“Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Brant poured the tea through a silver strainer with flower-work around its rim, and a fragrant, half-familiar steam rose like a ghost.
“Tea!” Rachel said, involuntarily, then blushed. Thayendanegea grinned at her through the steam.
“It is,” he said, and raised one eyebrow. “Do I take it that you have not encountered tea in some time?”
That was a delicately pointed question. Ian was ready for it, though; he’d told Rachel that he meant to make no bones regarding politics, as there was no knowing how much Thayendanegea knew about them already.
“We have not,” Ian said easily, taking a bun from the flowered china plate offered him by a servant. “It makes my uncle sneeze.”
Brant’s eyes creased with humor.
“I have heard of your uncle,” he said. “‘Nine-Fingers,’ he’s called among some of the Iroquois?”
Rachel hadn’t heard that one, but either Ian had or he hid his surprise.
“Aye. The Tsalagi call him ‘Bear-Killer.’”
“A man of many names,” Brant said, amused. “And General Washington calls him friend, I believe.”
“He is a friend to liberty,” Ian said, with a shrug.
“It’s fine tea, to be sure,” Jenny said to Mrs. Brant, though she set her cup down undrunk. “And a handsome house. Have ye lived here for some time?”
Rachel didn’t know whether the word “liberty” was a signal agreed upon between mother and son, or merely the natural rhythm of a conversation that must necessarily hover between politics and politesse, but Catherine Brant answered Jenny’s question, and the women passed easily into talk about the house, the furnishings, and then—by way of the china patterns—food, at which point the conversation became truly cordial.
Despite a genuine interest in corn soup and frybread, Rachel kept an ear on the men’s conversation, which ranged easily between English and Mohawk. She caught a name now and then—she recognized Looks at the Moon’s Mohawk name, and “Ounewaterika,” the name the Indians gave General Lee. And then her ear caught the name she had been waiting for. Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa.
She tried not to listen and forced herself not to look at Ian. She felt, rather than saw, Jenny’s sharp glance at him.
It didn’t last long, whatever was being said about the woman, for after a little, Brant turned to her to ask after her brother, Denzell, whom he had met briefly in Albany, and the eddies of the table’s conversation converged into a smooth current.
Smooth enough, now that Works With Her Hands had been momentarily dealt with, that Rachel could draw breath and consider the peculiarities of this table and the man who owned it, who was chatting in the most amiable fashion now with Silvia Hardman, about turkeys.
How could they be sitting here, engaged in the most ordinary sorts of conversation, opposite a man of whom it was said that he had killed, and ordered to be killed, numbers of people?
You not only sit down to dinner with Jamie Fraser, you love and respect him, her inner light pointed out. Has he not done the same things?
Not to innocent people, she thought stubbornly. Though in fairness, she knew well enough that anything might be said of a man, without its necessarily being true.
And both of them have done what they’ve done because it’s war, I suppose … Her inner light was skeptical, but retreated at a sudden shift in the talk.
Brant had said something to Ian in Mohawk, in a casual tone, but with a sidelong glance at Rachel that made the hairs of her scalp prickle. Ian deliberately turned to one side, so she couldn’t see his face, and said something in the same language that made Brant laugh.
She became aware that Jenny, beside her, was giving Brant a very narrow look. And that Catherine Brant was watching them over the rim of her teacup, one brow raised. Seeing that Rachel had noticed, she set down the cup and leaned forward a little.
“He said that if Wolf’s Brother should find that he couldn’t keep two wives, he should know that Works With Her Hands has eighty-five acres of good bottomland in her own name—she is very good at farming. But Wolf’s Brother should not fear for your future”—she smiled at Rachel—“because a good peace-talker would be welcome at any hearth and Thayendanegea would himself offer to keep you.”
Despite her best intentions, Rachel’s mouth fell open.
“Oh—not that way,” Catherine assured her. “He means he would maintain you as a valued member of his household, not his bed.”