Текст книги "Lord John and the Hand of Devils"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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“May we?” The brandy had calmed Mr. Lister, and had the salutary effect of relieving his stammer, but had also brought a hectic flush to his pale cheeks.

“I thank you for your words, sir. And seeing that you share the profession of arms, I suppose you mean them.”

“I do,” Grey said, somewhat surprised.

Lister mopped at his face with the handkerchief Tom had discreetly provided, and looked directly at Grey for the first time.

“You will think me ungrateful, my lord, and I assure you I am not. But I must tell you that we—my wife and I—were completely opposed to Philip’s choice of career. We—fell out over the matter, I regret to say. In f-fact…” He swallowed heavily. “We had not spoken to Philip since he took up his commission.”

And now he was dead, as a direct result of having done so. Grey took a deep breath and nodded.

“I see, sir. You have my sympathy. A bit more brandy, perhaps? Purely for medicinal purposes.”

Mr. Lister looked at the bottle with a certain longing, but shook his head.

“No, my lord. I…no.”

He fell silent, looking down at the sword, which he now clutched tightly, one hand wrapped around the scabbard.

“May I ask a great favor of you, my lord?” he said abruptly.

“Certainly,” Grey replied, willing to do almost anything, firstly to relieve Lister’s distress, secondly to get him out of Grey’s sitting room.

“I said that we were opposed to Philip’s pursuing a career with the army. He bought his commission with a small inheritance, and left almost immediately for London.” The hectic flush had faded a little; now it came back, washing up Mr. Lister’s throat in a tide of shame. “He—he t-took…” The words dried in his throat, and he looked down, fumbling with the ring of the scabbard.

Took what? Grey wondered. The family silver? Was he to be asked to comb pawnshops for bartered heirlooms? With a sense of resignation, he poured more tea, picked up the brandy bottle and added a healthy dollop, then firmly handed the cup to Mr. Lister.

“Took what?” he asked bluntly.

Mr. Lister took the tea with trembling hands and, with an obvious effort, went on, looking down into its aromatic depths.

“He had formed an…attachment. To the daughter of our minister—a most suitable young woman; my wife and daughters were terribly fond of her.”

The minister had been, if not fond of Philip Lister, at least amenable to the match—until Philip had declared his intention of becoming a soldier.

The upshot of this had been that the minister had broken off the attachment—evidently it had not reached the stage of betrothal—and forbade Philip the house. Whereupon the new lieutenant, inflamed, had come round by night with a ladder, and in the best romantic tradition, induced his love to elope with him.

The little he had heard from Quarry of Philip Lister had already convinced Grey that perhaps the son was not so religious in outlook as were his parents; thus this revelation was not quite the shock to him that it plainly had been to his family.

“The scandal,” Mr. Lister whispered, and, gulping tea, shuddered convulsively. “The disgrace of it nearly killed m-my wife. And the Reverend Mr. Thackeray, of course…The things he preached…”

Familiar with the ways of scandal, Grey had no difficulty in envisioning the aftermath of Lieutenant Lister’s elopement. The religious aspects of the matter had—as they usually did, he reflected—merely magnified the damage.

The Lister family had been summarily dismissed from the congregation, even though they had already publicly disowned Philip. Their dismissal had in turn caused dissent and schism in the congregation—which had, naturally, spread throughout the village of which Mr. Lister was squire, resulting in general bad feeling, fisticuffs in the pub, the burning of someone’s hayrick, and specific and personal denunciation of the Listers and their supporters from the pulpit.

“It is not that I consider the practice of arms immoral in itself, you understand,” Mr. Lister said, wiping his nose—which had gone bright red with emotion and brandy—with a napkin. “Only that we had hoped for better things for Philip. He was our only son.”

Grey was conscious of Tom Byrd on the opposite side of the room, prickling like a hedgehog, but was careful not to catch his eye.

“I quite understand, sir,” he said, meaning only to be soothing.

“Do you, my lord?” Lister gave him a look of puzzled anguish. He seemed intent that Grey shouldunderstand. His brow drew down and he turned the sword over in his hand, seeming to search for some means of making himself clearer.

“It is such—such a brutaloccupation, is it not?” he burst out at last.

Grey stared at him, thinking, Yes. And so?

Before he could formulate something polite in reply, Tom Byrd, bending over the table to retrieve the seed cake, leapt in.

“I daresay,” he said hotly. “And if it wasn’t, you’d be saying what you just said in bleedin’ French, wouldn’t you?”

Lister regarded him, openmouthed. Grey coughed and motioned Tom hastily out of the room. The young valet went, with a last glower of disapproval at their guest.

“I must apologize for my valet, sir,” Grey said, feeling a terrible urge to laugh. “He is…” A faint rattle from the cup and saucer he held made him realize that his hands had begun to shake, and he set them carefully down, grasping his knees with both hands.

“He is honest,” Lister said bleakly.

Outspoken honesty was not a virtue generally prized in a valet, but it was a virtue for all that—and Grey prized it. He nodded, and cleared his throat.

“A, um, favor, I believe you said?”

“Yes, my lord.” The recounting of his woes—and the recollection of the Reverend Mr. Thackeray’s most iniquitous sermon—had revived Mr. Lister more than brandy. He sat bolt upright, cup clutched to his bosom, his dead son’s sword across his knees, and fixed Grey with a burning gaze.

“I wish your help, my lord, in finding the girl. Anne Thackeray. I have some reason to suppose she was with child—and if so, I want the babe.”

Iam completely insane.”

“You’ve a very kind heart, me lord,” Tom Byrd said reprovingly. “Not the same thing at all.”

“Oh, I am reasonably sure that it is—at least in this instance. Kind of you to give me the benefit of the doubt, though, Tom.”

“Of course, me lord. Lift your chin a bit, if you please.” Tom breathed heavily through his nose, frowning in concentration as he drew the razor delicately up the side of Grey’s neck.

“Not as I know why you said you’d do it, mind,” Byrd remarked.

Grey shrugged one shoulder, careful not to move his head. He wasn’t sure why he’d said he’d do it, either. In part, he supposed, because he felt some guilt over not having made an effort to return Lister’s sword to his father sooner. In part because the Listers’ village was no more than an hour’s ride from his brother Edgar’s place in Sussex—and he anticipated that having some excuse to escape from Maude might be useful.

And, if he were honest, because the prospect of dealing with other people’s trouble was a welcome distraction from his own. Of course, he reflected, none of these considerations proved that he was notinsane.

Tom Byrd’s considerations were of another sort, though.

“ Brutal occupation,is it?” he muttered. Lister’s words of the day before had clearly rankled. “I’ll brutalize him and he don’t mind his manners summat better. To say such a thing to you,and half a minute later ask you a bleedin’ great favor!”

“Well, the man was upset. I daresay he didn’t think—”

“Oh, he thought, all right! Me lord,” Tom added as an afterthought. “Reckon he’s done nothing butthink since his son was killed,” he added, in less vehement tones.

He laid down the razor and subjected Grey’s physiognomy to his usual searching inspection, hazel eyes narrowed in concentration. Satisfied that no stray whisker had escaped him, he took up the hairbrush and went round to complete the chore of making his employer fit for public scrutiny.

He snorted briefly, pausing to work out a tangle with his fingers. Grey’s hair was like his mother’s—fair, thick and slightly wavy, prone to disorder unless tightly constrained, which it always would be, if Tom Byrd was given his way. Actually, Tom would be best pleased if Grey would consent to have his head polled and wear a good wig like a decent gentleman, but some things were past hoping for.

“You’ve not been sleeping proper,” Byrd said accusingly. “I can tell. You’ve been a-wallowing on your pillow; your hair’s a right rat’s nest!”

“I do apologize, Tom,” Grey said politely. “Perhaps I should sleep upright in a chair, in order to make your work easier?”

“Hmp,” Byrd said. And added, after a few moment’s strenuous brushing, “Ah, well. P’r’aps the country air will help.”

Tom Byrd, always suspicious of the countryside, was not reassured by his first sight of Mudling Parva.

“Rats,” he said darkly, peering at the charmingly thatched rooves of the cottages they passed. “I’ll wager there’s rats up in them thatches, to say nothing of bugs and such nastiness. My old granny come from a village like this. She told stories, how the rats would come down from the thatch at night and eat the faces off babies. Right in their cradles!” He looked accusingly at Lord John.

“There are rats in London,” Lord John pointed out. “Probably ten times more of them than in the countryside. And neither you nor I, Tom, are babes.”

Tom hunched his shoulders, not convinced.

“Well, but. In the city, you can see things coming, like. Here…” He glanced round, his disparaging look taking in not only the muddy lane of the village and the occasional gaping villager, but also the tangled hedgerows, the darkly barren fallow fields, and the shadowed groves of leafless trees, huddled near the distant stream. “Things might sneak up on you here, me lord. Easy.”

Part II

Family Matters

Blackthorn Hall, Sussex

Grey knew that his mother’s first husband, Captain DeVane, had been a most impressive man to look at—tall, handsome, dark, and dashing, with an aristocratically prominent nose and hooded gray eyes that gave him the aspect of a poet; Grey had seen several portraits.

Edgar, like his elder brother, Paul, exhibited these same characteristics, to a degree that caused young women to stare at him in the village, their mouths half open, despite the fact that he was well into his forties.

Filial respect caused Grey to hesitate in passing ex post factoopinions on his mother’s judgment, but after half an hour in the company of either Paul or Edgar, he could not escape a lurking suspicion that a just Providence, seeing the DeVanes so well endowed with physical beauty, had determined that there was no reason to spoil the work by adding intelligence to the mix.

“What?” Edgar frowned at him in incomprehension. “Somebody thinks I might have blown up a cannon? Bloody cheek!”

Of course, Grey reflected with an inner sigh, his mother hadbeen only fifteen when she married DeVane.

“Not you, personally, no,” he assured Edgar. “The question—”

“Wasn’t even there,was I?” Edgar’s high cheekbones flushed with indignation.

“I’m sure I should have noticed if you had been,” Grey assured him gravely. “The question—”

“Who’s this Marchmont fellow, anyway? Piddling Irish title, not more than two generations out of the muck, what does he think he’s about, insulting me?” The DeVanes boasted nothing more than the odd knighthood, but could—and Maude often tiresomely did—trace their lineage back to well before the Conquest.

“I’m sure no insult was—” Well, actually, he was convinced of exactly the opposite; Marchmont’s purpose had been specific and blatant insult—and he did wonder why. Was it only to rattle Grey himself—or had he been meantto convey Marchmont’s remarks to Edgar, all along? Well, that was a question to be turned over later.

For the moment, he dropped any further attempts at soothing his half brother and asked bluntly, “Who oversees your powder mill, Edgar?”

Edgar looked at him blankly for an instant, but then the mist of anger in the hooded eyes lifted. Cleverness and intuition were not his strongest suits, but he could be depended on for straightforward facts.

“William Hoskins. Bill, he goes by. Decent man, got him from Waltham, a year ago. You think he’s something to do with this?”

“As I’ve never heard of the man ’til this moment, I’ve no idea, but I should like very much to speak with him, if you have no objection.”

“Not the slightest.” They were standing in the orchard behind the manor house; Grey had waited for an opportunity to speak to Edgar in privacy after breakfast.

“Come now,” said Edgar, turning with an air of decision. “We’ll cut across the fields; it’s quicker than fetching horses and going round by the road.”

It was rough going across the autumn fields, some already turned under by the plow, some still thick with stubble and the sharp, ragged ends of cornstalks, but Grey didn’t mind. The day was cold and misty, the sky gray and very low, so the air seemed still around them, wrapping them in silence, unbroken save for the occasional whirof a pheasant rising, or the distant calling of crows among the furrows.

It was a good two miles from the house to the powder mill, located on a bend of the river, and the brothers kept to their own thoughts for some time. At a stile, though, Grey caught his foot coming down and twisted awkwardly to save himself falling. The movement sent a sharp hot wire lancing through his chest, and he froze, trying not to breathe. He had made an involuntary noise, though, and Edgar turned, startled.

Grey lifted a hand, indicating that he would be all right—he hoped he would—but couldn’t speak.

Edgar’s brow creased with concern, and he put out a hand, but Grey waved him off. It had happened several times before, and generally the pain passed within a few moments; Dr. Longstreet’s irritation of the nerves, quite harmless. There was always the possibility, though, that it might indicate a shift of the sliver of iron embedded in his chest, in which case he might be dead within the next few seconds.

He held his breath until he felt his ears ring and his vision gray, then essayed the slightest breath, found it possible, and slowly relaxed, the nightmare feeling of suffocation vanishing as his lungs expanded without further incident.

“Are you quite all right, John?” Edgar was surveying him with an expression of worried concern that moved him.

“Yes, fine.” He straightened himself, and gave Edgar a quick grimace of reassurance. “Nothing. Just…taken queer for a moment.”

Edgar gave him a sharp look that reminded him for an unsettling instant of their mother.

“Taken queer,” he repeated, eyes passing up and down Grey’s body as though inspecting him for damage, like a horse that had come up suddenly lame. “Melton’s wife wrote to Maude that you’d been injured in Germany; she didn’t say it was serious.”

“It isn’t.” Grey spoke lightly, feeling pleasantly giddy at the realization that he wasn’t going to die just this minute.

Edgar eyed him for a moment longer, but then nodded, patted him awkwardly and surprisingly on the arm, and turned toward the river.

“Never could understand why you went to the army,” Edgar said, shaking his head in disapproval. “Hal…well, of course. But surely there was no need for youto take up soldiering.”

“What else should I do?”

Grey wasn’t offended. He felt suffused with a great lightness of being. The stubbled fields and clouded sky embraced him, immeasurably beautiful. Even Edgar seemed tolerable.

Oddly enough, Edgar seemed to be considering his question.

“You’ve money of your own,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “You could go into politics. Buy a pocket borough, stand for election.”

Just in time, Grey recalled his mother mentioning that Edgar himself had stood for Parliament in the last by-election, and refrained from saying that personally, he would prefer to be shot outright than to have anything to do with politics.

“It’s a thought,” he said agreeably, and they spoke no more, until the powder mill came in sight.

It was a brick building, a converted grain mill, and outwardly tranquil, its big waterwheel turning slowly.

“That’s for the coarse grinding,” Edgar said, nodding at the wheel. “We use a horse-drawn edge runner for the finer bits; more control.”

“Oh, to be sure,” Grey replied, having no idea what an edge runner might be. “A very aromatic process, I collect?”

A gust of wind had brought them an eye-watering wave of feculent stink, and Edgar coughed, pulling a handkerchief from his coat and putting it over his nose in a practiced manner.

“Oh, that. That’s just the jakesmen.”

“The what?” Grey hastily applied his own handkerchief in imitation.

“Saltpeter,” Edgar explained, taking obvious satisfaction in knowing something that his clever-arse younger brother did not. “One requires brimstone—sulfur, you know—charcoal, and saltpeter for gunpowder, of course—”

“I did know that, yes.”

“—We can produce the charcoal here, of course, and sulfur is reasonably cheap; well, saltpeter is not so expensive, either, but most of it is imported from India these days—used to get it from France, but now—Well, so, the more of it we can obtain locally—”

“You’re digging it out of your tenants’ manure piles?” Grey felt a strong inclination to laugh.

“And the privies. It forms in large nuggets, down at the bottom,” Edgar replied seriously, then smiled. “You know there’s a law, written in Good Queen Bess’s time, but still on the books, that allows agents of the Crown to come round and dig out the jakes of any citizen, in time of war? A local lawyer found it for me; most useful.”

“I should think your tenants might find having their privies excavated to be a positive benefit,” Grey observed, laughing openly.

“Well, that part’s all right,” Edgar admitted, looking modestly pleased with all this evidence of his business acumen. “They’re less delighted at our messing about their manure piles, but they do put up with it—and it lowers the cost amazingly.”

He waved briefly as they passed within sight of the jakesmen, two muffled figures unhitching a morose-looking horse from a wagon piled high with irregular chunks of reddish-brown, but kept his handkerchief pressed firmly to his nose until they had moved upwind.

“Anyway, it all goes there”—he pointed at a small brick shed—“to be melted and cleaned. Then there, to the mixing shed”—another brick building, somewhat larger—“and then to one of the milling sheds, for the grinding and corning. Oh, but here’s Hoskins; I’ll leave you to him. Hoskins!”

Bill Hoskins proved to be a ruddy, healthy-looking man of thirty or so—young for an overseer, Grey thought. He bowed most respectfully when introduced, but had no hesitation in meeting Grey’s eyes. Hoskins’s own were a striking blue-gray, the irises rimmed with black; Grey noticed, then felt an odd clench in the pit of his stomach at the realization that he hadnoticed.

In the course of the next hour, he learned a great many things, among them what an edge runner was—this being a great slab of stone that could be drawn by horses over a flat trough of gunpowder—what raw sulfur smelled like—rotten eggs, as digested by Satan; “the devil’s farts,” as Hoskins put it, with a smile—how gunpowder was shipped—by barge down the river—and that Bill Hoskins was a noticeably well-built man, with large, clean, remarkably steady hands.

Trying to ignore this irrelevant observation, he asked whether powder of different grades was produced.

Hoskins frowned, considering.

“Well, can be, of course. That’s what the corning’s for—” He nodded at one of the flimsily built wooden sheds. “The finer the powder’s ground and corned into grains, the more explosive it is. But then, the finer it’s corned, the riskier it is to handle. That’s why the milling sheds are built like that”—he nodded at one—“roofs and walls nobbut sheets of wood, cobbled together, loose-like. If one should go up, why, then, it’s easy to pick up the bits and put them back together.”

“Indeed. What about anyone who might have been working in the shed when it…went up?” Grey asked, feeling his mouth dry a little at the thought.

Hoskins smiled briefly, eyes creasing.

“Not so easy. What you asked, though—in practice, we make only the one grade of powder at this mill, as it’s all sold to the Ordnance Office for artillery. Hard enough to pass their tests; we do better than most mills, and even so, a good quarter of some batches turns out dud when they test it at Woolwich. Not that any o’ that is ourfault, mind. Some others is mebbe not so careful, naming no names.”

Grey recalled the incessant thuds from the proving grounds.

“Oh, pray do,” he said. “Name names, I mean.”

Hoskins laughed. He was missing a tooth, far back on one side, but for the most part, his teeth were still good.

“Well, there’s the three owners in the consortium—”

“Wait—what consortium is this?”

Hoskins looked surprised.

“Mr. DeVane didn’t tell you? There’s him, and Mr. Trevorson, what owns Mayapple Farm, downriver—” He lifted his chin, pointing. “And then Mr. Fanshawe, beyond; Mudlington, his place is called. They went in together to bid the contracts for powder with the government, so as to be able to hold their own with the bigger powder mills like Waltham. So the powder’s kegged and shipped all as one, marked with the consortium’s name, but it’s made separate at the three mills. And as I say, not everyone’s as careful as what we are here.”

He looked over the assemblage of buildings with a modest pride, but Grey paid no attention.

“Marked with the consortium’s name,” he repeated, his heart beating faster. “What name is that?”

“Oh. Just DeVane,as your brother’s the principal owner.”

“Indeed,” Grey said. “How interesting.”

Edgar had gone on about his own business, offering to send back a horse for Grey. He had refused this offer, not wishing to seem an invalid—and feeling that he might profit from the solitary walk back across the fields, having considerable new information to think about.

The news of the consortium of powder-mill owners put a different complexion on the matter altogether.

We make only the one grade of powder atthis mill,Hoskins had said. Grey had overlooked the slight emphasis at the time, but in retrospect, was sure it had been there.

The implication was plain; one or another of the consortium’s mills didmake the higher grades of black powder required for grenades, muskets, and rifle cartridges. He thought of turning back to ask Hoskins which mill might provide the more explosive powder, but thought better of it. He could check that with Edgar.

He must also ask Edgar to invite the other mill owners to Blackthorn Hall. He should speak with them in any case, and it was likely best to do that en masse,so that none of them should feel personally accused, and thus wary. He might also be able to gain some information from seeing them together, watching to see what the relations among them were.

Could there possibly be truth behind Lord Marchmont’s insinuations of sabotage? If so—and he was still highly inclined to doubt it—then it became at least understandable why Marchmont should have mentioned Edgar by name.

No matter which mill had actually produced it, any suspicious powder would have been identified simply with the DeVane mark—a simplified version of Edgar’s family arms, showing two chevrons quartered with an odd heraldic bird, a small, footless thing called a martlet. Hoskins had shown him the half-loaded barge at anchor in the river, stacked with powder kegs, all branded with that mark.

The sun was still obscured, but faintly visible; a small, hazy disk directly overhead. Seeing it, and becoming aware from interior gurglings that it had been a long time since breakfast, he considered what to do next.

There was time to ride to Mudling Parva. The obvious first step in doing as he had promised Mr. Lister was to interview the Reverend Mr. Thackeray, for any indications he might be able to provide of his errant daughter’s whereabouts.

He could, though, reasonably leave that errand for the morrow, and return to Blackthorn Hall for luncheon. He must speak to Edgar about the consortium. And Maude had mentioned at breakfast that a friend or two from the county would be joining them.

“Hmm,” he said.

His relations with his elder half brothers had always been distant but cordial—save for the occasion when, aged ten, he had unwisely expressed the opinion that Edgar’s fiancйe was an overbearing doggess, and been clouted halfway across the room in consequence. His opinion of his sister-in-law had not altered in subsequent years, but he hadlearned to keep his opinions to himself.

Perhaps he would leave a note for Edgar and find some sort of sustenance on his way to the village.

He walked on, enjoying the spongy give of the earth beneath his boots, and returned to his contemplation of black powder. Or tried to. Within a few moments, though, he became aware that he was not thinking so much of the consortium, or of his new knowledge of the process of powder-making…but of Bill Hoskins.

The realization unsettled him. He had not responded in that visceral way to a man’s physical presence since—well, since before Crefeld.

He hadn’t really supposed that that part of him was dead, but had been content to leave it dormant, preoccupied as he had been with other matters, such as survival. If anything, though, he had expected that it might return slowly, healing gradually, as the rest of his body did.

Nothing gradual about it. Sexual interest had sprung up, sudden and vivid as a steel-struck spark, ready to ignite anything flammable in the vicinity.

Not that anything was.There was not the slightest indication that Hoskins had any such proclivities—and even had Hoskins been giving him a blatantly rolling eyeball of invitation, Grey would in no case approach someone in his brother’s orbit, let alone his employ.

No, it was nothing but simple appreciation.

Still, when he came to the stile where he had been stricken on the way out, he did not climb it, but seized the rail of the fence and vaulted over, then walked on, whistling “Lilibulero.”

Upon due consideration, Grey left Tom Byrd at the ordinary in Mudling Parva, with enough money to render half a dozen men indiscreet, if not outright insensible, and instructions to gather whatever tidbits of local gossip might be obtained under these circumstances. He himself proceeded, in his soberest clothes, to the home of the Reverend Mr. Thackeray, where he introduced himself by title, rather than rank, as a club acquaintance of Philip Lister’s, interested in the welfare of Anne Thackeray.

From Mr. Lister’s description of the minister, Grey had been expecting something tall and cadaverous, equipped with piercing eye and booming voice. The reality was something resembling a pug dog belonging to his friend Lucinda, Lady Joffrey: small, with a massively wrinkled face and slightly bulging eyes at the front, the impression of a wagging curly tail at the back.

The Reverend Mr. Thackeray’s air of effusive welcome diminished substantially, however, when informed of Lord John’s business.

“I am afraid I cannot tell you anything regarding my late daughter, sir,” he said, repressed, but still courteous. “I know nothing of her movements since her departure from my house.”

“Is your daughter…deceased?” Grey asked cautiously. “I was unaware…”

“She is dead to us,” the minister said, shaking his head dolefully. “And might better be dead in all truth, rather than to be living in a state of grievous sin. We can but hope.”

“Er…quite.” Grey sipped at the tea he had been offered, pausing to regroup, then essayed a different sally. “Should she be alive, though—perhaps with a child…”

The Reverend Mr. Thackeray’s eyes bulged further at the thought, and Grey coughed.

“I hesitate to voice the observation for fear of seeming crude, and I can but trust to your courtesy to overlook my presumption—but Lieutenant Lister actually isdead,” he pointed out. “Your daughter—and perhaps her offspring—is therefore presumably left without protection. Would you not wish to receive news of her, perhaps to offer aid, even if you feel unable to accept her home again?”

“No, sir.” Mr. Thackeray spoke with regret, but most decidedly. “She has chosen the path of ruin and damnation. There is no turning back.”

“You will pardon my ignorance, sir—but does your faith not preach the possibility of redemption for sinners?”

The minister’s amiably wrinkled countenance contracted, and Grey perceived the small, sharp teeth behind the upper lip.

“We pray for her soul,” he said. “Of course. And that she will perceive the error of her ways, repent, and thus perhaps be allowed at last to enter the kingdom of God.”

“But you have no desire that she should receive forgiveness while still alive?” Grey had intended to remain aloofly courteous throughout the interview, no matter what was said, but found himself becoming irritated—whether with the Reverend Mr. Thackeray’s sanctimony or his illogic, he was not sure.

“Certainly we should attempt to emulate Our Lord in forgiving,” the minister said, twitching the bands of his coat straight and drawing himself as upright as his diminutive stature would permit. “But we cannot be seen to suffer licentiousness and lewd behavior. What example would I be to my congregation, were I to accept into my home a young woman who had suffered such public and flagrant moral ruin, the fruit of her sin apparent for all to see?”

“So she hasborne a child?” Grey asked, pouncing upon this last injudicious phrase.

All of the reverend’s wrinkles flushed dark red and he stood abruptly.

“I fear that I can spare you no more time, Lord John. I have a great many engagements this afternoon. If you will—”

He was interrupted by the parlor maid who had brought tea, who bobbed a curtsy from the doorway.

“Your pardon, sir; it’s Captain Fanshawe come.”

The choler left the Reverend’s face at once.

“Oh,” he said. He glanced quickly at Grey, then at the doorway. Grey could see the figure of a tall man, standing in the hallway just beyond the maid.

“Captain Fanshawe…would that be Captain Marcus Fanshawe, perhaps?” Grey asked politely. “I believe we are members of the same club.” He’d met the man briefly on that last, riotous visit to White’s, he thought.