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Quarry glanced at the Chinese screen again. The windows were all open to the air, and the glorious June sunshine was streaming through them in floods. The air was like crystal; Grey could see individual grains of salt against the linen cloth, where he had upset the saltcellar in his agitation.
“Ah,” Quarry said. He fell silent for a moment, tracing a pattern with one forefinger in the spilled salt.
He didn’t ask whether Grey would recognize a chancrous sore. Any young serving officer must now and then have been obliged to accompany the surgeon inspecting troops, to take note of any man so diseased as to require discharge. The variety of shapes and sizes—to say nothing of conditions—displayed on such occasions was common fodder for hilarity in the officers’ mess on the evening following inspections.
“Well, where does he go whoring?” Quarry asked, looking up and rubbing salt from his finger.
“What?” Grey looked at him blankly.
Quarry raised one thick brow.
“Trevelyan. If he’s poxed, he caught it somewhere, didn’t he?”
“I daresay.”
“Well, then.” Quarry sat back in his chair, pleased.
“He needn’t have caught it in a brothel,” Grey pointed out. “Though I admit it’s the most likely place. What difference does it make?”
Quarry raised both brows.
“The first thing is make certain of it, eh, before you stink up the whole of London with a public accusation. I take it you don’t want to make overtures to the man yourself, in order to get a better look.”
Quarry gri
Quarry guffawed, his own face flushed with a mixture of claret and amusement. He hiccuped, chortled again, and slapped both hands down on the table.
“Well, whores ain’t so picky. And if a moggy will sell her body, she’ll sell anything else she has—including information about her customers.”
Grey stared blankly at the Colonel. Then the suggestion dropped into focus.
“You are suggesting that I employ a prostitute to verify my impressions?”
“You’re quick, Grey, damn quick.” Quarry nodded approval, snapping his fingers for more wine. “I was thinking more of finding a girl who’d seen his prick already, but your way’s a long sight easier. All you’ve got to do is invite Trevelyan along to your favorite convent, slip the lady abbess a word—and a few quid—and there you are!”
“But I—” Grey stopped himself short of admitting that far from patronizing a favored bawdery, he hadn’t been in such an establishment in several years. He had successfully suppressed the memory of the last such experience; he couldn’t say now even which street the building had been in.
“It’ll work a treat,” Quarry assured him, ignoring his discomposure. “Not likely to be too dear, either; two pound would probably do it, three at most.”
“But once I know whether my suspicion is confirmed—”
“Well, if he ain’t poxed, there’s no difficulty, and if he is . . .” Quarry squinted in thought. “Hmm. Well, how’s this? If you was to arrange for the whore to screech and carry on a bit, once she’d got a good look at him, then you rush out of your own girl’s chamber, so as to see what’s the matter, eh? House might be afire, after all.” He chortled briefly, envisioning the scene, then returned to the plan.
“Then, if you’ve caught him with his breeches down, so to speak, and the situation revealed beyond doubt, I shouldn’t think he’d have much choice save to find grounds for breaking the engagement himself. What d’ye say to that?”
“I suppose it might work,” Grey said slowly, trying to picture the scene Quarry painted. Given a whore of sufficient histrionic talent . . . and there would be no need for Grey actually to utilize the brothel’s services personally, after all.
The wine arrived, and both men fell momentarily silent as it was poured. As the steward departed, though, Quarry leaned across the table, eyes alight.
“Let me know when you mean to go; I’ll come along for the sport!”
Chapter 2
Widow’s Walk
France,” Stubbs was saying in disgust, pushing his way through the crowd in Clare Market. “Bloody France again, can you believe it? I dined with DeVries, and he told me he’d had it direct from old Willie Howard. Guarding the shipyards in frigging Calais, likely!”
“Likely,” Grey repeated, sidling past a fishmonger’s barrow. “When, do you know?” He aped Stubbs’s a
He was no more immune to the lure of adventure than any other soldier, and would enjoy to see the exotic sights of India. However, he was also well aware that such a foreign posting would likely keep him away from England for two years or more—away from Helwater.
A posting in Calais or Rouen, though . . . he could return every few months without much difficulty, fulfilling the promise he had made to his Jacobite prisoner—a man who doubtless would be pleased never to see him again.
He shoved that thought resolutely aside. They had not parted on good terms—well, on any. But he had hopes in the power of time to heal the breach. At least Jamie Fraser was safe; decently fed and sheltered, and in a position where he had what freedom his parole allowed. Grey took comfort in the imagined vision—a long-legged man striding over the high fells of the Lake District, face turned up toward sun and scudding cloud, wind blowing through the richness of his auburn hair, plastering shirt and breeches tight against a lean, hard body.
“Hoy! This way!” A shout from Stubbs pulled him rudely from his thoughts, to find the Lieutenant behind him, gesturing impatiently down a side street. “Wherever is your mind today, Major?”
“Just thinking of the new posting.” Grey stepped over a drowsy, moth-eaten bitch, stretched out across his way and equally oblivious both to his passage and to the scrabble of puppies tugging at her dugs. “If it isFrance, at least the wine will be decent.”
O’Co
Grey followed Stubbs through the shop’s narrow door, beneath a sign reading F. SCANLON, APOTHECARY, in faded script. He paused to stamp his foot in order to dislodge a strand of rotting vegetation that had slimed itself across his boot, but looked up at the sound of a voice from the shadows near the back of the shop.
“Good day to ye, gentlemen.” The voice was soft, with a strong Irish accent.
“Mr. Scanlon?”
Grey blinked in the gloom, and made out the proprietor, a dark, burly man hovering spiderlike over his counter, arms outspread as though ready to snatch up any bit of merchandise required upon the moment.
“Finbar Scanlon, the same.” The man inclined his head courteously. “What might I have the pleasure to be doin’ for ye, sirs, may I ask?”
“Mrs. O’Co
“Ah, herself is away just now,” the apothecary said, sidling quickly out from behind the counter in order to block the way. Behind him, a faded curtain of striped linen swayed in the breeze from the door, presumably concealing a staircase to the upper premises.
“Gone where?” Grey asked sharply. “Will she return?”