Lord John and the Private Matter

“Poorly,” Grey repeated. “She was ill?”

“Yes, sir,” Tab said, taking heart from having an actual piece of information to impart. “The doctor came, and all.”

He inquired further, but to no avail. Neither, it seemed, had actually seen the doctor, nor heard anything regarding their mistress’s ailment; they had only heard of it from Cook . . . or was it from Ilse, the mistress’s lady’s maid?

Abandoning this line of questioning, Grey was inspired by the mention of gossip to inquire further about their master.

“You would not know this from personal experience, of course,” he said, altering his smile to one of courteous apology, “but perhaps Herr Mayrhofer’s valet might have let something drop. . . . I am wondering whether your master has any particular marks or oddities? Upon his body, I mean.”

Both girls’ faces went completely blank, and then suffused with blood, so rapidly that they were transformed within seconds into a pair of tomatoes, ripe to bursting point. They exchanged brief glances, and Annie let out a high-pitched squeak that might have been a strangled giggle.

He hardly needed further confirmation at this point, but the girls—with many stifled half-shrieks and muffling of their mouths with their hands—did eventually confess that, well, yes, the valet, Herr Waldemar, hadexplained to Hilde the parlor maid exactly why he required so much shaving soap. . . .

He dismissed the girls, who went out giggling, and sank down for a moment’s respite on the brocaded chair by the desk, resting his head on his folded arms as he waited for his heart to cease pounding quite so hard.

So, the identity of the corpse was established, at least. And a connexion of some sort between Reinhardt Mayrhofer, the brothel in Meacham Street—and Joseph Trevelyan. But that connexion rested solely on a whore’s word, and on his own identification of the green velvet gown, he reminded himself.

What if Nessie was wrong, and the man who left the brothel dressed in green was not Trevelyan? But it was, he reminded himself. Richard Caswell had admitted it. And now a rich Austrian had turned up dead, dressed in what certainly appeared to be the same green gown worn by Magda, the madam of Meacham Street—which was in turn presumably the same gown worn by Trevelyan. And Mayrhofer was an Austrian who left his home on frequent mysterious journeys.

Grey was reasonably sure that he had discovered Mr. Bowles’s unknown shark. And if Reinhardt Mayrhofer was indeed a spymaster . . . then the solution to the death of Tim O’Connell most likely lay in the black realm of statecraft and treachery, rather than the blood-red one of lust and revenge.

But the Scanlons were gone, he reminded himself. And what part, in the name of God, did Joseph Trevelyan play in all this?

His heart was slowing again; he swallowed the metallic taste in his mouth and raised his head, to find himself looking at what he had half-seen but not consciously registered before: a large painting that hung above the desk, erotic in nature, mediocre in craftsmanship—and with the initials “RM” worked cunningly into a bunch of flowers in the corner.

He rose, wiping sweaty palms on the skirt of his coat, and glanced quickly round the room. There were two more of the same nature, indisputably by the same hand as the paintings that decorated Magda’s boudoir. All signed “RM.”

It was additional evidence of Mayrhofer’s connexions, were any needed. But it caused him also to wonder afresh about Trevelyan. He had only Caswell’s word for it that Trevelyan’s inamoratawas a woman—otherwise, he would be sure that the Cornishman’s rendezvous were kept with Mayrhofer . . . for whatever purpose.

“And the day you trust Dickie Caswell’s word about anything, you foolish sod . . .” he muttered, pushing himself up from the chair. On his way out the door, he spotted the dish of congealing egg whites, and took a moment to thrust it hastily into the drawer of the desk.

Von Namtzen had herded the rest of the servants into the library for further inquisition. Hearing Grey come in, he turned to greet him.

“They are both gone, certainly. He, some days ago, she, sometime in the night—no one saw. Or so these servants say.” Here he turned to bend a hard eye on the butler, who flinched.

“Ask them about the doctor, if you please,” Grey said, glancing from face to face.

“Doctor? You are unwell again?” Von Namtzen snapped his fingers and pointed at a stout woman in an apron, who must be the cook. “You—more eggs!”

“No, no! I am quite well, I thank you. The chambermaids said that Mrs. Mayrhofer was ill this week, and that a doctor had come. I wish to know if any of them saw him.”

“Ah?” Von Namtzen looked interested at this, and at once began peppering the ranks before him with questions. Grey leaned inconspicuously on a bookshelf, affecting an air of keen attention, while the next bout of dizziness spent itself.

The butler and the lady’s maid had seen the doctor, von Namtzen reported, turning to interpret his results to Grey. He had come several times to attend Frau Mayrhofer.

Grey swallowed. Perhaps he should have drunk the last batch of egg whites; they could not taste half so foul as the copper tang in his mouth.

“Did the doctor give his name?” he asked.

No, he had not. He did not dress quite like a doctor, the butler offered, but had seemed confident in his manner.

“Did not dress like a doctor? What does he mean by that?” Grey asked, straightening up.

More interrogation, answered by helpless shrugs from the butler. He did not wear a black suit, was the essential answer, but rather a rough blue coat and homespun breeches. The butler knit his brow, trying to recall further details.

“He did not smell of blood!” von Namtzen reported. “He smelled instead of . . . plants? Can that be correct?”

Grey closed his eyes briefly, and saw bunches of dried herbs hanging from darkened rafters, the fragrant gold dust drifting down from their leaves in answer to footsteps on the floor above.

“Was the doctor Irish?” he asked, opening his eyes.

Now even von Namtzen looked slightly puzzled.

“How would they tell the difference between an Irishman and an Englishman?” he said. “It is the same language.”

Grey drew a deep breath, but rather than attempt to explain the obvious, changed tack and gave a brief description of Finbar Scanlon. This, translated, resulted in immediate nods of recognition from butler and maid.

“This is important?” von Namtzen asked, watching Grey’s face.

“Very.” Grey folded his hands into fists, trying to think. “It is of the greatest importance that we discover where Frau Mayrhofer is. This ‘doctor’ is very likely a spy, in the Mayrhofers’ employ, and I very much suspect that the lady is in possession of something that His Majesty would strongly prefer to have back.”

He glanced over the ranks of the servants, who had started whispering among themselves, casting looks of awe, annoyance, or puzzlement at the two officers.

“Are you convinced that they are ignorant of the lady’s whereabouts?”

Von Namtzen narrowed his eyes, considering, but before he could reply, Grey became aware of a slight stir among the servants, several of whom were looking toward the door behind him.

He turned to see Tom Byrd standing there, freckles dark on his round face, and fairly quivering with excitement. In his hands were a pair of worn shoes.

“Me lord!” he said, holding them out. “Look! They’re Jack’s!”

Grey seized the shoes, which were large and very worn, the leather across the toes scuffed and cracked. Sure enough, the initials “JB” had been burnt into the soles. One of the heels was loose, hanging from its parent shoe by a single nail. Leather, and round at the back, as Tom had said.

“Who is Jack?” von Namtzen inquired, looking from Tom Byrd to the shoes, with obvious puzzlement.

“Mr. Byrd’s brother,” Grey explained, still turning the shoes over in his hands. “We have been in search of him for some time. Could you please inquire of the servants as to the whereabouts of the man who owns these shoes?”

Von Namtzen was in many ways an admirable associate, Grey thought; he asked no further questions of his own, but merely nodded and returned to the fray, pointing at the shoes and firing questions in a sharp but businesslike manner, as though he fully expected prompt answers.

Such was his air of command, he got them. The household, originally alarmed and then demoralized, had now fallen under von Namtzen’s sway, and appeared to have quite accepted him as temporary master of both the house and the situation.

“The shoes belong to a young man, an Englishman,” he reported to Grey, following a brief colloquy with butler and cook. “He was brought into the house more than a week ago, by a friend of Frau Mayrhofer; the Frau told Herr Burkhardt”—he inclined his head toward the butler, who bowed in acknowledgment—“that the young man was to be treated as a servant of the house, fed and accommodated. She did not explain why he was here, saying only that the situation would be temporary.”

The butler at this point interjected something; von Namtzen nodded, waving a hand to quell further remarks.

“Herr Burkhardt says that the young man was not given specific duties, but that he was helpful to the maids. He would not leave the house, nor would he go far away from Frau Mayrhofer’s rooms, insisting upon sleeping in the closet at the end of the hall near her suite. Herr Burkhardt had the feeling that the young man was guarding Frau Mayrhofer—but from what, he does not know.”

Tom Byrd had been listening to all of this with visible impatience, and could contain himself no longer.

“The devil with what he was doing here—where’s Jack gone?” he demanded.

Grey had his own pressing question, as well.

“This friend of Frau Mayrhofer—do they know his name? Can they describe him?”

With strict attention to social precedence, von Namtzen obtained the answer to Grey’s question first.

“The gentleman gave his name as Mr. Josephs. However, the butler says that he does not think this is his true name—the gentleman hesitated when asked for his name. He was very . . .” Von Namtzen hesitated himself, groping for translation. “ Fein herausgeputzt. Very . . . polished.”

“Well dressed,” Grey amended. The room seemed very warm, and sweat was trickling down the seam of his back.

Von Namtzen nodded. “A bottle-green silk coat, with gilt buttons. A good wig.”

“Trevelyan,” Grey said, with a sense of inevitability that was composed in equal parts of relief and dismay. He took a deep breath; his heart was racing again. “And Jack Byrd?”

Von Namtzen shrugged.

“Gone. They suppose that he went with Frau Mayrhofer, for no one has seen him since last night.”

“Why’d he leave his shoes behind? Ask ’em that!” Tom Byrd was so upset that he neglected to add a “sir,” but von Namtzen, seeing the boy’s distress, graciously overlooked it.

“He exchanged these shoes for the working pair belonging to this footman.” The Hanoverian nodded at a tall young man who was following the conversation intently, brows knitted in the effort of comprehension. “He did not say why he wished it—perhaps because of the damaged heel; the other pair were also very worn, but serviceable.”

“Why did this young man agree to the exchange?” Grey asked, nodding at the footman. The nod was a mistake; the dizziness rolled suddenly out of its hiding place and revolved slowly round the inside of his skull like a tilting quintain.

A question, an answer. “Because these are leather, with metal buckles,” von Namtzen reported. “The shoes he exchanged were simple clogs, with wooden soles and heels.”

At this point, Grey’s knees gave up the struggle, and he lowered himself into a chair, covering his eyes with the heels of his hands. He breathed shallowly, his thoughts spinning round in slow circles like the orbs of his father’s orrery, light flashing from memory to memory, hearing Harry Quarry say, Sailors all wear wooden heels; leather’s slippery on deck,and then, Trevelyan? Father a baronet, brother in Parliament, a fortune in Cornish tin, up to his eyeballs in the East India Company?

“Oh, Christ,” he said, and dropped his hands. “They’re sailing.”

Chapter 16

Lust Is Perjur’d

It took no little effort to persuade both von Namtzen and Tom Byrd that he was capable of independent movement and would not fall facedown in the street—the more so as he was not entirely sure of it himself. In the end, though, Tom Byrd went reluctantly to Jermyn Street to pack a bag, and von Namtzen—even more reluctantly—was convinced that his own path of duty lay in perusing the contents of Mayrhofer’s desk.

“No one else is capable of reading whatever papers may be there,” Grey pointed out. “The man is dead, and was very likely a spy. I will send someone from the regiment at once to take charge of the premises—but if there is anything urgent in those papers . . .”

Von Namtzen compressed his lips, but nodded.

“You will take care?” he asked earnestly, putting a large, warm hand on the nape of Grey’s neck, and bending down to look searchingly into his face. The Hanoverian’s eyes were a troubled gray, with small lines of worry round them.

“I will,” Grey said, and did his best to smile in reassurance. He handed Tom a scribbled note, desiring Harry Quarry to send a German speaker at once to Mecklenberg Square, and took his leave.

Three choices, he thought, breathing deeply to control the dizziness as he stepped into a commercial coach. The offices of the East India Company, in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Trevelyan’s chief man of business, a fellow named Royce, who kept offices in the Temple. Or Neil the Cunt.

The sun was nearly down, an evening fog dulling its glow like the steam off a fresh-fired cannonball. That made the choice simple; he could not hope to reach Westminster or the Temple before everyone had gone home for the night. But he knew where Stapleton lived; he had made it his business to find out, after the unsettling interview with Bowles.

“You want what?” Stapleton had been asleep when Grey pounded on his door; he was in his shirt and barefoot. He knuckled one bleary eye, regarding Grey incredulously with the other.

“The names and sailing dates for any ships licensed to the East India Company leaving England this month. Now.”

Stapleton had both eyes open now. He blinked slowly, scratching his ribs.

“How would I know such a thing?”

“I don’t suppose you would. Someone in Bowles’s employ does, though, and I expect you can find out where the information is, without undue loss of time. The matter is urgent.”

“Oh, is it?” Neil’s mouth twisted, and the lower lip protruded a little. His weight shifted subtly, so that he stood suddenly nearer. “How . . . urgent?”

“Much too urgent for games, Mr. Stapleton. Put on your clothes, please; I have a coach waiting.”

Neil did not reply, but smiled and lifted a hand. He touched Grey’s face, cupping his cheek, a thumb drawing languidly beneath the edge of his mouth. He was very warm, and smelt of bed.

“Not all that much of a rush, surely, Mary?”

Grey gripped the hand and pulled it away from his face, squeezing hard, so that the knucklebones cracked in his grasp.

“You will come with me at once,” he said, very clearly, “or I will inform Mr. Bowles officially of the circumstances under which we first met. Do you understand me, sir?”

He stared at Stapleton, eye to eye. The man was awake now, blue eyes snapping-bright and furious. He freed himself from Grey’s grasp with a wrench and took a half-step backward, trembling with rage.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Stapleton’s tongue flicked across his upper lip—not in attempted flirtation, but in desperation. The light was dying, but not yet so far gone that Grey could not see Stapleton’s face clearly, and discern the bone-deep fright that underlay the fury.

Stapleton glanced round, to be sure they were not overheard, and gripping Grey’s sleeve, drew him into the shelter of the doorway. Standing so near, it was plain that the man wore nothing beneath his shirt; Grey could see the smoothness of his chest in the open neck, golden skin falling away to alluring shadows farther down.

“Do you know what could happen to me if you were to do such a thing?” he hissed.

Grey did. Loss of position and social ruination were the least of it; imprisonment, public whipping, and the pillory were likely. And if it was discovered that Stapleton’s irregular attachments had contributed to a breach of confidence in his duties—which was precisely what Grey was inciting him to do—he would be fortunate to escape hanging for treason.

“I know what will happen to you if you don’t do as I tell you,” Grey said coldly. He pulled his sleeve away and stepped back. “Be quick about it; I have no time to waste.”

It took no more than an hour before they reached a dingy lane and a shabby building that housed a printing shop, closed and shuttered for the night. Without a glance at Grey, Stapleton jumped out of the coach and banged at the door. Within moments, a light showed between the cracks of the shutters, and the door opened. Stapleton murmured something to the old woman who stood there, and slipped inside.

Grey sat well back in the shadows, a slouch hat drawn down to hide his face. The coach was a livery affair, ramshackle enough—but still an oddity in the neighborhood. He could only hope that Stapleton was quick enough in his errand to allow them to remove before some inquisitive footpad thought to try his luck.

The rumble and stink of a night-soil wagon floated through the air, and he tugged the window shut against them.

He was relieved that Stapleton had given in without more struggle; the man was certainly clever enough to have realized that the sword Grey held over his head was a two-edged one. True, Grey claimed to have been in Lavender House only as a matter of inquiry—and the only person who could prove otherwise was the young man with dark hair—but Stapleton didn’t know that.

Still, if it came to a conflict of allegations between himself and Stapleton, there was no doubt who would be believed, and Stapleton obviously realized that, as well.

What he didn’trealize, just as obviously, was that Richard Caswell was one of the flies in Mr. Bowles’s web. Grey would wager half a year’s income that that fat little spider with the vague blue eyes knew the name of every man who had ever walked through the doors of Lavender House—and what they had done there. The thought gave him a cold feeling at the base of the neck, and he shivered, drawing his coat closer in spite of the mildness of the night.

A sudden slap at the window beside him jerked him upright, pistol drawn and pointed. No one was there, though; only the smeared print of a hand, excrement-smeared fingers leaving long dark streaks on the glass as they dragged away. A clump of noxious waste slid slowly down the window, and the guffaws of the night-soil men mingled with the bellows of the coach’s driver.

The coach heaved on its springs as the driver stood up, and then there was the crack of a whip and a sharp yelp of surprise from someone on the ground. Nothing like avoiding notice! Grey thought grimly, crouching back in his seat as a barrage of night soil thumped and splattered against the side of the coach, the night-soil men hooting and gibbering like Barbary apes as the coachman cursed, clinging to his reins to stop the team from bolting.

A rattling at the coach’s door brought his hand to his pistol again, but it was only Stapleton, flushed and breathless. The young man hurled himself onto the bench across from Grey, and tossed a scribbled sheet of paper into his lap.

“Only two,” he said brusquely. “The Antioch,sailing from the Pool of London in three weeks time, or the Nampara,from Southampton, day after tomorrow. That what you wanted?”

The coachman, hearing Stapleton’s return, drew up the reins and shouted to his horses. All too willing to escape the brouhaha, the team threw themselves forward and the coach leapt away, flinging Grey and Stapleton into a heap on the floor.

Grey hastily disentangled himself, still grasping the slip of paper tightly, and clambered back to his seat. Neil’s eyes gleamed up at him from the floor of the coach, where he swayed on hands and knees.

“I said—that’s what you wanted?” His voice was barely loud enough to carry over the rumble of the coach’s wheels, but Grey heard him well enough.

“It is,” he said. “I thank you.” He might have put out a hand to help Stapleton up, but didn’t. The young man rose by himself, long body swaying in the dark, and flung himself back into his seat.

They did not speak on the way back into London. Stapleton sat back, arms folded across his chest, head turned to stare out of the window. The moon was full, and dim light touched the aquiline nose and the sensual, spoilt mouth beneath it. He was a beautiful young man, to be sure, Grey thought—and knew it.

Ought he try to warn Stapleton, he wondered? He felt in some fashion guilty over his use of the man—and yet, warning him that Bowles was undoubtedly aware of his true nature would accomplish nothing. The spider would keep that knowledge to himself, hoarding it, until and unless he chose to make use of it. And once he did—no matter what that use might be—no power on earth would free Stapleton from the web.

The coach came to a stop outside Stapleton’s lodging, and the young man got out without speaking, though he cast a single, angry glance at Grey just before the coach door closed between them.

Grey rapped on the ceiling, and the driver’s panel slid back.

“To Jermyn Street,” he ordered, and sat silent on the drive back, scarcely noticing the stink of shit surrounding him.

Chapter 17

Nemesis

In frank revolt, Grey declined to consume further egg whites. In intractable opposition, Tom Byrd refused to allow him to drink wine. An uneasy compromise was achieved by the time they reached the first posthouse, and Grey dined nursery-fashion upon bread and milk for supper, to the outspoken amusement of his fellow coach passengers.

He ignored both the jibes and the continuous feeling of unease in head and stomach, scratching ferociously with a borrowed, battered quill and wretched ink, holding a lump of milk-sodden bread with his free hand as he wrote.

A note to Quarry first; then to Magruder, in case the first should go astray. There was no time for code or careful wording—just the blunt facts, and a plea for reinforcements to be sent as quickly as possible.

He signed the notes, folded them, and sealed them with daubs of sooty candle wax, stamped with the smiling half-moon of his ring. It made him think of Trevelyan, and his emerald ring, incised with the Cornish chough. Would they be in time?

For the thousandth time, he racked his brain, trying to think if there was some quicker way—and for the thousandth time, reluctantly concluded that there wasn’t. He was a decent horseman, but the chances of his managing a hell-bent ride from London to Southampton in his present condition were virtually nil, even had he had a good mount instantly available.

It must be Southampton, he thought, reassuring himself for the hundredth time. Trevelyan had agreed to three days; not enough time to prevent pursuit—unless he had planned on Grey being dead? But in that case, why bargain for time? Why not simply dismiss him, knowing that he would soon be incapable of giving chase?

No, he must be right in his surmise. Now he could only urge the post coach on by force of will, and hope that he would recover sufficiently by the time they arrived to allow him to do what must be done.

“Ready, me lord?” Tom Byrd popped up by his elbow, holding his greatcoat, ready to wrap round him. “It’s time to go.”

Grey dropped the bread into his bowl with a splash, and rose.

“See that these are sent back to London, please,” he ordered, handing the notes to the postboy with a coin.

“Aren’t you a-going to finish that?” Byrd asked, sternly eyeing the half-full bowl of bread and milk. “You’ll be needing your strength, me lord, and you mean to—”

“All right!” Grey seized a final piece of bread, dunked it hastily in the bowl, and made his way to the waiting coach, cramming it into his mouth as he went.

The Namparawas an East Indiaman, tall in silhouette against a sky of fleeting clouds, her masts dwarfing the other ship traffic. Much too large to approach the quay, she was anchored well out; the doryman rowing Grey and Byrd toward the ship called out to a skiff heading back to shore, receiving an incomprehensible bellow in return across the water.

“Dunno, sir,” the doryman reported, shaking his head. “She means to leave on the tide, and it’s ebbin’ now.” He lifted one dripping oar, briefly indicating the gray water racing past, though Grey could not have told which way it was going, under oath.

Still queasy from rocking and bumping for a night and half a day in the post coach to Southampton, Grey was disinclined to look at it; everything in sight seemed to be moving, all in contrary and unsettling directions—water, clouds, wind, the heaving boat beneath them. He thought he might vomit if he opened his mouth, so he settled for a scowl in the doryman’s direction and a significant clutching of his purse, which answered well enough.

“She’ll be away, mebbe, before we reach her—but we’ll try, sir, aye, we’ll give it a go!” The man redoubled his efforts, digging hard, and Grey closed his eyes, clinging tight to the scale-crusted slat on which he sat and trying to ignore the stink of dead fish seeping into his breeches.

“Ahoy! Ahoy!” The doryman’s shriek roused him from dogged misery, to see the side of the great merchantman rising like a cliff before them. They were still rods away, and yet the massive thing blotted out the sun, casting a cold, dark shadow over them.

Even a lubber such as himself could see that the Namparawas on the point of departure. Shoals of smaller boats that he supposed had been supplying the great Indiaman were rowing past them toward shore, scattering like tiny fish fleeing from the vicinity of some huge sea monster on the point of awaking.

A flimsy ladder of rope still hung from the side; as the doryman heaved to, keeping the boat skillfully away from the monster’s side with one oar, Grey stood up, tossed the doryman his pay, and seized a rung. The dory was sucked out from under his feet by a falling wave, and he found himself clinging for dear life, rising and falling with the ship itself.

A small flotilla of turds drifted past below his feet, detritus from the ship’s head. He set his face upward and climbed, stiff and slow, Tom Byrd pressing close behind lest he fall, and came at last to the top with his body slimed with cold sweat, the taste of blood like metal in his mouth.

“I will see the owner,” he said to the merchant officer who came hurrying hugger-mugger from the confusion of masts and the webs of swaying ropes. “Now, by the order of His Majesty.”

The man shook his head, not attending to what he said, only concerned that they not interfere. He was already turning away, beckoning with one hand for someone to come remove them.

“The captain is busy, sir. We are on the point of sailing. Henderson! Come and—”

“Not the captain,” Grey said, closing his eyes briefly against the dizzying swirl of the cobweb ropes overhead. He reached into his coat, groping for his much-creased letter of appointment. “The owner. I will see Mr. Trevelyan—now.”

The officer swung his head round, looking at him narrowly, and seemed in Grey’s vision to sway like the dark mast beside him.

“Are you quite well, sir?” The words sounded as though they were spoken from the bottom of a rain barrel. Grey wetted his lips with his tongue, preparing to reply, but was eclipsed.

“Of course he ain’t well, you starin’ fool,” Byrd said fiercely from his side. “But that’s no matter. You take the Major where he says, and do it smart!”

“Who are you, boy?” The officer puffed up, glaring at Byrd, who was having none of it.

“That’s no matter, either. He says he’s got a letter from the King, and he does, so you hop it, mate!”

The officer snatched the paper from Grey’s fingers, glanced at the Royal Seal, and dropped it as though it were on fire. Tom Byrd set his foot on it before it could blow away, and picked it up, while the officer backed away, muttering apologies—or possibly curses; Grey couldn’t tell, for the ringing in his ears.

“Had you best sit down, me lord?” Byrd asked anxiously, trying to dust the footmark off the parchment. “There’s a barrel over there that nobody’s using just now.”

“No, I thank you, Tom, I’m better now.” He was; strength was returning after the effort of the climb, as the cold breeze dried the sweat and cleared his head. The ship was a great deal steadier underfoot than the dory. His ears still buzzed, but he clenched his belly muscles and glanced after the officer. “Did you see where that man went? Let us follow; it’s best if Trevelyan is not given too much warning.”

The ship seemed in complete confusion, though Grey supposed there was some method in it. Seamen scampered to and fro, dropping out of the rigging with the random suddenness of ripe fruit, and shouts rang through the air in such profusion that he did not see how anyone could make out one from another. One benefit of the bedlam, though, was that no one tried to stop them, or even appeared to notice their presence, as Tom Byrd led the way through a pair of half-height doors and down a ladder into the shadowed depths belowdecks. It was like going down a rathole, he thought dimly—are Tom and I the ferrets?

A short passageway, and another ladder—was Tom indeed tracking the officer by smell through the bowels of the ship?—and a turn, and sure enough: The officer stood by a narrow door from which light flooded into the cavernous belowdecks, talking to someone who stood within.

“There he is, me lord,” Tom said, sounding breathless. “That’ll be him.”

“Tom! Tom, lad, is that you?”

A loud voice spoke incredulously behind them, and Grey swung round to see his valet engulfed in the embrace of a tall young man whose face revealed his kinship.

“Jack! I thought you was dead! Or a murderer.” Tom wriggled out of his brother’s hug, face glowing but anxious. “Are you a murderer, Jack?”

“I am not. What the devil do you mean by that, you pie-faced little snot?”

“Don’t you speak to me like that. I’m valet to his lordship, and you’re no but a footman, so there!”

“You’re what? No, you’re never!”

Grey would have liked to hear the developments of this conversation, but duty lay in the other direction. Heart thundering in his chest, he turned his back on the Byrds, and pushed his way past the ship’s officer, ignoring his objections.

The cabin was spacious, with stern windows that flooded the space with light, and he blinked against the sudden brightness. There were other people—he sensed them dimly—but his sole attention was fixed on Trevelyan.

Trevelyan was seated on a sea chest, coatless, with the sleeve of his shirt rolled up, one hand clamping a bloodstained cloth to his forearm.

“Good Christ,” Trevelyan said, staring at him. “Nemesis, as I live and breathe.”

“If you like.” Grey swallowed a rush of saliva and took a deep breath. “I arrest you, Joseph Trevelyan, for the murder of Reinhardt Mayrhofer, by the power of . . .” Grey put a hand into his pocket, but Tom Byrd still had his letter. No matter; it was near enough.

A trembling vibration rose under his feet before he could speak further, and the boards seemed to shift beneath him. He staggered, catching himself on the corner of a desk. Trevelyan smiled, a little ruefully.

“We are aweigh, John. That is the anchor chain you hear. And this is my ship.”

Grey drew another deep breath, realization of his error coming over him with a sense of fatality. He should have insisted upon seeing the captain, whatever the objection. He should have presented his letter and made sure that at all costs the ship was prevented from sailing—but in his haste to make sure of Trevelyan, his judgment had failed. He had been able to think of nothing but finding the man, cornering him, and bringing him to book at last. And now it was too late.

He was alone, save for Tom Byrd, and while Harry Quarry and Constable Magruder would know where he was, that knowledge would not save him—for now they were a-sail, heading away from England and help. And he doubted that Joseph Trevelyan meant ever to come back to face the King’s justice.

Still, they would not put him overboard in sight of land, he supposed. And perhaps he could yet reach the captain, or Tom Byrd could. It might be a blessing that Byrd still held his letter; Trevelyan could not destroy it immediately. But would any captain clap the owner of his ship in irons, or abort the sailing of such a juggernaut, on the power of a rather dubious letter of empowerment?

He glanced away from Trevelyan’s wry gaze, and saw, with no particular sense of surprise, that the man who stood in the corner of the cabin was Finbar Scanlon, quietly putting a case of instruments and bottles to rights.

“And where is Mrs. Scanlon?” he inquired, putting a bold face on it. “Also aboard, I assume?”

Scanlon shook his head, a slight smile on his lips.

“No, my lord. She is in Ireland, safe. I’d not risk her here, to be sure.”

Because of her condition, he supposed the man meant. No woman would choose to bear a child on board ship, no matter how large the vessel.

“A long voyage then, I take it?” In his muddled state, he had not even thought to ask Stapleton for the ship’s destination. Had he been in time, that would not have mattered. But now? Where in God’s name were they headed?

“Long enough.” It was Trevelyan who spoke, taking away the cloth from his arm and peering at the result. The tender skin of his inner forearm had been scarified, Grey saw; blood still oozed from a rectangular pattern of small cuts.

Trevelyan turned to pick up a fresh cloth, and Grey caught sight of the bed beyond him. A woman lay behind the drapes of gauze net, unmoving, and he took the few steps that brought him to the bedside, unsteady on his feet as the ship shuddered and quickened, taking sail.

“This would be Mrs. Mayrhofer, I suppose?” he asked quietly, though she seemed in a sleep too deep to rouse from easily.

“Maria,” Trevelyan said softly at his elbow, wrapping his arm with a bandage as he looked down at her.

She was drawn and wasted by illness, and looked little like her portrait. Still, Grey thought she was likely beautiful, when in health. The bones of her face were too prominent now, but the shape of them graceful, and the hair that swept back from a high brow dark and lush, though matted by sweat. She had been let blood, too; a clean bandage wrapped the crook of her elbow. Her hands lay open on the coverlet, and he saw that she wore Trevelyan’s signet, loose on her finger—the emerald cabochon, marked with the Cornish chough.

“What is the matter with her?” he asked, for Scanlon had come to stand by his other side.

“Malaria,” the apothecary replied, matter-of-factly. “Tertian fever. Are you well, sir?”

So close, he could smell it, as well as see it; the woman’s skin was yellow, and a fine sweat glazed her temples. The strange musky odor of jaundice reached him through the veil of perfume that she wore—the same perfume he had smelt on her husband, lying dead in a blood-soaked dress of green velvet.

“Will she live?” he asked. Ironic, he thought, if Trevelyan had killed her husband in order to have her, only to lose her to a deadly disease.

“She’s in the hands of God now,” Scanlon said, shaking his head. “As is he.” He nodded at Trevelyan, and Grey glanced sharply at him.

“What do you mean by that?”

Trevelyan sighed, rolling down his sleeve over the bandage.

“Come and have a drink with me, John. There is time enough now; time enough. I’ll tell you all you wish to know.”

“I should prefer to be knocked straightforwardly on the head, rather than poisoned again—if it is all the same to you, sir,” Grey said, giving him an unfriendly eye. To his annoyance, Trevelyan laughed, though he muted it at once, with a glance at the woman in the bed.

“I’d forgotten,” he said, a smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I do apologize, John. Though for what the explanation is worth,” he added, “I was not intending to kill you—only to delay you.”

“Perhaps it was not your intent,” Grey said coldly, “but I suspect you did not mind if you did kill me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Trevelyan agreed frankly. “I needed time, you see—and I couldn’t take the chance that you wouldn’t act, despite our bargain. You would not speak openly—but if you had told your mother, everyone in London would have known it by nightfall. And I could not be delayed.”

“And why should you trifle at my death, after all?” Grey asked, anger at his own stupidity making him rash. “What’s one more?”

Trevelyan had opened a cupboard and was reaching into it. At this, he stopped, turning a puzzled face to Grey.

“One more? I have killed no one, John. And I am pleased not to have killed you—I would have regretted that.”

He turned back to the cupboard, removing from it a bottle and a pair of pewter cups.

“You won’t mind brandy? I have wine, but it is not yet settled.”

Despite both anger and apprehension, Grey found himself nodding acceptance as Trevelyan poured the amber drink. Trevelyan sat down and took a mouthful from his cup, holding the aromatic liquid in his mouth, eyes half-closed in pleasure. After a moment, he swallowed, and glanced up at Grey, who still stood, glaring down at him.

With a slight shrug, he reached down and pulled open the drawer of the desk. He took out a small roll of grubby paper and pushed it across the desk toward Grey.

“Do sit down, John,” he said. “You look a trifle pale, if you will pardon my mentioning it.”

Feeling somehow foolish, and resenting both that feeling and the weakness of his knees, Grey lowered himself slowly onto the proffered stool, and picked up the roll of paper.

There were six sheets of rough paper, hard-used. Torn from a journal or notebook, they bore close writing on both sides. The paper had been folded, then unfolded and tightly rolled at some point; he had to flatten it with both hands in order to read it, but a glance was sufficient to tell him what it was.

He glanced up, to see Trevelyan watching him, with a slightly melancholy smile.

“That is what you have been seeking?” the Cornishman asked.

“You know that it is.” Grey released the papers, which curled themselves back into a cylinder. “Where did you get them?”

“From Mr. O’Connell, of course.”

The little cylinder of papers rolled gently to and fro with the motion of the ship, and the cloud-shattered light from the stern windows seemed suddenly very bright.

Trevelyan sat sipping his own drink, seeming to take no further notice of Grey, absorbed in his own thoughts.

“You said—you would tell me whatever I wished to know,” Grey said, picking up his own cup.

Trevelyan closed his eyes briefly, then nodded, and opened them, looking at Grey.

“Of course,” he said simply. “There is no reason why not—now.”

“You say you have killed no one,” Grey began carefully.

“Not yet.” Trevelyan glanced at the woman in the bed. “It remains to be seen whether I have killed my wife.”

“ Yourwife?” Grey blurted.

Trevelyan nodded, and Grey caught a glimpse of the fierce pride of five centuries of Cornish pirates, normally hidden beneath the suave facade of the merchant prince.

“Mine. We were married Tuesday evening—by an Irish priest Mr. Scanlon brought.”

Grey turned on his stool, gawking at Scanlon, who shrugged and smiled, but said nothing.

“I imagine my family—good Protestants that they’ve all been since King Henry’s time—would be outraged,” Trevelyan said, with a faint smile. “And it may not be completely legal. But needs must when the devil drives—and she is Catholic. She wished to be married, before . . .” His voice died away as he looked at the woman on the bed. She was restless now; limbs twitching beneath the coverlet, head turning uncomfortably upon her pillow.

“Not long,” Scanlon said quietly, seeing the direction of his glance.

“Until what?” Grey asked, suddenly dreading to hear the answer.

“Until the fever comes on again,” the apothecary replied. A faint frown creased his brow. “It is a tertian fever—it comes on, passes off, and then returns again upon the third day. And so again—and yet again. She was able to travel yesterday, but as you see . . .” He shook his head. “I have Jesuit bark for her; it may work.”

“I am sorry,” Grey said formally to Trevelyan, who inclined his head in grave receipt. Grey cleared his throat.

“Perhaps you would be good enough, then, to explain how Reinhardt Mayrhofer met his death, if not by your hand? And just how these papers came into your possession?”

Trevelyan sat for a moment, breathing slowly, then lifted his face briefly to the light from the windows, closing his eyes like a man savoring to the full the last moments of life before his execution.

“I suppose I must begin at the beginning, then,” he said at last, eyes still closed. “And that must be the afternoon when I first set eyes upon Maria. That occasion was the ninth of May last year, at one of Lady Bracknell’s salons.”

A faint smile flitted across his face, as though he saw the occasion pass again before his eyes. He opened them, regarding Grey with an easy frankness.

“I never go to such things,” he said. “Never. But a gentleman with whom I had business dealings had come to lunch with me at the Beefsteak, and we found we had more to speak of than would fit comfortably within the length of a luncheon. And so when he invited me to go with him to his further engagement, I did. And . . . she was there.”

He opened his eyes and glanced at the bed where the woman lay, still and yellow.

“I did not know such a thing was possible,” he remarked, sounding almost surprised. “If anyone had suggested such a thing to me, I would have scoffed at them—and yet . . .”

He had seen the woman sitting in the corner and been struck by her beauty—but much more by her sadness. It was not like the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan to be touched by emotion—his own or others’—and yet the poignant grief that marked her features drew him as much as it disturbed him.

He had not approached her himself, but had not been able to take his eyes off her for long. His attention was noticed, and his hostess had obligingly told him that the woman was Frau Mayrhofer, wife of a minor Austrian noble.

“Do go and speak to her,” the hostess had urged, a worried kindness evident in her manner as she glanced at the lovely, sorrowful guest. “This is her first excursion into society since her sad loss—her first child, poor thing—and I am sure that a bit of attention would do her so much good!”

He had crossed the room with no notion what he might say or do—he had no knowledge of the language of condolence, no skill at social small talk; his metier was business and politics. And yet, when his hostess had introduced them and left, he found himself still holding the hand he had kissed, looking into soft brown eyes that drowned his soul. And without further thought or hesitation had said, “God help me, I am in love with you.”

“She laughed,” Trevelyan said, his own face lighting at the recollection. “She laughed, and said, ‘God help me, then!’ It transformed her in an instant. And if I had been in love with La Dolorosa, I was . . . ravished . . . by La Allegretta. I would have done anything to keep the sorrow from returning to her eyes.” He looked at the woman on the bed again, and his fists curled unconsciously. “I would have done anything to have her.”

She was Catholic, and a married woman; it had taken several months before she yielded to him—but he was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. And her husband—

“Reinhardt Mayrhofer was a degenerate,” Trevelyan said, his narrow face hardening. “A womanizer and worse.”

And so their affair had begun.

“This would be before you became betrothed to my cousin?” Grey asked, a slight edge in his voice.

Trevelyan blinked, seeming slightly surprised.

“Yes. Had I had any hopes of inducing Maria to leave Mayrhofer, then of course I should never have contracted the betrothal. As it was, though, she was adamant; she loved me, but could not in conscience leave her husband. That being so . . .” He shrugged.

That being so, he had seen nothing wrong with marrying Olivia, thus enhancing his own fortunes and laying the foundation of his future dynasty with someone of impeccable family—while maintaining his passionate affair with Maria Mayrhofer.

“Don’t look so disapproving, John,” Trevelyan said, long mouth curling a little. “I should have made Olivia a good husband. She would have been quite happy and content.”

This was doubtless true; Grey knew a dozen couples, at least, where the husband kept a mistress, with or without his wife’s knowledge. And his own mother had said . . .

“I gather that Reinhardt Mayrhofer was not so complaisant?” he said.

Trevelyan uttered a short laugh.

“We were more than discreet. Though he would likely not have cared—save that it offered him a means of profit.”

“So,” Grey hazarded a guess, “he discovered the truth, and undertook to blackmail you?”

“Nothing quite so simple as that.”

Instead, Trevelyan had learned from his lover something of her husband’s interests and activities—and, interested himself by this information, had set out to gain more.

“He was not a bad intriguer, Mayrhofer,” Trevelyan said, turning the cup gently in his hands so as to release the bouquet of the brandy. “He moved well in society, and had a nose for bits of information that meant little by themselves but that could be built up into something of importance—and either sold or, if of military importance, passed on to the Austrians.”

“It did not, of course, occur to you to mention this to anyone in authority? That istreason, after all.”

Trevelyan took a deep breath, inhaling the spice of his brandy.

“Oh, I thought I would just watch him for a bit,” he said blandly. “See exactly what he was up to, you know.”

“See whether he was doing anything that might be of benefit to you, you mean.”

Trevelyan pursed his lips, and shook his head slowly over the brandy.

“You have a very suspicious sort of mind, John—has anyone ever told you that?” Not waiting for an answer, he went on. “So when Hal came to me with his suspicions about your Sergeant O’Connell, it occurred to me to wonder whether I might possibly kill two birds with one stone, you see?”

Hal had accepted his offer of Jack Byrd at once, and Trevelyan had set his most trusted servant the task of following the Sergeant. If O’Connell did have the Calais papers, then it might be arranged for Reinhardt Mayrhofer to hear about them.

“It seemed desirable to discover what Mayrhofer might do with such a find; who he would go to, I mean.”

“Hmm,” Grey said skeptically. He eyed his own brandy suspiciously, but there was no sediment. He took a cautious sip, and found that it burned agreeably on his palate, obliterating the murky smells of sea, sickness, and sewage. He felt immeasurably better at once.

Trevelyan had left off his wig. He wore his hair polled close; it was flat and a nondescript sort of brown, but it quite altered his appearance. Some men—Quarry, for instance—were who they were, no matter how attired, but not Trevelyan. Properly wigged, he was an elegant gentleman; shirtsleeved and bareheaded, with the bloodstained bandage about his arm, he might have been a buccaneer plotting the downfall of a prey, narrow face alight with determination.

“So I set Jack Byrd to watch O’Connell, as Hal had asked—but the bugger didn’t do anything! Just went about his business, and when he wasn’t doing that, spent his time drinking and whoring, before going home to that little seamstress he’d taken up with.”

“Hmm,” Grey said again, trying and failing notably to envision Iphigenia Stokes as a little anything.

“I told Byrd to try to get round the Stokes woman—see if she might be induced to wheedle O’Connell into action—but she was surprisingly indifferent to our Jack,” Trevelyan said, pursing his lips.

“Perhaps she actually loved Tim O’Connell,” Grey remarked, eliciting a pair of raised eyebrows and a puff of disbelief from Trevelyan. Love, evidently, was the exclusive province of the upper classes.

“Anyway”—Trevelyan dismissed such considerations with a wave of the hand—“finally Jack Byrd reported to me that O’Connell had scraped acquaintance with a man whom he met in a tavern. Unimportant in himself, but known to have vague connexions with parties sympathetic to France.”

“Known by whom?” Grey interrupted. “Not you, I don’t suppose.”

Trevelyan gave him a quick glance, wary but interested.

“No, not me. Do you know a man named Bowles, by any chance?”

“I do, yes. How the hell do you know him?”

Trevelyan smiled faintly.

“Government and commerce work hand in hand, John, and what affects one affects the other. Mr. Bowles and I have had an understanding for some years now, regarding the trade of small bits of information.”

He would have gone on with his story, but Grey had had a sudden flash of insight.

“An understanding, you say. This understanding—did it have something to do, perhaps, with an establishment known as Lavender House?”

Trevelyan stared at him, one brow raised.

“That’s very perceptive of you, John,” he said, looking amused. “Dickie Caswell said you were much more intelligent than you looked—not that you appear in any way witless,” he hastened to add, seeing the look of offense on Grey’s face. “Merely that Dickie is somewhat susceptible to male beauty, and thus inclined to be blinded to a man’s other qualities if he is the possessor of such beauty. But I do not employ him to make such distinctions, after all; merely to report to me such matters as might be of interest.”

“Good Lord.” Grey felt the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him again, and was obliged to close his eyes for a moment. Such matters as might be of interest.The mere fact that a man had visited Lavender House—let alone what he might have done there—would be a “matter of interest,” to be sure. With such knowledge, Mr. Bowles—or his agents—could bring pressure to bear on such men, the threat of exposure obliging them to undertake any actions suggested. How many men did the spider hold, enmeshed in his blackmailer’s web?

“So you employ Caswell?” he asked, opening his eyes and swallowing the metallic taste at the back of his throat. “You are the owner of Lavender House, then?”

“And of the brothel in Meacham Street,” Trevelyan said, his look of amusement deepening. “A great help in business. You have no idea, John, of the things that men will let slip when in the grip of lust or drunkenness.”

“Don’t I?” Grey said. He took a sparing sip of the brandy. “I am surprised, then, that Caswell should have revealed to me what he did, regarding your own activities. It was he who told me that you visited a woman there.”

“Did he?” Trevelyan looked displeased at that. “He didn’t tell me that.” He leaned back a little, frowning. Then he gave a short laugh and shook his head.

“Well, it’s as my old Nan used to say to me: ‘Lie down with pigs, and you’ll rise up mucky.’ I daresay it would have suited Dickie very well to have me arrested and imprisoned, or executed—and I suppose he thought the opportunity was ripe at last. He believes that Lavender House will go to him, should anything happen to me; I think it is that belief alone that’s kept him alive so long.”

“He believes it. It is not so?”

Trevelyan shrugged, suddenly indifferent.

“No matter now.” He rose, restless, and went to stand by the bed again. He could not keep from touching her, Grey saw; his fingers lifted a damp wisp of hair away from her cheek and smoothed it back behind her ear. She stirred in her sleep, eyelids fluttering, and Trevelyan took her hand, kneeling down to murmur to her, stroking her knuckles with his thumb.

Scanlon was watching, too, Grey saw. The apothecary had started brewing some potion over a spirit lamp; a bitter-smelling steam began to rise from the pot, fogging the windows. Glancing back toward the bed, he saw that England had fallen far behind by now; only a narrow hump of land was still visible through the windows, above the roiling sea.

“And you, Mr. Scanlon,” Grey said, rising, and moving carefully toward the apothecary, cup in hand. “How do you find yourself entangled in this affair?”

The Irishman gave him a wry look.

“Ah, and isn’t love a grand bitch, then?”

“I daresay. You would be referring to the present Mrs. Scanlon, I collect?”

“Francie, aye.” A warmth glowed in the Irishman’s eyes as he spoke his wife’s name. “We took up together, her and me, after her wretch of a husband left. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t marry, though she’d have liked it. But then the bastard comes back!”

The apothecary’s big clean hands curled up into fists at the thought.

“Waited until I was out, the shite. I come back from tending to an ague, and what do I find but my Francie on the floor, a-welter in her own blood and her precious face smashed in—” He stopped abruptly, trembling with recalled rage.

“There was a man bent over her; I thought he’d done it, and went for him. I’d have killed him, sure, had Francie not come round enough to wheeze out to me as it weren’t him but Tim O’Connell who’d beaten her.”

The man was Jack Byrd, who had followed O’Connell to the apothecary’s shop, and then, hearing the sounds of violence and a woman screaming, had rushed up the stairs, surprising Tim O’Connell and driving him away.

“Bless him, he was in time to save her life,” Scanlon said, crossing himself. “And I said to him, I did, that he was free of me and all I had, for what he’d done, though he’d take no reward for it.”

At this, Grey swung around to Trevelyan, who had risen from his own wife’s side and come to rejoin them.

“A very useful fellow, Jack Byrd,” Grey said. “It seems to run in the family.”

Trevelyan nodded.

“I gather so. That was Tom Byrd I heard in the corridor outside?”

Grey nodded in turn, but was impatient to return to the main story.

“Yes. Why on earth did O’Connell come back to his wife, do you know?”

Trevelyan and the apothecary exchanged glances, but it was Trevelyan who answered.

“We can’t say for sure—but given what transpired later, it is my supposition that he had not gone there in order to see his wife, but rather to seek a hiding place for the papers he had. I said that he had made contact with a petty spy.”

Jack Byrd had reported as much to Harry Quarry—and thus to Mr. Bowles—but, loyal servant that he was, had reported it also to his employer. This was his long-standing habit; in addition to his duties as footman, he was instructed to pick up such gossip in taverns as might prove of interest or value, to be followed up in such manner as Trevelyan might decide.

“So it is not merely Cornish tin or India spices that you deal in,” Grey said, giving Trevelyan a hard eye. “Did my brother know that you trade in information as well, when he asked your help?”

“He may have done,” Trevelyan replied blandly. “I have been able to draw Hal’s attention to a small matter of interest now and then—and he has done the same for me.”

It was not precisely a surprise to Grey that men of substance should regard matters of state principally in terms of their personal benefit, but he had seldom been brought so rudely face-to-face with the knowledge. But surely Hal would not have had any part in blackmail—He choked the thought off, returning doggedly to the matter at hand.

“So, O’Connell made some overture to this minor intrigant,and you learned of it. What then?”

O’Connell had not made it clear what information he possessed; only that he had something which might be worth money to the proper parties.

“That would fit with what the army suspected,” Grey said. “O’Connell wasn’t a professional spy; he merely recognized the importance of the requisitions and seized the chance. Perhaps he knew someone in France to whom he thought to sell them—but then the regiment was brought home before he had the chance to contact his buyer.”

“Quite.” Trevelyan nodded, impatient of the interruption. “I, of course, knew what the material was. But it seemed to me that, rather than simply retrieving the information, it might be more useful to discover who some of the parties interested in it might be.”

“It did not, of course, occur to you to share these thoughts with Harry Quarry or anyone else connected with the regiment?” Grey suggested politely.

Trevelyan’s nostrils flared.

“Quarry—that lump? No. I suppose I might have told Hal—but he was gone. It seemed best to keep matters in my own hands.”

It would, Grey thought cynically. No matter that the welfare of half the British army depended on those matters; naturally, a merchant would have the best judgment!

Trevelyan’s next words, though, made it apparent that things ran deeper than either money or military dispositions.

“I had learned from Maria that her husband dealt in secrets,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the bed. “I thought to use O’Connell and his material as bait, to draw Mayrhofer into some incriminating action. Once revealed as a spy . . .”

“He could be either banished or executed, thus leaving you a good deal more freedom with regard to his wife. Quite.”

Trevelyan glanced sharply at him, but chose not to take issue with his tone.

“Quite,” he said, matching Grey’s irony. “It was, however, a delicate matter to arrange things so that O’Connell and Mayrhofer should be brought together. O’Connell was a wary blackguard; he’d waited a long time to search out a buyer, and was highly suspicious of any overtures.”

Trevelyan, restless, got up and moved back to the bed.

“I was obliged to see O’Connell myself, posing as a putative middleman, in order to draw the Sergeant in and assure him that there was money available—but I went disguised, and gave him a false name, of course. Meanwhile, though, I had succeeded from the other end, in interesting Mayrhofer in the matter. Hedecided to cut me out—duplicitous bastard that he was!—and set one of his own servants to find O’Connell.”

Hearing Mayrhofer’s name from another source, and realizing that the man he spoke to was acting under an assumed identity, O’Connell had rather logically deduced that Trevelyan wasMayrhofer, negotiating incognito in hopes of keeping down the price. He therefore followed Trevelyan from the place of their last meeting—and tracked him with patience and skill to Lavender House.

Discerning the nature of the place from questions in the neighborhood, O’Connell had thought himself possessed of a marked advantage over the man he assumed to be Mayrhofer. He could confront the man at the scene of his presumed crimes, and then demand what he liked, without necessarily giving up anything in return.

He had, of course, been thwarted in this scheme when he found no one at Lavender House who had heard the name Mayrhofer. Baffled but persistent, O’Connell had hung about long enough to see Trevelyan depart, and had followed him back to the brothel in Meacham Street.

“I should never have gone directly to Lavender House,” Trevelyan admitted with a shrug. “But the business with O’Connell had taken longer than I thought—and I was in a hurry.” The Cornishman could not keep his eyes from the woman. Even from where he sat, Grey could see the flush of fever rising in her pallid cheeks.

“Normally, you would have gone to the brothel first, thence to Lavender House, and back again, in your disguise?” Grey asked.

“Yes. That was our usual arrangement. No one questions a gentleman’s going to a bordello—or a whore coming out of one, being taken to meet a customer.” Trevelyan said. “But Maria naturally could not meet me there. At the same time, no one would suspect a woman of entering Lavender House—no one who knew what sort of place it is.”

“An ingenious solution,” Grey said, with thinly veiled sarcasm. “One thing—why did you always employ a green velvet dress? Or dresses, as the case may be? Did you and Mrs. Mayrhofer both employ that disguise?”

Trevelyan looked uncomprehending for a moment, but then smiled.

“Yes, we did,” he said. “As for why green—” He shrugged. “I like green. It’s my favorite color.”

At the brothel, O’Connell had inquired doggedly for a gentleman in a green dress, possibly named Mayrhofer—only to have it strongly implied by Magda and her staff that he was insane. The result was naturally to leave O’Connell in some agitation of mind.

“He was not a practiced spy, as you note,” Trevelyan said, shaking his head with a sigh. “Already suspicious, he became convinced that some perfidy was afoot—”

“Which it was,” Grey put in, earning himself a brief glance of annoyance from Trevelyan, who nonetheless continued.

“And so I surmise that he decided he required some safer place of concealment for the papers he held—and thus returned to his wife’s lodgings in Brewster’s Alley.”

Where he had discovered his abandoned wife in an advanced state of pregnancy by another man, and with the irrationality of jealousy, proceeded to batter her senseless.

Grey massaged his forehead, closing his eyes briefly in order to counteract a tendency for his head to spin.

“All right,” he said. “The affair is reasonably clear to me so far. But,” he added, opening his eyes, “we have still two dead men to account for. Obviously, Magda told youthat O’Connell had rumbled you. And yet you say you did not kill him? Nor yet Mayrhofer?”

A sudden rustling from the bed interrupted him, and he turned, startled.

“It was I who killed my husband, good sir.”

The voice from the bed was soft and husky, with no more than a hint of foreign accent, but all three men jerked, startled as though it had been a trumpet blast. Maria Mayrhofer lay upon her side, hair tangled over her pillow. Her eyes were huge, glazed with encroaching fever, but still luminous with intelligence.

Trevelyan went at once to kneel beside her, feeling her cheek and forehead.

“Scanlon,” he said, a tone of command mingled with one of appeal.

The apothecary went at once to join him, touching her gently beneath the jaw, peering into her eyes—but she turned her head away from him, closing her eyes.

“I am well enough for the moment,” she said. “This man—” She waved in Grey’s direction. “Who is he?”

Grey stood, keeping his feet awkwardly as the deck rose under him, and bowed to her.

“I am Major John Grey, madam. I am appointed by the Crown to investigate a matter”—he hesitated, uncertain how—or whether—to explain—“a matter that has impinged upon your own affairs. Did I understand you to say that you had killed Herr Mayrhofer?”

“Yes, I did.”

Scanlon had withdrawn to check his hell-brew, and she rolled her head to meet Grey’s gaze again. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow, and yet her eyes held something prideful—almost insolent, despite her state—and he had a sudden glimmer of what it was that had so attracted the Cornishman.

“Maria . . .” Trevelyan set a hand on her arm in warning, but she disregarded it, keeping her gaze imperiously on Grey.

“What does it matter?” she asked, her voice still soft, but clear as crystal. “We are on the water now. I feel the waves that bear us on; we have escaped. This is your realm, is it not, Joseph? The sea is your kingdom, and we are safe.” A tiny smile played over her lips as she watched Grey, making him feel very odd indeed.

“I have left word,” Grey felt obliged to point out. “My whereabouts are known.”

The smile grew.

“So someone knows you are en route to India,” she said mockingly. “Will they follow you there, do you think?”

India. Grey had not received leave from the lady to sit in her presence, but did so anyway. The weakness of his knees owed something both to the swaying of the ship and to the aftereffects of mercury poisoning—but somewhat more to the news of their destination.

Still fighting giddiness, the first thought in his head was relief that he had managed that scribbled note to Quarry. At least I won’t be shot for desertion, when—or if—I finally manage to get back.He shook his head briefly to clear it, and sat up straight, setting his jaw.

There was no help for it, and nothing to be done now, save carry out his duty to the best of his ability. Anything further must be left to Providence.

“Be that as it may, madam,” he said firmly. “It is my duty to learn the truth of the death of Timothy O’Connell—and any matters that may be associated with it. If your state permits, I would hear whatever you can tell me.”

“O’Connell?” she murmured, and turned her head restlessly on the pillow, eyes half-closing. “I do not know this name, this man. Joseph?”

“No, dear one, it’s nothing to do with you, with us.” Trevelyan spoke soothingly, a hand on her hair, but his eyes searched her face uneasily. Glancing from him to her, Grey could see it, too; her face was growing markedly pale, as though some force pressed the blood from her skin.

All at once, there were gray shadows in the hollows of her bone; the lush curve of her mouth paled and pinched, lips nearly disappearing. The eyes, too, seemed to retreat, going dull and shrinking away into her skull. Trevelyan was talking to her; Grey sensed the worry in his tone, but paid no attention to the words, his whole attention fixed upon the woman.

Scanlon had come to look, was saying something. Quinine, something about quinine.

A sudden shudder closed her eyes and blanched her features. The flesh itself seemed to draw in upon her bones as she huddled deeper into the bedclothes, shaking. Grey had seen malarial chills before, but even so, was shocked at the suddenness and strength of the attack.

“Madam,” he began, stretching out a hand to her, helpless. He had no notion what to do, but felt that he must do something, must offer comfort of some kind—she was so fragile, so defenseless in the grip of the disease.

“She cannot speak with you,” Trevelyan said sharply, and gripped his arm. “Scanlon!”

The apothecary had a small brazier going; he had already seized a pair of tongs and plucked a large stone that he had heating in the coals. He dropped this into a folded linen towel and, holding it gingerly, hurried to the bedside, where he burrowed under the sheets, placing the hot stone at her feet.

“Come away,” Trevelyan ordered, pulling at Grey’s arm. “Mr. Scanlon must care for her. She cannot talk.”

This was plainly true—and yet she lifted her head and forced her eyes to open, teeth gritted hard against the chills that racked her.

“J-J-J-Jos-seph!”

“What, darling? What can I do?” Trevelyan abandoned Grey upon the instant, falling to his knees beside her.

She seized his hand and held it hard, fighting the chill that shook her bones.

“T-T-Tell him. If we b-both are d-dead . . . I would be j-j-justified!”

Both?Grey wondered. He had no time to speculate upon the meaning of that; Scanlon had hurried back with his steaming beaker, had lifted her from the pillow. He was holding the vessel to her lips, murmuring encouragement, willing her to sip at it, even as the hot liquid slopped and spilled from her chattering teeth. Her long hands rose and wrapped themselves about the cup, clinging tightly to the fugitive warmth. The last thing he saw before Trevelyan forced him from the cabin was the emerald ring, hanging loose from a bony finger.

He followed Trevelyan upward through the shadows to the open deck. The bedlam of setting sail had subsided now, and half the crew had vanished below. Grey had barely noticed his surroundings earlier; now he saw the clouds of snowy canvas billowing above, and the polished wood and brightwork of the ship. The Namparawas under full sail and flying like a live thing; he could feel the ship—feel her;they called ships “she”—humming beneath his feet, and felt a sudden unexpected exhilaration.

The waves had changed from the gray of the harbor to the lapis blue of deep sea, and a brisk wind blew through his hair, carrying away the smells of illness and confinement. The last remnants of his own illness seemed also to blow away on that wind—perhaps only because his debilities seemed inconsequent, by contrast with the desperate straits of the woman below.

There was still bustle on deck, and shouting to and fro between the deck and the mysterious realm of canvas above, but it was more orderly, less obtrusive now. Trevelyan made his way toward the stern, finding a place at the rail where they would not obstruct the sailors’ work, and there they leaned for a time, wind cleansing them, watching together as the final sight of England disappeared in distant mist.

“Will she die, do you think?” Grey asked eventually. It was the thought uppermost in his own mind; it must be so for Trevelyan as well.

“No,” the Cornishman snapped. “She will not.” He leaned on the rail, staring moodily into the racing water.

Grey didn’t speak, merely closed his eyes and let the glitter of the sun off the waves make dancing patterns of red and black inside his lids. He needn’t push; there was time now for everything.

“She is worse,” Trevelyan said at last, unable to bear the silence. “She shouldn’t be. I have seen malaria often; the first attack is normally the worst—if there is cinchona for treatment, subsequent attacks grow less frequent, less severe. Scanlon says so, too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“Has she suffered long with the disease?” Grey asked, curious. It was not a malady that often afflicted city-dwellers, but the lady might perhaps have acquired it in the course of traveling with Mayrhofer.

“Two weeks.”

Grey opened his eyes, to see Trevelyan standing upright, his short hair flicked into a crest by the wind, chin raised. Water stood in his eyes; perhaps it was caused by the rushing wind.

“I should not have let him do it,” Trevelyan muttered. His hands clenched on the rail in a futile rage tinged with despair. “Christ, how could I have let him do it?”

“Who?” Grey asked.

“Scanlon, of course.” Trevelyan turned away momentarily, rubbing a wrist across his eyes, then dropped back, leaning against the rail, his back to the sea. He folded his arms across his chest and stared moodily ahead, intent on whatever dire visions he harbored within.

“Let us walk,” Grey suggested, after a moment. “Come; the air will do you good.”

Trevelyan hesitated, but then shrugged and assented. They walked in silence for some time, circling the deck, dodging seamen about their tasks.

Mindful of his leather-heeled boots and the heaving deck, Grey strode carefully at first, but the boards were dry, and the motion of the ship a stimulus to his senses; despite his own predicament, he felt his spirits rise with the blood that surged through his cheeks and refreshed his cramped limbs. He began to feel truly himself again for the first time in days.

True, he was captive on a ship headed for India, and thus unlikely to see home again soon. But he was a soldier, used to long journeys and separations—and the thought of India, with all its mysteries of light and histories of blood, was undeniably exciting. And Quarry could be trusted to inform his family that he was likely still alive.

What would his family do about the wedding preparations? he wondered. Trevelyan’s abrupt flight would be an enormous scandal, and an even greater one if word got out—which indubitably it would—of the involvement of Frau Mayrhofer and of her husband’s shocking murder. He was not disposed to believe the lady’s claim to have killed Mayrhofer; not after seeing the body. Even in health, for a woman to have done that. . . and Maria Mayrhofer was slightly built, no larger than his cousin Olivia.

Poor Olivia; her name would be spread over the London broadsheets for weeks as the jilted fiancйe—but at least her personal reputation would be spared. Thank God the affair had come to a head before the wedding, and not afterward. That was something.

Would Trevelyan have bolted, had Grey not confronted him? Or would he have stayed—married Olivia, gone on running his companies, dabbling in politics, moving in society as the intimate of dukes and ministers, maintaining his facade as a rock-solid merchant—while privately carrying on his passionate affair with the widow Mayrhofer?

Grey cast a sidelong glance at his companion. The Cornishman’s face was still dark, but that brief glimpse of despair had vanished, leaving his jaw set with determination.

What could the man be thinking? To flee as he had, leaving scandal in his wake, would have disastrous consequences for his business affairs. His companies, their investors, his clients, the miners and laborers, captains and seamen, clerks and warehousemen who worked for the companies—even the brother in Parliament; all would be affected by Trevelyan’s flight.

Still, his jaw was set, and he walked like a man making for a distant goal, rather than one out for a casual stroll.

Grey recognized both the determination and the power of will from which it sprang, but he also was beginning to realize that the facade of the solid merchant was just that; beneath it lay a mind like quicksilver, able to sum up circumstances and change tack in an instant—and more than ruthless in its decisions.

He realized with a lurch of the heart that Trevelyan reminded him in some small way of Jamie Fraser. But no: Fraser was ruthless and quick, and might be equally passionate in his feelings—but above all, he was a man of honor.

By contrast, he could now see the deep selfishness that underlay Trevelyan’s character. Jamie Fraser would not have abandoned those who depended on him, not even for the sake of a woman who—Grey was forced to admit—he clearly loved beyond life itself. As for the notion of his stealing another man’s wife, it was inconceivable.

A romantic or a novelist might count the world well lost for love. So far as Grey’s own opinion counted, a love that sacrificed honor was less honest than simple lust, and degraded those who professed to glory in it.

“Me lord!”

He glanced up at the cry, and saw the two Byrds hanging like apples in the rigging just above. He waved, glad that at least Tom Byrd had found his brother. Would someone think to send word to the Byrd household? he wondered. Or would they be left in uncertainty as to the fate of twoof their sons?

That thought depressed him, and a worse one followed on the heels of it. While he had recovered the requisitions, he could tell no one that he had done so and that the information was safe. By the time he reached any port from which word could be sent, the War Office would long since have been obliged to act.

And they would be acting on the assumption that the intelligence had in fact fallen into enemy hands—a staggering assumption, in terms of the strategic readjustments required, and their expense. An expense that might be paid in lives, as well as money. He pressed an elbow against his side, feeling the crackle of the papers he had tucked away, fighting a sudden impulse to throw himself overboard and swim toward England until exhaustion pulled him down. He had succeeded—and yet the result would be the same as though he had failed utterly.

Beyond the ruin of his own career, great damage would be done to Harry Quarry and the regiment—and to Hal. To have harbored a spy in the ranks was bad enough; to have failed to catch him in time was far worse.

In the end, it seemed he would have no more than the satisfaction of finally hearing the truth. He had heard but a fraction of it so far—but it was a long way to India, and with both Trevelyan and Scanlon trapped here with him, he was sure of discovering everything, at last.

“How did you know that I was poxed?” Trevelyan asked abruptly.

“Saw your prick, over the piss-pots at the Beefsteak,” he replied bluntly. It seemed absurd now that he should have suffered a moment’s shame or hesitation in the matter. And yet—would it have made a difference, if he had spoken out at once?

Trevelyan gave a small grunt of surprise.

“Did you? I do not even recall seeing you there. But I suppose I was distracted.”

He was clearly distracted now; his step had slowed, and a seaman carrying a small cask was obliged to swerve in order to avoid collision. Grey took Trevelyan by the sleeve and led him into the lee of the forward mast, where a huge water barrel stood, a tin cup attached to it by a narrow chain.

Grey gulped water from the cup, even in his depression taking some pleasure from the feel of it, cool in his mouth. It was the first thing he had been able to taste properly in days.

“That must have been . . .” Trevelyan squinted, calculating. “Early June—the sixth?”

“About that. Does it matter?”

Trevelyan shrugged and took the dipper.

“Not really. It’s only that that was when I first noticed the sore myself.”

“Rather a shock, I suppose,” Grey said.

“Rather,” Trevelyan replied dryly. He drank, then dropped the tin cup back into the barrel.

“Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing,” the Cornishman went on, as though to himself. “But . . . no. That wouldn’t have done.” He waved a hand, dismissing whatever his thought had been.

“I could scarcely believe it. Went about in a daze for the rest of the day, and spent the night wondering what to do—but I knew it was Mayrhofer; it had to be.”

Looking up, he caught sight of Grey’s face, and a wry smile broke out upon his own.

“No, not directly. Through Maria. I had shared no woman’s bed since I began with her, and that was more than a year before. But clearly she had been infected by her whore-mongering bastard of a husband; she was innocent.”

Not only innocent, but clearly ignorant as well. Not wishing to confront her with his discovery at once, Trevelyan had gone in search of her doctor instead.

“I said that she had lost a child, just before I met her? I got the doctor who attended her to talk; he confirmed that the child had been malformed, owing to the mother’s syphilitic condition—but naturally he had kept quiet about that.”

Trevelyan’s fingers drummed restlessly on the lid of the barrel.

“The child was born malformed, but alive—it died in the cradle, a day after birth. Mayrhofer smothered it, wishing neither to be burdened by it nor to have his wife learn the cause of its misfortune.”

Grey felt his stomach contract.

“How do you know this?”

Trevelyan rubbed a hand over his face, as though tired.

“Reinhardt admitted it to her—to Maria. I brought the doctor to her, you see; forced him to tell her what he had told me. I thought—if she knew what Mayrhofer had done, infecting her, dooming their child, that perhaps she would leave him.”

She did not. Hearing out the doctor in numb silence, she had sat for a long time, considering, and then asked both Trevelyan and the doctor to go; she would be alone.

She had stayed alone for a week. Her husband was away, and she saw no one save the servants who brought her meals—all sent away, untouched.

“She thought of self-murder, she told me,” Trevelyan said, staring out toward the endless sea. “Better, she thought, to end it cleanly than to die slowly, in such fashion. Have you ever seen someone dying of the syphilis, Grey?”

“Yes,” Grey said, the bad taste creeping back into his mouth. “In Bedlam.”

One in particular, a man whose disease had deprived him both of nose and balance, so that he reeled drunkenly across the floor, crashing helplessly into the other inmates, foot stuck in a night bucket, tears and snot streaming over his rutted face. He could but hope that the syphilis had taken the man’s reason, as well, so that he was in ignorance of his situation.

He looked then at Trevelyan, envisioning for the first time that clever, narrow face, ruined and drooling. It would happen, he realized with a small shock. The only question was how long it might be before the symptoms became clear.

“If it were me, I might think of suicide, too,” he said.

Trevelyan met his eyes, then smiled ruefully.

“Would you? We are different, then,” he said, with no tone of judgment in the observation. “That course never occurred to me, until Maria showed me her pistol, and told me what she had been thinking.”

“You thought only of how the fact might be used to separate the lady from her husband?” Grey said, hearing the edge in his own voice.

“No,” Trevelyan replied, seeming unoffended. “Though that had been my goal since I met her; I did not propose to give it up. I tried to see her, after she had sent me away, but she would not receive me.”

Instead, Trevelyan had set himself to discover what remedy might be available.

“Jack Byrd knew of the difficulty; it was he who informed me that Finbar Scanlon seemed an able man in such matters. He had gone back to the apothecary’s shop, to inquire after Mrs. O’Connell’s welfare, and had become well acquainted with Scanlon, you see.”

“And that is where you met Sergeant O’Connell, returning to his home?” Grey asked, sudden enlightenment coming upon him. Trevelyan already knew of O’Connell’s peculations, and certainly had more men than Jack Byrd at his beck and call. He would have been more than capable, Grey thought, of having the Sergeant murdered, abstracting the papers for his own purposes regarding Mayrhofer. And those purposes now fulfilled, of course he could casually hand the papers back, uncaring of what damage had been done in the meantime!

He felt his blood rising at the thought—but Trevelyan was staring at him blankly.

“No,” he said. “I met O’Connell only the once, myself. Vicious sort,” he added, reflectively.

“And you did not have him killed?” Grey demanded, skepticism clear in his voice.

“No, why should I?” Trevelyan frowned at him a little; then his brow cleared.

“You thought I had him done in, in order to get the papers?” Trevelyan’s mouth twitched; he seemed to be finding something funny in the notion. “My God, John, you do have the most squalid opinion of my character!”

“You think it unjustified, do you?” Grey inquired acidly.

“No, I suppose not,” Trevelyan admitted, wiping a knuckle under his nose. He had not been recently shaved, and tiny drops of water were condensing on the sprouting whiskers, giving him a silvered look.

“But no,” he repeated. “I told you I had killed no one—nor had I anything to do with O’Connell’s death. That story belongs to Mr. Scanlon, and I am sure he will tell it to you, as soon as he is at liberty.”

Trevelyan glanced, as though despite himself, at the door that led to the quarters below, and then away.

“Should you be with her?” Grey asked quietly. “Go, if you like. I can wait.”

Trevelyan shook his head and glanced away.

“I cannot help,” he said. “And I can scarcely bear to see her in such straits. Scanlon will fetch me if—if I am needed.”

Seeming to detect some unspoken accusation in Grey’s manner, he looked up defensively.

“I did stay with her, the last time the fever came on. She sent me away, saying that it disturbed her to see my agitation. She prefers to be alone, when . . . things go wrong.”

“Indeed. As she was after learning the truth from the doctor, you said.”

Trevelyan took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders, as though setting himself for some unpleasant task.

“Yes,” he said bleakly. “Then.”

She had been alone for a week, save for the servants, who kept away at her own request. No one knew how long she had sat alone, that final day in her white-draped boudoir. It was long past dark when her husband had finally returned, somewhat the worse for drink, but still coherent enough to understand her accusation, her demand for the truth about her child.

“She said that he laughed,” Trevelyan said, his tone remote, as though reporting some business disaster; a mine cave-in, perhaps, or a sunken ship. “He told her then that he had killed the child; told her that she should be grateful to him, that he had saved her from living day after day with the shame of its deformity.”

At this, the woman who had lived patiently for years with the knowledge of infidelity and promiscuity felt the bonds of her vows break asunder, and Maria Mayrhofer had stepped across that thin line of prohibition that separates justice from vengeance. Mad with rage and sorrow, she had flung back in his teeth all the insults she had suffered through the years of their marriage, threatening to expose all his tawdry affairs, to reveal his syphilitic condition to society, to denounce him openly as a murderer.

The threats had sobered Mayrhofer slightly. Staggering from his wife’s presence, he had left her raging and weeping. She had the pistol that had been her constant companion through her week of brooding, ready to hand. She had hunted often in the hills near her Austrian home, was accustomed to guns; it was the work of a moment to load and prime the weapon.

“I do not know for sure what she intended,” Trevelyan said, his eyes fixed on a flight of gulls that wheeled over the ocean, diving for fish. “She told me that she didn’t know, herself. Perhaps she meant to kill herself—or both of them.”

As it was, the door to her boudoir had opened a few minutes later, and her husband lurched back in, clad in the green velvet dress which she wore to her assignations with Trevelyan. Flushed with drink and temper, he taunted her, saying that she dared not expose him—or he would see that both she and her precious lover paid a worse price. What would become of Joseph Trevelyan, he demanded, lurching against the doorframe, once it was known that he was not only an adulterer but also a sodomite?

“And so she shot him,” Trevelyan concluded, with a slight shrug. “Straight through the heart. Can you blame her?”

“How do you suppose he learned of your assignations at Lavender House?” Grey asked, ignoring the question. He wondered with a certain misgiving what Richard Caswell might have told about his own presence there, years before. Trevelyan had not mentioned it, and surely he would have, if . . .

Trevelyan shook his head, sighed, and closed his eyes against the glare of the sun off the water.

“I don’t know. As I said, Reinhardt Mayrhofer was an intriguer. He had his sources of information—and he knew Magda, who came from the village near his estate. I paid her well, but perhaps he paid her better. You can never trust a whore, after all,” he added, with a slight tinge of bitterness.

Thinking of Nessie, Grey thought that it depended on the whore, but did not say so.

“Surely Mrs. Mayrhofer did not smash in her husband’s face,” he said instead. “Was that you?”

Trevelyan opened his eyes and nodded.

“Jack Byrd and I.” He lifted his head, searching the rigging, but the two Byrds had flown. “He is a good fellow, Jack. A good fellow,” he repeated, more strongly.

Brought to her senses by the pistol’s report, Maria Mayrhofer had at once stepped from her boudoir and called a servant, whom she sent posthaste across the City to summon Trevelyan. Arriving with his trusted servant, the two of them had carried the body, still clad in green velvet, out to the carriage house, debating what to do with it.

“I could not allow the truth to come out,” Trevelyan explained. “Maria might easily hang, should she come to trial—though surely there was never a murder so well-deserved. Even were she acquitted, though, the simple fact of a trial would mean exposure. Of everything.”

It was Jack Byrd who thought of the blood. He had slipped out, returning with a bucket of pig’s blood from a butcher’s yard. They had smashed in the corpse’s face with a shovel, and then bundled both body and bucket into the carriage. Jack had driven the equipage the short distance to St. James’s Park. It was past midnight by that time, and the torches that normally lit the public pathways were long since extinguished.

They had tethered the horses and carried the body swiftly a little way into the park, there dumping it under a bush and dousing it with blood, then escaping back to the carriage.

“We hoped that the body would be taken for that of a simple prostitute,” Trevelyan explained. “If no one examined it carefully, they would assume it to be a woman. If they discovered the truth of the sex . . . well, it would cause more curiosity, but men of certain perverse predilections also are prone to meet with violent death.”

“Quite,” Grey murmured, keeping his face carefully impassive. It was not a bad plan—and he was, in spite of everything, pleased to have deduced it correctly. The death of an anonymous prostitute—of either sex—would cause neither outcry nor investigation.

“Why the blood, though? It was apparent—once one looked—that the man had been shot.”

Trevelyan nodded.

“Yes. We thought that the blood might obscure the cause of death, by suggesting that he had been beaten to death—but principally, its purpose was to prevent anyone undressing the body, and thus discovering its sex.”

“Of course.” Usable clothes found on a corpse would routinely be stripped and sold, either by the constables who found it, by the morgue-keeper who took charge of it, or, at the last, by the gravedigger who undertook to bury the body in some anonymous potter’s field. But no one—other than Grey himself—would have touched that sodden, reeking garment.

Had the fact of the green velvet dress not caught Magruder’s notice, or if they had had the luck to dispose of the body in another district of the City, it was very likely that no one would have bothered examining the body at all; it would simply have been put down as one of the casualties of London’s dark world and dismissed, as casually as one might dismiss the death of a stray dog crushed by a coach’s wheels.

“Sir?”

He hadn’t heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and was startled to find Jack Byrd standing behind them, his dark face serious. Trevelyan took one look at it, and headed for the doors to the companionway.

“Mrs. Mayrhofer is worse?” Grey asked, watching the Cornishman stumble through a knot of sailors mending canvas.

“I don’t know, me lord. I think she may be better. Mr. Scanlon come out and sent me to fetch Mr. Joseph. He says as how he’ll be in the crew’s mess for a bit, should you want to talk to him, though,” he added, as an obvious afterthought.

Grey glanced at the young man, and felt a twitch of recognition. Not the family resemblance to young Tom; something else. Jack Byrd’s eyes were still focused on his master, as Trevelyan reached the hatchway, and there was something unguarded in his face that Grey’s nervous system discerned long before his mind made sense of it.

It was gone in the next instant, Jack Byrd’s face lapsing back into an older, leaner version of his younger brother’s as he turned to Grey.

“Will you be wanting Tom, my lord?” he asked.

“Not now,” Grey responded automatically. “I’ll go and talk to Mr. Scanlon. Tell Tom I’ll send for him when I need him.”

“Very good, my lord.” Jack Byrd bowed gravely, an elegant footman’s gesture at odds with his seaman’s slops, and walked away, leaving Grey to find his own way.

He made his way downward in search of the crew’s mess, scarcely noticing his surroundings, mind belatedly searching for logical connexions that might support the conclusion his lower faculties had leaped to.

Jack Byrd knew of the difficulty,Trevelyan had said, referring to his own infection. It was he who informed me that Finbar Scanlon seemed an able man in such matters.

And Maria Mayrhofer had said that her husband threatened Trevelyan, asking what would happen to him once it was known that he was not only an adulterer but also a sodomite?

Not so fast, Grey cautioned himself. In all likelihood, Mayrhofer had only referred to Trevelyan’s association with Lavender House. And it was by no means unusual for a devoted servant to be privy to a master’s intimate concerns—he shuddered to think what Tom knew of his own intimacies at this point.

No, these were mere shreds of something less than evidence, he was obliged to conclude. Even less tangible—but perhaps the more trustworthy—was his own sense of Joseph Trevelyan. Grey did not think himself infallible, by any means—he would not in a hundred years have guessed the truth of Egbert Jones’s identity as “Miss Irons,” had he not seen it—and yet he was as certain as he could be that Joseph Trevelyan was not so inclined.

Putting modesty aside for the sake of logic, he blushed to admit that this conclusion was based as much on Trevelyan’s lack of response to his own person as to anything else. Such men as himself lived in secrecy—but there were signals, nonetheless, and he was adept at reading them.

So there might in fact be nothing on Trevelyan’s side, nothing beyond heartfelt appreciation of a good servant. But there was more than devoted service in Jack Byrd’s soul, he’d swear that on a gallon of brandy. So he told himself grimly, clambering monkeylike into the bowels of the ship in search of Finbar Scanlon, and the final parts to his puzzle.

And now, at last, the truth.

“Well, d’ye see, we’re soldiers, we Scanlons,” the apothecary said, pouring beer from a jug. “A tradition in the family, it is. Every man jack of us, for the last fifty years, save those born crippled, or too infirm for it.”

“You do not seem particularly infirm,” Grey observed. “And certainly not a cripple.” Scanlon in fact was a handsomely built man, clean-limbed and solid.

“Oh, I went for a soldier, too,” the man assured him, eyes twinkling. “I served for a time in France, but had the luck to be taken on as assistant to the regimental surgeon, when the regular man was crapped in the Low Countries.”

Scanlon had discovered both an ability and an affinity for the work, and had learned all that the surgeon could teach him within a few months.

“Then we ran into artillery near Laffeldt,” he said, with a shrug. “Grapeshot.” He leaned back on his stool and, pulling the tail of his shirt from his breeches, lifted it to show Grey a sprawling web of still-pink scars across a muscular belly.

“Tore across me, and left me with me guts spilling out,” he said casually. “But by the help of the Blessed Mother, the surgeon was to hand. Seized ’em in his fist, he did, and rammed them right back into me belly, then wrapped me up tight as a tick in bandages and honey.”

Scanlon had lived, by some miracle, but had of course been invalided out of the army. Seeking some alternate means of making a living, he had returned to his interest in medicine, and apprenticed himself to an apothecary.

“But me brothers and me cousins—a good number of them still are soldiers,” he said, taking a gulp of the ale and closing his eyes in appreciation as it went down. “And happen as none of us much likes a man as plays traitor.”

In the aftermath of the attack on Francine, Jack Byrd had told Scanlon and Francine that the Sergeant was likely a spy and in possession of valuable papers. And O’Connell had shouted to Francine in parting that he would be back, and would finish then what he had started.

“From what Jack said about the drab O’Connell stayed with, I couldn’t see that he’d likely come back only to murder Francie. That bein’ so”—Scanlon raised one eyebrow—“what’s the odds he’d come either to take something he’d left—or to leave something he had? And God knows, there was nothing there to take.”

Given these deductions, it was no great trick to search Francine’s room, and the shop below.

“Happen they was in one of the hollow molds that holds those condoms you was looking at, first time you came into the shop,” Scanlon said, one corner of his mouth turning up. “I could see what they were—and fond as I was by then of young Jack, I thought I maybe ought to keep hold of them, until I could find a proper authority to be handin’ them over to. Such as it might be yourself, sir.”

“Only you didn’t.”

The apothecary stretched himself, long arms nearly brushing the low ceiling, then settled back comfortably onto his stool.

“Well, no. For the one thing, I hadn’t met you yet, sir. And events, as you might say, intervened. I had to put a stop to Tim O’Connell and his mischief. For he did say he’d be back—and he was a man of his word, if nothing else.”

Scanlon had promptly set about collecting several friends and relations, all soldiers or ex-soldiers—“And I’m sure your honor will excuse me not mentioning of their names,” Scanlon said, with a small ironic bow toward Grey—who had lain in wait in the apothecary’s shop, hidden in Francine’s room upstairs, or in the large closet where Scanlon kept his extra stock.

Sure enough, O’Connell had returned that very night, soon after dark.

“He’d a key. He opens the door, and comes stealing into the shop, quiet as you please, and goes over to the shelf, picks up the mold—and finds it empty.”

The sergeant had swung round to find Scanlon watching him from behind the counter, a sardonic smile on his face.

“Went the color of beetroot,” the apothecary said. “I could see by the lamplight coming through the curtain by the stair. And his eyes slitted like a cat’s. ‘That whore,’ he said. ‘She told you. Where are they?’”

Fists clenched, O’Connell had bounded toward Scanlon, only to be confronted by a bevy of enraged Irishmen, come pouring down the stair and rushing from the closet, hurdling the counter in their haste.

“So we gave him a bit of what he’d given poor Francie,” the apothecary said, face hard. “And we took our time about it.”

And the people in the houses to either side had sworn blank-faced that they’d never heard a sound that night, Grey reflected cynically. Tim O’Connell had not been a popular man.

Once dead, O’Connell plainly could not be discovered on Scanlon’s premises. The body therefore had lain behind the counter for several hours, until the streets had quieted in the small dark hours of the morning. Wrapping the body in a sheet of canvas, the men had borne it silently away into the cold black of hidden alleys, and heaved it off Puddle Dock—“like the rubbish he was, sir”—having first removed the uniform, which O’Connell had no right to, and him a traitor. It was worth good money, after all.

Jack Byrd had come back the next day, bringing with him his employer, Mr. Trevelyan.

“And the Honorable Mr. Trevelyan had with him a letter from Lord Melton, the Colonel of your regiment, sir—I think he said as that would be your brother?—asking him for his help in finding out what O’Connell was up to. He explained as how Lord Melton himself was abroad, but plainly Mr. Trevelyan knew all about the matter, and so it was only sense to hand over the papers to him, so as to be passed on to the proper person.”

“Fell for that, did you?” Grey inquired. “Well, no matter. He’s fooled better men than you, Scanlon.”

“Including yourself, would it be, sir?” Scanlon lifted both black brows, and smiled with a flash of good teeth.

“I was thinking of my brother,” Grey said with a grimace, and lifted his cup in acknowledgment. “But certainly me as well.”

“But he’s given you back the papers, sir?” Scanlon frowned. “He did say as he meant to.”

“He has, yes.” Grey touched the pocket of his coat, where the papers reposed. “But since the papers are presently en route to India with me, there is no way of informing the ‘proper authorities.’ The effect therefore is as though the papers had never been found.”

“Better not to be found, than to be in the hands of the Frenchies, surely?” Doubt was beginning to flicker in Scanlon’s eyes.

“Not really.” Grey explained the matter briefly, Scanlon frowning and drawing patterns on the table with a dollop of spilled beer all the while.

“Ah, I see, then,” he said, and fell silent. “Perhaps,” the apothecary said after a few moments, “I should speak to him.”

“Is it your impression that he will attend, if you do?” Grey’s question held as much incredulous derision as curiosity, but Finbar Scanlon only smiled, and stretched himself again, the muscles of his forearms curving hard against the skin.

“Oh, I do, yes, sir. Mr. Trevelyan has been kind enough to say as he considers himself within my debt—and so he is, I suppose.”

“That you have come to nurse his wife? Yes, I should think he would feel grateful.”

The apothecary shook his head at that.

“Well, maybe, sir, but that’s more by way of being a matter of business. It was agreed between us that he would see to Francie’s safe removal to Ireland, money enough to care for her and the babe until my return, and a sum to me for my services. And if my services should cease to be required, I shall be put ashore at the nearest port, with my fare paid back to Ireland.”

“Yes? Well, then—”

“I meant the cure, sir.”

Grey looked at him in puzzlement.

“Cure? What, for the syphilis?”

“Aye, sir. The malaria.”

“Whatever do you mean, Scanlon?”

The apothecary picked up his cup and gulped beer, then set it down with an exhalation of satisfaction.

“’Tis a thing I learned from the surgeon, sir—the man as saved me life. He told it me while I lay sick, and I saw it work several times after.”

“Saw what, for God’s sake?”

“The malaria. If a man suffering from pox happened to contract malaria, once he’d recovered from the fever—if he did—the pox was cured, as well.”

Scanlon nodded to him, and lifted his cup, with an air of magisterial confidence.

“It does work, sir. And while the tertian fever may come back now and then, the syphilis does not. The fever of it burns the pox from the blood, d’ye see?”

“Holy God,” Grey said, suddenly enlightened. “You gave it to her—you infected that woman with malaria?”

“Aye, sir. And have done the same for Mr. Trevelyan, this very morning, with blood taken from a dyin’ sailor off the East India docks. Fitting, Mr. Trevelyan thought, that it should be one of his own men, so to speak, who’d provide the means of his deliverance.”

“He would!” Grey said scathingly. So that was it. Seeing the scarified flesh of Trevelyan’s arm, he had thought Scanlon had merely bled the man to insure his health. He had had not the faintest idea—

“It is done with blood, then? I had thought the fever was transmitted by the breathing of foul air.”

“Well, and so it often is, sir,” Scanlon agreed. “But the secret of the cure is in the blood, see? The inoculum was the secret that the surgeon discovered and passed on to me. Though it is true as it may take more than one try, to insure a proper infection,” he added, rubbing a knuckle under his nose. “I was lucky with Mrs. Maria; took no more than a week’s application, and she was burning nicely. I hope to have a similar good effect for Mr. Trevelyan. He didn’t want to start the treatment himself, though, see, until we were safe away.”

“Oh, I see,” Grey said. And he did. Trevelyan had not chosen to abscond with Maria Mayrhofer in order to die with her—but in hopes of overcoming the curse that lay upon them.

“Just so, sir.” A light of modest triumph glowed in the apothecary’s eye. “So you see, too, sir, why I think Mr. Trevelyan might indeed be inclined to attend to me?”

“I do,” Grey agreed. “And both the army and myself will be grateful, Scanlon, if you can contrive any means of getting that information back to London quickly.” He pushed back his stool, but paused for one Parthian shot.

“I think you should speak to him soon, though. His gratitude may be significantly ameliorated, if Frau Mayrhofer dies as a result of your marvelous cure.”

Chapter 18

God’s Dice

Eight days passed, and Maria Mayrhofer still lived—but Grey could see the shadows in Trevelyan’s eyes, and knew how he dreaded the return of the fever. She had survived two more bouts of the fever, but Jack Byrd had told Tom—who had told him, of course—that it was a near thing.

“She ain’t much more than a yellow ghost now, Jack says,” Tom informed him. “Mr. Scanlon’s that worried, though he keeps a good face, and keeps sayin’ as she’ll be all right.”

“Well, I’m sure we all hope she will, Tom.” He hadn’t seen Frau Mayrhofer again, but what he had seen of her on that one brief occasion had impressed him. He was inclined to see women differently than did most other men; he appreciated faces, breasts, and buttocks as matters of beauty, rather than lust, and thus was not blinded to the personalities behind them. Maria Mayrhofer struck him as having a personality of sufficient force to beat back death itself—if she wanted to.

And would she? He thought that she must feel stretched between two poles: the strength of her love for Trevelyan pulling her toward life, while the shades of her murdered husband and child must draw her down toward death. Perhaps she had accepted Scanlon’s inoculum as a gamble, leaving the dice in God’s hands. If she lived through the malaria, she would be free—not only of the disease, but of her life before. If she did not . . . well, she would be free of life, once and for all.

Grey lounged in the hammock he had been given in the crew’s quarters, while Tom sat cross-legged on the floor beneath, mending a stocking.

“Does Mr. Trevelyan spend much time with her?” he asked idly.

“Yes, me lord. Jack says he won’t be put off no more, but scarcely leaves her side.”

“Ah.”

“Jack’s worried, too,” Tom said, squinting ferociously at his work. “But I don’t know whether it’s her he’s worried for, or him.”

“Ah,” Grey said again, wondering how much Jack had said to his brother—and how much Tom might suspect.

“You best leave off them boots, me lord, and go barefoot like the sailors. Look at that—the size of a teacup!” He poked two fingers through the stocking’s hole in illustration, glancing reproachfully up at Grey. “Besides, you’re going to break your neck, if you slip and fall on deck again.”

“I expect you’re right, Tom,” Grey said, pushing against the wall with his toes to make the hammock swing. Two near-misses with disaster on a wet deck had drawn him to the same conclusion. What did boots or stockings matter, after all?

A shout came from the deck above, penetrating even through the thick planks, and Tom dropped his needle, staring upward. Most of the shouts from the rigging overhead were incomprehensible to Grey, but the words that rang out now were clear as a bell.

“Sail ho!”

He flung himself out of the hammock, and ran for the ladder, closely followed by Tom.

A mass of men stood at the rail, peering northward, and telescopes sprouted from the eyes of several ship’s officers like antennae from a horde of eager insects. For himself, Grey could see no more than the smallest patch of sail on the horizon, insignificant as a scrap of paper—but incontrovertibly there.

“I will be damned,” Grey said, excited despite the cautions of his mind. “Is it heading for England?”

“Can’t say, sir.” The telescope-wielder next to him lowered his instrument and tapped it neatly down. “For Europe, at least, though.”

Grey stepped back, combing the crowd of men for Trevelyan, but he was nowhere in evidence. Scanlon, though, was there. He caught the man’s eye, and the apothecary nodded.

“I’ll go at once, sir,” he said, and strode away toward the hatchway.

It struck Grey belatedly that he should go as well, to reinforce any arguments Scanlon might make, both to Trevelyan and to the captain. He could scarcely bear to leave the deck, lest the tiny sail disappear for good if he took his eyes off it, but the sudden hope of deliverance was too strong to be denied. He slapped a hand to his side, but was of course not wearing his coat; his letter was below.

He darted toward the hatchway, and was halfway down the ladder when one flexing bare foot stubbed itself against the wall. He recoiled, scrabbled for a foothold, found it—but his sweaty hand slipped off the polished rail, and he plunged eight feet to the deck below. Something solid struck him on the head, and blackness descended.

He woke slowly, wondering for a moment whether he had been inadvertently encoffined. A dim and wavering light, as of candlelight, surrounded him, and there was a wooden wall two inches from his nose. Then he stirred, turned over on his back, and found that he lay in a tiny berth suspended from the wall like the sort of box in which knives are kept, barely long enough to allow him to stretch out at full length.

There was a large prism set into the ceiling above him, letting in light from the upper deck; his eyes adjusting to this, he saw a set of shelves suspended above a minuscule desk, and deduced from their contents that he was in the purser’s cabin. Then his eyes shifted to the left, and he discovered that he was not alone.

Jack Byrd sat on a stool beside his berth, arms comfortably folded, leaning back against the wall. When he saw that Grey was awake, he unfolded his arms and sat up.

“Are you well, my lord?”

“Yes,” Grey replied automatically, belatedly checking to see whether it was true.

Fortunately, it seemed to be. There was a tender lump behind his ear, where he had struck his head on the companionway, and a few bruises elsewhere, but nothing of any moment.

“That’s good. The surgeon and Mr. Scanlon both said as you were all right, but our Tom wouldn’t have you left, just in case.”

“So you came to keep watch? That was unnecessary, but I thank you.” Grey stirred, wanting to sit up, and became conscious of a warm, soft weight beside him in the bed. The purser’s cat, a small tabby, was curled tight as an apostrophe against his side, purring gently.

“Well, you had company already,” Jack Byrd said with a small smile, nodding at the cat. “Tom insisted as how he must stay, too, though—I think he was afraid lest somebody come in and put a knife in your ribs in the night. He’s a suspicious little bugger, Tom.”

“I should say that he has cause to be,” Grey replied dryly. “Where is he now?”

“Asleep. It’s just risen dawn. I made him go to bed a few hours ago; said I’d watch for him.”

“Thank you.” Moving carefully in the confined space, Grey pulled himself up on the pillows. “We’re not moving, are we?”

Belatedly, he realized that what had wakened him was the cessation of movement; the ship was rolling gently as waves rose and fell beneath the hull, but her headlong dash had ceased.

“No, my lord. We’ve stopped to let the other ship come alongside of us.”

“Ship. The sail! What ship is it?” Grey sat upright, narrowly missing clouting himself anew on a small shelf above the berth.

“ The Scorpion,” Jack Byrd replied. “Troopship, the mate says.”

“A troopship? Thank Christ! Headed where?”

The cat, disturbed by his sudden movement, uncurled itself with a mirp!of protest.

“Dunno. They’ve not come within hailing distance yet. The captain’s not best pleased,” Byrd observed mildly. “But it’s Mr. Trevelyan’s orders.”

“Is it, then?” Grey gave Byrd a quizzical glance, but the smooth, lean face showed no particular response. Perhaps it was Trevelyan’s orders that had caused them to seek out the other ship—but he would have wagered a year’s income that the real order had come from Finbar Scanlon.

He let out a long breath, scarcely daring to hope. The other ship might not be heading for England; it could easily have overtaken them, sailing from England, en route to almost anywhere. But if it should be headed to France or Spain, somewhere within a few weeks’ journey of England—somehow, he would get back to London. Pray God, in time.

He had an immediate impulse to leap out of bed and fling on his clothes—someone, presumably Tom, had undressed him and put him to bed in his shirt—but it was plain that there would be some time before the two ships had maneuvered together, and Jack Byrd was making no move to rise and go, but was still sitting there, examining him thoughtfully.

It suddenly occurred to Grey why this was, and he halted his movement, instead altering it into a reach for the cat, which he scooped up into his lap, where it promptly curled up again.

“If the ship should be headed aright, I shall board her, of course, and go back to England,” he began carefully. “Your brother Tom—do you think he will wish to accompany me?”

“Oh, I’m sure he would, my lord.” Byrd straightened himself on the stool. “Better if he can get back to England, so our dad and the rest know he’s all right—and me,” he added, as an afterthought. “I expect they’ll be worried, a bit.”

“I should expect so.”

There was an awkward silence then, Byrd still making no move to go. Grey stared back.

“Will you wish to return to England with your brother?” Grey asked at last, quite baldly. “Or to continue on to India, in Mr. Trevelyan’s service?”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been asking myself, my lord, ever since that ship came close enough for Mr. Hudson to say what she was.” Jack Byrd scratched meditatively under his chin. “I’ve been with Mr. Trevelyan for a long time, see—since I was twelve. I’m . . . attached to him.” He darted a quick glance at Grey, then stopped, seeming to wait for something.

So he hadn’t been wrong. He had seen that unguarded look on Jack Byrd’s face—and Jack Byrd had seen him watching. He lifted one eyebrow, and saw the young man’s shoulders drop a little in sudden relaxation.

“Well . . . so.” Jack Byrd shrugged, and let his hands fall on his knees.

“So.” Grey rubbed his own chin, feeling the heavy growth of whiskers there. There would be time for Tom to shave him before the Scorpioncame alongside, he thought.

“Have you spoken to Tom? He will surely be hoping that you will come back to England with him.”

Jack Byrd bit his lower lip.

“I know.”

There were shouts of a different kind overhead: long calls, like someone howling in a chimney—he supposed the Namparawas trying to communicate with someone on the troopship. Where was his uniform? Ah, there, neatly brushed and hung on a hook by the door. Would Tom Byrd wish to go with him when the regiment was reposted? He could but hope.

In the meantime, there was Tom’s brother, here before him.

“I would offer you a position—as footman—” he added, giving the young man a straight look, lest there be any confusion about what was and was not offered,“—in my mother’s house. You would not lack for employment.”

Jack Byrd nodded, lips slightly pursed.

“Well, my lord, that’s kind. Though Mr. Trevelyan had made provisions for me; I shouldn’t starve. But I don’t see as how I can leave him.”

There was enough of a question in this last to make Grey sit up and face round in the bed, his back against the wall, in order to address the situation properly.

Was Jack Byrd seeking justification for staying, or excuse for leaving?

“It’s only . . . I’ve been with Mr. Joseph for some time,” Byrd said again, reaching out a hand to scratch the cat’s ears—more in order to avoid Grey’s gaze than because of a natural affection for cats, Grey thought. “He’s done very well by me, been good to me.”

And how good is that? Grey wondered. He was quite sure now of Byrd’s feelings, and sure enough of Trevelyan’s, for that matter. Whether anything had ever passed between Trevelyan and his servant in privacy—and he was inclined to doubt it—there was no doubt that Trevelyan’s emotions now focused solely on the woman who lay below, still and yellow in the interlude of her illness.

“He is not worthy of such loyalty. You know that,” Grey said, leaving the last sentence somewhere in the hinterland between statement and question.

“And you are, my lord?” It was asked without sarcasm, Byrd’s hazel eyes resting seriously on Grey’s face.

“If you mean your brother, I value his service more than I can say,” Grey replied. “I sincerely hope he knows it.”

Jack Byrd smiled slightly, looking down at the hands clasped on his knees. “Oh, I should reckon he does, then.”

They stayed without speaking for a bit, and the tension between them eased by degrees, the cat’s purring seeming somehow to dissolve it. The bellowing above had stopped.

“She might die,” Jack Byrd said. “Not that I want her to; I don’t, at all. But she may.” It was said thoughtfully, with no hint of hopefulness—and Grey believed him when he said there was none.

“She may,” he agreed. “She is very ill. But you are thinking that if that were unfortunately to occur—”

“Only as he’d need someone to care for him,” Byrd answered quickly. “Only that. I shouldn’t want him to be alone.”

Grey forbore to answer that Trevelyan would find it hard work to manage solitude on board a ship with two hundred seamen. The to-and-fro bumpings of the crew had not stopped, but had changed their rhythm. The ship had ceased to fly, but she scarcely lay quiet in the water; he could feel the gentle tug of wind and current on her bulk. Stroking the cat, he thought of wind and water as the hands of the ocean on her skin, and wondered momentarily whether he might have liked to be a sailor.

“He says that he will not live without her,” Grey said at last. “I do not know whether he means it.”

Byrd closed his eyes briefly, long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

“Oh, he means it,” he said. “But I don’t think he’d do it.” He opened his eyes, smiling a little. “I’m not saying as how he’s a hypocrite, mind—he’s not, no more than any man is just by nature. But he—” He paused, pushing out his lower lip as he considered how to say what he meant.

“It’s just as he seems so alive,” he said at last, slowly. He glanced up at Grey, dark eyes bright. “Not the sort as kills themselves. You’ll know what I mean, my lord?”

“I think I do, yes.” The cat, tiring at last of the attention, ceased purring and stretched itself, flexing its claws comfortably in and out of the coverlet over Grey’s leg. He scooped it up under the belly and set it on the floor, where it ambled away in search of milk and vermin.

Learning the truth, Maria Mayrhofer had thought of self-destruction; Trevelyan had not. Not out of principle, nor any sense of religious prohibition—merely because he could not imagine any circumstance of life that he could not overcome in some fashion.

“I do know what you mean,” Grey repeated, swinging his legs out of bed to go and open the door for the cat, who was clawing at it. “He may speak of death, but he has no . . .” He, in turn, groped for words. “. . . no friendship with it?”

Jack Byrd nodded.

“Aye, that’s something of what I mean. The lady, though—she’s seen that un’s face.” He shook his head, and Grey noted with interest that while his attitude seemed one of both liking and respect, he never spoke Maria Mayrhofer’s name.

Grey closed the door behind the cat and turned back, leaning against it. The ship swayed gently beneath him, but his head was clear and steady, for the first time in days.

Small as the cabin was, Jack Byrd sat no more than two feet from him, the rippled light from the prism overhead making him look like a creature from the seabed, soft hair wavy as kelp around his shoulders, with a green shadow in his hazel eyes.

“What you say is true,” Grey said at last. “But I tell you this. He will not forget her, even should she die. Particularly if she should die,” he added, thoughtfully.

Jack Byrd’s face didn’t change expression; he just sat, looking into Grey’s eyes, his own slightly narrowed, like a man evaluating the approach of a distant dust cloud that might hide enemy or fortune.

Then he nodded, rose, and opened the door.

“I’ll fetch my brother to you, my lord. I expect you’ll be wanting to dress.”

In the event, he was too late; a patter of footsteps rushed down the corridor, and Tom’s eager face appeared in the doorway.

“Me lord, Jack, me lord!” he said, excited into incoherence. “What they’re sayin’, what the sailors are sayin’! On that boat!”

“Ship,” Jack corrected, frowning at his brother. “So what are they saying, then?”

“Oh, to bleedin’ hell with your ships,” Tom said rudely, elbowing his brother aside. He swung back to Grey, face beaming. “They said General Clive’s beat the Nawab at a place called Plassey, me lord! We’ve won Bengal! D’ye hear—we’ve won!”

Epilogue

London

August 18, 1757

The first blast shook the walls, rattling the crystal wineglasses and causing a mirror from the reign of Louis XIV to crash to the floor.

“Never mind,” said the Dowager Countess Melton, patting a white-faced footman, who had been standing next to it, consolingly on the arm. “Ugly thing; it’s always made me look like a squirrel. Go fetch a broom before someone steps on the pieces.”

She stepped through the French doors onto the terrace, fanning herself and looking happy.

“What a night!” she said to her youngest son. “Do you think they’ve found the range yet?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Grey said, glancing warily down the river toward Tower Hill, where the fire-works master was presumably rechecking his calculations and bollocking his subordinates. The first trial shell had gone whistling directly overhead, no more than fifty feet above the Countess’s riverside town house. Several servants stood on the terrace, scanning the skies and armed with wet brooms, just in case.

“Well, they should do it more often,” the Countess said reprovingly, with a glance at the Hill. “Keep in practice.”

It was a clear, still, mid-August night, and while hot, moist air sat like a smothering blanket on London, there was some semblance of a breeze, so near the river.

Just upstream, he could see Vauxhall Bridge, so crowded with spectators that the span appeared to be a live thing itself, writhing and flexing like a caterpillar over the soft dark sheen of the river. Now and then, some intoxicated person would be pushed off, falling with a cannonball splash into the water, to the enthusiastic howls of their comrades above.

Conditions were not quite so crowded within the town house, but give it time, Grey thought, following his mother back inside to greet further new arrivals. The musicians had just finished setting up at the far end of the room; they would need to open the folding doors into the next room, as well, to make room for dancing—though that wouldn’t begin until after the fireworks.

The temperature was no bar to Londoners celebrating the news of Clive’s victory at Plassey. For days, the taverns had been overflowing with custom, and citizens greeted one another in the street with genial cries condemning the Nawab of Bengal’s ancestry, appearance, and social habits.

“Buggering black bastard!” bellowed the Duke of Cirencester, echoing the opinions of his fellow citizens in Spitalfields and Stepney as he charged through the door. “Put a rocket up his arse, see how high he flies before he explodes, eh? Benedicta, my love, come kiss me!”

The Countess, prudently putting several bodies between herself and the Duke, blew him a pretty kiss before disappearing on the arm of Mr. Pitt, and Grey tactfully redirected the Duke’s ardor toward the genial widow of Viscount Bonham, who was more than capable of dealing with him. Was the Duke’s Christian name Jacob? he wondered darkly. He thought it was.

A few more trial blasts from Tower Hill were scarcely noticed, as the noise of talk and music grew with each fresh bottle of wine opened, each new cup of rum punch poured. Even Jack Byrd, who had been quiet to the point of taciturnity since their return, seemed cheered; Grey saw him smile at a young maid passing through with a pile of cloaks.

Tom Byrd, newly outfitted in proper livery for the occasion, was standing by the bamboo screen that hid the chamber pots, charged with watching the guests to prevent petty thievery.

“Be careful, especially when the fireworks start in earnest,” Grey murmured to him in passing. “Take it turn about with your brother, so you can go out to the terrace and watch a bit—but be sure someone’s got an eye on my Lord Gloucester all the time. He got away with a gilded snuffbox last time he was here.”

“Yes, me lord,” Tom said, nodding. “Look, me lord—it’s the Hun!”

Sure enough, Stephan von Namtzen, Landgrave von Erdberg, had arrived in all his plumed glory, beaming as though Clive’s triumph had been a personal victory. Handing his helmet to Jack Byrd, who looked rather bemused by its receipt, he spotted Grey and an enormous smile spread across his face.

The intervening crowd prevented his passage, for which Grey was momentarily grateful. He was in fact more than pleased to see the Hanoverian, but the thought of being enthusiastically embraced and kissed on both cheeks, which was von Namtzen’s habit when greeting friends . . .

Then the Bishop of York arrived with an entourage of six small black boys in cloth of gold; a huge boom!from downriver and shrieks from the crowd on Vauxhall Bridge announced the real commencement of the fireworks, and the musicians struck up Handel’s Royal Fireworkssuite.

Two-thirds of the guests surged out onto the terrace for a better view, leaving the hard drinkers and those engaged in conversation a little room to breathe.

Grey took advantage of the sudden exodus to nip behind the bamboo screen for relief; two bottles of champagne took their toll. It was perhaps not an appropriate venue for prayer, but he sent up a brief word of gratitude, nonetheless. The public hysteria over Plassey had completely eclipsed any other news; neither broadsheets nor street journalists had said a word on the subjects of the murder of Reinhardt Mayrhofer, or the disappearance of Joseph Trevelyan—let alone made rude speculations concerning Trevelyan’s erstwhile fiancйe.

He understood that word was being discreetly circulated in financial circles that Mr. Trevelyan was traveling to India in order to explore new opportunities for import, in the wake of the victory.

He had a momentary vision of Joseph Trevelyan as he had been in the main cabin of the Nampara,standing by his wife’s bed, just before Grey had left.

“If? . . .” Grey had asked, with a small nod toward the bed.

“Word will come that I have been lost at sea—swept overboard by a swamping wave. Such things happen.” He glanced toward the bed where Maria Mayrhofer lay, still and beautiful and yellow as a carving of ancient ivory.

“I daresay they do,” Grey had said quietly, thinking once more of Jamie Fraser.

Trevelyan moved to stand by the bed, looking down. He took the woman’s hand, stroking it, and Grey saw her fingers tighten, very slightly; light quivered in the emerald teardrop of the ring she wore.

“If she dies, it will be the truth,” Trevelyan said softly, his eyes on her still face. “I shall take her in my arms and step over the rail; we will rest together, on the bottom of the sea.”

Grey moved to stand beside him, close enough to feel the brush of his sleeve.

“And if she does not?” he asked. “If you both survive the treatment?”

Trevelyan shrugged, so faintly that Grey might not have noticed were he not so close.

“Money will not buy health, nor happiness—but it has its uses. We will live in India, as man and wife; no one will know who she was—nothing will matter, save we are together.”

“May God bless you and grant you peace,” Grey murmured, reordering his dress—though he spoke to Maria Mayrhofer, rather than Trevelyan. He smoothed the edge of his waistcoat and stepped out from behind the screen, back into the maelstrom of the party.

Within a few steps, he was stopped by Lieutenant Stubbs, burnished to a high gloss and sweating profusely.

“Hallo, Malcolm. Enjoying yourself?”

“Er . . . yes. Of course. A word, old fellow?”

A boom from the river made speech momentarily impossible, but Grey nodded, beckoning Stubbs to a relatively quiet alcove near the foyer.

“I should speak to your brother, I know.” Stubbs cleared his throat. “But with Melton not here, you’re by way of being head of the family, aren’t you?”

“For my sins,” Grey replied guardedly. “Why?”

Stubbs cast a lingering glance through the French doors; Olivia was visible on the terrace, laughing at something said to her by Lord Ramsbotham.

“Not as though your cousin hasn’t better prospects, I know,” he said, a little awkwardly. “But I have got five thousand a year, and when the Old One—not that I don’t hope he lives forever, mind, but I amthe heir, and—”

“You want my permission to court Olivia?”

Stubbs avoided his eye, gazing vaguely off toward the musicians, who were fiddling industriously away at the far end of the room.

“Um, well, more or less done that, really. Hope you don’t mind. I, er, we were hoping you might see your way to a marriage before the regiment leaves. Bit hasty, I know, but . . .”

But you want a chance to leave your seed in a willing girl’s belly,Grey added silently, in case you don’t come back.

The guests had all left off chattering, and crowded to the edge of the gallery as the next explosion from the river boomed in the distance. Blue and white stars fountained from the sky amid a chorus of “ooh!” and “ahh!”—and he knew that every soldier there felt as he did the clench in the lower belly, balls drawn up tight at the echo of war, even as their hearts lifted heavenward at the sight of flaming glory.

“Yes,” he heard himself say, in the moment’s silence between one explosion and the next. “I don’t see why not. After all, her dress is ready.”

Then Stubbs was crushing his hand, beaming fervently, and he was smiling back, head swimming with champagne.

“I say, old fellow—you wouldn’t think of making it a double wedding, would you? There’s my sister, you know . . .”

Melissa Stubbs was Malcolm’s twin, a plump and smiling girl, who was even now giving him an all-too-knowing eye over her fan from the terrace. For a split second, Grey teetered on the edge of temptation; the urge to leave something of himself behind, the lure of immortality before one steps into the void.

It would be well enough, he thought, if he didn’t come back—but what if he did? He smiled, clapped Stubbs on the back, and excused himself with courtesy to go and find another drink.

“You don’t want to drink that French muck, do you?” Quarry said at his elbow. “Blow you up like a bladder—gassy stuff.” Quarry himself had a magnum of red wine clutched under one arm, a large blonde woman under the other. “May I introduce you to Major Grey, Mamie? Major, Mrs. Fortescue.”

“Your servant, ma’am.”

“A word in your ear, Grey?” Quarry released Mrs. Fortescue momentarily, and stepped in close, his craggy face red and glossy under his wig.

“We’ve got word at last; the new posting. But an odd thing—”

“Yes?” The glass in Grey’s hand was red, not gold, as though it contained the vintage called Schilcher, the shining stuff that was the color of blood. But then he saw the bubbles rise, and realized that the fireworks had changed in color, and the light around them went red and white and red again and the smell of smoke floated in through the French doors as though they stood in the center of a bombardment.

“I was just talking to that German chap, von Namtzen. He wants you to go and be a liaison of sorts with his regiment; already spoken to the War Office, he says. Seems to have conceived a great regard for you, Grey.”

Grey blinked and took a gulp of champagne. Von Namtzen’s great blond head was visible on the terrace, his handsome profile turned up to the sky, rapt with wonder as a five-year-old’s.

“Well, you needn’t decide on the spot, of course. Up to your brother, anyway. Just thought I’d mention it. Ready for another turn, Mamie, m’dear?”

Before Grey could gather his senses to respond, the three—Harry, the blonde, and the bottle—had galloped off in a wild gavotte, and the sky was exploding in pinwheels and showers of red and blue and green and white and yellow.

Stephan von Namtzen turned and met his eyes, lifting a glass in salute, and at the end of the room the musicians still played Handel, like the music of his life, beauty and serenity interrupted always by the thunder of distant fire.

Author’s Notes and References

Most of my information on the mollies of London comes from MOTHER CLAP’S MOLLY-HOUSE: The Gay Subculture in England 1700–1830, by Rictor Norton, which includes a fairly large bibliography, for those looking for further details. (I was interested to see that—according to this reference—terms such as “rough trade” and “Miss Thing,” currently in use, were in existence during the eighteenth century as well.)

While most of the locations mentioned as “molly-walks” are historically known—such as the bog-houses (public privies) of Lincoln’s Inn, Blackfriars Bridge, and the arcades of the Royal Exchange—the establishment known as Lavender House is fictional.

While some characters in this book, such as William Pitt, Robert Clive, the Nawab of Bengal, and Sir John Fielding, are real historic personages, most are fictional, or used in a fictional sense (e.g., there likely were real Dukes of Gloucester at various points in history, but I have no evidence to suggest that any of them were in fact kleptomaniac.).

Other useful references include:

ENGLISH SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (from THE PELICAN SOCIAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN series), by Roy Porter, 1982, Pelican Books. ISBN 0-14-022099-2. This includes a good bibliography, plus a number of interesting statistical tables.

THE TRANSVESTITE MEMOIRS OF THE ABBЙ DE CHOISY, Peter Owen Publishers, London. ISBN 0-7206-0915-1. This book deals with the subject of the title, in seventeenth-century France, and is more interesting for the sumptuous details of the Abbй’s clothes than anything else.

THE QUEER DUTCHMAN: True Account of a Sailor Castaway on a Desert Island for “Unnatural Acts” and Left to God’s Mercy, by Peter Agnos, Green Eagle Press, New York, 1974, 1993, ISBN 0-914018-03-5. The (edited) journal of Jan Svilts, marooned on Ascension Island in 1725 by officers of the Dutch East India Company, who feared that his “unnatural acts” would bring down the wrath of God upon their venture, as upon the inhabitants of Sodom.

LOVE LETTERS BETWEEN A CERTAIN LATE NOBLEMAN AND THE FAMOUS MR. WILSON, Michael S. Kimmel, ed. Harrington Park Press, New York, 1990. (Originally published as Journal of HomosexualityVolume 19, Number 2, 1990.) This deals with the homosexual world in England (London specifically) during the 18th century, and contains quite an extensive annotated bibliography, as well as considerable commentary on the actual correspondence, which is included.

SAMUEL JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY. ISBN 1-929154-10-0. Various editions of this are available; a recent abridged version is done by the Levenger Press, edited by Jack Lynch. The original dictionary was published in 1755.

A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE, by Captain Francis Grose (edited with a biographical and critical sketch and an extensive commentary by Eric Partridge). Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. There are several different editions available of Grose’s original work (which the Captain himself revised and re-published several times), but the original was probably published around 1807.

DRESS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE 1715–1789, by Aileen Ribeiro, Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., New York, 1984. Well illustrated, with an abundance of paintings and drawings from the period, and several useful appendices on eighteenth-century currency and political events.

Greenwood’s Map of London, 1827. This is the oldest complete map of London I was able to find, so I have used it as a general basis for the locations described. It’s available at a number of Internet sites; I used the site maintained by the University of Bath Spa: http://users.bathspa.ac.uk/imagemap/html.

The Malaria Cure. Finbar Scanlon’s notion of deliberately infecting someone with malaria in order to cure syphilis was a known medical procedure of the period—though not nearly so common or popular as the various mecury-based “cures.”

Oddly enough, in very recent times, a few observations have been made of people suffering from chronic infective diseases, who then acquire a separate infection causing extremely high fever (in excess of 104 degrees) over a prolonged period. Such fevers are very dangerous in and of themselves, but what was remarkable was that those patients who survived such fevers were in many cases found to no longer have the chronic disease. So there is indeed some evidence—though still very anecdotal at this point—to suggest that Mr. Scanlon’s remedy might well have worked. For the sake of Joseph Trevelyan and Maria Mayrhofer, we’ll hope so!

Transvestite. The use of this word as a noun dates only from the mid-twentieth century. The practice, however, is plainly a great deal older. Given Lord John’s Latin education, the use of this Latinate construction as an adjective—“transvestite commerce’’—is more than reasonable.

Also by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander

Dragonfly in Amber

Voyager

Drums of Autumn

The Fiery Cross

The Outlandish Companion