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.”

47

Tace Is the Latin for a Candle

JOHN 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.