Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

by Diana Gabaldon

  AFTER A TIME, he got up and wandered down the hall to the nook he’d taken over as his study. It was cramped as an eggshell, but he didn’t need much space—and the close confines seemed to help him think better, shutting out some of the outside world.

  He plucked a quill from the jar and bit it absently, tasting the bitter tang of dried ink. He should cut a new one but couldn’t summon up the energy to find his penknife, and after all, what did it matter? John wouldn’t mind a few blots.

  Paper…There was a half quire of the parchment sheets he’d used to reply to the expressions of sympathy about Esmé. They’d come in by the bushelful—unlike the spatter of embarrassed notes that had followed his father’s suicide three years before. He’d written the replies himself, in spite of his mother’s offer to help. He’d been filled with something like the electric fluid natural philosophers talked about, something that numbed him to any natural need like food or sleep, that filled his brain and body with a manic need to move, to do something—though God knew there was nothing more he could have done after killing Nathaniel Twelvetrees. Not that he hadn’t tried…

  The paper felt gritty with dust; he didn’t let anyone touch his desk. He held up a sheet and blew at it, shook it a bit, and set it down, then dipped his quill.

  J— he wrote, and stopped dead. What was there to say? I hope to God you’re not dead? Have you seen anyone strange asking questions? How are you finding Aberdeen? Other than cold, wet, dreary, and gray…

  After twiddling the quill for a while, he gave up, wrote, Luck. –H, sanded the sheet, folded it, and, taking up the candle, dribbled smoke-stained wax onto the paper and stamped it firmly with his signet. A swan, flying, neck outstretched, across a full moon.

  He was still sitting at his desk an hour later. There was progress: John’s letter sat there, squared to the corner of the desk, sealed and with the Armstrongs’ direction in Aberdeen neatly written—with a freshly cut pen. The quire of parchment had been shaken free of dust, tapped into alignment, and put away in a drawer. And he’d found the source of the dead-flower smell: a bunch of rotting carnations left in a pottery mug on the windowsill. He’d managed to open that window and throw them out and then had summoned a footman to take the mug away to be washed. He was exhausted.

  He became aware of noises in the distance: the sound of the front door opening, voices. That was all right; Sylvester would take care of whoever it was.

  To his surprise, the butler seemed to have been overcome by the intruder; there were raised voices and a determined step coming rapidly toward his sanctum.

  “What the devil are you doing, Melton?” The door was flung open and Harry Quarry’s broad face glowered in at him.

  “Writing letters,” Hal said, with what dignity he could summon. “What does it look like?”

  Harry strode into the room, lit a taper from the fire, and touched it to the candlestick on the desk. Hal hadn’t noticed it growing dark, but it must be teatime, at least. His friend lifted the candlestick and examined him critically by its light.

  “You don’t want to know what you look like,” said Harry, shaking his head. He put down the candle. “You didn’t recall that you were meant to be meeting with Washburn this afternoon, I take it.”

  “Wash—oh, Jesus.” He’d risen halfway out of his chair at the name and now sank back, feeling hollow at mention of his solicitor.

  “I’ve spent the last hour with him, after meeting with Anstruther and Josper—you remember, the adjutant from the Fourteenth?” He spoke with a strong note of sarcasm.

  “I do,” Hal said shortly, and rubbed a hand hard over his face, trying to rouse his wits.

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” he said, and shook his head. He rose, pulling his banyan round him. “Call Nasonby, will you? Have him bring us tea in the library. I have to change and wash.”

  Washed, dressed, brushed, and feeling some semblance of ability, he came into the library a quarter hour later to find the tea trolley already in place; a wisp of aromatic steam rose from the teapot’s spout to mingle with the spicy scents of ham and sardines and the unctuous sweetness of a currant sponge, oozing cream and butter.

  “When’s the last time you ate anything?” Harry demanded, watching Hal consume sardines on toast with the single-mindedness of a starving cat.

  “Yesterday. Maybe. I forget.” He reached for his cup and washed the sardines down far enough to make cake feasible as the next step. “Tell me what Washburn said.”

  Harry disposed of his own cake, swallowed, and replied.

  “Well, you can’t actually be tried in open court. Whatever you think about your damned title—no, don’t tell me, I’ve heard it.” He held out the palm of his hand in prevention, picking up a gherkin with the other.

  “Whether you choose to call yourself the Duke of Pardloe, the Earl of Melton, or plain Harold Grey, you’re still a peer. You can’t be tried by anything save a jury of your peers—to wit, the House of Lords. And I didn’t really require Washburn to tell me that the odds of a hundred noblemen agreeing that you should be either imprisoned or hanged for challenging the man who seduced your wife to a duel, and killing him as a result, is roughly a thousand to one—but he did tell me so.”

  “Oh.” Hal hadn’t given the matter a moment’s thought but if he had would likely have reached a similar conclusion. Still, he felt some relief at hearing that the Honorable Lawrence Washburn, KC, shared it.

  “Mind you—are you going to eat that last slice of ham?”

  “Yes.” Hal took it and reached for the mustard pot. Harry took an egg sandwich instead.

  “Mind you,” he repeated, mouth half full of deviled egg and thin white bread, “that doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble.”

  “You mean with Reginald Twelvetrees, I suppose.” Hal kept his eyes on his plate, carefully cutting the ham into pieces. “That isn’t news to me, Harry.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought so, no,” Harry agreed. “I meant with the king.”

  Hal set down his fork and stared at Harry.

  “The king?”

  “Or, to be more exact, the army.” Harry delicately plucked an almond biscuit from the wreckage of the tea trolley. “Reginald Twelvetrees has sent a petition to the secretary at war, asking that you be brought to a court-martial for the unlawful killing of his brother and, further, that you be removed as colonel of the Forty-sixth and the regiment refused permanent re-commission, on grounds that your behavior is so deranged as to constitute a danger to the readiness and ability of said regiment. That being where His Majesty comes in.”

  “Balderdash,” Hal said shortly. But his hand trembled slightly as he lifted the teapot, and the lid rattled. He saw Harry notice, and he set it down carefully.

  What the king giveth, the king also taketh away. It had taken months of painstaking work to have his father’s regiment provisionally re-commissioned and more—much more—to find decent officers willing to join it.

  “The scribblers—” Harry began, but Hal made a quick, violent gesture, cutting him off.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t—”

  “I do! Don’t bloody talk about it.”

  Harry made a soft growling noise but subsided. He picked up the pot and filled both cups, pushing Hal’s toward him.

  “Sugar?”

  “Please.”

  The regiment—in its resurrected form—had not yet seen service anywhere; it had barely half its complement of men, and most of those didn’t know one end of a musket from the other. He had only a skeleton staff, and while most of his officers were good, solid men, only a handful, like Harry Quarry, had any personal allegiance to him. Any pressure, any hint of scandal—well, any more scandal—and the whole structure could collapse. The remnants to be greedily scooped up or trampled on by Reginald Twelvetrees, Hal’s father’s blackened memory left forever dishonored as a traitor, and his own name dragged further through the mud—painted by the scribblers of the press not only as a cuckold but a murde
rer and lunatic.

  The handle of his porcelain teacup broke off suddenly and shot across the table, striking the pot with a tink! The cup itself had cracked right through, and tea ran down his arm, soaking his cuff.

  He carefully put down the two pieces of the cup and shook tea off his hand. Harry said nothing but raised one bushy black brow at him.

  Hal closed his eyes and breathed through his nose for several moments.

  “All right,” he said, and opened his eyes. “One—Twelvetrees’s petition. It hasn’t been granted yet?”

  “It has not.” Harry was beginning to relax a little, which gave Hal a bit more confidence in his own assumption of composure.

  “Well, then. That’s the first thing—stop that petition. Do you know the secretary personally?”

  Harry shook his head. “You?”

  “I’ve met him once, at Ascot. Friendly wager. I won, though.”

  “Ah. Too bad.” Harry drummed his fingers on the cloth for a moment, then darted a glance at Hal. “Ask your mother?”

  “Absolutely not. She’s in France, anyway, and she’s not coming back.”

  Harry knew why the Dowager Countess of Melton was in France—and why John was in Aberdeen—and nodded reluctantly. Benedicta Grey knew a great many people, but the suicide of her husband on the eve of his being arrested as a Jacobite traitor had barred her from the sort of circles where Hal might otherwise have found influence.

  There was a long silence, unbroken by Nasonby’s appearance with a new teacup. He filled this, took up the shattered bits of the old one, and vanished as he’d come, soft-footed as a cat.

  “What does this petition say, exactly?” Hal asked finally.

  Harry grimaced but settled himself to answer.

  “That you killed Nathaniel Twelvetrees because you had conceived the unfounded notion that he had been, er…dallying with your wife. In the grip of this delusion, you then assassinated him. And thus you are plainly mentally unfit to hold command over—”

  “Unfounded?” Hal said blankly. “Assassinated?”

  Harry reached out quickly and took the cup from his hand.

  “You know as well as I do, Melton—it’s not what’s true; it’s what you can make people believe.” He set the full cup gingerly on its saucer. “The hound was damned discreet about it, and apparently so was Esmé. There wasn’t a breath of gossip until the news that you’d shot him on his own croquet lawn.”

  “He chose the ground! And the weapons!”

  “I know that,” Harry said patiently. “I was there, remember?”

  “What do you think I am?” Hal snapped. “An idiot?”

  Harry ignored that.

  “I’ll say what I know, of course—that it was a legitimate challenge and that Nathaniel Twelvetrees accepted it. But his second—that chap Buxton—was killed last month in a carriage accident near Smithfield. And no one else was on that croquet lawn. That’s doubtless what gave Reginald the notion of trying to nobble you this way—no independent witnesses.”

  “Oh…hell.” The sardines were stirring in his guts.

  Harry took a breath that strained the seams of his uniform and looked down at the table.

  “I—forgive me. But…is there any proof?”

  Hal managed a laugh, dry as sawdust.

  “Of the affair? Do you think I’d have killed him if I hadn’t been sure?”

  “No, of course not. I only mean—well…bloody hell…did she just…tell you? Or perhaps you…er…saw…”

  “No.” Hal was feeling dizzy. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and tried a deep breath of his own. “No, I never caught them together. And she didn’t—didn’t quite tell me. There were—there were letters.”

  She’d left them where she knew he’d find them. But why? That was one of the things that killed him, over and over again. She’d never told him why. Was it simple guilt? Had she grown tired of the affair but lacked the courage to end it herself? Worse—had she wanted him to kill Nathaniel?

  No. Her face when he’d come back that day, when he told her what he’d done…

  His face was resting on the white cloth and there were black and white spots swarming before his eyes. He could smell starch and spilled tea, sardines with their tang of the sea. Of Esmé’s birth waters. And her blood. Oh, God, don’t let me vomit….

  3

  IRISH ROVERS

  London, May 1744

  MINNIE LAY IN BED, the remains of breakfast on a tray beside her, and contemplated the shape of her first day in London. She’d arrived late the night before and had barely taken notice of the rooms her father had engaged for her—she had a suite in a townhouse on Great Ryder Street, “convenient to everything,” as he’d assured her, complete with a housemaid and meals provided from the kitchen in the basement.

  She had been filled with an intoxicating sense of freedom from the moment she’d taken an affectionate leave of her father on the dock at Calais. She could still feel the pleasure of it, bubbling in the slow, pleasant fashion of a crock of fermenting cabbage under her stays, but her innate caution kept a lid on it.

  She’d done small jobs on her own before, sometimes outside of Paris, but those had been simple things like calling on the relatives of a dead bibliophile and sympathetically relieving them of their burdensome inheritance—she’d noticed that almost no one felt that a library was much of a legacy—and even then she’d had an escort, usually a stout, middle-aged, long-married man still capable of hoisting boxes and deflecting nuisances but unlikely to make improper advances to a young woman of seventeen.

  Monsieur Perpignan would not, of course, be a suitable escort for London. Aside from a tendency to seasickness, a fondness for his wife, and a disgust for British cooking, he didn’t speak English and had no sense of direction. She’d been a bit surprised that her father would let her stay in London entirely on her own—but of course he hadn’t. He had Made Arrangements: his specialty.

  “I’ve arranged a chaperone for you,” her father had said, handing over a neat docket of notes, addresses, maps, and English money. “A Lady Buford, a widow of slender means but good connections. She’ll arrange a social life for you, introduce you to the right sorts of people, take you to plays and salons, that sort of thing.”

  “What fun,” she’d said politely, and he laughed.

  “Oh, I expect you’ll find some, my dear,” he said. “That’s why I’ve also arranged two…shall we call them bodyguards?”

  “So much more tactful than minders, or wardens. Two?”

  “Yes, indeed. They’ll run errands for you, as well as accompany you when you visit clients.” He reached into one of the pigeonholes of his desk and drew out a folded sheet of paper, which he handed her. “This is a précis of what I told you about the Duke of Pardloe—and a few others. I didn’t mention him to Lady Buford, and you should be somewhat discreet about your interest in him. There’s a great deal of scandal attached to that family, and you—”

  “Don’t touch pitch until you’re ready to set light to it,” she finished, with no more than a slight roll of the eyes.

  “Travel safe, my dear.” He’d kissed her forehead and embraced her briefly. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too, Papa,” she murmured now, climbing out of bed. “But not that much.”

  She glanced at the secretaire, where she’d put all the lists and documents. Time enough for the chaste Duke of Pardloe and the randy Duke of Beaufort when she came within sight of them. Lady Buford had left a card, saying that she would meet Minnie at Rumm’s Tea-Room in Piccadilly at four o’clock for tea. Wear something pretty, modest, and not over-elaborate, Lady Buford had added, with welcome practicality. The pink muslin, then, with the little jacket.

  There were three appointments already scheduled for the early afternoon—routine book business—and the two bodyguards were meant to come and introduce themselves at eleven. She glanced at her little traveling clock, which showed half-eight. A quick wash, a simple dress, stout
boots for walking, and London was hers—alone!—for two hours.

  THEY’D LIVED IN London for a time, when she was much younger. And she’d come with her father twice for brief visits, when she was fourteen and fifteen. She had a general idea of the city’s shape but had never needed to find her own way.

  She was accustomed to exploring a new place, though, and within the first hour had discovered a decent-looking ordinary for quick meals outside her rooms, a baker’s shop for cakes, and the nearest church. Her father had nothing to do with religion, and so far as she knew, she’d never even been christened—but it was as well to look the part you played, and pious, modest young women went to church on Sunday. Besides, she liked the music.

  The day was bright, the air tangy with spring sap, and the streets were full of an exuberant bustle, quite different from Paris or Prague. There was really no place like London. Particularly as no other city contained her mother. But that small matter would need to wait for a bit; much as she longed to rush off to Parson’s Green at once and see this Mrs. Simpson, it was too important. She needed to reconnoiter, to calculate her approach. To be hasty or importunate might ruin everything.

  She headed toward Piccadilly, which housed a good many booksellers. On the way, though, were Regent and then Oxford Streets, charmingly studded with expensive shops. She must ask Lady Buford about dressmakers.

  She had a little French watch pinned to her fichu—it didn’t do to be late for appointments—and when it told her in a tiny silver voice that it was now half-ten, she sighed and turned back toward Great Ryder Street. As she crossed the corner of Upper St. James’s Park, though, she began to have an odd feeling at the back of her neck.

  She reached the corner, made as though to step into the street, then suddenly darted sideways, across a lane, and into the park itself. She whipped behind a large tree and stood in the shadow, frozen, watching. Sure enough, a young man came hurtling into the lane, looking sharp from side to side. He was roughly dressed, brown hair tied back with string—perhaps an apprentice or a laborer.