Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (5 page)

“Is he dead, do you think?”

The man’s wig had slipped askew, half covering his face. It had begun to snow lightly, and between the flickering light and the swirling flakes, it was impossible to perceive whether he was breathing.

“Let me look; perhaps—” Hal stooped to touch the man, but was prevented by a shout from the doorway.

“Don’t touch him! Not yet!” An excited young man issued from the club and seized Hal’s arm. “We haven’t put it in the book yet!”

“What, the betting book?” Hal demanded.

“Yes—Rogers says he’s dead, and I say he’s not. Two guineas on it! Will you join the wager with me, Melton?”

“He’s dead as a doornail, Melton!” came a shout from the open door, presumably from Rogers. “Whitbread and Gallagher are with me!”

“He ain’t, I say!” The young man slapped his palm on the doorjamb. “You lot couldn’t tell a corpse from a tailor’s ham!”

“Hoy!” Grey caught a glimmer of movement from the corner of his eye and whirled round, hand on his sword—but not in time to grab the ragged boy who had darted in to snatch the body’s hat. A hoot of triumph drifted back through the thickening snow.

“Call the Watch, for God’s sake. We can’t let him lie here, dead or not,” Hal said impatiently. “He’ll be picked clean.”

Grey obligingly belted down the street to the Fount of Wisdom, where he found two members of the Watch fortifying themselves against the weather. Reluctantly gulping their mulled cider, they huddled themselves grumbling into coats and hats and came back with him to White’s, where he found his brother standing guard over the body, leaning on his sword.

“About time,” Hal said, sheathing it. “They’re here!” he shouted, turning toward the open door, where Mr. Holmes, the club’s steward, hovered in anticipation.

Holmes promptly vanished, and the call of, “The book is closed, gentlemen!” rang through the house.

In moments, the body was surrounded by a crowd of eager bettors, who poured out into the snow, still arguing amongst themselves.

“What do you say?” Grey muttered to Hal. He sniffed the air, but was unable to detect any telltale scent of death, above the waft of smoke, coffee, and food drifting from the club. “Ten to one he’s alive,” he said, on impulse.

“You know I never bet on anything but cards,” Hal muttered back. Still, he held his position at the front of the group, curious as any of the bettors, as one of the Watchmen gingerly lifted the wig away from the man’s face.

There was a moment’s silence as the face was revealed, gray and slack as potter’s clay, eyes closed. The Watchman bent close, cupping the fallen jaw, then jerked upright.

“He’s alive! I felt his breath on me ’and!”

The group exploded into voice and action then, several men hastening to lift the victim and carry him inside, others calling out for hot coffee, a doctor, brandy, had the man a pocketbook, papers? Where was the doctor, for God’s sake?

A tall, gray-haired man came out of the cardroom glaring at the interruption.

“Who wants a doctor?”

“Oh, there you are, Longstreet. Your patient, sir.” Hal greeted the doctor, whom he evidently knew, and gestured toward the man in the greatcoat, who had been laid out on a settee and was being tenderly ministered to by the same men who had been wagering on his demise moments earlier.

Doctor Longstreet grimaced, shed his coat, and began to roll up his sleeves.

“All right. I’ll see. You lot, get out of it. Holmes—fetch me a bowl from the kitchen, if you would be so good.” He pulled a collapsible fleam from his pocket and flicked it open with a practiced air.

Mr. Holmes hesitated.

“You aren’t going to do anything…messy, are you? We’ve only just had that settee reupholstered.”

Longstreet gave the steward a humorless grin.

“I’m going to bleed him, yes—but I’ll endeavor not to stain your damask. Bowl!”

Grey, being nearest and not given to squeamishness, helped to lift the man—who was both tall and stout—and remove his outer clothes. The man’s eyelids flickered for a moment, and his lips moved, but he relapsed back into unconsciousness, not stirring even when Longstreet took hold of his bared arm and cut into the flesh below the elbow.

Blood pattered into the bowl, and one of the onlookers went quickly outside, whence the sound of vomiting was heard through the still-open door. Mr. Holmes cast a look of despair at the blood spattering the carpet, and went out to render aid.

“I don’t suppose you carry ammoniac salts on your person, do you?” Longstreet asked Grey, frowning at the unconscious man. “I hoped the flow of blood might revive him, but…”

“My brother does. A moment.” Hal had disappeared into the cardroom with most of the other members, who had ceased to be interested in the subject of their wager, now that it was won or lost. Grey went in and returned almost at once with Hal’s enameled snuffbox, which, when opened, proved to contain not snuff but a small corked vial containing sal volatile.

Dr. Longstreet accepted this with a nod of thanks, pulled the cork, and passed the bottle closely beneath the man’s nostrils.

“Why does your brother—Melton
is
your brother, I perceive? The resemblance is marked—why does he carry salts?”

“I believe his wife is subject to fits of fainting,” Grey said casually. In fact, Hal himself now and then suffered odd spells of dizziness. Having fainted once on the parade ground on a hot day, he had resolved never to appear at such a disadvantage again, and had taken to carrying salts—though to the best of Grey’s knowledge, his brother had never actually resorted to them. He was reasonably sure that Hal would prefer this precaution not to be public knowledge, however.

“Ah!” The doctor made a sound of satisfaction; the patient’s face had suddenly convulsed.

Matters thereafter were so intent as to allow no further conversation. With continued application of salts, cloths wrung out in warm water and applied to the limbs, and—as returning consciousness allowed—judicious infusions of brandy, the gentleman was gradually returned to a state of consciousness, though he remained unable to speak, and merely frowned in a puzzled way when spoken to.

“I believe he has suffered an apoplexy,” Longstreet remarked, surveying his patient with interest. “Common in subjects of a choleric disposition. Observe the burst small vessels in the cheeks—and most particularly the nose.”

“Indeed.” Grey peered at the man. “Will he recover his powers of speech, do you suppose?”

Longstreet shrugged, but appeared in good humor. The man had survived, after all. What more could be asked of a doctor?

“With good nursing, it’s possible. Do we know who he is?”

Grey had gone through the pockets of the man’s greatcoat and discovered among the contents an open letter, addressed to a Dr. Henryk van Humperdinck, at 44 Great Ormond Street.

The gentleman gave some signs of response when addressed by this name, and so a message was sent to Great Ormond Street, and the patient carried off to one of the bedrooms upstairs, under the direction of the long-suffering Mr. Holmes, until his connexions should be located and informed.

“Did you have any money on him?” the doctor asked jovially, wiping his hands on a towel. “I hope I have not beggared you by saving his life. Or your brother, for that matter.”

“No,” Grey assured him. “I should have won, had I been in time to place a bet. And my brother is not a betting man.”

“No?” Longstreet sounded surprised.

“No. He wagers at whist, but only, he says, because he has faith in his skill, not his luck.”

Longstreet gave him a queer look.

“Not a betting man?” he repeated, and laughed in cynic fashion. Seeing Grey’s look of incomprehension, his own face changed, and he pursed his lips, as though considering whether to say something.

“You’ve never seen it?” he said at last, looking sideways at Grey beneath gray brows. “Truly?”

Receiving no reply, he strode across the room and picked up the betting book, which had been left on a side table, following Mr. Holmes’s careful record of the settling of the wager on Dr. Humperdinck’s state of animation.

Longstreet flipped back through the pages, long-fingered and swift, finally discovering what he wanted with a small grunt of satisfaction.

“Here.” He handed the book to Grey, pointing out an entry that stood alone at the head of a page, otherwise blank, save the signatures of witnesses to the wager in the margin.

The Earl of Melton states that the Duke of Pardloe was not a traitor. He stakes twenty thousand pounds on the truth of this. All comers welcome.

Below this was Hal’s formal signature, big and black. Grey felt as though he had suddenly forgot how to breathe.

On the opposite page were three entries, the first written in small, evenly controlled letters, as though in deliberate contrast to the passion of Hal’s wager:

Done. Nathaniel Twelvetrees, Captain, 32nd Foot

Below this were two more names, carelessly scrawled.

Accepted. Arthur Wilbraham, MP

Accepted. George Longstreet

Grey worked his tongue in an effort to regain enough saliva to speak, and mechanically noted the date of the wager. 8 July, 1741. A month after his father’s death. There was no indication that the wager had ever been settled.

“You really didn’t know?” Longstreet was regarding him with something like sympathy, mixed with curiosity.

“No,” Grey said, achieving speech. With some effort, he closed the book and set it down. “George Longstreet. You?”

Doctor Longstreet shook his head.

“My cousin. I witnessed the wager, though.” The doctor’s mouth, long and mobile, quirked at one side. “It was a memorable night. Your brother came very close to calling Twelvetrees out and was dissuaded only by Colonel Quarry—he was only a lieutenant at the time, of course—who pointed out that he could not honorably risk leaving his mother and younger brother defenseless, were he killed. You must have been no more than a child at the time?”

Blood burned in Grey’s cheeks at that. He had had nothing to drink, but felt a rushing in his ears, together with that peculiar sense of detachment that sometimes came upon him after too much wine, as though he were not responsible for the actions of his body.

“Mr. Holmes!” he called, his voice surprisingly calm. “A quill and ink, if you please.”

He opened the book, and taking the quill hastily supplied by Holmes, who stood by anxious-faced and silent, he wrote neatly beneath his brother’s entry:

Lord John Grey joins this wager, upon the same terms.

He hadn’t got twenty thousand pounds, but it didn’t seem to matter.

“If you gentlemen will be so kind as to witness my hand?” He held out the ink-stained quill to Longstreet, who took it, looking amused. Holmes coughed, low in his throat, and Grey turned round to see his brother standing in the doorway, watching, expressionless. The sound of laughter and shouts of dismay came from the cardroom behind him.

“What in God’s name is the matter with you?” Hal asked, very quietly.

“The same thing that’s the matter with you,” Grey said. He took his hat and coat from the hallstand and bowed. “Good night,” he said politely. “Your Grace.”

Chapter 3

Pet Criminal

O
nce home, he could not sleep, and after a restless hour spent churning the bedclothes into knots, he got up, poked the fire into life, and sat by the window with a blanket round his shoulders, watching the snow come down.

Ice crystals coated the glass like clouded lace, but Grey barely noticed the cold; he was burning. And not with the fires of sudden lust this time—rather, with the desire to walk across town to his brother’s house, drag Hal from his bed, and assault him.

He could—he supposed—understand why Hal had never mentioned the wager to him. In the wake of the scandal following the duke’s death, Grey had been shipped off promptly to some of his mother’s distant relatives in Aberdeen. He had spent two grim years in that gray stone city, during which time he had seen his brother only once.

And when he had come back to England, Hal had been virtually a stranger, so preoccupied with the business of re constituting the regiment that he had no time to spare for either friends or family. And then…well, then he himself had met Hector, and in the cataclysms of personal discovery that followed that event had had no attention to spare for anyone else, either.

The brothers had only come to know each other again when Grey took up his commission with the regiment, and discovered that he shared the family taste and talent for soldiering. Certainly Hal had not forgotten the wager, but as it had plainly never been settled, it was conceivable that it might not have occurred to him to speak of it, years after the fact.

No, what was galling him was not that Hal had never mentioned the wager, but the fact that his brother had never told
him
openly that he believed their father had not been a traitor. Grey had lived on the tacit assumption that this was the case, but the matter had never been mentioned between them—and a casual observer would have drawn quite a different impression from Hal’s actions, taking these as the efforts of a man to live down shame and scandal, repudiating his patrimony in the process.

In fact, Grey admitted to himself, he had only assumed that Hal shared his faith in their father because he could not bear to think otherwise. If he were honest with himself, he must admit now that if Hal had not spoken to him of the matter, it was as much because he had never brought it up as because Hal had avoided discussion. He had been afraid to hear what he feared was the truth: that Hal knew something unpleasant and certain about the duke that he did not, but had spared him that knowledge out of kindness.

While it was good to discover the truth of Hal’s feelings now, any sense of relief he might have felt in the discovery was obscured by outrage. The fact that he knew the outrage to be largely unjustified only made it worse.

Worst of all was a sense of self-disgust, a feeling that he had wronged Hal—if only in his thoughts—and anger at the sense that he had been betrayed into committing injustice.

He got up, restless, and strode round the room, careful to step softly. His mother’s room lay below his.

He couldn’t even have it out with Hal, as that would involve his admitting to doubts that he preferred to keep buried, particularly now that they had been disproved. At least, his doubts regarding Hal had been disproved. As to his father…what the devil did that page from the missing journal mean? Who had left it? And why had his mother told Hal the duke had burnt the journal, when clearly he had not?

He glanced at the floor beneath his feet, debating the wisdom of going down and rousing his mother in order to ask her. But Hal had wished to speak to her alone; Grey supposed that was his right. Still, if either one of them thought he would be fobbed off now with further evasions or easy reassurances…He realized that he was clenching his fists, and opened them.

“You are grossly mistaken,” he said softly, and rubbed his palm against his leg. “Both of you.”

He had left his watch open on the desk. It chimed softly now, and he picked it up, holding it toward the fire to see the time—half two. He set it down again, next to the journal that also lay there, one of his father’s. He’d taken the volume at random from the library and brought it upstairs with him, for no good reason. Only feeling the need to touch it.

He laid a hand gently on the cover. Rough-tanned leather, the pages sewn in. It was like all the duke’s journals, made to withstand travel and the vicissitudes of campaign.

…watched the Perseids fall before the dawn twilight this morning, with V. and John. We lay upon the lawn, and counted more than sixty meteors within the space of an hour, at least a dozen very bright, with a visible tinge of blue or green.

He repeated the sentence to himself, making sure he had it word for word. That was the only sentence on the page Hal had burned that mentioned himself by name; a nugget of gold.

He hadn’t remembered that night at all, until the casual record brought it back: cool damp from the lawn seeping through his clothes, excitement overcoming the pull of sleep and the longing for his warm bed. Then the “Ah!” from his father and Victor—yes, “V.” was Victor Arbuthnot, one of his father’s astronomical friends. Was Arbuthnot still alive? he wondered. The sudden jerk of his heart at sight of the first shooting star—a brief and silent streak of light, startling as though a star had indeed fallen suddenly from its place.

That was what he most remembered—the silence. The men had talked at first, chatting casually; he had paid no attention, half-dreaming as he was. But then their conversation had faded, and the three of them lay flat on their backs, faces turned upward to the heavens, waiting together. Silent.

Poets spoke of the song of the heavens, the music of the spheres—and God knew, it was true. The silence of the stars chimed in the heart.

He paused by the window, looking up into a lavender sky, fingers pressed against the icy glass. No stars tonight; the snowflakes came down out of the dark, rushing toward him, endless, uncountable. Silent, too, but not like the stars. Falling snow whispered secrets to itself.

“And you are a fanciful idiot,” he said out loud, and turned away from the window. “Be writing poetry, next thing.”

He made himself lie down, and lay staring up at the plastered ceiling. Remembering the stargazing had quieted him, though he thought he would not sleep. Too many thoughts swirled through his brain, endless and confusing as the snowflakes. Missing journals, reappearing pages, ancient wagers—was that wager at the root of the animus between his brother and Colonel Twelvetrees? And the so-called sodomite conspiracy—had that anything to do with his family’s affairs? He might as well try to fit the falling snowflakes together in a way that made sense.

It was only as his eyes closed that he realized that while snowflakes cannot fit, they do accumulate. One upon another, until the sheer mass of them forms a crust that a man might walk upon—or fall through.

He would wait and see how deep the drifts lay, come morning.

I
n the morning, though, a letter came.

“Geneva Dunsany is dead.” Benedicta, Dowager Countess of Melton, set down the black-bordered letter very gently by her plate, her face pale. The footman froze in the act of presenting more toast.

For an instant, the words had no meaning. The hot tea in Grey’s cup warmed his fingers through the china, fragrant steam in his nostrils mingling with the scents of fried kippers, hot bread, and marmalade. Then he heard what his mother had said, and set down his cup.

“God rest her soul,” he said. His lips felt numb, in spite of the tea. “How?”

The countess closed her eyes for an instant, looking suddenly her age.

“In childbirth,” she said, drawing a long breath, and opening her eyes. “The child has survived, so far. A son, Lady Dunsany says.” The color was beginning to seep back into the countess’s face, and she picked up the letter again.

“Here is something remarkable, though terribly sad,” she said. “She says that the child’s father—that would be Ellesmere, old Ludovic, you know—died on the same day as his wife.”

“Oh, dear!” His cousin Olivia looked at her aunt, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. Olivia was a tenderhearted girl to begin with, and her inclination to be affected by sentiment had grown more pronounced with her own advancing pregnancy. Though Grey supposed that the news that Geneva Dunsany had perished in giving birth was bound to have a morbid effect on a young woman in similar condition.

Grey coughed, wishing to distract his cousin—and to keep his own feelings at bay for the moment.

“I do not suppose the earl died of a broken heart,” he said. “The shock, perhaps?”

“How do you know it was not a broken heart?” Olivia asked reproachfully, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “Were anything to happen to my darling Malcolm, I am sure I should not survive the news!” Her eyes overflowed at thought of her new husband, presently serving in the wilds of America.

The countess gave her son a jaundiced look; Olivia had come back to live with her aunt after Malcolm Stubbs’s departure for Albany, and Grey supposed that his cousin’s vivid imagination and outspoken emotions were perhaps beginning to wear upon his mother, who was kind but not particularly patient.

“I believe Ellesmere was a good fifty years his wife’s senior,” Grey said, in an attempt to make amends. “And while I am sure he was fond of her, I think his death much more likely to have been due to an apoplexy or seizure at the shock than to an excess of sorrow.”

“Oh.” Olivia sniffed and wiped her nose with the napkin. “Oh, but the poor little mite, left an orphan on the very day of his birth! Is that not terrible?”

“Terrible,” the countess agreed absently, continuing to read. “It was not an apoplexy, though, nor yet a surfeit of emotion. Lady Dunsany says that the earl perished through some tragic accident.”

Olivia looked blank.

“An accident?” she repeated, and wiped absently at her nose before replacing the napkin in her lap. “What happened?”

“Lady Dunsany does not say,” the countess reported, frowning at the letter. “How peculiar. They are very much distressed, of course.”

“Had Ellesmere any family,” Grey inquired, “or will the Dunsanys take the child?”

“They have taken him. Her chief concern, beyond the immediacies of the situation, is Isobel. She was so close to her sister, and her grief…” The countess laid down the letter, shaking her head, then pursed her lips and focused a thoughtful look on Grey.

“She asks whether you might see fit to visit them soon, John. Isobel is so fond of you; Lady Dunsany thinks perhaps you might be able to distract her somewhat from the burden of her grief. The funeral—or perhaps funerals; do you suppose they will be buried together?—are set for Thursday next. I suppose that you would go to Helwater fairly soon in any case, to assure yourself of the welfare of your pet criminal before the regiment departs, but—”

“Your pet criminal?” Olivia, who had resumed buttering her toast, paused openmouthed, knife in midair. “What—?”

“Really, Mother,” Grey said mildly, hoping that the sudden lurch of his heart did not show. “Mr. Fraser is—”

“A Jacobite, a convicted traitor, and a murderer,” his mother interrupted crisply. “Really, John, I cannot see
why
you should have gone to such lengths to keep such a man in England, when by rights, he should have been transported. Indeed, I am surprised he was not hanged outright!”

“I had reasons,” Grey replied, keeping voice and eyes both level. “And I am afraid you must trust my judgment in the matter, Mother.”

A sudden flush burned in his mother’s cheeks, though she held his gaze, lips pressed tight. Then something moved in her eyes, some thought.

“Of course,” she said, her voice suddenly as colorless as her cheeks. “To be sure.” Her eyes were still fixed on Grey, but she was no longer looking at him, rather at something far beyond him. She drew a long breath, then pushed back from the table in sudden decision.

“You will excuse me, my dears. I have a good many things to do this morning.”

“But you’ve barely touched a thing, Aunt Bennie!” Olivia protested. “Won’t you have a kipper, a bit of porridge perhaps…” But the countess had already gone, in a whisk of skirts.