The Scottish Prisoner (Lord John Grey #3)(26)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

He spent a moment in mindless relief, then said a brief prayer for the repose of Sister Eudoxia’s soul. He thought she would not mind a Papist prayer.

She’d died two days after his conversation with her, and he’d spent a wretched night after hearing the news, convinced she’d taken a chill from the cold marble of the folly. He was infinitely relieved to learn from the kitchen gossip next day that she’d died peacefully in her sleep, and he tried to remember her in his regular prayers. It had been some time since he had, though, and he was soothed now to imagine her presence near him. Her peaceful spirit didn’t intrude upon his necessary solitude.

Would it be all right, he wondered suddenly, to ask her to look after Willie while he was gone from Helwater?

It seemed a mildly heretical thought. And yet the thought felt answered at once; it gave him a feeling of … what? Trust? Confidence? Relief at the sharing of his burden?

He shook his head, half in dismay. Here he sat in an Englishman’s rubbish, talking to a dead Protestant nun with whom he’d had two minutes’ real conversation, asking her to look after a child who had grandparents, an aunt, and servants by the score, all anxious to keep him from the slightest harm. He himself couldn’t have done a thing for William had he been still at Helwater. And yet he felt absurdly better at the notion that someone else knew about William and would help to watch over him.

He sat a few moments, letting his mind relax, and slowly it dawned upon him that the only truly important thing in this imbroglio was William. The complications and suspicions and possible dangers of the present situation mattered only insofar as they might prevent his returning to Helwater—no further.

He took a deep breath, feeling better. Aye, with that made clear, it became possible to think logically about the rest. Well, then.

Major Siverly was the ostensible root of this tangle. He was a wicked man, if half what Captain Carruthers had written about him was true, but wicked men of that sort were far from unusual, he thought. Why did the Greys want so badly to get at the man?

John Grey, by his own words, because he felt a sense of obligation to his dead friend Carruthers. Jamie might have doubted that, but given his own conversations with the dead, he was obliged to admit that John Grey might hear his own voices and have his own debts to pay.

What about Pardloe, though? It wasn’t Lord John who’d dragged Jamie to London and was forcing him to go to Ireland after Siverly. Did Pardloe feel such impersonal outrage at Siverly’s corruption as to explain his actions? Was it part of his ideal of the army, of his own profession, that he could not bear such a man to be tolerated in it? Or was he doing it primarily to support his brother’s quixotic quest?

Jamie admitted reluctantly that it might be all these things. He didn’t pretend to understand the complexities of Pardloe’s character, but he had strong evidence of the man’s sense of family honor. He himself was alive only because of it.

But why him? Why did the Greys need him?

For the poem, first. The Wild Hunt, in Erse. That much, he could see. For while the Greys might have found someone among the Scottish or Irish regiments who had the Gàidhlig, it would be indiscreet—and possibly dangerous, given that they hadn’t known what the document contained—to put knowledge of it in the hands of someone they couldn’t control as they did Lally and him.

He grimaced at the thought of their control but put it aside.

So. Having brought him to London to translate the verse, was it then merely economical to make further use of him? That made sense only if Lord John actually required assistance to apprehend Siverly, and Jamie was not sure that he did. Whatever else you liked to say about the man, he was a competent soldier.

If it was a straight matter of showing Siverly the order to appear at a court-martial and escorting him there, John Grey could plainly do that without Jamie Fraser’s help. Likewise, if it were a matter of arresting the man, a detachment of soldiers would accomplish it fine.

Ergo, it wasn’t a straightforward matter. What the devil did they expect to happen? He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, letting the warm sweet fumes of well-rotted manure help to focus his mind.

Siverly might well simply refuse to come back with Lord John to England. Rather than face a court-martial, he might resign his commission and either stay in Ireland or depart—as so many had—to take service with a foreign army or to live abroad; peculation on the scale Pardloe had shown him must have given Siverly the means for that.

Should he so refuse—or hear of the matter beforehand and escape—then Jamie might be of use in finding or taking the man, yes. With a bit of practice, he’d likely get along in the Gaeilge well enough; he could make inquiries—and his way—in places where the Greys couldn’t. And then there was the matter of connections. There were Jacobites in Ireland and in France who would show him courtesy for the sake of the Stuarts, as well as his own name, but who would turn a closed face and a deaf ear to the Greys, no matter what the virtue of their quest. Despite himself, his brain began to compile a list of names, and he shook his head violently to stop it.

Yes, he might be useful. But was the possibility of Siverly’s flight enough?

He remembered what Lord John had said about Quebec. Siverly had saved John Grey’s life during the battle there. He supposed Lord John might find it an embarrassment to arrest Siverly and thus prefer Jamie to haul him back to England. He would have thought that notion funny, had he not had firsthand experience with the Grey family’s sense of honor.

Even that … but there was a third possibility, wasn’t there?

Siverly might fight. And Siverly might be killed.

“Jesus, Lord,” he said softly.

What if Pardloe wanted Siverly killed? The possibility once named seemed as sure to him as if he’d seen it written down in rhymed couplets. Whatever the duchess had seemed to be saying to him in her nocturnal visit, there was something in the Siverly affair that touched her deeply—and what touched her, touched the duke.

He’d no idea what the connection was between the duchess and Edward Twelvetrees, but he was sure it was there. And the duchess had told him that Edward Twelvetrees was an intimate of Siverly’s. Something moved in the web surrounding him, and he could feel the warning twitch of the sticky strand wrapped round his foot.

He took a long breath and let it out slowly.

In the cold light of logic, the answer was obvious—one answer, at least. Jamie was here because he was expendable. Better: because he could be made not to exist.

No one cared what became of a prisoner of war, especially not one held for so long, in such remote circumstances. The Dunsanys would not complain if he never came back, nor ask what had happened to him. His sister and Ian might—well, they would—make inquiries, but it would be a simple matter merely to inform them that he’d died of the flux or something, and leave it at that. They’d have no way of pursuing the matter or discovering the truth, even if they suspected they’d been lied to.

And if he were obliged to kill Siverly—or if it could be made to look as though he had—he shivered. He could be tried and hanged for it, if they cared to make the matter public; what would his word count for? Or John Grey could simply cut his throat and leave him sunk in an Irish bog, once he’d served his purpose, and tell the world what he liked.

He felt hot and cold together and found that he must make a conscious effort to keep breathing.

He’d thought that it would be a simple if annoying matter: do what Pardloe demanded, and be then returned to Helwater and William. But if it came to this …

Some sound made him open his eyes, to see John Grey standing in front of him, openmouthed.

“I … beg your pardon,” Grey said, recovering himself with some effort. “I did not mean to disturb—”

“What the bloody hell are ye doing here!?” Without intent, he found himself on his feet, his fist bunched in Grey’s shirtfront. Grey smartly jerked his forearm up, breaking Jamie’s hold, and stepped back, stuffing his rumpled shirt back into his waistcoat.

“You are without doubt the touchiest son of a bitch I have ever encountered,” Grey said, his face flushed. “And I include in that roster such men as my brother and the King of Prussia. Can you not behave like a civil being for more than ten minutes together?”

“Touchy, is it?” The blood was pounding in Jamie’s temples, and it took some effort to keep his fists curled at his sides.

“I grant you, your situation is invidious,” Grey said, making an obvious effort at conciliation. “I admit the provocation. However—”

“Invidious. Is that what ye call it? I am to be your cat’s-paw. To preserve what ye’re pleased to call your honor.” He felt so far beyond fury that he spoke with perfect calm. “And ye call it provoking?”

“What?” Grey seized Jamie’s sleeve as he made to turn away, and withstood the look of contempt directed at him. “What the devil do you mean by that?”

He jerked his sleeve out of Grey’s hand.

“I speak English as well as you do, ye bloody coward, and ye take my meaning fine!”

Grey drew breath, and Jamie could see the thoughts cross the Englishman’s face in rapid succession: the urge to lunge at him, the urge to make it more formal and call him out, a rush of unnameable calculation, and, finally—all within the space of a moment—a sudden clamping down, a forcible cooling of fury.

“Sit,” Grey said through his teeth, jerking his head at the bucket.

“I am not a dog!”

Grey rubbed a hand over his face. “A casual observer might argue the point,” he said. “But, no. I apologize for the implication. Come with me.” He turned away, adding over his shoulder, “If you please, Mr. Fraser.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Jamie followed the man. There was no point in remaining with the garden rubbish, after all.

Grey pushed open the door of the glasshouse and beckoned him inside. It was near twilight, but the place glowed like a king’s treasure, reds and pinks and whites and yellows glimmering in an emerald jungle in the dusk, and the air flooded in upon him, moist and caressing, filled with the scents of flowers and leaves, herbs and vegetables. For an instant, he smelled his wife’s hair among them and gulped air as though he’d been shot in the lung.

Pulsing with agitation, he followed Grey past a group of palms and gigantic things with leaves like the ragged ears of elephants. Round a corner, a group of wicker furniture stood beneath an enormous arbor covered with grapevines. Grey stopped short here and turned to him.

“I’ve had a bloody long day, and I want to sit down,” he said. “You can suit yourself.” He promptly collapsed into a basket chair and leaned back, thrust out his booted feet, and closed his eyes with a little sigh.

Jamie hesitated, not knowing whether to turn on his heel and leave, sit down in his turn, or pull John Grey out of the chair by his collar and punch him.

“We’ll have a half hour or so of privacy here,” Grey said, not opening his eyes. “The cook’s already come for the vegetables, and Minerva’s hearing Benjamin’s recitation of Caesar. She won’t come for the table flowers ’til he’s done, and he’s doing De Bello Gallico; he never gets past Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt without losing his place and having to start over.”