What he saw was that one frightful glimpse of nakedness he had surprised in Fraser’s face, naked in a way he would wish to see no man naked, let alone a man such as this.
“I understand,” he said softly, the sound of the words surprising him. “I wish it were not so.”
He looked down at the muddled mess of paper before him, blotched and crumpled, marked with spider blots of confusion and regret. It reminded him of that terse note, written with a burnt stick. Despite everything, Fraser had given him help when he asked it.
Might he ever see Jamie Fraser again? There was a good chance he would not. If chance did not kill him, cowardice might.
The mania of confession was on him; best make the most of it. His quill had dried; he did not dip it again.
I love you, he wrote, the strokes light and fast, making scarcely a mark upon the paper, with no ink. I wish it were not so.
Then he rose, scooped up the scribbled papers, and, crushing them into a ball, threw them into the fire.
He was unfortunately not dead when he woke in the morning, but wished he were. Every muscle in his body ached, and the ghastly residue of everything he had drunk clung like dusty fur to the inside of his throbbing head.
Tom Byrd brought him a tray, paused to view the remains, and shook his head in a resigned manner, but said nothing.
Oddly enough, his hands did not shake. Still, he clasped them carefully round his teacup and raised it cautiously to his lips. As he did so, he noticed a letter on the tray, sealed with a blob of crimson wax, in which the initials SC were incised. Simon Coles.
He sat up, narrowly avoiding spilling the tea, and fumbled open the missive, which proved to contain a brief note from the lawyer and a sheet of paper containing several drawings, with penciled descriptions written tidily beneath. Descriptions of the bits of jewelry that Anne Thackeray had taken with her when she eloped with Philip Lister.
“Tom,” Grey croaked.
“Yes, me lord?”
“Go tell the stable lad to ready the horses, then pack. We’ll leave in an hour.”
Both Tom’s eyebrows lifted, but he bowed.
“Very good, me lord.”
He had hoped to escape from Blackthorn Hall unnoticed, and was in the act of depositing a gracious note of thanks—pleading urgent business as excuse for his abrupt removal—on Edgar’s desk, when a voice spoke suddenly behind him.
“John!”
He whirled, guilt stamped upon his features, to find Maude in the doorway, a garden trug over one arm, filled with what looked like onions but were probably daffodil bulbs or something agricultural of the sort.
“Oh. Maude. How pleased I am to see you. I thought I should have to take my leave without expressing my thanks for your kindness. How fortunate—”
“You’re leaving us, John? So soon?”
She was a tall woman, and handsome, her dark good looks a proper match for Edgar’s. Maude’s eyes, however, were not those of a poetess. Something more in the nature of a gorgon’s, he had always felt; riveting the attention of her auditors, even though all instinct bade them flee.
“I … yes. Yes. I received a letter—” He had Coles’s note with him, and flourished it as evidence. “I must—”
“Oh, from Mr. Coles, of course. The butler told me he had brought you a note, when he brought me mine.”
She was looking at him with a most unaccustomed fondness, which gave him a small chill up the back. This increased when she moved suddenly toward him, setting aside her trug, and cupped a hand behind his head, looking searchingly into his eyes. Her breath was warm on his cheek, smelling of fried egg.
“Are you sure you are quite well enough to travel, my dear?”
“Ahh … yes,” he said. “Quite. Quite sure.” God in heaven, did she mean to kiss him?
Thank God, she did not. After examining his face feature by feature, she released him.
“You should have told us, you know,” she said reproachfully.
He managed a vaguely interrogative noise in answer to this, and she nodded toward the desk. Where, he now saw, the newspaper cutting referring to him as the Hero of Crefeld was displayed in all its glory, along with a note in Simon Coles’s handwriting.
“Oh,” he said. “Ah. That. It really—”
“We had not the slightest idea,” she said, looking at him with what in a lesser woman would have passed for doe-eyed respect. “You are so modest, John! To think of all you have suffered—it shows so clearly upon your haggard countenance—and to say not a word, even to your family!”
It was a cold day and the library fire had not been lit, but he was beginning to feel very warm. He coughed.
“There is, of course, a certain degree of exaggeration—”
“Nonsense, nonsense. But of course, your natural nobility of character causes you to shun public acclaim, I understand entirely.”
“I knew you would,” Grey said, giving up. They beamed at each other for a few seconds; then he coughed again and made purposefully to pass her.
“John.”
He halted, obedient, and she took him by the arm. She was slightly taller than he was, which he found disquieting, as though she might drag him off to her lair at any moment.
“You will be careful, John?” She was looking at him with such earnest concern that he felt touched, in spite of everything.
“Yes, dear sister,” he said, and patted her hand gently. “I will.”
Her hand relaxed, and he was able to detach himself without violence. In the moment’s delay afforded by the action, though, a belated thought had occurred to him.
“Maude—a question?”
“To be sure, John. What is it?” She paused in the act of picking up her trug, expectant.
“Do you know, perhaps, what would lead Douglas Fanshawe to describe a politician named Mortimer Oswald as a snake?”
She drew herself up, suffering a slight reversion to her former attitude toward him.
“Really, John. Can you possibly be in ignorance of Oswald’s despicable behavior during the election last year?”
“I … er … believe I may have been abroad,” he said politely, with a nod at the cutting on the desk. Her face changed at once, expressing remorse.
“Oh, of course! I am so sorry, John. Naturally you would have been preoccupied. Well, then; it is only that Mr. Oswald simply slithered round the district, spreading loathsome insinuations and ill-natured gossip about Edgar—nay, absolute lies, though he took great care never to be caught out about them, the beast!”
“Er … what sort of insinuations? Other than being loathsome, I mean.”
“Hints meant to suggest that there was something … corrupt”—her lips writhed delicately away from the word—“in the means by which Edgar and his partners gained their contracts with the government. Which of course there was not!”
“Of course not,” Grey said, but she was in full spate, eyes flashing magnificently in indignation.
“As though Oswald’s own hands were clean, in that regard! Everyone knows that the man simply battens upon bribery! He is a perfect viper of depravity!”
“Indeed.” Grey was undergoing a swift process of enlightenment, realizing belatedly that Oswald had clearly been Edgar’s opponent in the recent election. Which explained very neatly the insinuations of sabotage directed at the DeVane consortium. A better way of removing any future political threat could scarcely be imagined.
Oswald’s cleverness in the matter had been in leading Marchmont and Twelvetrees to make the accusations, virtuously avoiding any appearance of involvement himself. Yes, “snake” seemed reasonably accurate as a description.
“Who bribes him?” he asked.
There, though, Maude was at a loss, able only to repeat that everyone knew—but not precisely what everyone knew. Meaning that if Oswald did take bribes, he was reasonably circumspect about it. A word with Harry Quarry might shed a bit more light on the matter, though.
Invigorated by this thought, and the more eager to return to London, he smiled warmly upon Maude.
“Thank you, Maude, my dear,” he said. “You are a blessing and a boon.” Standing a-tiptoe, he kissed her startled cheek, then strode with great determination for the stables.
Part III
The Hero’s Return
“Would you say that I appear haggard, Tom?” he inquired. There was a looking glass upon his dresser, but he found himself reluctant to employ it.
“Yes, me lord.”
“Oh. Well, Colonel Quarry won’t mind, I suppose. You know what to do?”
“Yes, me lord.” Tom Byrd hesitated, looking at him narrowly. “You’re sure as you’ll be all right alone, me lord?”
“Certainly,” he said, with what heartiness he could muster. He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll be fine.”
Byrd eyed him in patent disbelief.
“I’ll summon you a coach, me lord,” he said.
He resisted the suggestion for form’s sake, in order not to alarm Tom, but once safely inside the coach, he sank gratefully into the dusty squabs, closing his eyes, and concentrated on breathing for the journey to the Beefsteak.
How many pawnshops might there be in Southwark? he wondered, as the coach rattled through the streets. Tom had made several careful copies of the list of Anne Thackeray’s jewelry; he and his brothers would see whether any of the bits and bobs had been pawned.
He had a most uneasy feeling about Anne Thackeray, but hoped for her sister’s sake that some trace of her could be found. He had gone himself to her last known address directly upon his return to London, but the landlady, a hard-faced bitch of a woman, had known nothing—or at least, nothing she would tell, even for a price.
He felt mildly feverish; after he’d seen Harry, perhaps he’d take a room at the Beefsteak for the night and go to bed. But he wanted to tell Quarry what he’d learned in Sussex, and set him on the trail of Mortimer Oswald. Granted, Maude DeVane was not an unbiased witness on the subject of the MP, but the way she had said, Everyone knows, so positive … If Oswald did take bribes, it was more than possible that Harry could find out. Harry’s own half brother was Sir Richard Joffrey, an influential and canny politician who had survived a good many shifts in government over the course of the last fifteen years. No one did that without knowing where a few bodies were buried.
He paid the coach and turned to find the doorman holding open the Beefsteak’s door, bowing with unusual respect.
“My lord!” the man said fervently.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Dobbs?” he asked.
“Never better, sir,” the man assured him, bowing him inside. “Colonel Quarry’s a-waiting on you in the library, my lord.”
His sense of unease grew as he passed through the hall. Mr. Bodley, the steward, stopped dead upon seeing him, eyes round, then vanished hurriedly into the dining room, presumably to fetch his tray.
He paused warily at the door to the library, but all seemed reassuringly as usual. Quarry’s broad back was visible, bent over a table by the window. As Grey drew near, he saw that the table was covered with newspapers, one of which Harry Quarry was perusing, a look of absorption upon his face. At Grey’s step, he looked up, his craggy face breaking into an ears-wide grin.
“Ho!” he said in greeting. “It’s the man himself! A bumper of your best brandy, Mr. Bodley, if you please, for the Hero of Crefeld!”
“Oh, shit!” said Grey.
In the end, he did spend the night at the Beefsteak, having been—despite his repeated protests, which went completely ignored by everyone—obliged to join in so many extravagant toasts in his honor that merely walking became problematic, let alone finding his way back to his quarters in the barracks.
An attempt at escape in the morning was frustrated by the baying hounds of Fleet Street, several of whom had got wind of his presence at the club and hovered outside, kept at bay by the indomitable Mr. Dobbs, who had survived being tomahawked by red Indians in America and thus was not intimidated by mere scribblers.
One of the most intransigent balladeers took up a station under the windows of the library and bellowed out a never-ending performance of a dramatic—and execrably rhymed—lay entitled “The Death of Tom Pilchard,” to the general disedification of Mr. Wilbraham and the other inhabitants of the Hermit’s Corner, all of whom glared at Grey, holding him responsible for the disturbance.
He escaped at last under cover of darkness, disguised in Mr. Dobbs’s shabby greatcoat and laced hat, and made his way on foot through the streets, arriving hungry and exhausted—though finally sober—to find Tom Byrd and his elder brother Jack awaiting him impatiently at the barracks.
“I found it at a place called Markham’s,” Jack told him, displaying his find. “Pawned a month ago, by a lady. Young, the pawnbroker said, and summat of a pop-eyed look about her, though he didn’t remember nothing else.”
“It’s hers, isn’t it, me lord?” Tom chipped in anxiously.
Grey picked up the trinket—a cheap silver locket, inscribed with the letter “A.” He compared it for form’s sake to the sheet Barbara had given him, but there could be little doubt.
“Excellent!” he said. “You asked, of course, whether she had left an address.”
Jack nodded.
“No joy there, my lord. The only thing …” He glanced at his younger brother, who was, after all, Grey’s valet, and thus had rights.
“The feller didn’t want to sell it to us, me lord. He said he’d had other things from this lady, and there was a gent what would come by, asking particular for her things, and pay a very pretty price for ’em.”