“I thank you, I had rather Adam Peverill was my informant. And if Verena is going, how will that serve me?”
“It will serve you if she is not,” Unice pointed out. “You may go and see her, and make what peace you can.”
Denzell brightened. “That is the first sensible suggestion anyone has made to me.”
It was not, however, until very late in the evening that he was able to beard Adam Peverill, and then by accident. In the expectation of the High Rocks expedition, there had been no entertainment arranged beyond the usual gathering for cards or chat in the Upper Rooms, and even that broke up early.
Feeling restless at Verena’s continued absence, Denzell did not accompany his hosts when they left for home, but went instead to the Gentlemen’s Rooms a few doors down, where a number of die-hards were engaged in dicing and wining, or smoking a pipe.
He discovered Adam Peverill slumped over a bottle in a corner. The boy was somewhat the worse for drink, he realised, as he came up to the small table. Adam looked up blearily at his approach.
Denzell smiled. “May I join you?”
A frown descended upon Adam’s brow, but he grudgingly moved a little to make room. Denzell pulled up a chair from close by and signed to one of the waiters. “Bring me burgundy, if you please.” He looked at Adam again. “I thought you had gone home.”
Adam made an effort. “Took my mother, thass all. Didn’t feel like g-going back to the New Inn.”
“I know what you mean,” Denzell agreed. “There is little enjoyment in drinking alone.”
“Want to be alone,” said Adam, and then his colour deepened. “I don’t mean — I mean, don’t mind you.”
“Thank you,” Denzell said, handing the waiter a coin and pouring himself a glass from the bottle that had been brought. He looked the lad over. Hewasonly a lad, for all the serious look of his face — dissipated just now, though, which told its own tale, along with the slurring of his words. He must have suffered, too,under such a brutal reign. Was this his way of dealing with it, through a too-liberal use of the bottle?
He leaned confidentially towards the boy. “Adam — may I call you that?”
A scornful laugh came. “Call me anything you like. Harsh as you like. I deserve it all!”
By George, what an opening! “Why, Adam, what have you done?”
He shook his head. “She hasn’t blamed me for it. Should’ve, though. All my fault.”
Verena? Had he not known it? But what was it? Really, it was almost as difficult to extract information from the boy in his cups as it was from Verena herself.
“Come, Adam. Your sister must know you meant no harm.”
“Harm? ’Course I meant no harm. She’s my mother. Think I want that devil to hurt her again? Swears he won’t. V’rena don’t believe him. Not sure I do either.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Denzell tossed off his glass and poured himself another. The boy had a loose tongue all right. It was not difficult to guess the rest.
“You told him where to find them, is that it?”
Adam dropped his head in his hands with a groan. Yes, that must have been it, Denzell decided, nursing his glass in his cupped hands. So that explained the mystery. Verena and her mother were in hiding here, and the boy had given them away. Obviously he had not meant to. But if he was in the habit of drinking, and drink made him garrulous, what price loyalty then?
A thought struck him with stunning force. Was the man Peverill coming here? Oh, chaste stars!
“Adam!” he said imperatively, putting down his glass without sipping at it again. “Tell me this. Is Verena in any danger? Peverill — your father — will he hurt her?”
The boy dragged himself upright, and tried to shake his head. “Not V’rena. Too clever.” He threw up a finger and tapped his own nose. “Used her head. Not like me. Alwaysh flared, me. Got beat for’t. Not V’rena. Quiet as a mouse, she was. Docile and ob-obedient, never say boo to a goose. Thass what he thought. He’d look at her, never see anything in her face, never. Give him no reason, she said, no excuse.”
Denzell’s heart contracted.Oh, poor darling girl.Was it thus her mask was built? All her warmth, the natural joy of her, pushed under for fear of what this man might do. And he himself, who had fallen in love with what he glimpsed beneath the mask, to be tarred with a like brush?No, Verena. Oh no, sweet princess.
There and then a new determination was born. If it took him his life long, she would learn to discover him for what he was — not for what she imagined he might be. And he would, whatever it took, release her from that darkness she inhabited, into a world of light and laughter.
“Adam,” he said, on a note of strength brought about by the change in him the boy’s revelations had wrought, “tell me only this. Is Verena intending to go to High Rocks tomorrow?”
The boy shook his head. “Waiting. Won’t come out. Wants me to keep Mama out of the way, much as possible. Thass why we’ve been gadding about — without V’rena. Hopes to send him packing.”
“Then are you going to High Rocks?”
