“My mother likes to remind me of it constantly, ma’am.” Starbuck gave a swipe of his own claw back. Miriam Faulconer just gazed unblinking, weighing Starbuck and not seeming to like her judgment.

“Not so close, Anna, you will scratch me.” Miriam Faulconer pushed her daughter’s fan a half inch farther away. She wore a black-stoned ring on one slender finger, intriguingly worn outside the black lace glove. She had a necklace of black pearls and a brooch of carved jet was pinned to the heavy folds of dark purple silk. “I think,” Miriam Faulconer said to Starbuck with an undeniable note of dislike in her voice, “that you are an adventurer.”

“Is that such a bad thing to be, ma’am?”

“It is usually a selfish thing.”

“Mother…,” Adam intervened.

“Be quiet, Adam, I have not asked for your opinion. Closer, Anna, bring the fan closer. Adventurers cannot be relied upon, Mister Starbuck.”

“I am sure, ma’am, that there have been many great and reliable men who did not shirk from adventure. Our own Founding Fathers, indeed?”

Miriam Faulconer ignored Starbuck’s words. “I shall hold you responsible for my son’s safety, Mister Starbuck.”

“Mother, please…” Adam again tried to intervene.

“If I require your contribution, Adam, be assured I shall ask you for it, and until then be so good as to stay quiet.” The claws were out now, bright and sharp. “I do not want you, Mister Starbuck, leading my son into adventures. I would have been happy had he pursued his pacific ventures in the north, but it seems that the belligerent party has won his soul. That party, I think, includes you, and I do not thank you for it. So be assured, Mister Starbuck, that I shall hold you and my husband jointly responsible for my son’s safety.”

“I am honored by your trust, ma’am.” At first Starbuck had thought this woman a vulnerable, pitiful beauty, now he thought her a bitter witch.

“I am pleased to have seen you,” Mrs. Faulconer said in much the same tone she might have used to express some mild satisfaction at having seen a strange beast in a traveling menagerie, then she looked away and a radiant smile came to her face as she reached both hands toward Ethan Ridley. “My dear Ethan! I just knew Washington would keep you from me, but you’re here at last! I have been talking with Mister Starbuck and am consequently in need of some diversion. Come and sit here, take Anna’s chair.”

Adam drew Starbuck away. “Dear Lord, I am so sorry,” he said. “I know she can be difficult, but I don’t know why she chose today of all days.”