The major had ordered whiskey and stuck to that throughout. Hawkwood had chosen brandy. The breeze that was coming off the water and eddying up the city’s streets was a bracing reminder that it was already winter. A stack of blazing logs and a warming drink were as good a way as any of keeping the chill at bay.

The taproom was enveloped in warmth. With the combined smells of ale, tobacco and victuals and the subdued murmur of conversation permeating the tavern Hawkwood could easily have shut his eyes and imagined, if only for a few brief seconds, that he was back in London, enjoying a wet at the Blackbird Inn.

Only he wasn’t. He was in Albany, New York, half a world away from Bow Street, trying to find some means of getting home.

Still, he thought, at least there was one advantage to being here.

He didn’t have to speak French.

The voyage from Nantes to Boston had taken thirty-two days, one more than Larkspur’s skipper, Jack Larsson, had forecast and thirty-two days too many, as far as Hawkwood was concerned.

Getting out of Paris in the wake of his last assignment had been achieved without too much difficulty but there had always been a weakness in the plan’s second stage, which had been reliant on Larkspur being intercepted and boarded by a British vessel on blockade duty, whereupon Hawkwood would have revealed his identity and secured safe passage back to England.

Regrettably, no one had allowed for the formidable seamanship of Larkspur’s wily skipper. During the five years the blockade had been in place – which required all neutral ships to submit to a cargo inspection at a British port or be seized as an enemy vessel – Jack Larsson had accrued valuable experience in the art of outwitting the Royal Navy’s squadrons. Now that Britain was actually at war with America, he had become even more adept at avoiding detection.

Thus Larkspur had slipped past the British patrols with ease, presenting Hawkwood with the uncomfortable realization that he was America bound.

The one advantage of the month-long voyage was that it had given him time to gather as much information as he could on the fluctuating state of British–American hostilities.

In Paris, up-to-date intelligence had been impossible to glean. Even though European newspapers carried accounts of skirmishes between the two sides, by the time news from the other side of the Atlantic reached the French newspapers or English ones smuggled in from London, it had to be at least six weeks out of date, if not more; which had left Hawkwood with no option but to tap Captain Larsson and his crew without arousing their suspicions.