Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(33)

I was staring at the apple. “I regret that devoted nurse is not with me now—and that I did not perhaps convey my thanks enough at the time. Or afterward.”

Aleksey smiled and continued eating his apple slowly.

The captain suddenly threw down his napkin. “Enough talk. Are we to find this raving man or not? I say we patrol out tonight. He has vital information, intelligence which we must have.”

Aleksey’s eyes brightened. “Yes, a night patrol, what do you say, Nik—Doctor?”

It seemed to me that with Aleksey in his current mood, I might as well spend the night out in the cold and dark on the back of a horse, for I would get nothing better from him. I shrugged. “I agree we should find him. But riding around in the dark will achieve nothing. He must be brought to us.”




FOR THE first time, therefore, I had some conversation with the trappers—as my plan was to lay a trap for this man and lure him to us.

This time spent in their company did not increase my confidence in them or my liking for them. Other than carrying their muskets with a swagger, they seemed to know very little about trapping. Perhaps I was in such a low mood that I misinterpreted their silences, and we confused each other. (Sitting here in my cabin now, with my parchment before me, it all seems so obvious, but at the time it was not. Hindsight, as they say, is a very overrated thing.)

They were both young men, possibly younger than Aleksey, and now I had time to speak with them, their accents were hard to define. This was not that unusual for the New World, as this land attracts to it men from all places in the Old World and men who had been here and there and forced to move around a great deal. My own father, Isaiah Hartmann, had been born in the Netherlands. His parents had brought him to England, where he had met my mother, and then they had come here. So I could not pin down some of the words these young men said, but then they were not open of speech or countenance and would not catch my eye when they spoke to me. They both, however, studied my body very carefully, and trust me when I say that this was not in the way other men have studied me. I have a sense for these things. I think they noticed the scars mostly. They proved utterly useless to assist in my plan to lure the man to us, so eventually I left them to their meal and returned to the officers’ table.

Basically, my plan was to encircle our current encampment with small cooking fires—five, at a mile or two’s distance from the center and each other. Each fire would be manned: the reverend and his oldest son at one, the captain and the second Wright brother on the next. The lieutenant I paired with the last brother. The two soldiers took the forth position, and the trappers I put together at the final one. Aleksey and I would move between them, keeping vigil and relaying relevant information. The major we left to guard our camp and the woman and child (although I would have left him some reinforcements had I not effectively put the creature out of action). Upon the fires, we would put the one thing I thought guaranteed to bring a cold, starving man to us, however mad he might be: bacon. What man can resist the smell of gently cooking bacon on a frosty night? The smell would travel for some distance in the still, cold air and lure him in. It would, of course, lure other things, and I warned each of our sentries to be wary and watchful for bears.

Again, I was surprised I had to warn the trappers of this danger and did not think they could be quite sensible men. What man who makes his living snaring animals in these vast woods has to ask what a bear approaching sounds like? What experienced hunter has to ask whether it is better to shoot a bear or run?

I was distracted that night by the thought that I would not enjoy the privileges I normally enjoyed with Aleksey’s body, and thus my misgivings about these men were ignored. How differently things might have turned out had I thought with my brain and not my cock that night.




ALEKSEY AND I planned to do our first circuit a couple of hours after the fires had been lit. Until then I had little to do but stare morosely at him across the camp table. I could have devised any number of more pleasurable things to do in those two hours, and he must have known this.

Finally he commented a little waspishly, “I have not seen much sign of wooing, Nikolai. Glaring at me is not doing it at all.”

“I am not glaring. I am composing something suitable in my head.”

“Oh, a poem? I hope I will like it.” He began to clean his nails with the tip of his knife. “Well?”

“I am stuck. I cannot think of anything that rhymes with arse.”

I expected him to throw down the knife and rise, furious, and that I could then appease his anger in my usual way, and we would then be able to indulge in those more pleasurable activities, but instead he replied mildly, “Farce. How about that? Farce seems very appropriate, does it not?”

Damn him. I nodded sourly. After a suitable juncture, I grumbled, “Then I need a rhyme for adore.”

He smiled. “Try abhor.”

I stood and made to go toward the horses, but he caught my arm, glancing to see if we could be observed. Then he realized he was holding my burnt arm and made a contrite face as he dropped it. “I’m sorry. I would like to hear your poem if it contains the word adore.”

“Well, I would not call it a poem, as such. I have not got much beyond that one word, for it seems to me to say all that needs to be said without further adornment.”

“Do you mean that?”

“That I have not got much further?”