We sat there for quite some time, neither of us having any idea what to say. He took a breath once or twice, as though about to say something, but then abandoned it. At last, he closed his eyes as though commending his soul to God, opened them and looked at me.
“Do you know—” he began, then stopped. He looked down at his clenched hands, then, not at me. A blue stone winked on one knuckle, bright as a teardrop.
“Do you know,” he said again, softly, addressing his hands, “what it is to love someone, and never—never!—be able to give them peace, or joy, or happiness?”
He looked up then, eyes filled with pain. “To know that you cannot give them happiness, not through any fault of yours or theirs, but only because you were not born the right person for them?”
I sat quiet, seeing not his, but another handsome face; dark, not fair. Not feeling the warm breath of the tropical night, but the icy hand of a Boston winter. Seeing the pulse of light like heart’s blood, spilling across the cold snow of hospital linens.
…
“I know,” I whispered, hands clenched in my lap. I had told Frank—Leave me. But he could not, no more than I could love him rightly, having found my match elsewhere.
Oh, Frank, I said, silently. Forgive me.
“I suppose I am asking whether you believe in fate,” Lord John went on. The ghost of a smile wavered on his face. “You, of all people, would seem best suited to say.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I said bleakly. “But I don’t know, any more than you.”
He shook his head, then reached out and picked up the miniature.
“I have been more fortunate than most, I suppose,” he said quietly. “There was the one thing he would take from me.” His expression softened as he looked down into the face of the boy in the palm of his hand. “And he has given me something most precious in return.”
Without thinking, my hand spread out across my belly. Jamie had given me that same precious gift—and at the same great cost to himself.
The sound of footsteps came down the hall, muffled by the carpet. There was a sharp rap at the door, and a militiaman stuck his head into the office.
“Is the lady recovered yet?” he asked. “Captain Jacobs has finished his questions, and Monsieur Alexandre’s carriage has returned.”
I got hastily to my feet.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I turned to the Governor, not knowing what to say to him. “I—thank you for—that is—”
He bowed formally to me, coming around the desk to see me out.
“I regret extremely that you should have been subjected to such a shocking experience, ma’am,” he said, with no trace of anything but diplomatic regret in his voice. He had resumed his official manner, smooth and polished as his parquet floors.
I followed the militiaman, but at the door I turned impulsively.
“When we met, that night aboard the
He stood for a second, polite, remote. Then the mask dropped away.
“I liked you, too,” he said quietly. “Then.”
I felt as though I were riding next to a stranger. The light was beginning to gray toward dawn, and even in the dimness of the coach, I could see Jamie sitting opposite me, his face drawn with weariness. He had taken off the ridiculous wig as soon as we drove away from Government House, discarding the facade of the polished Frenchman to let the disheveled Scot beneath show through. His unbound hair lay in waves over his shoulders, dark in that predawn light that robs everything of color.
“Do you think he did it?” I asked at last, only for something to say.
His eyes were closed. At this, they opened and he shrugged slightly.
“I don’t know,” he said. He sounded exhausted. “I have asked myself that a thousand times tonight—and been asked it even more.” He rubbed his knuckles hard over his forehead.
“I canna imagine a man I know to do such a thing. And yet…well, ye ken he’ll do anything when he’s drink taken. And he’s killed before, drunk—you’ll mind the Customs man at the brothel?” I nodded, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, sinking his head into his hands.
“This is different, though,” he said. “I canna think—but maybe so. Ye ken what he said about women on the ship. And if this Mrs. Alcott was to have toyed wi’ him—”
“She did,” I said. “I saw her.”
He nodded without looking up. “So did any number of other people. But if she led him to think she meant more than she maybe did, and then perhaps she put him off, maybe laughed at him…and him fu’ as a puggie wi’ drink, and knives to hand on every wall of the place…” He sighed and sat up.
“God knows,” he said bleakly. “I don’t.” He ran a hand backward through his hair, smoothing it.
“There’s something else about it. I had to tell them that I scarcely knew Willoughby—that we’d met him on the packet boat from Martinique, and thought it kindly to introduce him about, but didna ken a thing of where he came from, or the sort of fellow he truly was.”
“Did they believe it?”
He glanced at me wryly.
“So far. But the packet boat comes in again in six days—at which point, they’ll question the captain and
