Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade(9)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

Percy drank off his coffee in a gulp and rose, reaching for his cloak with one hand, even as he set down his cup with the other.

The walls of the Balboa were plastered with trivia for the edification of patrons—the entire series of Mr. Hogarth’s “Marriage à la Mode” etchings encircled the room, but were surrounded—and in some cases obscured—by thick flutterings of newspaper broadsheets, personal communiqués, and Wanted notices, these advertising a need for everything from six tonnes of pig lead or a shipload of Negroes, to a company director of good name and solid finances who might assume the leadership of a fledgling firm engaging in the sale of gentlemen’s necessaries—whether these might include snuffboxes, stockings, or condoms was not made clear.

Glancing casually at the new crop of postings as they made their way to the door, though, Grey’s eye caught a familiar name in the headline of a fresh broadsheet. DEATH DISCOVERED, read the large type.

He stopped short, the name Ffoulkes leaping out of the smaller newsprint at him.

“What?” Percy had perforce halted, too, and was looking curiously from Grey to the newspaper.

“Nothing. A name I recognized.” Grey’s elation dimmed a little, though he was too excited to be quelled completely. “Are you familiar with a barrister named Ffoulkes? Melchior Ffoulkes?” he asked Percy.

The latter looked blank and shook his head.

“I am afraid I know no one, much,” he said apologetically. “Should I have heard of Mr. Ffoulkes?”

“Not at all.” Grey would just as soon have dismissed Ffoulkes from his own mind, but felt obliged to see whether anything of what Hal had told him had made it into the public press. He tossed a silver ha’penny to the proprietor and took the broadsheet, folding it and stuffing it into his pocket. Time enough for such things later.

Outside, the chisping had stopped, but the sky hung low and heavy, and there was a sense of stillness in the air, the earth awaiting more snow. Alone, away from the buzz of the coffeehouse, there was a sudden small sense of intimacy between them.

“I must apologize,” Percy said, as they turned toward Hyde Park.

“For what?”

“For my unfortunate gaffe yesterday, in regard to your brother. The general had told me that I must not under any circumstance address him as ‘Your Grace,’ but he had not time to explain why—at the time.”

Grey snorted.

“Has he told you since?”

“Not in great detail.” Percy glanced at him, curious. “Only that there was a scandal of some sort, and that your brother in consequence has renounced his title.”

Grey sighed. Unavoidable, he’d known that. Still, he would have preferred to keep this first meeting for themselves, with no intrusions from either past or present.

“Not exactly,” he said. “But something like it.”

“Your father was a duke, though?” Wainwright cast him a wary glance.

“He was. Duke of Pardloe.” The title felt strange on his tongue; he hadn’t spoken it in…fifteen years? More. So long. He felt an accustomed hollowness of the bone at thought of his father. But if there was to be anything between himself and Percy Wainwright…

“But your brother is not now Duke of Pardloe?”

Despite himself, Grey smiled, albeit wryly.

“He is. But he will not use the title, nor have it used. Hence the occasional awkwardness.” He made a small gesture of apology. “My brother is a very stubborn man.”

Wainwright raised one brow, as though to suggest that he thought Melton might not be the only one in the Grey family to display such a trait.

“You need not tell me,” he said, though, touching Grey’s arm briefly. “I’m sure the matter is a painful one.”

“You will hear it sooner or later, and you have some right to know, as you are becoming allied with our family. My father shot himself,” Grey said abruptly. Percy blinked, shocked.

“Oh,” he said, low-voiced, and touched his arm again, very gently. “I am so sorry.”

“So am I.” Grey cleared his throat. “Cold, isn’t it?” He pulled on his gloves, and rubbed a hand beneath his nose. “It—you have heard of the Jacobites? And the South Sea Bubble?”

“I have, yes. But what have they to do with each other?” Percy asked, bewildered. Grey felt his lips twitch, not quite a smile.

“Nothing, so far as I know. But they had both to do with the—the scandal.”

Gerard Grey, Earl of Melton, had been a clever man. Of an ancient and honorable family, well educated, handsome, wealthy—and of a restless, curious turn of mind. He had also been a very fine soldier.

“My father came to the title as quite a young man, and was not content to potter about on the family estates. He had a good deal of money—my mother brought him more—and when the Old Pretender launched his first invasion in 1715, he raised a regiment, and went to fight for king and country.”

The Jacobites were ill-organized and badly equipped; the Old Pretender, James Stuart, had not even made it ashore to lead his troops, but had been left fuming impotently off the coast, stranded by bad weather. The invasion, such as it was, had been easily quashed. The dashing young earl, however, had distinguished himself at Sheriffmuir, emerging a hero.

German George, feeling uneasy on his new throne despite the victory, and wishing to demonstrate to the peers of his realm the advantages of supporting him in military terms, elevated Gerard Grey to the newly created dukedom of Pardloe.

“No money with it, mind, and only a scant village or two in terms of land, but it sounded well,” Grey said.

“What—whatever happened?” Percy asked, curiosity overcoming his impeccable manners.

“Well.” Grey took a deep breath, thinking where best to begin. He did not want to speak at once about his father, and so began from the other end of the affair.

“My mother’s mother was Scottish, you see. Not from the Highlands,” he added quickly. “From the Borders, which is quite a different thing.”

“Yes, they speak English there, do they not?” Wainwright nodded, a small frown of concentration between his brows.

“I expect that is a matter of opinion,” Grey said. It had taken him weeks to become sufficiently accustomed to the hideous accents of his Scottish cousins as to easily understand what they were saying.

“But at least they are not barbarians, such as the Highland Scots. Nor did the Borderers join in the Catholic Rising—most being strongly Protestant, and having no particular sympathy or common interest with either the Stuarts or the Highland clans.”

“I suppose, though, that many Englishmen do not make distinctions between one Scot and another?” Percy said, with some delicacy.

Grey gave a small grimace of acknowledgment.

“It did not help that one of my mother’s uncles and his sons did openly support the Stuart cause. For the sake of profit,” he added, with slight distaste, “not religion.”

“Is that better or worse?” Percy asked, a half smile taking any sting from the words.

“Not much to choose,” Grey admitted. “And before the thing was finished, a good many more of my mother’s family were embroiled. If not actually known Jacobites, certainly tainted by the association.”

“I see.” Wainwright’s brows were high with interest. “You mentioned your father’s involvement with the South Sea Bubble. Do we assume that this had something to do with your profit-minded great-uncle?”

Grey glanced at him, surprised at the quickness of his mind.

“Yes,” he said. “Great-Uncle Nicodemus. Nicodemus Patricius Marcus Armstrong.”

Percy made a small, muffled noise.

“There is a reason why I was christened ‘John,’ and that my brothers have such relatively common names as Paul, Edgar, and Harold,” Grey said wryly. “The names on my mother’s side of the family…” He shook his head, and resumed his account.

“My father invested a substantial sum with a certain company—the South Sea—upon the urgings of Uncle Nick, after Sheriffmuir. Mind you, this was some years before the collapse; at the time, it seemed no more than a somewhat risky venture. And it appealed, I think, to my father’s sense of adventure, which was acute.” He couldn’t help a brief smile at thought of some of those adventures.

“It was a substantial sum, but by no means a significant part of my father’s property. He was therefore content to leave it, depending upon Uncle Nick to watch the business, whilst he devoted himself to other, more interesting ventures. But then the Jacobite threat—” He paused, glancing at Percy.

“How old are you, if you will pardon my asking?”

Percy blinked at that, but smiled.

“Twenty-six. Why?”

“Ah. You may be old enough, then, to recall the atmosphere of suspicion and hysteria regarding Jacobites during the ’45?”

Percy shook his head.

“No,” he said ruefully. “My father was a clergyman, who viewed the world and its affairs as nothing more than a threat to the souls of the godly. We heard little news, and would have taken no heed of political rumors in any case—the only king of any importance being the Lord, so far as my father was concerned. But that’s of no consequence,” he added hastily. “Go on, please.”

“I was going to say that that hysteria, great as it was, was no more than an echo of what happened earlier. Are you content to walk, by the way? We could easily take a carriage.” The weather had grown sharply colder, and a bone-cutting breeze swept through the alleyways. Percy was lightly dressed for the temperature, but he shook his head.

“No, I prefer to walk. It’s much easier to talk—if you wish to do that,” he added, a little shyly.

Grey wasn’t at all sure that he wished to do that—his offer of a carriage had been based as much on a sudden desire to abandon the conversation for the moment as on a desire to save Mr. Wainwright from a chilled liver. But he’d meant it; Wainwright had a right to know, and might better hear the details from him than from someone who held the late duke in less esteem.

“Well. You will know, I suppose, that raising, equipping, and maintaining a regiment is an expensive business. My father had money, as I said, but in order to expand the regiment when the Jacobite threat recurred in 1719, he sold his South Sea shares—quite against the advice of Great-Uncle Nicodemus, I might add.”

Within the previous five years, the price of South Sea shares had risen, from ten pounds to a hundred, then dizzyingly, from a hundred to a thousand within a year, driven up by rumor, greed—and not a little calculated chicanery on the part of the company’s directors. The duke sold his shares at this pinnacle.

“And a week—one week—later, the slide began.” It had taken most of a year for the full devastation of the great crash to become evident. Several great families had been ruined; many lesser folk all but obliterated. And the public outcry toward those seen to be responsible…