Thomson laughed. “Come now,” he told MacPherson, “surely we can let our guards down among friends. We’re all of the same party, and truly I’m weary of watching my back.”
Mary privately thought he could hardly have cause to complain or be weary, when Mr. MacPherson had been the one doing the watching for all of them. But she said nothing. Her mind had been all but consumed by that single word: Rome.
They were going to Rome.
Where the king was. And where her brothers and father had gone. Where her father was, still.
Mary kept her face turned to the window and gazed at the street without seeing it, hearing but little of what others said. She recovered herself for a moment to nod a polite greeting to Mr. Cole—Mr. Warren’s good friend and associate—when he came in, and she noticed the clerk had been sent off again on an errand to leave them in privacy, but beyond that she retained little interest for what else went on in the room.
She was vaguely aware they were speaking about the affair of the Charitable Corporation, and Thomson’s sad part in it, although there seemed to be differences in how he told the tale this time around, and those differences gradually drew Mary’s focus away from the window and back to the men.
“…and having the management of the whole, we contrived to bring up all the stock into our own hands with the Company’s money, and in that time got the stock augmented fivefold, to £600,000.”
“And how did you manage that?” Warren had leaned forward in his chair as though he found the story fascinating.
“Why, sir, as such things are always done. By bribing several members of Parliament to pass acts allowing it,” Thomson said drily. “Yet clearly we did not bribe widely enough, for we could not keep the directors of the great companies in London, who found our traffic a prejudice to their own, from persuading Parliament to enter into an examination of our Corporation’s affairs, by which means all our schemes were defeated and I obliged to come abroad.”
“A disappointment to you,” Mr. Cole commiserated.
“Yes, indeed. For had Parliament not interfered, I should soon have had in my hands four or five hundred thousand pounds with which to assist the king.”
“And how much have you now?”
Mary waited for Thomson to answer Cole’s question, trying to reconcile what he’d just said with the tale he had told her in Lyon, confused by the details that would not be matched. Glancing over her shoulder she saw that MacPherson was still standing stone-faced beside the room’s door, and she could not tell from his expression how much he himself knew about the affair.
Thomson smiled at Warren and Cole in his charming way. “Enough,” he told them both, “to get to Rome, if you can find a ship to carry us.”
Which brought them back to business.
In this, Mr. Warren deferred to his friend, who seemed better acquainted with all of the various ships in the harbor.
“I know a man, Vilere—a very good man, comes from Avignon, who is an officer of the galleys, and could possibly arrange—”
MacPherson cut him off. “No galleys.”
“Ah. Well then. I would not send you by felucca at this time of year, their crews are not so seaworthy and often unreliable, and you have women with you…” He thought for a moment. “There’s one ship might suit you quite well, though the captain’s a bit of a rogue.” To MacPherson, he said, “Have you any objection to sailing with Spaniards?”
“None.”
“Right. Let me see, then, what I can arrange for you.”
Thomson and Warren and Cole shook hands all round and Warren in parting asked once more, as though to be sure, “So you do not need money?”
Thomson assured him he did not. “But when I return, if I have any business, sir, rest assured you’ll be the first man to know it.”
The young banker found this of interest. “And when do you plan to return?”
But his clerk, having finished his errand, chose that exact moment to enter the room. Thomson said in a jovial tone, “Very soon, I should think, for we plan but to travel a few leagues from town and return hence as soon as we can before Easter week.”
Men and their secrets, thought Mary, as she rose to follow MacPherson and Thomson out into the sunlit street. Men and their lies. And yet…
She lifted her chin and the Scotsman looked down at her as she asked bluntly, “Was this the plan from the beginning, to take us to Rome?”
He replied, “Would it matter?”
To no one, she reasoned, except very possibly her. Nicolas had said, straight out, if anybody wanted something from their father, they would have to go to Rome to ask him. And perhaps her brother had been speaking more to her than to her cousin, when he’d said that. Just perhaps, this had been Nicolas’s and her father’s own design from the beginning. Mary dared to let a tiny seed of hope begin to try its roots within her at the thought that maybe, as she’d called to Frisque that morning, so her father was now calling her. And asking her to come to him.
* * *
That seed had grown yet larger by the afternoon, when Mr. Cole sent word for them to meet him at the quayside and be ready to depart.
“A ship,” said Effie, with a note of resignation in her voice. “It would be.”
Mary, neatly wrapping up her journal, felt deep sympathy. “It was too cruel of them,” she said, “to send you on this journey when you suffer so from motion.”