Pardloe. Lieutenant Roswell must have known him some years ago,” I explained.
“Oh, aye. Well, lord or duke, how long can we keep him asleep?” she asked.
“The laudanum will keep him out for two or three hours,” I replied, glancing at the gilt carriage clock on the mantel, which had somehow escaped the carnage. “But he had a very hard day yesterday and a rather disturbed night; he may well go straight off into a natural sleep as the drug wears off. If no one comes along to knock the house down round our ears,” I added, wincing at sounds of a violent altercation somewhere nearby.
Jenny nodded. “Aye. I’d best go along to the printshop now, then, to see what the news in the city is. And perhaps Jamie will ha’ gone there,” she added hopefully. “Not thinking it safe to come here, I mean, wi’ the streets full of soldiers.”
A spark of hope at the suggestion flared up like a lit match. Though even as I envisioned the possibility, I knew that if Jamie was in the city at all, he’d be standing before me right now. Possibly enraged, possibly disturbed, but before me.
With the army already beginning its withdrawal, and the concomitant public disturbances, no one would have time or inclination to notice—let alone arrest—a tall Scotsman suspected of nothing more than passing suspicious documents. It wasn’t as though there was an all points bulletin out on him—or at least I hoped not. William was the only soldier who knew that Jamie had taken Lord John hostage, and from his manner in leaving, I rather thought that the last thing William would have done was give a full report of the situation to his superiors.
I said as much to Jenny, though agreed that she ought to go back to the printshop, to check on the welfare of Fergus and Marsali’s family, as well as to find out what was going on amongst the Rebels in the city.
“Will you be safe in the streets?” I asked, unfolding her cloak and holding it up for her to put on.
“Oh, I expect so,” she said briskly. “No one much thinks to look at an auld woman. But I suppose I’d best put away my wee bawbee.” The bawbee in question was a small silver chiming watch, with a delicately filigreed cover, which she wore pinned to the bosom of her dress.
“Jamie bought it for me in Brest,” she explained, seeing me looking at it as she unpinned it. “I told him it was foolery; I didna need such a thing to ken the time, nay more than he did himself. But he said, no, I must have it, that knowing what o’clock it is gives ye the illusion that ye have some control over your circumstances. Ye ken how he is,” she added, putting the watch carefully away in her pocket, “always explaining ye to yourself. Though I will say as he’s no often wrong.
“Now, then,” she added, turning to me as she opened the door. “I’ll come back before him upstairs wakes up, unless I can’t, and if I can’t, I’ll send Germain to say so.”
“Why should you not be able to?” I asked, in some surprise.
“Young Ian,” she said, equally surprised that I should not have thought of this. “Wi’ the army leaving, he may have come back from Valley Forge by now—and ye ken, the poor lad thinks I’m dead.”