“I wonder if he left the pipe as some kind of deliberate taunt,” Cade said as he bent to pick it up.
“Don’t!” Tamsyn grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “I think it was meant for you and might hit you harder than it did me.”
“I’ll pick it up,” Hansen said. “Since I’m not gifted, it shouldn’t affect me.”
He leaned to pick up the pipe, then swore, almost dropping it. “The bowl is still a little warm, as if tobacco was still burning when he dropped it.”
“Do you feel only the heat, or something more?” Tamsyn asked.
The captain hesitated. “Something more? A feeling like the one you described of a cold, evil man. But surely that’s impossible because I’m not gifted.”
“You are, though,” she said gently. “Not as strongly as we are, but you definitely have some talent. It’s probably helped you survive as a soldier.”
Hansen looked unnerved. “I don’t think I wanted to know that.”
“Gifts often run in families, so it’s good to know because your children might inherit some abilities,” she observed.
“Did your brother tell you that my wife is with child?” he asked, startled.
“No. It just seemed like something that would happen sooner or later.” She smiled. “Sooner, obviously! Congratulations.”
“As you see, Tamsyn and I are surviving on our gifts very well,” Cade said. “A lot of people have subtle gifts that they don’t recognize. They may just think they’re lucky, or have good judgment, or some such.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Hansen admitted.
Cade reached for the pipe. “I want to see just what kind of vicious energy the Scorpion put into this.”
“Let me see it first, Cade,” Tamsyn said. “Since I’m a healer, maybe I can reduce whatever wicked energy was infused in it by the Scorpion.”
“If you’re sure,” Cade said doubtfully.
Tamsyn carefully took the pipe from Hansen. She flinched, but it affected her less this time. She concentrated on sending calming power into the raw, jagged energy that was in the white clay.
After several minutes, she said, “I think it’s safe now, but the harm was definitely aimed at you, Cade. It has the feeling of you.”
Her brother took the pipe, rolling it around in his hands as he studied it. “I can feel the malice. I don’t think it would be possible to make an object like this kill a person, but it might have affected my mind or my abilities if you hadn’t defused it.”
Tamsyn frowned as she contemplated the pipe, and hoped they would reach Calais without any more interference from the Scorpion.
CHAPTER6
The ambassadorial party made it to Calais without further incident, but then stalled as they waited for permission to leave. They were fortunate to have found rooms in a pleasant hotel near the docks, but it was a mixed blessing to spend three days looking across the English Channel at the white cliffs of Dover. “So close and yet so far!” Tamsyn said as she gazed out the window in the duchess’s room.
The duchess joined her at the window. “Waiting is hard, but I like knowing how close we are to home. A mere twenty miles or so.”
“Does Lord Whitworth know why the French officials aren’t allowing us to depart?”
The duchess smiled wryly. “Charles says they do it because they can. He’s not concerned that they won’t let us leave. Within the next day or so, he said.”
Tamsyn hoped that would be the case. She worried that the port authorities were waiting for the official declaration of war. In theory, even that declaration shouldn’t prevent a diplomatic mission from leaving, but in Bonaparte’s France, traditional courtesies could not be counted on. And her sense of foreboding, of imminent disaster, was growing.
“I hope he’s right,” she said aloud. “Since we’re all packed, we can be out of here like a group of mad March hares as soon as permission is granted and the tide is right.”
The duchess laughed. “I like the image of us as a group of hares leaping!”
Tamsyn thought uneasily that hares were often caught in snares. “The port is the busiest it’s been since we arrived here. There are several ships flying British colors, and passengers are boarding very efficiently.”
“Like us, they want to go home! But I find it encouraging to see others leaving.” The duchess sighed. “Surely our turn will come soon.”
