Lord John and the Private Matter (Lord John Grey #1) 7

“Mm.” Grey swallowed egg and tried to focus his attention. “For what?”

“Edging for handkerchiefs.”

“That one.” He pointed with his spoon at the sample on the coffeepot. “The other is too masculine.” In fact, the first one reminded him vividly—though not unpleasantly—of the lace trim on the gown worn by Magda, madam of the Meacham Street brothel.

Olivia’s face broke into a beaming smile.

“Exactly what I thought! Excellent; I want to have a dozen handkerchiefs made for Joseph—I’ll have an extra half-dozen made up for you as well, shall I?”

“Spending Joseph’s money already, are you?” he teased. “The poor man will be bankrupt before you’ve been married a month.”

“Not a bit of it,” she said loftily. “This is my own money, from Papa. A gift from the bride to the bridegroom. D’you think he’ll like it?”

“I’m sure he’ll be charmed at the thought.” And lace-trimmed handkerchiefs would go so well with emerald velvet, he thought, stricken by a sudden qualm. All around him, preparations for the wedding were proceeding like the drawing up of battle lines, with regiments of cooks, battalions of sempstresses, and dozens of people with no discernible function but a great deal of self-important busy-ness swarming through the house each day. Five weeks until the wedding.

“You have a bit of egg on your ruffle, Johnny.”

“Have I?” He peered downward, flicking at the offending particle. “There, is it gone?”

“Yes. Aunt Bennie says you have a new valet,” she said, still looking him over with an air of appraisal. “That odd little person. Is he not a trifle young and—unpolished—for such a position?”

“Mr. Byrd may lack something in terms of years and experience,” Grey admitted, “but he does know how to administer a proper shave.”

His cousin peered closely at him—like his mother, she was a trifle short of sight—then leaned across the table to stroke his cheek, a liberty he suffered with good grace.

“Oh, that is nice,” she said with approval. “Like satin. Is he good with your wardrobe?”

“Splendid,” he assured her, with a mental picture of Tom Byrd frowning over his mending of the torn coat seam. “Most assiduous.”

“Oh, good. You must tell him, then, to make sure your gray velvet is in good repair. I should like you to wear it for the wedding supper, and last time you had it on, I noticed that the hem had come unstitched in back.”

“I shall call it to his attention,” he assured her gravely. “Is this concern lest my appearance disgrace your nuptials, or are you practicing care of domestic detail in preparation for assuming command of your own household?”

She laughed, but flushed, very prettily.

“I am sorry, Johnny. How overbearing of me! I confess, I do worry. Joseph tells me I need not trouble over anything, his butler is a marvel—but I do not wish to be the sort of wife who is nothing more than an ornament.”

She looked quite anxious as she said this, and he felt a deep qualm of misgiving. Caught up in his own responsibilities, he had scarcely taken time to think how his investigation of Joseph Trevelyan might affect his cousin personally, should the man indeed prove to be poxed.

“You are never less than ornamental,” he said, a little gruffly, “but I am sure that any man of worth must discern the true nature of your character, and value it much more highly than your outward appearance.”

“Oh.” She flushed more deeply, and lowered her lashes. “Why—thank you. What a kind thing to say!”

“Not at all. Will I fetch you a kipper?”

They ate in a pleasant silence for a few moments, and Grey’s thoughts had begun to drift toward a contemplation of the day’s activities, when Olivia’s voice pulled him back to the present moment.

“Have you never thought of marriage for yourself, John?”

He plucked a bun from the basket on the table, taking care not to roll his eyes. The newly betrothed and married of either sex invariably believed it their sacred duty to urge others to share their happy state.

“No,” he said equably, breaking the bread. “I see no pressing need to acquire a wife. I have no estate or household that requires a mistress, and Hal is making an adequate job of continuing the family name.” Hal’s wife, Minnie, had just presented her husband with a third son—the family ran to boys.

Olivia laughed.

“Well, that is true,” she agreed. “And I suppose you enjoy playing the gay bachelor, with all the ladies swooning after you. They do, you know.”

“Oh, la.” He made a dismissive gesture with the butter knife, and resumed his attention to the bun. Olivia seemed to take the hint, and retired into the mysteries of a fruit compote, leaving him to organize his thoughts.

The chief business of the day must be the O’Connell affair, of course. His inquiries into Trevelyan’s private life had yielded more mystery than answer so far, but his investigation of the Sergeant’s murder had produced still less in the way of results.

Inquiries into the Stokes family had revealed them to be a polyglot crew descended from a Greek sailor who had jumped ship in London some forty years earlier, whereupon he had promptly met and married a girl from Cheapside, taken her name—very sensibly, as his own was Aristopolous Xenokratides—and settled down to produce a numerous family, most of whom had promptly returned to the sea like spawning efts. Iphigenia, stranded on shore by the accident of her gender, ostensibly earned her living by the needle, with occasional financial augmentations offered by assorted gentlemen with whom she had lived, Sergeant O’Connell being the most recent of these.

Grey had set Malcolm Stubbs to explore the family’s further connexions, but he had little hope of this producing anything helpful.

As for Finbar Scanlon and his wife—

“Have you ever been in love, John?”

He looked up, startled, to see Olivia looking earnestly at him over the teapot. Evidently she had not abandoned her inquiries, after all, but had merely been occupied with the consumption of breakfast.

“Well … yes,” he said slowly, unsure whether this was mere familial curiosity or something more.

“But you did not marry. Why was that?”

Why was that, indeed. He took a deep breath.

“It wasn’t possible,” he said simply. “My lover died.”

Her face clouded, full lip trembling with sympathy.

“Oh,” she murmured, looking down at her empty plate. “That’s awfully sad, Johnny. I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged with a slight smile, acknowledging her sympathy but not encouraging further questions.

“Any interesting letters?” he asked, raising his chin toward the small sheaf of papers by her plate.

“Oh! Yes, I almost forgot—here are yours.” Burrowing through the stack, she unearthed two missives addressed to him and handed them across.

The first note, from Magruder, was brief but riveting. Sergeant O’Connell’s uniform—or at least the coat to it—had been found. The pawnbroker in whose shop it was discovered said that it had been brought in by an Irish soldier, himself wearing a uniform.

I went myself to inquire, Magruder wrote, but the man was unable to be sure of the rank or regiment of this Irishman—and I were loath to press him, for fear of his recollection transforming the man into a Welsh lance-corporal or a Cornish grenadier, under the pressure of forced recollection. For what the observation be worth, he believed the man to be selling an old coat of his own.

Impatient as he was for more detail, Grey was forced to admit the soundness and delicacy of Magruder’s instinct. Press questions too far, and a man would tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. It was much better to ask questions briefly, in a number of short sessions, rather than to bombard a witness with interrogation—but time was short.

Still, Magruder had got what he could be sure of. While all insignia and buttons had naturally been stripped from the coat, it was identifiable as having belonged to a sergeant of the 47th. While the government dictated certain specifics of army dress, those gentlemen who raised and financed their own regiments held the privilege of designing the uniforms for said regiments. In the case of the 47th, it was Hal’s wife who had patterned the officers’ coats, with a narrow buff stripe up the outside of the sleeve, which helped to draw the eye when an arm was waved in command. A sergeant’s coat, poorer in material and less stylish in cut, still bore that stripe.

Grey made a mental note to have someone check the other regimental sergeants, to be sure that none had sold an old coat—but this was merely for the sake of thoroughness. Magruder had not only described the coat and included a brief sketch of the garment, but noted also that the lining of the coat had been unstitched at one side, the stitches appearing to have been cut, rather than torn.

Well, that explained where O’Connell had been keeping his booty, if not where it was now. Grey took a bite of cold toast and reached for the second note, sporting Harry Quarry’s bold black scrawl. This one was still more brief.

Meet me at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, tomorrow at six o’clock, it read, the signature rendered merely as a large, slapdash “Q …” P.S. wear old uniform.

He was still frowning at this terse communication when Tom Byrd’s round head poked into the room, looking apologetic.

“Me lord? Sorry, sir, but you did say as how if a big Scotchman was to come—”

Grey was already on his feet, leaving Olivia open-mouthed behind him.

Rab the chairman was tall and solid, with a stupid, sullen face that barely brightened into dourness at Grey’s greeting.

“Agnes said ye’d pay for a word,” he muttered, not quite able to keep from staring at the bronze orrery that stood upon the table by the library window, its graceful arms and swooping orbs catching the morning sun.

“I will,” Grey said promptly, wanting to dispose of the man before his mother should come downstairs and start asking questions. “What is the word?”

Rab’s bloodshot eyes met his, displaying a bit more intelligence than did the rest of his countenance.

“Ye dinna want to know the price first?”

“Very well. How much do you want?” He could hear the Countess’s voice upstairs, raised in song.

The man’s thick tongue poked out, touching his upper lip in contemplation.

“Two pound?” he said, trying to sound indifferently truculent, but unable to conceal the tentative note in his voice. Obviously, two pounds was a nearly unthinkable fortune; he had no faith that it might actually be forthcoming, but was willing to hazard the chance.

“How much of that does Agnes get?” Grey asked pointedly. “I shall see her again, mind, and I’ll ask to make certain that she’s had her share.”

“Oh. Ah …” Rab struggled with the problem of division for a moment, then he shrugged. “Half, then.”

Grey was surprised at this generosity—and surprised further that Rab was able to discern his response.

“I mean to marry her,” the chairman said gruffly, fixing him with a stare and narrowing one eye as though daring him to make something of this statement. “When she’s bought free of her contract, aye?”

Grey bit his tongue to forestall an incautious response to this startling revelation, merely nodding as he dug into his pocketbook. He laid the silver on the desk, but kept his hand over it.

“What are you to tell me, then?”

“A house called ‘Lavender,’ in Barbican Street. Near to Lincoln’s Inn. Big place—not so much to look at from outside, but verra rich within.”

Grey felt a sudden cold weight in the pit of his stomach, as though he had swallowed lead shot.

“You have been inside?”

Rab moved one burly shoulder, shaking his head.

“Nah, then. Only to the door. But I could see as there were carpets like that”—he nodded at the silk Kermanshah on the floor by the desk—“and pictures on the wall.” He lifted a chin like a battering ram, indicating the painting over the mantelpiece, of Grey’s paternal grandfather seated on horseback. The chairman frowned with the effort of recall.

“I could see a bit into one of the rooms. There was a … thing. No quite like that thing”—he nodded at the orrery—“but along the same lines, ken? Bits o’ clockwork, like.”

The sensation of cold heaviness was worse. Not that there could have been any doubt about it from the beginning of Rab’s account.

“The … woman you fetched from this place,” Grey forced himself to ask. “Do you know her name? Did you deliver her there, as well?”

Rab shook his head, indifferent. There was no sign on his oxlike face that he knew that the person he had transported was not indeed a woman, nor that Lavender House was not merely another wealthy London house.

Grey essayed a few more questions, for form’s sake, but received no further information of value, and at last he removed his hand and stood back, nodding to indicate that Rab might take his pay.

The chairman was likely a few years younger than Grey himself, but his hands were gnarled, frozen in a curve, as though in permanent execution of his occupation. Grey watched him fumble, thick fingers slowly pinching up the coins one by one, and curled his own hands into fists among the folds of his banyan, to restrain the impulse to do it for him.

The skin of Rab’s hands was thick as horn, the palms yellow with callus. The hands themselves were broad and bluntly powerful, with black hairs sprouting over knobbled joints. Grey saw the chairman to the door himself, all the while imagining those hands upon Nessie’s silken skin, with a sense of morbid wonder.