Darius Boland’s face took on a strange look. Here was an intended insult to Dyck Calhoun. Right well the governor knew their relative social positions. Darius pulled at the hair on his chin reflectively. “Yes, I’ve drunk his liquor, but not as you mean, your honour. He’d drink with any man at all: he has no nasty pride. But he doesn’t drink with me.”
“Modest enough he is to be a good republican, eh, Boland?”
“Since your honour puts it so, it must stand. I’ll not dispute it, me being what I am and employed by whom I am.”
Darius Boland had a gift of saying the right thing in the right way, and he had said it now. The governor was not so dense as to put this man against him, for women were curious folk. They often attach importance to the opinion of a faithful servant and let it weigh against great men. He had once lost a possible fortune by spurning a little terrier of the daughter of the Earl of Shallow, and the lesson had sunk deep into his mind. He was high-placed, but not so high as to be sure of success where a woman was concerned, and he had made up his mind to capture Sheila Llyn, if so be she could be caught flying, or settled, or sleeping.
“Ah, well, he has drunk with worse men than republicans. Boland. He was a common sailor. He drank what was given him with whom it chanced in the fo’castle.”
Darius sniffed a little, and kept his head. “But he changed all that, your honour, and gave sailormen better drink than they ever had, I hear. In Jamaica he treats his slaves as though they were men and not Mohicans.”
“Well, he’ll have less freedom in future, Boland, for word has come from London that he’s to keep to his estate and never leave it.”
Darius looked concerned, and his dry face wrinkled still more. “Ah, and when was this word come, your honour?”
“But yesterday, Boland, and he’ll do well to obey, for I have no choice but to take him in hand if he goes gallivanting.”
“Gallivanting—here, in Jamaica! Does your honour remember where we are?”