I made my way purposefully into the fray, accepting tidbits offered to me by assorted servants and slaves, pausing to chat with any acquaintance I saw, particularly those from Hillsboro. Manfred had spent a great deal of time there, I knew, taking commissions for guns, delivering the finished products, and doing small jobs of repair. That was the most likely place for him to go, I thought. But no one I talked to had seen him, though most knew him.

“Nice lad,” one gentleman told me, pausing momentarily in his potations. “And sore missed, too. Besides Robin, there’s few gunsmiths closer than Virginia.”

I knew that, and knowing, wondered whether Jamie was having any luck in locating the muskets he needed. Perhaps Lord John’s smuggling connections would be necessary.

I accepted a small pie from a passing slave’s tray, and wandered on, munching and chatting. There was much talk about a series of fiery articles that had appeared recently in the Chronicle, the local newspaper, whose proprietor, one Fogarty Simms, was spoken of with considerable sympathy.

“A rare plucked ’un, is Simms,” said Mr. Goodwin, shaking his head. “But I doubt me he’ll stand. I spoke with him last week, and he told me he’s in some fear of his skin. There’ve been threats, aye?”

From the tone of the gathering, I assumed that Mr. Simms must be a Loyalist, and this appeared to be true, from the various accounts I was given. There was talk, apparently, of a rival paper setting up, this to support the Whiggish agenda, with its incautious talk of tyranny and the overthrow of the King. No one knew quite who was behind the new venture, but there was talk—and much indignation at the prospect—that a printer was to be brought down from the north, where folk were notably given to such perverse sentiments.

The general consensus was that such persons wanted their backsides kicked, to bring them to their senses.

I hadn’t sat down to eat formally, but after an hour of moving slowly through fields of champing jaws and wandering herds of hors d’oeuvre trays, I felt as though I’d sat through a French royal banquet—those occasions lasting so long that chamber pots were discreetly placed beneath the guests’ chairs, and where the occasional guest giving way and sliding beneath the table was discreetly ignored.

The present occasion was less formal, but not much less prolonged. After an hour’s preliminary eating, the barbecue was raised steaming from the pits near the stable, and brought to the lawns on wooden trestles, mounted on the shoulders of slaves. The sight of immense sides of beef, pork, venison, and buffalo, gleaming with oil and vinegar and surrounded by the smaller charred carcasses of hundreds of pigeons and quail, was greeted with applause by the guests, all by this time drenched with the sweat of their efforts, but nothing daunted.

Jocasta, seated by her guest, looked deeply gratified by the sound of her hospitality being so warmly accepted, and leaned toward Duncan, smiling, putting a hand on his arm as she said something to him. Duncan had left off looking nervous—the effect of a quart or two of beer, followed by most of a bottle of whisky—and seemed to be enjoying himself, too. He smiled broadly at Jocasta, then essayed a remark to Mrs. MacDonald, who laughed at whatever he said.

I had to admire her; she was besieged on all sides by people wanting a word, but she kept her poise admirably, being kind and gracious to everyone—though this meant sitting sometimes for ten minutes, a forkful of food suspended in air as she listened to some interminable story. At least she was in the shade—and Phaedre, dressed in white muslin, stood dutifully behind her with a huge fan made of palmetto fronds, making a breeze and keeping off the flies.

“Lemon shrub, ma’am?” A wilting slave, gleaming with sweat, offered me yet another tray, and I took a glass. I was dripping with perspiration, my legs aching and my throat dried with talking. At this point, I didn’t care what was in the glass, provided it was wet.

I changed my opinion instantly upon tasting it; it was lemon juice and barley water, and while it was wet, I was much more inclined to pour it down the neck of my gown than to drink it. I edged unobtrusively toward a laburnum bush, intending to pour the drink into it, but was forestalled by the appearance of Neil Forbes, who stepped out from behind it.

He was as startled to see me as I was to see him; he jerked back, and glanced hastily over his shoulder. I looked in the same direction, and caught sight of Robert Howe and Cornelius Harnett, making off in the opposite direction. Clearly, the three of them had been conferring secretly behind the laburnum bush.

“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, with a short bow. “Your servant.”

I curtsied in return, with a vague murmur of politeness. I would have slithered past him, but he leaned toward me, preventing my exit.

“I hear that your husband is collecting guns, Mrs. Fraser,” he said, his voice at a low and rather unfriendly pitch.

“Oh, really?” I was holding an open fan, as was every other woman there. I waved it languidly before my nose, hiding most of my expression. “Who told you such a thing?”

“One of the gentlemen whom he approached to that end,” Forbes said. The lawyer was large and somewhat overweight; the unhealthy shade of red in his cheeks might be due to that, rather than to displeasure. Then again …

“If I might impose so far upon your good nature, ma’am, I would suggest that you exert your influence upon him, so as to suggest that such a course is not the wisest?”

“To begin with,” I said, taking a deep breath of hot, damp air, “just what course do you think he’s embarked upon?”

“An unfortunate one, ma’am,” he said. “Putting the best complexion upon the matter, I assume that the guns he seeks are intended to arm his own company of militia, which is legitimate, though disturbing; the desirability of that course would rest upon his later actions. But his relations with the Cherokee are well-known, and there are rumors about that the weapons are destined to end in the hands of the savages, to the end that they may turn upon His Majesty’s subjects who presume to offer objection to the tyranny, abuse, and corruption so rife among the officials who govern—if so loose a word may be employed to describe their actions—this colony.”

I gave him a long look over the edge of my fan.

“If I hadn’t already known you were a lawyer,” I remarked, “that speech would have done it. I think that you just said that you suspect my husband of wanting to give guns to the Indians, and you don’t like that. On the other hand, if he’s wanting to arm his own militia, that might be all right—providing that said militia acts according to your desires. Am I right?”

A flicker of amusement showed in his deep-set eyes, and he inclined his head toward me in acknowledgment.

“Your perception astounds me, ma’am,” he said.

I nodded, and shut the fan.

“Right. And what are your desires, may I ask? I won’t ask why you think Jamie ought to take heed of them.”

He laughed, his heavy face, already flushed with the heat, going a deeper shade of red beneath his neat tie-wig.

“I desire justice, ma’am; the downfall of tyrants and the cause of liberty,” he said. “As must any honest man.”

… freedom alone—which any honest man surrenders only with his life. The line echoed in my head, and must have shown on my face, for he looked keenly at me.

“I esteem your husband deeply, ma’am,” he said quietly. “You will tell him what I have said?” He bowed and turned away, not waiting for my nod.

He hadn’t guarded his voice when speaking of tyrants and liberty; I saw heads nearby turn, and here and there, men drew together, murmuring as they watched him go.

Distracted, I took a mouthful of lemon shrub, and was then obliged to swallow the nasty stuff. I turned to find Jamie; he was still near Allan MacDonald, but had moved a little aside, and was in private conversation with Major MacDonald.