“You bastard,” she hissed. “Let go!” He did, folding his hands on his knees.
There was no sound for several minutes, save the rattle and hum of traffic in the street and the plash of the fountain. The smell of the garden was strong in the air, and while it was by no means as lush as the southern scents of Savannah, it was pungent enough to stir the blood—and memories of Mrs. Fleury’s garden, with its cold wet stone and the silent witness of a black-eyed toad.
“I’m the only one you can tell,” he said at last, quietly. “I don’t expect your father knows, does he? What happened to Ben?”
She laughed, short and bitter, but a laugh.
“‘What happened to Ben,’” she repeated. “Not, ‘What Ben did’？ General Washington didn’t come and kidnap him, you know. He went. He did it all, all by himself!”
“You went to him, though, didn’t you?” This wasn’t entirely a guess; he’d seen that her fingers weren’t shadowed with ink. Everyone who worked in a printshop or a bookseller’s eventually had smudged fingers; her father did. If hers weren’t, she hadn’t been here long.
She didn’t answer at once, but sat silently fuming, mouth pressed tight.
“I did,” she said at last. “The more fool I. I thought I could talk him round. I’d seen what happened during the siege, in Savannah. I thought I could convince him—for God’s sake, he was a British officer! He should know what the army’s like, what they can do!”
“I suppose he does,” William said mildly. “Rather courageous of him to go take up arms against them, isn’t it?”
She made a noise like an angry cat and flounced away from him.
“So he wouldn’t come back to Savannah with you. Why didn’t you just go yourself? You know the Greys would welcome you with open arms—if only because you’d take Trev off their hands.”
She breathed hard through her nose, then suddenly flounced back round to face him.
“I did see Ben. I saw him in bed with a black-haired whore who was sucking his—” Choler choked her as efficiently as Ben had likely choked his inamorata when he saw Amaranthus looming in the doorway.
William hesitated to say anything, for fear of making her leap up and run inside. Instead, he placed his hand on the bench between them, barely touching her fingers. And waited.
“He got up and pushed me into his dressing room and kept me from going back into the bedroom until she’d got up and run, the filthy twat.”
“Where the devil did you learn a word like that?” he asked, truly shocked.
“A book of erotic poetry in Lord John’s library,” she said, glowering at him. “I would have killed both of them, right there, if I’d had any bloody thing to do it with. You don’t go to a reunion with your estranged husband with a knife in your shoe, though, do you?” She stared down at her naked left hand. “I yanked my ring off and tried to make him swallow it. I almost managed, too,” she said, defiant. There were tears of rage slicked down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem aware of them.
“I’m sorry you didn’t,” he said, and took a careful breath. “I don’t excuse Ben, by any means, but … he’s a soldier, and he thought you’d left him forever. I mean, a—a casual liaison—”
“Casual, my arse!” she snarled, snatching her hand away. “He’s married her!”
The words struck him in the pit of the stomach. William opened his mouth, but found nothing whatever to say.
“That’s why I brought the ring away with me,” she said, looking at it. “I wouldn’t let her have it!”
Of course she’d also needed it for her widow’s imposture, but he rather thought that continuing to wear it—if even on the right hand—might be something in the nature of a hair shirt for her, but didn’t say that.
“Marry me,” he said, instead.
She was frowning at a bird that had landed on the edge of the fountain to drink—a dressy little creature with black-and-white wings and dark red sides.
“Towhee,” she said.
“What?”
“Him.” She lifted her chin toward the bird, who promptly flew off. She turned on the bench to look William full in the face, her own features more or less composed.
“Marry you,” she said slowly. A twitch she couldn’t control showed briefly at the corner of her pale mouth, but he didn’t think it was an impulse to laugh. Maybe shock, maybe not.