I felt a shadow touch my brow.“Does she know that man?”
Grant sank down in the chair on my other side, flushed and holding his hat in his lap, brimming with coins and cheap jewelry.“No idea,” he said absently, putting his feet up on another empty chair and beginning to sort through his winnings, tucking them into his pockets.“But no need to get ruffled, he looks a decent fellow.”
I watched Mary and her partner swirl around the floor in yet another rural dance.His hand was easy on her waist, hers across his shoulders, and they executed the steps with a fluidity and unity that told me they had both known this dance since childhood.
I felt a flush of possessiveness, brief and visceral.Then I recalled the way Mary had looked at me only moments before and extinguished the feeling with a long, steadying breath.
“Thank you for being willing,” I said to Ben, my eyes still on Mary.“Truly.”
Ben waved the words away.He looked less than pleased at Mary’s choice of partner.“Are you going to do something about that?”
“No.”I smirked.“I am grateful you have found a place in… well not your heart, but that you have some acceptance of Mary.”
“You care for her,” Ben scoffed, his countenance one of droll incredulity.“Therefore, she is you, and you are my blood.Besides, she is useful.So are you going to dance with her, or let that bumpkin grope her all night?”
“There is no groping,” I calmed him.“Have another drink.”
When the song ended Mary brought her dancing companion over, and introductions were made.One August Wade, a soldier stationed at the fort, took in Ben’s and my nearly identical faces with a predictable degree of startlement, then gave me a salute.His smile was a genuine thing, full-cheeked and boyish, though he could not have been much younger than me.
“Captains Rosser, yours is a name I’ve heard many a time,” he said to the pair of us, revealing the same accent as Mary’s in a deeper, masculine rumble.“For good and ill, I’ll admit, but I’ll not judge a man ’til I’ve laid eyes on him, and you both seem a fine sort.”
“We do?”Ben asked sardonically, and I resisted the urge to kick him.
“They can be,” Mary hedged, glancing at me with a depth of pride that made my heart swell.“August is from the Wold too, from Round-the-hill.”
“Is that the name of a town?”Ben smirked.
“Nay, not a town.”August laughed, grinning in a way that said he both saw Ben’s scorn and had borne it before.He glanced at Mary.“A hamlet?”
“A hut, a mill, and some cows.”She shrugged.
“There about,” August agreed.“Now, I promised the next dance to a friend.If you’ll excuse me?Innkeep’s daughter, was a pleasure to see you again.”
“Cowherd’s boy,” she returned, touching the brim of a nonexistent hat.
As if on cue, another woman edged from the crowd, plump and pretty and wearing her soldier’s uniform with the collar unbuttoned and cravat undone.She swept us an acknowledging look, offered Mary a small, peaceable smile, and held out her hand to August.Together, they moved off.
Another song began, this one with Illya in the middle of the fray.
“So youdoknow him?”I clarified.
“We met once or twice.”Mary situated herself in my lap, smiled at my startlement, and took her drink back.
I recovered enough to slip my arms around her waist, breathing in her scent of sea and lavender and fresh, sweet sweat.Ben sat beside us, drinking restfully, as the tavern burst with music and dance and raucous singing.
Conversation became impossible, but I did not care.I ignored the voice at the back of my mind, the one that sounded much like my uncle, encouraging decorum.I resisted memories of another tavern, another night, and the disagreement that had divided us for so long and still whispered cautions.
Instead, I rested my head on Mary’s chest as she draped her arms around my neck and kissed my temple.We were hardly the only couple in the tavern in such a state.
“Sir.”I twisted to look in the direction of the speaker and saw a middle-aged man, leaning through the crowd towards me.He looked like a landsman, with a long coat and tall boots, better for trudging across snowy countryside than working aboard ship.His skin was weatherworn and his body wiry, with the hint of a paunch.His expression was friendly, but there was an odd eagerness in his eyes that made my arms stiffen around Mary.
Mary turned, following my gaze, and Ben looked up from his drink.
“Sirs,” the man corrected himself, smiling nervously and tugging off his cap.“You may not remember me, beyond some twenty years ago it were, last we met.My name is Pitten, Mr.Jeremy Pitten, and I was a friend of your mum, Saint keep the kind lady’s soul.”
Memory rushed at me like a rogue wave.I remembered this man, younger, holding his cap the same way as he did now, in the entryway of Rosser House as Black Tide elders greeted my mother.He had smiled at Ben and I, lingering in the door of the study with chalk on our fingers from our lessons.Our governess had called us back, but not before I had seen my mother lead this man, and those elders, into the sitting room and close the door.
Mary stood sharply, inserting herself between Pitten and I in the cramped space.I stood just a breath behind her and, dimly, was aware of Ben stepping around to flank the man.
