Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade(62)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

“Ah. Too bad,” he said mechanically, but relaxed a little. Longstreet was no threat, then—if in fact he ever had been. Grey would like to go and talk to him, but doubtless Hal had assumed there was nothing urgent in the matter, and wanted to wait until he had returned from campaigning himself.

“Two things, you said.” He recovered himself abruptly. “What was the second?”

Quarry gave him a look of profound sympathy, though his voice was gruff in reply.

“They’ve moved Wainwright back to England. The court-martial’s not yet scheduled, but it will be, soon. Probably early October. I thought you should know,” Harry added, more gently.

It was warm in the room, but gooseflesh rose on Grey’s arms.

“Thank you,” he said. “Where…where is he now, do you know?”

Harry shrugged.

“Small country gaol in Devonshire,” he said. “But they’ll likely move him to Newgate for the trial.”

Grey wanted to ask the name of the town in Devonshire, but didn’t. Better if he didn’t know.

“Yes,” he said, and struggled to his feet to see Harry out. “I—thank you, Harry.”

Quarry gave him a grimace that passed for a smile, and with a small flourish, donned his hat and left.

“You all right, me lord?” Tom, who had never been farther than six feet from his side since Crefeld, came in with the sling for his arm, examining Grey with a look of worry. “Colonel Quarry’s tired you out. You look pale, you do.”

“I daresay,” Grey said shortly. “I haven’t been outdoors in three weeks. Here,” he said, seized by sudden recklessness. “I’m going for a walk. Put that on, and fetch my cloak, please, Tom.”

Tom opened his mouth to protest, but seeing the look on Grey’s face, shut it and sighed.

“Very good, me lord,” he said, resigned.

“And don’t follow me!”

“No indeed, me lord,” Tom said, fastening the sling with a little more force than strictly necessary. “I’ll just wait for the rag-and-bone man to bring you home, after he picks you up in the street, shall I?”

That made Grey smile, at least.

“I’ll come home on my own two feet, Tom, I promise.”

“Pah,” said Tom.

“Did you say, ‘Pah’?” Grey inquired, incredulous.

“Certainly not, me lord.” He swung Grey’s cloak round his shoulders. “Enjoy your walk, me lord,” he said politely, and stamped out.

The impetus of this conversation was sufficient to carry Grey as far as the edge of Hyde Park, where he leaned against a railing, waiting for his breath to come back. The wounds in his chest had healed fairly well, but any exertion made him feel as though his lungs were still riddled with bits of hot metal, and might fill with blood at any moment.

Early October. A month. Maybe less. Concerned with his own survival, he had managed not to think about anything for a time. And Minnie, Olivia, and Tom had gone to great lengths to be sure he was not exposed to anything upsetting; if Hal had mentioned Percy in any of his letters, he was sure Minnie had carefully suppressed the news.

He drew a shallow breath, breathed deeper, alert for rattling sounds in his chest, but there were none. Well, then. He straightened, taking his weight off the supporting railing. His arm was throbbing, despite the sling, but he ignored it. He had no idea what awaited him in October—but he would, as he’d promised Tom, go to it on his own two feet. Slowly, he began the journey round the park, the thought of Percy like iron fetters on his feet.

The christening of Cromwell Percival John Malcolm Stubbs took place a week later, within ten feet of his birthplace. Olivia, displaying the same streak of stubbornness—some called it perversity—that characterized the family, had insisted upon the child’s name, and as her husband was not there to stop her, it was done.

“Do you mind?” she had said to Grey. “I won’t do it, if you do. Melton would disapprove very much, I’m sure—but he isn’t here to forbid it.”

“Are you asking me as de facto head of the family?” he’d asked, smiling a little, in spite of the circumstances. She’d come to find him in the garden, where Tom forced him out to sit every afternoon, on the theory that it disturbed the household to know that he was still lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Of course not,” Olivia had said. “I’m asking you because—well, because.”

He probably should have tried to stop her. It was a private christening, with just the family and a few close friends—but people would talk. Lucinda, Lady Joffrey, was the child’s godmother; Sir Richard stiffened visibly when he heard the vicar pronounce the child’s names and shot a sharp look at Grey.

Grey was proof against looks, though, and speech, as well. He walked in a protective blanket of soft gray fog that muffled everything and made him feel invisible.

Now and then, something unexpected would penetrate the fog, sharp and wounding as the bits of shrapnel left in his chest, which worked their way one by one to the surface. Last week, it had been Harry’s visit. Today, it was the light.

It had been cloudy outside, but now the sun burst through, and a flood of colored light from a stained-glass window fell over the christening party in soft lozenges of red and blue and green.

The space at his side had been no more than an empty expanse of floor slates. Suddenly, it was an abyss.

He looked away, heart pounding and palms sweating, and saw Olivia looking at him, wearing an expression of concern. He nodded at her, forcing a smile, and she relaxed a little, her attention returning to the infant in Lucinda’s arms.

He spoke the words of the baptismal vows automatically, not hearing them. The air shook around him with the echo of organ pipes and clashing swords, and sweat ran down his back.

Lucinda removed the child’s lacy cap, and Cromwell Percival John Malcolm Stubbs’s head protruded from the christening robes, round as a cantaloupe. Grey fought back an inappropriate urge to laugh, and in the same instant, felt the piercing pain of being unable to turn to Percy and see the same laughter in his eyes.

It wasn’t even the right name. He’d thought of telling Olivia that, but hadn’t. It might not be the only secret Percy still possessed, but it was the only one Grey could keep for him.

The date for the court-martial had been set: 13th October, at eleven in the morning. If they hanged Percy—on Grey’s testimony—ought he to insist they do it as “Perseverance”?

Lucinda kicked him in the ankle, and he realized that everyone was looking at him.

“Say, ‘I do believe,’” Lucinda said under her breath.

“I do believe,” he said obediently.

“I baptize thee, Cromwell Percival John Malcolm, in the name of the Father…”

The splash of water came to him, distant as rain.

I should have told her it was “Perseverance,” he thought, in sudden panic. What if it’s all that should be left of him?

But it was too late. He closed his eyes, and felt the soft fog come to wrap its comfort round him once again, the gray of it tinged with the light of saints and martyrs.

You don’t look well, John.” Lucinda Joffrey circled round him, looking thoughtfully over her fan at him.

“You surprise me, madam,” he said politely. “I made sure that I appeared the very picture of health.”

She didn’t reply to that feeble retort, but closed the fan with a snap and tapped him in the chest with it. He flinched as though she had stabbed him with a brooch-pin.

“Not. Well.” She tapped him with each word, and he backed up sharply, to get away from her. The christening party was being held in the garden at Argus House, though, and his escape was prevented by the fishpond behind him.

“Look at him, Horry,” she ordered. “What does he look like?”

“The Duchess of Kendal,” Horace Walpole replied promptly. “When I last saw her, two days before her unlamented demise.”

“Thank you, Mr. Walpole,” Grey said, giving him a look.

“Not but that your lordship has much better taste than my lady Kendal.” Walpole gave him back the look. “The color of your face, however, is not what I would choose myself, to complement the shade of your suit. It is not quite the complexion of one of my darlings”—he nodded toward a sherry decanter on a nearby table, in which he had brought several small goldfish from his house at Strawberry Hill, as a present for Minnie—“but approaching that hue.”

“You must see a doctor, John,” Lucinda said, lowering the fan and giving him the benefit of her lovely eyes, set in open distress at his condition.

“I don’t want a doctor.”

“There is a very good man of my acquaintance,” Walpole said, as though struck by inspiration. “A specialist in weaknesses of the chest. I should be more than delighted to provide an introduction.”

“How kind of you, Horry! I am sure anyone you recommend must be a marvel.” Lucinda opened her fan in gratitude.

Grey, who was not so far gone as to be unable to spot gross conspiracy and very bad acting, rolled up his eyes.

“Give me the name,” he said, in apparent resignation. “I shall write for an appointment.”

“Oh, no need,” Walpole said cheerfully. “Dr. Humperdinck expresses the keenest interest in making your acquaintance. I’ll send my coach for you, at three o’clock tomorrow.”

“And I,” Lucinda put in swiftly, fixing him with a gimlet eye, “will be here to ensure that you get into it.”

“Short of drowning myself in the fishpond, I see there is no escape,” Grey said, with a sigh. “All right.”

Lucinda looked flabbergasted, and then alarmed, at this sudden capitulation. In fact, he simply hadn’t the strength to make more than a token resistance—nor, he discovered, did he really care. What did it matter?

“Mr. Walpole,” he said, nodding toward the table, “I fear that my nephew Henry is about to drink your fish.”

In the excitement occasioned by the rescue and subsequent ceremonious installation of the fish in their new home, Grey was able to make an inconspicuous departure, and went to sit in the library.

He was still there, an unread play by Molière open on his knee, when a shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see the Honorable Horace Walpole again. Walpole was a slight man, and much too frail in appearance to loom over anyone; he simply stood by Grey’s chair.

“It is a terrible thing,” Walpole said quietly, all affectation gone.

“Yes.”

“I spoke with my brother.” That would be the Earl of Orford, Grey supposed; Walpole was the youngest son of the late prime minister, and had three brothers, but only the eldest had any influence—though a great deal less than his father had had.

“He cannot help before the trial, but…if”—Walpole hesitated, ever so briefly, having obviously made a split-second decision to substitute “if” for “when”—“your…” A longer hesitation.