“That I don’t know, mum. He’s sure no so fussy about others that see him—and his poor wife did come to a terrible end.”
“Were you acquainted with her, Mrs.—?”
“Gill. Maria Gill. And only to give a good day to; as sweet and condescending a lady as you could ask, which is somethin’ you don’t often find in Americans, begging your pardon, mum. Not like that nasty—” She stopped herself. Abigail could not but wonder if the next words out of her mouth would have been, that nasty Mrs. Belle-Isle. “She’d often stop and talk with us, or with the women who did laundry or sewing here—not the girls that do for the men, you understand, but the town women who do fine work for the gentlemen. She had what my mum used to call ‘the common touch’: permittin’ no liberties, of course, but not bein’ so high in the instep as some I could name, that treats honest women as if they were the dirt in the streets.”
“She was here fairly often, was she?” Abigail stepped out of her skirt and stood back while Mrs. Gill pinched and shook her petticoats (“With your permission, mum—”), turned her bodice inside out, and conscientiously removed and held up every item in her pockets and set them on the chair in their screened sanctum (“Are you sure you’re warm enough, mum?”).
“Well”—Mrs. Gill half hid a little conspiratorial smile—“all those town ladies, they were back and forth to dine, of course. And the officers would invite them sailing, or to reviews, or to hear the regimental band. So yes, Mrs. Pentyre was often here.”
“With her husband?”
“Not always.” The stout woman cast a quick glance at Abigail’s face, as if asking herself how discreet she should be, then whispered, “She and the Colonel was good friends, if you take my meaning . . . good friends.” She winked. “But Mr. Pentyre, as often as not he’d come dine with them, or ask the Colonel over to that big house he has in Boston, and why should he play dog-in-the-manger? T’wasn’t as if he was sittin’ home alone weepin’ into his beer, nights.”
“Really?” Abigail leaned forward, discreetly agog.
Pleased, Mrs. Gill said, “That’s the truth, mum. A West Indian lady, a Mrs. Belle-Isle, that he set up in a house not two streets from his own, and has had brought over here—and got her a room for herself, when respectable people are doin’ without or livin’ in tents behind the cow pens—for fear that if riotin’ breaks out in the town over this Donny brook over the tea—and what on earth would Americans balk at? You can’t get it at home for such a price!—there’s some that would give her her deservin’ for the way she lives.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say.” Mrs. Gill handed her back her bodice with a self-righteous nod. “The jewelry he’s given that woman—and her not half as pretty as poor Mrs. P!—and the airs she’s taken on herself . . . and casting eyes on Major Gray and Major Garrick, and even the Colonel himself, poor man.”
“Was the Colonel very grieved?”
“He was shocked, of course.” Mrs. Gill started to lace her up again, neat and swift as a chambermaid. “You can’t not be, you know, even if you barely know someone, who’s killed sudden and terrible like that. Why, our Captain when we was stationed in Halifax, he robbed the men somethin’ cruel, holdin’ back their pay and sellin’ their rations to pocket the money himself, an’ havin’ my Fred flogged when he complained of it to the Colonel . . . yet when the Hurons killed him, I swear to you I cried, and not the only one in the regiment neither. And Mrs. P was a sweet young lady. The Colonel liked her by him. He had her ride with him in town like she was a queen. She’d stand at his side when he reviewed the soldiers, all pink and pretty—not like these Boston ladies who go about with faces like boot-scrapers as if a bit of rouge has got to be the Mark of the Devil, beggin’ your pardon, m’am, and to each ’er own I says. Even Mr. P would joke, that she’d become queen over the regiment. But still, you know, mum, Colonel Leslie is a soldier; and these things come and go. ’Tisn’t as if she thought he’d marry her, or either thought it would last. She flung herself at him, when all’s said—and he didn’t duck.”
“Well.” Primly, Abigail shook out her petticoat. “She sounds like a bit of a flirt to me, God rest her. If the Congregation didn’t frown upon gossip, I’d wonder if Mrs. Pentyre gave the Colonel cause to be jealous as well.”
“As to that, I’m sure I never saw sign of it.” Mrs. Gill sighed. “Even when the other young officers would be gallant—as they are, you know, being so far from home, how can you blame them?—she’d let them know it was the Colonel who had her heart, at least for the time being. And as for the Congregation,” she added with a grin, “if good men haven’t anything better to frown at in this sorry world, m’am, I say, Let ’em frown, eh? Gives their face a bit of exercise, not meaning no disrespect.”
Abigail permitted herself a smile. “And none taken, I’m sure.”
Like nearly everyone else in Boston, Abigail had seen Richard Pentyre from a distance. Like nearly everyone, she had for years thought him an Englishman, and the caricature of one, at that: slight, girlish, excessively tailored and intensely peruked. He bowed to Abigail with great polite-ness, and took a seat on the opposite side of the heavy table like a man who providentially finds the chairs so arranged, rather than one who has insisted on their placement to keep the greatest distance from his caller. He said, “Mrs. Adams,” in his wisp of a voice, but did not offer to touch her hand.
“Mr. Pentyre.” Lisette Droux’s voice came back to her: He laughed and joked his wife about her lovers, yet if any man crossed him in a business way, he make sure that that man became truly sorry that he had done so. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“The honor is mine.” His eyes were dark, intelligent, and wary: because he knew more than he was saying concerning his wife’s death? Or because he expected that at any moment she would whip a pistol out from beneath her skirts? “Lieutenant Coldstone said that you thought I could be of assistance in some way?”
“I know not if anyone can be,” said Abigail, hoping her voice and expression combined to express wearied resignation. “But I know not where else to turn. I am a friend to Mrs. Malvern—the woman in whose house—”
He raised a hand to stay further words, and turned his face aside. “Yes,” he said quickly, though his expression registered nothing. “I know who Mrs. Malvern was.”
“Pray forgive me for bringing up a subject that I know must grievously distress you.” Was? A thoughtless trick of speech? Or—Knowledge of something that others didn’t have? “Yet I—and, I might add, Mr. Malvern—are grasping at straws, in the matter of Mrs. Malvern’s disappearance.”
Annoyance flickered across his face at the mention of Malvern’s name. “Pray believe me, m’am,” he said, “though I sympathize with you in your concern for your friend, I had no idea that my wife had formed so distasteful a connection. While I’m sure Mrs. Malvern was a paragon of virtue and beauty, her husband’s habit of using members of his family—in particular his son and daughter—to obtain information about his trade rivals would have caused me to forbid the acquaintance, had I known of it.”