Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(198)
Grey reached for the brandy bottle, but Tom was already pouring a fresh glass, which he thrust into his employer’s hand. He carefully avoided meeting Grey’s eye.
“Malcolm Stubbs.” Grey sipped brandy, to give himself time to think. “Yes, of course. I…take it that he’s quite recovered, then?” On one level, this was good news; Malcolm Stubbs had lost a foot and part of the adjoining leg to a cannonball at the Battle of Quebec, more than two years before. By good luck, Grey had fallen over him on the field and had the presence of mind to use his belt as a tourniquet, thus preventing Stubbs from bleeding to death. He vividly recalled the splintered bone protruding from the remnants of Malcolm’s shin, and the hot, wet smell of blood and shit, steaming in the cold air. He took a deeper swallow of brandy.
“Yes, quite. Got an artificial foot, gets around quite well—even rides.”
“Good for him,” Grey said, rather shortly. There were a few other things he recalled about Malcolm Stubbs. “Is he in Havana?”
The general looked surprised.
“Yes, didn’t I say? He’s a diplomat of some kind now—sent to Havana last September.”
“A diplomat,” Grey repeated. “Well, well.” Stubbs probably did diplomacy well—given his demonstrated skills at lying, deceit, and dishonor….
“He wanted his wife and children to join him in Havana, once he had a suitable establishment, so—”
“Children? He had only the one son when I last saw him.” Only the one legitimate son, he added silently.
“Two, now—Olivia gave birth to a daughter two years ago; lovely child called Charlotte.”
“How nice.” His memory of the birth of Olivia’s first child, Cromwell, was nearly as horrifyingly vivid as his memories of the Battle of Quebec, if for somewhat different reasons. Both had involved blood and shit, though. “But Mother—”
“Your mother offered to accompany Olivia, to help with the children. Olivia’s expecting again, and a long sea voyage…”
“Again?” Well, it wasn’t as though Grey didn’t know what Stubbs’s attitude toward sex was…and at least the man was doing it with his wife. John kept his temper with some difficulty, but the general didn’t notice, continuing with his explanations.
“You see, I was meant to be sailing to Savannah in the spring—now, I mean—to advise a Colonel Folliott, who’s raising a local militia to assist the governor, and your mother was going to come with me. So it seemed reasonable that she go ahead with Olivia and help her to get settled, and I would arrange for her to join me when I came.”
“Very sensible,” John said. “That’s Mother, then. And where does the British Navy come into it?”
“Admiral Holmes, me lord,” Tom said, with a faint air of reproach. “He told you last week, when you had him to dinner. He said the Duke of Albemarle was a-coming to take Martinique away from the frogs and then see to Cuba.”
“Oh. Ah.”
Grey recalled the dinner, which had featured a remarkable dish that he had realized—too late—was the innards of pickled sea urchins, mixed with bits of raw fish and sea lettuce that had been cured with orange juice. In his desire to keep his guests—all recently arrived from London, and all lamenting the dearth of roast beef and potatoes in the Indies—from sharing his realization, he had called for lavish and repeated applications of a native palm liquor. This had been very effective; by the second glass, they wouldn’t have known they were eating whale turds, should his adventurous cook have taken it into his head to serve that as a second course. Consequently, though, his own memories of the occasion were somewhat dim.
“He didn’t say Albemarle was proposing to lay siege to the place, did he?”
“No, me lord, but that must’ve been his meaning, don’t you think?”
“God knows,” said John, who knew nothing about Cuba, Havana, or the Duke of Albemarle. “Or possibly you do, sir?” He turned politely to General Stanley, who was beginning to look better, under the influence of relief and brandy. The general nodded.
“I wouldn’t,” he admitted frankly, “save that I shared Albemarle’s table aboard his flagship for six weeks. What I don’t presently know about the harbor at Havana probably isn’t worth knowing, but I take no credit for the acquisition of that knowledge.”
The general had learned of Albemarle’s expedition only the night before the fleet sailed, when a message from the War Office had reached him, ordering him aboard.
“At that point, of course, the ship would reach Cuba long before any message I could send to your mother, so I went aboard at once—this”—he glowered at his bandaged foot—“notwithstanding.”
“Quite.” John raised a hand in brief interruption and turned to his valet. “Tom,—run—and I do mean run—to Admiral Holmes’s residence and ask him to call upon me as soon as is convenient. And by convenient, I mean—”
“Right now. Yes, me lord.”
“Thank you, Tom.”
Despite the brandy, Grey’s brain had finally grasped the situation and was busy calculating what to do about it.
If the British Navy showed up in Havana Harbor and started shelling the place, it wasn’t merely physical danger threatening the Stubbs family and Lady Stanley, also known as the Dowager Duchess of Pardloe. All of them would likely become immediate hostages of Spain.