Lord John and the Private Matter

Lord John and Private Matter

by Diana Gabaldon

To Margaret Scott Gabaldon and Kay Fears Watkins,

my children’s wonderful grandmothers

Chapter 1

When First We Practice

to Deceive

London, June 1757

The Society for the Appreciation of

the English Beefsteak, a Gentlemen’s Club

It was the sort of thing one hopes momentarily that one has not really seen—because life would be so much more convenient if one hadn’t.

The thing was scarcely shocking in itself; Lord John Grey had seen worse, could see worse now, merely by stepping out of the Beefsteak into the street. The flower girl who’d sold him a bunch of violets on his way into the club had had a half-healed gash on the back of her hand, crusted and oozing. The doorman, a veteran of the Americas, had a livid tomahawk scar that ran from hairline to jaw, bisecting the socket of a blinded eye. By contrast, the sore on the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan’s privy member was quite small. Almost discreet.

“Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a door,” Grey muttered to himself. “But it will suffice. Damn it.”

He emerged from behind the Chinese screen, lifting the violets to his nose. Their sweetness was no match for the pungent scent that followed him from the piss-pots. It was early June, and the Beefsteak, like every other establishment in London, reeked of beer and asparagus-pee.

Trevelyan had left the privacy of the Chinese screen before Lord John, unaware of the latter’s discovery. The Honorable Joseph stood across the dining room now, deep in conversation with Lord Hanley and Mr. Pitt, the very picture of taste and sober elegance. Shallow in the chest, Grey thought uncharitably—though the suit of puce superfine was beautifully tailored to flatter the man’s slenderness. Spindle-shanked, too; Trevelyan shifted weight, and a shadow winked on his left leg, where the pad of the downy-calf he wore had shifted under a clocked silk stocking.

Lord John turned the posy critically in his hand, as though inspecting it for wilt, watching the man from beneath lowered lashes. He knew well enough how to look without appearing to do so. He wished he were not in the habit of such surreptitious inspection—if not, he wouldn’t now be facing this dilemma.

The discovery that an acquaintance suffered from the French disease would normally be grounds for nothing more than distaste at worst, disinterested sympathy at best—along with a heartfelt gratitude that one was not oneself so afflicted. Unfortunately, the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan was not merely a club acquaintance; he was betrothed to Grey’s cousin.

The steward murmured something at his elbow; by reflex, he handed the posy to the man and flicked a hand in dismissal.

“No, I shan’t dine yet. Colonel Quarry will be joining me.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Trevelyan had rejoined his companions at a table across the room, his narrow face flushed with laughter at some jest by Pitt.

Grey couldn’t stand there glowering at the man; he hesitated, unsure whether to go across to the smoking room to wait for Quarry, or perhaps down the hall to the library. In the event, though, he was prevented by the sudden entry of Malcolm Stubbs, lieutenant of his own regiment, who hailed him with pleased surprise.

“Major Grey! What brings you here, eh? Thought you was quite the fixture at White’s. Got tired of the politicals, have you?”

Stubbs was aptly named, no taller than Grey himself, but roughly twice as wide, with a broad cherubic face, wide blue eyes, and a breezy manner that endeared him to his troops, if not always to his senior officers.

“Hallo, Stubbs.” Grey smiled, despite his inner disquiet. Stubbs was a casual friend, though their paths seldom crossed outside of regimental business. “No, you confuse me with my brother Hal. I leave the whiggery-pokery up to him.”

Stubbs went pink in the face, and made small snorting noises.

“Whiggery-pokery! Oh, that’s ripe, Grey, very ripe. Must remember to tell it to the Old One.” The Old One was Stubbs’s father, a minor baronet with distinct whiggish leanings, and likely a familiar of both White’s Club and Lord John’s brother.

“So, you a member here, Grey? Or a guest, like me?” Stubbs, recovering from his attack of mirth, waved a hand round the spacious confines of the white-naped dining room, casting an admiring glance at the impressive array of decanters being arranged by the steward at a sideboard.

“Member.”

Trevelyan was nodding cordially to the Duke of Gloucester, who returned the salutation. Christ, Trevelyan really did know everyone. With a small effort, Grey returned his attention to Stubbs.

“My godfather enrolled me for the Beefsteak at my birth. Starting at the age of seven, which is when he assumed reason began, he brought me here every Wednesday for luncheon. Got out of the habit while abroad, of course, but I find myself coming back, whenever I’m in Town.”

The wine steward was leaning down to offer Trevelyan a decanter of port; Grey recognized the embossed gold tag at its neck—San Isidro, a hundred guineas the cask. Rich, well-connected . . . and infected. Damn, what was he going to do about this?

“Your host not here yet?” He touched Stubbs’s elbow, turning him toward the door. “Come, then—let’s have a quick one in the library.”

They strolled down the pleasantly shabby carpet that lined the hall, chatting inconsequently.

“Why the fancy-dress?” Grey asked casually, flicking at the braid on Stubbs’s shoulder. The Beefsteak wasn’t a soldier’s haunt; though a few officers of the regiment were members, they seldom wore full dress uniform here, save when on their way to some official business. Grey himself was only uniformed because he was meeting Quarry, who never wore anything else in public.

“Got to do a widow’s walk later,” Stubbs replied, looking resigned. “No time to go back for a change.”

“Oh? Who’s dead?” A widow’s walk was an official visit, paid to the family of a recently deceased member of the regiment, to offer condolences and make inquiry as to the widow’s welfare. In the case of an enlisted man, such a visit might include the handing over of a small amount of cash contributed by the man’s intimates and immediate superiors—with luck, enough to bury him decently.

“Timothy O’Connell.”

“Really? What happened?” O’Connell was a middle-aged Irishman, surly but competent; a lifelong soldier who had risen to sergeant by dint of his ability to terrify subordinates—an ability Grey had envied as a seventeen-year-old subaltern, and still respected ten years later.

“Killed in a street brawl, night before last.”

Grey’s brows went up at that. “Must have been set on by a mob,” he said, “or taken by surprise; I’d have given long odds on O’Connell in a fight that was even halfway fair.”

“Didn’t hear any details; I’m meant to ask the widow.”

Taking a seat in one of the Beefsteak’s ancient but comfortable library wing chairs, Grey beckoned to one of the servants.

“Brandy—you, too, Stubbs? Yes, two brandies, if you please. And tell someone to fetch me when Colonel Quarry comes in, will you?”

“Thanks, old fellow; come round to my club and have one on me next time.” Stubbs unbuckled his dress sword and handed it to the hovering servant before making himself comfortable in turn.

“Met your cousin the other day, by the bye,” he remarked, wriggling his substantial buttocks deeply into the chair. “Out ridin’ in the Row—handsome girl. Nice seat,” he added judiciously.

“Indeed. Which cousin would that be?” Grey asked, with a small sinking feeling. He had several female cousins, but only two whom Stubbs might conceivably admire, and the way this day was going . . .

“The Pearsall girl,” Stubbs said cheerfully, confirming Grey’s presentiment. “Olivia? That the name? I say, isn’t she engaged to that chap Trevelyan? Thought I saw him just now in the dining room.”

“You did,” Grey said shortly, not anxious to speak about the Honorable Joseph at the moment. Once started on a conversational gambit, though, Stubbs was as difficult to deflect from his course as a twenty-pounder on a downhill slope, and Grey was obliged to hear a great deal regarding Trevelyan’s activities and social prominence—things of which he was only too well aware.

“Any news from India?” he asked finally, in desperation.

This gambit worked; most of London was aware that Robert Clive was snapping at the Nawab of Bengal’s heels, but Stubbs had a brother in the 46th Foot, presently besieging Calcutta with Clive, and was thus in a position to share any number of grisly details that had not yet made the pages of the newspaper.

“. . . so many British prisoners packed into the space, my brother said, that when they dropped from the heat, there was no place to put the bodies; those left alive were obliged to trample on the fallen underfoot. He said”—Stubbs looked round, lowering his voice slightly—“some poor chaps had gone mad from the thirst. Drank the blood. When one of the fellows died, I mean. They’d slit the throat, the wrists, drain the body, then let it fall. Bryce said they could scarce put a name to half the dead when they pulled them out of that place, and—”

“Think we’re bound there, too?” Grey interrupted, draining his glass and beckoning for another pair of drinks, in the faint hope of preserving some vestige of his appetite for luncheon.

“Dunno. Maybe—though I heard a bit of gossip last week, sounded rather as though it might be the Americas.” Stubbs shook his head, frowning. “Can’t say as there’s much to choose between a Hindoo and a Mohawk—howling brutes, the lot—but there’s the hell of a lot better chance of distinguishing oneself in India, you ask me.”

“If you survive the heat, the insects, the poisonous serpents, and the dysentery, yes,” Grey said. He closed his eyes in momentary bliss, savoring the balmy touch of English June that drifted through the open window.

Speculation was rampant and rumors rife as to the regiment’s next posting. France, India, the American Colonies . . . perhaps one of the German states, Prague on the Russian front, or even the West Indies. Great Britain was battling France for supremacy on three continents, and life was good for a soldier.

They passed an amiable quarter hour in such idle conjectures, during which Grey’s mind was free to return to the difficulties posed by his inconvenient discovery. In the normal course of things, Trevelyan would be Hal’s problem to deal with. But his elder brother was abroad at the moment, in France and unreachable, which left Grey as the man on the spot. The marriage between Trevelyan and Olivia Pearsall was set to take place in six weeks’ time; something would have to be done, and done quickly.

Perhaps he had better consult Paul or Edgar—but neither of his half-brothers moved in society; Paul rusticated on his estate in Sussex, barely moving a foot as far as the nearest market town. As for Edgar . . . no, Edgar would not be helpful. His notion of dealing discreetly with the matter would be to horsewhip Trevelyan on the steps of Westminster.

The appearance of a steward at the door, announcing the arrival of Colonel Quarry, put a temporary end to his distractions.

Rising, he touched Stubbs’s shoulder.

“Fetch me after dinner, will you?” he said. “I’ll come along on your widow’s walk, if you like. O’Connell was a good soldier.”

“Oh, will you? That’s sporting, Grey; thanks.” Stubbs looked grateful; offering condolences to the bereaved was not his strong suit.

Trevelyan had fortunately concluded his meal and departed; the stewards were sweeping crumbs off the vacant table as Grey entered the dining room. Just as well; it would have curdled his stomach if he were obliged to look at the man while eating.

He greeted Harry Quarry cordially, and forced himself to make conversation over the soup course, though his mind was still preoccupied. Ought he to seek Harry’s counsel in the matter? He hesitated, dipping his spoon. Quarry was bluff and frequently uncouth in manner, but he was a shrewd judge of character and more than knowledgeable in the messier sort of human affairs. He was of good family and knew how the world of society worked. Above all, he could be trusted to keep a confidence.

Well, then. Talking over the matter might at least clarify the situation in his own mind. He swallowed the last mouthful of broth and set down his spoon.

“Do you know Joseph Trevelyan?”

“The Honorable Mr. Trevelyan? Father a baronet, brother in Parliament, a fortune in Cornish tin, up to his eyeballs in the East India Company?” Harry raised his brows in irony. “Only to look at. Why?”

“He is engaged to marry my young cousin, Olivia Pearsall. I . . . merely wondered whether you had heard anything regarding his character.”

“Bit late to be makin’ that sort of inquiry, ain’t it, if they’re already betrothed?” Quarry spooned up a bit of unidentifiable vegetation from his soup bowl, eyed it critically, then shrugged and swallowed it. “Not your business anyway, is it? Surely her father’s satisfied.”

“She has no father. Nor mother. She is an orphan, and has been my brother Hal’s ward these past ten years. She lives in my mother’s household.”

“Mm? Oh. Didn’t know that.” Quarry chewed bread slowly, thick brows lowered thoughtfully as he looked at his friend. “What’s he done? Trevelyan, I mean, not your brother.”

Lord John raised his own brows, toying with his soup spoon.

“Nothing, to my knowledge. Why ought he to have done anything?”

“If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be inquiring as to his character,” Quarry pointed out logically. “Out with it, Johnny; what’s he done?”

“Not so much what he’s done, as the result of it.” Lord John sat back, waiting until the steward had cleared away the course and retreated out of earshot. He leaned forward a little, lowering his voice well past the point of discretion, yet feeling the blood rise in his cheeks nonetheless.

It was absurd, he told himself. Any man might casually glance—but his own predilections rendered him more than delicate in such a situation; he could not bear the notion that anyone might suspect him of deliberate inspection. Not even Quarry—who, finding himself in a similarly accidental situation, would likely have seized Trevelyan by the offending member and loudly demanded to know the meaning of this.

“I . . . happened to retire for a moment, earlier”—he nodded toward the Chinese screen—“and came upon Trevelyan, unexpectedly. I . . . ah . . . caught sight—” Christ, he was blushing like a girl; Quarry was grinning at his discomfiture.

“. . . think it is pox,” he finished, his voice barely a murmur.

The grin vanished abruptly from Quarry’s face, and he glanced at the Chinese screen, from behind which Lord Dewhurst and a friend were presently emerging, deep in conversation. Catching Quarry’s gaze upon him, Dewhurst glanced down automatically, to be sure his flies were buttoned. Finding them secure, he glowered at Quarry and turned away toward his table.

“Pox.” Quarry pitched his own voice low, but still a good deal louder than Grey would have liked. “You mean the syphilis?”

“I do.”

“Sure you weren’t seeing things? I mean, glimpse from the corner of the eye, bit of shadow . . . easy to make a mistake, eh?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Grey said tersely. At the same time, his mind grasped hopefully at the possibility. It hadbeen only a glimpse. Perhaps he could be mistaken. . . . It was a very tempting thought.

Quarry glanced at the Chinese screen again. The windows were all open to the air, and the glorious June sunshine was streaming through them in floods. The air was like crystal; Grey could see individual grains of salt against the linen cloth, where he had upset the saltcellar in his agitation.

“Ah,” Quarry said. He fell silent for a moment, tracing a pattern with one forefinger in the spilled salt.

He didn’t ask whether Grey would recognize a chancrous sore. Any young serving officer must now and then have been obliged to accompany the surgeon inspecting troops, to take note of any man so diseased as to require discharge. The variety of shapes and sizes—to say nothing of conditions—displayed on such occasions was common fodder for hilarity in the officers’ mess on the evening following inspections.

“Well, where does he go whoring?” Quarry asked, looking up and rubbing salt from his finger.

“What?” Grey looked at him blankly.

Quarry raised one thick brow.

“Trevelyan. If he’s poxed, he caught it somewhere, didn’t he?”

“I daresay.”

“Well, then.” Quarry sat back in his chair, pleased.

“He needn’t have caught it in a brothel,” Grey pointed out. “Though I admit it’s the most likely place. What difference does it make?”

Quarry raised both brows.

“The first thing is make certain of it, eh, before you stink up the whole of London with a public accusation. I take it you don’t want to make overtures to the man yourself, in order to get a better look.”

Quarry grinned widely, and Grey felt the blood rise in his chest, washing hot up his neck. “No,” he said shortly. Then he collected himself and lounged back a little in his chair. “Not my sort,” he drawled, flicking imaginary snuff from his ruffle.

Quarry guffawed, his own face flushed with a mixture of claret and amusement. He hiccuped, chortled again, and slapped both hands down on the table.

“Well, whores ain’t so picky. And if a moggy will sell her body, she’ll sell anything else she has—including information about her customers.”

Grey stared blankly at the Colonel. Then the suggestion dropped into focus.

“You are suggesting that I employ a prostitute to verify my impressions?”

“You’re quick, Grey, damn quick.” Quarry nodded approval, snapping his fingers for more wine. “I was thinking more of finding a girl who’d seen his prick already, but your way’s a long sight easier. All you’ve got to do is invite Trevelyan along to your favorite convent, slip the lady abbess a word—and a few quid—and there you are!”

“But I—” Grey stopped himself short of admitting that far from patronizing a favored bawdery, he hadn’t been in such an establishment in several years. He had successfully suppressed the memory of the last such experience; he couldn’t say now even which street the building had been in.

“It’ll work a treat,” Quarry assured him, ignoring his discomposure. “Not likely to be too dear, either; two pound would probably do it, three at most.”

“But once I know whether my suspicion is confirmed—”

“Well, if he ain’t poxed, there’s no difficulty, and if he is . . .” Quarry squinted in thought. “Hmm. Well, how’s this? If you was to arrange for the whore to screech and carry on a bit, once she’d got a good look at him, then you rush out of your own girl’s chamber, so as to see what’s the matter, eh? House might be afire, after all.” He chortled briefly, envisioning the scene, then returned to the plan.

“Then, if you’ve caught him with his breeches down, so to speak, and the situation revealed beyond doubt, I shouldn’t think he’d have much choice save to find grounds for breaking the engagement himself. What d’ye say to that?”

“I suppose it might work,” Grey said slowly, trying to picture the scene Quarry painted. Given a whore of sufficient histrionic talent . . . and there would be no need for Grey actually to utilize the brothel’s services personally, after all.

The wine arrived, and both men fell momentarily silent as it was poured. As the steward departed, though, Quarry leaned across the table, eyes alight.

“Let me know when you mean to go; I’ll come along for the sport!”

Chapter 2

Widow’s Walk

France,” Stubbs was saying in disgust, pushing his way through the crowd in Clare Market. “Bloody France again, can you believe it? I dined with DeVries, and he told me he’d had it direct from old Willie Howard. Guarding the shipyards in frigging Calais, likely!”

“Likely,” Grey repeated, sidling past a fishmonger’s barrow. “When, do you know?” He aped Stubbs’s annoyance at the thought of a possibly humdrum French posting, but in fact, this was welcome news.

He was no more immune to the lure of adventure than any other soldier, and would enjoy to see the exotic sights of India. However, he was also well aware that such a foreign posting would likely keep him away from England for two years or more—away from Helwater.

A posting in Calais or Rouen, though . . . he could return every few months without much difficulty, fulfilling the promise he had made to his Jacobite prisoner—a man who doubtless would be pleased never to see him again.

He shoved that thought resolutely aside. They had not parted on good terms—well, on any. But he had hopes in the power of time to heal the breach. At least Jamie Fraser was safe; decently fed and sheltered, and in a position where he had what freedom his parole allowed. Grey took comfort in the imagined vision—a long-legged man striding over the high fells of the Lake District, face turned up toward sun and scudding cloud, wind blowing through the richness of his auburn hair, plastering shirt and breeches tight against a lean, hard body.

“Hoy! This way!” A shout from Stubbs pulled him rudely from his thoughts, to find the Lieutenant behind him, gesturing impatiently down a side street. “Wherever is your mind today, Major?”

“Just thinking of the new posting.” Grey stepped over a drowsy, moth-eaten bitch, stretched out across his way and equally oblivious both to his passage and to the scrabble of puppies tugging at her dugs. “If it isFrance, at least the wine will be decent.”

O’Connell’s widow dwelt in rooms above an apothecary’s shop in Brewster’s Alley, where the buildings faced each other across a space so narrow that the summer sunshine failed to penetrate to ground level. Stubbs and Grey walked in clammy shadow, kicking away bits of rubbish deemed too decrepit to be of use to the denizens of the place.

Grey followed Stubbs through the shop’s narrow door, beneath a sign reading F. SCANLON, APOTHECARY, in faded script. He paused to stamp his foot in order to dislodge a strand of rotting vegetation that had slimed itself across his boot, but looked up at the sound of a voice from the shadows near the back of the shop.

“Good day to ye, gentlemen.” The voice was soft, with a strong Irish accent.

“Mr. Scanlon?”

Grey blinked in the gloom, and made out the proprietor, a dark, burly man hovering spiderlike over his counter, arms outspread as though ready to snatch up any bit of merchandise required upon the moment.

“Finbar Scanlon, the same.” The man inclined his head courteously. “What might I have the pleasure to be doin’ for ye, sirs, may I ask?”

“Mrs. O’Connell,” Stubbs said briefly, jerking a thumb upward as he headed for the back of the shop, not waiting on an invitation.

“Ah, herself is away just now,” the apothecary said, sidling quickly out from behind the counter in order to block the way. Behind him, a faded curtain of striped linen swayed in the breeze from the door, presumably concealing a staircase to the upper premises.

“Gone where?” Grey asked sharply. “Will she return?”

“Oh, aye. She’s gone round for to speak to the priest about the funeral. Ye’ll know of her loss, I suppose?” Scanlon’s eyes flicked from one officer to the other, gauging their purpose.

“Of course,” Stubbs said shortly, annoyed at Mrs. O’Connell’s absence. He had no wish to prolong their errand. “That’s why we’ve come. Will she be back soon?”

“Oh, I couldn’t be saying as to that, sir. Might take some time.” The man stepped out into the light from the door. Middle-aged, Grey saw, with silver threads in his neatly tied hair, but well-built, and with an attractive, clean-shaven face and dark eyes.

“Might I be of some help, sir? If ye’ve condolences for the widow, I should be happy to deliver them.” The man gave Stubbs a look of straightforward openness—but Grey saw the tinge of speculation in it.

“No,” he said, forestalling Stubbs’s reply. “We’ll wait in her rooms for her.” He turned toward the striped curtain, but the apothecary’s hand gripped his arm, halting him.

“Will ye not take a drink, gentlemen, to cheer your wait? ’Tis the least I can offer, in respect of the departed.” The Irishman gestured invitingly toward the cluttered shelves behind his counter, where several bottles of spirit stood among the pots and jars of the apothecary’s stock.

“Hmm.” Stubbs rubbed his knuckles across his mouth, eyes on the bottle. “It wasrather a long walk.”

It had been, and Grey, too, accepted the offered drink, though with some reluctance, seeing Scanlon’s long fingers nimbly selecting an assortment of empty jars and tins to serve as drinking vessels.

“Tim O’Connell,” Scanlon said, lifting his own tin, whose label showed a drawing of a woman swooning on a chaise longue. “The finest soldier who ever raised a musket and shot a Frenchman dead. May he rest in peace!”

“Tim O’Connell,” Grey and Stubbs muttered in unison, lifting their jars in brief acknowledgment.

Grey turned slightly as he brought the jar to his lips, so that the light from the door illuminated the liquid within. There was a strong smell from whatever had previously filled the jar—anise? camphor?—overlaying the smell of alcohol, but there were no suspicious crumbs floating in it, at least.

“Where was Sergeant O’Connell killed, do you know?” Grey asked, lowering his makeshift cup after a small sip, and clearing his throat. The liquid seemed to be straight grain alcohol, clear and tasteless, but potent. His palate and nasal passages felt as though they had been seared.

Scanlon swallowed, coughed, and blinked, eyes watering—presumably from the liquor, rather than emotion—then shook his head.

“Somewhere near the river, is all I heard. The constable who came to bring the news said he was bashed about somethin’ shocking, though. Knocked on the head in some class of a tavern fight and then trampled in the scrum, perhaps. The constable did mention that there was a heelprint on his forehead, God have mercy on the poor man.”

“No one arrested?” Stubbs wheezed, face going red with the strain of not coughing.

“No, sir. As I understand the matter, the body was found lyin’ half in the water, on the steps by Puddle Dock. Like enough, the tavern owner it was who dragged him out and dumped him, not wantin’ the nuisance of a corpse on his premises.”

“Likely,” Grey echoed. “So no one knows precisely where or how the death occurred?”

The apothecary shook his head solemnly, picking up the bottle.

“No, sir. But then, none of us knows where or when we shall die, do we? The only surety of it is that we shall all one day depart this world, and heaven grant we may be welcome in the next. A drop more, gentlemen?”

Stubbs accepted, settling himself comfortably onto a proffered stool, one booted foot propped against the counter. Grey declined, and strolled casually round the shop, cup in hand, idly inspecting the stock while the other two lapsed into cordial conversation.

The shop appeared to do a roaring business in aids to virility, prophylactics against pregnancy, and remedies for the drip, the clap, and other hazards of sexual congress. Grey deduced the presence of a brothel in the near neighborhood, and was oppressed anew at the thought of the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan, whose existence he had momentarily succeeded in forgetting.

“Those can be supplied with ribbons in regimental colors, sir,” Scanlon called, seeing him pause before a jaunty assortment of Condoms Design’d for Gentlemen,each sample displayed on a glass mold, the ribbons that secured the neck of each device coiled delicately around the foot of its mold. “Sheep’s gut or goat, per your preference, sir—scented, three farthings extra. That would be gratis to you gentlemen, of course,” he added urbanely, bowing as he tilted the neck of the bottle over Stubbs’s cup again.

“Thank you,” Grey said politely. “Perhaps later.” He scarcely noticed what he was saying, his attention caught by a row of stoppered bottles.

Mercuric Sulphide,read the labels on several, and Guiacumon others. The contents appeared to differ in appearance, but the descriptive wording was the same for both:

For swift and efficacious treatment of the gonorrhoea,

soft shanker, syphilis, and all other forms of venereal pox.

For a moment, he had the wild thought of inviting Trevelyan to dinner, and introducing one of these promising substances into his food. Unfortunately, he had too much experience to put any trust in such remedies; a dear friend, Peter Tewkes, had died the year before, after undergoing a mercuric “salivation” for the treatment of syphilis at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, after several attempts at patent remedy had failed.

Grey had not witnessed the process personally, having been exiled in Scotland at the time, but had heard from mutual friends who had visited Tewkes, and who had talked feelingly of the vile effects of mercury, whether applied within or without.

He couldn’t allow Olivia to marry Trevelyan if he was indeed afflicted; still, he had no desire to be arrested himself for attempted poisoning of the man.

Stubbs, always gregarious, was allowing himself to be drawn into a discussion of the Indian campaign; the papers had carried news of Clive’s advance toward Calcutta, and the whole of London was buzzing with excitement.

“Aye, and isn’t one of me cousins with Himself?” the apothecary was saying, drawing himself up with evident pride. “The Eighty-first, and no finer class of soldiers to be found on God’s green earth”—he grinned, flashing good teeth—“savin’ your presences, sirs, to be sure.”

“Eighty-first?” Stubbs said, looking puzzled. “Thought you said your cousin was with the Sixty-third.”

“Both, sir, bless you. I’ve several cousins, and the family runs to soldiers.”

His attention thus returned to the apothecary, Grey slowly became aware that something was slightly wrong about the man. He strolled closer, eyeing Scanlon covertly over the rim of his cup. The man was nervous—why? His hands were steady as he poured the liquor, but there were lines of strain around his eyes, and his jaw was set in a way quite at odds with his stream of casual talk. The day was warm, but it was not so warm in the shop as to justify the slick of sweat at the apothecary’s temples.

Grey glanced round the shop, but saw nothing amiss. Was Scanlon concealing some illicit dealings? They were not far from the Thames here; Puddle Dock, where O’Connell’s body had been found, was just by the confluence of the Thames and the Fleet, and petty smuggling was likely a way of life for everyone in the neighborhood with a boat. An apothecary would be particularly well-placed to dispose of contraband.

If that was the case, though, why be alarmed by the presence of two army officers? Smuggling would be the concern of the London magistrates, or the Excise, perhaps the naval authorities, but—

A small, distinct thump came from overhead.

“What’s that?” he asked sharply, looking up.

“Oh—naught but the cat,” the apothecary replied at once, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Wretched creatures, cats, but mice bein’ more wretched creatures still . . .”

“Not a cat.” Grey’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling, where bunches of dried herbs hung from the beams. As he watched, one bundle trembled briefly, then the one beside it; a fine gold dust sifted down, the motes visible in the beam of light from the door.

“Someone’s walking about upstairs.” Ignoring the apothecary’s protest, he strode to the linen curtain, pushed it aside, and was halfway up the narrow stair, hand on his sword hilt, before Stubbs had gathered his wits sufficiently to follow.

The room above was cramped and dingy, but sunlight shone through a pair of windows onto a battered table and stool—and an even more battered woman, open-mouthed with surprise as she froze in the act of setting down a dish of bread and cheese.

“Mrs. O’Connell?” She turned her head toward him, and Grey froze. Her open mouth was swollen, lips split, a dark-red gap showing in the gum where a lower tooth had been knocked out. Both eyes were puffed to slits, and she peered through a mask of yellowing bruises. By some miracle, her nose had not been broken; the slender bridge and fine nostrils protruded from the wreck, pale-skinned and freakish by contrast.

She lifted a hand to her face, turning away from the light as though ashamed of her appearance.

“I . . . yes. I’m Francine O’Connell,” she murmured, through the fan of her fingers.

“Mrs. O’Connell!” Stubbs took a stride toward her, then stopped, uncertain whether to touch her. “Who—who has done this to you?”

“Her husband. And may his soul rot in hell.” The remark came from behind them, in a conversational tone of voice. Grey turned to see the apothecary advance into the room, his manner still superficially casual, but all his attention focused on the woman.

“Her husband, eh?” Stubbs, no fool, for all his geniality, reached out and seized the apothecary’s hands, turning the knuckles to the light. The man suffered the inspection calmly enough, then pulled his unmarred hands back from Stubbs’s grip. As though the action granted him license, he crossed to the woman and stood beside her, radiating subdued defiance.

“True it is,” he said, still outwardly calm. “Tim O’Connell was a fine man when sober, but when the drink was on him . . . a fiend in human form, no less.” He shook his head, tight-lipped.

Grey exchanged a glance with Stubbs. This was true; they shared a memory of extricating O’Connell from a gaol in Richmond, following a riotous night’s leave. The constable and the gaoler had both borne the marks of the arrest, though neither had been as badly off as O’Connell’s wife.

“And what is your relation to Mrs. O’Connell, if I might ask?” Grey inquired politely. It was hardly necessary to ask; he could see the woman’s body sway toward the apothecary, like a twining vine deprived of its trellis.

“I am her landlord, to be sure,” the man replied blandly, putting a hand on Mrs. O’Connell’s elbow. “And a friend of the family.”

“A friend of the family,” Stubbs echoed. “Quite.” His wide blue gaze descended, resting deliberately on the woman’s midsection, where her apron bulged with a pregnancy of five or six months’ progress. The regiment—and Sergeant O’Connell—had returned to London a scant six weeks before.

Stubbs glanced at Grey, a question in his eyes. Grey lifted one shoulder slightly, then gave the faintest of nods. Whoever had done for Sergeant O’Connell, it was plainly not his wife—and the money was not theirs to withhold, in any case.

Stubbs gave a small growl, but reached into his coat and drew out a purse, which he tossed onto the table.

“A small token of remembrance and esteem,” he said, hostility plain in his voice. “From your husband’s comrades.”

“Shroud money, is it? I don’t want it.” The woman no longer leaned on Scanlon, but drew herself upright. She was pale beneath the bruises, but her voice was strong. “Take it back. I’ll bury me husband meself.”

“One might wonder,” Grey said politely, “why a soldier’s wife should wish to reject assistance from his fellows. Conscience, do you think?”

The apothecary’s face darkened at that, and his fists closed at his sides.

“What d’ye say?” he demanded. “That she did him to death, and ’tis the guilt of the knowledge causes her to spurn your coin? Show ’em your hands, Francie!”

He reached down and seized the woman’s hands, jerking them up to display. The little finger of one hand was bandaged to a splint of wood; otherwise, her hands bore no marks save the scars of healed burns and the roughened knuckles of daily work—the hands of any housewife too poor to afford a drudge.

“I do not suppose that Mrs. O’Connell beat her husband to death personally, no,” Grey replied, still polite. “But the question of conscience need not apply only to her own deeds, need it? It might also apply to deeds performed on her behalf—or at her behest.”

“Not conscience.” The woman pulled her hands away from Scanlon with sudden violence, the wreck of her face quivering. Emotions shifted like sea currents beneath the blotched skin as she glanced from one man to the other.

“I will tell ye why I spurn your gift, sirs. And that is not conscience, but pride.” The slit eyes rested on Grey, hard and bright as diamonds. “Or do you think a poor woman such as meself is not entitled to her pride?”

“Pride in what?” Stubbs demanded. He looked pointedly again at her belly. “Adultery?”

To Stubbs’s displeased surprise, she laughed.

“Adultery, is it? Well, and if it is, I’m not the first to be after doing it. Tim O’Connell left me last year in the spring; took up with a doxy from the stews, he did, and took what money we had to buy her gauds. When he came here two days ago, ’twas the first time I’d seen him in near on a year. If it were not for Mr. Scanlon offerin’ me shelter and work, I should no doubt have become the whore ye think me.”

“Better a whore to one man than to many, I suppose,” Grey said under his breath, putting a hand on Stubbs’s arm to prevent further intemperate remarks.

“Still, madam,” he went on, raising his voice, “I do not quite see why you object to accepting a gift from your husband’s fellows to help bury him—if indeed you have no sense of guilt over his demise.”

The woman drew herself up, crossing her arms beneath her bosom.

“Will I take yon purse and use it to have fine words said over the stinkin’ corpse of the man? Or worse, light candles and buy Masses for a soul that’s flamin’ now in the pits of hell, if there is justice in the Lord? That I will not, sir!”

Grey eyed her with interest—and a certain amount of admiration—then glanced at the apothecary, to see how he took this speech. Scanlon had dropped back a step; his eyes were fixed on the woman’s bruised face, a slight frown between the heavy brows.

Grey settled the silver gorget that hung at his neck, then leaned forward and picked up the purse from the table, jingling it gently in his palm.

“As you will, madam. Do you wish also to reject the pension to which you are entitled, as a sergeant’s widow?” Such a pension was little enough; but given the woman’s situation . . .

She stood for a moment, undecided, then her head lifted again.

“That, I’ll take,” she said, giving him a glittering look through one slitted eye. “I’ve earned it.”

Chapter 3

O What a Tangled Web

We Weave

There was nothing for it but report the matter. Finding someone to report to was more difficult; with the regiment refitting and furbishing for a new posting, there were constant comings and goings. The usual parade had been temporarily discontinued, and no one was where he ought to be. It was just past sunset of the following day when Grey eventually ran Quarry to earth, in the smoking room at the Beefsteak.

“Were they telling the truth, d’ye think?” Quarry pursed his lips, and blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “Scanlon and the woman?”

Grey shook his head, concentrating on getting his fresh cheroot to draw. Once it seemed well alight, he took it from his lips long enough to answer.

“She was—mostly. He wasn’t.”

Quarry’s brows lifted, then dropped in a frown.

“Sure of it? You said he was nervous; might that be only because he didn’t want you to discover Mrs. O’Connell, and thus his relations with her?”

“Yes,” Grey said. “But even after we’d spoken with her . . . I can’t say precisely what it was that Scanlon was lying about—or even that he lied, specifically. But he knew something about O’Connell’s death that he wasn’t telling straight, or I’m a Dutchman.”

Quarry grunted in response to this, and lay back in his chair, smoking fiercely and scowling at the ceiling in concentration. Indolent by nature, Harry Quarry disliked thinking, but he could do it when obliged to.

Respecting the labor involved, Grey said nothing, taking an occasional pull from the Spanish cigar that had been pressed upon him by Quarry, who fancied the exotic weed. He himself normally drank tobacco smoke only medicinally, when suffering from a heavy rheum, but the smoking room at the Beefsteak offered the best chance of private conversation at this time of day, most members being at their suppers.

Grey’s stomach growled at the thought of supper, but he ignored it. Time enough for food later.

Quarry removed the cigar from his lips long enough to say, “Damn your brother,” then replaced it and resumed his contemplation of the pastoral frolic taking place on the gessoed ceiling above.

Grey nodded, in substantial agreement with this sentiment. Hal was Colonel of the Regiment, as well as the head of Grey’s family. Hal was presently in France—had been for a month—and his temporary absence was creating an uncomfortable burden on those required to shoulder those responsibilities that were rightfully his. Nothing to be done about it, though; duty was duty.

In Hal’s absence, command of the regiment devolved upon its two regular Colonels, Harry Quarry and Bernard Sydell. Grey had had not the slightest hesitation in choosing to whom to make his report. Sydell was an elderly man, crotchety and strict, with little knowledge of his troops and less interest in them.

Observing the inferno in progress, one of the ever-watchful servants came silently forward to place a small porcelain dish on Quarry’s chest, lest the fuming ashes of his cigar set his waistcoat on fire. Quarry ignored this, puffing rhythmically and making occasional small growling noises between his teeth.

Grey’s cheroot had burnt itself out by the time Quarry removed the porcelain dish from his chest and the soggy remains of his own cigar from his mouth. He sat up and sighed deeply.

“No help for it,” he said. “You’ll have to know.”

“Know what?”

“We think O’Connell was a spy.”

Astonishment and dismay vied for place in Grey’s bosom with a certain feeling of satisfaction. He’d known there was something fishy about the situation in Brewster’s Alley—and it wasn’t codfish.

“A spy for whom?” They were alone; the ubiquitous servant had disappeared momentarily, but Grey nonetheless glanced round and lowered his voice.

“We don’t know.” Quarry squashed the stump of his cigar into the dish and set it aside. “That was why your brother decided to leave him be for a bit after we began to suspect him—in hopes of discovering his paymaster, once the regiment was back in London.”

That made sense; while O’Connell might have gathered useful military information in the field, he would have found it infinitely easier to pass it on in the seething anthill of London—where men of every nation on earth mingled daily in the streams of commerce that flowed up the Thames—than in the shoulder-rubbing confines of a military camp.

“Oh, I see,” Grey said, shooting a sharp glance at Quarry as the light dawned. “Hal took advantage of the gossip regarding the regimental posting, didn’t he? Stubbs told me after luncheon that he’d heard from DeVries that we were definitely set for France again—likely Calais. I take it that was misdirection, for O’Connell’s benefit?”

Quarry regarded him blandly. “Wasn’t announced officially, was it?”

“No. And we take it that the coincidence of such an unofficial decision and the sudden demise of Sergeant O’Connell is sufficient to be . . . interesting?”

“Depends on your tastes, I s’pose,” Quarry said, heaving a deep sigh. “Damn nuisance, I call it.”

The servant came quietly back into the room, bearing a humidor in one hand, a rack of pipes in the other. The supper hour was drawing to a close, and those members who liked a smoke to settle their digestions would be coming down the hallway shortly, each to claim his own pipe and his preferred chair.

Grey sat frowning for a moment.

“Why was . . . the gentleman in question . . . suspected?”

“Can’t tell you that.” Quarry lifted one shoulder, leaving it unclear as to whether his reticence was a matter of ignorance or of official discretion.

“I see. So perhaps my brother is in France—and perhaps he isn’t?”

A slight smile twitched the white scar on Quarry’s cheek.

“You’d know better than I would, Grey.”

The servant had gone out again, to fetch the other humidors; several members kept their personal blends of tobacco and snuff at the club. He could already hear the stir from the dining room, of scraping chairs and postprandial conversation. Grey leaned forward, ready to rise.

“But you had him followed, of course—O’Connell. Someone must have kept a close eye on him in London.”

“Oh, yes.” Quarry shook himself into rough order, brushing ash from the knees of his breeches and pulling down his rumpled waistcoat. “Hal found a man. Very discreet, well-placed. A footman employed by a friend of the family—your family, that is.”

“And that friend would be . . .”

“The Honorable Joseph Trevelyan.” Heaving himself to his feet, Quarry led the way out of the smoking room, leaving Grey to follow as he might, senses reeling from more than tobacco smoke.

It all made a horrid sense, though, he thought, following Quarry toward the door. Trevelyan’s family and Grey’s had been associated for the last couple of centuries, and it was in some part Joseph Trevelyan’s friendship with Hal that had led to his betrothal to Olivia in the first place.

It wasn’t a close friendship; one founded on a commonality of association, clubs, and political interests, rather than on personal affection. Still, if Hal had been looking for a discreet man to put on O’Connell’s trail, it would have been necessary to look outside the army—for who knew what alliances O’Connell had formed, both within the regiment and outside it? And so, evidently, Hal had spoken to his friend Trevelyan, who had recommended his own footman . . . and it was simply a matter of dreadful irony that he, Grey, should now be obliged to interfere in Trevelyan’s personal life.

Outside the Beefsteak, the doorman had procured a commercial carriage; Quarry was already into it, beckoning Grey impatiently.

“Come along, come along! I’m starving. We’ll go up to Kettrick’s, shall we? They do an excellent eel pie there. I could relish an eel pie, and perhaps a bucket or two of stout to go along. Wash the smoke down, what?”

Grey nodded, setting his hat on the seat beside him where it wouldn’t be crushed. Quarry stuck his head out the window and shouted up to the driver, then pulled it in and relapsed back onto the grimy squabs with a sigh.

“So,” Quarry went on, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the rattle and squeak of the carriage, “this man, Trevelyan’s footman—Byrd, his name is, Jack Byrd—he took up rooms across from the slammerkin O’Connell lived with. Been following the Sergeant to and fro, up and down London, for the past six weeks.”

Grey glanced out of the window; the weather had kept fine for several days, but was about to break. Thunder growled in the distance, and he could feel the coming rain in the air that chilled his face and freshened his lungs.

“What does this Byrd say occurred, then, the night that O’Connell was killed?”

“Nothing.” Quarry settled his wig more firmly on his head as a gust of moisture-laden wind swept through the carriage.

“He lost O’Connell?”

Quarry’s blunt features twisted wryly.

“No, we’ve lost Jack Byrd. Man hasn’t been seen or heard of since the night O’Connell was killed.”

The carriage was slowing, the driver chirruping to his team as they made the turn into the Strand. Grey settled his cloak about his shoulders and picked up his hat, in anticipation of their arrival.

“No sign of his body?”

“None. Which rather suggests that whatever happened to O’Connell, it wasn’t a simple brawl.”

Grey rubbed at his face, rasping the bristles on his jaw. He was hungry, and his linen was grimy after the day’s exertions. The clammy feel of it made him feel seedy and irritable.

“Which rather suggests that whatever happened wasn’t the fault of Scanlon, then—for why should he be concerned with Byrd?” He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased at this deduction or not. He knewthe apothecary had been lying to him in some way—but at the same time, he felt some sympathy for Mrs. O’Connell. She would be in a bad way if Scanlon was taken up for murder and hanged or transported—and a worse one, were she to be accused of conspiracy in the affair.

The opposite bench was harlequined with light and shadow as they clopped slowly past a group of flambeaux-men, lighting a party home. He saw Quarry shrug, obviously as irritable as he was himself from lack of food.

“If Scanlon had spotted Byrd following O’Connell, he might have put Byrd out of the way, as well—but why bother to hide it? A brawl might produce multiple bodies, easy as one. They often do, God knows.”

“But if it was someone else,” Grey said slowly, “someone who wanted O’Connell out of the way, either because he asked too much or because they feared he might give them away? . . .”

“The spymaster? Or his representative, at least. Could be. Again, though—why hide the body, if he did for Byrd, too?”

The alternative was obvious.

“He didn’t kill Byrd. He bought him off.”

“Damn likely. Directly I heard of O’Connell’s death, I sent a man to search the place he was living, but he didn’t find a thing. And Stubbs had a good look round the widow’s place, as well, while you were there—but not a bean, he says. Not a paper in the place.”

He’d seen Stubbs poking round as he made arrangements for the payment of O’Connell’s pension to his widow, but had paid no particular attention at the time. It was true, though; Mrs. O’Connell’s room was spartan in its furnishing, completely lacking in books or papers of any kind.

“What were they searching for?”

The bearlike growl that emerged from the shadows in reply might have been Quarry, or merely his stomach giving voice to its hunger.

“Don’t know for sure what it might look like,” Quarry admitted reluctantly. “It will be writing of some kind, though.”

“You don’t know? What sort of thing is it—or am I not allowed to know that?”

Quarry eyed him, fingers drumming slowly on the seat beside him. Then he shrugged; official discretion be damned, evidently.

“Just before we came back from France, O’Connell took the ordnance requisitions into Calais. He was late—all the other regiments had turned in their papers days before. The damn fool clerk had left the lot just sitting on his desk, if you can believe it! Granted, the office was locked, but still . . .”

Returning from a leisurely luncheon, the clerk had discovered the door forced, the desk ransacked—and every scrap of paper in the office gone.

“I shouldn’t have thought one man could carry the amount of paper to be found in an office of that sort,” Grey said, half-joking.

Quarry flipped one hand, impatient.

“It was a clerk’s hole, not the office proper. Nothing else there was important—but the quarterly ordnance requisitions for every British regiment between Calais and Prague! . . .”

Grey pursed his lips, nodding in acknowledgment. It was a serious matter. Information on troop movements and disposition was highly sensitive, but such plans could be changed, if it became known that the intelligence had fallen into the wrong hands. The munitions requirements for a regiment could not be altered—and the sum total of that information would tell an enemy almost to the gun what strength and what weaponry each regiment possessed.

“Even so,” he objected. “It must have been a massive amount of paper. Not the sort of thing a man could easily conceal about his person.”

“No, it would have taken a large rucksack, or a sail bag—something of that sort—to cart it all away. But cart it away someone did.”

The alarm had been raised promptly, of course, and a search instigated, but Calais was a medieval warren of a place, and nothing had been found.

“Meanwhile, O’Connell disappeared—quite properly; he was given three days’ leave when he took the requisitions in. We hunted for him; found him on the second day, smelling of drink and looking as though he hadn’t slept for the whole of the time.”

“Which would be quite as usual.”

“Yes, it would. But that’s also what you’d expect a man to look like who’d sat up for two days and nights in a hired room, making a prйcis of that mass of paper and turning it into something a good bit smaller and more portable—feeding the requisitions into the fire as he went.”

“So they weren’t ever found? The originals?”

“No. We watched O’Connell carefully; he had no chance to pass on the information to anyone after that—and we think it unlikely that he handed it on before we found him.”

“Because now he’s dead—and because Jack Byrd has disappeared.”

“Rem acu tetigisti,”Quarry replied, then snorted, half-pleased with himself.

Grey smiled in spite of himself. “You have touched the matter with a needle”; it meant, “you’ve put your finger on it.” Probably the only bit of Latin Quarry recalled from his schooldays, other than cave canem.

“And was O’Connell the only suspect?”

“No, damn it. Hence the difficulty. We couldn’t simply arrest him and sweat the truth out of him with no more evidence than the fact of his being there. At least six other men—all from different regiments, damn it!—were there during the relevant time, as well.”

“I see. So the other regiments are now quietly investigating theirpotential black sheep?”

“They are. On the other hand,” Quarry added judiciously, “the other five are still alive. Which might be an indication, eh?”

The coach stopped, and the sounds and smells of Kettrick’s Eel-Pye House floated through the window: laughter and talk, the sizzle of food and clank of wooden plates and pie tins. The brine-smell of jellied eels and ale and the solace of floury pies lapped round them, warm and comforting, spiced with the sauce of alcoholic conviviality.

“Do we know for certain how O’Connell was killed? Did anyone from the regiment see the body?” Grey asked suddenly, as Quarry descended heavily to the pavement.

“No,” Quarry said, not looking round, but heading for the door with single-minded determination. “You’re going to go and do that tomorrow, before they bury the bugger.”

Grey waited until the pies had been set down in front of them before he undertook to argue with Quarry’s statement that he, Grey, was forthwith relieved of other duties in order to pursue an investigation into the activities and death of Sergeant Timothy O’Connell.

“Why me?” Grey was astonished. “Surely it’s sufficiently serious a matter to justify the senior ranking officer’s attention—that would be you, Harry,” he pointed out, “or possibly Bernard.”

Quarry had his eyes closed in momentary bliss, mouth full of eel pie. He chewed slowly, swallowed, then opened his eyes reluctantly.

“Bernard—ha-ha. Very funny.” He brushed crumbs from his chest. “As for me . . . well, it might be, ordinarily. Fact is, though—I was in Calais, too, when the requisitions were taken. Could have done it meself. Didn’t, of course, but I could have.”

“No one in his right mind would suspect you, Harry, surely?”

“Think the War Office is in its right mind, do you?” Quarry raised one cynical eyebrow, along with his spoon.

“I take your point. But still . . .”

“Crenshaw was on home leave,” Quarry said, naming one of the captains of the regiment. “Meant to be in England, but who’s to say he didn’t sneak back to Calais?”

“And Captain Wilmot? You can’t all have been on leave!”

“Oh, Wilmot was in camp where he ought to have been, all proper and above suspicion. But he had a fit of some sort at his club this Monday past. Apoplexy, the quack says. Can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t view bodies.” Quarry pointed his spoon briefly at Grey’s chest. “You’re it.”

Grey opened his mouth to expostulate further, but finding no good argument to hand, inserted a bite of pie instead, chewing moodily.

With fate’s usual turn for irony, the scandal that had sent him to Ardsmuir in disgrace had now placed him beyond suspicion, as the only functioning senior officer of the regiment who could not possibly have had anything to do with the disappearance of the Calais requisitions. He had returned from his Scottish exile by the time of the disappearance, true—but had probably been in London, having not formally rejoined his regiment until a month ago.

Harry had a genius for avoiding unpleasant jobs, but in the present situation, Grey was forced to admit it wasn’t entirely Harry’s doing.

Kettrick’s was crowded, as usual, but they had found a bench in a secluded corner, and their uniforms kept the other diners at a safe distance. The clatter of spoons and pie tins, the crash and scrape of shifting benches, and the raucous conversation bouncing from the low wooden rafters provided more than sufficient cover for a private conversation. Nonetheless, Grey leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“Does the Cornish gentleman of whom we were speaking earlier know that his servant is incommunicabilis?” Grey asked circumspectly.

Quarry nodded, champing eel pie industriously. He coughed to clear a bit of pastry from his throat, and took a deep pull at his tankard of stout.

“Oh, yes. We thought the servant in question might have been scared off by whatever it was that happened to the sergeant—in which case, the natural thing would be for him to scuttle off back to . . . his place of employment.” Quarry beetled his brows at Grey, indicating that naturally he understood the necessity for discretion—did Grey think him dense? “Sent Stubbs round to ask—no sign of him. Our Cornish friend is disturbed.”

Grey nodded, and conversation was temporarily suspended while both men concentrated on their meal. Grey was scraping a bit of bread round his empty pannikin, unwilling to let a drop of the savory broth escape, when Quarry, having polished off two pies and three pints, belched amiably and chose to resume in a more social vein.

“Speakin’ of Cornishmen, what have you done about your putative cousin-in-law? Arranged to take him to a brothel yet?”

“He says he doesn’t go to brothels,” Grey replied tersely, recalled unwillingly to the matter of his cousin’s marriage. Christ, weren’t spies and suspected murder enough?

“And you’re letting him marry your cousin?” Quarry’s thick brows drew down. “How d’ye know he’s not impotent, or a sodomite, let alone diseased?”

“I am reasonably sure,” Lord John said, repressing the sudden insane urge to remark that, after all, the Honorable Mr. Trevelyan had not been watching himat the chamber pot.

He had called on Trevelyan earlier in the day, with an invitation to supper and various libidinous “amusements” to bid a proper farewell to Trevelyan’s bachelorhood. Trevelyan had agreed with thanks to a cordial supper, but claimed to have promised his mother upon her deathbed to have nothing to do with prostitutes.

Quarry’s shaggy brows shot up.

“What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn’t do that, would she?”

“I have no idea,” Grey said. “The situation has fortunately not arisen. But I suppose,” he said, attempting to divert the conversation, “that surely there aremen who do not seek such recreation. . . .”

Quarry gave him a look of jaundiced doubt. “Damn few,” he said. “And Trevelyan ain’t one of ’em.”

“You seem sure of it,” Grey said, slightly piqued.

“I am.” Quarry settled back, looking pleased with himself. “Asked around a bit—no, no, I was quite discreet, no need to fret. Trevelyan goes to a house in Meacham Street. Good taste; been there meself.”

“Oh?” Grey set aside his empty pie pan, and raised a brow in interest. “Why would he not wish to go with me, I wonder?”

“Maybe afraid you’ll blab to Olivia, disillusion the girl.” Quarry lifted a massive shoulder in dismissal of Trevelyan’s possible motives. “Be that as it may—why not go round and speak to the whores there? Chap I talked to says he’s seen Trevelyan there at least twice a month—good chance whichever girl he took last can tell you if he’s poxed or not.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Grey said slowly. Quarry took this for immediate agreement, and tossed back the remains of his final pint, belching slightly as he set it down.

“Splendid. We’ll go round day after tomorrow, then.”

“Day after tomorrow?”

“Got to go to dinner at my brother’s house tomorrow—my sister-in-law is having Lord Worplesdon.”

“Steamed, boiled, or baked en cro ы te?”

Quarry guffawed, his already ruddy face achieving a deeper hue under the stress of amusement.

“Oh, a good one, Johnny! I’ll tell Amanda—come to think, shall I have her invite you? She’s fond of you, you know.”

“No, no,” Grey said hastily. He was in turn fond of Quarry’s sister-in-law, Lady Joffrey, but was only too well aware that she regarded him not merely as a friend, but also as prey—a potential husband for one of her myriad sisters and cousins. “I am engaged tomorrow. But this brothel you’ve discovered—”

“Well, no time like the present, I agree,” Harry said, pushing back his bench. “But you’ll need your rest tonight, if you’re going to look at bodies in the morning. Besides,” he added, swirling his cloak over his shoulders, “I’m never at me best in bed after eel pie. Makes me fart.”

Chapter 4

A Valet Calls

Next morning, Grey sat in his bedchamber, unshaven and attired in his nightshirt, banyan, and slippers, drinking tea and debating with himself whether the authoritative benefits conferred by wearing his uniform outweighed the possible consequences—both sartorial and social—of wearing it into the slums of London to inspect a three-day-old corpse. He was disturbed in this meditation by his new orderly, Private Adams, who opened the bedroom door and entered without ceremony.

“A person, my lord,” Adams reported, and stood smartly to attention.

Never at his best early in the day, Grey took a moody swallow of tea and nodded in acknowledgment of this announcement. Adams, new both to Grey and to the job of personal orderly, took this for permission and stood aside, gesturing the person in question into the room.

“Who are you?” Grey gazed in blank astonishment at the young man who stood thus revealed.

“Tom Byrd, me lord,” the young man said, and bowed respectfully, hat in hand. Short and stocky, with a head round as a cannonball, he was young enough still to sport freckles across fair, rounded cheeks and over the bridge of his snubbed nose. Despite his obvious youth, though, he radiated a remarkable air of determination.

“Byrd. Byrd. Oh, Byrd!” Lord John’s sluggish mental processes began to engage themselves. Tom Byrd. Presumably this young man was some relation to the vanished Jack Byrd. “Why are you—oh. Perhaps Mr. Trevelyan has sent you?”

“Yes, me lord. Colonel Quarry sent him a note last night, saying as how you was going to be looking into the matter of . . . er-hem.” He cleared his throat ostentatiously, with a glance at Adams, who had taken up the shaving brush and was industriously swishing it to and fro in the soap mug, working up a great lather of suds. “Mr. Trevelyan said as how I was to come and assist, whatsoever thing it might be your lordship had need of.”

“Oh? I see; how kind of him.” Grey was amused at Byrd’s air of dignity, but favorably impressed at his discretion. “What duties are you accustomed to perform in Mr. Trevelyan’s household, Tom?”

“I’m a footman, sir.” Byrd stood as straight as he could, chin lifted in an attempt at an extra inch of height; footmen were normally employed for appearance as much as for skill, and tended to be tall and well-formed; Byrd was about Grey’s own height.

Grey rubbed his upper lip, then set aside his teacup and glanced at Adams, who had put down the soap mug and was now holding the razor in one hand, strop in the other, apparently unsure how to employ the two effectively in concert. “Tell me, Byrd, have you any experience at valeting?”

“No, me lord—but I can shave a man.” Tom Byrd sedulously avoided looking at Adams, who had discarded the strop and was testing the edge of the razor against the edge of his shoe sole, frowning.

“You can, can you?”

“Yes, me lord. Father’s a barber, and us boys’d shave the bristles from the scalded hogs he bought for to make brushes of. For practice, like.”

“Hmm.” Grey glanced at himself in the looking glass above the chest of drawers. His beard came in only a shade or two darker than his blond hair, but it grew heavily, and the stubble glimmered thick as wheat straw on his jaw in the morning light. No, he really couldn’t forgo shaving.

“All right,” he said with resignation. “Adams—give the razor to Tom here, if you please. Then go and brush my oldest uniform, and tell the coachman I shall require him. Mr. Byrd and I are going to view a body.”

A night lying in the water at Puddle Dock and two days lying in a shed behind Bow Street compter had not improved Timothy O’Connell’s appearance, never his strongest point to begin with. At that, he was at least still recognizable—more than could be said for the gentleman lying on a bit of canvas by the wall, who had apparently hanged himself.

“Turn him over, if you please,” Grey said tersely, speaking through a handkerchief soaked with oil of wintergreen, which he held against the lower half of his face.

The two prisoners deputed to accompany him to this makeshift morgue looked rebellious—they had already been obliged to take O’Connell from his cheap coffin and remove his shroud for Grey’s inspection—but a gruff word from the constable in charge propelled them into reluctant action.

The corpse had been roughly cleansed, at least. The marks of his last battle were clear, even though the body was bloated and the skin extensively discolored.

Grey bent closer, handkerchief firmly clasped to his face, to inspect the bruises across the back. He beckoned to Tom Byrd, who was standing pressed against the wall of the shed, his freckles dark against the paleness of his face.

“See that?” He pointed to the black mottling over the corpse’s back and buttocks. “He was kicked and trampled upon, I think.”

“Yes, sir?” Byrd said faintly.

“Yes. But you see how the skin is completely discolored upon the dorsal aspect?”

Byrd gave him a look indicating that he saw nothing whatever, including a reason for his own existence.

“His back,” Grey amended. “ Dorsumis the Latin word for back.”

“Oh, aye,” Byrd said, intelligence returning. “I see it plain, me lord.”

“That means that he lay upon his back for some time after death. I have seen men taken up from a battlefield for burial; the portions that have lain bottom-most are always discolored in that way.”

Byrd nodded, looking faintly ill.

“But you found him upon his face in the water, is that correct?” Grey turned to the constable.

“Yes, my lord. The coroner’s seen him,” the man added helpfully. “Death by violence.”

“Quite,” Grey said. “There was no grievous wound upon the front of his body that might have caused his death, and I see no such wound here, do you, Byrd? Not stabbed, not shot, not choked with a garrote . . .”

Byrd swayed slightly, but caught himself, and was heard to mutter something about “. . . head, mebbe?”

“Perhaps. Here, take this.” Grey shoved the handkerchief into Byrd’s clammy hand, then turned and, holding his breath, gingerly began to feel about in O’Connell’s hair. He was interested to see that an inexpert attempt had been made to do up the corpse’s hair in a proper military queue, wrapped round a pad of lamb’s wool and bound with a leather lacing, though whoever had done it had lacked the rice powder for a finishing touch. Someone who cared had laid the body out—not Mrs. O’Connell, he thought, but someone.

The scalp had begun to loosen, and shifted unpleasantly under his probing fingers. There were assorted lumps, presumably left by kicks or blows . . . yes, there. And there. In two places, the bone of the skull gave inward in a sickening manner, and a slight ooze moistened Grey’s fingertips.

Byrd made a small choking sound as Grey withdrew his hand, and blundered out, handkerchief still clasped to his face.

“Was he wearing his uniform when he was found?” Grey asked the constable. Deprived of his handkerchief, he wiped his fingers fastidiously on the shroud as he nodded to the two prisoners to restore the corpse to its original state.

“Nah, sir.” The constable shook his head. “Stripped to his shirt. We knew as he was one of yours, though, from his hair, and askin’ about a bit, we found someone as knew his name and regiment.”

Grey’s ears pricked up at that.

“Do you mean to say that he was known in the neighborhood where he was found?”

The constable frowned.

“I s’pose so,” he said, rubbing at his chin to assist thought. “Let me think . . . yes, sir, I’m sure as that’s right. When we pulled him out o’ the water, and I saw as how he was a soldier, I went round to the Oak and Oyster to inquire, that bein’ the nearest place where the soldiers mostly go. Brought a few of the folk in there along to have a look at him; as I recall, ’twas the barmaid from the Oyster what knew him.”

The body had been turned over, and one of the prisoners, lips pressed tight against the smell, was drawing up the shroud again, when Grey stopped him with a motion. He bent over the coffin, frowning, and traced the mark on O’Connell’s forehead. It was indeed a heelprint, distinctly indented on the livid flesh. He could count the nailheads.

He nodded to himself and straightened up. The body had been moved, so much was plain. But from where? If the Sergeant had been killed in a brawl, as appeared to be the case, perhaps there would have been a report of such an occurrence.

“Might I have a word with your superior, sir?”

“That’d be Constable Magruder, sir—round the front, room on the left. Will you be done with the corpse, sir?” He was already motioning for the two sullen prisoners to restore O’Connell’s wrappings and nail down the coffin lid.

“Oh . . . yes. I think so.” Grey paused, considering. Ought he perhaps to make some ceremonial gesture of farewell to a comrade in arms? There was nothing in that blank and swollen countenance, though, that seemed to invite such a gesture, and surely the constable did not care. In the end, he gave a slight nod to the corpse, a shilling to the constable for his trouble, and left.

Constable Magruder was a small, foxy-looking man, with narrow eyes that darted constantly from doorway to desk and back again, lest anything escape his notice. Grey took some encouragement from this, hoping that few things didescape the constable of the day and the Bow Street Runners under his purview.

The constable knew Grey’s errand; he saw the wariness lurking at the back of the narrow eyes—and the quick flick of a glance toward the magistrate’s offices next door. It was apparent that he feared Grey might go to the magistrate, Sir John Fielding, with all the consequent trouble this might involve.

Grey did not know Sir John himself, but was reasonably sure that his mother did. Still, at this point, there was no need to invoke him. Realizing what was in Magruder’s mind, Grey did his best to show an attitude of relaxed affability and humble gratitude for the constable’s continued assistance.

“I thank you, sir, for your gracious accommodation. I hesitate to intrude further on your generosity—but if I might ask just one or two questions?”

“Oh, aye, sir.” Magruder went on looking wary, but relaxed a little, relieved that he was not about to be asked to conduct a time-consuming and probably futile investigation.

“I understand that Sergeant O’Connell was likely killed on Saturday night. Are you aware of any disturbances taking place in the neighborhood on that night?”

Magruder’s face twitched.

“Disturbances, Major? The whole place is a disturbance come nightfall, sir. Robbery from the person, purse-cutting, fights and street riots, disagreements betwixt whores and their customers, burglary of premises, theft, tavern brawls, malicious mischief, fire-setting, horse-stealing, housebreaking, random assaults . . .”

“Yes, I see. Still, we are reasonably sure that no one set Sergeant O’Connell on fire, nor yet mistook him for a lady of the evening.” Grey smiled to abjure any suspicions of sarcasm. “I am only seeking to narrow the possibilities, you see, sir.” He spread his hands, deprecatingly. “My duty, you understand.”

“Oh, aye.” Magruder was not without humor; a small gleam of it lit the narrow eyes and softened the harsh outlines of his face. He glanced from the papers on his desk to the hallway, down which echoed shouts and bangings from the prisoners in the rear, then back to Grey.

“I’ll have to speak to the constable of the night, go through the reports. If I see anything that might be helpful to your inquiry, Major, I’ll send round a note, shall I?”

“I should appreciate it very much, sir.” Grey rose promptly, and the two men parted with mutual expressions of esteem.

Tom Byrd was sitting on the pavement outside, still pale, but improved. He sprang to his feet at Grey’s gesture, and fell into step behind him.

Would Magruder produce anything helpful? Grey wondered. There were so many possibilities. Robbery from the person, Magruder had suggested. Perhaps . . . but knowing what he did of O’Connell’s ferocious temperament, Grey was not inclined to think that a gang of robbers would have chosen him at random—there were easier sheep to fleece, by far.

But what if O’Connell had succeeded in meeting the spymaster—if there was one, Grey reminded himself—and had turned over his documents and received a sum of money?

He considered the possibility that the spymaster had then murdered O’Connell to retrieve his money or silence a risk—but in that case, why not simply kill O’Connell and take the documents in the first place? Well . . . if O’Connell had been wise enough not to carry the documents on his person, and the spymaster knew it, he would presumably have taken care to obtain the goods before taking any subsequent steps in disposing of the messenger.

By the same token, though, if someone else had discovered that O’Connell was in possession of a sum of money, they might have killed him in the process of a robbery that had nothing to do with the stolen requisitions. But the amount of damage done to the body . . . that suggested whoever had done the deed had meant to make sure that O’Connell was dead. Casual robbers would not have cared; they would have knocked O’Connell on the head and absconded, completely careless of whether he lived or died.

A spymaster might make certain of the matter. And yet—would a spymaster depend upon the services of associates? For clearly, O’Connell had faced more than one assailant—and from the condition of his hands, had left his mark on them.

“What do you think, Tom?” he said, more by way of clarifying his thoughts than because he desired Byrd’s opinion. “If secrecy were a concern, would it not be more sensible to use a weapon? Beating a man to death is likely to be a noisy business. Attract a lot of unwelcome attention, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, me lord. I expect that’s so. Though so far as that goes . . .”

“Yes?” He glanced round at Byrd, who hastened his step a bit to come level with Grey.

“Well, it’s only—mind, I ain’t—haven’t, I mean—seen a man beat to death. But when you go to kill a pig, you only get a terrible lot of screeching if you’ve done it wrong.”

“Done it wrong?”

“Yes, me lord. If you do it right, it doesn’t take but one good blow. The pig doesn’t know what hit ’im, and there’s no noise to speak of. You get a man what doesn’t know what he’s doing, or isn’t strong enough—” Byrd made a face at the thought of such incompetence. “Racket like to wake the dead. There’s a butcher’s across the street from me dad’s shop,” he offered in explanation. “I’ve seen pigs killed often.”

“A very good point, Tom,” Grey said slowly. If either robbery or simple murder was the intent, it could have been accomplished with much less fuss. Ergo, whatever had befallen Tim O’Connell had likely been an accident, in a brawl or street riot, or . . . and yet the body had been moved, sometime after death. Why?

His cogitations were interrupted by the sound of an agitated altercation in the alleyway that led to the back of the gaol.

“What’re you doing here, you Irish whore?”

“I’ve a right to be here—unlike you, ye draggletail thief!”

“Cunt!”

“Bitch!”

Following the sound of strife into the alley, Grey found Timothy O’Connell’s sealed coffin lying in the roadway, surrounded by people. In the center of the mob was the pregnant figure of Mrs. O’Connell, swathed in a black shawl and squared off against another woman, similarly attired.

The ladies were not alone, he saw; Scanlon the apothecary was vainly trying to persuade Mrs. O’Connell away from her opponent, with the aid of a tall, rawboned Irishman. The second lady had also brought reinforcement, in the person of a small, fat clergyman, dressed in dog collar and rusty coat, who appeared more entertained than distressed by the exchange of cordialities. A number of other people crowded the alley behind both women—mourners, presumably, come to assist in the burial of Sergeant O’Connell.

“Take your wicked friends and be off with ye! He was my husband, not yours!”

“Oh, and a fine wife youwere, I’m sure! Didn’t care enough to come and wash the mud from his face when they dragged him out of the ditch! It was me laid him out proper, and me that’ll bury him, thank you very much! Wife! Ha!”

Tom Byrd stood open-mouthed under the eaves of the shed, watching. He glanced up wide-eyed at Grey.

“And it’s me paid for his coffin—think I’ll let you take it? Likely you’ll give the body to a knacker’s shop and sell the box, greedy-guts! Take a man from his wife so you can suck the marrow from his bones—”

“Shut your trap!”

“Shut yours!” bellowed the widow O’Connell, and she took a wild swing at the other woman, who dodged adroitly. Seeing a sudden surge among the mourners on both sides, Grey pushed his way between the women.

“Madam,” he began, grasping Mrs. O’Connell’s arm with determination. “You must—” His admonition was interrupted by a swift elbow in the pit of the stomach, which took him quite by surprise. He staggered back a pace, and stamped inadvertently on the toe of the tall Irishman, who hopped to and fro on one foot, uttering brief blasphemies in what Grey assumed to be the Irish tongue, as it was no form of French.

These were rapidly subsumed by the blasphemies being flung by the two ladies—if that was the word, Grey thought grimly—in an incoherent barrage of insults.

The pistol-shot sound of a slapped cheek rang out, and then the alley erupted in high-pitched shrieks as the women closed with each other, fingers clawed and feet kicking. Grey grabbed for the other woman’s sleeve, but it was torn from his grip and he was knocked heavily into a wall. Someone tripped him, and he went down, rolling and rebounding from the wall of the shed before he could get his feet under him.

Regaining his balance, Grey staggered, then landed on the balls of his feet, and snatched out his sword in a slashing arc that made the metal sing. The thin chime of it cut through the racket in the alleyway like a knife through butter, separating the combatants and sending the women stumbling back from each other. In the moment’s silence that resulted, Grey stepped firmly between the two women and glared back and forth between them.

Assured that he had put at least a momentary stop to the battle, he turned to the unknown woman. A solid person with curly black hair, she wore a wide-brimmed hat that obscured her face, but not her attitude, which was belligerent in the extreme.

“May I inquire your name, madam? And your purpose here?”

“She’s a class of a slut, what else?” Mrs. O’Connell’s voice came from behind him, cracked with contempt, but controlled. Silencing the other woman’s heated response to this with a peremptory movement of his sword, he cast an irritated glance over his shoulder.

“I asked the lady herself—if you please, Mrs. O’Connell.”

“That would be Mrs. Scanlon—if youplease, my lord.” The apothecary’s voice was more than polite, but held a note almost of smugness.

“I beg your pardon?” Taken by surprise, he turned completely round to face Scanlon and the widow. Evidently, the other woman was equally shocked, for beyond a loud “ What?” behind him, she said nothing.

Scanlon was holding Francine O’Connell by the arm; he tightened his grasp a little and bowed to Grey.

“I have the honor to introduce you to my wife, sir,” he said gravely. “Wed yestereen we were, by special license, with Father Doyle himself doing of the honors.” He nodded at the tall Irishman, who nodded in turn, though keeping a wary eye on the tip of Grey’s rapier.

“What, couldn’t wait ’til poor old Tim was cold, could you? And who’s the slut here, I’d like to know, you with your belly swole up like a farkin’ toad!”

“I’m a married woman— twicemarried! And you with no name and no shame—”

“Ah, now, Francie, Francie . . .” Scanlon put his arms around his incensed wife, lugging her back by main force. “Let it be, sweetheart, let it be. Ye don’t want to be doing the babe an injury now, do ye?”

At this reminder of her delicate condition, Francine desisted, though she went on huffing beneath her hat brim, much in the manner of a bull who has chased intruders out of a field and means to see that they stay chased.

Grey turned back to the other woman, just as she opened her mouth again. He put the tip of his rapier firmly against the middle of her chest, cutting her expostulations short and eliciting a brief and startled “Eek!”

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, patience exhausted.

“Iphigenia Stokes,” she replied indignantly. “How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?” She backed up a step, swatting at his sword with a hand whose essential broadness and redness was not disguised by the black shammy mitt covering it.

“And who are you?” Grey swung toward the small clergyman, who had been tranquilly enjoying the show from a place of security behind a barrel.

“Me?” The clerical gentleman looked surprised, but bowed obligingly. “The Reverend Mr. Cobb, sir, curate of St. Giles. I was asked to come and deliver the obsequies for the late Mr. O’Connell, on behalf of Miss Stokes, whom I understand to have had a personal friendship with the deceased.”

“You what? A frigging Protestant?” Francine O’Connell Scanlon stood straight upright, trembling with renewed outrage. Mr. Cobb eyed her warily, but seemed to feel himself safe enough in his retreat, for he bowed politely to her.

“Interment is to be in the churchyard at St. Giles, ma’am—if you and your husband would care to attend?”

At this, the entire Irish contingent pressed forward, obviously intending to seize the casket and carry it off by main force. Nothing daunted, Miss Stokes’s escort likewise pushed eagerly to the fore, several of the gentlemen uprooting boards from a sagging fence to serve as makeshift clubs.

Miss Stokes was encouraging her troops with bellows of “Catholic whore!” while Mr. Scanlon appeared to be of two minds in the matter, simultaneously dragging his wife out of the fray while shaking his free fist in the direction of the Protestants and shouting assorted Irish imprecations.

With visions of bloody riot breaking out, Grey leapt atop the casket and swung his sword viciously from side to side, driving back all comers.

“Tom!” he shouted. “Go for the constables!”

Tom Byrd had not waited for instructions, but had apparently gone for reinforcements during the earlier part of the affray; the word “constables” was barely out of Grey’s mouth, when the sound of running feet came down the street. Constable Magruder and a pair of his men charged into the alley, clubs and pistols at the ready, with Tom Byrd bringing up the rear, panting.

Seeing the arrival of armed authority, the warring funeral parties drew instantly apart, knives disappearing like magic and clubs dropping to the ground with insouciant casualness.

“Are you in difficulties, Major?” Constable Magruder called, looking distinctly entertained as he glanced between the two competing widows and then up at Grey on his precarious roost.

“No, sir . . . I thank you,” Grey replied politely, gasping for breath. He felt the cheap boards of the coffin creak in a sinister fashion as he shifted his weight, and sweat ran down the groove of his back. “If you would care to go on standing there for just a moment longer, though? . . .”

He drew a deep breath and stepped gingerly down from his perch. He had rolled through a puddle; the seat of his breeches was wet, and he could feel the split where the sleeve seam beneath his right arm had given way. Goddamn it, now what?

He was inclined toward the simplicity of a Solomonic decree that would award half of Tim O’Connell to each woman, and rejected this notion only because of the time it would take and the fact that his rapier was completely unsuited to the task of such division. If the widows gave him any further difficulties, though, he was sending Tom to fetch a butcher’s cleaver upon the instant, he swore it.

Grey sighed, sheathed his sword, and rubbed the spot between his brows with an index finger.

“Mrs. . . . Scanlon.”

“Aye?” The swelling of her face had gone down somewhat; it was suspicion and fury now that narrowed those diamond eyes of hers.

“When I called upon you two days ago, you rejected the gift presented by your husband’s comrades in arms, on the grounds that you believed your husband to be in hell and did not wish to waste money upon Masses and candles. Is that not so?”

“It is,” she said, reluctantly. “But—”

“Well, then. If you believe him presently to be occupying the infernal regions,” Grey pointed out, “that is clearly a permanent condition. The act of having his body interred in a particular location, or with Catholic ritual, will not alter his unfortunate destiny.”

“Now, we can’t be knowing for certain as a sinner’s soul has gone to hell,” the priest objected, suddenly seeing the prospects of a fee for burying O’Connell receding. “God’s ways are beyond the ken of us poor men, and for all any of us knows, poor Tim O’Connell repented of his wickedness at the last, made a perfect Act of Contrition, and was taken straight up to paradise in the arms of the angels!”

“Excellent.” Grey leapt on this incautious speculation like a leopard on its prey. “If he is in paradise, he is still less in need of earthly intervention. So”—he bowed punctiliously to the Scanlons and their priest—“according to you, the deceased may be either damned or saved, but is surely in one of those two conditions. Whereas you”—he turned to Miss Stokes—“are of the opinion that Tim O’Connell is perhaps in some intermediate state where intercessory actions might be efficacious?”

Miss Stokes regarded him for a moment, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“I just want ’im buried proper,” she said, sounding suddenly meek. “Sir.”

“Well, then. I consider that you, madam”—he shot a sharp look at the new Mrs. Scanlon—“have to some degree forfeited your legal rights in the matter, being now married to Mr. Scanlon. If Miss Stokes were to reimburse you for the cost of the coffin, would you find that acceptable?”

Grey eyed the Irish contingent, and found them dour-faced but silent. Scanlon glanced at the priest, then at his wife, then finally at Grey, and nodded, very slightly.

“Take him,” Grey said to Miss Stokes, stepping back with a brief gesture toward the coffin.

He strode purposefully toward Scanlon, hand on the hilt of his sword, but while there was a certain amount of shuffling, muttering, and spitting in the ranks, none of the Irish seemed disposed to offer more than the occasional murmured insult as Miss Stokes’s minions took possession of the disputed remains.

“May I offer my felicitations on your marriage, sir?” he said politely.

“I am obliged to ye, sir,” Scanlon said, equally polite. Francine stood by his side, simmering beneath her large black hat.

They stood silent then, all watching as Tim O’Connell was borne away. Iphigenia Stokes was surprisingly gracious in triumph, Grey thought; she cast neither glance nor remark toward the defeated Irish, and her attendants followed her lead, moving in silence to pick up the coffin. Miss Stokes took up her place as chief mourner, and the small procession moved off. At the last, the Reverend Mr. Cobb risked a brief glance back and a tiny wave of the hand toward Grey.

“God rest his soul,” Father Doyle said piously, crossing himself as the coffin disappeared down the alley.

“God rot him,” said Francine O’Connell Scanlon. She turned her head and spat neatly on the ground. “ Andher.”

It was not yet noon, and the taverns were still largely empty. Constable Magruder and his assistants graciously accepted a quantity of drink in the Blue Swan in reward of their help, and then returned to their duties, leaving Grey to shuck his coat and attempt repairs to his wardrobe in a modicum of privacy.

“It seems you’re a handy fellow with a needle as well as a razor, Tom.” Grey slouched comfortably on a bench in the tavern’s deserted snug, restoring himself with a second pint of stout. “To say nothing of quick with both wits and feet. If you’d not gone for Magruder when you did, I’d likely be laid out in the alley now, cold as yesterday’s turbot.”

Tom Byrd squinted over the red coat he was mending by the imperfect light from a leaded-glass window. He didn’t look up from his work, but a small glow of gratification appeared to spread itself across his snub features.

“Well, I could see as how you had the matter well in hand, me lord,” he said tactfully, “but there was a dreadful lot of them Irish, to say nothin’ of the Frenchies.”

“Frenchies?” Grey put a fist to his mouth to stifle a rising eructation. “What, you thought Miss Stokes’s friends were French? Why?”

Byrd looked up, surprised.

“Why, they was speakin’ French to each other—at least a couple of them. Two black-browed coves, curly-haired, what looked as if they was related to that Miss Stokes.”

Grey was surprised in turn, and furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to recall any remarks that might have been made in French during the recent contretemps, but failing. He had marked out the two swarthy persons described by Tom, who had squared up behind their—sister, cousin? for surely Tom was right; there wasan undeniable resemblance—in menacing fashion, but they had looked more like—

“Oh,” he said, struck by a thought. “Did it sound perhaps a bit like this?” He recited a brief verse from Homer, doing his best to infuse it with a crude English accent.

Tom’s face lighted and he nodded vigorously, the end of the thread in his mouth.

“I did wonder where she’d got Iphigenia,” Grey said, smiling. “Shouldn’t think her father was a scholar of the classics, after all. It’s Greek, Tom,” he clarified, seeing his young valet frown in incomprehension. “Likely Miss Stokes and her brothers—if that’s what they are—have a Greek mother or grandmother, for I’m sure Stokes is home-grown enough.”

“Oh, Greek,” Tom said uncertainly, obviously unclear on the distinctions between this and any other form of French. “To be sure, me lord.” He delicately removed a bit of thread stuck to his lip, and shook out the folds of the coat. “Here, me lord; I won’t say as it’s good as new, but you can at least be wearing it without the lining peepin’ out.”

Grey nodded in thanks, and pushed a full mug of beer in Tom’s direction. He shrugged himself carefully into the mended coat, inspecting the torn seam. It was scarcely tailor’s work, but the repair looked stout enough.

He wondered whether Iphigenia Stokes might repay closer inspection; if she didhave family ties to France, it would suggest both a motive for O’Connell’s treachery—if he had been a traitor—and an avenue by which he might have disposed of the Calais information. But Greek . . . that argued for Stokes P и rehaving been a sailor, perhaps. Likely merchant seaman rather than naval, if he’d brought home a foreign wife.

Yes, he rather thought the Stokes family would bear looking into. Seafaring ran in families, and while his observations had necessarily been cursory under the circumstances, he thought that one or two of the men in the Stokes party had looked like sailors; one had had a gold ring in his ear, he was sure. And sailors would be well-placed for smuggling information out of Britain, though in that case—

“Me lord?”

“Yes, Tom?” He frowned slightly at the interruption to his thoughts, but answered courteously.

“It’s only I was thinking . . . seeing the dead cove, I mean—”

“Sergeant O’Connell, you mean?” Grey amended, not liking to hear a late comrade in arms referred to carelessly as “the dead cove,” traitor or not.

“Yes, me lord.” Tom took a deep swallow of his beer, then looked up, meeting Grey’s eyes directly. “Do you think me brother’s dead, too?”

That brought him up short. He readjusted the coat on his shoulders, thinking what to say. In fact, he did not think Jack Byrd was dead; he agreed with Harry Quarry that the fellow had probably either joined forces with whoever had killed O’Connell—or had killed the Sergeant himself. Neither speculation was likely to be reassuring to Jack Byrd’s brother, though.

“No,” he said slowly. “I do not. If he had been killed by the persons who brought about Sergeant O’Connell’s death, I think his body would have been discovered nearby. There could be no particular reason to hide it, do you think?”

The boy’s rigid shoulders relaxed a little, and he shook his head, taking another gulp of his beer.

“No, me lord.” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Only—if he’s not dead, where do ye think he might be?”

“I don’t know,” Grey answered honestly. “I am hoping we shall discover that soon.” It occurred to him that if Jack Byrd had not yet left London, his brother might be a help in determining his whereabouts, witting or not.

“Can you think of places where your brother might go? If he was—frightened, perhaps? Or felt himself to be in danger?”

Tom Byrd shot him a sharp look, and he realized that the boy was a good deal more intelligent than he had at first assumed.

“No, me lord. If he needed help—well, there’s six of us boys and Dad, and me father’s two brothers and their boys, too; we takes care of our own. But he’s not been home; I know that much.”

“Quite a thriving rookery of Byrds, it seems. You’ve spoken to your family, then?” Grey felt gingerly beneath the skirts of his coat; finding his breeches mostly dried, he sat down again opposite Byrd.

“Yes, me lord. Me sister—there’s only the one of her—come to Mr. Trevelyan’s on Sunday last, a-looking for Jack with a message. That was when Mr. Trevelyan said he’d not heard from Jack since the night before Mr. O’Connell died.”

The boy shook his head.

“If it happened Jack ran into summat too much for him, that Dad and us couldn’t handle, he would have gone to Mr. Trevelyan, I think. But he didn’t do that. If something happened, I think it must’ve been sudden, like.”

A clatter in the passageway announced the return of the barmaid, and prevented Grey answering—which was as well, since he had no useful suggestion to offer.

“Are you hungry, Tom?” The tray of fresh pasties the woman carried were hot and doubtless savory enough, but Grey’s nose was still numbed with oil of wintergreen, and the memory of O’Connell’s corpse fresh enough in mind to suppress his appetite.

The same appeared true of Byrd, for he shook his head emphatically.

“Well, then. Give the lady back her needle—and a bit for her kindness—and we’ll be off.”

Grey had not kept the coach, and so they walked back toward Bow Street, where they might find transport. Byrd slouched along, a little behind Grey, kicking at pebbles; obviously thoughts of his brother were weighing on his mind.

“Was your brother accustomed to report back to Mr. Trevelyan regularly?” Grey asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Whilst watching Sergeant O’Connell, I mean?”

Tom shrugged, looking unhappy.

“Dunno, me lord. Jack didn’t say what it was he was up to; only that it was a special thing Mr. Joseph wanted him to do, and that was why he wouldn’t be in the house for a bit.”

“But you know now? What he was doing, and why?”

An expression of wariness flitted through the boy’s eyes.

“No, me lord. Mr. Trevelyan only said as I should help you. He didn’t say specially what with.”

“I see.” Grey wondered how much of the situation to impart. It was the anxious look on Tom Byrd’s face, as much as anything else, that decided him on full disclosure. Full, that is, bar the precise nature of O’Connell’s suspected peculations and Grey’s private conjectures regarding the role of Jack Byrd in the matter.

“So you don’t think the dead—Sergeant O’Connell, I mean—you don’t think he was just knocked on the head by accident, like, me lord?” Byrd had come out of his mope; the clammy look had left his cheeks, and he was walking briskly now, engrossed in the details of Grey’s account.

“Well, you see, Tom, I still cannot say so with any certainty. I was hoping that perhaps we should discover some particular mark upon the body that would make it clear that someone had deliberately set out to murder Sergeant O’Connell, and I found nothing of that nature. On the other hand . . .”

“On the other hand, whoever stamped on his face didn’t like him much,” Tom completed the thought shrewdly. “ Thatwas no accident, me lord.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Grey agreed dryly. “That was done after death, not in the frenzy of the moment.”

Tom’s eyes went quite round.

“However do you know that? Me lord,” he added hastily.

“You looked closely at the heelprint? Several of the nailheads had broken through the skin, and yet there was no blood extravasated.”

Tom gave him a look of mingled bewilderment and suspicion, obviously suspecting that Grey had made up the word upon the moment for the express purpose of tormenting him, but merely said, “Oh?”

“Oh, indeed.” Grey felt some slight chagrin at having inadvertently shown up the deficiencies of Tom’s vocabulary, but didn’t wish to make further issue of the point by apologizing.

“Dead men don’t bleed, you see—save they have suffered some grievous wound, such as the loss of a limb, and are picked up soon after. Then you will see some dripping, of course, but the blood soon thickens as it chills, and—” Seeing the pallid look reappear on Tom’s face, he coughed, and resumed upon another tack.

“No doubt you are thinking that the nail marks might have bled, but the blood had been cleansed away?”

“Oh. Um . . . yes,” Tom said faintly.

“Possible,” Grey conceded, “but not likely. Wounds to the head bleed inordinately—like a stuck pig, as the saying is.”

“Whoever says it hasn’t likely seen a stuck pig,” Tom said, rallying stoutly. “I have. Floods of it, there is. Enough to fill a barrel—or two!”

Grey nodded, noting that it was clearly not the notion of blood per se that was disturbing the lad.

“Yes, that’s the way of it. I looked very carefully and found no dried blood in the corpse’s hair or on the skin of the face—though the cleansing appeared otherwise to be rather crude. So no, I am fairly sure the mark was made some little time after the Sergeant had ceased to breathe.”

“Well, it wasn’t Jack what made it!”

Grey glanced at him, startled. Well, now he knew what was disturbing the boy; beyond simple worry at his brother’s absence, Tom clearly feared that Jack Byrd might be guilty of murder—or at least suspected of it.

“I did not suggest that he did,” he replied carefully.

“But I know he didn’t! I can prove it, me lord!” Byrd grasped him by the sleeve, carried away by the passion of his speech.

“Jack’s shoes have square heels, me lord! Whoever stamped the dead cove had round ones! Wooden ones, too, and Jack’s shoes have leather heels!”

He paused, almost panting in his excitement, searching Grey’s face with wide eyes, anxious for any sign of agreement.

“I see,” Grey said slowly. The boy was still gripping his arm. He put his own hand over the boy’s and squeezed lightly. “I am glad to hear it, Tom. Very glad.”

Byrd searched his face a moment longer, then evidently found what he had been seeking, for he drew a deep breath and let go of Grey’s sleeve with a shaky nod.

They reached Bow Street a few moments later, and Grey waved an arm to summon a carriage, glad of the excuse to discontinue the conversation. For while he was sure that Tom was telling the truth regarding his brother’s shoes, one fact remained: The disappearance of Jack Byrd was still the main reason for presuming that O’Connell’s death had been no accident.

Harry Quarry was eating supper at his desk while doing paperwork, but put aside both plate and papers to listen to Grey’s account of Sergeant O’Connell’s dramatic departure.

“‘How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?’ She really said that?” He wheezed, wiping tears of amusement from the corners of his eyes. “Christ, Johnny, you’ve had a more entertaining day than I have, by a long shot!”

“You are quite welcome to resume the personal aspects of this investigation at any moment,” Grey assured him, leaning over to pluck a radish from the ravaged remains of Quarry’s meal. He had had no food since breakfast, and was ravenous. “I won’t mind at all.”

“No, no,” Quarry reassured him. “Wouldn’t dream of deprivin’ you of the opportunity. What d’ye make of Scanlon and the widow, coming to bury O’Connell like that?”

Grey shrugged, chewing the radish as he brushed flecks of dried mud from the skirts of his coat.

“He’d just married O’Connell’s widow, mere days after the sergeant was killed. I suppose he meant to deflect suspicion, assuming that people would scarce suspect him of having killed the man if he had the face to show up looking pious and paying for the funeral, complete with priest and trimmings.”

“Mm.” Quarry nodded, picking up a stalk of buttered asparagus and inserting it whole into his mouth. “Geddaluk t’shus?”

“Scanlon’s shoes? No, I hadn’t the opportunity, what with those two harpies trying to murder each other. Stubbs did look at his hands, though, when we were round at his shop. If Scanlon did for O’Connell, someone else did the heavy work.”

“D’you think he did it?”

“God knows. Are you going to eat that muffin?”

“Yes,” Quarry said, biting into it. Consuming the muffin in two large bites, he tilted back in his chair, squinting at the plate in hopes of discovering something else edible.

“So, this new valet of yours says his brother can’t have done it? Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

“Perhaps so—but the same argument obtains as for Scanlon; it took more than one person to kill O’Connell. So far as we know, Jack Byrd was quite alone—and I can’t envision a mere footman by himself doing what was done to Tim O’Connell.”

Failing to find anything more substantial, Quarry broke a gnawed chicken bone in two and sucked out the marrow.

“So,” he summed up, licking his fingers, “what it comes down to is that O’Connell was killed by two or more men, after which someone stamped on his face, then left him to lie for a bit. Sometime later, someone—whether the same someone who killed him, or someone else—picked him up and dropped him into the Fleet Ditch off Puddle Dock.”

“That’s it. I asked the constable in charge to look through his reports, to see whether there was any fighting reported anywhere on the night O’Connell died. Beyond that—” Grey rubbed his forehead, fighting weariness. “We should look closely at Iphigenia Stokes and her family, I think.”

“You don’t suppose she did it, do you? Woman scorned and all that—and she has got the sailor brothers. Sailors all wear wooden heels; leather’s slippery on deck.”

Grey looked at him, surprised.

“However do you come to know that, Harry?”

“Sailed from Edinburgh to France in a new pair of leather-heeled shoes once,” Quarry said, picking up a lettuce leaf and peering hopefully beneath it. “Squalls all the way, and nearly broke me leg six times.”

Grey plucked the lettuce leaf out of Quarry’s hand and ate it.

“An excellent point,” he said, swallowing. “And it would account for the apparent personal animosity evident in the crime. But no, I cannot think Miss Stokes had the Sergeant murdered. Scanlon might easily maintain a pose of pious concern for the purpose of disarming suspicion—but not she. She was entirely sincere in her desire to see O’Connell decently buried; I am sure of it.”

“Mm.” Quarry rubbed thoughtfully at the scar on his cheek. “Perhaps. Might her male relations have discovered that O’Connell had a wife, though, and done him in for honor’s sake? They might not have told her what they’d done, if so.”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Grey admitted. He examined the notion, finding it appealing on several grounds. It would explain the physical circumstances of the Sergeant’s death very nicely; not only the battering, done by multiple persons, but the viciousness of the heelprint—and if the killing had been done in or near Miss Stokes’s residence, then there was plainly a need to dispose of the body at a safe distance, which would explain its having been moved after death.

“It’s not a bad idea at all, Harry. May I have Stubbs, Calvert, and Jowett, then, to help with the inquiries?”

“Take anyone you like. And you’ll keep looking for Jack Byrd, of course.”

“Yes.” Grey dipped a forefinger into the small puddle of sauce that was the only thing remaining on the plate, and sucked it clean. “I doubt there’s much to be gained by troubling the Scanlons further, but I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit about his close associates, and where they might have been on Saturday night. Last but not least—what about this hypothetical spymaster?”

Quarry blew out his cheeks and heaved a deep sigh.

“I’ve something in train there—tell you later, if anything comes of it. Meanwhile”—he pushed back his chair and rose, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat—“I’ve got a dinner party to go to.”

“Sure you haven’t spoiled your appetite?” Grey asked, bitingly.

“Ha-ha,” Quarry said, clapping his wig on his head and bending to peer into the looking glass he kept on the wall near his desk. “Surely you don’t think one gets anything to eatat a dinner party?”

“That was my impression, yes. I am mistaken?”

“Well, you do,” Quarry admitted, “but not for hours. Nothing but sips of wine and bits of toast with capers on before dinner—wouldn’t keep a bird alive.”

“What sort of bird?” Grey said, eyeing Quarry’s muscular but substantial hindquarters. “A great bustard?”

“Care to come along?” Quarry straightened and shrugged on his coat. “Not too late, you know.”

“I thank you, no.” Grey rose and stretched, feeling every bone in his back creak with the effort. “I’m going home, before I starve to death.”

Chapter 5

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

(A Little Night Music)

It was well past dark when Grey returned to his mother’s house in Jermyn Street. In spite of his hunger, he was deliberately late, having no desire to face either his mother or Olivia before he had decided upon a course of action with regard to Joseph Trevelyan.

Not late enough, though. To his dismay, he saw light blazing through all the windows and a liveried footman standing by the portico, obviously there to admit invited guests and repel those unwanted. A voice within was upraised in some sort of song, accompanied by the sounds of flute and harpsichord.

“Oh, God. It isn’t Wednesday, is it, Hardy?” he pleaded, ascending the steps toward the footman, who smiled at sight of him, bowing as he opened the door.

“Yes, my lord. Has been all day, I’m afraid.”

Normally, he rather enjoyed his mother’s weekly musicales. However, he was in no condition to be sociable at the moment. He ought to go and spend the night at the Beefsteak—but that meant an arduous journey back across London, and he was perished with hunger.

“I’ll just slip through to the kitchen,” he said to Hardy. “ Don’ttell the Countess I’m here.”

“No indeed, my lord.”

He stole soft-footed into the foyer, pausing for a moment to judge the terrain. Because of the warm weather, the double doors into the main drawing room stood open, to prevent the occupants being suffocated. The music, a lugubrious German duet with a refrain of “Den Tod”—“O Death”—would drown the noise of his footsteps, but he would be in plain view for the second or two required to sprint across the foyer and into the hall that led to the kitchens.

He swallowed, mouth watering heavily at the scents of roast meat and steamed pudding that wafted toward him from the recesses of the house.

Another of the footmen, Thomas, was visible through the half-open door of the library, across the foyer from the drawing room. The footman’s back was turned to the door, and he carried a Hanoverian military helmet, ornately gilded and festooned with an enormous spray of dyed plumes, obviously wondering where to put the ridiculous object.

Grey pressed himself against the wall and eased farther into the foyer. There was a plan. If he could attract Thomas’s attention, he could use the footman as a shield to cross the foyer, thus gain the safety of the staircase, and make it to the sanctuary of his own chamber, whilst Thomas went to fetch him a discreet tray from the kitchen.

This plan of escape was foiled, though, by the sudden appearance of his cousin Olivia on the stair above, elegant in amber silk, blond hair gleaming in a lace cap.

“John!” she cried, beaming at sight of him. “There you are! I was so hoping you’d come home in time.”

“In time for what?” he asked, with a sense of foreboding.

“To sing, of course.” She skipped down the stairs and seized him affectionately by the arm. “We’re having a German evening—and you do the lieder so well, Johnny!”

“Flattery will avail you nothing,” he said, smiling despite himself. “I can’t sing; I’m starving. Besides, it’s nearly over, surely?” He nodded at the case clock by the stair, which read a few minutes past eleven. Supper was almost always served at half-past.

“If you’ll sing, I’m sure they’ll wait to hear you. Then you can eat afterward. Aunt Bennie has the most marvelous collation laid on—the biggest steamed pudding I’ve ever seen, with juniper berries, and lamb cutlets with spinach, and a coq au vin, and some absolutely disgusting sausages—for the Germans, you know. . . .”

Grey’s stomach rumbled loudly at this enticing catalog of gustation. He still would have demurred, though, had he not at this moment caught sight of an elderly woman with a swatch of ostrich plume in her tidy wig, through the open double doors of the drawing room.

The crowd erupted in applause, but as though the lady sensed his start of recognition, she turned her head toward the door, and her face lighted with pleasure as she saw him.

“She’s been hoping you’d come,” Olivia murmured behind him.

No help for it. With distinctly mixed feelings, he took Olivia’s arm and led her down as Hector’s mother hastened out of the drawing room to greet him.

“Lady Mumford! Your servant, ma’am.” He smiled and bent over her hand, but she would have none of this formality.

“Nonsense, sweetheart,” she said, in that warm throaty voice that held echoes of her dead son’s. “Come and kiss me properly, there’s a good boy.”

He straightened and obligingly bussed her cheek. She put her hands on his own cheeks and kissed him soundly on the mouth. The embrace did not recall Hector’s kiss to him, thank God, but was sufficiently unnerving for all that.

“You look well, John,” Lady Mumford said, stepping back and giving him a searching look with Hector’s blue eyes. “Tired, though. A great deal to be done, I expect, with the regiment set to move?”

“A good deal,” he agreed, wondering whether all of London knew that the 47th was due to be reposted. Of course, Lady Mumford had spent most of her life close to the regiment; even with husband and son both dead, she maintained a motherly interest.

“India, I heard,” Lady Mumford went on, frowning slightly as she fingered the cloth of his uniform sleeve. “Now, you’ll have your new uniform ready ordered, I hope? A nice tropical weight of superfine for your coat and weskit, and linen breeches. You don’t want to be spending a summer under the Indian sun, swaddled to the neck in English wool! Take it from me, my dear; I went with Mumford when he was posted there, in ’35. Both of us nearly died, between the heat, the flies, and the food. Spent a whole summer in me shift, having the servants pour water over me; poor old Wally wasn’t so fortunate, sweating about in full uniform, never could get the stains out. Drank nothing but whisky and coconut milk—bear that in mind, dear, when the time comes. Nourishing and stimulating, you know, and so much more wholesome to the stomach than brandywine.”

Realizing that he was merely proxy to the true objects of her bereaved affections—the shades of Hector and his father—he withstood this barrage with patience. It was necessary for Lady Mumford to talk, he knew; however, as he had learned from experience, it was not really necessary for him to listen.

He clasped her hand warmly between his own, nodding and making periodical small noises of interest and assent, while taking in the rest of the assembly with brief glances past Lady Mumford’s lace-covered shoulders.

Much the usual mix of society and army, with a few oddities from the London literary world. His mother was fond of books, and tended to collect scribblers, who flocked in ragtag hordes to her gatherings, repaying the bounty of her table with ink-splotched manuscripts—and a very occasional printed book—dedicated to her gracious patronage.

Grey looked warily for the tall, cadaverous figure of Doctor Johnson, who was all too apt to take the floor at supper and begin a declamation of some new epic in progress, covering any lacunae of composition with wide, crumb-showering gestures, but the dictionarist was fortunately absent tonight. That was well, Grey thought, spirits momentarily buoyed. He was fond both of Lady Mumford and of music, but a discourse on the etymology of the vulgar tongue was well above the odds, after the day he had been having.

He caught sight of his mother on the far side of the room, keeping an eye on the serving tables while simultaneously conversing with a tall military gentleman—from his uniform, the Hanoverian owner of the plumed excrescence Grey had observed in the library.

Benedicta, Dowager Countess Melton, was several inches shorter than her youngest son, which placed her inconveniently at about the height of the Hanoverian’s middle waistcoat button. Stepping back a bit in order to relieve the strain on her neck, she spotted John, and her face lighted with pleasure.

She jerked her head at him, widening her eyes and compressing her lips in an expression of maternal command that said, as plainly as words, Come and talk to this horrible person so I can see to the other guests!

Grey responded with a similar grimace, and the faintest of shrugs, indicating that the demands of civility bound him to his present location for the moment.

His mother rolled her eyes upward in exasperation, then glanced hastily round for another scapegoat. Following the direction of her minatory gaze, he saw that it had lighted on Olivia, who, correctly interpreting her aunt’s Jove-like command, left her companion with a word, coming obediently to the Countess’s rescue.

“Wait and have your smallclothes made in India, though,” Lady Mumford was instructing him. “You can get cotton in Bombay at a fraction of the London price, and the sheer luxury of cotton next the skin, my dear, particularly when one is sweating freely . . . You wouldn’t want to get a nasty rash, you know.”

“No, indeed not,” he murmured, though he scarcely attended to what he was saying. For at this inauspicious moment, his eye lit upon the companion that his cousin had just abandoned—a gentleman in green brocade and powdered wig who stood looking after her, lips thoughtfully pursed.

“Oh, is that Mr. Trevelyan?” Seeing his gaze rigidly fixed over her shoulder, Lady Mumford had turned to discover the reason for this lapse in his attention. “Whatever is he doing, standing there by himself?”

Before Grey could respond, Lady Mumford had seized him by the arm and was towing him determinedly toward the gentleman.

Trevelyan was got up with his customary dash; his buttons were gilt, each with a small emerald at its center, and his cuffs edged with gold lace, his linen scented with a delicate aroma of lavender. Grey was still wearing his oldest uniform, much creased and begrimed by his excursions, and while he usually did not affect a wig, he had on the present occasion not even had opportunity to tidy his hair, let alone bind or powder it properly. He could feel a loose strand hanging down behind his ear.

Feeling distinctly at a disadvantage, Grey bowed and murmured inconsequent pleasantries, as Lady Mumford embarked on a detailed inquisition of Trevelyan, with regard to his upcoming nuptials.

Observing the latter’s urbane demeanor, Grey found it increasingly difficult to believe that he had in fact seen what he thought he had seen over the chamber pots. Trevelyan was cordial and mannerly, betraying not the slightest sense of inner disquiet. Perhaps Quarry had been right after all: trick of the light, imagination, some inconsequent blemish, perhaps a birthmark—

“Ho, Major Grey! We have not met, I think? I am von Namtzen.”

As though Trevelyan’s presence had not been sufficient oppression, a shadow fell across Grey at this point, and he looked up to discover that the very tall German had come to join them, hawklike blond features set in a grimace of congeniality. Behind von Namtzen, Olivia rolled her eyes at Grey in a gesture of helplessness.

Not caring to be loomed over, Grey took a polite step back, but to no avail. The Hanoverian advanced enthusiastically and seized him in a fraternal embrace.

“We are allies!” von Namtzen announced dramatically to the room at large. “Between the lion of England and the stallion of Hanover, who can stand?” He released Grey, who, with some irritation, perceived that his mother appeared to be finding something amusing in the situation.

“So! Major Grey, I have had the honor this afternoon to be observing the practice of gunnery at Woolwich Arsenal, in company with your Colonel Quarry!”

“Indeed,” Grey murmured, noting that one of his waistcoat buttons appeared to be missing. Had he lost it during the contretemps at the gaol, he wondered, or at the hands of this plumed maniac?

“Such booms! I was deafened, quite deafened,” von Namtzen assured the assemblage, beaming. “I have heard also the guns of Russia, at St. Petersburg—pah! They are nothing; mere farts, by comparison.”

One of the ladies tittered behind her fan. This appeared to encourage von Namtzen, who embarked upon an exegesis of the military personality, giving his unbridled opinions on the virtues of the soldiery of various nations. While the Captain’s remarks were ostensibly addressed to Grey, and peppered by occasional interjections of “Do you not agree, Major?”, his voice was sufficiently resonant as to overpower all other conversation in his immediate vicinity, with the result that he was shortly surrounded by a company of attentive listeners. Grey, to his relief, was able to retreat inconspicuously.

This relief was short-lived, though; as he accepted a glass of wine from a proffered tray, he discovered that he was standing cheek by jowl again with Joseph Trevelyan, and now alone with the man, both Lady Mumford and Olivia having inconveniently decamped to the supper tables.

“The English?” von Namtzen was saying rhetorically, in answer to some question from Mrs. Haseltine. “Ask a Frenchman what he thinks of the English army, and he will tell you that the English soldier is clumsy, crude, and boorish.”

Grey met Trevelyan’s eye with an unexpected sympathy of feeling, the two men at once united in their unspoken opinion of the Hanoverian.

“One might ask an English soldier what he thinks of the French, too,” Trevelyan murmured in Grey’s ear. “But I doubt the answer would be suited to a drawing room.”

Taken by surprise, Grey laughed. This was a tactical error, as it drew von Namtzen’s attention to him once more.

“However,” von Namtzen added, with a gracious nod toward Grey over the heads of the intervening crowd, “whatever else may be said of them, the English are . . . invariably ferocious.”

Grey lifted his glass in polite acknowledgment, ignoring his mother, who had gone quite pink in the face with the difficulty of containing her emotions.

He turned half away from the Hanoverian and the Countess, which left him face-to-face with Trevelyan; an awkward position, under the circumstances. Requiring some pretext of conversation, he thanked Trevelyan for his graciousness in sending Byrd.

“Byrd?” Trevelyan said, surprised. “Jack Byrd? You’ve seen him?”

“No.” Grey was surprised in turn. “I referred to Tom Byrd. Another of your footmen—though he says he is brother to Jack.”

“Tom Byrd?” Trevelyan’s dark brows drew together in puzzlement. “Certainly he is Jack Byrd’s brother—but he is no footman. Beyond that . . . I did not send him anywhere. Do you mean to tell me that he has imposed his presence upon you, on the pretext that Isent him?”

“He said that Colonel Quarry had sent a note to you, advising you of . . . recent events,” he temporized, returning the nod of a passing acquaintance. “And that you had in consequence dispatched him to assist me in my enquiries.”

Trevelyan said something that Grey supposed to be a Cornish oath, his lean cheeks growing red beneath his face powder. Glancing about, he drew Grey aside, lowering his voice.

“Harry Quarry did communicate with me—but I said nothing to Byrd. Tom Byrd is the boy who cleans the boots, for God’s sake! I should scarcely take him into my confidence!”

“I see.” Grey rubbed a knuckle across his upper lip, suppressing his involuntary smile at the recollection of Tom Byrd, drawing himself up to his full height, claiming to be a footman. “I gather that he somehow informed himself, then, that I was charged with . . . certain enquiries. No doubt he is concerned for his brother’s welfare,” he added, remembering the young man’s white face and subdued manner as they left the Bow Street compter.

“No doubt he is,” Trevelyan said, plainly not perceiving this as mitigation. “But that is scarcely an excuse. I cannot believe such behavior! Inform himself—why, he has invaded my private office and read my correspondence—the infernal cheek! I should have him arrested. And then to have left my house without permission, and come here to practice upon you . . . This is unconscionable! Where is he? Bring him to me at once! I shall have him whipped, and dismissed without character!”

Trevelyan was growing more livid by the moment. His anger was surely justified, and yet Grey found himself oddly reluctant to hand Tom Byrd over to justice. The boy must plainly have been aware that he was sacrificing his position—and quite possibly his skin—by his actions, and yet he had not hesitated to act.

“A moment, if you will, sir.” He bowed to Trevelyan, and made his way toward Thomas, who was passing through the crowd with a tray of drinks—and not a moment too soon.

“Wine, my lord?” Thomas dipped his tray invitingly.

“Yes, if you haven’t anything stronger.” Grey took a glass at random and drained it in a manner grossly disrespectful to the vintage, but highly necessary to his state of mind, and took another. “Is Tom Byrd in the house?”

“Yes, my lord. I saw him in the kitchens just now.”

“Ah. Well, go and make sure that he stays there, would you?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Seeing Thomas off with his tray, Grey returned slowly to Trevelyan, a wineglass in either hand.

“I am sorry,” he said, offering one of the glasses to Trevelyan. “The boy seems to have disappeared. Fearful of being discovered in his imposture, I daresay.”

Trevelyan was still flushed with indignation, though his breeding had by now overtaken his temper.

“I must apologize,” he said stiffly. “I regret most extremely this deplorable situation. That a servant of mine should have practiced upon you in such fashion—I cannot excuse such unwarrantable intrusion, on any grounds.”

“Well, he has caused me no inconvenience,” Grey said mildly, “and was in fact helpful in some small way.” He brushed a thumb unobtrusively over the edge of his jaw, finding it still smooth.

“That is of no importance. He is dismissed at once from my service,” Trevelyan said, mouth hardening. “And I beg you will accept my apologies for this base imposition.”

Grey was not surprised at Trevelyan’s reaction. He wassurprised at the revelation of Tom Byrd’s behavior; the boy must have the strongest of feelings for his brother—and under the circumstances, Grey was inclined to a certain sympathy. He was also impressed at the lad’s imagination in conceiving such a scheme—to say nothing of his boldness in carrying it out.

Dismissing Trevelyan’s apologies with a gesture, he sought to turn the conversation to other matters.

“You enjoyed the music this evening?” he asked.

“Music?” Trevelyan looked blank for a moment, then recovered his manners. “Yes, certainly. Your mother has exquisite taste—do tell her I said so, will you?”

“Certainly. In truth, I am somewhat surprised that my mother has found time for such social pursuits,” Grey said pleasantly, waving a hand at the harpist, who had resumed playing as background to the supper conversation. “My female relations are so obsessed with wedding preparations of late that I should have thought any other preoccupation would be summarily dismissed.”

“Oh?” Trevelyan frowned, his mind plainly still on the matter of the Byrds. Then his expression cleared, and he smiled, quite transforming his face. “Oh, yes, I suppose so. Women do love weddings.”

“The house is filled from attic to cellar with bridesmaids, bolts of lace, and sempstresses,” Grey went on carelessly, keeping a sharp eye on Trevelyan’s face for any indications of guilt or hesitancy. “I cannot sit down anywhere without fear of impalement upon stray pins and needles. But I daresay the same conditions obtain at your establishment?”

Trevelyan laughed, and Grey could see that despite the ordinariness of his features, he was possessed of a certain charm.

“They do,” he admitted. “With the exception of the bridesmaids. I am spared that, at least. But it will all be over soon.” He glanced across the room toward Olivia as he spoke, with a faint wistfulness in his expression that both surprised Grey and reassured him somewhat.

The conversation concluded in a scatter of cordialities, and Trevelyan took his leave with grace, heading across the room to speak to Olivia before departing. Grey looked after him, reluctantly admiring the smoothness of his manners, and wondering whether a man who knew himself to be afflicted with the French disease could possibly discuss his forthcoming wedding with such insouciance. But there was Quarry’s finding of the house in Meacham Street—conflicting, rather, with Trevelyan’s pious promise to his dying mother.

“Thank God he’s gone at last.” His own mother had approached without his notice, and stood beside him, fanning herself with satisfaction as she watched Captain von Namtzen’s plumes bobbing out of the library toward the front door.

“Beastly Hun,” she remarked, smiling and bowing to Mr. and Mrs. Hartsell, who were also departing. “Did you smellthat dreadful pomade he was using? What was it, some disgusting scent like patchouli? Civet, perhaps?” She turned her head, sniffing suspiciously at a blue damask shoulder. “The man reeks as though he had just emerged from a whorehouse, I swear. And he wouldkeep touching me, the hound.”

“What would you know of whorehouses?” Grey demanded. Then he saw the gimlet gleam in the Countess’s eye and the slight curve of her lips. His mother delighted in answering rhetorical questions.

“No, don’t tell me,” he said hastily. “I don’t want to know.” The Countess pouted prettily, then folded her fan with a snap and pressed it against her lips in a token of silence.

“Have you eaten, Johnny?” she asked, flipping the fan open again.

“No,” he said, suddenly recalling that he was starving. “I hadn’t the chance.”

“Well, then.” The Countess waved one of the footmen over, selected a small pie from his tray, and handed it to her son. “Yes, I saw you talking to Lady Mumford. Kind of you; the dear old thing dotes upon you.”

Dear old thing. Lady Mumford was possibly the Countess’s senior by a year. Grey mumbled a response, impeded by pie. It was steak with mushrooms, delectable in flaky pastry.

“Whatever were you talking to Joseph Trevelyan so intently about, though?” the Countess asked, raising her fan in farewell to the Misses Humber. She turned to look at her son, and lifted one brow, then laughed. “Why, you’ve gone quite red in the face, John—one might think Mr. Trevelyan had made you some indecent proposal!”

“Ha ha,” Grey said, thickly, and put the rest of the pie into his mouth.

Chapter 6

A Visit to the Convent

In the event, they did not visit the brothel in Meacham Street until Saturday night.

The doorman gave Quarry an amiable nod of recognition—a welcome expanded upon by the madam, a long-lipped, big-arsed woman in a most unusual green velvet gown, topped by a surprisingly respectable-looking lace-trimmed cap and kerchief that matched the lavish trim of gown and stomacher.

“Well, if it’s not Handsome Harry!” she exclaimed in a voice nearly as deep as Quarry’s own. “You been neglectin’ us, me old son.” She gave Quarry a companionable buffet in the ribs, and wrinkled back her upper lip like an ancient horse, exposing two large yellow teeth, these appearing to be the last remaining in her upper jaw.

“Still, I s’pose we must forgive you, mustn’t we, for bringing such a sweet poppet as this along!”

She turned her oddly engaging smile on Grey, a shrewd eye taking in the silver buttons on his coat and the fine lawn of his ruffles at a glance.

“And what’s your name, then, me sweet child?” she asked, seizing him firmly by the arm and drawing him after her into a small parlor. “You’ve never come here before, I know; I should recall a pretty face like yours!”

“This is Lord John Grey, Mags,” Quarry said, throwing off his cloak and tossing it familiarly over a chair. “A particular friend of mine, eh?”

“Oh, to be sure, to be sure. Well, now, I wonder who might suit? . . .” Mags was sizing Grey up with the skill of a horse trader on fair day; he felt tight in the chest and avoided her glance by affecting an interest in the room’s decoration, which was eccentric, to say the least.

He had been in brothels before, though not often. This was a cut above the usual bagnio, with paintings on the walls and a good Turkey carpet before a handsome mantelpiece, on which sat a collection of thumbscrews, irons, tongue-borers, and other implements whose use he didn’t wish to imagine. A calico cat was sprawled among these ornaments, eyes closed, one paw dangling indolently over the fire.

“Like me collection, do you?” Mags hovered at his shoulder, nodding at the mantelpiece. “That little ’un’s from Newgate; got the irons from the whipping post at Bridewell when the new one was put up last year.”

“They ain’t for use,” Quarry murmured in his other ear. “Just show. Though if your taste runs that way, there’s a gel called Josephine—”

“What a handsome cat,” Grey said, rather loudly. He extended a forefinger and scratched the beast under the chin. It suffered this attention for a moment, then opened bright yellow eyes and sharply bit him.

“You want to watch out for Batty,” Mags said, as Grey jerked back his hand with an exclamation. “Sneaky, that’s what she is.” She shook her head indulgently at the cat, which had resumed its doze, and poured out two large glasses of porter, which she handed to her guests.

“Now, we’ve lost Nan, I’m afraid, since you was last here,” she said to Quarry. “But I’ve a sweet lass called Peg, from Devonshire, as I think you’ll like.”

“Blonde?” Quarry said with interest.

“Oh, to be sure! Tits like melons, too.”

Quarry promptly drained his glass and set it down, belching slightly.

“Splendid.”

Grey managed to catch Quarry’s eye, as he was turning to follow Mags to the parlor door.

“What about Trevelyan?” he mouthed.

“Later,” Quarry mouthed back, patting his pocket. He winked, and disappeared into the corridor.

Grey sucked his wounded finger, brooding. Doubtless Quarry was right; the chances of extracting information were better once social relations had been loosened by the expenditure of cash—and it was of course sensible to question the whores; the girls might spill things in privacy that the madam’s professional discretion would guard. He just hoped that Harry would remember to ask his blonde about Trevelyan.

He stuck his injured finger in the glass of porter and frowned at the cat, now wallowing on its back among the thumbscrews, inviting the unwary to rub its furry belly.

“The things I do for family,” he muttered balefully, and resigned himself to an evening of dubious pleasure.

He did wonder about Quarry’s motives in suggesting this expedition. He had no idea how much Harry knew or suspected about his own predilections; things had been said, during the affair of the Hellfire Club . . . but he had no notion how much Harry might have overheard on that occasion, nor yet what he had made of it, if he had.

On the other hand, given what he himself knew of Quarry’s own character and predilections, it was unlikely that any ulterior motive was involved. Harry simply liked whores—well, any woman, actually; he wasn’t particular.

The madam returned a moment later to find Grey in fascinated contemplation of the paintings. Mythological in subject and mediocre in execution, the paintings nonetheless boasted a remarkable sense of invention on the part of the artist. Grey pulled himself away from a large study showing a centaur engaged in amorous coupling with a very game young woman, and forestalled Mags’ suggestions.

“Young,” he said firmly. “Quite young. But not a child,” he added hastily. He withdrew his finger from the glass and licked it, making a face. “And some decent wine, if you please. A lot of it.”

Much to his surprise, the wine wasdecent; a rich, fruity red, whose origin he didn’t recognize. The whore was young, as per his request, but also a surprise.

“You won’t mind that she’s Scotch, me dear?” Mags flung back the chamber door, exposing a scrawny dark-haired girl crouched on the bed, wrapped up in a wooly shawl, despite a good fire burning in the hearth. “Some chaps finds the barbarous accent puts ’em off, but she’s a good girl, Nessie—she’ll keep stumm, and you tell her to.”

The madam set the decanter and glasses on a small table and smiled at the whore with genial threat, receiving a hostile glare in return.

“Not at all,” Grey murmured, gesturing the madam out with a courteous bow. “I am sure we shall suit splendidly.”

He closed the door and turned to the girl. Despite his outward self-possession, he felt an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“Stumm?” he asked.

“’Tis the German word for dumb,” the girl said, eyeing him narrowly. She jerked her head toward the door, where the madam had vanished. “She’s German, though ye wouldna think it, to hear her. Magda, she’s called. But she calls the doorkeep Stummle—and he’s a mute, to be sure. So, d’ye want me to clapper it, then?” She put a hand across her mouth, slitted eyes above it reminding him of the cat just before it bit him.

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

In fact, the sound of her speech had unleashed an extraordinary—and quite unexpected—tumult of sensation in his bosom. A mad mix of memory, arousal, and alarm, it was not an entirely pleasant feeling—but he wanted her to go on talking, at all costs.

“Nessie,” he said, pouring out a glass of wine for her. “I’ve heard that name before—though it was not applied to a person.”

Her eyes stayed narrow, but she took the drink.

“I’m a person, no? It’s short for Agnes.”

“Agnes?” He laughed, from the sheer exhilaration of her presence. Not just her speech—that slit-eyed look of dour suspicion was so ineffably Scotsthat he felt transported. “I thought it was the name the local inhabitants gave to a legendary monster, believed to live in Loch Ness.”

The slitted eyes popped open in surprise.

“Ye’ve heard of it? Ye’ve been in Scotland?”

“Yes.” He took a large swallow of his own wine, warm and rough on his palate. “In the north. A place called Ardsmuir. You know it?”

Evidently she did; she scrambled off the bed and backed away from him, wineglass clenched so hard in one hand, he thought she might break it.

“Get out,” she said.

“What?” He stared at her blankly.

“Out!” A skinny arm shot out of the folds of her shawl, finger jabbing toward the door.

“But—”

“Soldiers are the one thing, and bad enough, forbye—but I’m no takin’ on one of Butcher Billy’s men, and that’s flat!”

Her hand dipped back under the shawl, and reemerged with something small and shiny. Lord John froze.

“My dear young woman,” he began, slowly reaching out to set down his wineglass, all the time keeping an eye on the knife. “I am afraid you mistake me. I—”

“Oh, no, I dinna mistake ye a bit.” She shook her head, making frizzy dark curls fluff round her head like a halo. Her eyes had gone back to slits, and her face was white, with two hectic spots burning over her cheekbones.

“My da and two brothers died at Culloden, duine na galladh! Take that English prick out your breeks, and I’ll slice it off at the root, I swear I will!”

“I have not the slightest intention of doing so,” he assured her, lifting both hands to indicate his lack of offensive intent. “How old are you?” Short and skinny, she looked about eleven, but must be somewhat older, if her father had perished at Culloden.

The question seemed to give her pause. Her lips pursed uncertainly, though her knife hand held steady.

“Fourteen. But ye needna think I dinna ken what to do with this!”

“I should never suspect you of inability in any sphere, I assure you, madam.”

There was a moment of silence that lengthened into awkwardness as they faced each other warily, both unsure how to proceed from this point. He wanted to laugh; she was at once so doubtful and yet so in earnest. At the same time, her passion forbade any sort of disrespect.

Nessie licked her lips and made an uncertain jabbing motion toward him with the knife.

“I said ye should get out!”

Keeping a wary eye on the blade, he slowly lowered his hands and reached for his wineglass.

“Believe me, madam, if you are disinclined, I should be the last to force you. It would be a shame to waste such excellent wine, though. Will you not finish your glass, at least?”

She had forgotten the glass she was holding in her other hand. She glanced down at it, surprised, then up at him.

“Ye dinna want to swive me?”

“No, indeed,” he assured her, with complete sincerity. “I should be obliged, though, if you would honor me with a few moments’ conversation. That is—I suppose that you do not wish me to summon Mrs. Magda at once?”

He gestured toward the door, raising one eyebrow, and she bit her lower lip. Inexperienced as he might be in brothels, he was reasonably sure that a madam would look askance at a whore who not only refused custom, but who took a knife to the patrons without evident provocation.

“Mmphm,” she said, reluctantly lowering the blade.

Without warning, he felt an unexpected rush of arousal, and turned from her to hide it. Christ, he hadn’t heard that uncouth Scottish noise in months—not since his last visit to Helwater—and had certainly not expected it to have such a powerful effect, rendered as it was in a sniffy girlish register, rather than with the tone of gruff menace to which he was accustomed.

He gulped his wine, and busied himself in pouring out another glass, asking casually over his shoulder, “Tell me—given the undoubted strength and justice of your feelings regarding English soldiers, how is it that you find yourself in London?”

Her lips pressed into a seam, and her dark brows lowered, but after a moment she relaxed enough to raise her glass and take a sip.

“Ye dinna want to ken how I came to be a whore—only why I’m here?”

“I should say that the former question, while of undoubted interest, is your own affair,” he said politely. “But since the latter question affects my own interests—yes, that is what I am asking.”

“Ye’re an odd cove, and no mistake.” She tilted back her head and drank off the wine quickly, keeping a suspicious eye trained on him all the while. She lowered it with a deep exhalation of satisfaction, licking red-stained lips.

“That’s no bad stuff,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It’s the madam’s private stock—German, aye? Gie us another, then, and I’ll tell ye, if ye want to know so bad.”

He obliged, refilling his own glass at the same time. It wasgood wine; good enough to warm stomach and limbs, while not unduly clouding the mind. Under its beneficent influence, he felt the tension he had carried in neck and shoulders since entering the brothel gradually fade away.

For her part, the Scottish whore seemed similarly affected. She sipped with a delicate greed that drained her cup twice while she told her tale—a tale he gathered she had told before, recounted as it was with circumstantial embellishments and dramatic anecdotes. In sum, it was simple enough, though; finding life insupportable in the Highlands after Culloden and Cumberland’s devastations, her surviving brother had gone away to sea, and she and her mother had come south, begging for their bread, her mother occasionally reduced to the expedient of selling her body when begging was not fruitful.

“Then we fell in with him,” she said, making a sour grimace of the word, “in Berwick.” Hehad been an English soldier named Harte, newly released from service, who took them “under his protection”—a concept that Harte implemented by setting up Nessie’s mother in a small cottage where she could entertain his army acquaintances in comfort and privacy.

“He saw what a profit could be made, and so he’d go out now and again, huntin’, and come back wi’ some poor lass he’d found starvin’ on the roads. He’d speak soft to them, buy them shoes and feed them up, and next thing they kent, they were spreading their legs three times a night for the soldiers who’d put a bullet through their husbands’ heids—and within two years, Bob Harte was drivin’ a coach-and-four.”

It might be an approximation of the truth—or it might not.

Having no grounds for personal delusion, it was clear to Grey that a whore’s profession was one founded on mendacity. And if one could not believe in a whore’s central premise, unspoken though it was, one could scarcely place great credence in anything she said.

Still, it was an absorbing story—as it was meant to be, he thought cynically. He did not stop her, though; beyond the necessity of putting her at ease if he was to get any information from her, the simple fact was that he enjoyed hearing her talk.

“We met Bob Harte when I was nay more than five,” she said, putting a fist to her mouth to stifle a belch. “He waited until I was eleven—when I began to bleed—and then . . .” She paused, blinking, as though searching for inspiration.

“And then your mother, bent upon protecting your virtue, slew him in order to preserve you,” Grey suggested. “She was taken up and hanged, of course, whereupon you found yourself obliged by necessity to embrace the fate which she had sacrificed herself to prevent?” He lifted his glass to her in ironic toast, leaning back in his seat.

Rather to his surprise, she burst out laughing.

“No,” she said, wiping a hand beneath her nose, which had gone quite pink, “but that’s no bad. Better than the truth, aye? I’ll remember that one.” She lifted her glass in acknowledgment, then tilted back her head and drained it.

He reached for the bottle, only to find it empty. Rather to his surprise, the other was empty, too.

“I’ll get more,” Nessie said promptly. She bounced off the bed and was out of the room before he could protest. She had left the knife, he saw; it lay on the table, next to a covered basket. Leaning over and lifting the napkin from this, he discovered that it contained a pot of some slippery unguent, and various interesting appliances, a few of obvious intent, others quite mysterious in function.

He was holding one of the more obvious of these engines, admiring the artistry of it—which was remarkably detailed, even to the turgid veins visible upon the surface of the bronze—when she came back, a large jug clasped to her bosom.

“Oh, is that what ye like?” she asked, nodding at the object in his hand.

His mouth opened, but fortunately no words emerged. He dropped the heavy object, which struck him painfully in the thigh before hitting the carpeted floor with a thump.

Nessie finished pouring two fresh glasses of wine and took a gulp from hers before bending to pick the thing up.

“Oh, good, ye’ve warmed it a bit,” she said with approval. “That bronze is mortal cold.” Holding her full glass carefully in one hand and the phallic engine in the other, she knee-walked over the bed and settled herself among the pillows. Sipping her wine, she took hold of the engine with her other hand and used the tip to inch her shift languidly up the reaches of her skinny thighs.

“Shall I say things?” she inquired, in a businesslike tone. “Or d’ye want just to watch and I’ll pretend ye’re no there?”

“No!” Emerging suddenly from his tongue-tied state, Grey spoke more loudly than he had intended to. “I mean—no. Please. Don’t . . . do that.”

She looked surprised, then mildly irritated, but relinquished her hold on the object and sat up.

“Well, what then?” She pushed back the brambles of her hair, eyeing him in speculation. “I suppose I could suckle ye a bit,” she said reluctantly. “But only if ye wash it well first. With soap, mind.”

Feeling suddenly that he had drunk a great deal, and much more quickly than he had intended, Grey shook his head, fumbling in his coat.

“No, not that. What I want—” He withdrew the miniature of Joseph Trevelyan, which he had abstracted from his cousin’s bedroom, and laid it on the bed before her. “I want to know if this man has the pox. Not clap—syphilis.”

Nessie’s eyes, hitherto narrowed, went round with surprise. She glanced at the picture, then at Grey.

“Ye think I can tell from lookin’ at his face?” she inquired incredulously.

A more comprehensive explanation given, Nessie sat back on her heels, blinking meditatively at the miniature of Trevelyan.

“So ye dinna want him to marry your cousin, and he’s poxed, eh?”

“That is the situation, yes.”

She nodded gravely at Grey.

“That’s verra sweet of you. And you an Englishman, too!”

“Englishmen are capable of loyalty,” he assured her dryly. “At least to their families. Do you know the man?”

“I’ve no had him, myself, but aye, I think I’ve maybe seen him once or twice.” She closed one eye, considering the portrait again. She was swaying slightly, and Grey began to fear that his wine strategy had miscarried of its own success.

“Hmm!” she said, and nodded to herself. Tucking the miniature into the neck of her shift—given the meagerness of her aspect, he couldn’t imagine what held it there—she slid off the bed and took a soft blue wrapper from its peg.

“Some of the lasses will be busy the noo, but I’ll go and have a word wi’ those still in the sallong, shall I?”

“The . . . oh, the salon. Yes, that would be very helpful. Can you be discreet about your inquiries, though?”

She drew herself up with tipsy dignity.

“O’ course I can. Leave me a bit o’ the wine, aye?” Waving at the jug, she pulled the wrapper around her and swayed from the room in an exaggerated manner better suited to someone with hips.

Sighing, Grey sat back in his chair and poured another glass of wine. He had no idea what the vintage was costing him, but it was worth it.

He held his glass to the light, examining it. Wonderful color, and the nose of it was excellent—fruity and deep. He took another sip, contemplating progress to date. So far, so good. With luck, he would have an answer regarding Trevelyan almost at once—though it might be necessary to return, if Nessie could not manage to speak to whichever girls had most recently been with him.

The prospect of a return visit to the brothel gave him no qualms, though, since he and Nessie had reached their unspoken understanding.

He did wonder what she would have done, had he been truly interested in a carnal encounter rather than information. She had appeared deeply sincere in her objections to servicing one of Cumberland’s men—and in all honesty, he thought those objections not unreasonable.

The Highland campaign following Culloden had been his first, and he had seen such sights during it as would have made him ashamed to be a soldier, had he been in any frame of mind at the time as to encompass them. As it was, he had been shocked to numbness, and by the time he saw real action in battle, he was in France, and fighting against an honorable enemy—not the women and children of a defeated foe.

Culloden had been his first battle, in a way—though he had not seen action there, thanks to the scruples of his elder brother, who had brought him along to have a taste of military life but drew the line at letting him fight.

“If you think I am risking having to take your mutilated body home to Mother, you are demented,” Hal had grimly informed him. “You haven’t a commission; it’s not your duty yet to go and get your arse shot off, so you’re not going to. Stir one foot out of camp, and I’ll have Sergeant O’Connell thrash you in front of the entire regiment, I promise you.”

Fool that he was at sixteen, he had regarded this as monstrous injustice. And when he was at length allowed to set foot on the field, in the aftermath of the battle, he had gone out with pulse pounding, pistol cold in a sweating hand.

He and Hector had discussed it before, lying close together in a nest of spring grass under the stars, a little apart from the others. Hector had killed two men, face-to-face—God knew how many more, in the smoke of battle.

“You can’t tell, really,” Hector had explained, from the lofty heights of his four years’ advantage and his second lieutenant’s commission. “Not unless it’s face-to-face, with a bayonet, say, or your sword. Otherwise, it’s all black smoke and noise and you’ve no idea what you’re doing—you just watch your officer and run when he tells you, fire and reload—and sometimes you see a Scot go down, but you never know if it was your shot that took him. He might just have stepped in a mole hole, for all you know!”

“But you do know—when it’s close.” He had given Hector a rude nudge with his knee. “So what was it like then? Your first? Don’t dare to tell me you don’t remember!”

Hector had grabbed him and squeezed the muscle of his thigh until he squealed like a rabbit, then gathered him in close, laughing, forcing John’s face into the hollow of his shoulder.

“All right, I do remember, then. Wait, though.” He was quiet for a moment, his breath stirring John’s hair warm above the ear. It was too early in the year for midges, but the wind moved over them fresh and cool, tickling their skins with ends of waving grass.

“It was—well, it was fast. Lieutenant Bork had sent me and another fellow round a bit of copse to see if anything was doing, and I was in the lead. I heard a sort of thump and a cough behind me, and I thought Meadows—he was following me—I thought he’d stumbled. I turned to tell him to be quiet, and there he was lying on the ground, with blood all over his head, and a Scot just dropping the thumping great rock he’d hit Meadows with, and bending down to snatch his gun.

“They’re like animals, you know; all wild whiskers and dirt, generally barefoot and half-naked to boot. This one glanced up and saw me, and tried to seize the musket up and brain me, only Meadows had fallen on it, and I—well, I just screamed and lunged at him. I didn’t think a bit about it; it was just like the drills—only it felt a lot different when the bayonet went into him.”

John had felt a small shudder run through the body pressed against him, and put his arm round Hector’s waist, squeezing in reassurance.

“Did he die right away?” he asked.

“No,” Hector said softly, and John felt him swallow. “He fell back and sat down hard on the ground, and—and I lost hold of the gun, so he was sitting there with the bayonet sticking in him, and the gun’s butt . . . it was on the ground, bracing him, almost, like a shooting stick.”

“What did you do?” He stroked Hector’s chest, trying in some clumsy way to comfort him, but that was far beyond his powers at the moment.

“I knew I should do something—try to finish him, somehow—but I couldn’t think how. All I could do was to stand there, like a ninny, and him staring up at me out of that dirty face, and I . . .”

Hector swallowed again, hard.

“I was crying,” he said, all in a rush. “I kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and crying. And he sort of shook his head, and he said something to me, but it was in that barbarous Erse, and I couldn’t understand if he knew what I’d said, or was cursing me, or if he wanted something, water maybe . . . I had water . . .”

Hector’s voice trailed off, but John could tell from the thickened sound of his breath that he was near to crying now. His hand was fastened hard around John’s upper arm, clinging hard enough to leave a bruise, but John stayed still, perfectly still, until Hector’s breathing eased and the iron-hard grip relaxed at last.

“It seemed to take a long time,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Though I suppose it wasn’t, really. After a bit, his head just fell forward, very slowly, and stayed that way.”

He took a deep, wet breath, as though cleansing himself of the memory, and gave John a reassuring hug.

“Yes, you do remember the first one. But I’m sure it will be easier for you—you’ll do it better.”

Grey lay on Nessie’s bed, wineglass in hand, sipping slowly. He stared up at the soot-stained ceiling, but was seeing instead the gray skies over Culloden. It hadbeen easier—to do, at least, if not to recall.

“You’ll go with Windom’s detail,” Hal had said, handing him a long pistol. “Your job is to give the coup de gr в ce,if you find any still alive. Through one eye is surest, but behind the ear will answer well enough, if you find you can’t bear the eyes.”

His brother’s face was drawn with strain, white under the smudges of powder smoke; Hal was only twenty-five, but looked twice that, uniform plastered to him with rain and filthy with mud from the field. He gave his orders in a calm, clear voice, but Grey felt his brother’s hand tremble as he gave him the gun.

“Hal,” he said, as his brother turned away.

“Yes?” Hal turned back, patient but empty-eyed.

“You all right, Hal?” he asked, lowering his voice lest anyone nearby hear him.

Hal seemed to be looking somewhere far beyond him; it took a visible effort for him to bring his gaze back from that distant place, to fix it on his younger brother’s face.

“Fine,” he said. The edge of his mouth trembled, as though he wanted to smile in reassurance, but it fell back in exhaustion. He clapped a hand on John’s shoulder and squeezed hard; John felt oddly as though he were providing support to his brother, rather than the other way round.

“Just remember, Johnny—it’s a mercy that you give them. A mercy,” he repeated softly, then dropped his hand and left.

It lacked perhaps two hours ’til sunset when Corporal Windom’s detail set out onto the field, slogging through mud and moor plants that clung and grasped at their boots as they passed. The rain had stopped, but a freezing wind plastered his damp cloak to his body. He remembered the mixture of dread and excitement in his belly, superseded by the numbness of his fingers and his fear that he would not be able to prime the pistol again, if he had to use it more than once.

As it was, he had no need to use it at all for some time; all the men they came across were clearly dead. Nearly all Scots, though here and there a red coat burned like flame among the dull moor plants. The fallen of the English were taken away with respect, on stretchers. The enemy were thrown in heaps, the soldiers blue-fingered and mumbling curses in puffs of white breath as they dragged the bodies like so many felled logs, naked limbs like pale branches, stiff and awkward in the handling. He was not sure if he should help with this work, but no one seemed to expect him to; he trailed after the soldiers, gun in hand, growing colder by the moment.

He had seen battlefields before, at Preston and Falkirk, though neither had had so many bodies. One dead man was much like another, though, and within a short time, he was no longer bothered by their presence.

He had grown so numb, in fact, that he was barely startled when one of the soldiers shouted, “Hey, Cheeky! Got one for you!” His cold-slowed mind had not had time to interpret this before he found himself face-to-face with the man, the Scot.

He had vaguely supposed that everyone on the field was unconscious, if not dead; execution would be no more than a matter of kneel by the body, place the pistol, pull the trigger, step back and reload.

This man sat bolt upright in the heather, weight braced on the heels of his hands, the smashed leg that had prevented his escape twisted in front of him, streaked with blood. He was staring at Grey, dark eyes lively and watchful. He was young, perhaps Hector’s age. The eyes went from Grey’s face to the gun in his hand, then back to his face. The man lifted his chin, setting his mouth hard.

Behind the ear will answer well enough, if you find you can’t bear the eyes.

How? How was he to reach behind the ear, with him sitting like that? Grey lifted the pistol awkwardly, and stepped to the side, crouching a bit. The man’s head turned, eyes following him.

Grey stopped—but he couldn’t stop, the soldiers were watching.

“H-head, or heart?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. His hands were shaking; it was cold, though, so very cold.

The dark eyes closed for an instant, opened again, piercing through him.

“Christ, do I care?”

He lifted the pistol, the muzzle wavering a little, and pointed it carefully at the center of the man’s body. The Scot’s mouth compressed, and he shifted his weight to one hand. Before Grey could jerk away, he had lifted his free hand to seize Grey’s wrist.

Startled, Grey made no move to pull away. Breathing hard with effort, teeth gritted against the pain, the Scot guided the barrel so it came to rest against his forehead, just between the eyes. And stared at him.

And what Grey recalled most clearly was not the eyes, but the feel of the fingers, colder even than his own chilled flesh, curling gently round his wrist. There was no strength left now in the touch, but it stilled his shaking. The fingers squeezed, very gently. Offering mercy.

An hour later, they had gone back in darkness, and he had learned of Hector’s death.

The candle had been guttering for some time. There was another on the table, but he made no move to reach for it. Instead, he lay staring as the flame went out, and went on drinking wine in the musky dark.

He woke with a splitting head, somewhere in the dark hours before dawn. The candle had gone out, and for a disorienting moment, he had no idea where he was—or with whom. A warm, moist weight was curled against him, and his hand rested on bare flesh.

Possibilities erupted in his mind like a flight of startled quail, then disappeared as he took a deep breath and smelt cheap scent, expensive wine, and female musk. Girl. Yes, of course. The Scottish whore.

He lay still for a moment, muddled, trying to gain his bearings in the unfamiliar dark. There—a thin line of gray marked the shuttered window, a shade lighter than the night inside. Door . . . where was the door? He turned his head and saw a faint flicker of light across the floorboards, the exhausted glow of a guttering candle in the hallway. He vaguely remembered some uproar, singing and stamping from below, but that had ceased now. The brothel had subsided into quiet, though it was an odd, uneasy hush, like the troubled sleep of a drunken man. Speaking of which . . . he worked his tongue, trying to muster enough saliva from his parched and sticky membranes to swallow. His heart was beating with an unpleasant insistence that seemed to cause his eyeballs to protrude, bulging painfully with each throb of the organ. He hastily closed his eyes, but it didn’t help.

It was warm and close in the room, but a faint stirring of air from the shuttered window touched his body, a cool finger raising the hairs of chest and leg. He was naked, but didn’t recall undressing.

She was lying on his arm. Moving slowly, he disengaged himself from the girl, taking care not to rouse her. He sat for a moment on the bed, clutching his head in a soundless moan, then rose to his feet, taking great care lest it fall off.

Christ! What had he been about, to drink so much of that ungodly swill? It would have been better to swive the girl and have done with it, he thought, feeling his way across the room through bursts of brilliant white light that lit up the inside of his skull like fireworks on the Thames. His probing foot struck the table leg, and he felt blindly about beneath it until he found the chamber pot.

Somewhat relieved, but still desperately thirsty, he put it down and groped for the ewer and basin. The water in the pitcher was warm and tasted faintly of metal, but he drank it greedily, spilling it down his chin and chest, gulping until his guts began to protest the tepid onslaught.

He wiped a hand down his face and smeared the wetness across his chest, then loosened the shutters, taking deep, shuddering breaths of the cool gray air. Better.

He turned to look for his clothes, but realized belatedly that he couldn’t leave without Quarry. The thought of searching the house for his friend, flinging open doors and surprising sleep-sodden whores and their customers, was more than he could countenance in his present condition. Well, the madam would rout Harry out in short order, come daybreak. Nothing for it but wait.

Since he must wait, he might as well do it lying down; his innards were shifting and gurgling in ominous fashion, and his legs felt weak.

The girl was naked, too. She lay curled on her side, back to him, smooth and pale as a smelt on a fishmonger’s slab. He crawled cautiously onto the bed and eased himself down beside her. She shifted and murmured, but didn’t wake.

The air was much cooler now, with dawn coming on and the shutters ajar. He would have covered himself, but the girl was lying on the rumpled sheet. She shifted again, and he saw the gooseflesh prickling over her skin. She was thinner even than she had seemed the night before, ribs shadowing her sides and the shoulder blades sharp as wings in her bony little back.

He turned on his side and drew her against him, fumbling with one hand to disentangle the damp sheet and draw it over them both—as much to cover her skinniness as for its dubious warmth.

Her loosened hair was thick and curly, soft against his face. The feel of it disturbed him, though it was a moment before he realized why. She’d had hair like that—the Woman. Fraser’s wife. Grey knew her name—Fraser had told him—and yet he stubbornly refused to think of her as anything but “the Woman.” As though it were her fault—and the fault of her sex alone, at that.

But that was in another country, he thought, pulling the scrawny whore closer to him, and besides, the wench is dead.Fraser had said so.

He’d seen the look in Jamie Fraser’s eyes, though. Fraser had not ceased to love his wife merely because she was dead—no more than Grey could or would cease to love Hector. Memory was one thing, though, and flesh another; the body had no conscience.

He wrapped one arm over the girl’s fine-boned form, holding her tight against him. Nearly breastless, and narrow-arsed as a boy, he thought, and felt a tiny flame of desire, wine-fueled, lick up the insides of his thighs. Why not? he thought. He was paying for it, after all.

But, I’m a person, no?she’d said. And she was neither of the persons he longed for.

He closed his eyes, and kissed the shoulder near his face, very gently. Then he slept again, drifting on the troubled clouds of her hair.

Chapter 7

Green Velvet

He woke to broad daylight and a rumbling stir in the brothel below. The girl was gone—no, not gone. He rolled over and saw her by the window, dressed in her shift, her lips pressed tight in concentration as she plaited her hair, using the reflection in the chamber pot as her looking glass.

“Awake at last, are ye?” she asked, squinting at her reflection. “Thought I might need to poke a darning needle under your toenail to rouse ye.” Tying a red ribbon at the end of her plait, she turned and grinned at him.

“Ready for a bit o’ breakfast, then, chuck?”

“Don’t even mention it.” He sat up, slowly, one hand pressed to his forehead.

“Oh, a wee bit peaky this morn, are we?” A brown glass bottle and a pair of wooden tumblers had appeared on the washstand; she poured out something the color of ditch water and thrust the cup into his hand. “Try that; hair o’ the dog that bit ye is the best cure, or so they say.” She slopped a generous tot into her own glass and drank it off as though it were water.

It wasn’t water. He thought it was possibly turpentine, from the smell. Still, he wouldn’t be put to shame by a fourteen-year-old whore; he tossed it back in a gulp.

Not turpentine; vitriol. The liquid burned a fiery path straight down his gullet and into his bowels, sending a gust of brimstone fumes through the cavities of his head. Whisky, that’s what it was, and very raw whisky, at that.

“Aye, that’s the stuff,” she said approvingly, watching him. “Have another?”

Incapable of speech, he blinked watering eyes and held out his cup. Another fuming swallow, and he found that he had recovered sufficient presence of mind to inquire after his vanished clothes.

“Oh, aye. Just here.” She hopped up, bright as a sparrow, and pulled open a panel in the wall that hid a row of clothes pegs, upon which his uniform and linen had been hung with care.

“Did you undress me?”

“I dinna see anyone else here, do you?” She put a hand above her eyes, peering about the room in exaggerated fashion. He ignored this, pulling the shirt over his head.

“Why?”

He thought the glint of a smile showed in her eyes, though no trace of it touched her lips.

“So much as ye drank, I kent ye’d wake soon to have a piss, and like enough to stagger off then, if ye could. If ye stayed the night through, though, Magda wouldna bring anyone else up for me.” She shrugged, shift sliding off one scrawny shoulder. “Best sleep I’ve had in months.”

“I am deeply gratified to have been of benefit to you, madam,” Grey said dryly, assuming his breeches. “And what is likely to be the cost of an entire night spent in your charming company?”

“Two pound,” she said promptly. “Ye can pay me now, if ye like.”

He gave her a jaundiced look, one hand on his pocketbook.

“Two pound? Ten shillings, more like. Try again.”

“Ten shillings?” She tried to look insulted, but failed, thus informing him that he had been close in his estimate. “Well . . . one and six, then. Or perhaps one and ten”—she eyed him, her small pink tongue darting out to touch her upper lip in speculation—“if I can find out for ye where he goes?”

“Where who goes?”

“The Cornish lad ye were asking after—Trevelyan.”

Grey’s headache seemed suddenly diminished. He stared at her for a moment, then reached slowly into his pocketbook. He drew out three pound notes and tossed them into her lap.

“Tell me what you know.”

Agnes clasped her thighs together, hands between them, tight on the money, eyes sparkling with pleasure.

“What I ken is that he comes here, aye, maybe twa, three times in a month, but he doesna go wi’ any of the lasses—so as I couldna find out about the state of his prick, ye ken.” She looked apologetic.

Grey left off fastening his garter buckles, surprised.

“What does he do, then?”

“Weel, he goes into Mrs. Magda’s room, same as the rich ones always do—and a wee while later, out comes a woman in one of Maggie’s gowns and a big lace cap . . . but it’s no our Maggie. She’s near the same height, aye, but nay bosom to her and nay bum at all—and narrow in the shoulder, where Mags has the meat of a well-fed bullock.”

She raised one perfect eyebrow, obviously entertained by the look on his face.

“And then this . . . lady . . . goes out the back way, intae the alley, where there’s a chair waitin’. I’ve seen her do it,” she added, with a sardonic emphasis on the pronoun. “Though I didna ken who it was at the time.”

“And does . . . she . . . come back?” Grey asked, with the same emphasis.

“Aye, she does. She leaves past dark, and comes back just before dawn. I heard the chairmen in the alley, a week past, and bein’ as I happened for once to be alone”—she made a brief moue—“I got up and had a keek down from my window to see who it was. I couldna see any more than the top of her cap and a flash of green skirt—but whoever it was, her step was quick and long, like a man’s.”

She stopped then, looking expectant. Grey rubbed a hand through his tousled hair. The ribbon had come off as he slept, and was nowhere in sight.

“But you think that you can discover where this . . . person . . . goes to?”

She nodded, certain of herself.

“Oh, aye. I may not have seen the lady’s face, but I saw one of the chairmen, plain. Happen he’s a big auld lad called Rab, from up near Fife. He hasna often got the price of a whore, but when he does, he asks for me. Homesick, see?”

“Yes, I do see.” Grey wiped the hair out of his face, then reached into his pocketbook once more. She spread her legs just in time, catching the handful of silver neatly in the basket of her skirt.

“See that Rab has the price of you soon,” Grey suggested. “Aye?”

A rap came on the door, which sprang open to reveal Harry Quarry, bewhiskered and bleary-eyed, coat hung over one shoulder. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and only half-tucked into his breeches, the neckcloth discarded. While Quarry did have his wig on, it sat crookedly astride one ear.

“Not interrupting, am I?” he said, stifling a belch.

Grey hastily took up his own coat and stuffed his feet into his shoes.

“No, not at all. Just coming.”

Quarry scratched his ribs, rucking up his shirt in unconscious fashion to show a segment of hairy paunch. He blinked vaguely in Nessie’s direction.

“Had a good night, then, Grey? Not much to that one, is there?”

Lord John pressed two fingers between his throbbing brows and essayed what he hoped was an expression of satiated lewdness.

“Ah, well, you know the saying—‘the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat.’ ”

“Really?” Despite his dishevelment, Quarry perked up a little, peering over Lord John’s shoulder into the chamber. “Perhaps I’ll give her a try next time, then. What’s your name, chuck?”

Half-turning, Lord John saw Nessie’s eyes widen at the sight of Quarry, bloodshot and leering. Her mouth twisted in revulsion; she really had no tact, for a whore. He laid a hand on Quarry’s arm to distract him.

“Don’t think you’d like her, old fellow,” he said. “She’s Scotch.”

Quarry’s momentary interest disappeared like a snuffed-out candle.

“Oh, Scotch,” he said, belching slightly. “Christ, no. The sound of that barbarous tongue would wilt me on the spot. No, no. Give me a nice, fat English girl, good round bum, plenty of flesh on her, something to get hold of.” He aimed a jovial slap at the bum of a passing maid who clearly met these requirements, but she dodged adroitly and he staggered, narrowly avoiding ignominious collapse by catching hold of Grey, who in turn seized the doorjamb with both hands to keep from being overborne. He heard a giggle from Nessie, and straightened up, pulling his clothes into what order he could.

Following this rather undignified departure, they found themselves in a coach, rattling up Meacham Street in a manner highly unsuited to the state of Grey’s head.

“Find out anything useful?” Quarry asked, closing one eye to assist in concentration as he redid the buttons of his fly, which had been somehow fastened askew.

“Yes,” Grey said, averting his eyes. “But God knows what it means.”

He explained his inconclusive findings briefly, causing Quarry to blink owlishly at him.

“I don’t know what it means, either,” Quarry said, scratching his balding head. “But you might drop a word to that constable friend of yours—ask if any of his men have heard of a woman in green velvet. If she—or he—is up to something . . .”

The coach turned, sending a piercing ray of light through Grey’s eyes and straight into the center of his brain. He emitted a low moan. What had Constable Magruder suggested? Housebreaking, horse-stealing, robbery from the person . . .

“Right,” he said, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, envisioning the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan under arrest for fire-setting or public riot. “I’ll do that.”

Chapter 8

Enter the Chairman

Grey came down late to breakfast on Monday. The Countess had long since finished her meal and departed; his cousin Olivia was at table, though, informally clad in a muslin wrapper with her hair in a plait down her back, opening letters and nibbling toast.

“Late night?” he said, nodding to her as he slid into his chair.

“Yes.” She yawned, covering her mouth daintily with a small fist. “A party at Lady Quinton’s. What about you?”

“Nothing so entertaining, I’m afraid.” After a long and blissfully restorative sleep, he had spent the Sunday evening at Bernard Sydell’s house, listening to interminable complaints about the lack of discipline in the modern army, the moral shortcomings of the younger officers, the miserliness of politicians who expected wars to be fought without adequate materials, the shortsightedness of the current government, lamentations for the departure of Pitt as Prime Minister—who had been just as roundly excoriated when in office—and further remarks in a similar vein.

At one point during these declamations, Malcolm Stubbs had leaned aside and murmured to Grey, “Why don’t someone just fetch a pistol and put him out of his misery?”

“Toss you a shilling for the honor,” Grey had murmured back, causing Stubbs to choke on the vile sherry Sydell thought appropriate to such gatherings.

Harry Quarry hadn’t been there. Grey hoped that Harry was busy with his “something in train,” rather than merely avoiding the sherry—for if something definite was not discovered soon regarding O’Connell’s death, it was likely to come to the attention not only of Sydell, but of people with the capacity to cause a great deal more trouble.

“What do you think of these two, John?” Olivia’s voice interrupted his thoughts, and he withdrew his attention from the coddled egg before him to look across the table. She was frowning thoughtfully at two narrow lengths of lace, one draped across the silver coffeepot, another suspended from one hand.

“Mm.” Grey swallowed egg and tried to focus his attention. “For what?”

“Edging for handkerchiefs.”

“That one.” He pointed with his spoon at the sample on the coffeepot. “The other is too masculine.” In fact, the first one reminded him vividly—though not unpleasantly—of the lace trim on the gown worn by Magda, madam of the Meacham Street brothel.

Olivia’s face broke into a beaming smile.

“Exactly what I thought! Excellent; I want to have a dozen handkerchiefs made for Joseph—I’ll have an extra half-dozen made up for you as well, shall I?”

“Spending Joseph’s money already, are you?” he teased. “The poor man will be bankrupt before you’ve been married a month.”

“Not a bit of it,” she said loftily. “This is my own money, from Papa. A gift from the bride to the bridegroom. D’you think he’ll like it?”

“I’m sure he’ll be charmed at the thought.” And lace-trimmed handkerchiefs would go so well with emerald velvet, he thought, stricken by a sudden qualm. All around him, preparations for the wedding were proceeding like the drawing up of battle lines, with regiments of cooks, battalions of sempstresses, and dozens of people with no discernible function but a great deal of self-important busy-ness swarming through the house each day. Five weeks until the wedding.

“You have a bit of egg on your ruffle, Johnny.”

“Have I?” He peered downward, flicking at the offending particle. “There, is it gone?”

“Yes. Aunt Bennie says you have a new valet,” she said, still looking him over with an air of appraisal. “That odd little person. Is he not a trifle young and—unpolished—for such a position?”

“Mr. Byrd may lack something in terms of years and experience,” Grey admitted, “but he does know how to administer a proper shave.”

His cousin peered closely at him—like his mother, she was a trifle short of sight—then leaned across the table to stroke his cheek, a liberty he suffered with good grace.

“Oh, that isnice,” she said with approval. “Like satin. Is he good with your wardrobe?”

“Splendid,” he assured her, with a mental picture of Tom Byrd frowning over his mending of the torn coat seam. “Most assiduous.”

“Oh, good. You must tell him, then, to make sure your gray velvet is in good repair. I should like you to wear it for the wedding supper, and last time you had it on, I noticed that the hem had come unstitched in back.”

“I shall call it to his attention,” he assured her gravely. “Is this concern lest my appearance disgrace your nuptials, or are you practicing care of domestic detail in preparation for assuming command of your own household?”

She laughed, but flushed, very prettily.

“I amsorry, Johnny. How overbearing of me! I confess, I do worry. Joseph tells me I need not trouble over anything, his butler is a marvel—but I do not wish to be the sort of wife who is nothing more than an ornament.”

She looked quite anxious as she said this, and he felt a deep qualm of misgiving. Caught up in his own responsibilities, he had scarcely taken time to think how his investigation of Joseph Trevelyan might affect his cousin personally, should the man indeed prove to be poxed.

“You are never less than ornamental,” he said, a little gruffly, “but I am sure that any man of worth must discern the true nature of your character, and value it much more highly than your outward appearance.”

“Oh.” She flushed more deeply, and lowered her lashes. “Why—thank you. What a kind thing to say!”

“Not at all. Will I fetch you a kipper?”

They ate in a pleasant silence for a few moments, and Grey’s thoughts had begun to drift toward a contemplation of the day’s activities, when Olivia’s voice pulled him back to the present moment.

“Have you never thought of marriage for yourself, John?”

He plucked a bun from the basket on the table, taking care not to roll his eyes. The newly betrothed and married of either sex invariably believed it their sacred duty to urge others to share their happy state.

“No,” he said equably, breaking the bread. “I see no pressing need to acquire a wife. I have no estate or household that requires a mistress, and Hal is making an adequate job of continuing the family name.” Hal’s wife, Minnie, had just presented her husband with a third son—the family ran to boys.

Olivia laughed.

“Well, that is true,” she agreed. “And I suppose you enjoy playing the gay bachelor, with all the ladies swooning after you. They do, you know.”

“Oh, la.” He made a dismissive gesture with the butter knife, and resumed his attention to the bun. Olivia seemed to take the hint, and retired into the mysteries of a fruit compote, leaving him to organize his thoughts.

The chief business of the day must be the O’Connell affair, of course. His inquiries into Trevelyan’s private life had yielded more mystery than answer so far, but his investigation of the Sergeant’s murder had produced still less in the way of results.