“Do something,” Jules said. And it was clear to Gabriel that he must do something, the one and only thing there was to do.

Major Gabriel Villeré offered the officers wine and cigars and a seat by the fire. And while he played host, struggling to maintain a polite, deferential tone, his mind, shocked for once out of lethargy, went to work.

From the veranda, Kit Wyndham watched a feckless Gabriel Villeré move like a puppet from one side of the parlor to another. He looked stunned, as well he should be.

Kit turned away, glad that Thornton had not asked him to take part in the actual capture of the house. Instead he had been assigned responsibility for dealing with the civilians, most specifically the slaves. It was his job to make them comfortable with this rather drastic change in their circumstances. He was to get any information they could provide, and convince them that while they were now free, their services would be greatly appreciated. The quartermaster would have to see to feeding the thousands of men who were coming, and for that he would need the locals. Thornton would expect a proper dinner tonight, and wine, and a fire. He would call the women who served the table servants instead of slaves, but beyond that they would be invisible to him.

There were a dozen slaves, young and old, about half of them the ones who worked in the house and kitchen. None of them, men or women, would meet his eye. Fear, disorientation, confusion. Kit spoke to them in a tone he hoped would strike them as friendly without being coercive. Most probably they wouldn’t trust him anyway, and in that they were right. They had been hearing for a long time about what good things the British would do for them, but what reason did they have to believe those rumors? And if things went badly here after all, they would find themselves returned to their owners, and in worse shape than they had been yesterday.

But he did his best. Kit spoke to the slaves in his own approximation of the local French. He offered them a fair wage for their work, pointed out the quartermaster who would pay them, answered the few subdued questions they asked.

A younger man, heavily muscled and as broad through the chest as a barrel, was the one to ask the inevitable.

“And if you British lose? What happens to us then? Will you take all of us to England and give us places to live and work?”

There was only one possible answer, and Kit gave it. “The Americans can’t stand up to the full force of the British army and navy. You have nothing to worry about.”

Walking away later, Kit hoped the cook and kitchen helpers would not be among the ones who ran off. A dragoon ran up to him, dismayed to find that the slaves had already dispersed.

“I wanted you to ask them where the rest of the horses have been hid.” The invasion forces had only enough horses for the officers; the dragoons, for whom a horse was as basic a piece of equipment as a right arm, had had to come on foot like the infantry. They had been hoping to find mounts on the plantations, but if Villeré was any indication, the dragoons would not be mounted at all for the duration of this campaign.

The dragoons were disappointed, but the rest of the troops were in good spirits. The weather was dry and unusually warm, and there was no sign of resistance.

“Easy pickings,” he heard one man say to another. “By tonight they’ll have finished with the transport and we can march on New Orleans tomorrow.”

After the misery of the journey, it all seemed too easy. A dozen of the Highlanders got the quartermaster’s permission to have a look at the levee, where they promptly stripped down and dove into the Mississippi, muddy and cold as it was.

“Yesterday they couldn’t wait to get out of the wet,” said Quartermaster Surtees to Kit. “Soldiers.” And he shook his head with all the exasperated affection of a father.

Standing on the levee, Kit surveyed the river and the bordering properties. To the north was Denis de la Ronde’s plantation, with a mansion that had no equal in five hundred miles for beauty or graciousness. De la Ronde intended to transform all of southern Louisiana into a new France, and so he had called his home Versailles. Kit had been invited to an evening party there a few weeks ago, and he had danced with de la Ronde’s daughter, Gabriel Villeré’s young wife. A pretty but easily confused young lady, who had been sent away with the other ladies to safety.

He was thinking of that pleasant evening, of the wine and card games and conversation, when Kit heard the commotion from the house. He turned in time to see Gabriel Villeré leaping a fence to tear across the fields, one of his dogs running at his heels. Muskets had already come up and began to fire, but it seemed that Villeré could move when the need was on him. He disappeared into a swampy area of trees and bushes that separated this property from de la Ronde’s, and a half dozen of the 95th gave chase, only to come back a quarter hour later empty-handed.

“And so he’ll carry the tale to Jackson,” said the quartermaster, who still stood beside Kit. “You’ve seen the man. What will he do? Jump up from his dinner to come wave his sword in our faces?”

And the quartermaster laughed uproariously at the idea of the American military on the offensive. Americans had never been known to attack, not in all the years they had been fighting wars on this continent.

Kit looked out over the troops making themselves at home in the expanse of land between the river and the swamp, and some of the disquiet of the last day came back to him. But he said nothing to the quartermaster, who was still laughing at his own joke as Kit walked away.

At mid-afternoon, Jennet showed up at headquarters. Luke heard her voice in the main office and braced himself for some kind of disturbing news; his wife disliked the army headquarters and would never come here unless truly compelled.