“Your pardon, Monsieur.” They had clutched each other’s arms to keep their feet, smiled and spoke together, then laughed.
The philosopher’s face gleamed with sweat, and he mopped carelessly at his forehead with a sleeve. Grey pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to offer it, and felt something fall at his feet.
“Ah.” He stooped to pick it up. “Permettez-moi, Monsieur. Un petit cadeau—pour Madame votre épouse.”
Diderot’s brows rose a little as he accepted both handkerchief and book; he dabbed absently at his cheeks as he flipped open the book with his thumb, read the title page, and broke into a most infectious grin, no less charming for a missing tooth.
“Your servant, sir,” he said. “My wife will be most obliged to you, Monsieur!” With a wave of the hand, he strode off, the open book still in his hand, and a moment later, wild peals of laughter came from behind the ornamental screen.
Heads were beginning to turn in Grey’s direction, and he realized that Percy Wainwright had come up beside him, looking curious.
“Whatever did you give him?”
“Ah …” It dawned upon Grey that in his haste to accomplish his errand, he had neglected to inform M. Diderot that he was not himself the author of the verses, which were at the moment causing a murmur of baffled amusement to sweep through the room, people sniggering faintly from sympathy, though quite ignorant of the cause.
He could not in countenance join M. Diderot to explain, not with all eyes fixed upon that end of the room—Diderot was now loudly declaiming one of the verses, evidently for the edification of another gentleman whose head Grey briefly glimpsed above the edge of the screen. Ripples of outright laughter were running through the room, and Grey caught sight of Lucinda Joffrey, open fan pressed over her mouth, eyes wide in what might be hilarity or horror. He didn’t wish to find out which.
“Let’s go.” He seized Percy by the arm, and with the barest of bows to Lady Jonas, they made a hurried escape.
Outside, it had begun to snow in earnest. They stopped, breathless, to struggle into their greatcoats and cloaks in the shelter of the trees at the edge of Hyde Park.
“I had no idea, Lord John.” Percy Wainwright was red-cheeked with cold and laughter. “I knew you for a man of wit, but not of letters. The subject matter, though …”
“You cannot possibly think I wrote that! And for God’s sake, call me John,” he added.
Percy looked at him, snow spangling his dark hair—for he had lost most of his powder in the heat and crush of the salon—and gave him a smile of surpassing sweetness.
“John, then,” he said softly.
It was well on to evening. Candlelight glowed from the windows of the houses across the street, and the air was full of mystery and excitement, white flakes pelting down in utter silence, so quickly hiding the cobbled streets and leafless trees and the commonplace filth of London. Despite the cold, he felt warmth pulsing through him; did it show? Grey wondered.
“It is early,” he said, looking down as he brushed a few flakes of snow from his hat. “What would you say to a supper at the Beefsteak, perhaps a hand or two of cards? Or if you are so inclined, there is a new play …”
Glancing shyly up, he saw Percy’s face fall.
“I should like it of all things. But the general has engaged us to dine with Colonel Benham; I cannot beg off, as it is on my account.”
“No, of course,” Grey said hurriedly, unreasonably disappointed. “Another time—”
“Tomorrow?” Percy’s eyes met his, direct. “Perhaps … in my rooms? I live very plainly, I fear. Still, it is …” Grey saw Percy’s throat move as he swallowed. “It is … quiet. Our conversation would be undisturbed.”
The generalized warmth Grey had been feeling coalesced quite suddenly, low in his abdomen.
“That would be—oh, damn!”
“You have suddenly recalled another engagement?” Percy cocked a brow, with a crooked smile. “I am not surprised; I should imagine you are in great demand, socially.”
“Hardly that,” Grey assured him. “No, it’s only that I must leave in the morning for the Lake District. The funeral of a—of a friend.” Even as he said it, he was thinking how he might delay his departure—surely a day would make no difference? He might make up the time on the road.
He wanted very urgently to stay; imagined that he could feel the heat of Percy’s body, even across the space of snowy air between them. And yet … better, surely, if they had time. This was not some stranger—or rather, he was, but a stranger who was about to become part of Grey’s family, and whom he hoped might be a friend; not some attractive, anonymous body whom he would never see again. He wished very much to do the thing—but even more, to do it properly.
“I must go,” he repeated, reluctantly. “I regret it exceedingly. But I will, of course, be back in good time for the wedding.”
Percy looked searchingly at him for a moment, then gave him the faintest smile and lifted his hand. His bare fingers touched Grey’s cheek, cold and fleeting.
“Godspeed, then,” he said. “John.”
Could be worse, he reflected. Percy Wainwright’s unavailability meant that his own evening was free. Which in turn meant that he could go and beard Hal now, rather than in the morning, and thus not delay his departure for Helwater. If the snow kept pelting down like this, he might not make it out of London in any case.
He turned into the park, head bent against the blowing snow. Lady Jonas’s house lay near the parade ground, just past the Grosvenor Gate, while the Greys’ family manor, Argus House, was nearly diagonal from it, on the edge of the park near the barracks. It was nearly a mile across open ground, without the shelter of buildings to break the wind, but faster than going round by the road. And his blood was sufficiently warm with wine and excitement as to save him freezing to death.
The memory of the pleasure of Percy Wainwright’s company—and speculations based on the furtherance of their acquaintance—were nearly enough to distract him from the prospect of the impending conversation with Hal—but not quite.
Reliving the old scandals leading to his father’s death for Percy had been painful, but in the way that lancing an abscess is painful; he felt surprisingly the better for it. Only with the lancing did he realize how deeply and how long the thing had festered in him.
The feeling of relief now emboldened him. He was no longer a twelve-year-old boy, after all, to be protected or lied to for his own good. Whatever secret was sticking in Hal’s craw now, he could bloody well cough it up.
The scent of smoke cut through the air, acrid and heartening with its promise of heat. Surprised, he looked for the source, and made out a faint glow in the gathering dark. There were few people in the park—most of the poor who scraped a living begging or stealing near the park had gone to shelter in alleyways and night cellars, crowding into filthy boozing kens or garrets if they had a penny to spare, huddling in church porches or under walls if they had not. But who in his right mind would camp in the open during a snowstorm?
He altered his path enough to investigate, and found the glow came from a clay firepot burning in the lee of a crude lean-to, propped against a tree. The lean-to was deserted—was, in fact, too small to shelter anything larger than a dog. He had no more than an instant to think this odd, when instinct made him turn and look behind.
There were two of them, one with a club, the other unarmed.
Stocky shapes, black and ragged, hunched under split burlap sacks that covered heads and shoulders, hiding their faces.
“Stand and deliver!” said a hoarse Irish voice.
“Else we squash yer head in like a rotten turnip!” said another just like it.
He hadn’t worn a sword to the salon. He did have his accustomed dagger, though, worn beneath his waistcoat.
“Bugger off,” he said briefly, unbuttoning his coat and producing this. He made small circles with the blade, the metal gleaming dull in what little light there was.
A dagger was not th
e weapon of choice when facing someone armed with a club, but it was what he had. He backed slowly, jabbing the blade at them, hoping to acquire enough distance to turn and run before they charged him.
To his surprise, they seemed turned to stone at his words.
“It’s him, so ’tis!” one of them hissed to the other. “The major!”
“O’Higgins?” he said, straightening in disbelief. “O’Higgins!” he bellowed. But they had fled, uttering Irish blasphemies that floated back to him through the snow.
He replaced the dagger and rebuttoned his greatcoat, fumbling a bit, his fingers shaking a little from the shock of the encounter.
The bloody O’Higgins brothers. Grossly misnamed by their pious mother for a pair of archangels, their baptismal names of Raphael and Michael shortened for common use to Rafe and Mick. Not twins, but so similar in appearance that they often masqueraded as each other in order to escape trouble. And worked in concert to get into it.
He was morally sure they were deserters from the Irish Brigade, but the recruiting sergeant had given them their shillings and their uniforms before Grey had set eyes on them. They weren’t the worst of soldiers, though given to more alarming varieties of free enterprise than most.
He squinted through the gloom in the direction they had taken. Sure enough, Hyde Park barracks lay that way, though he couldn’t see the buildings through the trees, dark as it was by now. At a guess, the O’Higginses had come to dice and drink with friends quartered there—or to attend some social event such as a cockfight—and realizing a sudden need for cash, had improvised in their usual slipshod but imaginative manner.
Shaking his head, he kicked the firepot over and scattered the glowing coals, which hissed red and died in the snow. He’d deal with the O’Higginses in the morning.
By the time he reached the Serpentine road, he was thickly plastered with snow, his blood had chilled appreciably, and he was beginning to regret not having picked the firepot up and taken it with him, the detriment to his appearance notwithstanding. Despite his gloves, his fingers had gone numb, as had his face, and the stiffness of his cheeks reminded him of the man lying on the pavement outside White’s the night before.
The royal swan-keepers had removed the swans for the winter, and the lake was frozen, but not so hard that he would trust his weight to it. Covered with snow, soft patches would be invisible, and all he needed now was to crash through the ice and be submerged in freezing water and decaying duckweed. Sighing, he turned left to make his way round the lake.
Well, perhaps he would remember to ask Hal whether the man’s identity and fate had been determined, once the other matter was settled. And while he was asking … the events of the afternoon had almost made him forget his mother’s odd behavior at breakfast. In the shock of learning of Geneva’s death, he had not at once thought of connecting her reaction to the mention of Jamie Fraser with the appearance of the journal page in Hal’s office, but from his present perspective, it seemed not only likely, but probable.
Had Hal spoken to her already, then? If he had come to Jermyn Street, he had done so very surreptitiously, either late the night before or very early in the morning. No. Not late, or Grey, stewing by his window, would have seen him. And not early; his mother had been in her wrapper at breakfast, blinking and yawning as was her morning habit, clearly fresh from her bed.
Another thought struck him; perhaps his mother had also received a page from his father’s missing journal? Perhaps in the morning post? He slowed a little, boots beginning to crunch in the inch of snow that now covered the ground. Had she opened another letter, after the one from Lady Dunsany? He could not remember; his attention had been focused on Olivia.
The thought of another page filled him with simultaneous alarm and excitement. It would account for his mother’s sudden agitation, and her violent reaction to the mention of his Jacobite prisoner. And if such a thing had arrived this morning, Hal likely didn’t know about it yet.
A surge of blood burnt his frozen cheeks. He brushed away the flakes that clung melting to his lashes, and strode through the deepening snow with renewed determination.
He was the more startled and discomfited to be greeted at the door by Hal’s butler with the news that his brother had gone to Bath.
“He really has,” his sister-in-law assured him, appearing behind the butler. She dimpled at his upraised eyebrow, and flung out a hand to indicate the hall behind her. “Search the house, if you like.”
“What the devil has he gone to Bath for?” Grey demanded irritably. “In this weather?”
“He didn’t tell me,” Minnie said equably. “Do come in, John. You look like a snowman, and you must be wet to the skin.”
“No, I thank you. I must—”
“You must come in and take supper,” she said firmly. “Your nephews miss their uncle John. And your stomach is grumbling; I can hear it from here.”
It was, and he surrendered his wet outer garments to the butler with more gratitude than he cared to show.
Supper was delayed for a bit, though, in favor of a visit to the nursery. Six-year-old Benjamin and five-year-old Adam were so raucously pleased to see their uncle that three-year-old Henry was roused from sleep and shrieked to join the fun. Half an hour of playing knights and dragon—Grey was allowed to be the dragon, which let him roar and breathe fire, but compelled him to die ignominiously on the hearthrug, stabbed through the heart with a ruler—left him in much better temper, but monstrously hungry.
“You are an angel, Minerva,” he said, closing his eyes in order better to appreciate the savory steam rising from the slice of fish pie set in front of him.
“You won’t think so if you call me Minerva again,” she told him, taking her own slice. “I’ve a nice Rhenish to go with that—or will you rather like a French wine?”
Grey’s mouth was full of fish pie, but he did his best to indicate with his eyebrows that he would be pleased to drink whatever she chose. She laughed, and sent the butler to bring both.
Obviously accustomed to men’s needs, she didn’t trouble him with conversation until he had finished the fish pie, a plate of cold ham with pickled onions and gherkins, some excellent cheese, and a large helping of treacle pudding, followed by coffee.
“Minnie, you have saved my life,” he said, after his first sip of the fragrant hot black stuff. “I am your most devoted servant.”
“Are you? Oh, good. Now,” she said, sitting back with an expression of pleased command, “you may tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” she said firmly. “I haven’t been out of the house in a month, your mother and Olivia are too taken up with wedding preparations to visit, and your wretched brother tells me nothing whatever.”
“He doesn’t?” Grey was surprised at that. Minnie was Hal’s second wife—acquired after a decade of widowerhood—and he had always thought the marriage a close one.
“Your brother does, of course, speak to me on occasion,” she admitted, with a small gleam of amusement. “But he subscribes to the peculiar notion that expectant women must be exposed to nothing in the least stimulating. I haven’t heard any decent gossip in weeks, and he hides the newspapers—fearing, no doubt, that I will read some lurid confessional from Tyburn Hill, and the child be born with a noose round its neck.”
Grey laughed—though with the belated memory of the broadsheet in his coat pocket, felt that his brother might be well advised in the matter of newspapers, at least. He obligingly recounted his experiences at Lady Jonas’s salon, though, including the incident of the Sub-Genius’s book of verse, which made Minnie laugh so hard that she choked on her coffee and was obliged to be pounded on the back by the butler.
“Never fear,” she said, wiping her eyes on her napkin. “I shall worm the author’s identity out of Lucinda Joffrey, when next I see her, and let you know. So, you went with the new brother, did you? What is he like?”
“Oh … very pleasant. Well bred, well
spoken. What does Hal think of him?” he asked curiously.
Minnie pursed her lips in thought. She was a pretty woman, rather than a beautiful one, but pregnancy agreed with her, lending a shine to mousy hair and a glow to her apple-dumpling cheeks.
“Hmm. He rather approves, though Melton being Melton, he is inclined to watch sharply, lest new brother pocket the teaspoons and put them up the spout to finance his habit of opium-eating and his three mistresses.”
“I see that Hal has waited much too long to forbid you newspapers,” Grey said, very pleased indeed to hear that Hal approved of Percy, in spite of the small awkwardness between them at first meeting. “But you must have had some visitors yourself of late; who has come to call?”
“My grandmother, two aunts, six cousins, a rather nice little woman collecting money for the relief of widows of brickmakers—she actually did pinch one of the teaspoons, but Nortman caught her and shook it out of her, quite fun, such an amazing quantity of things she had stuffed into her bodice.” She dimpled at the butler, who inclined his head respectfully. “Oh, and Captain Bates’s lady came this afternoon. She came to see Hal, of course, but he wasn’t in, and I was bored, so invited her to stay to tea.”
“Captain Bates’s lady?” Grey repeated in surprise. “I had not heard that he was married.”
“He isn’t; she’s his mistress,” she said frankly, then laughed at his expression. “Don’t tell me you are shocked, John?”
He was, but not entirely for the reasons she supposed.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“She told me—more or less.”
“Meaning what?”
Minnie rolled her eyes at him in exaggerated patience.
“Meaning that she was so agitated that she could not contain the purpose of her desire to speak with Melton, and so told me of her concern for the captain—I hear he has been arrested, did you know?”
“I had heard something of the matter.” Grey put aside his cup, waving away Nortman, hovering with the coffeepot. “But—”
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