“Ah. No, sir, I have misled you. She is my cousin’s widow, my uncle’s daughter-in-law.” He tilted his head in the direction of Uncle Hal. “Her husband died as a prisoner of war in New Jersey, and she and her young son have taken refuge with … us.”
“My profound sympathies to the young woman, my lord,” Preston said, looking genuinely concerned. “I suppose her husband was an officer—do you know his regiment?”
“Yes,” William said, letting the “my lord” pass. “The Thirty-fourth. Why?”
“I am a very junior under-undersecretary of the War Office, my lord, charged with overseeing the support of our prisoners of war. Pitifully meager support, I am afraid,” he added, with a tightening of the mouth.
“In most cases, all I can do is to solicit and organize help from churches and compassionate Loyalists in the vicinity of the prisons. The Americans are so straitened in their means that they can scarce afford to feed their own troops, let alone their prisoners, and I blush to say that the same is often very nearly true of the British army as well.”
Preston sat back as two footmen arrived with the soup. “This is not the time or the place for such discussions,” Preston said, peering round a bowl descending in front of him. “But if you should be at leisure later, my lord, I should be most grateful if you would tell me what you can about your cousin and the conditions in which he was held. If—if it is not too painful,” he added hastily, with another glance at Uncle Hal.
“I should be happy to,” William said, taking up his silver soup spoon and essaying the lobster bisque. “Perhaps … we might meet at the Arches this evening? The Pink House, you know. I shouldn’t want to cause my uncle distress.” He glanced at Uncle Hal, too—his uncle appeared to be experiencing indigestion, whether of a physical or spiritual nature, and Papa was regarding his soup with a very fixed expression.
“Of course.” Mr. Preston glanced quickly at the duke and lowered his voice. “I—hesitate to ask, but do you think that your father might perhaps accompany you later? His experience with prisoners was of course some time ago, but—”
“Prisoners?” William felt something small and hard bob in his midsection, as though he’d inadvertently swallowed a golf ball. “My father?”
Mr. Preston blinked, taken back.
“Forgive me, my lord. I had thought—”
“That doesn’t matter.” William waved a hand. “What did you mean, though; his experience with prisoners?”
“Why—Lord John was the governor of a prison in Scotland, perhaps … twenty, twenty-five, perhaps … years ago? Now, what was the name … oh, of course. Ardsmuir. You did not know that? Dear me, I do beg your pardon.”
“Twenty-five years ago,” William repeated. “I—suppose some of the prisoners might have been Jacobite traitors, from the Rising?”
“Oh, indeed,” Mr. Preston said, looking happier now that it seemed William was not offended. “Most of them, as I recall. I have written one or two small books on the subject of prison reform, and the handling of the Jacobite prisoners comprised a significant portion of my researches. I—could tell you a bit more about it, perhaps … this evening? Shall we say at ten o’clock?”
“Charmed,” William said cordially, and put the spoon full of cold soup into his mouth.
45
Not Quite like Leprosy
LORD JOHN LIFTED A spoonful of hot soup and held it suspended to cool, not removing his gaze from the gentleman sitting across the table from him, next to Prévost. He could feel Hal vibrating next to him and wondered briefly whether to spill the soup on Hal’s leg, as a means of getting him out of the dining room before he said or did something injudicious.
Their erstwhile stepbrother, who had just been introduced to them as the Cavalier Saint-Honoré, couldn’t help but be aware of their reaction to his presence, but he preserved a perfect sang-froid, letting his gaze pass vacantly over the brothers Grey, meeting neither one’s eyes. He was chatting to Prévost in Parisian French, and so far as Grey could tell, was actually pretending to be a Frenchman, damn his eyes!
Percy. You … you … Rather to his surprise, he was unable to apply a suitable epithet. He neither liked nor trusted Percy—but once he had loved the man, and he was sufficiently honest with himself as to admit it.
Percival Wainwright—his real name was Perseverance, but John was willing to wager that he was the only person on earth who knew that—was looking well, and well turned out, in an expensive and fashionable suit of puce silk with a striped waistcoat in pale blue and white. He still had delicate, attractive features with soft brown eyes, but whatever he had been doing of recent years had given him a new firmness of expression—and new lines bracketing his mouth.
“Monsieur,” John said to Percy directly, and bowing to him, continued in French. “Allow me to introduce myself—I am Lord John Grey, and this”—he nodded toward Hal, who was breathing rather noisily—“is my brother, the Duke of Pardloe. We are honored by your company, but find ourselves curious as to what … stroke of fortune should have brought you here.”
“A votre service,” Percy replied, with an equally civil bow. Did John imagine the spark in his eye? No, he did not, he concluded, and he casually let his hand fall on his brother’s knee, squeezing in a manner intended to suggest that one word out of Hal and he’d be limping for hours.
Hal cleared his throat in a menacing tone, but likewise bowed, not taking his eyes off Percy as he did so.
“I am here at the invitation of Mr. Robert Boyer,” Percy said, switching to English with a slight French accent. He tilted his head slightly, indicating a portly gentleman at a neighboring table whose wine-colored suit was the exact shade of the burst blood vessels in his bulbous nose. “Monsieur Boyer owns several ships and holds contracts with both the Royal Navy and the army, for the supplying of victuals and other necessaries. He has some matters of importance to discuss with the major general and thought that I might be of some small help with … details.”
The spark grew more pronounced, but Percy luckily refrained from anything overt, given that Hal was staring holes in his striped waistcoat.
“Indeed,” John said casually, in English. “How interesting.” And with the briefest of dismissive nods to Percy, he let go of Hal’s knee and turned to his partner to the right, this being Mrs. Major General Prévost. Madam General was obviously used to being the only female at military dinners and seemed startled to be spoken to.
John engaged her in descriptions of her garden and which plants were growing well at the moment and which ones were not. This occupied relatively little of his attention, unfortunately; he could hear Hal, behind him, talking to his other partner, a much-decorated but elderly and torpid colonel of artillery, who was stone deaf. Hal’s half-shouted queries were punctuated by small, jibing remarks under his breath, aimed at Percy, who so far had ignored them.
Feeling his joints knot with the urgent need to do something, and unable to kick Percy under the table or give Hal a jolt in the ribs with his elbow, John pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.