“Which look is that?” I asked warily. It was an article of faith amongst the members of my family that I couldn’t keep secrets; that everything I thought was visible on my face. They weren’t entirely right, but they weren’t completely wrong, either. What never occurred to them was just how transparent they were to me.
Brianna tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowed as she examined my face. I smiled pleasantly, putting out a hand to intercept Mandy as she trotted past me, three medicine bottles in hand.
“You can’t take Grannie’s bottles outside, sweetheart,” I said, removing them deftly from her chubby grasp. “Grannie needs them to put medicine in.”
“But I’m gonna catch leeches wif Jemmy and Aidan and Germain!”
“You couldn’t get even one leech into a bottle that size,” I said, standing up and placing the bottles on a shelf out of reach. I scanned the next shelf down and found a slightly chipped pottery bowl with a lid.
“Here, take this.” I wrapped a small linen towel around the bowl and tucked it into the pocket of her pinafore. “Be sure to put in a little mud—a little mud, all right? No more than a pinch—and some of the waterweed you find the leeches in. That will keep them happy.”
I watched her trot out the door, black curls bouncing, then braced myself and turned back to Bree.
“Well, if you must know, I was thinking how much I should tell you.”
She laughed, though with sympathy.
“That’s the look, all right. You always look like a heron staring into the water when you have something you can’t quite decide whether to tell somebody.”
“A heron?”
“Beady-eyed and intent,” she explained. “A contemplative killer. I’ll draw you doing it one of these days, so you can see.”
“Contemplative … I’ll take your word for it. I don’t think you’ve ever met Denzell Hunter, have you?”
She shook her head. “No. Ian mentioned him once or twice, I think—a Quaker doctor? Isn’t he Rachel’s brother?”
“That’s him. To keep it to the essentials for the moment, he’s a wonderful doctor, a good friend of mine, and besides being Rachel’s brother, he’s married to the daughter of the Duke of Pardloe—who happens to be Lord John Grey’s elder brother.”
“Lord John?” Her face, already glowing with light, broke into a brilliant smile. “My favorite person—outside the family. Have you heard from him? How is he?”
“Fine, to the best of my knowledge. I saw him briefly in Savannah a few months ago—the British army is still there, so it’s likely he is, too.” I’d thought out what to say, in hopes of avoiding anything awkward, but a script is not a conversation. “I was thinking that you might write to him.”
“I suppose I might,” she said, tilting her head and looking at me sideways, one red brow raised. “Right this minute?”
“Well … soonish. The thing is, Jamie’s just had a letter from one of his aides—from the army—I’ll tell you about that later. Anyway, the gist of it is that Denzell Hunter was captured by the British army and is being held in a military prison camp at Stony Point.”
“Captured doing what?” She sat up straighter and set her lap desk aside. She hadn’t been drawing a sentimental portrait of her daughter, I saw—it looked like a floor plan of something, embellished with small marginal sketches of apes. “You said he’s a Quaker?”
I sighed. “Yes. He’s what they call a Fighting Quaker, but he doesn’t fight. He joined the Continental army as a surgeon, though, and was evidently scooped up off a battlefield somewhere.”
“Sounds like an interesting man,” she remarked, the brow still high. “What does he have to do with me writing to Lord John?”
I explained, as briefly as possible, the connections and possibilities, concluding, “So I—we—want to see that the duke knows where Denny is. Even if he can’t get him released directly—and knowing Hal, I wouldn’t bet against him doing exactly that—he can make sure that Denny’s well treated, and naturally he’d find Dottie and see she’s taken care of.”
Bree was watching me with a curiously analytic look on her face, as though she were estimating the shear forces on the girders of a bridge.
“What?” I said. “John was a good friend of yours. Before, I mean. I should think you’d want to write to him in any case.”