“She is charming,” said Mrs. Pearson. “And they say her husband left her wealthy.”
“It is good to know that husbands may be good for something,” I said. “Such as leaving money to their wives.”
I feared I may have exceeded my limits, but Mrs. Pearson burst out into a shrill, girlish laugh such as I never thought to hear again.
“Captain Ethan Saunders, let us take a drink in the library.”
“Mrs. Cynthia Pearson, your husband has informed me that if I am not gone in a quarter hour, I shall be tossed out by the servants.”
She smiled at me. “I’ve learned a thing or two after a decade of marriage. The servants are loyal to me. And the library is well removed far from Mr. Pearson’s room. There is no better place to go in the house to avoid his notice.”
“Then, Mrs. Pearson, let us go by all means. I do love a good library.”
Her pretty plump girl led us to the library, where a fire already burned. The girl lit a number of candles and provided us with an excellent bottle of port. She was good enough to pour a glass for each of us, and equally good enough to disappear afterward.
Cynthia let out a sigh and sat in a high-backed chair across from me and, just like that, something changed. That one small gesture did it. It was as though a master carpenter presented two pieces of wood and they fit together with such preordained snugness that they clicked upon joining. So it was that Cynthia, in her good-natured and indulgent sigh, in her uncomplicated slide into a high-backed chair, put me at my ease. I was not an unwelcome intrusion from her past but something far more pleasing.
“It was wrong of Joan to invite you here tonight,” Cynthia said, studying her port. “I think she is mischievous.”
“Such old friends as we are might be in the same room without mischief.”
“It was not what I meant. I wish you had not seen Mr. Pearson in one of his moods.”
“I understand, and yet I have seen it. Mrs. Pearson, you asked for my help before. You asked me to find your husband because you believed yourself and your children in danger. I cannot believe you wished me to find him for his own sake.”
“You mustn’t say that,” she said. “We cannot be together if you speak to me so.”
“Then I won’t speak to you so. It will be all business. I never mind a deception or two if it is to cover one’s own tracks, but you must own up if discovered. Did you ask Mrs. Maycott to invite me here and to do it publicly at the party so all could see it was not of your doing?”
She blushed deeply. “How did you know?”
“Only a feeling. It was a clever maneuver.”
“Thank you. I did learn a thing or two from you during the war. I always loved to hear of your tricks and schemes, and at last I had a chance to put into place a little scheme of my own.”
“To what end?” I asked. “I would like to flatter myself that you wished no more than my company, but I cannot think it so. Can you not tell me more of what you know?”
“It began some six weeks ago,” she said. “Mr. Pearson has never been the most even-tempered of men, but he grew much more irritable than usual. And he began to have around the house a very uncouth sort of man, very western-looking, with a scar upon his face.”
“I know who he is. He works for William Duer. Have you met Duer?”
“Of course. Several times. Philadelphia society, you know. When he worked for Hamilton and lived in Philadelphia, our families came into contact often.”
“When did your husband start doing business with Duer?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“And the reason you contacted me?”
“When Mr. Pearson disappeared last week, I hardly thought anything of it. That man Lavien came around, wishing to ask questions. He’d been around before, and Mr. Pearson had refused to speak to him. Now he wished to know where my husband was and what I knew of his business. It was uncomfortable, but nothing more. Then a man calling himself Reynolds-a tall bald man with an Irish accent-came to see me. He said I must tell Lavien nothing, and if I wished to preserve the safety of my husband, my children, and myself, I would not trouble myself with things that did not concern me.”
The tall Irishman. Yet another man pretending to be Reynolds and making himself conspicuously my enemy. I had no notion of what it could mean, but it made me uneasy. “And that was when you sought me out?” I asked.
She nodded. “I would hardly have concerned myself about Mr. Pearson’s absence. It was not his first, after all. But once the matter involved my children, I did not know what to do, and yours was the only name I could think of. I am sorry to have troubled you with all this.”
“You must not say so. It is my duty to help you.”
“And,” she said, “it is good to see you after so many years.”
It was at this point that the door opened and Mr. Pearson entered the room, red in the face, red in the eyes. His vest was unbuttoned and his shirt disheveled, and his mouth was twisted into a sneer. In one hand he held a silver-handled horsewhip. In the other, he dragged along a boy-perhaps eight or nine years of age-by the collar of a dull cotton sleeping gown. The boy’s hair was mussed from sleep, but he was wide awake. And terrified.
The boy looked very much like Cynthia, with his fair hair and even features and a nose the image of hers. He looked like Pearson too, particularly in the eyes, though his were red with fear and confusion, not his father’s diabolical mania.
Mrs. Pearson stood. “Jeremy,” she said.
“Mama,” he said, very softly, seeming both tired and terrified.
“I told you to leave,” Pearson hissed at me.
I rose to my feet slowly, careful to observe everything with crisp clarity. I saw the whip in Pearson’s hand, I saw the fear in the boy’s eyes, I saw the faded burn mark on the boy’s wrist, and the matching scar on his mother’s. Someone was clearly fond of burning wrists.
“I shall leave the moment I know all is in order here.”
“The ordering of my house is not your concern. My whore of a wife has bewitched the servants. They cannot confront you, for all are injured or frightened or unable to be found. I have therefore taken the trouble to awaken the boy. I shan’t threaten to hurt you, Saunders, since I hear you are too pathetic to mind a sound beating, but the child is another matter. If you are not gone from this house in one minute, I shall whip the boy bloody.”
“He is your son,” I whispered.
“And so I may do as I like.”
Cynthia was pale and trembling, and she held out her hands ever so slightly, from stiff vertical arms. Tears fell down her cheek. She bit her lip. I thought she must be a madwoman by now, gone into some lunatic maternal world of fear for her child, but she looked at me, and when she spoke, her voice was steady and strong and rational. “You must go.” The last word came out smooth and easy, not a command, as in telling me I must leave at once, but as a qualifier. I must leave in this particular instance. The future was another matter.
“Well,” I said to Pearson, “don’t mutilate your heir on my account. I’ve things to do, you know, taverns to visit. The life of a drunkard traitor. Very busy.”
“See that you do busy yourself with your wasted life,” said Pearson. “You were far better off vomiting in alleys than troubling yourself in the affairs of gentlemen. You are too unrefined to travel in the circles you covet.”
“It is interesting you should say that,” I answered, “for when I spoke of that very topic to Miss Emily Fiddler-I mean the aunt, of course, not the niece, for there is no talking to that one, as I need not tell you. In any event, do you know what your good friend Miss Fiddler mentioned to me about the refined circles in which you yourself-”
I made it no further, for Pearson grabbed his son’s tousled hair and yanked hard and mercilessly. The boy let out a horrible cry of pain, and silent tears, to match his mother’s, poured down his face. His face then turned dark and angry, a juvenile reflection of his father’s, but there was more there too. A silent resolve to endure his suffering in silence.