Chapter 11
Warnings
What with one thing and another, it hadn’t occurred to Grey to wonder what his mother’s response to his misadventure might be. If it had, he might have expected her to peer at him in sympathy, pour him a stiff drink, and leave for a play. He would not have expected her to go white as a sheet. Not with fear for his well being—with anger.
“The bastards!” she said, in a tone barely above a whisper—a sign of great fury. “How dare they?”
“Rather easily, I’m afraid.” Grey was sitting—gingerly—in her boudoir, examining himself in her enameled hand glass. The apothecary had been right about the leeching; while his jaw was sore, the swelling was much reduced, and only a faint blue tinge of new bruising showed, circling one eye and extending up into his temple. There was a cut on his cheek-bone, though, and a trickle of blood had run down his neck onto his neckcloth and the neckband of his shirt. There was also a sizable rent in his coat, to say nothing of the filth from rolling in the alley; Tom would be annoyed, too.
“Did you recognize them?” The countess’s hands had been clenching a chair back. The first shock receding, she let go, though her fingers curled convulsively, wanting to strangle something. Hal got his temper from their mother.
“No,” he said, laying down the looking glass. “Your ordinary ruffians. It’s quite all right, Mother. They didn’t even manage to rob me.” He pulled the cuff of his coat down a bit, hiding his right hand, which, not having been leeched, looked much worse than his face.
Her lips pressed together, nostrils flaring. Motherlike, unable to attack the miscreants who had harmed her offspring, her annoyance was shifting itself to said offspring.
“Whatever were you doing in Seven Dials, John?”
He started to raise an eyebrow at her, but it hurt and he desisted.
“Hal and I took Percy Wainwright to the salle des armes. He and I were on our way to luncheon.”
“Oh, Percy Wainwright was with you? Was he hurt?” Her fair brows drew together in concern.
“No.”
“I swear I shall be relieved when you all are off to Germany,” she said tartly. “I shall worry about you much less, if you’re merely standing in front of cannon batteries and charging redoubts full of grenadiers.”
He laughed at that, though carefully because of his ribs, and stood up, also carefully. Doing so, he felt a small hard object in his pocket, and was reminded.
“Father was a Freemason, was he not?”
“Yes,” she said, and a fresh uneasiness seemed to flare in her eyes. “Why?”
“I only wondered—could this be his ring?” He fished it out and handed it to her. He might have picked it up carelessly in the library; there was a tray of the duke’s small clutter, kept there by way of memoriam, though he did not recall ever seeing a ring among those objects.
He saw her eyes flick toward the little inlaid secretary that stood in the corner of the room, before she reached for the ring. Which told him that the duke had indeed had such a ring—and that she had kept it. So much for the dead past, he thought cynically.
She tried the ring gingerly on her left hand; it hung loose as a quoit on a stick, and she shook her head, dropping it back into his palm.
“No, it’s much too big. Where did you get it? And why did you think it might be your father’s?”
“No particular reason,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t remember where I picked it up.”
“Let me see it again.”
Puzzled, he handed it over, and watched as she turned it to and fro, bringing it to her candlestick in order to see the inside. At last, she shook her head and gave it back.
“No, I don’t know. But…John, if you do recall where you found it, will you tell me?”
“Of course,” he said lightly. “Good night, Mother.” He kissed her cheek and left her, wondering.
He declined Tom’s suggestion of bread and milk in favor of a large whisky—or two—by the library fire, and had just reached a state of reconciliation with the universe when Brunton came to announce that he had a caller.
“I won’t come in.” Percy Wainwright smiled at him from the shadows of the porch. “I’m not fit to be indoors. I only came to bring you this.”
“This” was Grey’s dagger, which Percy put gingerly into his hands. Percy hadn’t been exaggerating about his fitness for civil surroundings; he was wearing rough clothes, much spotted and stained, and he bore about his person a distinct odor of alleyways and refuse.
“I went back to look for it,” he explained. “Luckily, it was under a pile of dead cabbages—sorry about the smell. I thought…you might need it,” he concluded, rather shyly.
Grey would have kissed him, damaged mouth notwithstanding, save for the lurking presence of Brunton in the hall. As it was, all he could do was to press Percy’s hand, hard, in gratitude.
“Thank you. Will I see you tomorrow?”
Percy’s smile glimmered in the dark.
“Oh, yes. Or shall I say, ‘Yes, sir?’ For I believe you’re now my superior officer, aren’t you?”
Grey laughed at that, bruises, bleeding, and his mother’s odd behavior all seeming inconsequent for the moment.
“I suppose so. I’ll arrange a commendation for you in the morning, then.”