“My portmanteau, Edward.”
He looked at her blankly.
“It contains all that I own and I cannot leave it.”
“Oh, of course,” he said, and picked it up.
Cassie shaded her eyes with her hand when they emerged into the bright sunlight. “How very changeable the weather is here, Edward.”
“Is it not in Genoa?”
She stared up at him, an unpleasant knot growing in her throat.
“Captain Crowley said he had brought you from Genoa,” he said gently. He touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I do not wish to cause you discomfort, Cass. We can talk when we reach my lodgings.”
She nodded, without speaking.
He pulled up suddenly and frowned. “I have only my mare, Delila. If you are tired, Cass, you may ride.”
“No, Edward, I am not the least tired. Are your lodgings far from here?”
“Not very far. I live in an inn, The King George, on William Street. ’Tis not more than half a mile.”
She watched him silently as he fastened her portmanteau to his mare’s saddle. He led them onto Broadway, which seemed to her to be teeming with scarlet-coated soldiers, many of them fully equipped with gear and weapons. And ladies. So many ladies, most of them elegantly dressed. Yet they seemed overly open with the soldiers.
“For the most part they are prostitutes, Cassie,” Edward said, reading her thoughts. “Where there are soldiers and sailors, there are always women gladly willing to part them from their guineas.” Edward paused a moment, running his hand along his jaw. It was ridiculous to chatter like this. She has returned from the dead to me and here I am prosing about prostitutes and soldiers.
“Cass.”
He spoke her name so softly that she was uncertain whether she had imagined it. She turned and looked up at him.
“I cannot believe that you are here.” He suddenly dropped Delila’s reins. He gave a shout of joy, closed his hands about her waist and lifted her high off the ground.
As Edward set her back down upon her feet, the feel of his mouth against hers was still vivid in her mind, and her color was high. She tried to relieve her embarrassment and her uncertainty with inconsequential chatter. Edward smiled down at her, his once painful memories of her rapid-fire way of asking questions, of saying whatever popped into her mind, becoming again, quite naturally, amused tolerance.
He answered her questions in a normal tone of voice, as if they had never been apart. “They are Scots, to the man, of the 42nd Highlanders. They are known as the Black Watch and mightily feared by the rebels.”
Cassie stared at their checkered bonnets and their bare, knobby knees. “This is very exciting, Edward. I have never before actually seen their battle dress.”
“That group to the right are Hessian grenadiers. You can always recognize them by their blue coats and the high brass-fronted caps. It is said that their mustaches are as black as they are because they use the same colored wax paste as on their boots. Like the 42nd Highlanders, they are effective, disciplined fighters, but they are barbarians.”
“Barbarians, Edward?”
“Yes. The stories of their atrocities, recent in fact, from New Jersey, make my blood curdle. Unfortunately, even here in New York, they are many times like unleashed dogs. One of the bastards even tried to force himself on Jen—” He immediately broke off, cursing himself for his loose tongue.
Cassie quirked an eyebrow at him. “Jen, Edward? Who is she?”
He shrugged. “Jennifer Lacy. She and her father are loyalists and friends of mine.”
“You must tell me about her sometime,” Cassie said.
Edward gazed down at Cassie’s proud, classical profile. He could not converse with her even about the most mundane, trivial matters as if nothing had ever occurred. Important things, painful things, kept cropping up, willy nilly. Dear God, he thought, I don’t even know what happened to her.
It was as if Cassie had become as uncomfortable as he. “There is much to tell you, Edward.”
“Yes, I know.” He drew in his breath and kept walking.
But she did not intend to tell him that this vast, uncivilized land made her feel she had been transported to the very ends of the earth. She glanced up at him and smiled. She had known Edward all her life, trusted him implicitly and loved him. Yet she felt afraid and terribly uncertain, at a moment when her happiness should have been complete. It would have been complete, she told herself angrily, if it had not been for him.