He picked up the lass and ran for the mule, Isobel whimpering and digging her fingernails into his neck. He slapped her briefly on the bum to make her stop, put her up on the mule, untied it, and made for the road as the door of the inn opened and a truculent male voice said--from the safety of the lighted interior--"I see you, you bugger! I see you!"
Isobel said not a word on the way back to Helwater.
JOHN GREY WAS LYING in his bed, contentedly reading Mrs. Hagwood's Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry, when he heard a great rustling and bumping in the corridor outside. Tom had gone to bed long since in the servants' attic, so Grey flung back the covers, reaching for his banyan. He had barely got this on when there was a brief, imperative thump at his door that shivered its boards, as though someone had kicked it.
Someone had.
He wrenched the door open and Jamie Fraser walked in, dripping wet carrying someone wrapped in a blanket. Breathing heavily, he crossed the room and deposited his burden on Grey's rumpled bed with a grunt. The burden let out a small squeak and clutched the blanket round itself.
"Isobel?" Grey glanced wildly at Fraser. "What's happened? Is she hurt?"
"You need to soothe her and put her back where she belongs," Fraser said, in very decent German. This startled Grey nearly as much as the intrusion, though an instant's thought supplied the explanation--Isobel spoke French but not German.
"Jawohl," he replied, giving Fraser a sideways look. He hadn't known Fraser spoke German, and a brief thought of Stephan von Namtzen flashed through his mind. Christ, what might they have said to each other in Fraser's hearing? That didn't matter now, though.
"What's happened, my dear?"
Isobel was hunched on the edge of the bed, snuffling and hiccuping. Her face was bloated and red, her blond hair loose, damp and tangled about her shoulders. Grey sat down gingerly beside her and rubbed her back gently.
"I'b ad idiot," Isobel said thickly, and buried her face in her hands.
"She tried to elope with the lawyer--Wilberforce," Jamie said in English. "Her maid came and got me and I went after them." Jamie returned to German and acquainted Grey with the situation in a few blunt sentences, including his intelligence regarding Wilberforce's wife and the precise situation in which he had found the lawyer and Isobel.
"The schwanzlutscher hadn't penetrated her, but it was close enough to give her a shock," he said, looking down dispassionately on Isobel, who was slumping with exhaustion, her head leaning on Grey's shoulder as he put his arm about her.
"Bastard," Grey said. It was the same word in English and German, and Isobel shuddered convulsively. "You're safe, sweetheart," he murmured to her. "Don't worry. Everything will be all right." The wet blanket had slipped off her shoulders and puddled round her, and he saw with a pang that she was wearing a nightdress of sheer lawn, with broderie Anglaise inserts and pale pink ribbon at the neck. She'd gone prepared for her wedding night--only she hadn't been prepared at all, poor little creature.
"What did you do to the lawyer?" he asked Jamie in German. "You didn't kill him, did you?" It was pouring outside; he hoped he wouldn't have to go and hide Wilberforce's body.
"Nein." Fraser didn't elaborate, but squatted in front of Isobel.
"No one knows," he said to her softly, eyes intent on her face. "No one needs to know. Ever."
She didn't want to look at him; Grey could feel her resistance. But after a moment she lifted her head and nodded, her mouth compressed to stop it trembling.
"I--thank you," she blurted. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she wasn't sobbing or shivering anymore, and her body had begun to relax.
"It's all right, lass," Fraser said to her, still softly. He rose then and went to the door, hesitating there. Grey patted Isobel's hand and, leaving her, came across to see Fraser out.
"If you can get her back to her room without being seen, Betty will take care of her," Jamie said to Grey in a low voice. And then in German, "When she's calm, tell her to forget it. She won't, but I don't want her to feel that she is in my debt. It would be awkward for us both."
"She is, nonetheless. And she is an honorable woman. She'll want to repay you in some way. Let me think how best to handle it."
"I am obliged." Fraser spoke abstractedly, though, and his eyes were still on Isobel. "There is ... if she ..." His gaze switched suddenly to Grey's face.
Jamie's own face was rough with red stubble and lined with tiredness, his eyes dark and bloodshot. Grey could see that the knuckles of his left hand were swollen and the skin was broken; he'd likely punched Wilberforce in the mouth.
"There is a thing I want," Fraser said, very low-voiced, still in German. "But it cannot be blackmail or look like it in any way. If there were some means to suggest it very tactfully ..."
"I see your opinion of my diplomacy has improved. What is it that you want?"
A brief smile touched Fraser's face, though it vanished almost at once.
"The wee lad," he said. "They make him wear a corset. I would like to see him free of it."
Grey was extremely surprised, but merely nodded.
"All right. I'll see about it."
"Not tonight," Fraser said hastily. Isobel had collapsed with a little sigh, her head on Grey's pillow, feet trailing on the floor.
"No," he agreed. "Not tonight."
He closed the door quietly behind Fraser and went to deal with the girl in his bed.
42
Point of Departure
TOM HAD THE LUGGAGE LOADED ONTO THE MULE, AND THE horses were waiting. Lord John embraced Lady Dunsany and--very gently--Isobel and shook hands with Lord Dunsany in farewell. The old man's hands were cold, and the bones as fragile in his grasp as dried twigs. He felt a pang, wondering if he would see Dunsany alive the next time he came--and a deeper pang of concern, realizing what the old man's death might mean to him, beyond the loss of a dear old friend.
Well ... he'd cross that bridge when he came to it, and God send he wasn't coming to it just yet.
Outside, the weather was lowering, the first drops of rain already making wet spots on the flags. The horses' ears twitched and turned to and fro; they didn't mind rain and were fresh and eager to be off.
Jamie was holding Grey's gelding. He inclined his head respectfully and stood back to allow Grey to mount by himself. As Grey put his hand on the pommel, he heard a low Scots voice murmur in his ear:
"Queen's rook to king eight. Check."
Grey laughed out loud, a burst of exhilaration pushing aside his disquiet.
"Ha," he said, though without raising his voice. "Queen's bishop to knight four. Check. And mate, Mr ... MacKenzie."
JAMIE COULDN'T ENLIST Keren's help this time. Instead, when Peggy the nursemaid came to fetch Willie back to the nursery for his tea, he asked her to take a note from him to Betty. Peggy couldn't read, and while she might tell someone he was meeting Betty, she couldn't know where. He particularly didn't wish to be overheard.
Betty was waiting for him behind the hay shed, fastidiously eyeing the immense manure pile with a curled lip. She switched the expression to him, raising one brow in inquiry.
"I've a wee thing for ye, Mrs. Betty," he said without preliminary.
"About time," she said, the curl melting into a coquettish smile. "Though not so wee as all that, I hope. And I also hope you have a better place than this for it, too," she added, with a glance at the manure. It was too late in the season for flies, and Jamie personally found the smell rather pleasant, but he could see she didn't share this opinion.
"The place will do well enough," he said. "Give me your hand, lass."
She did, looking expectant. The look changed to one of astonishment when he put the little purse into her palm.
"What's this?" she asked, but the chink of coins as she weighed the purse was answer enough.
"That's your dowry, lass," he said, smiling.
She looked at him suspiciously, plainly not knowing whether this was a joke or something else.
&nbs
p; "A lass like you should be marrit," he said. "But it's not me ye should be marrying."
"Who says so?" she asked, fixing him with a fishy eye.
"I do," he replied equably. "Like the wicked Mr. Wilberforce, lass--I've got a wife."
She blinked.
"You do? Where?"
Ah, where indeed?
"She couldna come with me, when I was captured after Culloden. But she's alive still."
Lord, that she may be safe ...
"But there's a man that wants ye bad, lass, and well ye know it. George Roberts is a fine man, and with that wee bawbee"--he nodded at the purse in her hand--"the two of ye could set up in a bit wee cottage, maybe."
She didn't say anything but pursed her lips, and he could see her envisioning the prospect.
"Ye should have your own hearth, lass--and a cradle by it, wi' your own bairn in it."
She swallowed and, for the first time since he'd known her, looked tremulous and uncertain.
"I--but--why?" She made a tentative gesture toward him with the purse, not quite offering it back to him. "Surely you need this?"
He shook his head and took a definite step back, waving her off.
"Believe me, lass. There's nothing I'd rather do with it. Take it wi' my blessing--and if ye like, ye can call your firstborn Jamie." He smiled at her, feeling the warmth in his chest rise into the back of his eyes.
She made an incoherent sound and took a pace toward him, rose onto her toes, and kissed him on the mouth.
A strangled gasp broke them apart, and Jamie turned to see Crusoe goggling at them from the corner of the shed.
"What the devil are you looking at?" Betty snapped at him.
"Not a thing, miss," Crusoe assured her, and put one large palm over his mouth.
43
Succession
October 26, 1760
GREY ARRIVED IN LONDON TO THE TOLLING OF PASSING BELLS.
"The king is dead!" cried the ballad sellers, the news chanters, the scribblers, the street urchins, their voices echoing through the city. "Long live the king!"
In the furious preparations and public preoccupations that attend a state funeral, the final arrests of the Irish Jacobite plotters who had called themselves the Wild Hunt took place without notice. Harold, Duke of Pardloe, neither ate nor slept for several days during this effort, nor did his brother, and it was in a state of mind somewhere between sleep and death that they came to Westminster Abbey on the night of the king's obsequies.
The Duke of Cumberland did not look well either. Grey saw Hal's eyes rest on Cumberland with an odd expression, somewhere between grim satisfaction and grudging sympathy. Cumberland had suffered a stroke not long before, and one side of his face still sagged, the eye on that side almost closed. The other was still pugnacious, though, and looked daggers at Hal from the other side of Henry VII's chapel. Then the duke's attention was distracted by his own brother, the Duke of Newcastle, who was crying, alternately mopping his eyes and using his glass to spy out the crowd and see who was there. A look of disgust crossed Cumberland's face, and he looked back down into the vault, where the huge purple-draped coffin sat somber and majestic in the light of six enormous silver candelabra, all ablaze.
"Cumberland's thinking he will descend there himself in no short time, I fear." Horace Walpole's soft whisper came from behind Grey, but he couldn't tell whether it was directed to him or merely Walpole making observations to himself. Horry talked all the time, and it seemed to make little difference whether anyone was listening.
Whatever you wanted to say about the royal family--and there was quite a lot you could say--they mostly displayed a becoming fortitude in their time of sorrow. The funeral of George II had been going on for more than two hours now, and Grey's own feet were mere blocks of ice from standing on the cold marble of the abbey floor, though Tom had made him put on two pair of stockings and his woolen drawers. His shins ached.
Newcastle had surreptitiously stepped onto the five-foot train of Cumberland's black cloak in order to avoid the mortal chill of the marble floor; Grey hoped he would neglect to get off before his brother started walking again. But Cumberland stood like a rock, despite a bad leg. He'd chosen--God knew why--to wear a dark-brown wig in the style called "Adonis," which went oddly with his distorted, bloated face. Maybe Horry was right.
The view down into the vault was impressive; he'd admit that much. George II was now once and forever safe from the Wild Hunt--and every other earthly threat. Three officers of the Irish Brigades--so far--had been court-martialed quietly and condemned to hang for treason. The executions would be private, too. The monarchy was safe; the public would never know.
You did it, Charlie, Grey thought. Goodbye. And sudden tears made the candle flames blur bright and huge. No one noticed; there were a number of people moved to tears by the emotion of the occasion. Charles Carruthers had died alone in an attic in Canada and had no resting place. Grey had had Charlie's body burned, his ashes scattered, that carefully assembled packet of papers his only memorial.
"Such a relief, my dear," Walpole--who was exceedingly slight--was saying to Grenville. "I was positive they would pair me with a ten-year-old boy, and the young have so little conversation."
The huge fretted vault of the abbey rustled and chirped as though it were full of roosting bats, the noise a counterpoint to the constant tolling of bells overhead and the firing of minute guns outside. One went off, quite close, and Grey saw Hal close his eyes in sudden pain; his brother had one of his sick headaches and was having trouble staying on his feet. If there had been incense, it would likely have finished him off; he'd thought Hal was about to vomit when Newcastle scampered past him earlier, reeking loudly of bergamot and vetiver.
For all the lack of frankincense and priests saying Masses for the late king's soul, the ceremony was lavish enough to have pleased a cardinal. The bishop had blundered badly through the prayers, but no one noticed. Now the interminable anthem droned on and on, unmeasurably tedious. Grey found himself wondering whether it sounded any better to him than it would have to Jamie Fraser, with his inability to hear music. Mere rhythmic noise, in either case. It wasn't doing Hal any good; he gave a stifled moan.
He pulled his thoughts hurriedly away from Fraser, moving a little closer to Hal in case he fell over. His undisciplined thoughts promptly veered to Percy Wainwright. He'd stood thus in church with Percy--his new stepbrother--at the marriage of Grey's mother to Percy's stepfather. Close enough that their hands had found each other, hidden in the full skirts of their coats.
He didn't want to think about Percy. Obligingly, his thoughts veered straight back in the direction of Jamie Fraser.
Will you bloody go away? he thought irritably, and jerked his attention firmly to the sight before him: people were crammed into every crevice of the chapel, sitting on anything they could find. The white breath of the crowd mingled with the smell of smoke from the torches in the nave. If Hal did pass out, Grey thought, he wouldn't fall down; there wasn't room. Nonetheless, he moved closer, his elbow brushing Hal's.
"At least now we'll have a ruler who speaks English. More or less." Walpole's cynical remark drew Grey's wandering eye to the heir--the king, he should say. The new George looked just like all the Hanovers, he thought, the beaky nose and heavy-lidded, gelid eyes undiluted by any softer maternal influence; doubtless they'd all looked that way for a thousand years and would do so for another thousand. George III was only twenty-two, though, and Grey wondered how well he might withstand the influence of his uncle Cumberland, should the latter decide to shift his concerns from horse racing to politics.
Though perhaps his health would not recover enough to allow any meddling. He looked almost as ill as Hal did. Grey didn't suppose that the outcome of Siverly's court-martial had actually caused Cumberland to have a paralytic stroke, but the timing was coincidental.
The anthem plodded toward a conclusion, and people began to draw breath in relief--but it was a false amnesty; the ponderous
refrain started up again, this time sung by a bevy of angel-faced little boys, and the audience relapsed into glazed endurance. Perhaps the point of funerals was to exhaust the mourners, thus numbing the more exigent emotions.
In spite of the tedium, Grey found something reassuring about the service, with its sheer solidity, its insistence upon permanence in the face of transience, the reliability of succession. Life was fragile, but life went on. King to king, father to son ...
Father to son. And with that thought, all the disconnected, fragmentary, scattered fancies in his brain dropped suddenly into a single, vivid image: Jamie Fraser, seen from the back, looking over the horses in the paddock at Helwater. And beside him, standing on a rail and clinging to a higher one, William, Earl of Ellesmere. The alert cock of their heads, the set of their shoulders, the wide stance--just the same. If one had eyes to see, it was plain as the nose on the new king's face.
And now a great sense of peace filled his soul, as the anthem at last came to an end and a huge sigh filled the abbey. He remembered Jamie's face as they rode in to Helwater, alight as they saw the women on the lawn--with William.
He'd suspected it when he'd found Fraser in the chapel with Geneva Dunsany's coffin, just before her funeral. But now he knew, beyond doubt. Knew, too, why Fraser did not desire his freedom.
A sudden poke in the back jerked him from his revelation.
"I do believe Pardloe's going to die," Walpole said. A small, neat hand came through the narrow gap between the Grey brothers, holding a corked glass vial. "Would you care to use my salts?"
Startled, Grey looked at his brother. Hal's face was white as a sheet and running with sweat, his eyes huge and dilated, absolutely black with pain. He was swaying. Grey grabbed the salts with one hand, Hal's arm with the other.
By the combined effect of smelling salts and force of will, Hal remained on his feet, and the service came mercifully to an end ten minutes later.
George Grenville had come in a sedan chair, and his bearers were waiting on the embankment. Grenville generously put these at Hal's service, and he was taken off at the trot for Argus House, nearly insensible. Grey took leave of his friends as soon as he decently could and made his own way home on foot.