Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (Lord John Grey #2)(16)

That took Grey off guard, and he was obliged to simulate a minor coughing fit.

“I do not believe so,” he said at last, clearing his throat. “I imagine my mother spoke rhetorically. She has the lowest opinion of Jacobites in general, you see.”

Olivia nodded wisely, eyes round. She had been no more than five or six at the time of the Rising, but must have heard some echoes of the public hysteria as the forces of Charles Stuart made what had seemed for a time their inexorable advance on London. Even the king had prepared to flee, and the streets were flooded with broadsheets painting the Highlanders as vicious savages who skewered children, pillaged and raped without mercy, and put whole villages to the torch.

As for his mother’s personal animus toward the Jacobites…he did not know whether Olivia had ever been told anything; probably not. It had all happened long before she was born, and neither his mother nor Hal ever spoke of it, he knew from experience. Well, it was no business of Grey’s to inform Olivia of the gory details of the family scandal. His mother and brother were both determined to let the past bury its dead, and surely…

He stopped eating, an extraordinary apprehension making the hair prickle on his nape.

No. Surely not. But it had been the mention of Fraser and the word “Jacobite” that had made the countess blench and pale. Yet she had known about Fraser—Grey had gone several times to Helwater since Fraser had been paroled there. He had never made much of the matter himself, though, never mentioned Fraser’s presence as the principal reason for his visits. No, some thought had occurred to his mother, something that had not struck her before. Could it be that she had suddenly thought his reasons for keeping James Fraser in England had to do with…

Something small and cold slid wormlike through his entrails.

Olivia had lost interest in the Scottish prisoner, and was happily outlining her plans for the suit he would wear for the wedding.

“Yellow velvet, I think,” she said, squinting consideringly at him over the tea cozy. “It will be lovely against Aunt Bennie’s blue, it will set off your own coloring, and I think it will be good for the general’s stepson. Your mother says he is dark—have you met him?”

“I have, and yes, he is dark,” Grey said, his innards performing an immediate volte-face and growing noticeably warm. “You intend that we should be dressed alike? In yellow? Olivia, we shall look like nothing so much as a pair of singing canaries.” He’d spoken in all seriousness, but the observation sent her off into giggles, and made her snort tea through her nose. Which absurd sight made Grey himself laugh.

“Well,” Olivia said, recovering first, “if you do mean to go up to the Lake District, I suppose you’d best go quickly, in order to be back in good time for the wedding. Whether it is yellow or not, you will have a new suit, and the fittings…”

Grey was no longer attending, though. Christ, he would have to go at once, if he meant to go at all. The funeral and Isobel Dunsany’s need quite aside, the wedding was in late February; were he to delay, he would have no chance to go and return before the regiment set sail for France in March.

For the first time, his anticipation at the prospect of visiting Helwater was tinged with slight dismay. Percy Wainwright…but after all, there was no hurry in that quarter, was there? Particularly not if Wainwright should indeed join the regiment. And he was meant to meet the man this afternoon; he would be able to explain. Perhaps even to…

A movement in the doorway drew his eye, and he glanced up to see his mother standing there, hand braced against the jamb.

“Go if you must,” she said abruptly. “But for God’s sake, John, be careful.”

Then she turned and was gone again. Thoroughly unsettled, he picked up his cup, found the tea had gone cold, and drank it just the same.



Chapter 4



Chisping

It was chisping, that ambiguous sort of precipitation, half snow, not quite drizzle. Misshapen flakes fell slow and scattered, spiraled through gray air and brushed his face, tiny cold touches so fleeting as not even to leave a sense of wetness in their wake. Dry tears, he thought. Appropriate to his sense of distant mourning.

He paused at the edge of Haymarket, waiting his chance to dodge through the traffic of cabs, carriages, horses, and handcarts. It was a long walk; he might have ridden, called for a chair, or taken his mother’s carriage, but he had felt restless, wanting air and movement and the proximity of people with whom he need not talk. Needing time to prepare, before he met Percy Wainwright again.

He was shocked, of course. He had known Geneva since her birth. A lovely girl, with great charm of manner and a light in her eyes. Somewhat spoilt, though attractively so, and reckless to a degree. Superb on a horse. He would not have been surprised in the slightest to hear that she had broken her neck in some hunting accident, or died in leaping a horse across some dangerous chasm. The sheer ordinariness of death in childbirth…that seemed somehow wrong, obscurely unworthy of her.

He still remembered the occasion when she had gone riding with him, challenged him to a race, and when he declined, had calmly unpinned her hat, leaned over, and smacked his horse on the rump with it, then kicked her own mount and galloped off, leaving him to subdue a panicked sixteen-hand gelding, then to pursue her at breakneck pace over the rocky fells above Helwater. He was a good horseman—but he’d never caught her.