“Mrs. Adams.” He saw her across the street and smiled, teeth very white in a fine-boned ebony face. His name, Abigail recalled, was Scipio; he’d greet her with his sunny smile at the Brattle Street Meeting, if he was sure his master wasn’t looking. Sure enough, he glanced back at the house as if to make sure he was unobserved before crossing to her. “Are you well, m’am? And Mrs. Malvern: Is all well with her?”

“No,” said Abigail softly. “I am sorry to say a shocking thing has happened, and I was coming now, to let your master know of it. As far as I know she’s all right,” she added, seeing how the man’s eyes widened with alarm. “It wouldn’t be right to tell you details before I’ve spoken to him—”

“No, of course not.” He collected himself quickly, hastened ahead of her, to open the house door. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

No fire burned in the grate of the book-room where he left her, though there were Turkey carpets on the brick floor. Charles Malvern was not a man to heat rooms when they were not in use. A portrait of the Fair Althea hung on the wall, very like Jeffrey but with kindliness rather than wit in her smile. Beside it hung a painting of Tamar, done recently, where once Rebecca’s pen-sketch of little Nathan had been displayed: the child whose birth had cost his mother her life. Abigail remembered that Nathan had been fascinated with it, had sat, too, looking up at the likeness of the mother he had never seen. The sketch was gone. Abigail wondered whether Malvern had disposed of it when Rebecca had left, or after the boy had died.

“Mrs. Adams?” Scipio reappeared in the doorway, to usher her across the hall.

“Good day to you, m’am.” Charles Malvern rose from his desk when the butler admitted her, came around himself to bring up a chair. His wide-skirted dark coat and plain Ramilles wig were not one shilling more costly than they had to be, to let others know of his consequence in the world of trade and business. Their former encounter and her championship of his estranged wife flickered like malign fire in his eyes, but he asked politely, “Will you take tea? ’Tis a raw morning.”

“Thank you, no.” Any number of Abigail’s friends observed the boycott but made it a point to call on their less political friends for a cup of Hyson or Bohea in the course of a cold afternoon. That, in Abigail’s opinion, was cheating.

He didn’t offer the acceptable Whig alternative of coffee, but signed Scipio from the room. “To what do I owe this honor, m’am?”