Текст книги "Lord John and the Private Matter "

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

A sudden rustling from the bed interrupted him, and he turned, startled.

“It was I who killed my husband, good sir.”

The voice from the bed was soft and husky, with no more than a hint of foreign accent, but all three men jerked, startled as though it had been a trumpet blast. Maria Mayrhofer lay upon her side, hair tangled over her pillow. Her eyes were huge, glazed with encroaching fever, but still luminous with intelligence.

Trevelyan went at once to kneel beside her, feeling her cheek and forehead.

“Scanlon,” he said, a tone of command mingled with one of appeal.

The apothecary went at once to join him, touching her gently beneath the jaw, peering into her eyes—but she turned her head away from him, closing her eyes.

“I am well enough for the moment,” she said. “This man—” She waved in Grey’s direction. “Who is he?”

Grey stood, keeping his feet awkwardly as the deck rose under him, and bowed to her.

“I am Major John Grey, madam. I am appointed by the Crown to investigate a matter”—he hesitated, uncertain how—or whether—to explain—“a matter that has impinged upon your own affairs. Did I understand you to say that you had killed Herr Mayrhofer?”

“Yes, I did.”

Scanlon had withdrawn to check his hell-brew, and she rolled her head to meet Grey’s gaze again. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow, and yet her eyes held something prideful—almost insolent, despite her state—and he had a sudden glimmer of what it was that had so attracted the Cornishman.

“Maria . . .” Trevelyan set a hand on her arm in warning, but she disregarded it, keeping her gaze imperiously on Grey.

“What does it matter?” she asked, her voice still soft, but clear as crystal. “We are on the water now. I feel the waves that bear us on; we have escaped. This is your realm, is it not, Joseph? The sea is your kingdom, and we are safe.” A tiny smile played over her lips as she watched Grey, making him feel very odd indeed.

“I have left word,” Grey felt obliged to point out. “My whereabouts are known.”

The smile grew.

“So someone knows you are en route to India,” she said mockingly. “Will they follow you there, do you think?”

India. Grey had not received leave from the lady to sit in her presence, but did so anyway. The weakness of his knees owed something both to the swaying of the ship and to the aftereffects of mercury poisoning—but somewhat more to the news of their destination.

Still fighting giddiness, the first thought in his head was relief that he had managed that scribbled note to Quarry. At least I won’t be shot for desertion, when—or if—I finally manage to get back.He shook his head briefly to clear it, and sat up straight, setting his jaw.

There was no help for it, and nothing to be done now, save carry out his duty to the best of his ability. Anything further must be left to Providence.

“Be that as it may, madam,” he said firmly. “It is my duty to learn the truth of the death of Timothy O’Connell—and any matters that may be associated with it. If your state permits, I would hear whatever you can tell me.”

“O’Connell?” she murmured, and turned her head restlessly on the pillow, eyes half-closing. “I do not know this name, this man. Joseph?”

“No, dear one, it’s nothing to do with you, with us.” Trevelyan spoke soothingly, a hand on her hair, but his eyes searched her face uneasily. Glancing from him to her, Grey could see it, too; her face was growing markedly pale, as though some force pressed the blood from her skin.

All at once, there were gray shadows in the hollows of her bone; the lush curve of her mouth paled and pinched, lips nearly disappearing. The eyes, too, seemed to retreat, going dull and shrinking away into her skull. Trevelyan was talking to her; Grey sensed the worry in his tone, but paid no attention to the words, his whole attention fixed upon the woman.

Scanlon had come to look, was saying something. Quinine, something about quinine.

A sudden shudder closed her eyes and blanched her features. The flesh itself seemed to draw in upon her bones as she huddled deeper into the bedclothes, shaking. Grey had seen malarial chills before, but even so, was shocked at the suddenness and strength of the attack.

“Madam,” he began, stretching out a hand to her, helpless. He had no notion what to do, but felt that he must do something, must offer comfort of some kind—she was so fragile, so defenseless in the grip of the disease.

“She cannot speak with you,” Trevelyan said sharply, and gripped his arm. “Scanlon!”

The apothecary had a small brazier going; he had already seized a pair of tongs and plucked a large stone that he had heating in the coals. He dropped this into a folded linen towel and, holding it gingerly, hurried to the bedside, where he burrowed under the sheets, placing the hot stone at her feet.

“Come away,” Trevelyan ordered, pulling at Grey’s arm. “Mr. Scanlon must care for her. She cannot talk.”

This was plainly true—and yet she lifted her head and forced her eyes to open, teeth gritted hard against the chills that racked her.

“J-J-J-Jos-seph!”

“What, darling? What can I do?” Trevelyan abandoned Grey upon the instant, falling to his knees beside her.

She seized his hand and held it hard, fighting the chill that shook her bones.

“T-T-Tell him. If we b-both are d-dead . . . I would be j-j-justified!”

Both?Grey wondered. He had no time to speculate upon the meaning of that; Scanlon had hurried back with his steaming beaker, had lifted her from the pillow. He was holding the vessel to her lips, murmuring encouragement, willing her to sip at it, even as the hot liquid slopped and spilled from her chattering teeth. Her long hands rose and wrapped themselves about the cup, clinging tightly to the fugitive warmth. The last thing he saw before Trevelyan forced him from the cabin was the emerald ring, hanging loose from a bony finger.

He followed Trevelyan upward through the shadows to the open deck. The bedlam of setting sail had subsided now, and half the crew had vanished below. Grey had barely noticed his surroundings earlier; now he saw the clouds of snowy canvas billowing above, and the polished wood and brightwork of the ship. The Namparawas under full sail and flying like a live thing; he could feel the ship—feel her;they called ships “she”—humming beneath his feet, and felt a sudden unexpected exhilaration.

The waves had changed from the gray of the harbor to the lapis blue of deep sea, and a brisk wind blew through his hair, carrying away the smells of illness and confinement. The last remnants of his own illness seemed also to blow away on that wind—perhaps only because his debilities seemed inconsequent, by contrast with the desperate straits of the woman below.

There was still bustle on deck, and shouting to and fro between the deck and the mysterious realm of canvas above, but it was more orderly, less obtrusive now. Trevelyan made his way toward the stern, finding a place at the rail where they would not obstruct the sailors’ work, and there they leaned for a time, wind cleansing them, watching together as the final sight of England disappeared in distant mist.

“Will she die, do you think?” Grey asked eventually. It was the thought uppermost in his own mind; it must be so for Trevelyan as well.

“No,” the Cornishman snapped. “She will not.” He leaned on the rail, staring moodily into the racing water.

Grey didn’t speak, merely closed his eyes and let the glitter of the sun off the waves make dancing patterns of red and black inside his lids. He needn’t push; there was time now for everything.

“She is worse,” Trevelyan said at last, unable to bear the silence. “She shouldn’t be. I have seen malaria often; the first attack is normally the worst—if there is cinchona for treatment, subsequent attacks grow less frequent, less severe. Scanlon says so, too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“Has she suffered long with the disease?” Grey asked, curious. It was not a malady that often afflicted city-dwellers, but the lady might perhaps have acquired it in the course of traveling with Mayrhofer.

“Two weeks.”

Grey opened his eyes, to see Trevelyan standing upright, his short hair flicked into a crest by the wind, chin raised. Water stood in his eyes; perhaps it was caused by the rushing wind.

“I should not have let him do it,” Trevelyan muttered. His hands clenched on the rail in a futile rage tinged with despair. “Christ, how could I have let him do it?”

“Who?” Grey asked.

“Scanlon, of course.” Trevelyan turned away momentarily, rubbing a wrist across his eyes, then dropped back, leaning against the rail, his back to the sea. He folded his arms across his chest and stared moodily ahead, intent on whatever dire visions he harbored within.

“Let us walk,” Grey suggested, after a moment. “Come; the air will do you good.”

Trevelyan hesitated, but then shrugged and assented. They walked in silence for some time, circling the deck, dodging seamen about their tasks.

Mindful of his leather-heeled boots and the heaving deck, Grey strode carefully at first, but the boards were dry, and the motion of the ship a stimulus to his senses; despite his own predicament, he felt his spirits rise with the blood that surged through his cheeks and refreshed his cramped limbs. He began to feel truly himself again for the first time in days.

True, he was captive on a ship headed for India, and thus unlikely to see home again soon. But he was a soldier, used to long journeys and separations—and the thought of India, with all its mysteries of light and histories of blood, was undeniably exciting. And Quarry could be trusted to inform his family that he was likely still alive.

What would his family do about the wedding preparations? he wondered. Trevelyan’s abrupt flight would be an enormous scandal, and an even greater one if word got out—which indubitably it would—of the involvement of Frau Mayrhofer and of her husband’s shocking murder. He was not disposed to believe the lady’s claim to have killed Mayrhofer; not after seeing the body. Even in health, for a woman to have done that. . . and Maria Mayrhofer was slightly built, no larger than his cousin Olivia.

Poor Olivia; her name would be spread over the London broadsheets for weeks as the jilted fiancйe—but at least her personal reputation would be spared. Thank God the affair had come to a head before the wedding, and not afterward. That was something.

Would Trevelyan have bolted, had Grey not confronted him? Or would he have stayed—married Olivia, gone on running his companies, dabbling in politics, moving in society as the intimate of dukes and ministers, maintaining his facade as a rock-solid merchant—while privately carrying on his passionate affair with the widow Mayrhofer?

Grey cast a sidelong glance at his companion. The Cornishman’s face was still dark, but that brief glimpse of despair had vanished, leaving his jaw set with determination.

What could the man be thinking? To flee as he had, leaving scandal in his wake, would have disastrous consequences for his business affairs. His companies, their investors, his clients, the miners and laborers, captains and seamen, clerks and warehousemen who worked for the companies—even the brother in Parliament; all would be affected by Trevelyan’s flight.

Still, his jaw was set, and he walked like a man making for a distant goal, rather than one out for a casual stroll.

Grey recognized both the determination and the power of will from which it sprang, but he also was beginning to realize that the facade of the solid merchant was just that; beneath it lay a mind like quicksilver, able to sum up circumstances and change tack in an instant—and more than ruthless in its decisions.

He realized with a lurch of the heart that Trevelyan reminded him in some small way of Jamie Fraser. But no: Fraser was ruthless and quick, and might be equally passionate in his feelings—but above all, he was a man of honor.

By contrast, he could now see the deep selfishness that underlay Trevelyan’s character. Jamie Fraser would not have abandoned those who depended on him, not even for the sake of a woman who—Grey was forced to admit—he clearly loved beyond life itself. As for the notion of his stealing another man’s wife, it was inconceivable.

A romantic or a novelist might count the world well lost for love. So far as Grey’s own opinion counted, a love that sacrificed honor was less honest than simple lust, and degraded those who professed to glory in it.

“Me lord!”

He glanced up at the cry, and saw the two Byrds hanging like apples in the rigging just above. He waved, glad that at least Tom Byrd had found his brother. Would someone think to send word to the Byrd household? he wondered. Or would they be left in uncertainty as to the fate of twoof their sons?

That thought depressed him, and a worse one followed on the heels of it. While he had recovered the requisitions, he could tell no one that he had done so and that the information was safe. By the time he reached any port from which word could be sent, the War Office would long since have been obliged to act.

And they would be acting on the assumption that the intelligence had in fact fallen into enemy hands—a staggering assumption, in terms of the strategic readjustments required, and their expense. An expense that might be paid in lives, as well as money. He pressed an elbow against his side, feeling the crackle of the papers he had tucked away, fighting a sudden impulse to throw himself overboard and swim toward England until exhaustion pulled him down. He had succeeded—and yet the result would be the same as though he had failed utterly.

Beyond the ruin of his own career, great damage would be done to Harry Quarry and the regiment—and to Hal. To have harbored a spy in the ranks was bad enough; to have failed to catch him in time was far worse.

In the end, it seemed he would have no more than the satisfaction of finally hearing the truth. He had heard but a fraction of it so far—but it was a long way to India, and with both Trevelyan and Scanlon trapped here with him, he was sure of discovering everything, at last.

“How did you know that I was poxed?” Trevelyan asked abruptly.

“Saw your prick, over the piss-pots at the Beefsteak,” he replied bluntly. It seemed absurd now that he should have suffered a moment’s shame or hesitation in the matter. And yet—would it have made a difference, if he had spoken out at once?

Trevelyan gave a small grunt of surprise.

“Did you? I do not even recall seeing you there. But I suppose I was distracted.”

He was clearly distracted now; his step had slowed, and a seaman carrying a small cask was obliged to swerve in order to avoid collision. Grey took Trevelyan by the sleeve and led him into the lee of the forward mast, where a huge water barrel stood, a tin cup attached to it by a narrow chain.

Grey gulped water from the cup, even in his depression taking some pleasure from the feel of it, cool in his mouth. It was the first thing he had been able to taste properly in days.

“That must have been . . .” Trevelyan squinted, calculating. “Early June—the sixth?”

“About that. Does it matter?”

Trevelyan shrugged and took the dipper.

“Not really. It’s only that that was when I first noticed the sore myself.”

“Rather a shock, I suppose,” Grey said.

“Rather,” Trevelyan replied dryly. He drank, then dropped the tin cup back into the barrel.

“Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing,” the Cornishman went on, as though to himself. “But . . . no. That wouldn’t have done.” He waved a hand, dismissing whatever his thought had been.

“I could scarcely believe it. Went about in a daze for the rest of the day, and spent the night wondering what to do—but I knew it was Mayrhofer; it had to be.”

Looking up, he caught sight of Grey’s face, and a wry smile broke out upon his own.

“No, not directly. Through Maria. I had shared no woman’s bed since I began with her, and that was more than a year before. But clearly she had been infected by her whore-mongering bastard of a husband; she was innocent.”

Not only innocent, but clearly ignorant as well. Not wishing to confront her with his discovery at once, Trevelyan had gone in search of her doctor instead.

“I said that she had lost a child, just before I met her? I got the doctor who attended her to talk; he confirmed that the child had been malformed, owing to the mother’s syphilitic condition—but naturally he had kept quiet about that.”

Trevelyan’s fingers drummed restlessly on the lid of the barrel.

“The child was born malformed, but alive—it died in the cradle, a day after birth. Mayrhofer smothered it, wishing neither to be burdened by it nor to have his wife learn the cause of its misfortune.”

Grey felt his stomach contract.

“How do you know this?”

Trevelyan rubbed a hand over his face, as though tired.

“Reinhardt admitted it to her—to Maria. I brought the doctor to her, you see; forced him to tell her what he had told me. I thought—if she knew what Mayrhofer had done, infecting her, dooming their child, that perhaps she would leave him.”

She did not. Hearing out the doctor in numb silence, she had sat for a long time, considering, and then asked both Trevelyan and the doctor to go; she would be alone.

She had stayed alone for a week. Her husband was away, and she saw no one save the servants who brought her meals—all sent away, untouched.

“She thought of self-murder, she told me,” Trevelyan said, staring out toward the endless sea. “Better, she thought, to end it cleanly than to die slowly, in such fashion. Have you ever seen someone dying of the syphilis, Grey?”

“Yes,” Grey said, the bad taste creeping back into his mouth. “In Bedlam.”

One in particular, a man whose disease had deprived him both of nose and balance, so that he reeled drunkenly across the floor, crashing helplessly into the other inmates, foot stuck in a night bucket, tears and snot streaming over his rutted face. He could but hope that the syphilis had taken the man’s reason, as well, so that he was in ignorance of his situation.

He looked then at Trevelyan, envisioning for the first time that clever, narrow face, ruined and drooling. It would happen, he realized with a small shock. The only question was how long it might be before the symptoms became clear.

“If it were me, I might think of suicide, too,” he said.

Trevelyan met his eyes, then smiled ruefully.

“Would you? We are different, then,” he said, with no tone of judgment in the observation. “That course never occurred to me, until Maria showed me her pistol, and told me what she had been thinking.”

“You thought only of how the fact might be used to separate the lady from her husband?” Grey said, hearing the edge in his own voice.

“No,” Trevelyan replied, seeming unoffended. “Though that had been my goal since I met her; I did not propose to give it up. I tried to see her, after she had sent me away, but she would not receive me.”

Instead, Trevelyan had set himself to discover what remedy might be available.

“Jack Byrd knew of the difficulty; it was he who informed me that Finbar Scanlon seemed an able man in such matters. He had gone back to the apothecary’s shop, to inquire after Mrs. O’Connell’s welfare, and had become well acquainted with Scanlon, you see.”

“And that is where you met Sergeant O’Connell, returning to his home?” Grey asked, sudden enlightenment coming upon him. Trevelyan already knew of O’Connell’s peculations, and certainly had more men than Jack Byrd at his beck and call. He would have been more than capable, Grey thought, of having the Sergeant murdered, abstracting the papers for his own purposes regarding Mayrhofer. And those purposes now fulfilled, of course he could casually hand the papers back, uncaring of what damage had been done in the meantime!

He felt his blood rising at the thought—but Trevelyan was staring at him blankly.

“No,” he said. “I met O’Connell only the once, myself. Vicious sort,” he added, reflectively.

“And you did not have him killed?” Grey demanded, skepticism clear in his voice.

“No, why should I?” Trevelyan frowned at him a little; then his brow cleared.

“You thought I had him done in, in order to get the papers?” Trevelyan’s mouth twitched; he seemed to be finding something funny in the notion. “My God, John, you do have the most squalid opinion of my character!”

“You think it unjustified, do you?” Grey inquired acidly.

“No, I suppose not,” Trevelyan admitted, wiping a knuckle under his nose. He had not been recently shaved, and tiny drops of water were condensing on the sprouting whiskers, giving him a silvered look.

“But no,” he repeated. “I told you I had killed no one—nor had I anything to do with O’Connell’s death. That story belongs to Mr. Scanlon, and I am sure he will tell it to you, as soon as he is at liberty.”

Trevelyan glanced, as though despite himself, at the door that led to the quarters below, and then away.

“Should you be with her?” Grey asked quietly. “Go, if you like. I can wait.”

Trevelyan shook his head and glanced away.

“I cannot help,” he said. “And I can scarcely bear to see her in such straits. Scanlon will fetch me if—if I am needed.”

Seeming to detect some unspoken accusation in Grey’s manner, he looked up defensively.

“I did stay with her, the last time the fever came on. She sent me away, saying that it disturbed her to see my agitation. She prefers to be alone, when . . . things go wrong.”

“Indeed. As she was after learning the truth from the doctor, you said.”

Trevelyan took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders, as though setting himself for some unpleasant task.

“Yes,” he said bleakly. “Then.”

She had been alone for a week, save for the servants, who kept away at her own request. No one knew how long she had sat alone, that final day in her white-draped boudoir. It was long past dark when her husband had finally returned, somewhat the worse for drink, but still coherent enough to understand her accusation, her demand for the truth about her child.

“She said that he laughed,” Trevelyan said, his tone remote, as though reporting some business disaster; a mine cave-in, perhaps, or a sunken ship. “He told her then that he had killed the child; told her that she should be grateful to him, that he had saved her from living day after day with the shame of its deformity.”

At this, the woman who had lived patiently for years with the knowledge of infidelity and promiscuity felt the bonds of her vows break asunder, and Maria Mayrhofer had stepped across that thin line of prohibition that separates justice from vengeance. Mad with rage and sorrow, she had flung back in his teeth all the insults she had suffered through the years of their marriage, threatening to expose all his tawdry affairs, to reveal his syphilitic condition to society, to denounce him openly as a murderer.

The threats had sobered Mayrhofer slightly. Staggering from his wife’s presence, he had left her raging and weeping. She had the pistol that had been her constant companion through her week of brooding, ready to hand. She had hunted often in the hills near her Austrian home, was accustomed to guns; it was the work of a moment to load and prime the weapon.

“I do not know for sure what she intended,” Trevelyan said, his eyes fixed on a flight of gulls that wheeled over the ocean, diving for fish. “She told me that she didn’t know, herself. Perhaps she meant to kill herself—or both of them.”

As it was, the door to her boudoir had opened a few minutes later, and her husband lurched back in, clad in the green velvet dress which she wore to her assignations with Trevelyan. Flushed with drink and temper, he taunted her, saying that she dared not expose him—or he would see that both she and her precious lover paid a worse price. What would become of Joseph Trevelyan, he demanded, lurching against the doorframe, once it was known that he was not only an adulterer but also a sodomite?

“And so she shot him,” Trevelyan concluded, with a slight shrug. “Straight through the heart. Can you blame her?”

“How do you suppose he learned of your assignations at Lavender House?” Grey asked, ignoring the question. He wondered with a certain misgiving what Richard Caswell might have told about his own presence there, years before. Trevelyan had not mentioned it, and surely he would have, if . . .

Trevelyan shook his head, sighed, and closed his eyes against the glare of the sun off the water.

“I don’t know. As I said, Reinhardt Mayrhofer was an intriguer. He had his sources of information—and he knew Magda, who came from the village near his estate. I paid her well, but perhaps he paid her better. You can never trust a whore, after all,” he added, with a slight tinge of bitterness.

Thinking of Nessie, Grey thought that it depended on the whore, but did not say so.

“Surely Mrs. Mayrhofer did not smash in her husband’s face,” he said instead. “Was that you?”

Trevelyan opened his eyes and nodded.

“Jack Byrd and I.” He lifted his head, searching the rigging, but the two Byrds had flown. “He is a good fellow, Jack. A good fellow,” he repeated, more strongly.

Brought to her senses by the pistol’s report, Maria Mayrhofer had at once stepped from her boudoir and called a servant, whom she sent posthaste across the City to summon Trevelyan. Arriving with his trusted servant, the two of them had carried the body, still clad in green velvet, out to the carriage house, debating what to do with it.

“I could not allow the truth to come out,” Trevelyan explained. “Maria might easily hang, should she come to trial—though surely there was never a murder so well-deserved. Even were she acquitted, though, the simple fact of a trial would mean exposure. Of everything.”

It was Jack Byrd who thought of the blood. He had slipped out, returning with a bucket of pig’s blood from a butcher’s yard. They had smashed in the corpse’s face with a shovel, and then bundled both body and bucket into the carriage. Jack had driven the equipage the short distance to St. James’s Park. It was past midnight by that time, and the torches that normally lit the public pathways were long since extinguished.

They had tethered the horses and carried the body swiftly a little way into the park, there dumping it under a bush and dousing it with blood, then escaping back to the carriage.

“We hoped that the body would be taken for that of a simple prostitute,” Trevelyan explained. “If no one examined it carefully, they would assume it to be a woman. If they discovered the truth of the sex . . . well, it would cause more curiosity, but men of certain perverse predilections also are prone to meet with violent death.”

“Quite,” Grey murmured, keeping his face carefully impassive. It was not a bad plan—and he was, in spite of everything, pleased to have deduced it correctly. The death of an anonymous prostitute—of either sex—would cause neither outcry nor investigation.

“Why the blood, though? It was apparent—once one looked—that the man had been shot.”

Trevelyan nodded.

“Yes. We thought that the blood might obscure the cause of death, by suggesting that he had been beaten to death—but principally, its purpose was to prevent anyone undressing the body, and thus discovering its sex.”

“Of course.” Usable clothes found on a corpse would routinely be stripped and sold, either by the constables who found it, by the morgue-keeper who took charge of it, or, at the last, by the gravedigger who undertook to bury the body in some anonymous potter’s field. But no one—other than Grey himself—would have touched that sodden, reeking garment.

Had the fact of the green velvet dress not caught Magruder’s notice, or if they had had the luck to dispose of the body in another district of the City, it was very likely that no one would have bothered examining the body at all; it would simply have been put down as one of the casualties of London’s dark world and dismissed, as casually as one might dismiss the death of a stray dog crushed by a coach’s wheels.

“Sir?”

He hadn’t heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and was startled to find Jack Byrd standing behind them, his dark face serious. Trevelyan took one look at it, and headed for the doors to the companionway.

“Mrs. Mayrhofer is worse?” Grey asked, watching the Cornishman stumble through a knot of sailors mending canvas.

“I don’t know, me lord. I think she may be better. Mr. Scanlon come out and sent me to fetch Mr. Joseph. He says as how he’ll be in the crew’s mess for a bit, should you want to talk to him, though,” he added, as an obvious afterthought.

Grey glanced at the young man, and felt a twitch of recognition. Not the family resemblance to young Tom; something else. Jack Byrd’s eyes were still focused on his master, as Trevelyan reached the hatchway, and there was something unguarded in his face that Grey’s nervous system discerned long before his mind made sense of it.

It was gone in the next instant, Jack Byrd’s face lapsing back into an older, leaner version of his younger brother’s as he turned to Grey.

“Will you be wanting Tom, my lord?” he asked.

“Not now,” Grey responded automatically. “I’ll go and talk to Mr. Scanlon. Tell Tom I’ll send for him when I need him.”

“Very good, my lord.” Jack Byrd bowed gravely, an elegant footman’s gesture at odds with his seaman’s slops, and walked away, leaving Grey to find his own way.

He made his way downward in search of the crew’s mess, scarcely noticing his surroundings, mind belatedly searching for logical connexions that might support the conclusion his lower faculties had leaped to.

Jack Byrd knew of the difficulty,Trevelyan had said, referring to his own infection. It was he who informed me that Finbar Scanlon seemed an able man in such matters.

And Maria Mayrhofer had said that her husband threatened Trevelyan, asking what would happen to him once it was known that he was not only an adulterer but also a sodomite?

Not so fast, Grey cautioned himself. In all likelihood, Mayrhofer had only referred to Trevelyan’s association with Lavender House. And it was by no means unusual for a devoted servant to be privy to a master’s intimate concerns—he shuddered to think what Tom knew of his own intimacies at this point.