Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon
"My cousin," the doctor said at last. He raised his head and met Grey's eyes. "George." He spoke the name with a sense of affection, and regret.
"My condolences," Grey said quietly. "I had not heard that Lord Creemore had died."
"Last week." Longstreet rested the pipe upon his knee. "Le Roi est mort; vive Le Roi."
"I beg your pardon?"
Longstreet smiled, irony uppermost.
"I am my cousin's heir. I am Lord Creemore now--for what good it may do me. Wha--wha--" He cleared his throat and drew a rattling breath, then coughed explosively, and shook his head.
"What do you think is more important, Lord John?" he said, more clearly. "The life of a man, or the honor of his name when he is dead?"
Grey considered that. The question took him by surprise, but it had been meant seriously.
"For myself," he said at last, "I should say firstly, that it depends upon the man. And secondly, that a man whose life lacks honor surely has no claim upon it after death."
"Ah. But I did not say the man's honor, necessarily. I said, 'the honor of his name.' That, I expect, strikes you more cogently?"
"His family's honor, you mean." Yes, that blow struck home--as it was meant to. He kept his temper, though. "I would value that, yes. But honor is not only what the world perceives it to be, sir--but what it is. And I repeat that a man cannot be separated from his honor."
"No," Longstreet said thoughtfully. "I suppose that is true." And yet... his face said, as plainly as words. Some disagreement struggled within him, and Grey suddenly thought that he might know its nature.
"But of course," he said, "you are a physician. From your point of view, perhaps, to preserve life must be the greatest good, regardless of other considerations?"
Longstreet--Grey could not yet think of him as Lord Creemore--shot him a startled glance, but whether because Grey's shot had struck in the gold, or because it had missed the target entire, he couldn't tell.
The appearance of the housekeeper with tea gave them both a moment to regroup. The little house was damp, and there was a chill in the air despite the fire; Grey's left arm ached where it had been broken, and he was glad of the hot china in his hands and the smell of good Assam. Beyond the physical comfort of tea, the small rituals employed in drinking it eased the atmosphere between them by degrees.
"You were your cousin's physician, then?" Grey asked, as casually as he might have asked the doctor to pass the sugar bowl.
Longstreet had recovered his composure, and the heat of the tea lent a slight warmth to his gaunt cheeks. He nodded.
"Yes. And he did not die of the syphilis, nor of any other disgraceful disease, lest you be thinking that the point of my original question."
Dementia and insanity were quite as disgraceful as--if not more so than--a venereal disease, but Grey did not--yet--mention that. Most medical men of his acquaintance had no delicacy of feeling whatever, and Longstreet was an army surgeon--or had been--and was thus presumably hardened to the realities of even the most disgusting physical phenomena.
"What did he die of?" Grey asked bluntly.
"Dropsy," Longstreet replied, with no hesitation whatever. Either it was the truth or he had had his answer prepared ahead of time. Grey thought it was likely the truth.
"Your cousin died childless, if you are his heir," he observed. "Is there much family, besides yourself?"
Longstreet shook his head, his eyes hooded against the steam from his cup.
"Only myself now," he said quietly. "The title dies with me."
Grey didn't argue that Longstreet might still marry and have sons; he was no physician, but had seen his share of death. His own brush with it had perhaps made him morbidly sensitive to its presence; he could hear the sigh of Longstreet's damaged lungs, and see the blue shadow on his lips.
"So," Grey said slowly, "if it is the honor of your family name that concerns you..."
The doctor's lips twisted in a wry expression, not quite a smile.
"You think that if the name ceases, there is no need to guard its honor?"
"Will you guard it at the price of your own?" The words came unbidden, surprising Grey nearly as much as Longstreet.
The doctor's mouth opened, working soundlessly. Then he picked up his tea and drank, hastily, as though to drown the words rising in his throat. His hands were shaking when he set the cup down; Grey heard the faint rattle of the china in its saucer.
"No," Longstreet said hoarsely, and stopped to clear his throat. "No," he said more firmly. "No, I won't. I cannot say what chance inspired Humperdinck to tell you, or how much he told you..." He shot Grey a sharp glance, but Grey wisely preserved silence.
Very likely, Humperdinck had known nothing, as he had no chance of speaking with Longstreet before the apoplexy struck him down. Only that there was something to know. But Longstreet might have told him something when making the original appointment; best if he thought Grey knew whatever there was to know.
"My cousin was a Jacobite," Longstreet said abruptly.
Grey raised one brow, though his heart began to beat faster. "Many people have been, and are. Unless you mean--"
"You know what I mean." The wheezing note was still in Longstreet's voice, but the voice itself had grown stronger, and the doctor's gaze was steady. He had made up his mind.
The story, in its essence, was much as had been given out at the time of the Duke of Pardloe's death--save, of course, that the nobleman who was the centerpiece of the English plot to assassinate the king was not the Duke of Pardloe but the Earl of Creemore.
"And you learned of this...when?"
"At the time." Longstreet looked down, fingers restless on the mermaid's scaly tail. "I...was invited to join them. I declined."
"Not very safe," Grey observed skeptically. "For them or you."
"Only my cousin knew. It was he who invited me; tried to persuade me of the--the rightness of their cause. He did believe that," he added softly, still looking down as though his argument were addressed to the little mermaid. "That James Stuart was rightfully king."
"So his motives were quite without self-interest, were they?"
Longstreet looked up at that, eyes fierce.
"Are any man's?"
Grey shrugged, conceding the point. Longstreet in turn conceded another.
"Whatever George's motives, those of his fellow conspirators were most assuredly mixed. I didn't know them all--George wouldn't tell me their names until I became one of them. Reasonably enough." He paused to cough a little.
"You didn't know them all--but you knew some?"
Longstreet nodded slowly, clearing his throat.
"The Marquis of Banbury. Catholic--his whole family was ferociously Catholic. When--when your father was killed, he fled to France. Died there a few years ago. Another man--I never knew his name; George only called him A."
A for Arbuthnot? Grey wondered, with a dropping of the stomach.
"You knew this--but you said nothing?"
Longstreet leaned back a little in his chair, surveying Grey, and after a moment, shook his head.
"I asked you--did you value life more, or honor? I asked myself that. Many times. And at the time...I chose my cousin's life above my honor. Your father was already dead; I could not alter that. I should have denounced Creemore, I know. But I could not bring myself to do it."
"After all," Grey said, curling his fingers under the edge of his seat in order not to strike Longstreet, "what harm could it do, to let my father's honor be destroyed and his family live in the belief that he had killed himself?"
He hadn't tried to keep his feelings out of his voice, and Longstreet recoiled a little, and turned his eyes away.
"I chose my cousin's life," he said again, so softly that the words were barely audible. Then his head rose and his gaze turned sharply on Grey.
"What do you mean--the belief that he had killed himself? He did kill himself. Did-didn't he?" For the first time, a note of uncertainty had entered the doc
"No, he bloody didn't," Grey said. "He was murdered, and I intend to find out by whom."
Longstreet's brow narrowed in concentration, and he stared deeply into Grey's eyes, as though making a diagnosis of some kind. He blinked once or twice, then stood abruptly, and without a word, left the room, leaning on his stick.
Grey sat, nonplussed, wondering whether to follow. But the man had not seemed ill, or particularly offended. He waited, wandering slowly round the room, examining the doctor's collection of curiosities.
Within a few moments, he heard the sound of the doctor's stick, and turned from the mantelpiece to see Longstreet enter the room, a familiar book in his hand. Bound in rough leather, its cover darkened and shiny in spots from much handling.
The doctor held it out to Grey, breathing heavily, and Grey snatched it from his hand, his heart in his throat.
"I thought...you might...want that." Longstreet nodded at the book.
"I...yes." Grey glanced at him, though he could scarcely take his eyes from the book. "Where did you get this?"
Longstreet had sat down, his face tinged with blue, and was breathing so heavily that he could manage no more than a helpless gesture.
Grey stood up and rummaged in his coat for his flask, from which he poured a substantial amount of brandy into the dregs of Longstreet's tea. He held the cup to Longstreet's thin blue lips, seeing in memory the doctor's hands performing a similar office for the stricken Humperdinck, that snowy night at White's Club.
It took some time before Longstreet was able to reply, but finally he managed, "It was among my cousin's things. I brought it away with me after he died."
"But you knew he had it?" The journal page had been left in Hal's office before Lord Creemore's death--but from the sound of things, it seemed unlikely that the gout-crippled and dropsical Lord Creemore had crept unobserved into the regimental offices. Whereas Longstreet, in his uniform, would have passed easily without notice.
Longstreet nodded.
"He...showed it to me. When I pressed him. That is how I knew where to find it."
"You've read it?" The rough leather of the cover seemed to burn against Grey's fingers, and the impulse to open the book, see his father's writing spring to life, was nearly overwhelming.
The man's breath was coming more easily now.
"I've read it."
"Did he--my father--did he write anything regarding a Jacobite conspiracy?"
Longstreet nodded, taking another sip from his cup.
"Yes. He knew a bit, suspected a great deal more--but he was circumspect enough to refer to the principals in code. He called my cousin Banquo." One side of the doctor's mouth turned up. "There were three others referred to by name--Macbeth, Fleance, and Siward. I think Siward was a man named Arbuthnot--Victor Arbuthnot. I don't know the others."
Grey felt the blood pulse in his fingertips, where they touched the journal.
"I said that I was obliged to choose between the truth and my cousin's life--and I chose George, for good or ill. That choice, however, did not absolve me of further responsibility in the matter. I have no interest in politics--one charlatan on the throne is as good as another, and if the Pope meddles, so does Friedrich of Prussia."
His hand curled protectively around the little mermaid, and he glanced at Grey, his voice growing softer.
"But I did feel a responsibility to prevent further harm being done, if I could. If any one of those men had become convinced that your mother knew what your father knew, they might easily have killed her, rather than risk the possibility that she might expose them."
His mother must have feared precisely that eventuality--as well as the certainty that Hal would take matters into his own hands, if he discovered the truth. And so she had taken what precautions she could: disguising his father's murder as suicide, sending her younger son to safety in Aberdeen, and leaving the country herself. And then had remained quiet for the next seventeen years--watching.
"Does she know?" Longstreet asked curiously. "Who killed your father?"
"No. Had she known which man it was, she would have killed him, I assure you," Grey said.
Longstreet looked startled at that.
"They do say women are amazing vindictive," the doctor said reflectively.
"If you think she would keep silence, sir, you know nothing of women in general, or my mother in particular. But since she did not in fact know who the murderer was, she did keep silent. But then, that is why..." The words died in his throat, revelation dawning.
"That's why you sent a page of this"--he lifted the journal--"to my brother, and another to my mother? Because of her impending marriage to General Stanley?"
Longstreet shook his head, the breath in his lungs sighing like wind in river willows.
"No--because my cousin was dying. It was clear to me that he was near death; almost beyond the reach...of law or man. The others...if they..."
Grey was losing patience.
"And why did you set the O'Higginses on me?"
Longstreet frowned.
"Who?"
"Two soldiers who attempted to waylay me in Hyde Park." It occurred to him that Longstreet certainly knew the name of Percy's patron, Mr. A. The temptation to ask was enormous--but if he knew, the temptation to find the man would be greater still. And then what?
Longstreet had been struggling with his breath, as Grey struggled with his baser instincts.
"That--I did not intend that you should be h-harmed."
"I wasn't," Grey said shortly. "Not on that occasion. But then I was attacked in an alley near Seven Dials; was that you, too?"
Longstreet nodded, a hand pressed to his chest.
"A warning. They--both times, they were meant only to knock you senseless, and to leave a th-third page of the journal in your pocket. I had not expected you to f-fight back."
"Sorry about that." Grey rubbed his left arm. He had left off the sling, and it was beginning to throb. "What the devil was the point of this--this charade?"
Longstreet leaned back in his chair, sighing deeply.
"Justice," he said softly. "Call it a sop to my conscience. I chose my cousin, as I said. But it became clear to me some months ago that he was dying. Once he was beyond the reach of the law...I could tell the truth. But I dared not do it openly--not then." A brief smile flitted across his face. "I had something to lose, then."
He had read the journal carefully, and selected three pages, all of them mentioning the name of Victor Arbuthnot.
"That was the only thing those pages had in common." To leave a page in Melton's office would arouse alarm; another sent to the countess would increase it; to leave the third with Grey, following a physical attack, would, he thought, insure that the pages were carefully studied--Arbuthnot's name would spring out of the comparison, and the Greys would go looking for him. And so far past the event, Arbuthnot would likely admit to the truth himself. If he did not...Longstreet would still have the option of revealing the truth in some other way.
"That actually worked," Grey admitted, though his displeasure over the stratagem had not abated in the slightest. "But Arbuthnot didn't know my father had been murdered, either."
What matters more? Longstreet had asked him. The life of a man, or the honor of his name when he is dead? Both, Grey thought. Longstreet had chosen; Grey had no choice.
"Who in bloody hell killed my father?" he demanded in frustration.
Longstreet closed his eyes.
"I don't know." The doctor had been growing visibly more exhausted as he spoke, needing to pause for breath at shorter intervals, coughing in short, harsh bursts that made Grey's own chest ache in sympathy. He flapped a limp hand toward the journal.
"You know...what I know."
Grey sat for a moment, trying not to burst with the force of the questions that boiled in his brain. But Longstreet did not have the answers to most of them, and the one thing he did know--the name of Mr. A--Grey could not bring himself to ask.
"My brother challenged Nathaniel Twelvetrees to a duel," he said abruptly. "Do you know why?"
Longstreet opened his eyes and looked up, faintly surprised.
"Don't you? Ah, I see not. I suppose Melton wouldn't refer to the matter. Twelvetrees had...seduced his wife."
Grey felt as though Longstreet had suddenly punched him violently in the chest.
"His wife." It came to him, with a sense of mingled horror and relief, that Longstreet did not mean Minnie, but Esme, his brother's first wife--who had been French and beautiful. She died in childbirth--and the child with her. Had the child been Hal's? he wondered, appalled. He remembered Hal's tearing grief at her death, but had not understood the half of his brother's feelings. His own heart burned at the thought.
"Thank you," he said, for lack of anything else to say to Longstreet, and turned to go. One final thought occurred to him.
"One last thing," he said, turning back, curious. "Would you have killed me? Had my brother not been there when you removed the shrapnel from my chest?"
Longstreet put back his head and surveyed Grey carefully, his eyes alive with ironic intelligence, still bright in his drawn face. Slowly, he shook his head.
"Had I met you in a dark alley, perhaps. H-had we met in a duel, certainly." He paused to breathe. "But you came...to me as a patient." He coughed again, and tapped his chest.
"Do no...harm," he wheezed, and closed his eyes.
The housekeeper, who had been standing silently in the shadows of the hall, came in, not looking at Grey. She went to Longstreet, knelt beside him, and smoothed the hair from his face, her touch tender. Longstreet did not open his eyes, but put up a hand, slowly, and laid it over hers.
Grey had dismissed the coach, not knowing how long his interview might take. It would be easy enough to find a cab, but he chose to walk, scarcely knowing which path he took.
His mind was a stew of revelation, shock, conjecture--and frustration. Beneath it all was a substratum of grief--for his father, for his mother, for Hal. His own grief seemed inconsequent, and yet magnified by all he now knew of his family's past.
The pressure in his chest made it painful to breathe, but he didn't worry about the remaining shrapnel; only stopped now and then when his breath grew too short to continue. At length, he found himself on the shore of the Thames, where he found an overturned dory and sat on it, the journal tucked under his coat, watching the brown water swirl past, lapping up the shore as the tide came in. He let his thoughts go, exhausted, and his mind emptied, little by little.