‘You surprise me. Adam usually spends so much time examining his own conscience that he scarcely notices the existence of other people.’ Anna, thus revealing a more astringent mind than Starbuck had expected, nevertheless blushed, as if apologizing for her apparently harsh judgment. ‘My brother is a Faulconer to the core,’ she explained. ‘He is not very practical.’
‘Your father is practical, surely?’
‘He’s a dreamer,’ Anna said, ‘a romantic. He believes that all fine things will come true if we just have enough hope.’
‘And surely this house was not built by mere hopes?’ Starbuck waved toward the generous facade of Seven Springs.
‘You like the house?’ Anna sounded surprised. ‘Mother and I are trying to persuade Father to pull it down and build something altogether grander. Something Italian, perhaps, with columns and a dome? I would like to have a pillared temple on a hill in the garden. Something surrounded by flowers, and very grand.’
‘I think the house is lovely as it is,’ Starbuck said.
Anna made a face to show her disapproval of Starbuck’s taste. ‘Our great-great-grandfather Adam built it, or most of it. He was very practical, but then his son married a French lady and the family blood became ethereal. That’s what mother says. And she’s not strong either, so her blood didn’t help.’
‘Adam doesn’t seem ethereal.’
‘Oh, he is,’ Anna said, then she smiled up at Starbuck. ‘I do so like Northern voices. They sound so much cleverer than our country accents. Would you permit me to paint you? I’m not so good a painter as Ethan, but I work harder at it. You can sit beside the Faulconer River and look melancholy, like an exile beside the waters of Babylon.’
‘You’d like me to hang my harp upon the willows?’ Starbuck jested clumsily.
Anna withdrew her arm and clapped her hands with delight. ‘You will be marvelous company. Everyone else is so dull. Adam is being pious in the North, father is besotted with soldiering, and mother spends all day wrapped in ice.’
‘In ice?’
‘Wenham ice, from your home state of Massachusetts. I suppose, if there’s war, there’ll be no more Wenham ice and we shall have to suffer the local product. But Doctor Danson says the ice might cure mother’s neuralgia. The ice cure comes from Europe, so it must be good.’ Starbuck had never heard of neuralgia, and did not want to inquire into its nature in case it should prove to be one of the vague and indescribable feminine diseases that so often prostrated his mother and elder sister, but Anna volunteered that the affliction was a very modern one and was constituted by what she described as ‘facial headaches.’ Starbuck murmured his sympathy. ‘But father thinks she makes it up to annoy him,’ Anna continued in her timid and attenuated voice.
‘I’m sure that can’t be true,’ Starbuck said.
‘I think it might,’ Anna said in a very sad voice. ‘I sometimes wonder if men and women always irritate each other?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This isn’t a very cheerful conversation, is it?’ Anna asked rather despairingly and in a tone that suggested all her conversations became similarly bogged down in melancholy. She seemed to sink further into despair with every second, and Starbuck was remembering Belvedere Delaney’s malicious tales of how intensely his half-brother disliked this girl, but how badly Ridley needed her dowry. Starbuck hoped those tales were nothing more than malicious gossip, for it would be a cruel world, he thought, that could victimize a girl as fey and tremulous as Anna Faulconer. ‘Did Father really say the petticoats were for me?’ she suddenly asked.
‘Your uncle said as much.’
‘Oh, Pecker,’ Anna said, as if that explained everything.
‘It seemed a very strange request,’ Starbuck said gallantly.
‘So much is strange these days,’ Anna said hopelessly, ‘and I daren’t ask Father for an explanation. He isn’t happy, you see.’
‘No?’
‘It’s poor Ethan’s fault. He couldn’t find Truslow, you see, and Father has set his heart on recruiting Truslow. Have you heard about Truslow?’
‘Your uncle told me about him, yes. He made Truslow sound rather fearful.’
‘But he is fearful. He’s frightful!’ Anna stopped to look up into Starbuck’s face. ‘Shall I confide in you?’
Starbuck wondered what new horror story he was about to hear of the dreaded Truslow. ‘I should be honored by your confidence, Miss Faulconer,’ he said very formally.
‘Call me Anna, please. I want to be friends. And I tell you, secretly, of course, that I don’t believe poor Ethan went anywhere near Truslow’s lair. I think Ethan is much too frightened of Truslow. Everyone’s frightened of Truslow, even Father, though he says he isn’t.’ Anna’s soft voice was very portentous. ‘Ethan says he went up there, but I don’t know if that’s true.’
‘I’m sure it is.’
‘I’m not.’ She put her arm back into Starbuck’s elbow and walked on. ‘Maybe you should ride up to find Truslow, Mister Starbuck?’
‘Me?’ Starbuck asked in horror.
A sudden animation came into Anna’s voice. ‘Think of it as a quest. All my father’s young knights must ride into the mountains and dare to challenge the monster, and whoever brings him back will prove himself the best, the noblest and the most gallant knight of all. What do you think of that idea, Mister Starbuck? Would you like to ride on a quest?’
‘I think it sounds terrifying.’
‘Father would appreciate it if you went, I’m sure,’ Anna said, but when Starbuck made no reply she just sighed and pulled him toward the side of the house. ‘I want to show you my three dogs! You’re to say that they’re the prettiest pets in all the world, and after that we shall fetch the painting basket and we’ll go to the river and you can hang that shabby hat on the willows. Except we don’t have willows, at least I don’t think we have. I’m not good at trees.’
But there was to be no meeting with the three dogs, nor any painting expedition, for the front door of Seven Springs suddenly opened and Colonel Faulconer stepped into the sunlight.
Anna gasped with admiration. Her father was dressed in one of his new uniforms and looked simply grand. He looked, indeed, as though he had been born to wear this uniform and to lead free men across green fields to victory. His gray frock coat was thickly brocaded with gilt and yellow lace that had been folded and woven to make a broad hem to the coat’s edges, while the sleeves were richly embroidered with intricately looped braid that climbed from the broad cuffs to above the elbows. A pair of yellow kidskin gloves was tucked into his shiny black belt, beneath which a tasseled red silk sash shimmered. His top boots gleamed, his saber’s scabbard was polished to mirror brightness and the yellow plume on his cocked hat stirred in the small warm wind. Washington Faulconer was quite plainly delighted with himself as he moved to watch his reflection in one of the tall windows. ‘Well, Anna?’ he asked.
‘It’s wonderful, Father!’ Anna said with as much animation as Starbuck suspected her capable. Two black servants had come from the house and nodded their agreement.
‘I expected the uniforms yesterday, Nate.’ Faulconer half-asked and half-accused Starbuck with the statement.
‘Shaffer’s was a day late, sir’—the lie came smoothly—‘but they were most apologetic.’
‘I forgive them, considering the excellency of their tailoring.’ Washington Faulconer could hardly take his eyes from his reflection in the window glass. The gray uniform was set off with golden spurs, gilded spur chains and golden scabbard