The countess gave her son a jaundiced look; Olivia had come back to live with her aunt after Malcolm Stubbs’s departure for Albany, and Grey supposed that his cousin’s vivid imagination and outspoken emotions were perhaps beginning to wear upon his mother, who was kind but not particularly patient.
“I believe Ellesmere was a good fifty years his wife’s senior,” Grey said, in an attempt to make amends. “And while I am sure he was fond of her, I think his death much more likely to have been due to an apoplexy or seizure at the shock than to an excess of sorrow.”
“Oh.” Olivia sniffed and wiped her nose with the napkin. “Oh, but the poor little mite, left an orphan on the very day of his birth! Is that not terrible?”
“Terrible,” the countess agreed absently, continuing to read. “It was not an apoplexy, though, nor yet a surfeit of emotion. Lady Dunsany says that the earl perished through some tragic accident.”
Olivia looked blank.
“An accident?” she repeated, and wiped absently at her nose before replacing the napkin in her lap. “What happened?”
“Lady Dunsany does not say,” the countess reported, frowning at the letter. “How peculiar. They are very much distressed, of course.”
“Had Ellesmere any family,” Grey inquired, “or will the Dunsanys take the child?”
“They have taken him. Her chief concern, beyond the immediacies of the situation, is Isobel. She was so close to her sister, and her grief …” The countess laid down the letter, shaking her head, then pursed her lips and focused a thoughtful look on Grey.
“She asks whether you might see fit to visit them soon, John. Isobel is so fond of you; Lady Dunsany thinks perhaps you might be able to distract her somewhat from the burden of her grief. The funeral—or perhaps funerals; do you suppose they will be buried together?—are set for Thursday next. I suppose that you would go to Helwater fairly soon in any case, to assure yourself of the welfare of your pet criminal before the regiment departs, but—”
“Your pet criminal?” Olivia, who had resumed buttering her toast, paused openmouthed, knife in midair. “What—?”
“Really, Mother,” Grey said mildly, hoping that the sudden lurch of his heart did not show. “Mr. Fraser is—”
“A Jacobite, a convicted traitor, and a murderer,” his mother interrupted crisply. “Really, John, I cannot see why you should have gone to such lengths to keep such a man in England, when by rights, he should have been transported. Indeed, I am surprised he was not hanged outright!”
“I had reasons,” Grey replied, keeping voice and eyes both level. “And I am afraid you must trust my judgment in the matter, Mother.”
A sudden flush burned in his mother’s cheeks, though she held his gaze, lips pressed tight. Then something moved in her eyes, some thought.
“Of course,” she said, her voice suddenly as colorless as her cheeks. “To be sure.” Her eyes were still fixed on Grey, but she was no longer looking at him, rather at something far beyond him. She drew a long breath, then pushed back from the table in sudden decision.
“You will excuse me, my dears. I have a good many things to do this morning.”
“But you’ve barely touched a thing, Aunt Bennie!” Olivia protested. “Won’t you have a kipper, a bit of porridge perhaps …” But the countess had already gone, in a whisk of skirts.
Olivia turned a suspicious gaze on Grey.
“What was that about?”
“I have no idea,” Grey replied honestly.
“Something about this wretched Mr. Fraser of yours disturbed her,” Olivia said, frowning at the doorway through which the countess had vanished. “Who is he?”
Christ, how was he to answer such a question? He chose the only possible avenue, that of strict factuality.
“He is, as my mother remarked, a Jacobite officer, a Scot. He was amongst the prisoners at Ardsmuir; I came to know him there.”
“But he is at Helwater? How comes he to be there?” Olivia asked, baffled.
“Ardsmuir was closed, the prisoners removed,” he replied, paying careful attention to his kipper. He lifted the bones and set them neatly aside, shrugging one shoulder. “Fraser was paroled, but not allowed to return to Scotland. He labors as a groom at Helwater.”
“Hmm!” Olivia seemed satisfied with that. “Well, and serve him right, no doubt, horrid creature. But why does Aunt Bennie call him your pet?”
“Only her little jest,” Grey replied casually, forking up a bite of kipper. “As I am a longtime friend to the Dunsany family, I visit Helwater regularly—and as the erstwhile governor of Ardsmuir, it behooves me to see that Mr. Fraser is well behaved and in good health.”
Olivia nodded, chewing. She swallowed her toast, then, with a covert glance at the footman, leaned toward Grey, lowering her voice.
“Is he really a murderer?” she whispered.
That took Grey off guard, and he was obliged to simulate a minor coughing fit.
“I do not believe so,” he said at last, clearing his throat. “I imagine my mother spoke rhetorically. She has the lowest opinion of Jacobites in general, you see.”
Olivia nodded wisely, eyes round. She had been no more than five or six at the time of the Rising, but must have heard some echoes of the public hysteria as the forces of Charles Stuart made what had seemed for a time their inexorable advance on London. Even the king had prepared to flee, and the streets were flooded with broadsheets painting the Highlanders as vicious savages who skewered children, pillaged and raped without mercy, and put whole villages to the torch.
As for his mother’s personal animus toward the Jacobites … he did not know whether Olivia had ever been told anything; probably not. It had all happened long before she was born, and neither his mother nor Hal ever spoke of it, he knew from experience. Well, it was no business of Grey’s to inform Olivia of the gory details of the family scandal. His mother and brother were both determined to let the past bury its dead, and surely …
He stopped eating, an extraordinary apprehension making the hair prickle on his nape.
No. Surely not. But it had been the mention of Fraser and the word “Jacobite” that had made the countess blench and pale. Yet she had known about Fraser—Grey had gone several times to Helwater since Fraser had been paroled there. He had never made much of the matter himself, though, never mentioned Fraser’s presence as the principal reason for his visits. No, some thought had occurred to his mother, something that had not struck her before. Could it be that she had suddenly thought his reasons for keeping James Fraser in England had to do with …
Something small and cold slid wormlike through his entrails.
Olivia had lost interest in the Scottish prisoner, and was happily outlining her plans for the suit he would wear for the wedding.
“Yellow velvet, I think,” she said, squinting consideringly at him over the tea cozy. “It will be lovely against Aunt Bennie’s blue, it will set off your own coloring, and I think it will be good for the general’s stepson. Your mother says he is dark—have you met him?”
“I have, and yes, he is dark,” Grey said, his innards performing an immediate volte-face and growing noticeably warm. “You intend that we should be dressed alike? In yellow? Olivia, we shall look like nothing so much as a pair of singing canaries.” He’d spoken in all seriousness, but the observation sent her off into giggles, and made her snort tea through her nose. Which absurd sight made Grey himself laugh.
“Well,” Olivia said, recovering first, “if you do mean to go up to the Lake District, I suppose you’d best go quickly, in order to be back in good time for the wedding. Whether it is yellow or not, you will have a new suit, and the fittings …”
Grey was no longer attending, though. Christ, he would have to go at once, if he meant to go at all. The funeral and Isobel Dunsany’s need quite aside, the wedding was in late February; were he to delay, he would have no chance to go and return before the regiment set sail for France in March.
For the first tim
e, his anticipation at the prospect of visiting Helwater was tinged with slight dismay. Percy Wainwright … but after all, there was no hurry in that quarter, was there? Particularly not if Wainwright should indeed join the regiment. And he was meant to meet the man this afternoon; he would be able to explain. Perhaps even to …
A movement in the doorway drew his eye, and he glanced up to see his mother standing there, hand braced against the jamb.
“Go if you must,” she said abruptly. “But for God’s sake, John, be careful.”
Then she turned and was gone again. Thoroughly unsettled, he picked up his cup, found the tea had gone cold, and drank it just the same.
Chapter 4
Chisping
It was chisping, that ambiguous sort of precipitation, half snow, not quite drizzle. Misshapen flakes fell slow and scattered, spiraled through gray air and brushed his face, tiny cold touches so fleeting as not even to leave a sense of wetness in their wake. Dry tears, he thought. Appropriate to his sense of distant mourning.
He paused at the edge of Haymarket, waiting his chance to dodge through the traffic of cabs, carriages, horses, and handcarts. It was a long walk; he might have ridden, called for a chair, or taken his mother’s carriage, but he had felt restless, wanting air and movement and the proximity of people with whom he need not talk. Needing time to prepare, before he met Percy Wainwright again.
He was shocked, of course. He had known Geneva since her birth. A lovely girl, with great charm of manner and a light in her eyes. Somewhat spoilt, though attractively so, and reckless to a degree. Superb on a horse. He would not have been surprised in the slightest to hear that she had broken her neck in some hunting accident, or died in leaping a horse across some dangerous chasm. The sheer ordinariness of death in childbirth … that seemed somehow wrong, obscurely unworthy of her.
He still remembered the occasion when she had gone riding with him, challenged him to a race, and when he declined, had calmly unpinned her hat, leaned over, and smacked his horse on the rump with it, then kicked her own mount and galloped off, leaving him to subdue a panicked sixteen-hand gelding, then to pursue her at breakneck pace over the rocky fells above Helwater. He was a good horseman—but he’d never caught her.
As though still challenged by the memory, he plunged into the street and dashed across the cobbles, ducking under the startled nose of a hurtling cab horse, and arrived at the other side, heart pounding and the cabbie’s curses ringing in his ears.
He turned down St. Martin’s Lane, feeling the blood thrum in his ears and fingers, with that half-shameful sense of pleasure in being alive that was sometimes the response to news of death, or the sight of it.
He could not yet think of her as dead. Perhaps he would not until he reached Helwater, and found himself amongst her family, walking through the places that had known her. He tried to envision her, but found that her face had faded from his memory, though he kept a strong sense of her form, lithe in a brown habit, chestnut-haired and quick as a fox.
Quite suddenly, he wondered whether he could recall Percy Wainwright’s face. He had spent all of a two-hour luncheon the day before yesterday in gazing at it, but was suddenly unsure. And much of the second hour in imagining the form that lay beneath the neat blue suit; he was more sure of that, and his heart sped up in anticipation.
What he saw in his mind’s eye, though, was another face, another form, vivid as flame among the damp greens and grays of the fells. He saw it, the long, suspicious nose, the narrowed eyes hostile as a leopard’s, as though the man himself stood before him, and the pleasant thrum of his blood changed at once to something deeper and more visceral.
He realized now that the vision had sprung up in him at once, the moment his mother had spoken the words, “Geneva Dunsany is dead”—though he had instinctively been suppressing it. Geneva Dunsany meant Helwater. And Helwater meant not only his memories of Geneva, nor the griefs of her parents and sister. It meant Jamie Fraser.
“God damn it,” he said to the vision, under his breath. “Not now. Go away!”
And walked on to his engagement, heedless of the chisping snow, his heated blood in ferment.
They had agreed to meet beforehand, and go together to Lady Jonas’s salon. Not sure either of Wainwright’s means or his style, Grey had chosen the Balboa, a modest coffeehouse chiefly patronized by sea traders and brokers.
The place was always cheerful and bustling, with men huddled intently in small groups, plotting strategy, wrangling over contracts, absorbed in the details of business in a fragrant, invigorating atmosphere of roasting coffee. Now and then a clerk or ’prentice rushed in in panic to fetch out one of the patrons to deal with some emergency of business—but in the postluncheon lull, most of the merchants had returned to their offices and warehouses; it would be possible at least to have a conversation.
Grey was punctual by habit and arrived just as his pocket watch chimed three, but Percy Wainwright was already there, seated at a table near the back.
He did recognize the man; indeed, his putative stepbrother’s face seemed to spring smiling out of the dimness, vivid as though he sat by a candle flame, and the disquieting wraith of Jamie Fraser disappeared at once from Grey’s mind.
“You are very prompt,” he remarked, waving Wainwright back onto his stool and taking one opposite. “I hope you did not have too far to come?”
“Oh, no; I have rooms quite near—in Audley Street.” Wainwright nodded, indicating the direction, though his eyes stayed fixed on Grey, friendly, but intensely curious.
Grey was equally curious, but took care not to seem to examine his companion too closely. He ordered coffee for himself, and took the opportunity of Wainwright’s speaking to the waiter to look, covertly. Good style, an elegant but quiet cut, the cloth a little worn, but originally of good quality. Linen very fine, and immaculate—as were the long, knob-jointed fingers that took up the sugar tongs, Wainwright’s dark brows lifting in inquiry.
Grey shook his head.
“I am not fond of sugar, but I do like cream.”
“As do I.” Wainwright set down the tongs at once, and they smiled unexpectedly at finding that they shared this trifling preference—then smiled wider, finally laughing at the absurdity, for lack of anything sensible to say.
Grey picked up his coffee and spilled some into the saucer to cool, wondering quite what to say next. He was intensely curious to learn more of Percy Wainwright, but not sure how closely he might inquire without giving offense.
He had already learned a little from his mother: Percy Wainwright was the son of an impoverished clergyman who had died young, leaving the boy and his mother a small annuity. They had lived in genteel poverty for some years, but Mrs. Wainwright had been quite beautiful, and eventually had met and married General Stanley—himself a widower of many years’ standing.
“I believe they were quite happy,” his mother had said, dispassionate. “But she died only a few months after the wedding—of the consumption, I believe.”
She had been looking thoughtfully into her looking glass as they talked, turning her head this way and that, eyes half-closing in quizzical evaluation.
“You are very beautiful, too, Mother,” he’d said, both amused and rather touched by what he took as this unusual evidence of doubt.
“Well, yes,” she said frankly, laying down the glass. “For my age, I am remarkably handsome. Though I do think the general values me more for my rude good health than for the fact that I have all my teeth and good skin. He has buried two sickly wives, and found it distressing.”
His mother, of course, had buried two husbands—but she didn’t mention that, and neither did he.
He asked the usual social questions now—did Wainwright go often to Lady Jonas’s salons? Grey had not yet had the pleasure. How did Mr. Wainwright find the company there, by comparison with other such gatherings?—meanwhile thinking that the late Lady Stanley must have been very beautiful indeed, judging by her son.
And I
doubt extremely that I am the first man to have noticed that, he thought. Is there anyone …?
While he hesitated, Percy gave him a direct look and put the question that was in the forefront of his own mind.
“Do you go often? To Lavender House?”
He felt a slight easing, for the asking of the question answered it, so far as he was himself concerned; if Wainwright were in the habit of frequenting Lavender House, he would know that Grey was not.
“No,” he said, and smiled again. “I had not visited the place in many years, prior to the occasion when I met you there.”
“That was my first—and only—visit,” Percy confessed. He looked down into his dish of coffee. “A … friend sought to introduce me to the company, thinking that I might find some congeniality of persons there.”
“And did you?”
Percy Wainwright had long, dark lashes. These lifted slowly, giving Grey the benefit of those warm-sherry eyes, further warmed by a look of amusement.
“Oh, yes,” Percy said. “Did you?”
Grey felt blood rise in his face, and lifted his coffee to his mouth, so that the warmth of the liquid might disguise it.
“The pursuit of … congeniality was not my purpose,” he said carefully, lowering the cup. “I had gone there in order to question the proprietor about a private matter. Still,” he added, offhanded, “it would be a foolish man who disregards a pound discovered lying by his foot in the road, only because he was not looking for it.” He darted a look at Percy, who laughed in delight.
Suddenly, Grey felt a rush of exhilaration, and could not bear to remain indoors, sitting.
“Shall we go?”
Percy drank off his coffee in a gulp and rose, reaching for his cloak with one hand, even as he set down his cup with the other.
The walls of the Balboa were plastered with trivia for the edification of patrons—the entire series of Mr. Hogarth’s “Marriage à la Mode” etchings encircled the room, but were surrounded—and in some cases obscured—by thick flutterings of newspaper broadsheets, personal communiqués, and Wanted notices, these advertising a need for everything from six tonnes of pig lead or a shipload of Negroes, to a company director of good name and solid finances who might assume the leadership of a fledgling firm engaging in the sale of gentlemen’s necessaries—whether these might include snuffboxes, stockings, or condoms was not made clear.
The Lord John Series 4-Book Bundle Page 61