John looked about to say something else, but at that moment Lieutenant Coldstone appeared in the archway from outside, a leather sabertache beneath his arm and his Irish sergeant at his heels. “My apologies for the inconvenience, Mrs. Adams, Mr. Adams. Unfortunately there is no other place to wait. Sergeant Muldoon, would you be so good as to bring Mrs. Adams a cup of tea? Or coffee, if you would prefer, Madame.”

“Coffee,” said Abigail drily, and the Lieutenant bowed, as if the whole of the colony were not aflame on the subject of tea.

“Coffee, then. Mr. Adams?” He held open the door, and closed it behind them.

Three hours. Abigail opened the book she had brought, then let it rest on her lap. The gauzy quality of the noon overcast brought other clouded days to her, in the little kitchen on Brattle Street: one of those wet mornings when she’d patiently attempted to teach Rebecca how to make Indian pudding that did not end as inedible clots. “He sent her away,” Rebecca had said, holding up the note that had just come to the house. “Without a character, Scipio says. Only for having served me.” “Does she have family?” Abigail had asked, and Rebecca had said, “A brother. She fled the place; she wanted something other than to be a farm drudge—”

At that point Johnny, who had just turned three, had staggered purposefully toward the fireplace and the discussion had ended, and Abigail never had learned where Catherine’s brother lived. From time to time over the ensuing years, Rebecca had spoken of receiving letters from her former servant: a farm somewhere, in the harsh backcountry that still crowded close to the cities of the seaside. Charles Malvern had not scrupled to—

Raised voices came dimly through the office door, faded almost at once. Abigail blinked, frowned. How long do they need, for John to sign a bond?

Is there another door out of that office?

She waited for a moment when the corridor was empty—servants were coming and going with greater frequency now, bearing dress uniforms to be brushed, trays of tea things or port bottles—then stepped to the door. Putting her ear close to the crack, she heard Coldstone’s chill, measured voice asking something, and John’s, loud with his anger, reply, “. . . liver bay, about ten years old, white stocking on the off hind . . .” Balthazar, in fact: John’s horse. Had John dispatched his clerk, young Thaxter, to return the post-horse he’d borrowed to get back to Boston on? He must have—she hadn’t seen the young man at dinner yesterday afternoon, though he often stayed to eat with the family. She shook her head at herself. I must have been more tired than I knew . . .