Lord John And The Hand Of Devils (Lord John Grey #1.5)

“You knew him well?” He could not help himself; whether it brought him comfort or misery, he felt he had no choice now but to speak of Fraser—and Quarry was the only man in London to whom he could so speak.

“Oh, yes—or as well as one might know a man in that situation,” Quarry replied offhandedly. “Had him to dine in my quarters every week; very civil in his speech, good hand at cards.” He lifted a fleshy nose from his glass, cheeks flushed ruddier than usual with the steam. “He wasn’t one to invite pity, of course, but one could scarce help but feel some sympathy for his circumstances.”

“Sympathy? And yet you left him in chains.”

Quarry looked up sharply, catching the edge in Grey’s words.

“I may have liked the man; I didn’t trust him. Not after what happened to one of my sergeants.”

“And what was that?” Lord John managed to infuse the question with no more than light interest.

“Misadventure. Drowned by accident in the stone-quarry pool,” Quarry said, dumping several teaspoons of rock sugar into a fresh glass and stirring vigorously. “Or so I wrote in the report.” He looked up from his coffee, and gave Grey his lewd, lopsided wink. “I liked Fraser. Didn’t care for the sergeant. But never think a man is helpless, Grey, only because he’s fettered.”

Grey sought urgently for a way to inquire further without letting his passionate interest be seen.

“So you believe—” he began.

“Look,” said Quarry, rising suddenly from his seat. “Look! Damned if it’s not Bob Gerald!”

Lord John whipped round in his chair. Sure enough, the late-afternoon sun struck sparks from a fiery head, bent as its owner emerged from one of the stalled sedan chairs. Gerald straightened, face set in a puzzled frown, and began to push his way into the knot of embattled bearers.

“Whatever is he about, I wonder? Surely—Hi! Hold! Hold, you blackguard!” Dropping his glass unregarded, Quarry rushed toward the door, bellowing.

Grey, a step or two behind, saw no more than the flash of metal in the sun and the brief look of startlement on Gerald’s face. Then the crowd fell back, with a massed cry of horror, and his view was obscured by a throng of heaving backs.

He fought his way through the screaming mob without compunction, striking ruthlessly with his sword hilt to clear the way.

Gerald was lying in the arms of one of his bearers, hair fallen forward, hiding his face. The young man’s knees were drawn up in agony, balled fists pressed hard against the growing stain on his waistcoat.

Quarry was there; he brandished his sword at the crowd, bellowing threats to keep them back, then glared wildly round for a foe to skewer.

“Who?” he shouted at the bearers, face congested with fury. “Who’s done this?”

The circle of white faces turned in helpless question, one to another, but found no focus; the foe had fled, and his bearers with him.

Grey knelt in the gutter, careless of filth, and smoothed back the ruddy hair with hands gone stiff and cold. The hot stink of blood was thick in the air, and the fecal smell of pierced intestine. Grey had seen battlefields enough to know the truth even before he saw the glazing eyes, the pallid face. He felt a deep, sharp stab at the sight, as though his own guts were pierced, as well.

Brown eyes fixed wide on his, a spark of recognition deep behind the shock and pain. He seized the dying man’s hand in his, and chafed it, knowing the futility of the gesture. Gerald’s mouth worked, soundless. A bubble of red spittle swelled at the corner of his lips.

“Tell me.” Grey bent urgently to the man’s ear, and felt the soft brush of hair against his mouth. “Tell me who has done it—I will avenge you. I swear it.”

He felt a slight spasm of the fingers in his, and squeezed back, hard, as though he might force some of his own strength into Gerald; enough for a word, a name.

The soft lips were blanched, the blood bubble growing. Gerald drew back the corners of his mouth, a fierce, tooth-baring rictus that burst the bubble and sent a spray of blood across Grey’s cheek. Then the lips drew in, pursing in what might have been the invitation to a kiss. Then he died, and the wide brown eyes went blank.

Quarry was shouting at the bearers, demanding information. More shouts echoed down the walls of the streets, the nearby alleys, news flying from the scene of murder like bats out of hell.

Grey knelt alone in the silence near the dead man, in the stench of blood and voided bowels. Gently, he laid Gerald’s hand limp across his wounded breast, and wiped the blood from his own hand, unthinking, on his cloak.

A motion drew his eye. Harry Quarry knelt on the other side of the body, his face gone white as the scar on his cheek, prying open a large clasp knife. He searched gently through Gerald’s loosened, blood-matted hair, and drew out a clean lock, which he cut off. The sun was setting; light caught the hair as it fell, a curl of vivid flame.

“For his mother,” Quarry explained. Lips tightly pressed together, he coiled the gleaming strand and put it carefully away.

Part II

Intrigue

The invitation came two days later, and with it a note from Harry Quarry. Lord John Grey was bidden to an evening’s entertainment at Joffrey House, by desire of the Lady Lucinda Joffrey. Quarry’s note said simply, Come. I have news.

And not beforetimes, Grey thought, tossing the note aside. The two days since Gerald’s death had been filled with frantic activity, with inquiry and speculation—to no avail. Every shop and barrow in Forby Street had been turned over thoroughly, but no trace found of the assailant or his minions; they had faded into the crowd, anonymous as ants.

That proved one thing, at least, Grey thought. It was a planned attack, not a random piece of street violence. For the assailant to vanish so quickly, he must have looked like hoi polloi; a prosperous merchant or a noble would have stood out by his bearing and the manner of his dress. The sedan chair had been hired; no one recalled the appearance of the hirer, and the name given was—not surprisingly—false.

He shuffled restlessly through the rest of the mail. All other avenues of inquiry had proven fruitless so far. No weapon had been found. He and Quarry had sought the hall porter at the Beefsteak, in hopes that the man had heard somewhat of the conversation between Gerald and Bubb-Dodington, but the man was a temporary servant, hired for the day, and had since taken his wages and vanished, no doubt to drink them.

Grey had canvassed his acquaintance for any rumor of enemies, or failing that, for any history of the late Robert Gerald that might bear a hint of motive for the crime. Gerald was evidently known, in a modest way, in government circles and the venues of respectable society, but he had no great money to leave, no heirs save his mother, no hint of any romantic entanglement—in short, there was no intimation whatever of an association that might have led to that bloody death in Forby Street.

He paused, eye caught by an unfamiliar seal. A note, signed by one G. Bubb-Dodington, requesting a few moments of his time, in a convenient season—and noting en passant that B-D would himself be present at Joffrey House that evening, should Lord John find himself likewise engaged.

He picked up Quarry’s note again, and found another sheet of paper folded up behind it. Unfolded, this proved to be a broadsheet, printed with a poem—or at the least, words arranged in the form of verse. “A Blot Removed,” it was titled. Lacking in meter, but not in crude wit, the doggerel gave the story of a “he-whore” whose lewdities outraged the public, until “scandal flamed up, blood-red as the abominable color of his hair,” and an unknown savior rose up to destroy the perverse, thus wiping clean the pristine parchment of society.

Lord John had eaten no breakfast, and sight of this extinguished what vestiges he had of appetite. He carried the document into the morning room, and fed it carefully to the fire.

Joffrey House was a small but elegant white stone mansion, just off Eaton Square. Grey had never come there before, but the house was well known for brilliant parties, much frequented by those with a taste for politics; Sir Richard Joffrey, Quarry’s elder half brother, was influential.

As Grey came up the marble steps, he saw a member of Parliament and the First Sea Lord, close in converse ahead of him, and perceived a considerable array of discreetly elegant carriages standing at a distance in the street. Something of an occasion, then; he was a trifle surprised that Lady Lucinda should be entertaining on such a scale, on the heels of her cousin’s assassination—Quarry had said she was close to Gerald.

Quarry was on the qui vive; Grey had no sooner been announced than he found himself seized by the arm and drawn out of the slowly moving reception line, into the shelter of a monstrous plant that had been stood in the corner of the ballroom, where it consorted with several of its fellows in the manner of a small jungle.

“You came, then,” Quarry said, unnecessarily.

Seeing the haggard aspect of the man, Grey said merely, “Yes. What news?”

Fatigue and distress tended merely to sharpen Grey’s fine-cut features, but gave Quarry an air of snappish ferocity, making him look like a large, ill-tempered dog.

“You saw that—that—unspeakable piece of excrement?”

“The broadsheet? Yes; where did you get it?”

“They are all over London; not only that particular excrescence—many others, as vile or worse.”

Grey felt a prick of deep unease.

“With similar accusations?”

“That Robert Gerald was a pederast? Yes, and worse; that he was a member of a notorious sodomitical society, a gathering for the purpose of … well, you’ll know the sort of thing? Disgusting!”

Grey could not tell whether this last epithet was applied to the existence of such societies, or to the association of Gerald’s name with one. In consequence, he chose his words with care.

“Yes, I have heard of such associations.”

Grey did know, though the knowledge was not personal; such societies were said to be common—he knew of taverns and back rooms aplenty, to say nothing of the more notorious mollyhouses, where … Still, fastidiousness and caution had prevented any close inquiry into these assemblies.

“Need I say that—that such accusations have no truth—not the slightest pretention to truth?” Quarry spoke with some difficulty, avoiding Grey’s eye. Grey laid a hand on Quarry’s sleeve.

“No, you need not say so. I am certain of it,” he said quietly. Quarry glanced up, giving him a half-embarrassed smile, and clasped his hand briefly.

“Thank you,” he said, voice rasping.

“But if it be not so,” Grey observed, giving Quarry time to recover himself, “then such rapid profusion of rumor has the taste about it of an organized calumny. And that in itself is very strange, do you not think?”

Evidently not; Quarry looked blankly at him.

“Someone wished not only to destroy Robert Gerald,” Grey explained, “but thought it necessary also to blacken his name. Why? The man is dead; who would think it needful to murder his reputation, as well?”

Quarry looked startled, then frowned, brows drawing close together in the effort of thought.

“ ’Strewth,” he said slowly. “Damme, you’re right. But who …?” He stopped, looking thoughtfully out over the assemblage of guests.

“Is the prime minister here?” Grey peered through the drooping foliage. It was a small but brilliant party, and one of a particular kind; no more than forty guests, and these all drawn from the echelons of power. No mincing fops or gadding henwits; ladies there were, to be sure, providing grace and beauty—but it was the men who were of consequence. Several ministers were in attendance, the sea lord, an assistant minister of finance … He stopped, feeling as though someone had just punched him hard in the belly.

Quarry was muttering in his ear, explaining something about the prime minister’s absence, but Grey was no longer attending. He fought the urge to step back farther into the shadows.

George Everett was looking well—very well indeed. Wig and powder set off the blackness of his brows and the fine dark eyes below them. A firm chin and a long, mobile mouth—Grey’s index finger twitched involuntarily, tracing the line of it in memory.

“Are you well, Grey?” Quarry’s gruff voice recalled him to himself.

“Yes. A trifling indisposition, no more.” Grey pulled his eyes away from Everett’s slim figure, striking in black and primrose. It was only a matter of time, after all; he had known they would meet again—and at least he had not been taken unawares. With an effort, he turned his attention back to Quarry.

“The news you mentioned. Is it—”

Quarry interrupted, gripping his arm and pulling him out from the shelter of the trees into the babble of the party.

“Hark, here is Lucinda. Come, she wishes to meet you.”

Lady Lucinda Joffrey was small and round, her dark hair worn unpowdered, sleek to the skull, and her ringlets fastened with an ornament of pheasant’s feathers that went well with her russet gown. Her face was plump and rather plain, though it might have some claim to character, had there been much life to it. Instead, swollen lids drooped over eyes smudged with shadows she had not bothered to disguise.

Lord John bowed over her hand, wondering again as he did so what had caused her to open her house this evening; plainly she was in great distress.

“My lord,” she murmured, in response to his courtesies. Then she lifted her eyes and he found himself startled. Her eyes were beautiful, almond-shaped and clear gray in color—and despite their reddened lids, clear and piercing with intelligence.

“Harry tells me that you were with Robert when he died,” she said, softly but clearly, holding him with those eyes. “And that you have offered your help in finding the dastard who has done this thing.”