Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(179)

“Still, ye have got some of the man’s letters to work from,” he pointed out. “Could ye maybe trace a few words here and there and add in, between-like?”

“Maybe,” she said dubiously. “But there’s more to a good forgery than only the handwriting, you know. If it’s going to a person who knows the sender, then the style needs to be a decent facsimile—has to resemble the real person’s, I mean,” she added quickly, seeing his lips start to shape “facsimile.”

“And his style writing a poem could be different to what he’d do writing a letter?” Mick turned that over for a moment, considering.

“Yes. What if he was only known to write sonnets, I mean, and I wrote a sestina? Someone might smell a rat.”

“I’ll take yer word for it. Though I shouldn’t think your man was in the habit of writin’ love poems to the secretary at war, eh?”

“No,” she said, a little tersely. “But if I wrote something shocking enough to justify his lordship shooting the man who wrote it, what are the chances that the secretary would show it to somebody else? Who might tell somebody else, and…and so on.” She flipped a hand. “If it got to someone who could tell that Nathaniel Twelvetrees didn’t write it, then what?”

Mick nodded soberly. “Then they’d maybe think your lordship did it himself, ye mean?”

“That’s one possibility.” On the other hand, the other possibility was undeniably fascinating.

They had reached Great Ryder Street and the scrubbed white steps that led up to her door. The scent of brewing tea floated up from the servants’ areaway beside the steps, and her stomach curled in a pleasantly anticipatory fashion.

“It’s a good idea, Mick,” she said, and touched his hand lightly. “Thank you. I’ll ask Lady Buford whether Nathaniel published any of his poetry. If I could read a bit of it, just to see…”

“Me money’s on you, Lady Bedelia,” Mick said, and, smiling at her, raised her hand and kissed it.



“NATHANIEL TWELVETREES?” Lady Buford was surprised and peered closely at Minnie through her quizzing glass. “I don’t believe so. He was much given to declaiming his poetry at salons and I believe went so far as to give a theatrical reading at one point, but from what little I heard of his poetry—well, what little I hear of what people said of his poetry—I doubt that most printers would have considered it a promising financial venture.”

She resumed watching the stage, this presently featuring a mediocre performance of “Charming Country Songs, by a Duette of Two Ladies,” but tapped her closed fan now and then against her closed lips, an indication of continued thought.

“I believe,” she said at once, when the next pause in the entertainment came, “that Nathaniel did have some of his poems privately printed. For the edification of his friends,” she added, with a delicate lift of one strong gray brow. “Why do you ask?”

Fortunately the pause had given Minnie time enough to foresee that one, and she answered readily enough.

“Sir Robert Abdy was speaking of Mr. Twelvetrees at Lady Scroggs’s rout the other night—rather scornfully,” she added, with her own delicacy. “But as Sir Robert has his own pretensions in that line…”

Lady Buford laughed, a deep, engaging laugh that made people in the box next them turn round to look, and proceeded to say a few scornful—and deeply amusing—things of her own about Sir Robert.

But Minnie continued to think, through the appearances of a pair of Italian fire-eaters, a dancing pig (which disgraced itself onstage, to the delight of the audience), two purportedly Chinese gentlemen who sang a purportedly comic song, and several more acts of a similar ilk.

Privately printed. For the edification of his friends. There were at least two poems, written expressly for the edification of Esmé, Countess Melton. Where were they?

“I wonder,” she said quite casually, as they began to make their way out through the throngs of theatergoers, “if Countess Melton was fond of poetry?”

Lady Buford was only half attending, being occupied in trying to catch the eye of an acquaintance on the far side of the theater, and replied absently, “Oh, I don’t think so. Woman never read a book in her life, save the Bible.”

“The Bible?” Minnie asked, incredulous. “I wouldn’t have thought her a…a religious person.” Lady Buford had succeeded in attracting the friend, who was wading forcefully toward them through the crowd, and spared a cynic smile for Minnie.

“She wasn’t. But she did like to read the Bible and make fun of it to shock people. Only too easy to do, I’m afraid.”



“SHE WOULDN’T HAVE thrown the poems away,” Minnie argued to Rafe, who was disposed to be dubious. “They were to her, about her. No woman would throw away a poem that a man she cared for wrote about her—and most especially not a woman like Esmé.”

“Has any man ever written you a love poem, Lady Bedelia?” he asked, teasing.

“No,” she said primly, but felt herself blushing. A few men had done just that—and she’d kept the poems, even though she didn’t care all that much for the men who’d written them. Still…

“Mmm,” Rafe conceded, with a waggle of his head. “But maybe your man Melton burnt them. I would, if some smellsmock had been sending my wife that class of thing.”