Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade(26)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

“Good. What’s this lot?” Quarry picked up his spectacles and squinted through them at the papers. His eyes widened and he snatched off the spectacles, as though unable to believe his eyes. “What?” he bellowed.

Grey plucked at Percy’s sleeve.

“You’re dismissed,” he whispered. “Come on.”

Percy cast a last, apprehensive glance at Quarry, who had gone puce with rage and was addressing the sheaf of papers in loudly blasphemous terms. Quarry wasn’t looking at him, but Percy saluted briskly and turned on his heel to follow Grey.

“What was that about, or am I allowed to know?” he asked, once outside.

“Nothing.” Grey shrugged. “Instructions from the War Office, contradicting the last set. It happens once a week or so. How are you getting on with things?” More than busy with his own duties, he’d barely seen Percy during the week.

“Well enough. Or at least I hope so,” Percy said dubiously. “People do shout at me a lot.”

Grey laughed.

“Being shouted at is actually quite high on your list of duties,” he assured Percy.

“No one shouts at you.”

“I am,” Grey said complacently, “a major. No one is allowed to shout at me—within the regiment, of course—save Harry, Colonel Symington, and my brother. I don’t mind Harry, I keep the hell out of Symington’s sight, and I tread with extreme care around Melton; I advise you to do the same. Have you toured the barracks this morning?”

“Yesterday. Ah…is there anything I should look for especially, in terms of brewing trouble?”

Grey had gone with him for the first round of such tours, but now explained the finer points.

“For those in barracks, look for signs of drunkenness—which is not difficult to spot, I assure you—excessive gambling, or a disposition to excessive whoring. For those in billets in the town—”

“How do you know what’s excessive?”

“If a man is missing important bits of his uniform or equipment, he’s gambling excessively. If he’s missing important bits of his anatomy from the syphilis, or if you find a whore actually in his bed, that’s considered above the odds. Pox and the clap are more or less all right, provided he can stand up straight.”

“Easier said than done. Ever had it?”

“No,” Grey said, edging aside and giving Percy a stare. “Have you?”

“Once, in my younger years.” Percy shuddered. “Only time I ever bedded a woman. If I hadn’t already known what I was, that would likely have been enough to seal the matter.”

“Was she a whore?” Grey inquired, not without sympathy. He had himself bedded several whores over the years, partly from necessity, and partly—at first—from a curiosity as to whether the experience might suddenly trigger some dormant desire for the female.

“No,” Percy said. “In fact, she was a rather well-known lady with a marked reputation for piety. A good deal older than myself,” he added delicately.

“Is she dead?” Grey asked, with interest. “Do I know her?”

“Yes, you do, and no, she isn’t, worse luck, the old baggage. Anyway, what am I looking for when Colonel Quarry says, ‘the looks of the men’?”

“Oh—” Grey waved a vague hand toward the distant parade ground, where a mass of new recruits were being chivvied into awkward lines by barking corporals. “If they seem thinner or paler than usual, not themselves.”

“And how would I know that?” Percy protested. “I’ve only seen most of them once!”

“Well, you visit them every week—oftener, if you have reason to think there’s trouble brewing,” Grey said patiently. “You ought to know all their names by the end of the second week, and the names of their mothers, sisters, and sweethearts by the third.”

“After which I will perhaps have mastered the duties of ensign, and be allowed to forget them all, as a second lieutenant?”

“You won’t forget them,” Grey said with confidence. “An officer never forgets his men. Never worry—I have the greatest faith in you.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so,” Percy said, in tones of extreme doubt, following Grey into the armory. “And these are muskets, are they?”

Despite Percy’s protestations of ignorance and ineptitude, he proved to be a more than adequate shot. Grey had taken him out to the edge of London, to an open field, to try his hand without witnesses, and was agreeably surprised.

“And these are muskets, are they?” he mimicked, poking a finger through the center of a target, the cloth shredded by multiple shots.

Percy grinned, unabashed.

“I didn’t say I’d never held a gun before.”

“No, you didn’t.” Grey rolled up the target. “What kind of gun?”

“Target pistols, for the most part. Fowling pieces, now and again.” Percy didn’t go into detail, shrugging off Grey’s praise with modesty. “What Colonel Quarry said—about the family connexion…” He hesitated, not sure how to express his question.

“Well, there will be a bit of jealousy amongst the other officers,” Grey said, matter-of-factly. “They all view each other as rivals, and of course will suspect you of preferment. Not a great deal you can do about it, though, save do your job well.”

Percy rubbed a handkerchief over his face to remove the powder stains.

“I mean to,” he said with determination. “What other skills ought I to possess, do you think?”

“Well,” said Grey, with a glance at Wainwright’s graceful form, “you must be able to dance. Can you dance?”

Percy looked at him in disbelief.

“Dance?”

Grey looked back in similar disbelief, but this wasn’t mockery. He tended to forget, given Percy’s ease in society, that he had not been born to that world but rather into a family of strict Methodists. He knew nothing of Methodists, but supposed they considered dancing sinful.

“Dance,” Grey said firmly. “Dancing is most necessary for any man of good education, and the more so for an officer. And I quote from a well-known authority: ‘Fencing endows a man with speed and strength, while dancing brings elegance and dignity to carriage and movement.’”

“In that case, I am doomed.”

“Well, dancing is somewhat less lethal in intent,” Grey said, rubbing a finger beneath his nose in an effort not to laugh. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” Percy gathered up the musket, cartridge box, shot pouch, powder horn, and other impedimenta of shooting.

“To my brother’s house. My sister-in-law employs a very good dancing master for her sons, and I’m sure will make arrangements for you to be tutored discreetly.”

Minnie was charmed by Percy, whom she had not yet met; still more charmed that he should seek her help. Grey had noticed this female paradox before: women who swooned at the notion of powerful men who would protect them at the same time liked nothing better than an open admission of helplessness on the part of any male within their sphere of influence.

He left Percy to Minnie, who was—in spite of her pregnancy—demonstrating steps and figures with considerable deftness, and went to the library.

Hal’s collection of military historians, tacticians, and theorists was considerable, and Grey helped himself without compunction to those volumes he thought might be of most service in Percy’s military instruction.

Flavius Vegetius Renatus—known chummily as “Vegetius” to his intimates—who wrote Epitomae Rei Militaris sometime between A.D. 385 and 450. One of Hal’s favorites, a good place to start.

“Few men are brave; many become so through care and force of discipline,” Grey murmured, tucking the book into the crook of his arm.

There was Mauvillon’s Histoire de la Dernière Guerre de Bohème, in three volumes. Very popular, and quite recent, having been published only two years before, in Amsterdam. Only volumes I and II were present—Hal must be reading volume III—but he took the first one.

He hesitated among Marcus Aurelius, Tacitus, and Vauban, but on impulse added Virgil’s Aeneid, for some relief. That would do for now; after all, Percy had very little time to read these days—no more than Grey himself did.

He turned from the bookshelf at the sound of a step, and found his brother had returned.

“Stealing my books again?” Hal asked, with a smile.

“Retrieving my own.” Grey tapped the Aeneid, which was in fact his. “And borrowing Vegetius for Percy Wainwright, if you don’t mind.”

“Not in the least. Quarry says he’s shaping well,” Hal remarked. “I see—or rather, I hear—that Minnie’s teaching him to dance.” He inclined his head toward the drawing room, where the sound of laughter and the counting of steps indicated the satisfactory progress of the first lesson.

“Yes. I think he’ll do very well,” Grey said, pleased at hearing Harry’s good opinion.

“Good. I’m sending him in command of a company down to Sussex tomorrow, to fetch back a shipment of powder.”

Grey felt an immediate urge to protest, but stifled it. His opposition to the suggestion was based more on the fact that he and Percy had agreed to a private rendezvous next day than to any doubt of Percy’s ability to manage such an expedition—or to his knowledge of the inherent dangers of any expedition involving kegs of black powder and inexperienced soldiers.

“Oh, good,” he said casually.

He was beginning to feel, like Percy, that perhaps he was doomed. To involuntary celibacy, if nothing else.

“Where have you been?” he asked curiously, noticing as Hal put off his cloak that his brother was in traveling clothes, rather than uniform.

Hal looked mildly disconcerted, and Grey, with interest, saw him rapidly consider whether to tell the truth or not.

“Bath,” he said, with only an instant’s delay.

“Again? What the devil is in Bath?”

“None of your business.”

Suddenly, and without warning, Grey lost his temper. He dropped the books on the desk with a bang.

“Don’t tell me what is my business and what is not!”

If Hal was taken aback, it was for no more than an instant.

“Need I remind you that I am the head of this family?” he said, lowering his voice, with a glance at the door.

“And I am bloody part of this family. You can’t fob me off by telling me things are none of my business. You cannot ship me off to Aberdeen to prevent my asking questions!”

Hal looked as though he would have liked to do precisely that, but he controlled himself, with a visible effort.

“That was not why you were sent to Aberdeen.”

Grey pounced on that.

“Why, then?”

Hal glared at him.

“I decline to tell you.”

Grey hadn’t hit Hal for a number of years, and had lost the fight on the last occasion when he’d tried it. He gave Hal a look suggesting that he wouldn’t lose this one. Hal returned the look and shifted his weight, indicating that he would welcome the chance of relieving his feelings by violence. That was interesting; Hal was more upset than he appeared.