Lord John and the Private Matter (10 page)

He had seen battlefields before, at Preston and Falkirk, though neither had had so many bodies. One dead man was much like another, though, and within a short time, he was no longer bothered by their presence.

He had grown so numb, in fact, that he was barely startled when one of the soldiers shouted, “Hey, Cheeky! Got one for you!” His cold-slowed mind had not had time to interpret this before he found himself face-to-face with the man, the Scot.

He had vaguely supposed that everyone on the field was unconscious, if not dead; execution would be no more than a matter of kneel by the body, place the pistol, pull the trigger, step back and reload.

This man sat bolt upright in the heather, weight braced on the heels of his hands, the smashed leg that had prevented his escape twisted in front of him, streaked with blood. He was staring at Grey, dark eyes lively and watchful. He was young, perhaps Hector’s age. The eyes went from Grey’s face to the gun in his hand, then back to his face. The man lifted his chin, setting his mouth hard.

Behind the ear will answer well enough, if you find you can’t bear the eyes.

How? How was he to reach behind the ear, with him sitting like that? Grey lifted the pistol awkwardly, and stepped to the side, crouching a bit. The man’s head turned, eyes following him.

Grey stopped—but he couldn’t stop, the soldiers were watching.

“H-head, or heart?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. His hands were shaking; it was cold, though, so very cold.

The dark eyes closed for an instant, opened again, piercing through him.

“Christ, do I care?”

He lifted the pistol, the muzzle wavering a little, and pointed it carefully at the center of the man’s body. The Scot’s mouth compressed, and he shifted his weight to one hand. Before Grey could jerk away, he had lifted his free hand to seize Grey’s wrist.

Startled, Grey made no move to pull away. Breathing hard with effort, teeth gritted against the pain, the Scot guided the barrel so it came to rest against his forehead, just between the eyes. And stared at him.

And what Grey recalled most clearly was not the eyes, but the feel of the fingers, colder even than his own chilled flesh, curling gently round his wrist. There was no strength left now in the touch, but it stilled his shaking. The fingers squeezed, very gently. Offering mercy.

An hour later, they had gone back in darkness, and he had learned of Hector’s death.

The candle had been guttering for some time. There was another on the table, but he made no move to reach for it. Instead, he lay staring as the flame went out, and went on drinking wine in the musky dark.

He woke with a splitting head, somewhere in the dark hours before dawn. The candle had gone out, and for a disorienting moment, he had no idea where he was—or with whom. A warm, moist weight was curled against him, and his hand rested on bare flesh.

Possibilities erupted in his mind like a flight of startled quail, then disappeared as he took a deep breath and smelt cheap scent, expensive wine, and female musk. Girl. Yes, of course. The Scottish whore.

He lay still for a moment, muddled, trying to gain his bearings in the unfamiliar dark. There—a thin line of gray marked the shuttered window, a shade lighter than the night inside. Door . . . where was the door? He turned his head and saw a faint flicker of light across the floorboards, the exhausted glow of a guttering candle in the hallway. He vaguely remembered some uproar, singing and stamping from below, but that had ceased now. The brothel had subsided into quiet, though it was an odd, uneasy hush, like the troubled sleep of a drunken man. Speaking of which . . . he worked his tongue, trying to muster enough saliva from his parched and sticky membranes to swallow. His heart was beating with an unpleasant insistence that seemed to cause his eyeballs to protrude, bulging painfully with each throb of the organ. He hastily closed his eyes, but it didn’t help.

It was warm and close in the room, but a faint stirring of air from the shuttered window touched his body, a cool finger raising the hairs of chest and leg. He was naked, but didn’t recall undressing.

She was lying on his arm. Moving slowly, he disengaged himself from the girl, taking care not to rouse her. He sat for a moment on the bed, clutching his head in a soundless moan, then rose to his feet, taking great care lest it fall off.

Christ! What had he been about, to drink so much of that ungodly swill? It would have been better to swive the girl and have done with it, he thought, feeling his way across the room through bursts of brilliant white light that lit up the inside of his skull like fireworks on the Thames. His probing foot struck the table leg, and he felt blindly about beneath it until he found the chamber pot.

Somewhat relieved, but still desperately thirsty, he put it down and groped for the ewer and basin. The water in the pitcher was warm and tasted faintly of metal, but he drank it greedily, spilling it down his chin and chest, gulping until his guts began to protest the tepid onslaught.

He wiped a hand down his face and smeared the wetness across his chest, then loosened the shutters, taking deep, shuddering breaths of the cool gray air. Better.

He turned to look for his clothes, but realized belatedly that he couldn’t leave without Quarry. The thought of searching the house for his friend, flinging open doors and surprising sleep-sodden whores and their customers, was more than he could countenance in his present condition. Well, the madam would rout Harry out in short order, come daybreak. Nothing for it but wait.

Since he must wait, he might as well do it lying down; his innards were shifting and gurgling in ominous fashion, and his legs felt weak.

The girl was naked, too. She lay curled on her side, back to him, smooth and pale as a smelt on a fishmonger’s slab. He crawled cautiously onto the bed and eased himself down beside her. She shifted and murmured, but didn’t wake.

The air was much cooler now, with dawn coming on and the shutters ajar. He would have covered himself, but the girl was lying on the rumpled sheet. She shifted again, and he saw the gooseflesh prickling over her skin. She was thinner even than she had seemed the night before, ribs shadowing her sides and the shoulder blades sharp as wings in her bony little back.

He turned on his side and drew her against him, fumbling with one hand to disentangle the damp sheet and draw it over them both—as much to cover her skinniness as for its dubious warmth.

Her loosened hair was thick and curly, soft against his face. The feel of it disturbed him, though it was a moment before he realized why. She’d had hair like that—the Woman. Fraser’s wife. Grey knew her name—Fraser had told him—and yet he stubbornly refused to think of her as anything but “the Woman.” As though it were her fault—and the fault of her sex alone, at that.

But that was in another country
, he thought, pulling the scrawny whore closer to him,
and besides, the wench is dead.
Fraser had said so.

He’d seen the look in Jamie Fraser’s eyes, though. Fraser had not ceased to love his wife merely because she was dead—no more than Grey could or would cease to love Hector. Memory was one thing, though, and flesh another; the body had no conscience.

He wrapped one arm over the girl’s fine-boned form, holding her tight against him. Nearly breastless, and narrow-arsed as a boy, he thought, and felt a tiny flame of desire, wine-fueled, lick up the insides of his thighs. Why not? he thought. He was paying for it, after all.

But,
I’m a person, no?
she’d said. And she was neither of the persons he longed for.

He closed his eyes, and kissed the shoulder near his face, very gently. Then he slept again, drifting on the troubled clouds of her hair.

Chapter 7

Green Velvet

H
e woke to broad daylight and a rumbling stir in the brothel below. The girl was gone—no, not gone. He rolled over and saw her by the window, dressed in her shift, her lips pressed tight in concentration as she plaited her hair, using the reflection in the chamber pot as her looking glass.

“Awake at last, are ye?” she asked, squinting at her reflection. “Thought I might need to poke a darning needle under your toenail to rouse ye.” Tying a red ribbon at the end of her plait, she turned and grinned at him.

“Ready for a bit o’ breakfast, then, chuck?”

“Don’t even mention it.” He sat up, slowly, one hand pressed to his forehead.

“Oh, a wee bit peaky this morn, are we?” A brown glass bottle and a pair of wooden tumblers had appeared on the washstand; she poured out something the color of ditch water and thrust the cup into his hand. “Try that; hair o’ the dog that bit ye is the best cure, or so they say.” She slopped a generous tot into her own glass and drank it off as though it were water.

It wasn’t water. He thought it was possibly turpentine, from the smell. Still, he wouldn’t be put to shame by a fourteen-year-old whore; he tossed it back in a gulp.

Not turpentine; vitriol. The liquid burned a fiery path straight down his gullet and into his bowels, sending a gust of brimstone fumes through the cavities of his head. Whisky, that’s what it was, and very raw whisky, at that.

“Aye, that’s the stuff,” she said approvingly, watching him. “Have another?”

Incapable of speech, he blinked watering eyes and held out his cup. Another fuming swallow, and he found that he had recovered sufficient presence of mind to inquire after his vanished clothes.

“Oh, aye. Just here.” She hopped up, bright as a sparrow, and pulled open a panel in the wall that hid a row of clothes pegs, upon which his uniform and linen had been hung with care.

“Did you undress me?”

“I dinna see anyone else here, do you?” She put a hand above her eyes, peering about the room in exaggerated fashion. He ignored this, pulling the shirt over his head.

“Why?”

He thought the glint of a smile showed in her eyes, though no trace of it touched her lips.

“So much as ye drank, I kent ye’d wake soon to have a piss, and like enough to stagger off then, if ye could. If ye stayed the night through, though, Magda wouldna bring anyone else up for me.” She shrugged, shift sliding off one scrawny shoulder. “Best sleep I’ve had in months.”

“I am deeply gratified to have been of benefit to you, madam,” Grey said dryly, assuming his breeches. “And what is likely to be the cost of an entire night spent in your charming company?”

“Two pound,” she said promptly. “Ye can pay me now, if ye like.”

He gave her a jaundiced look, one hand on his pocketbook.

“Two pound? Ten shillings, more like. Try again.”

“Ten shillings?” She tried to look insulted, but failed, thus informing him that he had been close in his estimate. “Well . . . one and six, then. Or perhaps one and ten”—she eyed him, her small pink tongue darting out to touch her upper lip in speculation—“if I can find out for ye where he goes?”

“Where who goes?”

“The Cornish lad ye were asking after—Trevelyan.”

Grey’s headache seemed suddenly diminished. He stared at her for a moment, then reached slowly into his pocketbook. He drew out three pound notes and tossed them into her lap.

“Tell me what you know.”

Agnes clasped her thighs together, hands between them, tight on the money, eyes sparkling with pleasure.

“What I ken is that he comes here, aye, maybe twa, three times in a month, but he doesna go wi’ any of the lasses—so as I couldna find out about the state of his prick, ye ken.” She looked apologetic.

Grey left off fastening his garter buckles, surprised.

“What does he do, then?”

“Weel, he goes into Mrs. Magda’s room, same as the rich ones always do—and a wee while later, out comes a woman in one of Maggie’s gowns and a big lace cap . . . but it’s no our Maggie. She’s near the same height, aye, but nay bosom to her and nay bum at all—and narrow in the shoulder, where Mags has the meat of a well-fed bullock.”

She raised one perfect eyebrow, obviously entertained by the look on his face.

“And then this . . . lady . . . goes out the back way, intae the alley, where there’s a chair waitin’. I’ve seen her do it,” she added, with a sardonic emphasis on the pronoun. “Though I didna ken who it was at the time.”

“And does . . . she . . . come back?” Grey asked, with the same emphasis.

“Aye, she does. She leaves past dark, and comes back just before dawn. I heard the chairmen in the alley, a week past, and bein’ as I happened for once to be alone”—she made a brief moue—“I got up and had a keek down from my window to see who it was. I couldna see any more than the top of her cap and a flash of green skirt—but whoever it was, her step was quick and long, like a man’s.”

She stopped then, looking expectant. Grey rubbed a hand through his tousled hair. The ribbon had come off as he slept, and was nowhere in sight.

“But you think that you can discover where this . . . person . . . goes to?”

She nodded, certain of herself.

“Oh, aye. I may not have seen the lady’s face, but I saw one of the chairmen, plain. Happen he’s a big auld lad called Rab, from up near Fife. He hasna often got the price of a whore, but when he does, he asks for me. Homesick, see?”

“Yes, I do see.” Grey wiped the hair out of his face, then reached into his pocketbook once more. She spread her legs just in time, catching the handful of silver neatly in the basket of her skirt.

“See that Rab has the price of you soon,” Grey suggested. “Aye?”

A rap came on the door, which sprang open to reveal Harry Quarry, bewhiskered and bleary-eyed, coat hung over one shoulder. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and only half-tucked into his breeches, the neckcloth discarded. While Quarry did have his wig on, it sat crookedly astride one ear.

“Not interrupting, am I?” he said, stifling a belch.

Grey hastily took up his own coat and stuffed his feet into his shoes.

“No, not at all. Just coming.”

Quarry scratched his ribs, rucking up his shirt in unconscious fashion to show a segment of hairy paunch. He blinked vaguely in Nessie’s direction.

“Had a good night, then, Grey? Not much to that one, is there?”

Lord John pressed two fingers between his throbbing brows and essayed what he hoped was an expression of satiated lewdness.

“Ah, well, you know the saying—‘the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat.’ ”

“Really?” Despite his dishevelment, Quarry perked up a little, peering over Lord John’s shoulder into the chamber. “Perhaps I’ll give her a try next time, then. What’s your name, chuck?”

Half-turning, Lord John saw Nessie’s eyes widen at the sight of Quarry, bloodshot and leering. Her mouth twisted in revulsion; she really had no tact, for a whore. He laid a hand on Quarry’s arm to distract him.

“Don’t think you’d like her, old fellow,” he said. “She’s Scotch.”

Quarry’s momentary interest disappeared like a snuffed-out candle.

“Oh, Scotch,” he said, belching slightly. “Christ, no. The sound of that barbarous tongue would wilt me on the spot. No, no. Give me a nice, fat English girl, good round bum, plenty of flesh on her, something to get hold of.” He aimed a jovial slap at the bum of a passing maid who clearly met these requirements, but she dodged adroitly and he staggered, narrowly avoiding ignominious collapse by catching hold of Grey, who in turn seized the doorjamb with both hands to keep from being overborne. He heard a giggle from Nessie, and straightened up, pulling his clothes into what order he could.

Following this rather undignified departure, they found themselves in a coach, rattling up Meacham Street in a manner highly unsuited to the state of Grey’s head.

“Find out anything useful?” Quarry asked, closing one eye to assist in concentration as he redid the buttons of his fly, which had been somehow fastened askew.

“Yes,” Grey said, averting his eyes. “But God knows what it means.”

He explained his inconclusive findings briefly, causing Quarry to blink owlishly at him.

“I don’t know what it means, either,” Quarry said, scratching his balding head. “But you might drop a word to that constable friend of yours—ask if any of his men have heard of a woman in green velvet. If she—or he—is up to something . . .”

The coach turned, sending a piercing ray of light through Grey’s eyes and straight into the center of his brain. He emitted a low moan. What had Constable Magruder suggested? Housebreaking, horse-stealing, robbery from the person . . .

“Right,” he said, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, envisioning the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan under arrest for fire-setting or public riot. “I’ll do that.”