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partner.” Silence answered him for long minutes.
    â€œHe’s a member of the Society,” Owen admitted at last. “Dedicated to our principles. He wanted to found a college, but this is better. It will have more impact.”
    Thomas hunched lower in his Chesterfield. All the problems of working with Owen came down to his Fabian Society and its so-called principles. The man was an avowed atheist, an advocate of free love and common property. As were all his closest associates.
    Better, however, to consort with an honest atheist than that lying, murdering papist king. Mr. Owen had denied again and again having any desire to hinder the teaching of the Gospel. Thomas believed him. And he knew exactly who’d be capable of holding the man to his word.
    On the pavement before his lodgings Thomas bade his partner a hasty farewell, agreeing hurriedly to meet with him again the next day and cross off more logistical details from a list that already seemed endless. Mrs. Swain lay in wait for him in the front parlor. She helped him out of his coat while talking gaily of nothing of consequence, but, noting his distraction, soon left. When he announced he had “something to write” she happily provided him with an extra candle and went off to her bed, probably congratulating herself on contributing her mite to the creation of a masterful speech or sermon.
    But it was, again, a letter Thomas composed on his much-employed traveling desk, as in Boma. Not, this time, an open letter to a monarch to be published, but a private letter to a widow woman. A comrade in the armies of Christ.
    â€œDear Martha,” he began, and went on for an hour, covering five pages and crossing them, explaining the situation in full. Telling her how and why their colonial enterprise had suddenly widened in scope, with their partner providing the additional funds this would necessitate. Asking her to undertake to manage their affairs so that this imbalance in the colony’s financial underpinnings would not disadvantage them. Exhorting her to heighten her watchfulness in all to do with these new and worldly allies.

 
    On Board White Bird, June 1894
    Lisette Toutournier sailed with the Albins to their new African home as a matter of course, to outward appearances merely the children’s governess. Her attachment to Laurie, never robust, had weakened over the years, but that to Daisy became ever stronger. And once aboard White Bird she found she also loved the ship: its stacks and railings, decks and companionways. Loved its deep, sleek secrets, black and shining with grease, throbbing with power.
    On the long voyage to Freetown the sailors had come to respect Lisette and indulge her open admiration of White Bird, though at first, of course, she was suspect, being a woman, and young, and beautiful. But eventually—some time between Funchal and the Canary Islands, she believed—they came around. They accepted her. It helped that she was never in the slightest ill, and that she wore trousers, and shoes of sensibleness, or sometimes no footgear at all. That she tanned in the fierce sun instead of burning—thanks to her half-Negro grand-père, but they would not hear of him from her—did no harm either. Nor did she complain at any time of the warm, insistent rain.
    Daisy had accompanied her husband Laurie Albin and his “secretary” Ellen ashore to meet with Mr. Owen, and she’d brought Laurie Junior along with her as his birthday treat. One would think that the older children would have tired by now of shipboard life and be aching also to disembark, but here they sat, ranged round her like so many pirates awaiting orders from their chief. George had even gone so far as to tie one of Lily’s scarves around his head. Rosalie, who had earlier suffered much from the sun, had borrowed her mother’s best hat, without, Lisette was certain, either Ellen’s or Daisy’s permission. As the