'Why have you come back?' she whispered, her face contorted with anguish as she sat back upon the chair and her right hand drew the silk wrap defensively about her breast.
'Are you in health, Arabella?' he asked, keeping his distance, hardening his painfully thumping heart at her plight.
'Yes,' she nodded, seizing the proprieties he offered, ignoring the incongruity of their situation, 'and you?'
'Yes,' he paused and she saw the struggle in his own face.
'You have nothing to fear,' she said more firmly, looking at him, 'I miscarried in the second month.'
She had conceived! The shock of it struck Drinkwater like a whiplash. It brought him no goatish pleasure, only an appalling regret and a piteous compassion which was out of kilter with his present purpose. 'My dear...' he made a move towards her, then stopped at the precise moment she held up her hand to arrest him.
'No! It is over, and it is for the best!'
He avoided her eyes. 'Yes,' he mumbled, 'the war...'
'I did not mean the war, Nathaniel, though that too is an impediment now.' She paused, then added, 'You found your wife well?'
'Arabella,' he protested, utterly confused, desperately hanging on to the reason for his unceremonious arrival. In his heart he had no real wish to revive their liaison and her continuing assumption piqued him.
'No blame attaches to you,' she said, sensing his mood, 'but why have you come back?'
He sighed, ashamed of himself now the moment of truth had come. 'I need some information, Arabella, information I thought our former intimacy might entitle me at least to ask of you.'
'You wish me to turn traitor?' she enquired, that lilting, bantering tone on which they had first established their friendship back in her voice, 'just as I once turned whore.'
'No,' he replied levelly, pleased he had at least anticipated this question. 'I merely wish to know if the Stingray is at sea under your brother's command. Such a question may easily be discovered from other sources; it is rumoured that a Yankee comes cheaper than Judas Iscariot.'
She opened her mouth to protest and then a curiously reticent look crossed her face. Her eyes searched his for some clue, as though he had said something implicit and she was gauging the extent of his knowledge. Then, as soon as the expression appeared it had faded and he was mystified, almost uncertain whether or not he had read it aright, merely left staring at her singular beauty.
'Why should you wish to know this? And why come all the way from England and up the Chesapeake if it may be bought from some fisherman for a few dollars?'
'Because I wished for an excuse to see you,' he replied, voicing a gallant half-truth, 'and because it might stop your brother and I from trying to kill each other,' he lied. He watched the words sink in, hoping she might recall the respective attitudes he and Stewart had professed when the possibility of war between their two countries had been discussed. He hoped, too, she might not begin to guess how large was the ocean and how unlikely they were to meet. Unless ...
'The Stingray, Captain Drinkwater, is undergoing repairs at the Washington Navy Yard,' she said with a cool and dismissive air. 'My brother is unemployed by the Navy Department... out of your reach…'
He admired her quick intelligence, her guessing of his dissimulation, and was now only mildly offended at her assumption of motive.
'Madam,' he said with a wry smile that savaged her with its attractiveness, 'I do not meditate any revenge, I assure you.'
The formality had evaporated the passion between them. He was no longer a slave to their concupiscence; his imagination ran in a contrary direction.
'He is at sea, though, ma'am, is he not?'
She inclined her head. 'Perhaps.'
'In a Baltimore clipper schooner...' He flattened his tone, kept the interrogative out of his voice, made of the question a statement of fact and watched like a falcon the tiny reactive muscles about her lovely eyes.
'You knew,' she said before perceiving his trap and clenching her fist in her anger. 'You ... you ...' She stammered her outrage and he stepped forward and put a hand upon her shoulder. The white silk was warmed by the soft flesh beneath.
'Arabella ...' She looked up, her eyes bright with fury. 'I truly mean no harm to either of you, but I have my obligations as you have yours. Please do not be angry with me. The web we find ourselves caught in is not of our making.'
She put her hand on his and it felt like a talon as it clawed at him. 'Why do you help weave it, then? You men are all the same! Why, you knew all along,' she whispered. Her fingers dug into the back of his hand, bearing it down upon her own shoulder as though she wanted to mutilate herself for her treachery. As he bent to kiss her hair the door was flung open with a crash of the handle upon the plaster.
Drinkwater looked round. Zebulon Shaw stood in the doorway with a scatter gun levelled at Drinkwater's belly. Behind him, the dull gleam of a musket barrel in his hands, was the dark presence of the negro groom and the pale face of the maid.
'Take your hands off!' Shaw roared.
Shaw's misreading of the situation in thinking the moment of anguished intimacy one of imminent violence, moved Drinkwater to fury. Arabella, too, reacted.
'Father ...' she expostulated, but Drinkwater seized her shoulders, drew her to her feet, jerked her round and pulled her to him. Whipping the knife from his belt he held it to her neck, hissing a reassurance in her ear.
He had no idea to what extent and in what detail the French maid had betrayed her mistress; he hoped she had acted protectively with some discretion, concerned only for Arabella's safety in the presence of a man who, once her lover, was now at the very least an enemy. Whatever the niceties, he could, he realized, avoid compromising Arabella further while at the same time facilitating his escape. Zebulon Shaw's next remark gave him grounds for thinking he had guessed right.
'Drinkwater? Is it you? What in hell's name d'you mean by ... ?'
'I wished to know the whereabouts of the USS Stingray, Mr Shaw, and if you'll stand aside, I'll trouble your home no further. I have armed men outside and I have no need to remind you we are at war.'
Shaw's tongue flicked out over dry lips and his face lost its resolute expression. Drinkwater pressed his advantage.
'I apologize for my method,' he went on, sensing Shaw's indecision, 'and it would distress me even more if I had to add mutilation or murder to a trifling burglary.' As he spoke he moved the knife menacingly across Arabella's white throat.
'Damn you!' Shaw growled, drawing back.
'Very well, Mrs Shaw,' Drinkwater said with a calm insolence, 'precede me and no harm will come to you.' He pressed her gently forward, passed into the passage and ran the gauntlet of Shaw and the negro, glaring at the maid as she held up a wildly flickering candelabra in a shaking hand. 'No tricks, sir ...'
They were convinced by his show of bravado in which Arabella played her part submissively.
'Go, sir,' Shaw called after them, 'go and be damned to you if this is how you treat our hospitality ...'
'Needs must, sir, when the devil drives,' Drinkwater flung over his shoulder as they reached the head of the staircase. 'Careful, m'dear,' he muttered to Arabella as they descended to the darkened hall.
Shaw and the negro covered their descent and Drinkwater was aware of open doors closing on their approach as inquisitive servants, roused by noises on the floor above, retreated before the sight of the cloaked intruder with their mistress a hostage. He paused at the main door and turned.
'Remain here, Shaw. I shall take your daughter-in-law a pistol shot from the house and release her. I trust you to wait here.'