“Now,” she said at last, “for Mr. Ames.”

  Ames was waiting in Michael’s study, a dour-faced man growing dourer by the minute. “Running this plantation is quite time consuming, Mrs. Fallon,” he said as soon as she entered the room. “I really don’t have time for—”

  “Please rise when a lady enters the room,” she broke in.

  Stiffly he got to his feet and moved out from behind the desk to make a leg. She quickly moved behind it and sat down, picking up one of his papers as if to study it.

  Ames’s mouth tightened. “Mrs. Fallon—”

  “Mrs. Fallon,” she said suddenly. “You say that quite often, but you don’t seem to understand it.”

  “Mrs. Fallon, I assure you, if I’ve shown any disrespect—”

  “Not open disrespect, no. But you have acted as if I’m a schoolroom miss who’s keeping you from your work.” Ames opened his mouth; she went on. “Whereas I’m not that at all. I am Mrs. Michael Fallon. And I not only intend to take an interest in Tir Alainn, I intend to run it.”

  Ames closed his eyes. “Let me speak, please, Mrs. Fallon. I need only remind you of your latest interference. You’re having that damned great warehouse built—”

  “You’ll please not to swear in my presence. I don’t propose to explain every decision I make to you, nor to obtain your approval for them. This time, however—The price of rice is high. But it is high in inflated money, in paper money that grows more worthless by the day. So Tir Alainn won’t sell. Its rice will be stored.”

  “But—” he began insistently.

  “But? Sooner or later the market will come back for rice. Sooner or later the price will be paid in gold. And when the gold market returns, one plantation will have as much rice to sell as anyone wants to buy. Tir Alainn. Because I mean to plant as much as I can clear land for, sell only what I have to, and store the rest. If you will help me, then stay. If you will do as I say. If you cannot, then you must leave.” She eyed him sternly, but her heart was pounding fiercely. He was off balance, completely surprised. She only hoped he was too surprised to realize how much she needed him. He knew all about rice; she knew nothing. Without him her plans would grind to a halt. But he had to accept her terms. He had to recognize her authority.

  “Very well,” he said slowly. “Tir Alainn is yours, and you may do with it as you wish. I’ll help as I’m able.”

  It took an effort for her not to sigh with relief. “Good. That’s settled, then. Now, before I forget. I want you to buy as much osnaburg as you can. Use all the Continentals before you touch gold.”

  “I’d intended putting off new clothes for the slaves.” She frowned at him, and he sighed. “Yes, Mr. Ames, cloth is priced far too high. But I fear it’ll go much higher before it comes down. If it doesn’t, you’ve my permission to put this down to a woman’s whim and gammon, but I’ll not have my people in rags because cloth has become too expensive to buy.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll order the cloth. And on the slaves, I’ve sent you the manumission papers on the first dozen hands Mr. Fallon purchased. They’ve served their eight years. Only, you’ve not given them back yet. I can’t release them without signed papers. They’ll have trouble otherwise.”

  “Have you spoken to them about this?” she asked casually.

  The overseer’s voice stiffened. “No, ma’am, I haven’t. I hope you’ll pardon me, Mrs. Fallon, but with your well-known soft treatment for your blacks, I’d have thought you’d have signed long since.”

  “Did my husband leave specific instructions with you concerning manumission?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  For the second time she had to suppress a sigh of relief. It was bad enough going against Michael’s wishes, but she could not have disobeyed his orders. She’d gone over the plantation’s books again and again, and one thing was clear. The price of everything was rising. Already it cost more to run Tir Alainn than could be realized from the sale of its rice. If new slaves had to be bought, then Tir Alainn was doomed.

  “There’ll be no slaves freed, Mr. Ames, not those or others, until I decide differently.”

  “But Mr. Fallon—”

  “My husband isn’t here. I intend to make the decisions I feel are best for Tir Alainn as long as he’s gone. And I’ll apologize to him if I go against his wishes, not to you. Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly, ma’am,” he said, and there was a new note of respect in his voice.

  She’d done it, she realized. She’d openly countered Michael’s expressed wishes. She’d been sure she would be swept by guilt and remorse, but all she felt was a little excitement. She took a deep breath and smiled. “Next, Mr. Ames, I’d like to consider building another cog-machine. With new fields producing rice—”

  The curtains across Hussar’s stern cabin windows kept out night fog, but they couldn’t keep out the dank cold. Michael rubbed his knuckles briskly before picking up the pen and opening the capture log.

  30 December 1776. The Irish Sea. Mary B. Three hundred fifty tons. Four three-pounders. Bound for Liverpool from New York. Surrendered after short chase and one shot across bow. Cargo: Turpentine, pitch, cordage, and oak ship timbers. Sent into Morlaix.

  And now today’s:

  5 January 1777. South of Land’s End. Green Dolphin. One hundred sixty tons. Six four-pounders. Bound for London from Oporto. Cargo: oranges, lemons, and olives. Took off ten casks of lemons and sent into Brest.

  There was a rap at the door, followed by Byrne’s head. “Masthead lookout claims a sighting, Captain, though how he can see anything in this—”

  “Where away, Christopher?” The book flipped shut.

  “Dead ahead, he says. Ship rugged. Even says he can hear her rigging creak. Another man I sent up says it’s the wind, but you wanted to be advised of anything.”

  “I did. Let’s see if there’s someone who thinks the fog and the night will make him safe.”

  The fog pressed in over the bulwarks, and the bow was completely obscured by dingy gray billows. Only the steersman and a few seamen were on deck, grumpily frowning at the fog, but they perked up when Michael came on deck.

  “Where’s the lookout, Mr. Byrne?” They maintained formality in front of the crew.

  “As high as we could get him, Captain. The mainmast royal yards. With a messenger, in case he spots something.”

  “And maybe he has. I’d better be taking a look myself.” Without waiting for a reply he mounted the rail and disappeared up the shrouds. The lower mast top wasn’t a stopping place. He mounted to the small top, then, though the deck had long since disappeared below, through dark and mist up the topgallant shrouds, and so to the royal yard.

  Below the yard he stopped and tapped one of the men on the foot. “Climb down, lad, and let me up for a look.” He and the messenger worked their way past each other, and he took a seat on the opposite side of the mast from the lookout. “All right, now. Where?”

  The seaman shifted his cud of tobacco. “Dead ahead, sir. You can’t see her but when the fog shifts a mite, and not hardly then. Just keep an eye peeled forward, sir.”

  Michael nodded and kept a silent watch. Ahead was nothing but fog. It might be like this, he imagined, if a man could get in amongst the clouds. Everywhere he looked would be mist. Was it possible the lookout really had seen something? What were the odds that on a particular night, on a particular part of a foggy ocean, two ships would be on the same course, and close enough to each other to be seen? Add to that the fog—The shifting billows rolled, parted, and closed again, but there it was. Three masts, square-rigged, jutting momentarily above the amorphous gray into moonlight.

  “You’ve just earned an extra fifty pounds,” he told the lookout, “no matter what that turns out to be.”

  Down the shrouds he scrambled, with thought neither for height nor darkness, wringing a startled oath from the messenger waiting on the small top, flinging himself without word into the topmast shrouds. He didn’t slow until his boots thumped on the quarterdeck. Byrne and the helmsman jumped.

  “It’s there,” Michael said. “Don’t use the drums, but get the men to quarters. Put on staysails. Move, man.”

  Bare feet padded on the deck as the crew rolled out of their hammocks to whispered instructions. Lashings were cast off, and guncarriage wheels rumbled as the guns were loaded and run out. Blocks and rigging creaked and groaned as the triangular staysails were hoisted between the masts.

  Too much noise, he thought. If the other ship heard and shifted course, or worse, heard and simply ran out its guns for a quick broadside into the rigging—He took his pistols and a cutlass from a seaman. There might be need of them.

  Slowly something became visible ahead, a shape in the mist, an outline. Michael signaled to the helmsman for a slight change of course. The stern of the ship ahead could be dimly seen now. That tubby shape spelled merchantman.

  Slowly they glided up beside the other vessel. Still no sign that they’d been seen. Michael motioned, the helm went over, and Hussar crashed against the side of the other ship. He snatched up a speaking trumpet. “This is the forty-gun American frigate Eagle. Surrender or suffer a broadside.” With a shout he leaped to the other deck, and half his crew followed, howling like the fiends of hell.

  “Don’t fire!” someone on the mechantman screamed. “The powder! For God’s sake, don’t fire.”

  A frantic shape in a nightshirt came bumping up the companionway onto the quarterdeck. “I surrender! In God’s name, don’t fire! You’ll blow us all to hell! I’m the captain! I surrender.” Barefoot and wide-eyed, he stumbled to the rail. When he made out the Hussar, his mouth fell open. “That’s no frigate.”

  “Would you care to change your mind, then?” Michael asked.

  The captain eyed the privateersmen swarming over his deck and shook his head. “No. I’m Captain Peter Phillipson, and I formally surrender the Brent to you, whoever you are. Rebel privateer, I take it?”

  “You take it correctly, Captain. Michael Shane Fallon, captain of the American privateer Hussar, at your service. I suggest we retire to your cabin. Mr. Byrne, come with me. Let’s see if we can find a manifest.”

  Phillipson sat in a corner, disgruntled, drinking a glass of his own wine, while they opened every drawer, chest, and cabinet in his quarters.

  “I’ve found it, sir,” Christopher announced. “In with a stack of letters from his wife.”

  Michael straightened with a small chest in his hands. “Read it while I open this.”

  “Merciful God!” Byrne barked. “No wonder they were screaming we’d all blow up. They’ve twenty tons of gunpowder on board.”

  Michael looked up sharply. “Storeship?”

  “God’s wounds, yes. Two thousand muskets. Two thousand bayonets. One thousand uniform coats. One thousand pairs of breeches. Five—Damn, but this is a prize. Eight six-pound field pieces with carriages and full equipage, plus one thousand six-pound shot. Michael, you could outfit a small army from this ship.”

  “Well, it’ll be our army, this time.” He’d forced the lock with his cutlass; now he opened the chest. The first things out were two large bricks of lead.

  “I was supposed to throw that overboard if there was any danger of capture,” Phillipson said with a resigned shrug. “If I was navy instead of contract, I suppose they’d courtmartial me.”

  “Not for these,” Michael said, ripping open the despatches one by one. New regulations concerning enlisting Tory troops around New York. A complaint about expenditures for medical supplies. A report that a general named Burgoyne would take command of British troops in Canada.

  Michael picked a last letter and broke the seal. It was a personal letter, not a despatch.

  Michael scanned it quickly. He was about to throw it back in the chest when something leaped out at him. He checked the address. To a Lieutenant Colonel Francis Holbein, attached to General Howe’s headquarters in New York, from someone who signed himself Tom and could get his personal mail in with military despatches. Hurriedly he searched back for one of the despatches, folded the two together, and stuck them in his pocket. “Captain Phillipson, if you’ll give your parole, you can stay in your cabin.”

  “Certainly, so long as I may have my wine.”

  “Of course. Christopher, come on,” Michael hurried back topside with Byrne following. The fog showed no sign of lifting. “Get a prize crew on board and send her off to Charlestown. This cargo will do more good there than in France. We’re sailing for Brest, immediately.”

  “But the fog—”

  “If it doesn’t clear, we’ll wait offshore. Immediately, Christopher. Immediately.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Michael frowned and touched the papers in his pocket. Once in Paris, he hoped he’d find he was on a fool’s errand:

  The antechamber of the American Commission in Paris was crowded, as it’d been crowded for each of the four days Michael had been fuming in it. The first, after a 350-mile ride across midwinter France, stopping only long enough to change horse, he’d sat in the mud and sweat of his journey, expecting to be called at any moment.

  Thomas Martin, the Commission’s secretary, entered the antechamber and was immediately besieged by a mob of waiting petitioners, privateer captains, military men offering to sell their swords, and inventors with weapons that would sweep the British from America in a week.

  Martin seated himself at his desk and fussed with papers, all the while ignoring those who fought for his attention. Or seeming to. Suddenly he flashed an unctuous smile. “You’ll all have to sit down. The Commissioners are very busy. Please, gentlemen, sit down. No. No, we’re not interested in muskets powered by air. Please, gentlemen. Please.” He watched the men back to their seats, basking in their disappointment as he had in their attention. His eye fell on Michael. “You again? What’s your name? Fallon? I’ve told you, the Commissioners are very busy men. They can’t give personal interviews to privateer captains come to wallow in the fleshpots of Paris.”

  Michael gritted his teeth and pushed his fists into his coat pockets. “Martin, I’ve told you fifty times why I’m here, and it’s nothing to do with fleshpots or wallowing.” Though he had considered wallowing his fist in Martin’s face a time or two. “But be that as it may, I’ve something important here to show to Dr. Franklin. Dr. Benjamin Franklin. And don’t try telling me again he’s not in France. He’s been in Paris since December.”

  The secretary carefully measured the distance across the desk between him and Michael. “It’s true Dr. Franklin is in the city, but he cannot be disturbed. If you’ll leave whatever it is with me, I’ll see that Commissioner Deane looks at it.” The oily smile was back. He held out his hand for whatever it was, the picture of reasonableness.

  “Deane!” Michael exploded. “I’ve had dealings with Silas Deane before. There’s been more than one time I’ve questioned whose side he’s on.” A murmur of agreement from the other privateers in the room backed him up. “I’ll deal with Benjamin Franklin, and with no other.”

  “In that case,” said Silas Deane, ghosting up to the desk, “you may very well deal with no one.”

  Michael eyed Deane distastefully. There was nothing precisely rodentlike in the man’s looks, but his creeping, handwashing, nose-twitching, darting-eyed furtiveness was a perfect imitation of a wharf rat. “Dealing with you, Deane, is like dealing with a wall. No matter what you say or do, nothing ever comes of it.”

  There was only silence in the room this time. No one there wanted to antagonize Deane. A Commissioner could cause untold trouble for an American in France.

  Deane’s nose twitched, and his mouth drew up.

  Michael suddenly pounded on the desk. Martin jumped in his seat. “God’s wounds, man. What game are you playing at keeping me from Franklin? Send my name in to him. I met him once. Perhaps he’ll recognize it and consent to see me.”

  Deane’s face was white with anger, and his teeth were bared in a half snarl. “Your name has already been mentioned to Franklin. He doesn’t remember you, and he doesn’t want to see you. Now will you leave, or must I have you ejected?”

  “I don’t believe that will be necessary.” The entire antechamber surged to its feet as Franklin entered. He waved them away with a shake of his head and a sympathetic gesture, and, for him, they sank back with a few protesting murmurs. “You were shouting so loudly, I could hear you in the other room. You, sir. Don’t I know you? Yes, of course. Michael Fallon, Christopher Gadsden’s Irish firebrand from Charlestown. Come in, sir. Come in.”

  Michael followed him into the next room, Silas Deane’s eyes boring into his back. Franklin was almost unchanged. Except for being in black velvet this time, he could have just stepped from his chambers on the morning Michael had first met him in London. He realized with a start that Franklin had spoken and was waiting for a reply.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that you’ve not changed a hair since I saw you last. I realize you’re busy with important matters, but it was also important I see you, I believe.”

  Franklin laughed. “I may not have changed a hair, Mr. Fallon, but I’ve lost any number of them. And as for my onerous duties. Women, sir. Women. I’m not complaining, mind you. My taste in clothing piques the ladies’ interest, and when they discover I’m the man who gives talks on electricity, though most aren’t certain whether electricity is a fish or a plant, they seek me out. It seems that having me for a lover confers a certain status. From there it’s but a short step to meeting their husbands and—amis. And those, my dear Fallon, are the men who run France, and provide guns and money, and perhaps, one day, more for the American cause. In such ways do we serve our country. Wine, sir, or brandy against the cold?”

  “Brandy, thank you. I can see, Mr. Franklin, that women would take even more of a man’s time than academicians and philosophers. I don’t wonder you didn’t remember my name when it was mentioned. I’m only glad you recognized me.”