Charles Town

WILLIAM HAD NOT expected ever to meet Sir Henry Clinton again. But there he was, frowning at William in a way that made it evident that Sir Henry recalled very well who he was. William had been waiting in an anteroom of the gracious Charles Town mansion presently serving as command headquarters for the Charles Town garrison, having requested a brief audience with Stephen Moore, one of Clinton’s aides-de-camp with whom he had been friendly—and one who he knew was familiar with the Duke of Pardloe. He’d sent in his name, though, and five minutes later Sir Henry himself popped up like a jack-in-the-box, his appearance nearly as startling.

“Still Captain Ransom, is it?” Sir Henry asked, elaborately courteous. There wasn’t any bar to a man resigning one commission and buying another, but the circumstances of William’s resignation of his commission under Sir Henry had been dramatic, and commanders in general disliked drama in their junior officers.

“It is, sir.” William bowed, very correctly. “I trust I see you well, sir?”

Sir Henry made a hrmph noise, but nodded briefly. He was, after all, surrounded by the evidences of a significant victory: the streets of Charles Town were pitted and marred by cannon fire, and soldiers—many of them black—were everywhere, laboriously restoring what they had spent weeks blowing up.

“I am come with a message for the Duke of Pardloe,” William said.

Sir Henry looked mildly surprised.

“Pardloe? But he’s gone.”

“Gone,” William repeated carefully. “Has the duke returned to Savannah?”

“He didn’t say he meant to,” Clinton replied, beginning to be impatient. “He left more than a week ago, though, so I imagine he’ll have got back to Savannah by now.”

William felt a coolness on the back of his neck, as though the room around them had subtly changed from one moment to the next and an unseen window had opened.

“Yes,” he managed to say, and bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

He walked out into the street and turned right, with no intent in mind save movement. He was at once alarmed and incensed. What the devil was Uncle Hal about? How dare he go off about his own business when his own brother had disappeared?

He stopped dead for a moment, as the thought struck him that his father and uncle might have disappeared together. But why? The thought died in the next moment, though, as he spotted a familiar red-coated form a hundred yards down the street, buying a packet of tobacco from a black woman in a spotted turban. Denys Randall.

“The very man I wanted to see,” he said a moment later, falling into step alongside Denys as he walked away from the tobacco seller.

Denys looked up, startled, then looked forward and back before turning to William.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m supposed to be here, and you aren’t.”

William didn’t bother asking what Randall was doing. He didn’t care.