Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“Yes, didn’t I say? He’s a diplomat of some kind now—sent to Havana last September.”


“A diplomat,” Grey repeated. “Well, well.” Stubbs probably did diplomacy well—given his demonstrated skills at lying, deceit, and dishonor….

“He wanted his wife and children to join him in Havana, once he had a suitable establishment, so—”

“Children? He had only the one son when I last saw him.” Only the one legitimate son, he added silently.

“Two, now—Olivia gave birth to a daughter two years ago; lovely child called Charlotte.”

“How nice.” His memory of the birth of Olivia’s first child, Cromwell, was nearly as horrifyingly vivid as his memories of the Battle of Quebec, if for somewhat different reasons. Both had involved blood and shit, though. “But Mother—”

“Your mother offered to accompany Olivia, to help with the children. Olivia’s expecting again, and a long sea voyage…”

“Again?” Well, it wasn’t as though Grey didn’t know what Stubbs’s attitude toward sex was…and at least the man was doing it with his wife. John kept his temper with some difficulty, but the general didn’t notice, continuing with his explanations.

“You see, I was meant to be sailing to Savannah in the spring—now, I mean—to advise a Colonel Folliott, who’s raising a local militia to assist the governor, and your mother was going to come with me. So it seemed reasonable that she go ahead with Olivia and help her to get settled, and I would arrange for her to join me when I came.”

“Very sensible,” John said. “That’s Mother, then. And where does the British Navy come into it?”

“Admiral Holmes, me lord,” Tom said, with a faint air of reproach. “He told you last week, when you had him to dinner. He said the Duke of Albemarle was a-coming to take Martinique away from the frogs and then see to Cuba.”

“Oh. Ah.”

Grey recalled the dinner, which had featured a remarkable dish that he had realized—too late—was the innards of pickled sea urchins, mixed with bits of raw fish and sea lettuce that had been cured with orange juice. In his desire to keep his guests—all recently arrived from London, and all lamenting the dearth of roast beef and potatoes in the Indies—from sharing his realization, he had called for lavish and repeated applications of a native palm liquor. This had been very effective; by the second glass, they wouldn’t have known they were eating whale turds, should his adventurous cook have taken it into his head to serve that as a second course. Consequently, though, his own memories of the occasion were somewhat dim.

“He didn’t say Albemarle was proposing to lay siege to the place, did he?”

“No, me lord, but that must’ve been his meaning, don’t you think?”

“God knows,” said John, who knew nothing about Cuba, Havana, or the Duke of Albemarle. “Or possibly you do, sir?” He turned politely to General Stanley, who was beginning to look better, under the influence of relief and brandy. The general nodded.

“I wouldn’t,” he admitted frankly, “save that I shared Albemarle’s table aboard his flagship for six weeks. What I don’t presently know about the harbor at Havana probably isn’t worth knowing, but I take no credit for the acquisition of that knowledge.”

The general had learned of Albemarle’s expedition only the night before the fleet sailed, when a message from the War Office had reached him, ordering him aboard.

“At that point, of course, the ship would reach Cuba long before any message I could send to your mother, so I went aboard at once—this”—he glowered at his bandaged foot—“notwithstanding.”

“Quite.” John raised a hand in brief interruption and turned to his valet. “Tom,—run—and I do mean run—to Admiral Holmes’s residence and ask him to call upon me as soon as is convenient. And by convenient, I mean—”

“Right now. Yes, me lord.”

“Thank you, Tom.”

Despite the brandy, Grey’s brain had finally grasped the situation and was busy calculating what to do about it.

If the British Navy showed up in Havana Harbor and started shelling the place, it wasn’t merely physical danger threatening the Stubbs family and Lady Stanley, also known as the Dowager Duchess of Pardloe. All of them would likely become immediate hostages of Spain.

“The moment we got within sight of Martinique and joined Monckton’s forces there, I…er…requisitioned a small cutter to bring me here, as quickly as possible.”

“Requisitioned, sir?” John said, smiling at the general’s tone.

“Well, I stole it, to be perfectly frank,” the general admitted. “I don’t imagine they’d bring me to a court-martial, at my age…and I bloody don’t care if they do.” He sat upright, gray-stubbled chin outthrust and a glint in his eye. “All I care about is Benedicta.”



WHAT THE GENERAL knew about the harbor at Havana was, generally speaking, that it was one of the finest deepwater harbors in the world, capable of accommodating a hundred ships of the line, and that it was guarded on either side by a large fortress: Morro Castle to the east, and La Punta on the west.

“La Punta’s a working fortress, purely defensive; it overlooks the city, though of course one side faces the harbor. El Morro—that’s what the Spaniards call it—is a bigger place and is the administrative headquarters of Don Juan de Prado, governor of the city. It’s also where the main batteries controlling the harbor are located.”

“With luck, I won’t need to know that,” John said, pouring rum into a glass of orange juice, “but I’ll make a note of it, just in case.”

Tom returned toward the end of the general’s remarks, to report that Admiral Holmes was aware of the planned invasion but had no details concerning it, beyond the fact that Sir James Douglas, who was due to take command of the Jamaica squadron, had sent word that he wished to rendezvous with the squadron off Haiti, at the admiral’s earliest convenience.

Through all of this discussion, Lord John had been making mental notes of anything that might conceivably be useful to him—and a parallel list of things here in Jamaica that might come in handy for an impromptu expedition to an island where he didn’t speak the language. When he got up to pour more orange juice for the general, he asked Tom, in an undertone, to fetch Azeel from the kitchen.

“What did you mean, you stole the cutter?” John asked curiously, topping up the orange juice with rum.

“Well, that might be a slightly dramatic way to have put it,” the general admitted. “The cutter normally attends the Warburton, and I do believe Captain Grace, who commands her, was intending to send Lieutenant Rimes off on an errand of his own. I nipped across to Albemarle’s ship, though, and…er…preempted him.”