Delaney smiled and broke the spell. “Some brandy? And another cigar, I think.” It would be amusing, Delaney thought, to corrupt the Reverend Elial Starbuck’s son. Besides, if Delaney was honest, he rather liked Nathaniel Starbuck. The boy was naive, but there was steel inside him and he had quick wits even if those wits were presently obliterated by desire. Starbuck, in short, might be useful one day, and if that usefulness was ever needed Delaney would be able to call in the debt that he was forging this night out of a young man’s obsession and desperation.

For Delaney was now an agent of the North. A man had come to his chambers, posing as a client, and there produced a copy of Delaney’s letter offering to spy for the North. The copy had been burned, and the sight of the burning paper had sent a shiver of nerves through Delaney’s soul. From now on he knew himself to be a marked man, liable to the death penalty, yet still the rewards of that loyalty to the North were worth the risk.

And the risk, he knew, could be very short-lived. Delaney did not believe the rebellion could last even to the end of July. The North’s new army would roll majestically across the pathetic rebel forces gathered in northern Virginia, secession would collapse and the southern politicians would then whimper that they had never meant to preach rebellion anyway. And what would become of the little people betrayed by those politicians? Starbuck, Delaney supposed, would be sent back to his ghastly hellhound of a father and that would be the end of the boy’s one adventure. So let him have a last, exotic moment to remember his whole dull life through and if, perchance, the rebellion did last a few months more, why, Starbuck would be an ally whether he wanted to be or not. “Tomorrow night, then,” Delaney said mischievously, then raised his brandy glass, “at five.”