“My dear Mrs. Adams, like hurling a grenado into a dovecot!”
“Well, it was supposed to be announced at dinner,” said Lucy. “And of course Papa had arranged to have me seated next to Sir Jonathan, or where Sir Jonathan would have been sitting had he been there. I caught Governor Hutchinson first thing, as he received us in the hall, and begged him for a word, and told him that whatever Papa had said, I would not marry the man, and he arranged to have my place changed at the table. That set everyone talking, and Papa looked ready to have an apoplexy, but at least I didn’t have to sit next to his empty chair. And of course, no one would say things in front of me—”
“They did before me,” reported Mrs. Sandhayes, limping gamely along the frozen gravel of the walk on Lucy’s other side. “La, the rumors that flew about the cardroom! That Sir Jonathan had heard you’d jilted him and had walked out of the Governor’s house—that you’d told His Excellency some terrible tale about that charming Sir Jonathan and had obliged the Governor to eject him—that Sir Jonathan had discovered that your Papa was about to cheat him over the Maine lands, which really belonged to Mr. Gardiner—”
“They do not!” Lucy protested.
“That’s not what Felicity Gardiner says.”
“Felicity Gardiner’s a—Well,” said Lucy. “Anyway, His Excellency kept sending servants to ask in the stables, had Sir Jonathan arrived yet? He even sent a footman down to the wharf to see if Mr. Bingham’s boat had come in from Maine as it was supposed to, and he brought word back that yes, Sir Jonathan had debarked that morning and gone off no one knew where, without sending word or anything. That set the cat among the pigeons! And everyone kept staring at me and whispering behind their fans—”
“They weren’t whispering about you at that point, my dear.” Mrs. Sandhayes raised her kohl black eyebrows. “I suppose you’re aware by this time, Mrs. Adams, that Sir Jonathan’s appetites would have shamed a rabbit in the brambles. I don’t doubt—and neither did anyone at the Governor’s that night, I assure you—that he had a sweetheart somewhere in town, for whom he’d been pining all those days in Maine. Not that he wasn’t perfectly capable of trying to get up an intrigue or two in the Penobscot or the Kennebec—lud, what names you Americans think up! But then I understand the women of the province tend to be of the granitey, Gog and Magog variety—”
“But no one you know of?”
Margaret Sandhayes considered the matter, forehead puckering in a manner that threatened the thick pink and white maquillage that habitually plastered her rather horsey face, then shook her head. The whaleboned stays in the hood of her cloak creaked alarmingly—it was of the variety boned out to accommodate a much-curled and decorated coiffure, and the sharp gusts of wind that slashed across Boston from the bay gave Abigail the impression every minute that the whole structure was going to be whipped away like a kite, carrying the gawky chaperone with it.
“Would Mr. Fenton know?” asked Lucy. “Sir Jonathan’s man. He came down with la grippe the night before Sir Jonathan left for Maine. He was going to follow when he got better, but I think he’s still at the Governor’s.”
“La, child, one doesn’t go about questioning a man’s servants!”
“Not even to save an innocent man’s life?”
“It is shockingly bad ton, child, and your reputation would never recover if it got about! As well have it said that you pay peoples’ maids for copies of their letters!”
“Margaret—” Lucy looked almost as if she wanted to shake the older woman. “This is Harry’s life we’re talking about!”
“Oh, pooh.” Mrs. Sandhayes looked aside uneasily. “I daresay they won’t hang him on a clerk’s tittle-tattle—”
“They will,” said Abigail quietly. “Mr. Knox has been—er—outspoken in his objection to some of the Crown’s policies regarding the colonies, and yes, he stands in grave and immediate danger of being hanged. Whatever Mr. Fenton might be able to tell us truly could save Mr. Knox’s life.”
Mrs. Sandhayes made a face expressive of her opinion as to how much any servant could be useful for anything besides fetching her another tea-cake, but Lucy exclaimed, “Mr. Barnaby will know. Our butler, you remember, Mrs. Adams. His sister’s husband is Governor Hutchinson’s steward—Mr. Buttrick. Do you mind walking back with us to ask? It isn’t far.”
They had come opposite the writing-school by this time, so it was, in fact, something more than a half mile to the handsome house on Milk Street that Thomas Fluckner had purchased with his wife’s money, many years ago. This part of Boston lay west of the original town that huddled around the waterfront, and the streets were far less crowded, with open spaces of fields and gardens lying behind the houses of timber and brick. As they passed along Marlborough Street, Abigail slowed her steps before the Governor’s house itself and stood for a moment considering the mansion through the bare branches of the oak trees on its snow-covered lawn. On the cupola, the copper Indian weather vane swung in the cutting wind, and had the day not been so cold—and Mrs. Sandhayes lagging farther and farther behind—Abigail would have suggested a detour down the frozen muck of Rawson’s Lane, to have a look at the scene of the crime.
First things first.
“Did Sir Jonathan write your father while he was in Maine?” she asked as they walked. “I understand he was to stay with your father’s agent in Boothbay.”
“Mr. Bingham,” affirmed the girl. “He’s in charge of collecting the rents for that whole section of the coast, from Moscongus Bay down to the Kennebec, but half the time he doesn’t send much. The whole section’s in a state of revolt against the Proprietors, and only a month ago Mr. Bowdoin’s agent was beaten up and sent back to Boston in a load of bad herring.” She laughed her schoolgirl laugh, and Mrs. Sandhayes looked shocked.
“No, he didn’t write—neither to Papa nor to Governor Hutchinson, which I thought pretty high-handed of him, considering he was going to be guest of honor at a dinner and a ball, and I don’t think he would have written to Mr. Fenton, either. From what Mr. Barnaby told me, he treated Mr. Fenton worse than any dog.”
“There,” declared Mrs. Sandhayes gloomily, catching up with the other three. “Now tell me servants can be trusted to keep their mouths shut about anything.”
Philomela, carrying extra scarves and shawls for the others, turned her head as if to admire the tall steeple of Old South Church on the corner and pretended she had not heard this remark.
Mr. Barnaby, who opened the door to the four women and clucked over the coldness of the weather, confirmed all of Lucy’s information about Sir Jonathan’s manservant. “It’s not unusual for a gentleman to have so little regard for his man, and I’m sorry to say some of the gentlemen from the home country are the worst I’ve seen in that regard.” A stout, genial, middle-aged man with a deeply pockmarked face and the accent of London to his voice, he bowed and signed a liveried footman to collect their wraps. “Most vexed he was that poor Mr. Fenton should have been taken sick the night before their departure, leaving him no time to replace him before he left. He said if Mr. Fenton didn’t follow him within two days, he could consider himself discharged and find his own way back to England or wherever he wished to go, but I wouldn’t have wanted to think he meant it.”