Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade Read online

  He asked the usual social questions now--did Wainwright go often to Lady Jonas's salons? Grey had not yet had the pleasure. How did Mr. Wainwright find the company there, by comparison with other such gatherings?--meanwhile thinking that the late Lady Stanley must have been very beautiful indeed, judging by her son.

  And I doubt extremely that I am the first man to have noticed that, he thought. Is there anyone...?

  While he hesitated, Percy gave him a direct look and put the question that was in the forefront of his own mind.

  "Do you go often? To Lavender House?"

  He felt a slight easing, for the asking of the question answered it, so far as he was himself concerned; if Wainwright were in the habit of frequenting Lavender House, he would know that Grey was not.

  "No," he said, and smiled again. "I had not visited the place in many years, prior to the occasion when I met you there."

  "That was my first--and only--visit," Percy confessed. He looked down into his dish of coffee. "A...friend sought to introduce me to the company, thinking that I might find some congeniality of persons there."

  "And did you?"

  Percy Wainwright had long, dark lashes. These lifted slowly, giving Grey the benefit of those warm-sherry eyes, further warmed by a look of amusement.

  "Oh, yes," Percy said. "Did you?"

  Grey felt blood rise in his face, and lifted his coffee to his mouth, so that the warmth of the liquid might disguise it.

  "The pursuit of...congeniality was not my purpose," he said carefully, lowering the cup. "I had gone there in order to question the proprietor about a private matter. Still," he added, offhanded, "it would be a foolish man who disregards a pound discovered lying by his foot in the road, only because he was not looking for it." He darted a look at Percy, who laughed in delight.

  Suddenly, Grey felt a rush of exhilaration, and could not bear to remain indoors, sitting.

  "Shall we go?"

  Percy drank off his coffee in a gulp and rose, reaching for his cloak with one hand, even as he set down his cup with the other.

  The walls of the Balboa were plastered with trivia for the edification of patrons--the entire series of Mr. Hogarth's "Marriage a la Mode" etchings encircled the room, but were surrounded--and in some cases obscured--by thick flutterings of newspaper broadsheets, personal communiques, and Wanted notices, these advertising a need for everything from six tonnes of pig lead or a shipload of Negroes, to a company director of good name and solid finances who might assume the leadership of a fledgling firm engaging in the sale of gentlemen's necessaries--whether these might include snuffboxes, stockings, or condoms was not made clear.

  Glancing casually at the new crop of postings as they made their way to the door, though, Grey's eye caught a familiar name in the headline of a fresh broadsheet. DEATH DISCOVERED, read the large type.

  He stopped short, the name Ffoulkes leaping out of the smaller newsprint at him.

  "What?" Percy had perforce halted, too, and was looking curiously from Grey to the newspaper.

  "Nothing. A name I recognized." Grey's elation dimmed a little, though he was too excited to be quelled completely. "Are you familiar with a barrister named Ffoulkes? Melchior Ffoulkes?" he asked Percy.

  The latter looked blank and shook his head.

  "I am afraid I know no one, much," he said apologetically. "Should I have heard of Mr. Ffoulkes?"

  "Not at all." Grey would just as soon have dismissed Ffoulkes from his own mind, but felt obliged to see whether anything of what Hal had told him had made it into the public press. He tossed a silver ha'penny to the proprietor and took the broadsheet, folding it and stuffing it into his pocket. Time enough for such things later.

  Outside, the chisping had stopped, but the sky hung low and heavy, and there was a sense of stillness in the air, the earth awaiting more snow. Alone, away from the buzz of the coffeehouse, there was a sudden small sense of intimacy between them.

  "I must apologize," Percy said, as they turned toward Hyde Park.

  "For what?"

  "For my unfortunate gaffe yesterday, in regard to your brother. The general had told me that I must not under any circumstance address him as 'Your Grace,' but he had not time to explain why--at the time."

  Grey snorted.

  "Has he told you since?"

  "Not in great detail." Percy glanced at him, curious. "Only that there was a scandal of some sort, and that your brother in consequence has renounced his title."

  Grey sighed. Unavoidable, he'd known that. Still, he would have preferred to keep this first meeting for themselves, with no intrusions from either past or present.

  "Not exactly," he said. "But something like it."

  "Your father was a duke, though?" Wainwright cast him a wary glance.

  "He was. Duke of Pardloe." The title felt strange on his tongue; he hadn't spoken it in...fifteen years? More. So long. He felt an accustomed hollowness of the bone at thought of his father. But if there was to be anything between himself and Percy Wainwright...

  "But your brother is not now Duke of Pardloe?"

  Despite himself, Grey smiled, albeit wryly.

  "He is. But he will not use the title, nor have it used. Hence the occasional awkwardness." He made a small gesture of apology. "My brother is a very stubborn man."

  Wainwright raised one brow, as though to suggest that he thought Melton might not be the only one in the Grey family to display such a trait.

  "You need not tell me," he said, though, touching Grey's arm briefly. "I'm sure the matter is a painful one."

  "You will hear it sooner or later, and you have some right to know, as you are becoming allied with our family. My father shot himself," Grey said abruptly. Percy blinked, shocked.

  "Oh," he said, low-voiced, and touched his arm again, very gently. "I am so sorry."

  "So am I." Grey cleared his throat. "Cold, isn't it?" He pulled on his gloves, and rubbed a hand beneath his nose. "It--you have heard of the Jacobites? And the South Sea Bubble?"

  "I have, yes. But what have they to do with each other?" Percy asked, bewildered. Grey felt his lips twitch, not quite a smile.

  "Nothing, so far as I know. But they had both to do with the--the scandal."

  Gerard Grey, Earl of Melton, had been a clever man. Of an ancient and honorable family, well educated, handsome, wealthy--and of a restless, curious turn of mind. He had also been a very fine soldier.

  "My father came to the title as quite a young man, and was not content to potter about on the family estates. He had a good deal of money--my mother brought him more--and when the Old Pretender launched his first invasion in 1715, he raised a regiment, and went to fight for king and country."

  The Jacobites were ill-organized and badly equipped; the Old Pretender, James Stuart, had not even made it ashore to lead his troops, but had been left fuming impotently off the coast, stranded by bad weather. The invasion, such as it was, had been easily quashed. The dashing young earl, however, had distinguished himself at Sheriffmuir, emerging a hero.

  German George, feeling uneasy on his new throne despite the victory, and wishing to demonstrate to the peers of his realm the advantages of supporting him in military terms, elevated Gerard Grey to the newly created dukedom of Pardloe.

  "No money with it, mind, and only a scant village or two in terms of land, but it sounded well," Grey said.

  "What--whatever happened?" Percy asked, curiosity overcoming his impeccable manners.

  "Well." Grey took a deep breath, thinking where best to begin. He did not want to speak at once about his father, and so began from the other end of the affair.

  "My mother's mother was Scottish, you see. Not from the Highlands," he added quickly. "From the Borders, which is quite a different thing."

  "Yes, they speak English there, do they not?" Wainwright nodded, a small frown of concentration between his brows.

  "I expect that is a matter of opinion," Grey said. It had taken him weeks to become sufficiently accustomed to t
he hideous accents of his Scottish cousins as to easily understand what they were saying.

  "But at least they are not barbarians, such as the Highland Scots. Nor did the Borderers join in the Catholic Rising--most being strongly Protestant, and having no particular sympathy or common interest with either the Stuarts or the Highland clans."

  "I suppose, though, that many Englishmen do not make distinctions between one Scot and another?" Percy said, with some delicacy.

  Grey gave a small grimace of acknowledgment.

  "It did not help that one of my mother's uncles and his sons did openly support the Stuart cause. For the sake of profit," he added, with slight distaste, "not religion."

  "Is that better or worse?" Percy asked, a half smile taking any sting from the words.

  "Not much to choose," Grey admitted. "And before the thing was finished, a good many more of my mother's family were embroiled. If not actually known Jacobites, certainly tainted by the association."

  "I see." Wainwright's brows were high with interest. "You mentioned your father's involvement with the South Sea Bubble. Do we assume that this had something to do with your profit-minded great-uncle?"

  Grey glanced at him, surprised at the quickness of his mind.

  "Yes," he said. "Great-Uncle Nicodemus. Nicodemus Patricius Marcus Armstrong."

  Percy made a small, muffled noise.

  "There is a reason why I was christened 'John,' and that my brothers have such relatively common names as Paul, Edgar, and Harold," Grey said wryly. "The names on my mother's side of the family..." He shook his head, and resumed his account.

  "My father invested a substantial sum with a certain company--the South Sea--upon the urgings of Uncle Nick, after Sheriffmuir. Mind you, this was some years before the collapse; at the time, it seemed no more than a somewhat risky venture. And it appealed, I think, to my father's sense of adventure, which was acute." He couldn't help a brief smile at thought of some of those adventures.

  "It was a substantial sum, but by no means a significant part of my father's property. He was therefore content to leave it, depending upon Uncle Nick to watch the business, whilst he devoted himself to other, more interesting ventures. But then the Jacobite threat--" He paused, glancing at Percy.

  "How old are you, if you will pardon my asking?"

  Percy blinked at that, but smiled.

  "Twenty-six. Why?"

  "Ah. You may be old enough, then, to recall the atmosphere of suspicion and hysteria regarding Jacobites during the '45?"

  Percy shook his head.

  "No," he said ruefully. "My father was a clergyman, who viewed the world and its affairs as nothing more than a threat to the souls of the godly. We heard little news, and would have taken no heed of political rumors in any case--the only king of any importance being the Lord, so far as my father was concerned. But that's of no consequence," he added hastily. "Go on, please."

  "I was going to say that that hysteria, great as it was, was no more than an echo of what happened earlier. Are you content to walk, by the way? We could easily take a carriage." The weather had grown sharply colder, and a bone-cutting breeze swept through the alleyways. Percy was lightly dressed for the temperature, but he shook his head.

  "No, I prefer to walk. It's much easier to talk--if you wish to do that," he added, a little shyly.

  Grey wasn't at all sure that he wished to do that--his offer of a carriage had been based as much on a sudden desire to abandon the conversation for the moment as on a desire to save Mr. Wainwright from a chilled liver. But he'd meant it; Wainwright had a right to know, and might better hear the details from him than from someone who held the late duke in less esteem.

  "Well. You will know, I suppose, that raising, equipping, and maintaining a regiment is an expensive business. My father had money, as I said, but in order to expand the regiment when the Jacobite threat recurred in 1719, he sold his South Sea shares--quite against the advice of Great-Uncle Nicodemus, I might add."

  Within the previous five years, the price of South Sea shares had risen, from ten pounds to a hundred, then dizzyingly, from a hundred to a thousand within a year, driven up by rumor, greed--and not a little calculated chicanery on the part of the company's directors. The duke sold his shares at this pinnacle.

  "And a week--one week--later, the slide began." It had taken most of a year for the full devastation of the great crash to become evident. Several great families had been ruined; many lesser folk all but obliterated. And the public outcry toward those seen to be responsible...

  "I can imagine." Percy glanced at him. He wore no hat, and the tips of his ears were red with cold. "But your father was not responsible, was he?"

  Grey shook his head.

  "He was seen to profit immensely, while others went bankrupt," he said simply. "Nothing else was needed to convict him in the popular mind." And the House of Commons, that voice of the popular mind, had been vociferous in their denunciations.

  "But he was a duke." Grey watched the words purl out, his breath like smoke. "He could not be tried, save by his peers. And the House of Lords declined to proceed." Not from any sense of justice--many noble families had suffered in the crash and were quite as irrationally bloodthirsty as the commoners. But the Duke of Pardloe chose his friends carefully, and the ravenings of the mob moved on to easier prey.

  "Such things leave a mark, though. Enemies were made, enmities lingered. And it was the more unfortunate that my father should have been a good friend of Francis Atterbury's. The Bishop of Rochester," he added, seeing Percy's puzzled look. "Convicted of being the focus of a Jacobite plot to exploit public feeling about the South Sea Bubble by staging a Stuart invasion and dethroning the king, in '22. Banished, though, not executed."

  Their path had led them to Hyde Park, for the most direct way to Lady Jonas's house lay straight across it. They were now well within the park, and Grey gestured to the wide spaces all around them, empty and desolate.

  "When word got out of the plot in '22, His Majesty in panic ordered ten thousand troops to London, to safeguard the city. They were quartered here--in the park. My father told me of it; he said the smoke of their fires was thicker than the morning fog, and the stench was indescribable. Convenient, though; the family house stands on the edge of the park--just beyond those trees." He gestured toward it, with a brief smile at the memory, then went on.

  "My father merely played chess with the bishop; he had no Jacobite leanings whatever. But again--"

  "The popular mind." Percy nodded. "And your mother's family. So he was perceived as a Jacobite sympathizer? The notion being that he had somehow engineered the crash in order to facilitate the invasion--though it never happened?"

  Grey nodded, a sense of hollowness growing beneath his breastbone. He had never told the story to anyone before, and was both surprised and disturbed that the words came so easily to him. He was coming now to the most difficult part of the history, though, and so hesitated.

  "There was another Jacobite scare, a decade later--this one no more, really, than talk. Lord Cornbury it was, who was the instigator. No one would have noticed, really, save he was the Earl of Clarendon's heir. And it came to nothing in the end; Cornbury was not even imprisoned--merely left off meddling in politics." He smiled again, though without humor.

  Percy's lower teeth were fixed in his upper lip. He shook his head slowly.

  "Don't tell me. Cornbury was also an intimate of your father's?"

  "Ah--no. My mother." He gave Percy a wry glance. "Or rather, Cornbury had been a close friend to her first husband. Thus Cornbury is my eldest half brother's godfather. Not a close connexion, by any means--but it was a connexion, and it didn't help when the rumors about another Stuart Rising began in 1740."

  He took a breath and released it slowly, watching the steam of it.

  "There were...other Jacobite influences. My mother's family, as you say. And then--one of my father's nearest friends was exposed as a Jacobite plotter, and arrested. The man was taken t
o the Tower and questioned closely--I do not know whether that is a euphemism for torture; it was not said--but under the pressure of such questioning, he revealed a number of names. Persons, it was claimed, who were involved in a direct plot to assassinate the king and his family."

  Speaking these words now, from the far side of Culloden, the idea seemed preposterous. He thought it had perhaps seemed equally ludicrous to his parents--at first.

  "He--this Jacobite plotter--incriminated your father?"

  Grey nodded, somewhat comforted to see that Percy looked both aghast and incredulous at this.

  "Yes. There was no direct evidence--or at least none was ever produced. But the matter did not come to trial. A warrant was issued for my father's arrest. He...died--the night before it was to be executed."

  "Oh, dear God," Percy said, very quietly. He did not touch Grey again, but drew closer, walking slowly, so that their shoulders nearly brushed.

  "Of course," Percy said after a moment, "your father's death was taken as an admission of guilt?" He put the question delicately, but remembered bitterness filled Grey's throat with the taste of bile.

  "It was. A Bill of Attainder was brought against my father's title, but did not pass." He smiled wryly.

  "My father had many enemies, but just as many friends. And a much better instinct in choosing godfathers for his sons than my mother's first husband. Hal's godfather was Robert Walpole."

  "What, the prime minister?" Percy looked gratifyingly agog.

  "Well, he wasn't at the time of Hal's birth, of course. And when the scandal broke, twenty-some years later, Walpole was very near his own death--but still an immensely powerful man.

  "And," Grey added judiciously, "whatever his personal feelings in the matter, it wouldn't have done Walpole's own reputation any good to have his godson's father publicly denounced as a traitor. Not at such a delicate point in his own affairs.

  "So," he concluded, "the Bill of Attainder was quashed. My father had not, after all, been proved a traitor. There was sufficient public--and private--outcry, though, that Hal declared he would not bear a tainted title, and has ever since refused to use it. He did wish to renounce it completely, but could not by law."

  He gave a short laugh.

  "So. A very long story, I am afraid--but we do arrive at the end, never fear."