Sir George’s question pulled Grey’s attention momentarily away from Percy, and the conversation became general again. Hal was relaxing by degrees, though Grey could see that he was still a long way from succumbing entirely to Sir George’s charm.
You are a suspicious bastard, you know, he said with a glance at his brother after one particularly probing question.
Yes, and a good thing, too, Hal’s dark look at him replied, before turning to Percy Wainwright with a courteous renewal of Grey’s invitation to visit the regimental quarters.
By the time the pudding arrived, though, cordial relations appeared to have been established on all fronts. Sir George had replied satisfactorily to all Hal’s questions, seeming quite untroubled by the intrusive nature of some of them. In fact, Grey had the feeling that Sir George was privately rather amused by his brother, though taking great care to ensure that Hal was not aware of it.
Meanwhile, he and Percy Wainwright had discovered a mutual enthusiasm for horse-racing, the theater, and French novelists—a discussion of this last subject causing his brother to mutter, “Oh, God!” beneath his breath and order a fresh round of brandy.
Snow had begun to fall outside; in a momentary lull in the conversation, Grey heard the whisper of it against the window, though the heavy drapes were closed against the winter’s chill, and candles lit the room. A pleasant shiver ran down his back at the sound.
“Do you find the room cold, Lord John?” Wainwright asked, noticing.
He did not; there was an excellent fire, roaring away in the hearth and constantly kept up by the ministrations of the Beefsteak’s servants. Beyond that, a plentitude of hot food, wine, and brandy ensured sufficient warmth. Even now, the steward was bringing in cups of mulled wine, and a Caribbean hint of cinnamon spiced the air.
“No,” he replied, taking his cup from the proffered tray. “But there is nothing so pleasant as being inside, warm and well-fed, when the elements are hostile without. Do you not agree?”
“Oh, yes.” Wainwright’s eyelids had gone heavy, and he leaned back in his chair, his clear skin flushed in the candlelight. “Most … pleasant.” Long fingers touched his neckcloth briefly, as though finding it a little tight.
Awareness floated warm in the air between them, heady as the scents of cinnamon and wine. Hal and Sir George were beginning to make noises indicative of leave-taking, with many expressions of mutual regard.
Percy’s long dark lashes rested for a moment on his cheek, and then swept up, so that his eyes met Grey’s.
“Perhaps you would be interested to come with me to Lady Jonas’s salon—Diderot will be there. Saturday afternoon, if you are at liberty?”
So, shall we be lovers, then?
“Oh, yes,” said Grey, and touched the linen napkin to his mouth. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips. “I think so.”
Well, he thought, I don’t suppose it’s really incest, and pushed his chair back to arise.
Tom Byrd, Grey’s valet, was rubbing at the gold lace on Grey’s dress uniform with a lump of bread to brighten it, and listening with a lively interest to Grey’s account of the luncheon with General Stanley and his stepson.
“So the general means to make his home here, me lord?” Grey could see Tom calculating what this change might mean to his own world; the general would doubtless bring some of his own servants, including a valet or orderly. “Will the son come, too, this Mr. Wainwright?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.” In fact, the notion had not occurred to Grey, and he took a moment to examine it. Wainwright had said he had his own rooms, somewhere in Westminster. Having seen the cordial relations that appeared to exist between Sir George and his stepson, though, he had assumed that this state of things was either to do with the cramped nature of the general’s present lodgings—or with Wainwright’s desire for privacy.
“I don’t know. Perhaps he would.” It was an unsettling thought, though not necessarily unpleasant. Grey smiled at Tom, and pulled his banyan close for warmth; despite the fire, the room was cold. “I shouldn’t think he will bring a valet with him if he does come, though.”
“Ho,” Byrd said thoughtfully. “Would you want me to do for him as well, me lord? I wouldn’t mind,” he added quickly. “Is he a dandy, though, would you say?”
There was such a hopeful tone to this last question that Grey laughed.
“Very kind of you, Tom. He dresses decently, but is no macaroni. I believe he means to take up a commission, though. Nothing but more uniforms for you, I’m afraid.”
Byrd made no audible reply to this, but his glance at Grey’s boots, standing caked with mud, straw, and manure by the hearth, was eloquent. He shook his head, squinted at the coat he was holding, decided it would do, and stood up, brushing bread crumbs into the fire.
“Very good, me lord,” he said, resigned. “You’ll look decent for the wedding, though, if I die for it. Come to that, if we’re a-going back to France in March, you’d best be calling on your tailor this week.”
“Oh? All right. Make me a list, then, of what’s needed. Smallclothes, certainly.” Both of them grimaced, in joint memory of what passed for drawers on the Continent.
“Yes, me lord.” Tom bent to shovel embers into the warming pan. “And a pair of doeskin breeches.”
“Don’t I have a pair?” Grey asked, surprised.
“You do,” Byrd said, straightening, “and Lord only knows what you sat on whilst wearing ’em.” He gave Grey a disapproving look; Tom was eighteen, and round-faced as a pie, but his disapproving looks would have done credit to an old gaffer of eighty.
“I’ve done me best, me lord, but bear in mind, if you go out in those breeches, don’t be taking your coat off, or folk will be sure you’ve beshit yourself.”
Grey laughed, and stood aside for Tom to warm the bed. He shucked his banyan and slippers and slid between the sheets, the heat grateful on his chilly feet.
“You have several brothers, don’t you, Tom?”
“Five, me lord. I’d never had a bed to meself until I came to work for you.” Tom shook his head, marveling at his luck, then grinned at Grey. “Don’t suppose you’ll need to share your bed with this Mr. Wainwright, though, will you?”
Grey had a sudden vision of Percy Wainwright, stretched solid beside him in the bed, and an extraordinary sense of warmth pulsed through him, quite incommensurate with the heat provided by the warming pan.
“I doubt it,” he said, remembering to smile. “You can put out the candle, Tom, thank you.”
“Good night, me lord.”
The door closed behind Tom Byrd, and Grey lay watching the firelight play over the furnishings of the room. He was not particularly attached to places—a soldier couldn’t be—nor was this house a great part of his past; the countess had bought it only a few years before. And yet he felt a sudden peculiar nostalgia—for what, he couldn’t have said.
The night was still and cold, and yet seemed full of restless movement. The flicker of the fire; the flicker of arousal that burned in his flesh. He felt things shift and stir, unseen, and had the odd feeling that nothing would ever again be the same. This was nonsense, of course; it never was.
Still, he lay a long time sleepless, wishing time to stay; the night, the house, and himself to remain as they were, just a little longer. And yet the fire died, and he slept, conscious in his dreams of the rising wind outside.
Chapter 2
Not a Betting Man
Grey spent the next morning in a drafty room in Whitehall, enduring the necessary tedium of a colonels’ meeting with the Ordnance Office, featuring a long-winded address by Mr. Adams, First Secretary of the Ministry of Ordnance. Hal, pleading press of business, had dispatched Grey in his place—meaning, Grey thought, manfully swallowing a yawn, that Hal was likely either still at home enjoying breakfast, or at White’s Chocolate House, wallowing in sugared buns and gossip, whilst Grey sat through bum-numbing hours of argument over powder allocations. Well, rank had its privileges.
He found his situation not unpleasant, though. The 46th was fortunately provided for with regards to gunpowder; his half brother Edgar owned one of the largest powder mills in the country. And as Grey was junior to most of the other officers present, he was seldom required to say anything, and thus free to allow his thoughts to drift into speculation regarding Percy Wainwright.
Had he mistaken the attraction? No. He could still feel the extraordinary warmth of Wainwright’s eyes—and the warmth of his touch, when they had shaken hands in farewell.
The notion of Percy Wainwright’s joining the regiment was intriguing. Considered in the sober light of day, it might also be dangerous.
He knew nothing of the man. True, the fact that he was General Stanley’s stepson argued that he must be at least discreet—but Grey knew several discreet villains. And he must not forget that his first meeting with Wainwright had been at Lavender House, a place whose polished surfaces hid many secrets.
Had Wainwright been with anyone on that occasion? Grey frowned, trying to recall the scene, but in fact, his attention had been so distracted at the time that he had noticed only a few faces. He thought that Percy had been alone, but … yes. He must have been, for he had not only introduced himself—he had kissed Grey’s hand.
He’d forgotten that, and his hand closed involuntarily, a small jolt running up his arm as though he had touched something hot.
“Yes, I’d like to throttle him, too,” muttered the man beside him. “Bloody windbag.” Startled, Grey glanced at the officer, an infantry colonel named Jones-Osborn, who nodded, glowering, at Mr. Adams, whose rather high-pitched voice had been going on for some time.
Grey had no idea what Adams had been saying, but grunted agreement and glowered in sympathy. This provoked the man on his other side, who, encouraged by this show of support, shouted a contradiction at Adams, liberally laced with epithet.
The secretary, Irish by birth and no mean hand at confrontation, replied in kind with spirit, and within moments, the meeting had degenerated into something more resembling a session of Parliament than the sober deliberations of military strategists.
Drawn perforce into the ensuing melee, this followed by a cordial luncheon with Jones-Osborn and the rest of the anti-Adams faction, Grey thought no more of Percy Wainwright until he found himself at mid-afternoon in his brother’s office at regimental headquarters.
“Jesus,” Hal said, laughing over Grey’s account of the morning’s events. “Better you than me. Was Twelvetrees there?”
“Don’t know him.”
“Then he wasn’t there.” Hal flipped a hand in dismissal. “You’d have noticed him slipping a dagger in Jones-Osborn’s back. Adams’s lap-wolf. What did you think of the new brother? Shall we have him?”
Familiar as he was with Hal’s quick-change methods of conversation, it took Grey only an instant to catch his brother’s meaning.
“Wainwright? Seems a decent fellow,” he said, affecting casualness. “Have you heard anything of him?”
“No more than we learned yesterday. I asked Quarry, but neither he nor Joffrey knew anything of the man.”
That said much; between them, Harry Quarry, one of the two regimental colonels, and his half brother, Lord Joffrey, knew everyone of note in both military and political circles.
“You liked him?” Grey asked. Hal frowned a little, considering.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “And it would be awkward to refuse him, should he desire to take a commission with us.”
“No experience, of course,” Grey observed. This was not a stumbling block, but it was a consideration. Commissions were normally purchased, and many officers had never seen a soldier nor held a weapon prior to taking up their office. On the other hand, most of the 46th’s senior officers were veterans of considerable battlefield experience, and Hal chose new additions carefully.
“True. I should suggest his beginning at second lieutenant, perhaps—or even ensign. To learn his business before moving higher.”
Grey considered this, then nodded.
“Second lieutenant,” he said. “Or even first. There will be the family connexion. It wouldn’t be fitting, I think, that he should be an ensign.” Ensigns were the lowliest of the commissioned officers, at everyone’s beck and call.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Hal conceded. “We’d put him under Harry, of course, at least to start. You would be willing to guide him?”
“Certainly.” Grey felt his heart beat faster, and forced himself to caution. “That is, should he wish to join us. The general did say they had not decided. And Bonham would take him at once as a captain in the Fifty-first, you know.”
Hal huffed and looked down his nose at the thought that anyone might prefer to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven, as it were, but reluctantly conceded the point.
“Yes, I should like to make him captain eventually, if he proves able. But we leave for France in less than three months; I doubt that is time to try him adequately. Can he even handle a sword, do you think?” Wainwright had not been wearing one; still, most nonmilitary gentlemen did not.
Grey shrugged.
“I can find out. Do you wish me to broach the matter of commission with Wainwright directly, or shall you open negotiations with the general?”
Hal drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment, then made up his mind.
“Ask him directly. If he is to be a member of both the family and the regiment, I think we must treat him as such from the beginning. And he is much nearer to you in age. I think he is somewhat afraid of me.” Hal’s brows knitted briefly in puzzlement, and Grey smiled. His brother liked to think himself modest and inoffensive, and affected not to know that while his troops idolized him, they were also terrified of him.
“I’ll talk to him, then.”
Grey made to rise, but Hal waved him back, still frowning.
“Wait. There is—another matter.”
Grey looked sharply at his brother, hearing the note of strain in Hal’s voice. Distracted by thoughts of Percy Wainwright, he hadn’t really looked at Hal; now he saw the tightness around his brother’s mouth and eyes. Trouble, then.
“What is it?”
Hal grimaced, but before he could reply, footsteps came down the corridor, and someone knocked diffidently at the jamb of the open door. Grey turned to see a young hussar, his face flushed from the cold wind outside.
“My lord? A message, sir, from the ministry. I was told to wait upon an answer,” he added awkwardly.
Hal turned a dark countenance on the messenger, but then beckoned impatiently and snatched the message.
“Wait downstairs,” he said, waving the hussar away. He broke the seal and read the note quickly, muttered something blasphemous under his breath, and seized a quill to scribble a reply at the bottom of the page.
Grey rocked back in his chair, waiting. He glanced round the office, wondering what could have happened since yesterday. Hal had shown no signs of worry during their luncheon with the general and Percy.
He could not have said what drew his eye to the scrap of paper. Hal’s office resembled nothing so much as the den of some large beast of untidy habit, and while both Hal and his elderly clerk, Mr. Beasley, could lay their hands on anything wanted within an instant, no one else could find so much as a pin in the general chaos.
The paper itself lay among a quantity of others scattered on the desk, distinguished only by a ragged edge, as though it had been torn from a book. Grey picked it up, glanced at it casually, then stiffened, eyes glued to the page.
“Do let my papers alone, John,” Hal said, finishing his reply with a viciously scrawled signature. “You’ll muddle everything. What’s that you have?” He tossed his quill on the desk and snatched the paper impatiently from Grey. He made to put it back on the desk, then caught sight of the words and froze.
“It is, is it not?” Grey asked, feeling queer. “Father’s writing?” It was a rhetorical question; he had recognized both the hand and
the style of writing at once. Hal hadn’t heard in any case; the blood had drained from his face, and he was reading the journal page—for that is what it clearly was—as though it were notice of his own execution.
“He burnt it,” Hal whispered, and swallowed. “She said he’d burnt it.”
“Who?” Grey asked, startled. “Mother?”
Hal glanced up at him sharply, but ignored his question.
“Where did this come from?” he demanded, barely waiting for Grey’s shrug before shouting, “Mr. Beasley! I want you!”
Mr. Beasley, promptly emergent from his own pristine sanctuary, denied any knowledge of the sheet of paper and confessed complete ignorance of its means of arrival in Hal’s office. He was, though, able to supply the helpful information that the paper had definitely not been upon the desk earlier in the day.
“How on earth would you know?” Grey inquired, giving the desk and its contents a disparaging look. Two beady-eyed stares turned upon him. They’d know. Grey coughed.
“Yes. In that case …” He trailed off. He had been about to inquire who had come into the office during the day, but realized at once the difficulty of the question. Dozens of people visited the office every day: clerks, sutlers, officers, royal messengers, gunnery sergeants, weaponers.… He’d come in once and found a man with a dancing bear on a chain and a monkey on his shoulder, come to collect payment for performing at a jollification for the troops in honor of the queen’s birthday.
Still, surely some effort should be made.
“How long had you been here before I came in?” he asked. Hal rubbed a hand over his face.
“I came in just before you. Otherwise, I should have seen it at once.”
“Ought we call in the door guard, and the men in the building?” Grey suggested. “Query each of them as to anyone who might have entered the office whilst it was unoccupied?”
Hal’s lips compressed. He’d got control of himself; Grey could see his mind working again, and rapidly.
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