Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

What had been Ffoulkes’s part in the matter? Presumably, to conduct the negotiations with France, using his wife’s relatives as the go-between with Louis’s spymasters. But when had Ffoulkes shot himself? It seemed so long ago, and Grey’s memory of anything further back than yesterday was still undependable. He did recall one thing, though, and going hastily into the house entered the library and rummaged through the drawer into which he was inclined to decant miscellaneous papers, until he emerged with a smeared and worn-edged broadsheet, the faint smell of coffee still in its creases.

He hastily unfolded Bates’s statement to check a date. No, Ffoulkes had shot himself a few days before the arrest of Bates, Otway, and Jeffords.

The theft would have been discovered very shortly; Adams could not delay in executing the part of his crime designed to shield himself from blame. But what of the other part? The delivery of the stolen material to France? With Ffoulkes dead, that pathway might be closed.

He folded the letter again, and thrust it into his pocket. These were all questions that could wait. The important thing was that he now had a tool that might be used to open up Bernard Adams like a keg of salt herring. Someone in authority would need to see this letter—but not just yet.

“Nordman!” he called, going to the hallway. “Call the coach, please—I’m going out.”

Bernard Adams’s house was not grand, but it was elegant; an Inigo Jones jewel, set in its own small private wood. Grey was not of a mind to admire the scenery, but did observe a small stone building, a little way from the house, whose ornaments showed it clearly to have been originally a Catholic chapel. Adams was not Catholic, though—could not have held such positions in the government as he had, if he were.

Not openly Catholic.

“An Irish Jacobite,” Grey murmured to himself, appalled. “Jesus.” Positions in the government. Adams’s rise to power had begun with his appointment as secretary to Robert Walpole—and Grey saw, as clearly as though the scene was taking place before him on the drive, the picture of the tall, ailing prime minister, leaning heavily on his secretary—his Irish secretary—coming down the path to visit the widow of the late Duke of Pardloe.

Clenching his jaw so hard that his teeth creaked, he bounded up the steps and pounded on the door.

“Sir?” The butler was an Irishman; so much was obvious from the one word.

“Your master. I wish to see him.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, sir, the master’s gone out.”

Grey seized the man by one shoulder and thrust him backward, stepping into the house.

“Sir!”

“Where is he?”

The butler glanced wildly round for assistance, and looked as though he was about to shout for help.

“Tell me where he is, and I’ll go. Otherwise…I shall be obliged to look for him.” Grey had worn his sword; he put a hand on the hilt.

The butler gasped.

“He—he has gone to meet the Duchess of Pardloe.”

“He— what?” Grey shook his head, convinced that he was hearing things, but the man repeated it, gaining confidence, as Grey seemed not about to run him through.

“The Duchess of Pardloe, sir. She sent a note this morning—I was there when the master opened it, and, ah…happened to see.”

Grey nodded, narrowly keeping a grip on himself.

“Did you happento see where the meeting was? And when?”

“In the Edgeware Road, a house called ‘Morning Glory,’ four o’clock,” the butler blurted.

Without a word, Grey let go of his sword and left. He felt dazed and off balance, as though someone had suddenly pulled a carpet out from under him.

It couldn’t be—but it couldn’t notbe. No one but his mother would use that title. And to use it to Adams was a direct challenge. It must be her. But how had she got back to London, and what in God’s namedid she think she was doing?

Gripped by fear, he ran down the drive toward the street where he had left his carriage waiting. Morning Glory. He knew the house; it was a small, elegant house belonging to the Walpole family. What…?

“Edgeware Road!” he shouted to the coachman, ducking inside. “And hurry!”

Morning Glory looked deserted. The shutters were closed, the fountain in the front court dry, the court itself unswept, carpeted with dead leaves. It had the look of a house whose family had gone away to the country, leaving the furniture under sheets, the servants paid off.

Neither was there any sign of a coach, a horse, or any living person. Grey mounted the stoop softly, and stood for a moment, listening. The place was still, save the cawing of rooks in the bare-limbed trees in the garden.

He took hold of the doorknob; it turned in his hand. Slowly letting out the breath he had been holding, he opened the door and stepped warily inside.

The furniture wasunder sheets, he saw. He paused, listening. No voices. No sound, save his own breathing. He knew the house, had been here now and then, at musicales—the present Earl of Orford’s wife sang, or thought she could.

The doors off the foyer stood open—all but one. That one led, he thought, to the library. He put a hand on his sword hilt, but decided against drawing it. Adams was a slight man, and twenty years Grey’s senior; he wouldn’t need it.

He set his hand on the doorknob; it was white china, painted with roses, and a pang went through him at the cool slick touch of it on his hand, but there was no time now to think of such things. He eased the door gently open—and came face to face with the barrel of a pistol, pointed directly at him.

He flung himself to the side, seizing a chair, which he narrowly stopped himself from throwing at the person holding the gun.

“Jesus!” he said. He stood frozen for an instant, then, quivering in every limb, set the chair slowly down and collapsed onto it.

“What the devil are you doing here?” his mother demanded, lowering the pistol.

“I might ask you the same thing, madam.” His heart was pounding in his chest, sending small jolts of pain down his left arm with every beat, and he had broken out in a cold sweat.

“It is a private affair,” she said fiercely. “Will you bloody leave?”

He paid no attention to her unaccustomed language.

“I will not. What were you intending? To shoot Mr. Adams on sight? Is that thing loaded?”

“Of course it is loaded,” she said in exasperation, “and if I’d meant to shoot him on sight, you’d be dead at the moment. Will you go away!”

“No,” he said briefly, and rising, reached for the gun. “Give me that.”

She took two steps back, holding the gun—which was not only loaded and primed, but cocked, he saw—protectively against her breast.

“John, I wish you to leave,” she said, as calmly as she could, though he saw the pulse beat fast in the hollow of her throat, and the slight shaking of her hands. “You mustgo, and now. I will tell you everything, I swear it. But not now.”

“He isn’t coming.” That much had dawned on him. It was nearly half past four—he had heard the bells strike, just before his arrival. If Adams had meant to come, he would be here. The fact that he was not…

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Adams,” he repeated. “It isBernard Adams who killed Father?”

Her face drained of all color, and she sat down, quite suddenly, on a sofa. Her eyes closed, as though she could not keep them open.

“What have you done, John?” she whispered. “What do you know?”

He came and sat down beside her, removing the pistol from her hand, gone limp and unresisting.