An Echo in the Bone (145 page)

“Thee has seen such things?” she asked curiously.

“I have, yes. When I worked in London with John Hunter. He was much in society and would now and then take me with him to attend a case and sometimes to accompany him and his wife to some grand occasion—most kind of him. But we must not judge, thee knows, most particularly by appearance. Even one who seems most frivolous, spendthrift, or light-minded yet has a soul and is valuable before God.”

“Yes,” she said vaguely, not really attending. She pulled back the curtain from the window, seeing the street outside as a white blur. There was a lantern hung by the inn’s door that cast a small circle of light, but the snow was still falling. Her own face floated in the dark glass of the window, thin and big-eyed, and she frowned at it, pushing a straggle of dark hair back under her cap.

“Does thee think he knows?” she asked abruptly. “Friend William?”

“Does he know what?”

“His very striking resemblance to James Fraser,” she said, letting the curtain fall. “Surely thee does not think this coincidence?”

“I think it is not our business.” Denny resumed scratching with his quill.

She heaved an exasperated sigh. He was right, but that didn’t mean she was forbidden to observe and to wonder. She had been happy—more than happy—to see William again, and while his being a British soldier was no less than she had suspected, she had been extremely surprised to find him an officer of high rank. Much more than surprised to learn from his villainous-looking Cornish orderly that he was a lord, though the little creature had been uncertain what kind.

Yet surely no two men could look so alike who did not share blood in some close degree. She had seen James Fraser many times and admired him for his tall, straight dignity, thrilling a bit at the fierceness in his face, always feeling that niggle of recognition when she saw him—but it wasn’t until William suddenly stepped out before her at the camp that she realized
why
. Yet how could an English lord be in any way related to a Scottish Jacobite, a pardoned criminal? For Ian had told her something of his own family history—though not enough; not nearly enough.

“Thee is thinking of Ian Murray again,” her brother observed, not looking up from his paper. He sounded resigned.

“I thought thee abjured witchcraft,” she said tartly. “Or does thee not include mind reading among the arts of divination?”

“I notice thee does not deny it.” He looked up then, pushing his spectacles up his nose with a finger, the better to look through them at her.

“No, I don’t deny it,” she said, lifting her chin at him. “How did thee know, then?”

“Thee looked at the dog and sighed in a manner betokening an emotion not usually shared between a woman and a dog.”

“Hmph!” she said, disconcerted. “Well, what if I
do
think of him? Is that not my business, either? To wonder how he does, what his family in Scotland makes of him? Whether he feels he has come home there?”

“Whether he will come back?” Denny took off his spectacles and rubbed a hand over his face.

He was tired; she could see the day in his features.

“He will come back,” she said evenly. “He would not abandon his dog.”

That made her brother laugh, which annoyed her very much.

“Yes, he will likely come back for the dog,” he agreed. “And if he comes back with a wife, Sissy?” His voice was gentle now, and she swung round to the window again, to keep him from seeing that the question disturbed her. Not that he needed to see to know that.

“It might be best for thee and for him if he did, Rachel.” Denny’s voice was still gentle but held a warning note. “Thee knows he is a man of blood.”

“What would thee have me do, then?” she snapped, not turning round. “Marry William?”

There was a brief silence from the direction of the desk.

“William?” Denny said, sounding mildly startled. “Does thee feel for him?”

“I—of course I feel friendship for him. And gratitude,” she added hastily.

“So do I,” her brother observed, “yet the thought of marrying him had not crossed my mind.”

“Thee is a most annoying person,” she said crossly, turning round and glaring at him. “Can thee not refrain from making fun of me for one day, at least?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a sound from outside took her attention, and she turned again to the window, pulling back the heavy curtain. Her breath misted the dark glass, and she rubbed it impatiently with her sleeve in time to see a sedan chair below. The door of it opened and a woman stepped out into the swirling snow. She was clad in furs and in a hurry; she handed a purse to one of the chair-bearers and rushed into the inn.

“Well, that is odd,” Rachel said, turning to look first at her brother, and then at the small clock that graced their rooms. “Who goes a-visiting at nine o’clock on Christmas night? It cannot be a Friend, surely?” For Friends did not keep Christmas and would find the feast no bar to travel, but the Hunters had no connections—not yet—with the Friends of any Philadelphia meeting.

A thump of footsteps on the staircase prevented Denzell’s reply, and an instant later the door of the room burst open. The fur-clad woman stood on the threshold, white as her furs.

“Denny?” she said in a strangled voice.

Her brother stood up as though someone had applied a hot coal to the seat of his breeches, upsetting the ink.

“Dorothea!” he cried, and in one bound had crossed the room and was locked in passionate embrace with the fur-clad woman.

Rachel stood transfixed. The ink was dripping off the table onto the painted canvas rug, and she thought she ought to do something about that, but didn’t. Her mouth was hanging open. She thought she ought to close it, and did.

Quite suddenly she understood the impulse that caused men to engage in casual blasphemy.

RACHEL PICKED UP her brother’s spectacles from the floor and stood holding them, waiting for him to disentangle himself.
Dorothea
, she thought to herself.
So this is the woman—but
surely this is William’s cousin?
For William had mentioned his cousin to her as they rode in from Valley Forge. Indeed, the woman had been in the house when Denny performed the operation on—but then, Henry Grey must be this woman’s brother! She had hidden in the kitchen when Rachel and Denny came to the house this afternoon. Why… Of course: it was not squeamishness or fear but a wish not to come face-to-face with Denny, and him on his way to perform a dangerous operation.

She thought somewhat better of the woman for that, though she was not yet disposed to clasp her to her own bosom and call her sister. She doubted the woman felt so toward her, either—though in fact, she might not even have noticed Rachel yet, let alone have conclusions about her.

Denny let go of the woman and stood back, though from the look on his glowing face, he could hardly bear not to touch her.

“Dorothea,” he said. “Whatever does thee—”

But he was forestalled; the young woman—she was very pretty, Rachel saw now—stepped back and dropped her elegant ermine cloak on the floor with a soft thud. Rachel blinked. The young woman was wearing a sack. No other word for it, though now that she looked, she perceived that it had sleeves. It was made of some coarse gray fabric, though, and hung from the young woman’s shoulders, barely touching her body elsewhere.

“I will be a Quaker, Denny,” she said, lifting her chin a little. “I have made up my mind.”

Denny’s face twitched, and Rachel thought he could not make up his own mind whether to laugh, cry, or cover his beloved with her cloak again. Not liking to see the lovely thing lie disregarded on the floor, Rachel bent and picked it up herself.

“Thee—Dorothea,” he said again, helpless. “Is thee sure of this? I think thee knows nothing of Friends.”

“Certainly I do. You—thee, I mean—see God in all men, seek peace in God, abjure violence, and wear dull clothes so as not to distract your minds with the vain things of the world. Is that not right?” Dorothea inquired anxiously.
Lady
Dorothea, Rachel corrected herself. William had said his uncle was a duke.

“Well… more or less, yes,” Denny said, his lips twitching as he looked her up and down. “Did thee… make that garment?”

“Yes, of course. Is something wrong with it?”

“Oh, no,” he said, sounding somewhat strangled. Dorothea looked sharply at him, then at Rachel, suddenly seeming to notice her.

“What’s wrong with it?” she appealed to Rachel, and Rachel saw the pulse beating in her round white throat.

“Nothing,” she said, fighting her own urge to laugh. “Friends are allowed to wear clothes that fit, though. Thee need not purposefully uglify thyself, I mean.”

“Oh, I see.” Lady Dorothea gazed thoughtfully at Rachel’s tidy skirt and jacket, which might be of butternut homespun but most assuredly fit well, and became her, too, if she did say so.

“Well, that’s good, then,” Lady Dorothea said. “I’ll just take it in a bit here and there.”

Dismissing this, she stepped forward again and took Denny’s hands in her own.

“Denny,” she said softly. “Oh, Denny. I thought I should never see you again.”

“I thought so, too,” he said, and Rachel saw a new struggle taking place in his face—one between duty and desire, and her heart ached for him. “Dorothea … thee cannot stay here. Thy uncle—”

“He doesn’t know I’ve gone out. I’ll go back,” Dorothea assured him. “Once we’ve settled things between us.”

“Settled things,” he repeated, and, with a noticeable effort, withdrew his hands from hers. “Thee means—”

“Will thee take a little wine?” Rachel broke in, reaching for the decanter the servant had left for them.

“Yes, thank you. He’ll have some, too,” Dorothea said, smiling at Rachel.

“I expect he will need it,” Rachel murmured, with a glance at her brother.

“Dorothea …” Denny said helplessly, running a hand through his hair. “I know what thee means.

But it is not only a matter of thee becoming a Friend—always assuming that to be … to be…

possible.”

She drew herself up, proud as a duchess.

“Do you doubt my conviction, Denzell Hunter?”

“Er… not exactly. I just think that perhaps thee has not given the matter sufficient thought.”

“That’s what you think!” A flush rose in Lady Dorothea’s cheeks, and she glared at Denny. “I’ll have you—thee, I mean—know that I’ve done nothing
but
think, ever since you left London.

How the devil do you—thee—think I bloody got here?”

“Thee conspired to have thy brother shot in the abdomen?” Denny inquired. “That seems somewhat ruthless, and perhaps not certain of success.”

Lady Dorothea drew two or three long breaths in through her nose, eyeing him.

“Now, you see,” she said, in a reasonable tone of voice, “was I not quite the perfect Quaker, I would strike you. Thee. But I have not, have I? Thank you, my dear,” she said to Rachel, taking a glass of wine. “You are his sister, I collect?”

“Thee has not,” Denny admitted warily, ignoring Rachel. “But even allowing, for the sake of argument,” he added, with a glimmer of his usual self, “that God has indeed spoken to thee and said that thee must join us, that still leaves the small matter of thy family.”

“There is nothing in your principles of faith that requires me to have my father’s permission to marry,” she snapped. “I asked.”

Denny blinked.

“Who?”

“Priscilla Unwin. She’s a Quaker I know in London. You know her, too, I think; she said you’d—thee’d? That can’t be right—that you’d lanced a boil on her little brother’s bum.”

At this point, Denny became aware—perhaps because his eyes were sticking out of his head looking at Lady Dorothea, Rachel thought, not altogether amused—that his spectacles were missing. He put out a finger to push them up the bridge of his nose, then stopped and looked about, squinting. With a sigh, Rachel stepped forward and settled them onto his nose. Then she picked up the second glass of wine and handed it to him.

“She’s right,” she told him. “Thee needs it.”

“PLAINLY,” LADY DOROTHEA said, “we are getting nowhere.” She did not look like a woman accustomed to getting nowhere, Rachel thought, but was keeping a fair grip on her temper. On the other hand, she was not even close to giving in to Denny’s urging that she must go back to her uncle’s house.

“I’m not going back,” she said, in a reasonable tone of voice, “because if I do, you’ll sneak off to the Continental army in Valley Forge, where you think I won’t follow you.”

“Thee would not, surely?” Denny said, and Rachel thought she divined a thread of hope in the question, but she wasn’t sure what kind of hope it was.

Lady Dorothea fixed him with a wide blue stare.

“I have followed thee across an entire bloody ocean. You—thee—think a damned army can stop me?”

Denny rubbed a knuckle down the bridge of his nose.

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t. That is why I have not left. I do not wish thee to follow me.”

Lady Dorothea swallowed audibly but bravely kept her chin up.

“Why?” she said, and her voice shook only a little. “Why do you not wish me to follow you?”

“Dorothea,” he said, as gently as possible. “Putting aside the fact that thy going with me would put thee in rebellion and in conflict with thy family—it is an army. Moreover, it is a very poor army, and one lacking every conceivable comfort, including clothing, bedding, shoes, and food.

Beyond that, it is an army on the verge of disaster and defeat. It is no fit place for you.”

“And it is a fit place for your sister?”

“Indeed it is not,” he said. “But—” He stopped short, obviously realizing that he was on the verge of stepping into a trap.

“But thee can’t stop me coming with thee.” Rachel sprang it for him, sweetly. She was not quite sure she should help this strange woman, but she did admire the Lady Dorothea’s spirit.

“And you can’t stop me, either,” Dorothea said firmly.

Denny rubbed three fingers hard between his brows, closing his eyes as though in pain.

“Dorothea,” he said, dropping his hand and drawing himself up. “I am called to do what I do, and it is the Lord’s business and mine. Rachel comes with me not only because she is pigheaded but also because she is my responsibility; she has no other place to go.”