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

So he hadn’t been wrong. He had seen that unguarded look on Jack Byrd’s face—and Jack Byrd had seen him watching. He lifted one eyebrow, and saw the young man’s shoulders drop a little in sudden relaxation.

“Well … so.” Jack Byrd shrugged, and let his hands fall on his knees.

“So.” Grey rubbed his own chin, feeling the heavy growth of whiskers there. There would be time for Tom to shave him before the Scorpion came alongside, he thought.

“Have you spoken to Tom? He will surely be hoping that you will come back to England with him.”

Jack Byrd bit his lower lip.

“I know.”

There were shouts of a different kind overhead: long calls, like someone howling in a chimney—he supposed the Nampara was trying to communicate with someone on the troopship. Where was his uniform? Ah, there, neatly brushed and hung on a hook by the door. Would Tom Byrd wish to go with him when the regiment was reposted? He could but hope.

In the meantime, there was Tom’s brother, here before him.

“I would offer you a position—as footman—” he added, giving the young man a straight look, lest there be any confusion about what was and was not offered,“—in my mother’s house. You would not lack for employment.”

Jack Byrd nodded, lips slightly pursed.

“Well, my lord, that’s kind. Though Mr. Trevelyan had made provisions for me; I shouldn’t starve. But I don’t see as how I can leave him.”

There was enough of a question in this last to make Grey sit up and face round in the bed, his back against the wall, in order to address the situation properly.

Was Jack Byrd seeking justification for staying, or excuse for leaving?

“It’s only … I’ve been with Mr. Joseph for some time,” Byrd said again, reaching out a hand to scratch the cat’s ears—more in order to avoid Grey’s gaze than because of a natural affection for cats, Grey thought. “He’s done very well by me, been good to me.”

And how good is that? Grey wondered. He was quite sure now of Byrd’s feelings, and sure enough of Trevelyan’s, for that matter. Whether anything had ever passed between Trevelyan and his servant in privacy—and he was inclined to doubt it—there was no doubt that Trevelyan’s emotions now focused solely on the woman who lay below, still and yellow in the interlude of her illness.

“He is not worthy of such loyalty. You know that,” Grey said, leaving the last sentence somewhere in the hinterland between statement and question.

“And you are, my lord?” It was asked without sarcasm, Byrd’s hazel eyes resting seriously on Grey’s face.

“If you mean your brother, I value his service more than I can say,” Grey replied. “I sincerely hope he knows it.”

Jack Byrd smiled slightly, looking down at the hands clasped on his knees. “Oh, I should reckon he does, then.”

They stayed without speaking for a bit, and the tension between them eased by degrees, the cat’s purring seeming somehow to dissolve it. The bellowing above had stopped.

“She might die,” Jack Byrd said. “Not that I want her to; I don’t, at all. But she may.” It was said thoughtfully, with no hint of hopefulness—and Grey believed him when he said there was none.

“She may,” he agreed. “She is very ill. But you are thinking that if that were unfortunately to occur—”

“Only as he’d need someone to care for him,” Byrd answered quickly. “Only that. I shouldn’t want him to be alone.”

Grey forbore to answer that Trevelyan would find it hard work to manage solitude on board a ship with two hundred seamen. The to-and-fro bumpings of the crew had not stopped, but had changed their rhythm. The ship had ceased to fly, but she scarcely lay quiet in the water; he could feel the gentle tug of wind and current on her bulk. Stroking the cat, he thought of wind and water as the hands of the ocean on her skin, and wondered momentarily whether he might have liked to be a sailor.

“He says that he will not live without her,” Grey said at last. “I do not know whether he means it.”

Byrd closed his eyes briefly, long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

“Oh, he means it,” he said. “But I don’t think he’d do it.” He opened his eyes, smiling a little. “I’m not saying as how he’s a hypocrite, mind—he’s not, no more than any man is just by nature. But he—” He paused, pushing out his lower lip as he considered how to say what he meant.

“It’s just as he seems so alive,” he said at last, slowly. He glanced up at Grey, dark eyes bright. “Not the sort as kills themselves. You’ll know what I mean, my lord?”

“I think I do, yes.” The cat, tiring at last of the attention, ceased purring and stretched itself, flexing its claws comfortably in and out of the coverlet over Grey’s leg. He scooped it up under the belly and set it on the floor, where it ambled away in search of milk and vermin.

Learning the truth, Maria Mayrhofer had thought of self-destruction; Trevelyan had not. Not out of principle, nor any sense of religious prohibition—merely because he could not imagine any circumstance of life that he could not overcome in some fashion.

“I do know what you mean,” Grey repeated, swinging his legs out of bed to go and open the door for the cat, who was clawing at it. “He may speak of death, but he has no …” He, in turn, groped for words. “… no friendship with it?”

Jack Byrd nodded.

“Aye, that’s something of what I mean. The lady, though—she’s seen that un’s face.” He shook his head, and Grey noted with interest that while his attitude seemed one of both liking and respect, he never spoke Maria Mayrhofer’s name.

Grey closed the door behind the cat and turned back, leaning against it. The ship swayed gently beneath him, but his head was clear and steady, for the first time in days.

Small as the cabin was, Jack Byrd sat no more than two feet from him, the rippled light from the prism overhead making him look like a creature from the seabed, soft hair wavy as kelp around his shoulders, with a green shadow in his hazel eyes.

“What you say is true,” Grey said at last. “But I tell you this. He will not forget her, even should she die. Particularly if she should die,” he added, thoughtfully.

Jack Byrd’s face didn’t change expression; he just sat, looking into Grey’s eyes, his own slightly narrowed, like a man evaluating the approach of a distant dust cloud that might hide enemy or fortune.

Then he nodded, rose, and opened the door.

“I’ll fetch my brother to you, my lord. I expect you’ll be wanting to dress.”

In the event, he was too late; a patter of footsteps rushed down the corridor, and Tom’s eager face appeared in the doorway.

“Me lord, Jack, me lord!” he said, excited into incoherence. “What they’re sayin’, what the sailors are sayin’! On that boat!”

“Ship,” Jack corrected, frowning at his brother. “So what are they saying, then?”

“Oh, to bleedin’ hell with your ships,” Tom said rudely, elbowing his brother aside. He swung back to Grey, face beaming. “They said General Clive’s beat the Nawab at a place called Plassey, me lord! We’ve won Bengal! D’ye hear—we’ve won!”

Epilogue

London

August 18, 1757

The first blast shook the walls, rattling the crystal wineglasses and causing a mirror from the reign of Louis XIV to crash to the floor.

“Never mind,” said the Dowager Countess Melton, patting a white-faced footman, who had been standing next to it, consolingly on the arm. “Ugly thing; it’s always made me look like a squirrel. Go fetch a broom before someone steps on the pieces.”

She stepped through the French doors onto the terrace, fanning herself and looking happy.

“What a night!” she said to her youngest son. “Do you think they’ve found the range yet?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Grey said, glancing warily down the river toward Tower Hill, where the fire-works master was presumably rechecking his calculations and bollocking his subordinates. The first trial shell had gone whistling directly overhead, no more than fifty feet above the Countess’s riverside town house. Several servants stood on the terrace, scanning the skies and armed with wet brooms, just in case.

“Well, they should do it more often,” the Countess said reprovingly, with a glance at the Hill. “Keep in practice.”

It was a clear, still, mid-August night, and while hot, moist air sat like a smothering blanket on London, there was some semblance of a breeze, so near the river.

Just upstream, he could see Vauxhall Bridge, so crowded with spectators that the span appeared to be a live thing itself, writhing and flexing like a caterpillar over the soft dark sheen of the river. Now and then, some intoxicated person would be pushed off, falling with a cannonball splash into the water, to the enthusiastic howls of their comrades above.

Conditions were not quite so crowded within the town house, but give it time, Grey thought, following his mother back inside to greet further new arrivals. The musicians had just finished setting up at the far end of the room; they would need to open the folding doors into the next room, as well, to make room for dancing—though that wouldn’t begin until after the fireworks.

The temperature was no bar to Londoners celebrating the news of Clive’s victory at Plassey. For days, the taverns had been overflowing with custom, and citizens greeted one another in the street with genial cries condemning the Nawab of Bengal’s ancestry, appearance, and social habits.

“Buggering black bastard!” bellowed the Duke of Cirencester, echoing the opinions of his fellow citizens in Spitalfields and Stepney as he charged through the door. “Put a rocket up his arse, see how high he flies before he explodes, eh? Benedicta, my love, come kiss me!”

The Countess, prudently putting several bodies between herself and the Duke, blew him a pretty kiss before disappearing on the arm of Mr. Pitt, and Grey tactfully redirected the Duke’s ardor toward the genial widow of Viscount Bonham, who was more than capable of dealing with him. Was the Duke’s Christian name Jacob? he wondered darkly. He thought it was.

A few more trial blasts from Tower Hill were scarcely noticed, as the noise of talk and music grew with each fresh bottle of wine opened, each new cup of rum punch poured. Even Jack Byrd, who had been quiet to the point of taciturnity since their return, seemed cheered; Grey saw him smile at a young maid passing through with a pile of cloaks.

Tom Byrd, newly outfitted in proper livery for the occasion, was standing by the bamboo screen that hid the chamber pots, charged with watching the guests to prevent petty thievery.

“Be careful, especially when the fireworks start in earnest,” Grey murmured to him in passing. “Take it turn about with your brother, so you can go out to the terrace and watch a bit—but be sure someone’s got an eye on my Lord Gloucester all the time. He got away with a gilded snuffbox last time he was here.”

“Yes, me lord,” Tom said, nodding. “Look, me lord—it’s the Hun!”

Sure enough, Stephan von Namtzen, Landgrave von Erdberg, had arrived in all his plumed glory, beaming as though Clive’s triumph had been a personal victory. Handing his helmet to Jack Byrd, who looked rather bemused by its receipt, he spotted Grey and an enormous smile spread across his face.

The intervening crowd prevented his passage, for which Grey was momentarily grateful. He was in fact more than pleased to see the Hanoverian, but the thought of being enthusiastically embraced and kissed on both cheeks, which was von Namtzen’s habit when greeting friends …

Then the Bishop of York arrived with an entourage of six small black boys in cloth of gold; a huge boom! from downriver and shrieks from the crowd on Vauxhall Bridge announced the real commencement of the fireworks, and the musicians struck up Handel’s Royal Fireworks suite.

Two-thirds of the guests surged out onto the terrace for a better view, leaving the hard drinkers and those engaged in conversation a little room to breathe.

Grey took advantage of the sudden exodus to nip behind the bamboo screen for relief; two bottles of champagne took their toll. It was perhaps not an appropriate venue for prayer, but he sent up a brief word of gratitude, nonetheless. The public hysteria over Plassey had completely eclipsed any other news; neither broadsheets nor street journalists had said a word on the subjects of the murder of Reinhardt Mayrhofer, or the disappearance of Joseph Trevelyan—let alone made rude speculations concerning Trevelyan’s erstwhile fiancée.

He understood that word was being discreetly circulated in financial circles that Mr. Trevelyan was traveling to India in order to explore new opportunities for import, in the wake of the victory.

He had a momentary vision of Joseph Trevelyan as he had been in the main cabin of the Nampara, standing by his wife’s bed, just before Grey had left.

“If?…” Grey had asked, with a small nod toward the bed.

“Word will come that I have been lost at sea—swept overboard by a swamping wave. Such things happen.” He glanced toward the bed where Maria Mayrhofer lay, still and beautiful and yellow as a carving of ancient ivory.

“I daresay they do,” Grey had said quietly, thinking once more of Jamie Fraser.

Trevelyan moved to stand by the bed, looking down. He took the woman’s hand, stroking it, and Grey saw her fingers tighten, very slightly; light quivered in the emerald teardrop of the ring she wore.

“If she dies, it will be the truth,” Trevelyan said softly, his eyes on her still face. “I shall take her in my arms and step over the rail; we will rest together, on the bottom of the sea.”