“I really do apologize,” Richardson said, and sounded as though he meant it. “I have no personal animus against you at all, and if I could have managed this without involving you, I would have.”
Grey shifted his gaze reluctantly to Richardson, who wore the uniform of a British infantry major.
“I have heard of double agents, and met them, too,” he said, more or less politely. “But damned if I’ve seen one less able to make up his mind. Would you care to tell me which side you’re really on?”
He thought the expression on Richardson’s face was meant to be a smile, but it wasn’t altogether succeeding.
“That,” Richardson said, “is not as simple a question as you might think.”
“Well, it’s as good a question as you’re likely to get, under the circumstances.” Grey closed his eyes and lifted the glass under his nose; maybe inhaling brandy fumes would allay the headache without making him drunk. He thought it might be dangerous to be drunk in Richardson’s company.
“Let me ask you one, then.” Richardson was sitting in the captain’s chair; it creaked as he leaned forward. “When I asked you whether you had any personal interest in Claire Fraser, you replied that you didn’t, and then promptly married her. Why did you do that?”
That made John open his eyes. Richardson had spoken mildly, but was regarding him with the air of a very patient cat sat outside a mousehole. John touched the back of his head gingerly, then looked at his fingers. Yes, he was bleeding, but not heavily.
“I could tell you that it’s none of your business,” he said, wiping his fingers on his breeches. “But as it is, there’s no reason for secrecy. You had threatened to have the lady arrested for sedition. She was the widow of a good friend. It seemed to me that keeping her out of your clutches was perhaps the last office I could perform for Jamie Fraser.”
Richardson nodded.
“Just so,” he said. “A gallant gesture, my lord.” He seemed slightly amused, though it was hard to tell. “I understand that the marriage was necessarily of short duration, owing to Mr. Fraser’s unexpected return from a watery grave. But did the lady tell you, in some exchange of marital confidences, anything regarding her antecedents?”
“No,” Grey said, without hesitation.
“That seems rather remarkable,” Richardson said, “though given what those antecedents are, perhaps the lady’s reticence was justified.”
A ripple of unease crept down the back of Grey’s neck—or perhaps it was just a dribble of blood, he thought. Antecedents, my arse. He leaned back a little, careful of his tender head, and gave Richardson what he hoped was an inscrutable stare.
Richardson regarded him for a long moment, then, with a brief nod to himself, rose and fetched a leather folder from the shelf and sat down again. He opened the folder and removed an official-looking document, complete with seal and stamp, though Grey couldn’t tell from where he sat whose seal it was.
“Are you familiar with a man named Neil Stapleton?” Richardson asked, cocking one brow.
“In what sense, familiar?” Grey asked, raising both of his. “I might have heard the name, but if so, it’s been some time.” It had been some time, but the name “Neil Stapleton”—better known to Grey as Neil the Cunt—had struck him in the pit of the stomach with the force of a two-pound round shot. He hadn’t seen Stapleton in many years, but he certainly hadn’t forgot the man.
“Perhaps I should have inquired as to whether you knew him … in the biblical sense?” Richardson asked, watching Grey’s face. He pushed the document toward Grey, whose eyes fixed at once on the heading: Confession of Neil Patrick Stapleton.
No, he thought. Bloody hell, no …
He took up the document, glad in a remote way to see that his hands weren’t shaking, and read a moderately detailed and quite accurate account of what had occurred between himself and Neil Stapleton on the night of April 14, 1759, and again on the afternoon of May 9 of the same year.
He laid down the document and stared at Richardson over it.
“What did you do to him?” he asked. His stomach tightened at the thought of what they—for surely it was a “they” and not this man alone—might have done to a man like Neil.
“Do to him?” Richardson said, looking bland.
“Blackmail, bribery, torture …? He didn’t write this of his own free will. What sane man would?” And whatever else he might be, Neil had never been lacking in his wits.
Richardson shrugged.
“Is he alive?” Grey said, between his teeth.
“Do you care?” Richardson seemed only faintly interested. “Oh—but of course you do. If he were dead, you could claim that this document is a forgery. But I’m afraid that Mr. Stapleton is, in fact, still alive, though I naturally cannot guess as to how long he’ll stay in that condition.”
Grey stared at him. Was the fellow actually now threatening to have Neil killed? But that made no sense.
“He is, however, in London. Fortunately, though, I have additional … testimony, shall we say?—nearer to hand.” He rose and went to the cabin door, opened it, and put his head out.
“Come in,” he said, and stepped back to allow Percy Wainwright room to enter.
PERCY LOOKED DREADFUL, Grey thought. He was disheveled, his neckcloth missing, and his curly, graying hair matted in spots, sticking up in others. He was pale as skimmed milk, with dark circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves were bloodshot and fixed on Grey at once.
“John,” he said, a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat, hard, then looked away and said, “I’m sorry, John. I’m not brave. You’ve always been brave, but I never have.”
This was no more than the truth, acknowledged between them and part of the love they’d once shared; John had always been willing to be brave for both of them. He felt a tinge of sympathetic pity beneath the larger sense of annoyance—and the very much larger sense of fear.
“So you made him sign a statement of confession, too,” he said to Richardson, doing his best to keep calm.
Richardson pursed his lips and opened the folder again, this time drawing out a longer document. Well, it would be longer, wouldn’t it? Grey thought. How long were we lovers?
“Unnatural acts and incest,” Richardson remarked, turning over the pages of the new document. “Dear me, Lord John. Dear me.”
“Sit down, Percy,” Grey said, feeling unutterably tired. He caught a brief glimpse of the document’s heading, though, and his spirits rose a fraction of an inch. Confession of P. Wainwright, it said. So Percy had kept that one last bit of self-respect; he hadn’t given Richardson his real first name. He tried to catch Percy’s eye, but his erstwhile stepbrother was looking down at his hands, folded in his lap like a schoolchild’s.
You did try to warn me, didn’t you?
“You’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble for nothing, Mr. Richardson,” he said coolly. “I don’t care what you do with these documents; a gentleman does not submit to blackmail.”
“Actually, almost all of them do,” Richardson said, almost apologetically. “As it is, though, I’m not blackmailing you.”