Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

She nearly dropped the cup but tightened her hold just in time.


“What letters?” she asked sharply. Now she knew what it was about his note that had struck her oddly. Twelvetrees. That was the name of the Countess of Melton’s lover: Nathaniel Twelvetrees. All too plainly, this Edward was some relation.

And she heard in memory Colonel Quarry’s words when she’d asked if she might speak with Nathaniel: “Afraid not, Miss Rennie. My friend shot him.”

“Correspondence between the late Countess Melton and my brother Nathaniel Twelvetrees.”

She sipped her tea, feeling Edward’s gaze as hot on her skin as the breath from her cup. She set the cup down carefully and looked up. His face had an expression she’d seen on the faces of hawks fixing on their prey. But it wasn’t she who was the prey here.

“That might be possible,” she said coolly, though her heart had sped up noticeably. “Forgive me, though—are you sure such correspondence exists?”

He uttered a short laugh, quite without humor.

“It did exist, I’m sure of that.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said politely. “But if the correspondence is of the nature I surmise you mean—I have heard certain speculations—would the duke not have burned any such letters, following the death of his wife?”

Mr. Twelvetrees lifted one shoulder and let it fall, his eyes still fixed on hers.

“He might have done,” he said. “And your immediate task would of course be to discover whether that is the case. But I have reason to believe that the correspondence still exists—and if it does, I want it, Miss Rennie. And I’ll pay for it. Handsomely.”



WHEN THE DOOR closed behind Edward Twelvetrees, she stood frozen for a moment, until she heard the door of her boudoir open, across the hall.

“Well, that’s a rum cove,” Rafe O’Higgins observed, with a nod toward the closed front door. Eliza, who had come in to take away the tray, inclined her head in sober agreement.

“Wengeful,” she said. “Wery wengeful, ’e is. But oo’d blame him?”

Oo, indeed? Minnie thought, and suppressed the urge to laugh. Not from humor so much as from nerves.

“Aye, mibbe,” Rafe said. He went to the window and, lifting the edge of the blue velvet curtain, looked carefully down into the street, where Edward Twelvetrees was presumably vanishing into the distance. “I’d say your man’s inclined toward vengeance, sure. But what d’ye think he’d be after doing with these letters, if there are any?”

There was a brief silence, as all three of them contemplated the possibilities.

“Put ’em on broadsheets and sell ’em at a ha’penny a go?” Eliza suggested. “Could make a bit o’ money out o’ that, I s’pose.”

“Make a lot more out of the duke,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “Blackmail, aye? If the letters are juicy enough, I daresay His Grace would pay through the nose to keep just that from happening.”

“I imagine so,” Minnie said absently, though the echoes of her conversation with Colonel Quarry drowned out further suggestions.

“…he requires proof of the affair for a…a…legal reason, and he will not countenance the idea of letting anyone read his wife’s letters, no matter that she is beyond the reach of public censure nor that the consequences to himself if the affair is not proved may be disastrous.”

What if numerology was less penetrating an art than usual and Harry Quarry wasn’t a bluff, transparent four, after all? What if his care for Lord Melton was a charade? Twelvetrees had just openly engaged her to be his cat’s-paw; what if Quarry had the same end in mind but was playing a double game?

If so…were the two men playing the same game? And if so, were they in it together or working in opposition, whether known to each other or not?

She brought Quarry to mind, reliving their conversations and analyzing them, word for word, watching the emotions play out in memory across his broad, crudely handsome face.

No. One of the chief tenets of her family credo was “Trust no one,” but one did have to make judgments. And she was as sure as it was possible to be that Harry Quarry’s motive was what he had said: to protect his friend. And after all…Harry Quarry not only was convinced of the letters’ existence but had a good notion of their location. True, he hadn’t asked her to steal the letters, not explicitly, but had certainly done everything but.

She had promised Edward Twelvetrees nothing beyond an attempt to find out whether the letters did exist; if so, she’d said, then they could discuss further terms.

Well, then. The next step, at least, was clear.

“Rafe,” she said, interrupting an argument between Rafe and Eliza as to whether Mr. Twelvetrees more resembled a ferret or an obelisk (she assumed they meant “basilisk” but didn’t stop to find out), “I have a job for you and Mick.”





13





THE LETTERS


MR. VAUXHALL GARDENS (alias Mr. Hosmer Thornapple, a wealthy broker on the Exchange, as Minnie had discovered by the simple expedient of having Mick O’Higgins follow him home) had proved to be not only an excellent client, with an insatiable appetite for Lithuanian illuminated manuscripts and Japanese erotica, but also a most valuable connection. Through him, she had acquired (besides a thin sheaf of sealed documents intended for her father’s eyes) two fifteenth-century incunabula—one in excellent condition, the other needing some repair—and a tattered but originally beautiful small book by María Anna águeda de San Ignacio, an abbess from New Spain, with handwritten annotations said to be in the hand of the nun herself.

Minnie hadn’t enough Spanish to make out much of the content, but it was the sort of small book that gave one pleasure simply to hold, and she had paused in her labors to do just that.

The sturdy sideboard in her parlor was stacked on one side with books and on the other with more books, these wrapped in soft cloth, then a layer of felt, one of lambswool, and then an outer skin of oiled silk, tied with tarred twine. Piles of packing materials were arrayed on the dining table, and several large wooden crates were wedged under it.

She trusted no one else to handle or pack the books for shipment back to Paris and was in consequence dust-stained and sweaty, in spite of the breeze from the open window. Just past Midsummer’s Day, the weather had kept fine for a whole week, much to the astonishment of every Londoner she’d spoken to.