“You.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the printshop below was vacant at the moment, though he could hear voices in the kitchen. “Fergus asked me to go with him on an errand, and he asked me to bring a knife. So I thought I’d give you this for safekeeping—you know, in case we’re going to meet a highway robber and get his life story for the front page,” he added, trying to make a feeble joke of it. His wife was having none of his humors, and heaved herself to her feet with a hand on a barrel of varnish, her eyes fixing him with a look of dark-blue suspicion.
She kept her eyes on him while taking the paper from his hand and unfolding it, glancing away only to read it.
“What is this?”
“It’s a warehouse certificate. You’ve seen them before, surely? Your da has a fistful of them in his strongbox.”
“I have,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “Why do you have a warehouse certificate to a warehouse in Charlotte?”
“Because so far as either I or Frank Randall knows, there won’t be any significant fighting in Charlotte. That’s where I sent the, um, guano. I thought nobody would notice, and nobody did.”
She gave the certificate a careful look, and he saw her note that he’d put her name on it as well as his. Under the circumstances, she didn’t seem to find that comforting.
“So,” he said heartily, “we’ll be back before supper. Oh—and Mandy’s sock is over there, under the candle snuffer.”
FEELING THAT IT didn’t behoove a not-quite-ordained minister to walk about in a black coat with a large knife on his belt in plain view, Roger put on his second-best coat, this being a rather shabby brown number with a visible mend in the sleeve and wooden buttons. Fergus viewed this with approval.
“Yes, very good,” he said. “You look as though you could do business.” The tone of his voice made it clear what kind of business he meant, but Roger assumed this to be a joke.
“Oh, so I’m meant to be your henchman?” He fell into step next to Fergus, who was wearing the same clothes he wore for printing, but with a blue coat little better than Roger’s over them.
“We will hope it doesn’t come to that,” Fergus said thoughtfully. “But it’s as well to be prepared.”
Roger stopped abruptly and grabbed Fergus’s sleeve, bringing him to a halt.
“Would you care to tell me just who we’re going to see? And how many of them?”
“Only one, so far as I know,” Fergus assured him. “His name is Percival Beauchamp.”
That didn’t sound like the eighteenth-century version of a gangster, a dangerous pirate, or a smuggler of uncustomed goods, but names could be deceiving.
“A soldier brought me a note last week,” Fergus said, presumably in explanation. “He was not in uniform, but I could tell. And I think he was from the British army, which I considered to be unusual.”
Very unusual. Though there were occasional red-coated soldiers to be seen in Charles Town now and then, these usually being messengers bound for General Lincoln’s headquarters, presumably with threatening missives urging the general to consider his situation.
Fergus waved the matter of the note-bearing soldier aside for the moment.
“The note was from Monsieur Beauchamp, saying that he was in residence in Charles Town for a short time and would request the honor of a brief visit at his h?tel.”
“Do you know this Beauchamp?” Roger asked curiously. The name rang a faint bell. “He can’t be a relative of Claire’s, can he?”
Fergus gave him a startled glance.
“Surely not,” he said, though his tone wasn’t quite that sure. “It isn’t an uncommon French name. But, yes, I know him.”
“I gather it isn’t altogether a cordial acquaintanceship?” Roger touched the knife on his belt; it was the Highland dirk that Jamie had given him, an impressive foot-long bit of weaponry with a carved hilt bearing the name of St. Michael and a small image of the archangel. He rather admired the capacity of Catholics to sincerely seek peace while pragmatically acknowledging the necessity for occasional violence.
A brief look of amusement flitted across Fergus’s saturnine features.
“Non,” he said. “But let me tell you. This Beauchamp has tried to speak with me several times, offering assorted things—but chiefly, offering me the truth—or what he says is the truth—about my parents.”
Roger glanced at him.
“Even an orphan must have had parents at one time,” Fergus said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I have never known anything about mine, and I take leave to doubt that Monsieur Beauchamp does, either.”