'What I don't understand,' he frowns on the coach ride back 'is why the King's protection is so important.'
Pocahontas doesn't want to answer. Her head has started hurting.
'I mean,' he is annoyed, frustrated, she can hear in in the way he articulates the words, 'it will only be a piece of paper. A diplomatic gesture. But it won't stop this man, if the stories Smith and his daughter tell are true. It won't do any real good.'
But they will have something. Some legal protection. She thinks. It would make taking that girl tantamount to kidnapping a royal, or an aristocrat. A deed in direct contradiction to the wishes of the English monarch, and off putting for not only the Marquis, but for his country – large and wild as it is. So if Meg is taken, if he succeeds in stealing her, he will be fighting this land and that. And he is not so powerful that he can afford to fall out of grace was the Tsar.
Or at least, this is what John Smith had told her.
And her husband must know it too – after all, he was a diplomat himself, once upon a time. So he's asking because he is jealous.
The thought makes her swallow back guilt, and so she catches his hand, holds it tenderly.
Thomas sits opposite them, gazing out of the window. He does not acknowledge his parents, more concerned with the drumming of dark grey rain outside.
They eventually arrive back at the house, and she disappears up to her bedroom, combs out and braids her hair – she doesn't want dinner, thank you, she's very tired. Then Pocahontas climbs into the large silk sheeted bed. Curtains hang around it – she draws them, letting the heavy velvet fall round her, creating a warm, dark nest of sorts. The color is wine red.
She has done her duty. For her friend and the girl her son loves. She has done all she ought to. All she should.