Bree hadn’t drunk much wine since Amy Higgins’s death; the smell of grapes reminded her too much of that day among the scuppernongs, and the color of red wine was too much the color of blood, fresh in the sunlight. Even so, this wine seemed not so much to be swallowed as to dissolve right through her membranes and into her own sweet blood, and she felt her body gradually soften, easing back into its natural shape as the tension of the trip left her.
They’d made it.
So far, said the cynical back of her mind, but she ignored that. For the moment, everyone was safe—and together.
Germain hadn’t gone to bed with Jem and Mandy and his sisters; he was curled up beside his mother on the settle, sound asleep with his head in her lap, and she smoothed a hand gently over his tousled blond head, with a look of such tenderness on her face that it smote Bree in the heart.
She touched her breastbone lightly at the thought, but everything was peaceful within, a soft, regular THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump that would lull her to sleep in moments, if she let it. A brief squawk from the cradle by Fergus’s chair drove the notion of sleep out of her head, and she sat up quickly, a maternal surge rising straight up from belly to breasts with surprising force.
“If one goes, the other will, too,” Marsali said, sighing and reaching for her laces. “Hold my wine, will ye, Bree?”
She took the glass, warm from the fire and Marsali’s hand, and watched, half enviously, as Fergus handed one swaddled bundle to his wife, then bent to pick the other baby up from the cradle.
“This one’s wet,” he said, holding the little boy away from his body.
“I’ll change him.” Bree put the wine on the table and took the bundle from Fergus, who released his son with alacrity and sat down again with his own glass, looking happy.
There were clean clouts and rags on a shelf, and a small tin of some sort of ointment that smelled of lavender, chamomile, and oatmeal. She smiled, recognizing a version of Mama’s diaper-rash cream.
“Who do I have?” she asked, turning back the blanket to reveal a small, round, sleepy face and a slick of light-brown hair down the middle of the head.
“Charles-Claire,” said Fergus, and nodded at Marsali’s bundle. “That’s Alexandre.”
“Hello there,” she said softly, and the baby smacked his lips in a thoughtful sort of way and began to wiggle inside his wrappings. “Comment ?a va?”
“Wah!”
“Oh, not that good, eh? Well, let’s see about it, then …”
TIRED AS THEY were, nobody wanted to go to bed. Brianna could feel sleep gently creeping up from her tired feet and aching shins, over her knees like a warm quilt. But there was much to be said, and after a lot of catching up with the current state of things on the Ridge, plus the welfare of all the people and animals there, they reached an explanation of their presence in Charles Town.
“It was mostly Germain,” Roger said, smiling at the sleeping boy and then at Marsali. “Once he’d had your letter, of course we had to come. And, um”—he darted a quick glance at Bree—“I think Jamie said he’d sent you a note?”
That made Marsali look sharply at Fergus, who made an offhand “It’s nothing” sort of gesture. Roger cleared his throat and continued. “But Charles Town is on the way, after all.”
“On the way where?” Fergus had relaxed into something like bonelessness, eyelids half shut against the smoke from the driftwood fire. Brianna thought she’d never seen him this way before—completely at peace.
“To Savannah,” Roger replied, with a touch of pride that warmed Brianna more than the fire. “Bree’s got a commission—to paint the wife of a rich merchant named Brumby.”
One of Fergus’s brows twitched up.
“Congratulations, ma soeur. Savannah … is this Monsieur Alfred Brumby?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Do you know him? Or anything about him?”
“I see his name painted on any number of boxes and barrels on the wharves, as they pass from Savannah to Philadelphia and Boston. He’s an importer of molasses from the West Indies. And very rich in consequence, I assure you. Charge him anything you like for his portrait; he won’t blink.”
Brianna rolled a sip of wine around her mouth, enjoying the slight roughness on her tongue.
“Do I take it that ‘importer’ is a polite name for ‘smuggler’？”
“Well, no more than half the time,” Fergus said, with a slight Gallic shrug. “It is still legal to import molasses into the colonies—but naturally, there is a tax for doing so. And where you have taxes …”