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As for Dashwood and the others . . . let them look to themselves. He who sups wi’ the De’il, needs bring a lang spoon.Grey smiled faintly, hearing the Scots proverb in memory. Jamie Fraser had said it on the occasion of their first meal together—casting Grey as the Devil, he supposed, though he had not asked.
Grey was not a religious man, but he harbored a persistent vision: an avenging angel presiding over a balance on which the deeds of a man’s life were weighed—the bad to one side, the good to the other—and George Everett stood before the angel naked, bound and wide-eyed, waiting to see where the wavering balance might finally come to rest. He hoped this night’s work should be laid to George’s credit, and wondered briefly how long the accounting might go on, if it was true that a man’s deeds lived after him.
Jamie Fraser had told him once of purgatory, that Catholic conception of a place prior to final judgment, where souls remained for a time after death, and where the fate of a soul might still be affected by the prayers and Masses said for it. Perhaps it was true; a place where the soul waited, while each action taken during life played itself out, the unexpected consequences and complications following one another like a collapsing chain of dominoes down through the years. But that would imply that a man was responsible not only for his conscious actions, but for all the good and evil that might spring from them forever, unintended and unforeseen; a terrible thought.
He straightened, feeling at once drained and keyed up. He was exhausted, but completely awake—in fact, sleep had never seemed so far away. Every nerve was raw, and all his muscles ached with unrelieved tension.
The house lay silent around him, its inhabitants still sleeping the drugged sleep of wine and sated sensuality. Rain began to fall, the soft ping of raindrops striking the glass accompanied by a harsh, fresh scent that came cold through the cracks of the casement, cutting through the stale air of the house and through the fog that filled his brain.
“Nothing like a long walk home in a driving rain to clear the cobwebs,” he murmured to himself. He had left his hat somewhere—perhaps in the library—but felt no desire to go in search of it. He made his way to the stair, down to the second floor, and along the gallery toward the main staircase that would take him down to the door.
The door of one of the rooms on the gallery was open, and as he passed by, a shadow fell across the boards at his feet. He glanced up and met the eye of a young man who lounged in the doorway, clad in nothing but his shirt, dark curls loose upon his shoulders. The young man’s eyes, black and long-lashed, passed over him, and he felt the heat of them on his skin.
He made as though to go by, but the young man reached out and grasped him by the arm.
“Come in,” the young man said softly.
“No, I—”
“Come. For a moment only.”
The young man stepped out onto the gallery, his bare feet long and graceful, standing so close that his thigh pressed Grey’s. He leaned forward, and the warmth of his breath brushed Grey’s ear, the tip of his tongue touched the whorl of it with a crackling sound like the spark that springs from the fingers on a dry day when metal is touched.
“Come,” he murmured, and stepped backward, drawing Grey after him into the room.
It was clean and plainly furnished, but he saw nothing save the dark eyes, so close, and the hand that moved from his arm, sliding down to entwine its fingers with his own, the swarthiness of it startling by contrast with his own fairness, the palm broad and hard against his.
Then the young man moved away and, smiling at Grey, took hold of the hem of the shirt and drew it upward over his head.
Grey felt as though the cloth of his stock were choking him. The room was cool, and yet a dew of sweat broke out on his body, hot damp in the small of his back, slick in the creases of his skin.
“What will you, sir?” the young man whispered, still smiling. He put down one hand and stroked himself, inviting.
Grey reached slowly up and fumbled for a moment with the fastening of his stock, until it suddenly came free, leaving his neck exposed, bare and vulnerable. Cool air struck his skin as he shed his coat and loosened his shirt; he felt gooseflesh prickle on his arms and rush pell-mell down the length of his spine.
The young man knelt now on the bed. He turned his back and stretched himself catlike, arching, and the rain-light from the window played upon the broad flat muscle of thigh and shoulder, the groove of back and furrowed buttocks. He looked back over one shoulder, eyelids half-lowered, long and sleepy-looking.
The mattress gave beneath Grey’s weight, and the young man’s mouth moved under his, soft and wet.
“Shall I talk, sir?”
“No,” Grey whispered, closing his eyes, pressing down with hips and hands. “Be silent. Pretend . . . I am not here.”
Chapter 11
German Red
There were, Grey calculated, approximately a thousand wineshops in the City of London. However, if one considered only those dealing in wines of quality, the number was likely more manageable. A brief inquiry with his own wine merchant proving unfruitful, though, he decided upon consultation with an expert.
“Mother—when you had the German evening last week, did you by any chance serve German wine?”
The Countess was sitting in her boudoir reading a book, stockinged feet comfortably propped upon the shaggy back of her favorite dog, an elderly spaniel named Eustace, who opened one sleepy eye and panted genially in response to Grey’s entrance. She looked up at her son’s appearance, and shoved the spectacles she wore for reading up onto her forehead, blinking a little at the shift from the world of the printed page.
“German wine? Well, yes; we had a nice Rhenish one, to go with the lamb. Why?”
“No red wine?”
“Three of them—but not German. Two French, and a rather raw Spanish; crude, but it went well with the sausages.” Benedicta ran the tip of her tongue thoughtfully along her upper lip in recollection. “Captain von Namtzen didn’t seem to like the sausages; very odd. But then, he’s from Hanover. Perhaps I inadvertently had sausages done in the style of Saxony or Prussia, and he thought it an insult. I think Cook considers all Germans to be the same thing.”
“Cook thinks that anyone who isn’t an Englishman is a frog; she doesn’t draw distinctions beyond that.” Dismissing the cook’s prejudices for the moment, Grey unearthed a stool from under a heap of tattered books and manuscripts, and sat on it.
“I am in search of a German red—full-bodied, fruity nose, about the color of one of those roses.” He pointed at the vase of deep-crimson roses spilling petals over his mother’s mahogany secretary.
“Really? I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen a German red wine, let alone tasted one—though I suppose they do exist.” The Countess closed her book, keeping a finger between the pages to mark her place. “Are you pla
Grey felt as though he’d received a sudden punch to the midsection. Christ, he’d forgotten all about his invitation to Trevelyan.
“Whyever do you want a German wine, though?” The Countess laid her head on one side, one fair brow lifted in curiosity.
“That is another matter, quite separate,” Grey said hastily. “Are you still getting your wine from Ca
“For the most part. Gentry’s, now and then, and sometimes Hemshaw and Crook. Let me see, though . . .” She ran the tip of a forefinger slowly down the bridge of her nose, then pressed the tip, having arrived at the sought-for conclusion.