The Firebird

Setting down his second letter, partly opened, he gave her his full attention. ‘No, of course not. Why should you imagine that you are?’ His mind was quick. ‘Did Charles say something to upset you?’

‘No.’

His eyes were on her face, now. ‘No?’

She had been but a child when she had first locked gazes with him in Calais, and in two months she would be seventeen, but in the time between she had not learnt the trick of telling lies to him without revealing it. She looked away. ‘He only said he felt himself a burden to you sometimes, and I wondered whether I …’

‘No.’ In his voice there was no hesitation. ‘You have never been a burden.’ Looking down again, he seemed to fix his concentration on the wax seal of the letter he was opening, and told her, low, ‘You’ve been a blessing.’

Anna blinked the grateful wetness from her eyes, because she knew he would not thank her for a show of strong emotion. He was softer than he seemed, inside, and did not like to show it. ‘It is only that you have this house,’ she said, ‘and the expense of it, and Nan and Mary and the servants.’

‘I shall have one servant less, if Gregor does not make it home by nightfall,’ was his dry remark. ‘And if you think I’m eager to be rid of you, then I suggest you go ask General Lacy his opinion on the matter, and he’ll set you straight.’

‘General Lacy?’ She frowned as she sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Aye.’ This letter was stiffer and more tightly folded than the first. He had to open it with care. ‘He met me in the street the other day and asked me would I think of sending you to live with him awhile.’

She couldn’t think why General Lacy, whom she’d only rarely seen, would ask a thing like that, but Gordon knew the reason, and enlightened her.

‘He saw how kindly you took care of Jane,’ he said, the rough edge to his voice a slight betrayal of his sentiment, ‘and thought you’d be good company for his own wife, who has been ill herself and is in need of some assistance.’

‘General Lacy has more servants in his house than we do.’

‘Aye, but he wants a girl of rank to be his wife’s companion,’ Gordon said. ‘I told him no, he could not have you, and he seemed to take it well, which if I know him means he plans to make a new attempt to sway me in a few days’ time. And I shall tell him no again.’

She took this in, and turned it over in her mind while Gordon read his letter. It might not be such a bad thing, she considered, to go live with General Lacy for a while. His house was grand, and he himself by reputation was a kind and generous person. And besides, by her employment with so powerful a man she could not help but earn the vice admiral more favour with those men who could advance him.

‘You should tell him yes,’ she said, ‘if he has need of me.’

When Gordon did not answer, she glanced round and saw him bowed above the letter with his handsome face set deep in lines of sorrow. She had seen those lines before.

‘Someone has died?’

His nod was brief. ‘A friend.’ He passed a hand across his eyes. ‘I am a fool to weep, for it was hardly unexpected. He was old, and I have neither seen nor heard from him for years, but still,’ he told her, in a voice that rasped a little, ‘it is hard to lose a friend.’

He took a moment to compose himself, then setting down the letter showed the shadow of a smile and told her, ‘We had some adventures in the old days, back in Scotland. Colonel Graeme was the very best of men.’

The fire on the hearth was suddenly too far away, and Anna felt a cold hand wrap around her heart and squeeze until she could not draw a breath that would be deep enough to let her speak. She turned her face away, before her brimming eyes betrayed her, and she stood and took a not quite steady step towards the fireplace, in search of warmth.

There was a chance, she thought, that it was not her colonel. Not the man whose laughing eyes and Highland voice still came to her in dreams sometimes, who’d told her of her parents and their love for one another, and who’d risked his life to fetch her safely out of Scotland for no other reason than that she was his own nephew’s child, and blood was blood …

She felt the memory of his arms wrapped strongly round her, that last morning that she’d seen him, when he’d left to go to Paris and she’d wanted to go with him. She could hear his voice, regretful even now: ‘I cannot take ye where I’m going, lass.’ And her own childish answer: ‘I’m no feart.’

She watched the flames dance on the hearth and saw them blur and wished him back again to hold her as he’d held her then; to kiss her hair and tell her he forgave her for the lie, for feeling fear, for being so afraid of bringing harm and danger to him that she’d run away, that she’d left him, to keep him safe.

Vice Admiral Gordon, from the bed behind, was asking, ‘Did you know him? Colonel Patrick Graeme was his name. He lately lived in Paris.’

‘No.’ She had not known if she would have a voice, yet there it was, if not entirely her own. ‘I did not know him.’ In her mind she saw the chessmen in the Earl of Erroll’s library at play upon the board, and smiling eyes that watched them move. She asked, ‘How did he die?’

‘In his own bed, at peace.’ The pause that followed afterwards seemed overlong, and yet she felt the trail of wetness on her cheeks and knew she could not turn around. At long last Gordon’s voice said gently, ‘Anna. I have never pressed you for the details of your upbringing, but if—’