Solemn Vows (25 page)

I
N
T
HE
C
ROOKED
A
NCHOR
, Cobb seemed uncharacteristically eager to tell Marc about Rumsey’s death at the pier near Turner’s brewery. He had barely touched the fried trout in front of him. “It was me that led the troops down there and told ’em where to hide in the grass so’s them ridiculous costumes wouldn’t show,” he was saying.

“I know, and I’m sure you’ll receive due credit,” Marc said.

Cobb was anxious to talk, but he was also eyeing Marc closely, as if sensing that there had been some sea change in his outwardly unflappable superior. “That don’t matter a pig’s arse,” he said and jabbed a fork into his plate. “So, like I was sayin’, after I talk them into skulkin’ down there like a pack of bird dogs, I start to sneak back up the embankment to see if I can spot Rumsey before he gets too close to all them pop-guns. I know it’s important to take Rumsey alive as he’s got a lot of talkin’ to do before we hang him, but, dammit-all, the bugger’d already outcircled me. The first thing I know, I turn to see him almost on the wharf and scuttlin’ fer a fishin’ boat
with a little cabin on it. So I give out a holler, but the troop is already liftin’ out of the grass like flushed pheasants, and Rumsey of course sees ’em.”

Cobb took a deep breath but did not raise his flagon. “I swear to God, Major, one of them crazy soldiers shoots before Rumsey can say shit or surrender. Naturally, he misses, but Rumsey ups and fires back, and I hear a mighty yelp and see one of the soldiers grab his leg and go down. Then there’s a roar like a ten-gun salute and the poor bastard flies backwards with the guts shot out of him before he hits the water.”

Cobb now hoisted his flagon and drank greedily. “I ain’t ever seen anythin’ like it, and I hope to Christ I never do again.”

Almost absently Marc said, “Any idea who fired that first shot?”

Cobb picked up on the tone instantly. He looked at Marc for a long second before answering. “Could’ve been any one of ’em. They ain’t got a brain to divvy up amongst ’em.”

“Rumsey’s dead,” Marc said. “And that’s all that seems to matter.”

Cobb picked at the bones of his trout. “Well, it ain’t really none of my business, I suppose, but I recall you figured Rumsey couldn’t’ve been actin’ on his own. Don’t we have an instigator of some kind maybe runnin’ around loose somewheres? Or don’t that matter no more either?”

“As far as the governor is concerned, the case is closed.”

“And as far as you’re concerned?”

“I do what the governor commands me to do.”

Cobb flashed Marc an enigmatic grin. “Well, then, I best get back to my humble patrol.”

Marc rose and held out his hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Constable.”

Cobb did not respond, but he watched Marc as he slowly made his way out of the tavern.

M
ARC
R
ETURNED
TO M
RS.
S
TANDISH’S
after eating supper at the officers’ mess, where all the talk was about the upcoming gala at Somerset House, the life-and-death decisions regarding dance cards and partners, the relative merits of one colonial beauty over another, and the irresistible allure of the British officer in his ceremonial accoutrements. There was much teasing of Ensign Rick Hilliard, who, having won inestimable favour in the governor’s eye during their trek through the western hustings, had been rewarded with the honour of escorting Angeline Hartley to the ball and dancing both the lancers and the galop with her. It was almost eight o’clock when Marc stepped onto the veranda and greeted his landlady, who was sweeping the dust of the day off her threshold.

“Is Colin home?” Marc asked her.

The Widow Standish leaned forward with both hands on her broomstick. “He was, Lieutenant. But he’s left—and in such a state!”

“He’d not been drinking?”

She sighed: “No, sir, I could not say he had. But he was unforgivably rude to me, he threw his clothes all over his room, and on his way out he give Maisie such a snub as left her sobbing for an hour in the laundry shed.”

Marc was beginning to tire of defending the young man he had taken under his wing, but he said, “Colin’s had a frustrating week chaperoning the governor’s ward when he was promised better things. Then yesterday, as you’ve heard, he was part of the heroic troop that tracked down and shot Mr. Moncreiff’s killer. Now he has nothing before him but returning to his routine duties at Government House on Monday morning. And he tends to get upset over such disappointments—”

“More like a little boy throwing a tantrum, I’d say.”

“And I daresay you are right, Mrs. Standish.”

A
S HE BEGAN DRESSING
for the gala, Marc realized that he had sleepwalked through the day’s events. His failure to live up to Beth’s expectations, Eliza’s rejection of his proposal (did she know more about him and Beth than he had supposed? Could she herself have arranged to leave because of what she knew?), his abject behaviour before a superior whose ethics (not to speak of his dubious sanity) he found repugnant, and his cowardly acquiescence in the whole sordid cover-up of the Rumsey affair—all these less than
sterling actions had left him benumbed, devoid of passion and commitment.

Even worse was the fact that both his superior officers and those he commanded viewed him as an exemplary soldier, and could not stop pouring praise in his direction. It had been his efforts, they had said repeatedly, that had pointed the finger at Rumsey on the very day of the murder, his strategy that had set up the spy system at Danby’s Crossing and the Tinker’s Dam, leading to Rumsey’s being spotted yesterday (Cobb was a mere cipher in all of this), his quick thinking and courage at the cabin that had spooked the fugitive and sent him scuttling to the docks, and his intuition that had forecast the precise pier to which the villain would flee. He might even be made a captain.

It was little wonder, then, that Marc found he was unable to concern himself with Colin’s moods, perceived slights, and childish disappointments. Willoughby would just have to face the stern realities of being adult and conscionable like everybody else. After all, what had he to complain about compared to someone like Beth Smallman, who had lost a husband and a much-loved father-in-law in the same year, who had been left with a farm and a crippled brother to raise alone in the semi-wilderness? Or Eliza Dewart-Smythe, rich heiress that she was, who had been orphaned at three and raised by a succession of uncles more attached to the wine business than parenting, and who had been bitterly disappointed in love (had it been a fortune-hunter
pretending to be a lover?) and had come two thousand miles to an outpost of civilization to learn a man’s business and compete in a man’s world? To hell with Willoughby! Let him take care of himself.

On his way out, he gave Maisie a warm smile, and was rewarded when her face lit up and she blushed prettily.

T
HE PROVINCIAL ARISTOCRACY
was out in full force and gay panoply. Tory gentlemen and their wives from London, Brantford, Cobourg, and every place in between had come into the capital a day or two before the event and set themselves up in comfort at the best Toronto hotels and inns or had descended upon wary relatives with spacious abodes in town. In one way or another, all this had been part of Sir Francis Head’s strategy for the elite to take back the political powers of which they had been indignantly deprived in the elections of 1834 and upon which they had hereditary claim.

Every carriage and horse-drawn vehicle in York County and beyond had been commandeered for the purpose of conveying the eighty-some guests to the magnificent residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ignatius Maxwell (and daughter) along a route that would give them the widest exposure for their ostentation and the least discomfort for their behinds. Most of them connived to promenade at least part of the way westwards along fashionable King Street, where the hoi polloi cheered and jeered them with equal vigour. And since more than a
dozen handsome officers of the 24th Regiment of Foot had been included in the guest list and since such officers were necessarily resplendent in scarlet or green and gold with high, feathered shako caps, those with the most important carriages and the showiest horses contrived to pick up one or more of these trophies, adding both colour and sex appeal to their equipage.

Marc chose to walk. He went down Peter Street to Front, where, dangling from a flagpole in front of the Toronto Hotel, was a crude effigy of Philo Rumsey, his neck well wrung by a hangman’s noose. They would, it appeared, be celebrating more than a patently successful electoral campaign tonight. For a block around Somerset House, the streets were bustling with stomping horses, beleaguered grooms and footmen, and of course gorgeously arrayed women and rigidly handsome gentlemen moving in stately file up the stone steps of the great neo-Gothic house. Sir Francis stood beside Prudence and Ignatius Maxwell on its lush portico and accepted fealty in the form of curtsy and bow from the guests. All this house needs is a moat, Marc thought uncharitably. He was surprised to see several moderate Reformers among the guests, including Robert Baldwin and Francis Hincks.

As he made his way politely along the reception line, Prudence Maxwell leaned over to him and whispered, “I’ve put you down for the waltz later on, Lieutenant—when the party’s had a chance to warm up.”

M
ARC WAS A NATURAL
and, on most occasions, an enthusiastic dancer. He was glad this was so, for it enabled him to coast through the main part of the evening in a not-unpleasant, near-narcotic state. Riding the rhythms of the music (the orchestra in the ornate mezzanine of the enormous, tall-windowed ballroom was the best money could assemble) and tripping through the formal configurations of the set-piece dances, he was able to smile and utter brief, meaningless pleasantries as fingers touched and hips brushed and eyes locked—while his thoughts and feelings floated free in their own misery-laden ether. Indeed, it was only by reference to his dance card that he could be sure he had actually partnered Angeline Hartley, Chastity Maxwell, and half a dozen other belles whose names he was expected to remember. When he somewhat reluctantly went over to Prudence to fulfill his commitment to the waltz, he was surprised that she glided out onto the floor like a proper chatelaine, made light but coherent conversation, and barely looked him in the eye. Her own eyes, however, were beginning to sparkle like the Champagne fuelling them, and Marc hoped for her sake that she would make it through the evening with her hostess’s dignity intact.

When the requisite and preordained dances were complete, the orchestra took a break, and the grand ladies and gentlemen repaired variously to the sweetmeats-and-Champagne tables or to the powder rooms tucked away
behind a huge screen of intersecting Persian rugs. Within minutes, natural groupings had formed and were from time to time reformed as boredom or more avid passions took precedence.

Without a lot of real interest, Marc stood well aside and observed the to-ing and fro-ing. He noticed that Willoughby (who had arrived late and scrupulously avoided him all evening) was paying much attention to Chastity Maxwell. Could Colin have been the officer secretly courting her? It was possible. Colin had definitely been seeing some woman or women in the past week or so: Mrs. Standish’s instincts in that regard were near infallible. Hilliard, who had arrived with Angeline, had danced with her at least three times and was now plying her recklessly with Champagne while the governor’s gaze was averted. Marc decided to keep his own watch on the couple. He liked Hilliard, who was as ambitious as he himself was, and did not wish to see him jeopardize his career so foolishly. Prudence Maxwell, tulip glass in hand, was chatting with Chief Justice Robinson and his sturdy wife, while her own husband was in a far corner, his mutton chops caressing the cleavage of a debutante from the hinterland. When the justice and his spouse took their leave, Prudence made a wobbly beeline for the drinks table.

When the orchestra returned and struck up a lancers tune, those guests with youthful energies took up the challenge. Without the strictures of the dance card, men and women were free to partner as caprice propelled them.
Liaisons or the promise of such were made, coyly retracted, then reinstated with a coquettish smile or an extra squeeze of hip or fingertip. Hilliard stuck close to Angeline (or she to him, it was hard to tell). Willoughby had disappeared but not, Marc was relieved to see, with Chastity—who was keeping a daughterly eye on her mother. For Prudence, still counting herself among the vigorous, had tottered into a square, tumbled against a startled ensign, and, in breaking her fall, had latched on to a part of him generally reserved for his own use. Chastity and another woman—whom Marc took to be Flora Moncreiff, her aunt—assisted Prudence towards the powder rooms, but she put up such a fuss that they had to be satisfied with sitting her down on a chair, where she slumped like a punched puppet. Ignatius Maxwell was nowhere in sight. Nor was the debutante.

Marc wanted very much to leave all of this—the superficiality and the melodrama and the picayune rivalries. But he was genuinely concerned about Prudence, and Chastity too. God knows where Maxwell had spirited his young woman or what he was planning to do with her. Prudence was undoubtedly aware of her husband’s philandering, but the humiliation of his carrying on at a gala of which he was host and which the governor himself had sanctioned as a celebration of sorts could well prove too much. He expected her at any moment to start proclaiming her mate’s apostasy before the assembled pillars of the community. And with a voice like hers, the deafest dowager in the hall would soon know all.

Fortunately, the frolic was almost over. The last dance had been announced. Marc took the opportunity to sidle over to Chastity and say quickly, “If you need any help with your mother, please call on me. I’ll stay till the end, if you like.”

Chastity smiled gratefully. “Thank you. She’s almost asleep in her chair, thank God.” Marc moved a discreet distance away, and noticed that Chastity was looking anxiously around the ballroom for someone—her truant father, or Willoughby?