Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“I do,” Hal said shortly, and rubbed a hand hard over his face, trying to rouse his wits.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” he said, and shook his head. He rose, pulling his banyan round him. “Call Nasonby, will you? Have him bring us tea in the library. I have to change and wash.”

Washed, dressed, brushed, and feeling some semblance of ability, he came into the library a quarter hour later to find the tea trolley already in place; a wisp of aromatic steam rose from the teapot’s spout to mingle with the spicy scents of ham and sardines and the unctuous sweetness of a currant sponge, oozing cream and butter.

“When’s the last time you ate anything?” Harry demanded, watching Hal consume sardines on toast with the single-mindedness of a starving cat.

“Yesterday. Maybe. I forget.” He reached for his cup and washed the sardines down far enough to make cake feasible as the next step. “Tell me what Washburn said.”

Harry disposed of his own cake, swallowed, and replied.

“Well, you can’t actually be tried in open court. Whatever you think about your damned title—no, don’t tell me, I’ve heard it.” He held out the palm of his hand in prevention, picking up a gherkin with the other.

“Whether you choose to call yourself the Duke of Pardloe, the Earl of Melton, or plain Harold Grey, you’re still a peer. You can’t be tried by anything save a jury of your peers—to wit, the House of Lords. And I didn’t really require Washburn to tell me that the odds of a hundred noblemen agreeing that you should be either imprisoned or hanged for challenging the man who seduced your wife to a duel, and killing him as a result, is roughly a thousand to one—but he did tell me so.”

“Oh.” Hal hadn’t given the matter a moment’s thought but if he had would likely have reached a similar conclusion. Still, he felt some relief at hearing that the Honorable Lawrence Washburn, KC, shared it.

“Mind you—are you going to eat that last slice of ham?”

“Yes.” Hal took it and reached for the mustard pot. Harry took an egg sandwich instead.

“Mind you,” he repeated, mouth half full of deviled egg and thin white bread, “that doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble.”

“You mean with Reginald Twelvetrees, I suppose.” Hal kept his eyes on his plate, carefully cutting the ham into pieces. “That isn’t news to me, Harry.”

“I shouldn’t have thought so, no,” Harry agreed. “I meant with the king.”

Hal set down his fork and stared at Harry.

“The king?”

“Or, to be more exact, the army.” Harry delicately plucked an almond biscuit from the wreckage of the tea trolley. “Reginald Twelvetrees has sent a petition to the secretary at war, asking that you be brought to a court-martial for the unlawful killing of his brother and, further, that you be removed as colonel of the Forty-sixth and the regiment refused permanent re-commission, on grounds that your behavior is so deranged as to constitute a danger to the readiness and ability of said regiment. That being where His Majesty comes in.”

“Balderdash,” Hal said shortly. But his hand trembled slightly as he lifted the teapot, and the lid rattled. He saw Harry notice, and he set it down carefully.

What the king giveth, the king also taketh away. It had taken months of painstaking work to have his father’s regiment provisionally re-commissioned and more—much more—to find decent officers willing to join it.

“The scribblers—” Harry began, but Hal made a quick, violent gesture, cutting him off.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t—”

“I do! Don’t bloody talk about it.”

Harry made a soft growling noise but subsided. He picked up the pot and filled both cups, pushing Hal’s toward him.

“Sugar?”

“Please.”

The regiment—in its resurrected form—had not yet seen service anywhere; it had barely half its complement of men, and most of those didn’t know one end of a musket from the other. He had only a skeleton staff, and while most of his officers were good, solid men, only a handful, like Harry Quarry, had any personal allegiance to him. Any pressure, any hint of scandal—well, any more scandal—and the whole structure could collapse. The remnants to be greedily scooped up or trampled on by Reginald Twelvetrees, Hal’s father’s blackened memory left forever dishonored as a traitor, and his own name dragged further through the mud—painted by the scribblers of the press not only as a cuckold but a murderer and lunatic.

The handle of his porcelain teacup broke off suddenly and shot across the table, striking the pot with a tink! The cup itself had cracked right through, and tea ran down his arm, soaking his cuff.

He carefully put down the two pieces of the cup and shook tea off his hand. Harry said nothing but raised one bushy black brow at him.

Hal closed his eyes and breathed through his nose for several moments.

“All right,” he said, and opened his eyes. “One—Twelvetrees’s petition. It hasn’t been granted yet?”

“It has not.” Harry was beginning to relax a little, which gave Hal a bit more confidence in his own assumption of composure.

“Well, then. That’s the first thing—stop that petition. Do you know the secretary personally?”

Harry shook his head. “You?”

“I’ve met him once, at Ascot. Friendly wager. I won, though.”

“Ah. Too bad.” Harry drummed his fingers on the cloth for a moment, then darted a glance at Hal. “Ask your mother?”

“Absolutely not. She’s in France, anyway, and she’s not coming back.”

Harry knew why the Dowager Countess of Melton was in France—and why John was in Aberdeen—and nodded reluctantly. Benedicta Grey knew a great many people, but the suicide of her husband on the eve of his being arrested as a Jacobite traitor had barred her from the sort of circles where Hal might otherwise have found influence.

There was a long silence, unbroken by Nasonby’s appearance with a new teacup. He filled this, took up the shattered bits of the old one, and vanished as he’d come, soft-footed as a cat.

“What does this petition say, exactly?” Hal asked finally.

Harry grimaced but settled himself to answer.

“That you killed Nathaniel Twelvetrees because you had conceived the unfounded notion that he had been, er…dallying with your wife. In the grip of this delusion, you then assassinated him. And thus you are plainly mentally unfit to hold command over—”

“Unfounded?” Hal said blankly. “Assassinated?”

Harry reached out quickly and took the cup from his hand.

“You know as well as I do, Melton—it’s not what’s true; it’s what you can make people believe.” He set the full cup gingerly on its saucer. “The hound was damned discreet about it, and apparently so was Esmé. There wasn’t a breath of gossip until the news that you’d shot him on his own croquet lawn.”

“He chose the ground! And the weapons!”

“I know that,” Harry said patiently. “I was there, remember?”

“What do you think I am?” Hal snapped. “An idiot?”