She opened her mouth, but found nothing to say, and closed it again. She looked at him, eyes narrowed.

“If you don’t want that journal page,” he said, “I do.”

“No,” she said at once.

“Does it contain something so dangerous, then? Have you shown it to Hal?” Despite himself, a tinge of anger was creeping into his words. “I’m no longer twelve, Mother.”

She looked at him for a long moment, the oddest expression of regret flitting across her face.

“More’s the pity,” she said. Her shoulders sagged then, and she bowed her head and turned away, rubbing two fingers between her brows.

“I’ll think about it, John,” she said. “More, I can’t promise you. Now leave me, do; I’ve a dreadful headache.”

“Liar,” he said again, but without heat. “I’ll send your maid, shall I?”

“Please.”

He went out, then, but at the door turned back and stuck his head through.

“Mother?”

“Yes?”

“If you wish to convince someone that you aren’t afraid—look them in the eye. Good night.”

Percy Wainwright, it transpired, had never so much as touched a sword, let alone used one with violent intent. In order to remedy this shocking lack, he agreed amiably enough, upon his return from Bath, to go with Grey and Melton to their usual weekly practice, for the purpose of basic instruction.

The salle des armesfavored by the Greys was in Monmouth Street, a small, dingy building wedged between a pawnbroker’s and a mercer’s shop near St. Giles, and run by a small Sicilian gentleman whose skill with the blade was surpassed only by the individuality of his idiom.

“Gets you fat-fat,” SignorBerculi said without preamble, rudely poking Hal in his very flat stomach. “No practice, two weeks! Some pidocchiodo the business on you, stick a rapier up you fat arse.”

Hal, quite accustomed to SignorBerculi, ignored this pleasantry and introduced Mr. Wainwright as a new addition to the family and to the regiment.

The Signorcircled Percy, shaking his head and biting his finger in dismay. Percy looked mildly apprehensive, but the glance he shot Grey was filled with amusement.

“So old, so old!” SignorBerculi mourned, halting in front of Percy and prodding him critically in the upper arm. He waved a small, callused hand at Grey. “That one, sword in cradle. You? Pah!” He spat, shook himself violently, then crossed himself.

“Come,” he said, resigned, and seized Percy by the sleeve. “You lunge. No stick you foot, all right?”

While Percy was rapidly stripped to his shirt and breeches, given a battered rapier with no point, and set to lunging, the Greys stripped for action.

“En garde.”Hal fell naturally into his stance, knee bent, rapier forward, the side of his body turned toward Grey, left hand held gracefully up behind his head.

“J’ai regard й .”Grey tapped his blade lightly against Hal’s, and held it crossed. SignorBerculi, circling them with beady eyes narrowed for flaws in form, shouted, “Commencez!”and they began.

It was an exhibition of form to begin with, neither man seeking actual advantage but only an opening in which to try a coup йor passe avant,circling slowly as their muscles loosened.

Grey saw Percy’s eyes upon them, interested, until SignorBerculi spotted his distraction and drove him back to his lunging with a bark.

He breathed deep, intoxicated by the smell of sweat, old and fresh, the metal tang of the swords, and the rub of the hilt on the heel of his hand. He loved to fight with the rapier; it was so light, he was barely conscious of it as anything more than an extension of his body.

He and his brother were evenly matched physically, being of a height, with Hal having a few pounds the advantage in weight, and Grey perhaps an inch more in reach. Despite this evident equality—and the fact that Hal wasa fine swordsman—Grey knew himself to be better.

He seldom demonstrated that knowledge in their practice bouts, knowing equally well that Hal hated to lose and would be in bad temper if he did. Now, though, he found himself pressing, ever so slightly, and realized with a glance at Percy and a small tingling of his flesh that he meant to win today, no matter what the consequence.

“Have you any further news of the conspirators?” Grey asked, as much in order to distract his brother as from curiosity.

Hal met his thrust with a strong riposte, beat, and went for a thrust in quarte,which failed.

“They go to trial this week,” he said briefly.

“I have”—a beat, beat back, feint in prime,and he touched Hal’s shoulder, barely, and smiled—“have not seen mention of it in the papers.”

“You will.” Grunting, Hal lunged, and he barely turned aside in time.

“They”—Hal was beginning to breathe hard by now, and the words emerged in brief bursts—“decided to—do as I said—they would.”

“To suppress the political aspects of the case?” Grey was still breathing easily. “Say ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’”

“She sells—sea shells—by the frigging seashore! Damn your eyes!” A fusillade of beats and a vicious thrust that missed his chest so narrowly that Grey felt the blade glide along his shirtfront.

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Peter Piper picked a peck of pippled pickers, Peter P—” Laughing—and beginning to gasp himself—he left off, and fought.

Beat, beat, feint, a half skip back as Hal’s point lunged past his face, another, Hal was leaning too far forward—no, he’d caught himself, jumped back in the nick of time as Grey’s blade came up. A lunge in tierce,in tierceagain without let, and dust flew up from the stamp of his foot on the boards.

Hal had caught what he was about; he could feel Hal’s thoughts as though they were inside his own head, feel the edge of astonished annoyance change, anger rising, then the jerk as Hal caught himself, forced himself to restraint, to something colder and more cautious.

Grey himself had no such restraint. He was happily off his head, drunk with the lust of fighting. His body felt like oiled rope, tensile and slippery, and he was taking dangerous chances, completely confident that he could elude Hal’s point, regardless. He saw an opening, dropped into a flattened lunge with a yell, and his buttoned point struck Hal’s thigh and skidded across the fabric of his breeches.

“Jesus!” said Hal, and swung at his head.

He ducked, laughing, and popped up like a jack-in-the-box, grabbing the point of his rapier so the blade bowed between his hands, then let go and snapped it off Hal’s, making the metal ring and the sword jump in Hal’s hand.

He heard Berculi swear in Italian, but had no attention to spare. Hal was fighting back in earnest now, beating at his blade fit to break them both. He skipped in at once, his arm running up Hal’s and taking him by surprise, so they ended in embrace, sword arms linked and blades entangled, bodies pressed together.

He grinned at Hal, baring his teeth, and saw the spark leap in his brother’s eye. He was faster, though, and the first to jerk loose, leaving Hal for an instant off balance. He dropped by instinct into a perfect Passata-sotto,and his button pressed against Hal’s throat.

“ Touch й ,”he said softly.

Hal’s hands fell away, his rapier dangling, and he stood for a moment, chest heaving for breath, before he nodded.

“Je me rends,”he said gruffly. I yield.

Grey took away his point and bowed to his brother, but his eyes were on Percy. Percy had left off his lunging altogether in order to watch, and stood against the wall, eyes wide in shock and what Grey hoped was admiration.