Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (63 page)

THE SUN WAS WELL
above the horizon when William came ambling slowly down Oglethorpe Street toward his father's house. He'd had a long, fascinating—and very enlightening—conversation with Christopher Preston, about the Crown's treatment of prisoners, prisoner-help societies, prison hulks…and Ardsmuir Prison. In the fullness of time, he might need to have a talk with Lord John. But not just…this…minute.

He wasn't drunk, but wasn't yet quite sober, either. One of his pockets sagged heavily and jingled when he touched it. He had a vague memory of playing cards with Preston and some friends of his—at least this experience seemed to have ended better than the last time he'd got blind drunk, ended up penniless, and…met Jane again.

Jane.

He hadn't meant to call her to mind, but there she was, vivid, drawn on the surface of his mind with a sharp-pointed quill. The first time he'd met her—and the second. The shine of her hair and the smell of her body, close in the dark.

He stopped and leaned heavily on the iron fence surrounding a neighbor's front garden. The scent of flowers and new-turned soil was fresh as the morning air on his face, the breath of the distant river and its marshes soothing, with its sense of flowing water, soft black silt, and lurking alligators.

The unexpected thought of alligators made him laugh, and he rubbed a hand over his rasping whiskers, shook his head, and turned in to Papa's gate. He sniffed the air expectantly, but he was early; he could smell smoke from the kitchen fire, but no bacon. Voices, though…He wandered round the side of the house, intending to see whether he might charm Moira the cook into giving him a bit of toasted bread or some cheese to ease the pangs of starvation 'til something more substantial was ready.

He found Moira in the kitchen garden, pulling onions. She was talking to Amaranthus, who had evidently been gathering as well; she carried a trug that held a large mound of grapes and a couple of pears from the small tree that grew near the cookhouse. With an eye for the fruit, he strode up and bade the women good morning. Amaranthus gave him an up-and-down glance, inhaled as though trying to judge his state of intoxication from his aroma, and with a faint shake of the head handed him a pear.

“Coffee?” he said hopefully to Moira.

“Well, I'll not be saying there isn't,” she said dubiously. “It's left from yesterday, though, and strong enough to take the shine off your teeth.”

“Perfect,” he assured her, and bit into the pear, closing his eyes as the luscious juice flooded his mouth. He opened them to find Amaranthus, back turned to him, stooping to look at something on the ground among the radishes. She was wearing a thin wrapper over her shift, and the fabric stretched neatly over her very round bottom.

She stood up suddenly, turning round, and he at once bent toward the ground she'd been looking at, saying, “What
is
that?” though he personally saw nothing but dirt and a lot of radish tops.

“It's a dung beetle,” she said, looking at him closely. “Very good for the soil. They roll up small balls of ordure and trundle them away.”

“What do they do with them? The, um, balls of ordure, I mean.”

“Eat them,” she said, with a slight shrug. “They bury the balls for safekeeping, and then eat them as need requires—or sometimes they breed inside the larger ones.”

“How…cozy. Have you had any breakfast?” William asked, raising one brow.

“No, it isn't ready yet.”

“Neither have I,” he said, getting to his feet. “Though I'm not quite as hungry as I was before you told me that.” He glanced down at his waistcoat. “Have I any dung beetles in this noble assemblage?”

That made her laugh.

“No, you haven't,” she said. “Not nearly colorful enough.”

Amaranthus was suddenly standing quite close to him, though he was sure he hadn't seen her move. She had the odd trick of seeming to appear suddenly out of thin air; it was disconcerting, but rather intriguing.

“That bright-green one,” she said, pointing a long, delicate finger at his middle, “is a Dogbane Leaf Beetle,
Chrysosuchus auratus.
”

“Is it, really?”

“Yes, and this lovely creature with the long nose is a billbug.”

“A pillbug?” William squinted down his chest.

“No, a billbug,” she said, tapping the bug in question. “It's a sort of weevil, but it eats cattails. And young corn.”

“Rather a varied diet.”

“Well, unless you're a dung beetle, you do have some choice in what you eat,” she said, smiling. She touched another of the beetles, and William felt a faint but noticeable jolt at the base of his spine. “Now here,” she said, with small, distinct taps of her finger, “we have Ash Borer, a Festive Tiger Beetle, and the False Potato Beetle.”

“What does a true potato beetle look like?”

“Very much the same. This one's called a False Potato Beetle because while it
will
eat potatoes in a pinch, it really prefers horse nettles.”

“Ah.” He thought he should express interest in the rest of the little red-eyed things ornamenting his waistcoat, partially to repay her kindness in embroidering them but more in hopes that she'd go on tapping them. He was opening his mouth to inquire about a large cream-colored thing with horns when she stepped back in order to look up into his face.

“I heard my father-in-law talking to Lord John about you,” she said.

“Oh? Good. I hope they'd a fine day for it,” he said, not really caring.

“Speaking of False Potato Beetles, I mean,” she said. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened one and looked at her. She was perfectly solid, not wavering in the slightest.

“I know I'm a trifle the worse for drink,” he said politely. “But I don't
think
I resemble any sort of potato beetle, regardless of my uncle's opinion.”

She laughed, showing very white teeth. Maybe she didn't drink coffee…

“No, you don't,” she assured him. “The dichotomy just reminded me of what Father Pardloe was saying—that you wanted to renounce your title, but couldn't.”

He felt suddenly almost sober.

“Really. Did you happen to overhear the reason?”

“No,” she said. “And it's not my business, is it?”

“Evidently you think it is,” he said. “Or why are you mentioning it?”

She bent and plucked a small bunch of grapes out of the trug, offering it to him. Moira, he noticed, had gone about her business.

“Well, I thought that if that's truly the case…I might be able to suggest something.”

With an odd sense of exhilaration, he took the grapes and asked, “Such as?”

“Well,” she said, as reasonably as though she were describing the eating habits of a firefly, “it's quite simple. You can't renounce your title, but you
could
hand it on. Abdicate in favor of your heir, I mean.”

“I haven't an heir. Are you suggesting—”

“Yes, exactly.” She nodded approvingly at him. “You marry me and as soon as I have a son, you can give him your title, and either retire into private life and breed dachshunds or perhaps pretend to commit suicide and go off to become anyone you like.”

“Leaving you—”

“Leaving me as the dowager countess of whatever your estate is called, I forget. That might be slightly better than being the Duke of Pardloe's penurious daughter-in-law, mightn't it?”

He took a deep breath. Coffee was indeed on the wind, and so was bacon, but he'd suddenly lost interest in food. He stared at her. She cocked one smooth blond eyebrow.

“And what if your next child is a daughter?” he said, to his own surprise. “And the one after that? It seems to me that I should be in substantial danger of ending with a—a—hareem of girls, all in need of dowries and marriages, and myself still a bloody earl.”

Her brow wrinkled slightly.

“What's a hareem?”

“It's what Arab sheiks do to leaven the monotony of marriage, or so I'm told. Polygamy, I mean.”

“Surely you don't mean to imply that you think being married to me would be
boring,
William.” The shadow of a dimple flickered in her cheek. “But as for hareems, nonsense. You needn't marry me straight off, you know. We'd give it a go, and if the result is male, then you marry me, acknowledge the child, and—” She gave a flick of her hand in a silent
“voilà.”

“I don't believe I am having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I really don't. But for the sake of argument, just what the devil do you propose doing if the result, as you so casually put it, is female?”

She pursed her lips and turned her head to one side, considering.

“Oh, I can think of a dozen things at least. The simplest would be for me to go abroad at the first suggestion of pregnancy—I should do that in any case, as we wouldn't be married yet—and pretend to be a wealthy widow. Then—”

William uttered a noise that he'd meant to be a laugh, and she raised a palm to suppress him, continuing serenely, “And then, if the child were to be a girl, I should simply come back with the little darling (for I'm sure any child of yours would be adorable, William) and announce that a good friend of mine had died in childbed and that I had adopted her daughter, out of charity, of course, but also to give my darling Trevor a sister.”

She lowered the palm and widened her eyes at him.

“That's one way. I can think of others, if you—”

“Please don't.” He didn't know whether to laugh, shout at her, eat a grape, or just leave. Before he could decide, she'd done her illusion again and was pressed lightly against him, her hands on his shoulders, face beguilingly turned up.

“But you see,” she said reasonably, “there isn't really any risk. To you, I mean. And you might”—her hand cupped his cheek, brief and cool as rain, and her forefinger traced his lips—“just possibly enjoy it.”

J
OHN HAD KNOWN THEY’D
have to talk about Percy, but he’d succeeded in avoiding Hal until the next day, by the simple expedient of leaving his coat and gorget with Prévost’s cook and going down to the harbor while Hal was still talking to Old Bullet Head. There he hired a boat to take him fishing in the marshes. His guide, a local by the name of Lapolla, was very knowledgable, and John came in after dark, smelling of mud and marsh grass, with a sack full of redfish and a large, horrible thing called a horseshoe crab, which they had discovered—fortunately dead—on a tiny islet composed entirely of oyster shells.

He had eaten some of his fish, broiled over a fire on the beach and utterly delicious. Then, slightly drunk, he had stolen into Hal’s room around midnight and left the dead crab on the bedside table beside his sleeping brother, as a symbolic comment on the situation.

What with one thing and another, though, he didn’t encounter a conscious Hal until late the next afternoon, following a harrowing tea party at the home of a Mrs. Tina Anderson, who, while herself a tall, statuesque blond beauty possessed of great charm, was also possessed of a horde of chattering friends who had descended on him
en masse,
affectionately clinging to his sleeve or fingering his gold braid while expressing their gratitude for the army’s presence and their admiration of the courageous soldiers who were saving them—apparently—from mass rapine.

“It was like being pecked to death by a flock of small parrots,” he told Hal. “Screeching, and feathers everywhere.”

“Never mind parrots,” Hal said shortly. He’d been out himself, to a more formal—and doubtless less noisy—gathering at the home of a Mrs. Roma Sars, where he’d talked to some of the politicals who’d been at Prévost’s luncheon.

“I was hoping to talk to Monsieur Soissons and find out how the devil bloody Percy comes to be here, when he’s supposed to be dead—or at least decently pretending to be—but Soissons wasn’t in the way,” Hal replied shortly. He’d got his stock off, and the dark-red mark across his neck suggested that he’d been choking back words of one kind and another all afternoon. “Where was it you said you’d met the fellow last?”

John undid his own leather stock and closed his eyes, sighing with relief.

“I met him at the American camp in a place called Coryell’s Ferry, just before Monmouth. I told you about that.”

Hal wiped his face with a discarded towel, evidently used previously for blacking boots, and tossed it into the corner.

“And how the devil did he come to be
there,
for that matter?”

John shook his head. What did it matter now, after all? Still, he wasn’t going to explain just how it was that Percy had escaped being hanged for the crime of sodomy; he’d rather Hal didn’t expire of apoplexy
just
yet.

“About how you got yourself arrested by the Americans, escaped, and showed up after the battle in camp with a homicidal Mohawk Indian purporting to be James Fraser’s nephew? More or less,” Hal said, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Mostly less, I imagine. You didn’t mention Percy, at any rate.”

John blinked in a noncommittal sort of way and tilted his head toward the door. Brisk footsteps were coming down the corridor; doubtless Hal’s valet, coming to extract Hal from the bondage of his dress uniform.

To his surprise, however, the footsteps belonged to William, mildly disheveled but evidently sober.

“I need to find Banastre Tarleton,” he said, without preamble. “How do you suggest I do that?”

“What d’you want him for?” Hal inquired, sitting down in a wooden chair. “And if you want help, turnabout’s fair play—help me get these bloody boots off. They’re John’s, and they’re killing me.”

“It’s not my fault you’ve got bunions,” John said. “Totally fitting for an infantry commander, though, you’ll admit. No one can say you don’t do your job thoroughly.”

Hal gave him a mildly evil look, then put his hands on William’s head to brace himself as William wrestled one boot loose.

“Do you know where Tarleton is?” he asked John, who shook his head.

“Neither do I,” Hal said, addressing the cowlick on top of William’s head, which swirled neatly clockwise before sticking up.
Just like his father’s,
John thought.

“Clinton’s chief clerk would know,” Grey said, and cleared his throat. “His name’s Ronson—Captain Geoffrey Ronson, if you please.”

“Fine.” William jerked the boot off and nearly shot backward off the campaign chest he was sitting on. He tossed the muddy boot on the hearth rug and inspected his chest, to be sure his beetles had suffered no damage. “Where the devil is Sir Henry keeping himself these days?”

“New York, for the moment,” Hal said, sticking out his other foot. “I’d bet reasonable money that Tarleton is still with him. Tarleton’s cavalry riders were Clinton’s new toy at Monmouth, and I doubt he’s had all his fun with them yet.”

William grunted as the second boot came off, and laid it with its fellow on the rug.

“So, shall I write to Tarleton directly, care of Sir Henry?”

John and Hal exchanged glances.

“I think I would,” Hal said, with a slight shrug. “Just don’t put anything in the letter that you don’t want the world to know about. Some clerks are discreet and a hell of a lot of them aren’t.”

“Speaking of which,” John said, eyeing his son. “Would it be indiscreet of us to ask why you want to find Banastre Tarleton?”

William shook his head, then smoothed the dislodged cowlick back into the dark mass of his hair.

“Denys Randall told me at the luncheon yesterday that it was Ban Tarleton who first got the letter from Middlebrook Encampment about Ben dying there. He evidently gave it to Ezekiel Richardson, and thus—” He made a spiraling gesture indicating the letter’s eventual arrival to Hal’s hand. “So I want to know why Tarleton got it, and how.”

“Very reasonable,” Hal agreed. “But I doubt it’ll be that easy.” He lowered his brows and stared at William, very directly. “What I tell you goes no further, William. Not to your Indian friend, your lover—if you have one, and no, I don’t want to know—or anyone else.”

William refrained from rolling his eyes, but only just. John looked down to hide a smile.

“
Tace
is the Latin for a candle,” William said obligingly, and laid a hand over his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

Hal snorted, but nodded.

“Right. Sir Henry is tired of making feints at the Americans around New York and Virginia. He wants a bold stroke, and he’s got his eye upon Charles Town. If he hasn’t already left New York to go take it from the Americans, he will, within the next few months.”

“Who told you that?” John asked, surprised.

“Three different men at luncheon, all of whom begged me to keep it quiet.”

“I see what you mean about discretion, Uncle,” William said, openly amused.

“I,” said Hal coldly, “am the Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot.
You
are…” His voice trailed off as he gazed at William, bareheaded and slightly rumpled in his civilian finery, but still with the straight-backed bearing of a soldier.

I don’t suppose that will ever leave him,
John thought.
It hasn’t left his father.

“…not a serving officer at the moment,” Hal finished, choosing to be tactful for once.

William nodded agreeably.

“That’s fortunate, isn’t it?” he said. “As you aren’t my commanding officer, you can’t forbid me to go look for Tarleton if I like.”