Chapter 5
Genius and Sub-Genius
Grey noted at once that Percy was not entirely comfortable.
His color was high, and while he handed his cloak to the butler with aplomb, he looked quickly round the drawing room to which they were taken, as though searching for acquaintance, then glanced back at Grey uncertainly. His face brightened, though, as he spotted their hostess, and he hastened forward, Grey in his wake.
He bowed to Lady Jonas, and introduced Grey to her; she greeted them kindly, but with that air of distraction that attends a hostess in search of more-distinguished guests. They kissed her hand in turn and retired to the drinks table.
“You don’t do this often, do you?” Grey murmured to Percy.
“Does it show?” Wainwright cast him a glance of half-comic alarm, and he laughed.
“Not at all,” he assured Percy. “It is only that no one save Lady Jonas has spoken to you since we entered. How do you come to know her?”
Wainwright shrugged a little, looking embarrassed.
“She stepped on my foot at a ball. At Sir Richard Joffrey’s house—the general had taken me there to meet Colonel Quarry. But Lady Jonas apologized most gracefully, asked my name—she knew the general, of course—and ended by inviting me to her salon, with any friend I might choose to bring. She said”—Percy blushed, avoiding Grey’s eye—“that beautiful boys were always welcome.”
“I have found that generally to be the case in society,” Grey said, tactfully ignoring both the blush and the implied compliment. “Regardless of sex.” He nodded at the Honorable Helene Rowbotham, whose swanlike neck and doelike eyes were exciting their usual admiration near the window where she had placed herself so as to take best advantage of the pale winter sun.
“On the other hand,” he said lightly, “a party at which the guests are all of the beautiful persuasion tends to be dull indeed, as they have no conversation that does not pertain to themselves. A successful gathering requires a number of the ill-favored but clever. The beautiful are but ornaments—desirable, but dispensable.”
“Indeed,” Percy said dryly. “And in which camp do you place yourself here? Beautiful and dull, or homely and clever?”
“Oh,” Grey said lightly, and touched Percy’s wrist, “I’ll be wherever you are…Brother.”
The blush, which had receded, surged back full force. Wainwright had no chance to reply, though, before Grey perceived Lady Beverley drifting toward them, an intentness in her eye at sight of Percy.
“Light-frigate off the starboard bow,” he said under his breath. Percy frowned in bewilderment, but then saw the direction of his glance.
“Really? She looks most respectable,” Percy murmured, he having evidently spent enough time with General Stanley in military circles as to have acquired familiarity with such terms as “light-frigate” for a woman of easy virtue.
“Don’t go into an alcove with her,” Grey murmured back, already nodding and smiling at the approaching lady. “She’ll have her hand in your breeches before you can say—Lady Beverley! Your servant, madam—may I present you my new stepbrother, Percival Wainwright?”
Seeing the hint of hesitation in Percy’s eye, he grasped Lady Beverley’s trailing hand and kissed it, thus signaling to Percy that, yes, she was married, reputation notwithstanding, then gracefully relinquished the appendage to Wainwright for the bestowal of his own homage.
“Mr. Wainwright.” Lady Beverley gave him a look of approval, then turned the force of her not inconsiderable charm on Grey. “We are obliged to you, Lord John! Monstrous kind of you, to bring such an ornament to decorate our dull society. Do come and have a glass of punch with me, Mr. Wainwright, and tell me what you think of Mr. Garrick’s new role—you will have seen it, I’m sure. For myself…”
Before either man could draw breath to answer, she had got Percy’s hand firmly trapped between her elbow and her yellow silk bodice, and was towing him purposefully toward the refreshment table, still talking.
Wainwright cast Grey a wide-eyed look, and Grey sketched a small salute in return, suppressing a smile. At least Wainwright had been warned. And if he took care to keep Lady Beverley out in the public view, she would be good company. Already she had drawn him into the circle around the guest of honor, which she cleft like the Red Sea, and was introducing him to the French philosopher.
He relaxed a bit, seeing that Percy seemed able to hold his own, and deliberately turned his back, not to embarrass his new relation with undue scrutiny.
“Lord John!” A clear voice hailed him, and he looked round to find his friend Lucinda, Lady Joffrey, smiling at him, a small leather-bound book in one hand. “How do you do, my dear?”
“Excellently well, I thank you.” He made to kiss her hand, but she laughed and drew him in, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek instead.
“I crave a favor, if you please,” she whispered in his ear, and came down on her heels, looking up at him, expectant of his consent.
“You know I can deny you nothing,” he said, smiling. She reminded him always of a partridge, small, neat, and slightly plump, with a kind, soft eye. “What is your desire, Lady Joffrey? A cup of punch? Sardines on toast? Or had you in mind something more in the way of apes, ivory, and peacocks?”
“It may well be pearls before swine,” she said, dimpling, and handed him the book. “But the fact of the matter is that I have a…relation…who has written some verses—negligible, I am sure, but perhaps not without a certain charm. I thought to present them to Monsieur Diderot…” She cast a glance toward the window where the distinguished man of letters held court, then turned back, a faint blush mantling her cheeks.
“But I find my nerve fails me.”
Grey gave her a look of patent disbelief. Small and demure she might be in appearance; by temperament she had the guile of a serpent and the tenacity of a sticking plaster.
“Really,” she insisted, both dimple and blush growing deeper. She glanced round to be sure they were not overheard, and leaning close, whispered, “Have you by chance heard of a novel entitled Les Bijoux Indiscrets?”
“I have, Lady Joffrey,” he said, with mock severity, “and I am shocked to the core of my being to discover that a woman of your character should be acquainted with such a scandalous volume. Have you read it?” he inquired, dropping the pose.
“La, everyone’s read it,” she said, relaxing into comfortable scorn. “Your mother sent it to me last year.”
“Indeed.” He was not surprised; his mother would read anything, and maintained friendships with several similarly indiscriminate ladies, who kept up a constant exchange of books—most of which would have shocked their husbands, had those worthy gentlemen ever bothered to inquire about their wives’ pastimes.
“Have you read it?” she asked.
He shook his head. Les Bijoux Indiscrets was an erotic novel, written some years before by M. Diderot for Madeleine le Puisieux, his mistress at the time. It had been published in Holland, and for a time, there had been a mania in England for smuggled copies. He’d seen the book, of course, but had done no more than flip through an illustrated copy, looking for the pictures—which were indifferently executed. Perhaps the text was better.
“Prude,” she said.
“Quite. Am I to infer that these…verses…share something of the sentiments of that particular volume?” He weighed the book in his hand. It was both small and slender, befitting poetry.
“I believe they were inspired by certain of the events depicted therein,” Lady Joffrey said, circumspect. “The, um, author of the verses wished to present them to Monsieur Diderot as an acknowledgment of the inspiration, I believe—a tribute, if you will.”
He raised a brow at her, and opened the cover. Certain Verses Upon the Subject of—
“Jesus,” he said, involuntarily, and shut the book. He immediately opened it again, cautiously, as though afraid it might spit at him.
By an Admirer of the Works of that Urgent Genius, Monsieur Denis Diderot, who in Humility stiles himself “Sub-Genius.”
“You didn’t write them yourself, did you?” he asked, glancing up. Lady Joffrey’s mouth fell open, and he smiled. “No, of course not. My apologies.”
He thumbed slowly through the book, pausing to read here and there. The verses were actually quite competent, he thought—even good, in spots. Though the material…
“Yes,” he said, closing the book and clearing his throat. “I see why you might hesitate to present this personally—he is a Frenchman, though I believe he’s said to be quite faithful to his present mistress. I suppose you hadn’t looked at the contents before coming here?”
She shook her head, making the pheasant’s feathers she wore in her powdered hair sweep across her shoulder.
“No. He—the relation I spoke of—had brought it to me early in the week, but I’d had no chance to look at it. I read it in the carriage on the way—and then, of course, was at a loss what to do, until most fortunately I saw you.” She looked over her shoulder at the group by the window, then back at Grey. “I did promise to deliver it. Will you? Please?”
“I don’t know why your husband does not beat you regularly,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Or at least keep you locked up safely at home. Has he the slightest idea…?”
“Sir Richard is a most accomplished diplomat,” she replied with complacence. “He has a great facility for not knowing things that it is expedient not to know.”
“I daresay,” Grey replied dryly. “Speaking of knowing—do I know your relation?”
“Why, I am sure I could not say, I have so many,” she answered blandly. “But speaking of relations—I hear that you are to acquire a new brother? I am told that he is amazing handsome to look at.”
Hearing Percival Wainwright referred to as his brother gave him a slightly odd feeling, as though he might in fact be contemplating incest. He ignored this, though, and nodded toward the table.
“You may judge of that for yourself; there he stands.”
Wainwright had moved away from the throng around the philosopher, and was now surrounded, Grey was pleased to see, by a small group of his own, both men and women, all seeming much amused by his conversation—particularly Lady Beverley, who hung upon both his words and his arm. Wainwright was telling some story, his face alight, and even across the room, Grey felt the warmth of his presence. As though he sensed their scrutiny, Percy glanced suddenly in their direction, and shot Grey a smile of such delight in his surroundings that Grey smiled back, delighted in turn to see him manage so well.
Lucinda Joffrey emitted a hum of approval.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “And quite good style, too. Did you dress him?” she inquired.
No, but I should like very much to undress him. He cleared his throat.
“No, he has excellent taste of his own.”
“And the money to support it?”
He was not offended. A man’s means were generally of more interest than his face, and everyone would be wondering the same thing of a newcomer—though not everyone would ask so bluntly. Lucinda, though, did have a great many relations, of whom at least half were female, and felt it her moral duty to help her sisters and cousins to good marriages.
“Unfortunately not. His father—you collect he is the general’s stepson?—was a minister of some kind. Family poor as church mice, I gather. The general has settled a small sum upon him, but he has no property.”
Lucinda hummed again, but with less approval.
“Looking for a rich wife, then, is he?” she said, with a degree of resignation. She came from an old and estimable family, but one without wealth.
“Early days for that, surely.” Grey thought he had spoken lightly, but she gave him a sharp look.
“Ho,” she said. “Does he fancy himself in love with someone unsuitable?”
Grey felt as though she had pushed him suddenly in the chest. He had forgotten just how acute she was. Sir Richard Joffrey was indeed a good diplomat—but no little degree of his success was the result of his wife’s social connexions and her ability to ferret out things that it was expedient to know.
“If so, he has not told me,” Grey said, achieving, he thought, a good simulation of indifference. “Have you met the great man yourself? Will I present you?”
“Oh, Monsieur Diderot?” Lucinda turned to eye the guest of honor speculatively. “I did meet him, some years ago in Paris. A very witty man, though I think I should not care to be married to him.”
“Because he keeps a mistress?”
She looked surprised, then waved her fan in dismissal.
“Oh, no. The difficulty with witty people is that they feel compelled to exhibit their wit all the time—which is most tedious over the breakfast table. Sir Richard,” she said with satisfaction, “is not witty at all.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t do in a diplomat,” Grey agreed. “Will I fetch you some refreshment?”
Lady Joffrey assenting, he made his way through the crowd, the book she had given him still in hand. The room buzzed with conversation and the excitement of a successful salon, but a freak of sound brought him Diderot’s voice clearly—nasal, like all Frenchmen, but rich and pleasant. He seemed to be speaking of his wife.
“She has conceived the idea, you see, that all novels are vulgar trash, and desires me to read to her only material of a spiritually uplifting sort—commentaries upon the Bible, the works of—haha!—Burke and the like.”
A number of his listeners laughed with him, though Edmund Burke was popular.
“So,” the warm voice went on, audibly amused, “I have taken to reading her the most ribald stories I can obtain. The value of the lesson is thereby doubled, as she not only hears the stories, but then reports every detail again in horror to her friends!”
A gust of laughter resulted from that, obliging Grey to signal his desire to the servant at the refreshment table, who nodded understanding and gave him a silver cup of punch and a small plate of savories. Balancing these with the book of poetry, he made his way back across the room, only to find Lucinda Joffrey already supplied with refreshment by a new escort, whom he recognized as an influential Member of Parliament.
Lucinda flicked a glance at him over the MP’s shoulder, and made a slight gesture with her fan, which he interpreted as a signal that she was engaged in confidential transaction. He nodded understanding and retreated to a convenient window ledge, where he sat in the shelter of the damask draperies and consumed the savories himself with enjoyment, meanwhile observing the ebb and flow of society.
He had not been in the London tide for some time, and found it pleasant to sit and hear the grossest trivialities mingled with the loftiest of philosophical ideas, and to watch the social commerce being conducted under his nose—matches made and unmade, business connexions forged and uncoupled, favors given, acknowledged, and traded. And politics, of course—always politics—talked to death amidst expressions of outrage or approbation, depending upon the company.
And yet he knew there was real power here, could feel the pulse of it throbbing beneath the chatter and clothes. For most of those present, such salons were what they seemed: a source of entertainment at worst, at best a chance to be seen, perhaps to be taken up and made the vogue of the moment. But in the quiet corners, things were said that had the potential to alter lives—perhaps to affect the course of history.
Was it in such places that his own parents’ fates had been sealed? It was at an evening musicale that his mother, a young widow, had been introduced to his father, he knew. Why had he been there? Gerard Grey had no ear for music. Had he come for the sake of politics and met love unaware? Or had his mother been part of it, even then?
He’d heard the story of his parents’ meeting often as a child; it had been at her brother’s house. His mother had three brothers, and a great quantity of ill-defined cousins, half cousins, and persons who were no blood relation but held the status of brothers, having been fostered by the family in that peculiar custom of the Scottish aristocracy.
One uncle was dead now, another living in exile in France. The third had retreated to his Border fortress, far from the public eye. Some cousins had survived the scandal, others had not. Politics was a risky game, and the stakes were high—sometimes mortal.
He felt the shiver of a goose crossing his grave, and shook it off, quaffing the punch in one swallow. He hadn’t thought of these things in years, deliberately. But it was his family history; Percy should be told, as much for his own safety as anything else, if he was to move in society—and plainly he wished to. If there was a public connexion between himself and Grey…Some people had long memories.
He scanned the faces of the crowd, but luckily saw no one against whom Percy need be warned just yet.
Rising from his hiding place, he nearly collided with Diderot, heading purposefully for the pissoirs behind the screen at the end of the room.
“Your pardon, Monsieur.” They had clutched each other’s arms to keep their feet, smiled and spoke together, then laughed.
The philosopher’s face gleamed with sweat, and he mopped carelessly at his forehead with a sleeve. Grey pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to offer it, and felt something fall at his feet.
“Ah.” He stooped to pick it up. “Permettez-moi, Monsieur. Un petit cadeau—pour Madame votre épouse.”
Diderot’s brows rose a little as he accepted both handkerchief and book; he dabbed absently at his cheeks as he flipped open the book with his thumb, read the title page, and broke into a most infectious grin, no less charming for a missing tooth.
“Your servant, sir,” he said. “My wife will be most obliged to you, Monsieur!” With a wave of the hand, he strode off, the open book still in his hand, and a moment later, wild peals of laughter came from behind the ornamental screen.
Heads were beginning to turn in Grey’s direction, and he realized that Percy Wainwright had come up beside him, looking curious.
“Whatever did you give him?”
“Ah…” It dawned upon Grey that in his haste to accomplish his errand, he had neglected to inform M. Diderot that he was not himself the author of the verses, which were at the moment causing a murmur of baffled amusement to sweep through the room, people sniggering faintly from sympathy, though quite ignorant of the cause.
He could not in countenance join M. Diderot to explain, not with all eyes fixed upon that end of the room—Diderot was now loudly declaiming one of the verses, evidently for the edification of another gentleman whose head Grey briefly glimpsed above the edge of the screen. Ripples of outright laughter were running through the room, and Grey caught sight of Lucinda Joffrey, open fan pressed over her mouth, eyes wide in what might be hilarity or horror. He didn’t wish to find out which.
“Let’s go.” He seized Percy by the arm, and with the barest of bows to Lady Jonas, they made a hurried escape.
Outside, it had begun to snow in earnest. They stopped, breathless, to struggle into their greatcoats and cloaks in the shelter of the trees at the edge of Hyde Park.
“I had no idea, Lord John.” Percy Wainwright was red-cheeked with cold and laughter. “I knew you for a man of wit, but not of letters. The subject matter, though…”
“You cannot possibly think I wrote that! And for God’s sake, call me John,” he added.
Percy looked at him, snow spangling his dark hair—for he had lost most of his powder in the heat and crush of the salon—and gave him a smile of surpassing sweetness.
“John, then,” he said softly.
It was well on to evening. Candlelight glowed from the windows of the houses across the street, and the air was full of mystery and excitement, white flakes pelting down in utter silence, so quickly hiding the cobbled streets and leafless trees and the commonplace filth of London. Despite the cold, he felt warmth pulsing through him; did it show? Grey wondered.
“It is early,” he said, looking down as he brushed a few flakes of snow from his hat. “What would you say to a supper at the Beefsteak, perhaps a hand or two of cards? Or if you are so inclined, there is a new play…”
Glancing shyly up, he saw Percy’s face fall.
“I should like it of all things. But the general has engaged us to dine with Colonel Benham; I cannot beg off, as it is on my account.”
“No, of course,” Grey said hurriedly, unreasonably disappointed. “Another time—”
“Tomorrow?” Percy’s eyes met his, direct. “Perhaps…in my rooms? I live very plainly, I fear. Still, it is…” Grey saw Percy’s throat move as he swallowed. “It is…quiet. Our conversation would be undisturbed.”
The generalized warmth Grey had been feeling coalesced quite suddenly, low in his abdomen.
“That would be—oh, damn!”
“You have suddenly recalled another engagement?” Percy cocked a brow, with a crooked smile. “I am not surprised; I should imagine you are in great demand, socially.”
“Hardly that,” Grey assured him. “No, it’s only that I must leave in the morning for the Lake District. The funeral of a—of a friend.” Even as he said it, he was thinking how he might delay his departure—surely a day would make no difference? He might make up the time on the road.
He wanted very urgently to stay; imagined that he could feel the heat of Percy’s body, even across the space of snowy air between them. And yet…better, surely, if they had time. This was not some stranger—or rather, he was, but a stranger who was about to become part of Grey’s family, and whom he hoped might be a friend; not some attractive, anonymous body whom he would never see again. He wished very much to do the thing—but even more, to do it properly.
“I must go,” he repeated, reluctantly. “I regret it exceedingly. But I will, of course, be back in good time for the wedding.”
Percy looked searchingly at him for a moment, then gave him the faintest smile and lifted his hand. His bare fingers touched Grey’s cheek, cold and fleeting.
“Godspeed, then,” he said. “John.”
Could be worse, he reflected. Percy Wainwright’s unavailability meant that his own evening was free. Which in turn meant that he could go and beard Hal now, rather than in the morning, and thus not delay his departure for Helwater. If the snow kept pelting down like this, he might not make it out of London in any case.
He turned into the park, head bent against the blowing snow. Lady Jonas’s house lay near the parade ground, just past the Grosvenor Gate, while the Greys’ family manor, Argus House, was nearly diagonal from it, on the edge of the park near the barracks. It was nearly a mile across open ground, without the shelter of buildings to break the wind, but faster than going round by the road. And his blood was sufficiently warm with wine and excitement as to save him freezing to death.
The memory of the pleasure of Percy Wainwright’s company—and speculations based on the furtherance of their acquaintance—were nearly enough to distract him from the prospect of the impending conversation with Hal—but not quite.
Reliving the old scandals leading to his father’s death for Percy had been painful, but in the way that lancing an abscess is painful; he felt surprisingly the better for it. Only with the lancing did he realize how deeply and how long the thing had festered in him.
The feeling of relief now emboldened him. He was no longer a twelve-year-old boy, after all, to be protected or lied to for his own good. Whatever secret was sticking in Hal’s craw now, he could bloody well cough it up.
The scent of smoke cut through the air, acrid and heartening with its promise of heat. Surprised, he looked for the source, and made out a faint glow in the gathering dark. There were few people in the park—most of the poor who scraped a living begging or stealing near the park had gone to shelter in alleyways and night cellars, crowding into filthy boozing kens or garrets if they had a penny to spare, huddling in church porches or under walls if they had not. But who in his right mind would camp in the open during a snowstorm?
He altered his path enough to investigate, and found the glow came from a clay firepot burning in the lee of a crude lean-to, propped against a tree. The lean-to was deserted—was, in fact, too small to shelter anything larger than a dog. He had no more than an instant to think this odd, when instinct made him turn and look behind.
There were two of them, one with a club, the other unarmed.
Stocky shapes, black and ragged, hunched under split burlap sacks that covered heads and shoulders, hiding their faces.
“Stand and deliver!” said a hoarse Irish voice.
“Else we squash yer head in like a rotten turnip!” said another just like it.
He hadn’t worn a sword to the salon. He did have his accustomed dagger, though, worn beneath his waistcoat.
“Bugger off,” he said briefly, unbuttoning his coat and producing this. He made small circles with the blade, the metal gleaming dull in what little light there was.
A dagger was not the weapon of choice when facing someone armed with a club, but it was what he had. He backed slowly, jabbing the blade at them, hoping to acquire enough distance to turn and run before they charged him.
To his surprise, they seemed turned to stone at his words.
“It’s him, so ’tis!” one of them hissed to the other. “The major!”
“O’Higgins?” he said, straightening in disbelief. “O’Higgins!” he bellowed. But they had fled, uttering Irish blasphemies that floated back to him through the snow.
He replaced the dagger and rebuttoned his greatcoat, fumbling a bit, his fingers shaking a little from the shock of the encounter.
The bloody O’Higgins brothers. Grossly misnamed by their pious mother for a pair of archangels, their baptismal names of Raphael and Michael shortened for common use to Rafe and Mick. Not twins, but so similar in appearance that they often masqueraded as each other in order to escape trouble. And worked in concert to get into it.
He was morally sure they were deserters from the Irish Brigade, but the recruiting sergeant had given them their shillings and their uniforms before Grey had set eyes on them. They weren’t the worst of soldiers, though given to more alarming varieties of free enterprise than most.
He squinted through the gloom in the direction they had taken. Sure enough, Hyde Park barracks lay that way, though he couldn’t see the buildings through the trees, dark as it was by now. At a guess, the O’Higginses had come to dice and drink with friends quartered there—or to attend some social event such as a cockfight—and realizing a sudden need for cash, had improvised in their usual slipshod but imaginative manner.
Shaking his head, he kicked the firepot over and scattered the glowing coals, which hissed red and died in the snow. He’d deal with the O’Higginses in the morning.
By the time he reached the Serpentine road, he was thickly plastered with snow, his blood had chilled appreciably, and he was beginning to regret not having picked the firepot up and taken it with him, the detriment to his appearance notwithstanding. Despite his gloves, his fingers had gone numb, as had his face, and the stiffness of his cheeks reminded him of the man lying on the pavement outside White’s the night before.
The royal swan-keepers had removed the swans for the winter, and the lake was frozen, but not so hard that he would trust his weight to it. Covered with snow, soft patches would be invisible, and all he needed now was to crash through the ice and be submerged in freezing water and decaying duckweed. Sighing, he turned left to make his way round the lake.
Well, perhaps he would remember to ask Hal whether the man’s identity and fate had been determined, once the other matter was settled. And while he was asking…the events of the afternoon had almost made him forget his mother’s odd behavior at breakfast. In the shock of learning of Geneva’s death, he had not at once thought of connecting her reaction to the mention of Jamie Fraser with the appearance of the journal page in Hal’s office, but from his present perspective, it seemed not only likely, but probable.
Had Hal spoken to her already, then? If he had come to Jermyn Street, he had done so very surreptitiously, either late the night before or very early in the morning. No. Not late, or Grey, stewing by his window, would have seen him. And not early; his mother had been in her wrapper at breakfast, blinking and yawning as was her morning habit, clearly fresh from her bed.
Another thought struck him; perhaps his mother had also received a page from his father’s missing journal? Perhaps in the morning post? He slowed a little, boots beginning to crunch in the inch of snow that now covered the ground. Had she opened another letter, after the one from Lady Dunsany? He could not remember; his attention had been focused on Olivia.
The thought of another page filled him with simultaneous alarm and excitement. It would account for his mother’s sudden agitation, and her violent reaction to the mention of his Jacobite prisoner. And if such a thing had arrived this morning, Hal likely didn’t know about it yet.
A surge of blood burnt his frozen cheeks. He brushed away the flakes that clung melting to his lashes, and strode through the deepening snow with renewed determination.
He was the more startled and discomfited to be greeted at the door by Hal’s butler with the news that his brother had gone to Bath.
“He really has,” his sister-in-law assured him, appearing behind the butler. She dimpled at his upraised eyebrow, and flung out a hand to indicate the hall behind her. “Search the house, if you like.”
“What the devil has he gone to Bath for?” Grey demanded irritably. “In this weather?”
“He didn’t tell me,” Minnie said equably. “Do come in, John. You look like a snowman, and you must be wet to the skin.”
“No, I thank you. I must—”
“You must come in and take supper,” she said firmly. “Your nephews miss their uncle John. And your stomach is grumbling; I can hear it from here.”
It was, and he surrendered his wet outer garments to the butler with more gratitude than he cared to show.
Supper was delayed for a bit, though, in favor of a visit to the nursery. Six-year-old Benjamin and five-year-old Adam were so raucously pleased to see their uncle that three-year-old Henry was roused from sleep and shrieked to join the fun. Half an hour of playing knights and dragon—Grey was allowed to be the dragon, which let him roar and breathe fire, but compelled him to die ignominiously on the hearthrug, stabbed through the heart with a ruler—left him in much better temper, but monstrously hungry.
“You are an angel, Minerva,” he said, closing his eyes in order better to appreciate the savory steam rising from the slice of fish pie set in front of him.
“You won’t think so if you call me Minerva again,” she told him, taking her own slice. “I’ve a nice Rhenish to go with that—or will you rather like a French wine?”
Grey’s mouth was full of fish pie, but he did his best to indicate with his eyebrows that he would be pleased to drink whatever she chose. She laughed, and sent the butler to bring both.
Obviously accustomed to men’s needs, she didn’t trouble him with conversation until he had finished the fish pie, a plate of cold ham with pickled onions and gherkins, some excellent cheese, and a large helping of treacle pudding, followed by coffee.
“Minnie, you have saved my life,” he said, after his first sip of the fragrant hot black stuff. “I am your most devoted servant.”
“Are you? Oh, good. Now,” she said, sitting back with an expression of pleased command, “you may tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” she said firmly. “I haven’t been out of the house in a month, your mother and Olivia are too taken up with wedding preparations to visit, and your wretched brother tells me nothing whatever.”
“He doesn’t?” Grey was surprised at that. Minnie was Hal’s second wife—acquired after a decade of widowerhood—and he had always thought the marriage a close one.
“Your brother does, of course, speak to me on occasion,” she admitted, with a small gleam of amusement. “But he subscribes to the peculiar notion that expectant women must be exposed to nothing in the least stimulating. I haven’t heard any decent gossip in weeks, and he hides the newspapers—fearing, no doubt, that I will read some lurid confessional from Tyburn Hill, and the child be born with a noose round its neck.”
Grey laughed—though with the belated memory of the broadsheet in his coat pocket, felt that his brother might be well advised in the matter of newspapers, at least. He obligingly recounted his experiences at Lady Jonas’s salon, though, including the incident of the Sub-Genius’s book of verse, which made Minnie laugh so hard that she choked on her coffee and was obliged to be pounded on the back by the butler.
“Never fear,” she said, wiping her eyes on her napkin. “I shall worm the author’s identity out of Lucinda Joffrey, when next I see her, and let you know. So, you went with the new brother, did you? What is he like?”
“Oh…very pleasant. Well bred, well spoken. What does Hal think of him?” he asked curiously.
Minnie pursed her lips in thought. She was a pretty woman, rather than a beautiful one, but pregnancy agreed with her, lending a shine to mousy hair and a glow to her apple-dumpling cheeks.
“Hmm. He rather approves, though Melton being Melton, he is inclined to watch sharply, lest new brother pocket the teaspoons and put them up the spout to finance his habit of opium-eating and his three mistresses.”
“I see that Hal has waited much too long to forbid you newspapers,” Grey said, very pleased indeed to hear that Hal approved of Percy, in spite of the small awkwardness between them at first meeting. “But you must have had some visitors yourself of late; who has come to call?”
“My grandmother, two aunts, six cousins, a rather nice little woman collecting money for the relief of widows of brickmakers—she actually did pinch one of the teaspoons, but Nortman caught her and shook it out of her, quite fun, such an amazing quantity of things she had stuffed into her bodice.” She dimpled at the butler, who inclined his head respectfully. “Oh, and Captain Bates’s lady came this afternoon. She came to see Hal, of course, but he wasn’t in, and I was bored, so invited her to stay to tea.”
“Captain Bates’s lady?” Grey repeated in surprise. “I had not heard that he was married.”
“He isn’t; she’s his mistress,” she said frankly, then laughed at his expression. “Don’t tell me you are shocked, John?”
He was, but not entirely for the reasons she supposed.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“She told me—more or less.”
“Meaning what?”
Minnie rolled her eyes at him in exaggerated patience.
“Meaning that she was so agitated that she could not contain the purpose of her desire to speak with Melton, and so told me of her concern for the captain—I hear he has been arrested, did you know?”
“I had heard something of the matter.” Grey put aside his cup, waving away Nortman, hovering with the coffeepot. “But—”
“And I knew she must be his mistress and not his wife, because I’d met her before—with her husband.” She took a demure sip of her freshly filled cup, eyes dancing at him.
“Who is…?” he prompted.
“A Mr. Tomlinson. Very wealthy. Member of Parliament for some nasty little borough whose name I forget, in Kent. I met him just the once, at a subscription ball. He’s fat, and hasn’t two words to rub together; little wonder his wife’s taken a lover.”
“Little wonder,” Grey murmured, thinking furiously. Tomlinson, Tomlinson… The name rang no bells for him at all. Could he possibly have anything to do with the conspiracy Hal had told him of?
“What was her concern?” he asked. “And why did she come to Hal?”
“Well, the captain was arrested on Thursday,” Minnie said reasonably. “She naturally wants him released. And evidently Hal is a good friend of the captain’s—not that he’d ever mentioned it to me, of course.”
Not that he mentioned it to me, either, Grey thought cynically. And what is our supposedly shirt-lifting captain doing with a mistress? Hal had certainly not mentioned that aspect of the matter to Minnie, though, and a few more questions failed to elicit anything further in the way of information. Mrs. Tomlinson had been distraught, but hadn’t known anything beyond the fact that Captain Bates had been arrested.
“She doesn’t even know where he is, poor thing.” Minnie’s wide, fair brow crinkled in pity. “Do you think you could find out, John? I could send her a note, at least. Anonymously,” she added. “I suppose Melton wouldn’t like me to sign it.”
“A very reasonable supposition. I’ll see what I can find out tomorrow—oh. I forgot; I am leaving in the morning for the Lake District. But I will see what I can discover before I leave.”
“The Lake District?” Minnie stared at him, then at the closed drapes, where the window glass rattled faintly in the wind behind its layers of lace and blue velvet. “In this weather? What is it, a form of family dementia? Next thing you know, your mother will announce her departure for Tierra del Fuego in the midst of a hurricane.”
Grey smiled at her, realizing that it would be injudicious to mention Geneva Dunsany’s death to an expectant mother.
“A prisoner of mine, from Ardsmuir, is paroled there. I must interview him, concerning a few administrative matters”—“administrative” was a word sure to extinguish interest in even the most curious; sure enough, Minnie’s eyes showed a faint glaze—“and I must go now, to be sure of returning in time for the wedding, since the regiment will be departing for France soon thereafter.”
“Mr. Fraser? Melton told me about him. Yes, you will have to hurry.” She sighed, unconsciously pressing a hand over her abdomen. Hal had said the child was expected in the autumn; there was a good chance that it would be born before his return.
Grey did his best to distract Minnie from this distressing prospect with the story of his encounter with the O’Higginses in Hyde Park, and succeeded in getting her to laugh again.
When he left at last, she stood a-tiptoe at the door to kiss his cheek, then looked up at him with unaccustomed graveness.
“You will be careful, John? My daughter will need her godfather, you know.”
“Daughter?” He glanced involuntarily at her still-flat midsection.
“She has to be. I really can’t bear another man to worry about—going off to the ends of the earth to be cut to pieces or die of flux and plague, wretched creatures that you are.” She was still smiling, but he heard the tremor in her voice, and touched her shoulder gently.
“Godfather?” he said.
“Don’t mention it to Melton; I haven’t told him yet.”
“Your secrets are safe with me,” he assured her, and her smile grew more natural.
“Good. But you will be careful, John?”
“I will,” he said, and stepped into the swirling whiteness, wondering as he did so whether it was James Fraser or himself who carried the air of doom that impelled both his mother and Minnie to urge him to carefulness.
He had it in mind to ask his mother just that, amongst other questions, but discovered upon his return to Jermyn Street that Minnie had perhaps been more astute than he thought in her discernment of a family mania for travel; the countess had indeed departed. Not for Tierra del Fuego, true; merely for a play in Drury Lane—the one which he had hoped to see with Percy Wainwright, ironically enough—after which she proposed to spend the night at General Stanley’s house in town, because of the snow.
The effect upon his own intentions was the same, though, and he was obliged to content himself with writing a brief note to Hal, informing him of his own proposed absence, the date of his return, and a firm statement that he expected to be apprised of any further discoveries apropos the document of interest—meaning the journal page.
He considered mentioning the possibility that the countess had received a similar page, but dismissed it. Hal had said he would speak with their mother about the page; if she had received another, she would presumably tell him. And Grey had every intention of speaking with the countess himself upon his return from Helwater.
He was putting down his quill when he recollected the matter of the O’Higginses, and with a sigh, took it up again, this time to write a brief note to Captain Wilmot, under whose authority the O’Higginses theoretically fell—though in fact, he was privately inclined to consider them more a force of nature than properly disciplined parts of a military engine.
“It’s stopped snowing, me lord!” Tom Byrd’s voice came faintly to him, and he glanced aside, to see his valet’s lower half protruding from the open window. A cold draft wound its way about his ankles like a ghostly cat, but the wind had died. Evidently the storm had passed.
He came to stand behind Tom, who pulled his head in, red-cheeked from the cold. Everything outside was still, pure and peaceful in a blanket of white. He scooped a bit of fresh snow from the windowsill with his finger and ate it, enjoying the granular feel of it on his tongue as it melted, and the faint taste of soot and metal that it seemed to carry. There was no more than an inch or two upon the sill, and the sky was now clear, a cold deep violet, full of stars.
“Sun in the morning, I’ll be bound,” Tom said with satisfaction. “The roads will be clear in no time!”
“The roads will be mud in no time, you mean,” Grey said, but smiled nonetheless. Despite the grim nature of their errand, he shared Tom’s lightening of the heart at thought of a journey. It had been a long winter indoors.
Finished with the packing, Tom had now picked up Grey’s discarded greatcoat, coat, and waistcoat, and was turning out the pockets in his usual methodical fashion, putting loose coins into Grey’s pocketbook, tossing crumpled handkerchiefs into a pile of dirty linen, setting aside loose buttons to be sewn on, and looking askance at various of the other items contained therein.
“It’s a pritchel,” Grey said helpfully, seeing Tom’s brows go up over a small pointed metal implement. “Or part of one. Thing for punching nail holes in a horseshoe.”
“’Course it is,” Tom said, laying the object aside with a glance at Grey. “Does whoever you lifted it from want it back, you reckon?”
“I shouldn’t think so; it’s broken.” A pritchel was normally about a foot long; the bit on his desk was only two or three inches, broken from the pointed end.
Grey frowned, trying to think where on earth he had acquired the fragment. It was true; he had a habit of stuffing things unconsciously into his pockets, as well as a habit of picking up small objects and turning them over in his fingers while talking to people. The result being that he not infrequently came home with the proceeds of inadvertent petty theft in his pockets, and was obliged to return the items via Tom.
Tom examined a small pebblelike object critically, sniffed it, and determining it to be a lump of sugar from the Balboa, thriftily ate it before picking another object out of a handful of squashed papers.
“Well, now, this ’un’s Lord Melton’s,” he said, holding up a Masonic ring. “Seen it on him. You been with him today?”
“No, yesterday.” Memory thus jogged, he came to look over Tom’s shoulder. “You’re right, it is Melton’s. I’ll send it round to his house by one of the footmen. Oh—and I’ll keep that. You can burn the rest.” He caught sight of the folded broadsheet he had taken from the coffeehouse, and retrieved it from the pile of paper scraps.
A faint smell of coffee wafted from the page as he unfolded it, and he experienced a vivid recollection of Percy Wainwright’s face, flushed from the heat of the coffee he was drinking. Dismissing the faint sense of warmth this brought him, he turned his attention to the article concerning Ffoulkes.
The gist of it was much what Hal had told him. Prominent barrister Melchior Ffoulkes, discovered dead in his study by his wife, thought to have perished by his own hand…assorted remarks by persons who had known deceased, general shock and consternation…coroner’s inquest to be held…but only vague allusions to what might have caused the man’s suicide, and no hint whatever of treason or sodomitical conspiracies, and no mention of Captain Michael Bates, let alone the other fellow Hal had mentioned—Otway? So far, Grey thought cynically, crumpling the newspaper into a ball and tossing it into the fire.
The thought, though, recalled to him what Minnie had said about the visit of Captain Bates’s mistress. It wasn’t impossible, he supposed; there were men who enjoyed the favors of both men and women—but it wasn’t common, and such persons as he knew of that bent generally displayed a sexual indiscriminacy that seemed at odds with the notion of such a settled relationship as the word “mistress” implied.
Well…what of it, if Bates were in fact not inclined to men? As he had said to Hal, sodomitical conspiracies were the common resort of any newspaper in need of news. People did love to read about depravity, and if the usual daily reports of arrests, trials, and pillorying for that vice began to pall…
“Will you need aught else, me lord?” Tom’s voice broke his train of thought, and he looked up to see his valet hovering, arms filled with dirty linen and heavy-eyed, obviously longing for his bed.
“Oh. No, Tom, I thank you. Oh! Perhaps one thing…” He picked up the volume of his father’s journal from his desk. “Will you put this on its shelf in the library as you go?”
“Certainly, me lord. Good night, me lord.” Tom dexterously shifted his load in order to free a hand for the book and went out. Grey closed the door behind him and stretched, suddenly overcome by a desire for his own bed. He bent to extinguish the candle, then stopped short.
Damn, he’d forgotten that he’d promised Minnie to try to discover Captain Bates’s whereabouts. Stifling a groan, he uncapped his inkwell and sat down again. Harry Quarry, he thought, would be best placed to discover Bates’s circumstances; Harry knew everyone, and liked Minnie. And Harry was a sufficiently intimate friend that he could write bluntly of the matter, without niceties or circumspections.
Send me word of your discoveries as well, if you will, he wrote, and added the direction for Helwater.
As he pressed the half-moon signet he wore on his right hand into the sealing wax, he noticed that Hal’s Masonic ring and the broken pritchel still lay on his desk. He picked up the ring and rolled it idly between his palms, trying to think if there were any further missives that might come between himself and bed.
A momentary urge to write to Percy Wainwright flickered in his brain—only a line, to express regret for his absence, a renewed desire to meet upon his return—but the church bells were tolling the hour of midnight, and his mind had grown so fatigued that he doubted his ability to put down even such a brief sentiment coherently.
His hands relaxed, and the Masonic ring rolled into his left palm, clinking against his own ring. Hector’s sapphire.
Hal shared Grey’s nervous habit of fiddling with things as he talked, but was most given to taking his rings on and off—this wasn’t the first time he’d lost one. Grey, in contrast, never removed his rings, save to wash.
He turned his closed hand, so the sapphire glinted in the candlelight, a soft, true blue. The color of Hector’s eyes.
Do you mind? he thought suddenly. About Percy? It was impulse; he expected no reply, and received none.
Now and then he wished ardently that he had faith in a merciful God and an afterlife in which the dead might live on—Jamie Fraser had such faith; burned with it, in a way that excited both Grey’s curiosity and his envy. But Grey was a rationalist. He accepted the existence of God, but had no conviction of the nature of such a being, and no sense that his creator took a personal interest in him. Just as well, considering.
He flicked Hal’s ring idly onto his own middle finger—where it slid down, hanging loosely round his knuckle.
He frowned at it for a moment, feeling something obscurely wrong, but not realizing what. Then his hand curled tight in reflex.
His brother’s hands were the same size as his own; they routinely took each other’s gloves in mistake. Hal wore his ring on his own middle finger. Ergo, it wasn’t Hal’s ring.
He took it off and turned it over, squinting in the candlelight, but there was no inscription within, no mark of ownership. He was not a Freemason himself, but had many friends who were; this was a common style of ring.
“Well, where the devil did I pick you up, then?” he said to it, aloud.