The Scottish Prisoner

“Mama says you killed the other man,” Adam remarked. “Where did you stick him?”

“In the belly.”

“Colonel Quarry said the other man was an uncon-she-ubble tick,” Benjamin said, working out the syllables carefully.

“Unconscionable. Yes, I suppose so. I hope so.”

“For why?” asked Adam.

“If you have to kill someone, it’s best to have a reason.”

All three boys nodded solemnly, like a nestful of owls, but then demanded more details of the duel, eager to hear how much blood there had been, how many times Uncle John had stuck the bad fellow, and what they had said to each other.

“Did he call you vile names and utter foul oaths?” asked Benjamin.

“Foul oafs,” Henry murmured happily to himself. “Foul oafs, foul oafs.”

“I don’t think we said anything, really. That’s what your second does—he goes and talks to the other fellow’s second, and they try to see if things can be arranged so that you don’t need to fight.”

This seemed a most peculiar notion to his audience, and the struggle to explain just why one wouldn’t always want to fight someone exhausted him, so that he greeted with relief the arrival of a footman bearing a tray—even though the tray bore nothing more than a bowl of gray slop that he assumed was gruel and another of bread and milk.

The boys ate the bread and milk, passing the bowl round the bed in a companionable way, dribbling on the covers and vying with one another to tell him the news of the household: Nasonby had fallen down the front stair and had to have his ankle strapped up; Cook had had a disagreement with the fishmonger, who sent plaice instead of salmon, and so the fishmonger wouldn’t bring any more fish, and so supper last night was pancakes and they all pretended it was Shrove Tuesday; Lucy the spaniel had had her pups in the bottom of the upstairs linen closet, and Mrs. Weston the housekeeper had had a fit—

“Did she fall down and foam at the mouth?” Grey asked, interested.

“Probably,” Benjamin said cheerfully. “We didn’t get to look. Cook gave her sherry, though.”

Henry and Adam were by now cuddling against his sides, their wriggly warmth and the sweet smell of their heads a comfort that, in his weakness, threatened to make him tearful again. To avoid this, Grey cleared his throat and asked Ben to recite something for him.

Ben frowned thoughtfully, looking so much like Hal considering a hand of cards that Grey’s emotion changed abruptly to amusement. He managed not to laugh—it hurt his chest very much to laugh—and relaxed, listening to an execrably performed rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” this interrupted by the entrance of Mi

“Whatever are you doing to your poor uncle John?” she demanded. “Look what you’ve done to his bed! Off with the lot of you!”

The bedroom purged, she looked down her nose at John and shook her head. She had on a tiny lace cap, with her ripe-wheat hair put up, and looked charmingly domestic.

“Hal says the doctor be damned and Cook, too: you are to have steak and eggs, with a mixed grill. So steak you shall have, and if you die or burst or rot as a result, it will be your own fault.”

Grey had already plunged a fork into a succulent grilled tomato and was chewing blissfully.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Thank you. Thank Hal. Thank Cook. Thank everybody.” He swallowed and speared a mushroom.

Despite her earlier disavowal, Mi

“Hal said you wanted to scold me about something.” She didn’t look at all apprehensive at the prospect.

“I didn’t say that,” Grey protested, pausing with a chunk of bloody steak held in transit. “I just said I could do with a word.”

She folded her hands and looked at him, not quite batting her eyelashes.

“Well, actually, I meant to reproach you with sharing your insights regarding my motives with Mr. Fraser, but as it is …”

“As it is, I was right about them?”

He shrugged, mouth too full of steak to answer.

“Of course I was,” she answered for him. “And as Mr. Fraser is no fool, I doubt he needed telling. He did, however, ask me why I thought you’d challenged Edward Twelvetrees. So I told him.”

“Where … um … where is Mr. Fraser at the moment?” he asked, swallowing and reaching at once for a forkful of egg.

“I suppose he’s where he has been for the last three days, reading his way through Hal’s library. And speaking of reading …” She lifted a small stack of letters—which he hadn’t noticed, his whole attention being focused on food—off the tray and deposited them on his stomach.

They were tinted pink or blue and smelled of perfume. He looked at her, brows raised in inquiry.

“Billets-doux,”she said sweetly. “From your admirers.”

“What admirers?” he demanded, setting down his fork in order to remove the letters. “And how do you know what’s in them?”

“I read them,” she said without the faintest blush. “As for whom, I doubt you know many of the ladies, though you’ve likely danced with some of them. There are a great many women, though—particularly young and giddy ones—who positively swoon over men who fight duels. The ones who survive, that is,” she added pragmatically.

He opened a letter with his thumb and held it in one hand, going on eating with the other as he read it. His brows went up.

“I’ve never met this woman. Yet she professes herself besotted with me—well, she’s certainly besotted, I’ll say that much—consumed with admiration for my valor, my excessive courage, my … Oh, dear.” He felt a slow blush rising in his own cheeks and put the letter down. “Are they all like that?”

“Some much worse,” Mi

“No,” he said absently, sca

“Actually, it did,” she said, picking up the discarded letters, some of which had fallen to the floor. “You weren’t here, having absconded to Canada in the most craven fashion, and all just to avoid marrying Caroline Woodford. Putting aside the question of a wife, do you not long for children, John? Do you not want a son?”

“Having just spent half an hour with yours, no,” he said, though in fact this was not true, and Minerva knew it; she merely laughed again and handed him the tidy pile of letters.

“Well, in fact, the public response to your duel with Nicholls was quite subdued compared with this. For one thing, it was hushed up as much as possible, and for another, it was only fought over the honor of a lady rather than the honor of the kingdom. Hal said I needn’t forward the letters to you in Canada, so I didn’t.”

“Thank you.” He made to hand the letters back to her. “Here, burn them.”

“If you insist.” She dimpled at him, but took the pile and stood up. “Oh, wait—you haven’t opened this one.”

“I thought you’d read them all.”

“Only the female ones. This looked more like business.” She picked a plain cover from the stack of hued and scented ones and handed it over. There was no return direction upon the cover, but there was a name, written in a neat, small hand. H. Bowles.

A most extraordinary feeling of revulsion came over him at sight of it, and he suddenly lost his appetite.

“No,” he said, and gave it back. “Burn that one, too.”

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