Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (62 page)

“When?” Denys betrayed no open excitement at the news, but cocked his head like a terrier wondering whether he had just heard the scrabbling of a gopher underground.

“The letter was dated a month ago. No telling whether the captain saw the fellow then or sometime before. No hint that Schermerhorn—that’s the captain—knows that Ezekiel Richardson is a turncoat, by the way, so I suppose he wasn’t in uniform. Not an American uniform, I mean.”

“Nothing else?” The terrier was disappointed, but perked up again at William’s next bit of information.

“Apparently Richardson was with a gentleman named Haym. But he didn’t say anything about what they were doing, or who Haym might be.”

“I know who he is.” Denys kept control of his expression, but his interest was plain.

The conversation was interrupted at this point by the banging of a small gong and the butler’s announcement that luncheon was served, and he found himself separated as another acquaintance hailed Denys.

“All right, Willie?” His father popped up beside him as he made his way through the double doors of the reception room into a generous hall with a fantastic floorcloth of painted canvas, done in simulation of the mosaic of a Roman villa. “Has he found out anything about Ben?”

“Not much, but there may be something.” He hastily conveyed the gist of his conversation with Randall.

“He says he knows the man Richardson was seen with in Charles Town. Haym.”

“Haym?” Uncle Hal had caught up with them in time to hear this, and lifted an eyebrow at the name.

“Possibly,” said William. “You know him?”

“Not to say ‘know,’ ” his uncle said with a shrug. “But I have heard of a rich Polish Jew named Haym Salomon. I can’t think what the devil he’d be doing in Charles Town, though—the last I heard of him, he’d been sentenced to death as a spy, in New York.”

LUNCHEON WAS TEDIOUS,
with small patches of aggravation. William found himself seated between a Mr. Sykes-Hallett, who seemed to be a Member of Parliament from someplace in Yorkshire, judging from his incomprehensible accent, and a slender, stylish gentleman in a bottle-green coat called Fungo (or possibly Fungus), who burbled about the brilliance of the Southern Campaign (about which he plainly knew nothing, nor did he notice the stony looks of the soldiers seated near him) and kept addressing William as “Lord Ellesmere,” though he’d been tersely invited to stop.

William thought he caught a sympathetic look from Uncle Hal at the adjoining table, but wasn’t sure.

“Do I understand correctly that you have resigned your commission, Lord Ellesmere?” the green fungus asked, between nibbles of poached salmon. “Colonel Campbell said that you had—some trouble about a girl? Mind, I don’t blame you a bit.” He raised a hair-thin eyebrow in a knowing fashion. “A military career is well enough for men who have capacity but no means—but I understand that you fortunately do not require to make your way in life at the cost—at least the potential cost—of your blood?”

William had been raised to exercise courtesy even in adverse circumstances, and thus merely took a forkful of the rabbit terrine and put it into his mouth instead of stabbing Fungo in the throat with it.

Now, had it been Campbell…but it wasn’t really Campbell’s malice that troubled him. He hadn’t realized how much it would bother him, not being a soldier anymore. He felt like an imposter, an interloper, a useless and despised lump, sitting here among soldiers in a waistcoat covered with fucking beetles, for God’s sake!

It was a large gathering, some thirty men, two-thirds of them in uniform, and he could feel the lines drawn between the civilians and the soldiers, clearly. Respect, certainly—but respect with an underlying scorn—on both sides.

“What a charming waistcoat, sir,” said the man across the table, smiling. “I admit to a great partiality for beetles. I had an uncle who collected them—he left his collection to the British Museum when he died.”

The man’s name was Preston, William thought—second secretary to the undersecretary of war, or something. Still, he wasn’t either sneering or leering; he had a strong though rather homely face, with a large, crooked nose that bore a pair of
pince-nez,
and obviously intended nothing more than friendly conversation.

“My cousin embroidered them for me, sir,” William said, with a slight bow. “Her father is a naturalist, and she assures me that they’re completely correct—save for the eyes, which were her particular fancy.”

“Your cousin?” Preston glanced at the next table, where Papa and Uncle Hal were engaged in conversation with Prévost and his two principal guests, a minor nobleman sent as a representative of Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, and a dressy Frenchman of some sort. “Surely it is not the duke who is a naturalist. Oh—but of course, the uncle must be on your mother’s side?”

“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.

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.

He headed for the discreet screen in the corner of the dining room that hid the pisspots from view, but the warm tidal reek of the urine of numerous lobster-eaters hit him in the face and he veered away, going out through the open French doors into the fresh air of the garden. It had been raining, but the downpour had stopped, and water dripped from every tree and shrub.

He felt as though there had been an iron band round his chest that broke as he left the house, and he breathed deep, refreshing gulps of cool, rain-washed air. His face felt hot, and he swiped a hand through the wet leaves of a hydrangea bush and wiped cold water over his face.

“John,” said a voice behind him. He stiffened, but didn’t turn around.

“Go away,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

There was a faint snort in reply.

“I daresay,” said Percy, in his normal English accent. “And I can’t say I blame you. But I’m afraid you’ll have to, you know.”

“No, I won’t.” John turned, meaning to push past Percy and go back inside, but Percy seized his arm.

“Not so fast,” he said. “Buttercup.”

John’s spinal column reacted much faster than his conscious mind. Both stomach and balls contracted with a force that made him gasp, before his mind managed to inform him that the bloody man really
had
just used his
nom de guerre.
The very secret code name under which he had labored—for three mortal years—in London’s Black Chamber.

He became aware that he was staring at Percy with his mouth open, and closed it. Percy smiled, a little tremulously. The façade of the arrogant, elegant Frenchman had dropped away, and it truly was Percy. His dark curls were hidden under the smooth, powdered wig, but the eyes were as they’d always been—dark, soft, and holding promise. Of various kinds.

“Don’t tell me,” John said, surprised that his own voice sounded normal. “Monsieur Citròn?”

“Yes.”

Percy’s voice was husky, though John couldn’t have said with what emotion. Humor, fear, excitement, lust…? The last thought made him shake off Percy’s grasp and take a step back.

“How bloody long did you know?” he demanded. “Monsieur Citròn” had been his opposite number, in France’s equivalent to the Black Chamber. All countries had one, though the names varied. The underground hive where worker bees gathered the pollen of intelligence, grain by grain, and painstakingly turned it into honey—or poison.

Percy shrugged.

“I’d been working for the Secret du Roi for about two years, before they gave you to me. It took me another six months to discover who you really were.”

Not for the first time, John wished he had Jamie Fraser’s ability to make glottal noises that made clear his state of mind without the nuisance of finding words. But he was an Englishman, and therefore found some.

“Are you working for Hirondelle now?” he demanded. The Secret du Roi—Louis XV’s private spy ring—had not quite perished with the death of the King, but in the manner of such things had quietly been absorbed into a more officially recognized body. He had himself escaped the clutches of Hubert Bowles, head of London’s Black Chamber, some years ago, and had left the world of official secrets behind with the relieved sense of one being fished out of a noisome bog on the end of a rope.

Percy raised one shoulder briefly, smiling.

“If I were still true to La Belle France—and her masters—you couldn’t tell whether I was telling you the truth about that or not, could you?”

John’s heart was beginning to slow down, but that
“if”
sped it up like a kicked horse. He didn’t reply at once, though. He took time to look Percy up and down, deliberately.

“It’s not
quite
like leprosy, you know,” Percy said, bearing this scrutiny with visible amusement. “Treason doesn’t show that easily.”

“The devil it doesn’t,” John said, but more for something to say than because it was true. “Are you actually telling me that you have—or are about to,” he added, with a hard look to Percy’s very expensive Parisian finery, “part company with your ‘special interests’ in France?”
Including whoever you were working for in the Black Chamber? I wonder.

“Yes. I haven’t done it quite yet, because—” He glanced involuntarily over his shoulder, and John gave a short laugh.

“Wise of you,” he said. “So you’re wanting to prepare a soft landing on this side before you jump. And you thought you’d start with me?” There was enough spin on that question as to take the skin off Percy’s hand if he tried to catch it.

He didn’t catch it and he didn’t duck, either. Just stood and let it pass, regarding Grey with his soft, dark eyes.

“You saved my life, John,” he said quietly, looking at him. “Thank you for that; I hadn’t the chance to say so at the time.”

John flipped a hand dismissively, though his chest had tightened at Percy’s words. He’d suppressed everything at the time and he didn’t want it back now, twenty years later. Any of it.

“Yes. Well…” He turned slightly; Percy was standing between him and the terrace with the French doors.

“So I thought that you might possibly be willing to do me a much less dangerous favor.”

“Think again,” John advised him briefly, and, stepping round his erstwhile lover, walked rapidly away.

He heard nothing behind him; no protest, no offers, no calling of his name. At the open French doors, he glanced involuntarily behind him.

Percy was standing by the hydrangea bush. Smiling at him.