She smiled fully at that. She had a lovely smile.

“So we are. You must call me Cousin Amaranthus, then—it’s a plant,” she added, with the slightly resigned air of one frequently obliged to make this explanation. “Amaranthus retroflexus. Of the family Amaranthaceae. Commonly known as pigweed.”

Trevor, who to this point had been perched on his mother’s knee, goggling stupidly at William, now made an urgent noise and reached out toward him. Fearing lest the child escape his mother’s clutches and pitch face-first onto the brick pathway, William grabbed him round the midsection and hoisted him onto his own knee, where the little boy stood, wobbling and crowing, beaming into William’s face. Despite himself, William smiled back. The boy was handsome, when not screeching, with soft dark hair and the pale-blue eyes common to the Greys.

“Wotcha, then, Trev?” he said, lowering his head and pretending to butt the child, who giggled and clutched at his hair.

“He looks quite like Benjamin,” he said, extracting his ears from Trevor’s grip. “And my uncle. I hope I don’t give you pain by saying so?” he added, suddenly unsure. She shook her head, though, and her smile turned rueful.

“No. It’s as well that he does. Your uncle was somewhat suspicious of me, I think. We married rather in haste,” she explained, in answer to William’s inquiring look, “and while Benjamin did write to tell his father of the marriage, his letter apparently didn’t reach England before His Grace left for the colonies. So when I discovered that His Grace was in Philadelphia, and wrote to him myself …” She lifted one shoulder in a graceful shrug and glanced toward the house.

“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Is he an Indian?”

William felt a sudden weight come back, one that he’d shed without noticing it over the last few minutes.

“Yes,” he said. “His mother was half Indian, half French, he says. Though I can’t say to what Indian nation she might have belonged. She died when he was an infant, and he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Quebec.”

Amaranthus was interested. She leaned forward, looking toward the house.

“And his father?” she asked. “Or does he know anything of his father?”

William glanced involuntarily at the house again, but all was silent.

“As to that,” he said, groping for something to say that was not a lie, but still something short of the full truth, “it’s a long story—and it’s not my story to tell. All I can say is that his father was a British soldier.”

“I did notice his hair,” Amaranthus said, dimpling. “Most remarkable.” She glanced past him at the house, and reached to take the baby back. “Will you be staying with his lordship?”