"You've changed hands."
"My right was spent in His Majesty's service," Edmund said. "I've only the left to offer you."
Something crossed Stannard's face that Edmund could not read. It was not contempt. It might almost have been pain.
"I'm sorry for it," Stannard said, and turned and walked back to his mark.
Edmund took his place. The grass soaked through his stockings to the ankle. He stood side-on, as Kit had taught him, with his right shoulder back and his left forward, and lowered the pistol along his thigh. The fog was thinning. The elms had become separate trees, and a thrush had started up in one of them, singing loudly and repeating each phrase as if the meadow were too dull to catch it the first time. Twelve paces off, Stannard stood easy with his pistol down, looking at nothing.
Darnell raised the handkerchief.
Edmund found he was thinking about the ledger under the floorboard, the noon bell at Somerset House, and ninety-one men who had died in hammocks in the Leeward Islands with their bellies full of his father's beef. He thought that if he had a prayer to say, it should be for them. Then he thought that it was too late to begin praying for anyone now, and that he had better simply—
"Stop!"
It was a woman's voice, high and clear, from the direction of the road. The thrush stopped singing.
III
She came across the wet meadow at something not quite a run, because ladies do not run, and not quite a walk either, because there was no time. She wore a dark blue cloak and the hood had fallen back. Her hair was coming down on one side, and her skirts were soaked dark to the knee. Behind her, a long way behind and losing ground, came a small woman in a brown bonnet. That was Tibby, her maid, who had been Sophia's nurse once and now kept hold of her the way a person keeps hold of a kite string in high wind.
Edmund lowered his pistol until it pointed at the ground. He could not have said whether he did it from courtesy or because his hand had gone weak.