The countess nodded, reached for her coffee, and, discovering it to be cold, put it back with wrinkled nose.

“I did. But I refused them, as I say, and continued to live quietly. One of them returned to press his suit, but eventually he gave up, as well.”

The countess had not, so far as Grey knew, ever even considered remarriage, until she met Sir George.

“I can see why the journal pages should be distressing to you, Aunt Bennie,” Olivia said, frowning. “But what purpose could they be intended to serve?”

Benedicta glanced at the general.

“At first, I wasn’t sure. But then John was attacked and beaten in the street, to no apparent purpose, which alarmed me very much.” His mother’s eye lingered on Grey’s face, troubled. “And when I thought it had happened again yesterday…I became sure that this was a warning, a threat to prevent my marriage.”

Grey was thunderstruck.

“What? You thought—”

“I did, no thanks to you.” His mother’s look of concern had altered to annoyance. “I didn’t want you killed next time, so I thought I would break the engagement and let it be publicly known. If there were no more such warnings, I would know that my deductions were correct, and I could proceed on that assumption.”

“Whereas if you broke your engagement and I was consequently murdered in the street, you could reform your hypothesis. Quite.” Heat rose in Grey’s face. “For God’s sake, Mother! When—if ever—did you propose to tell meany of this?”

“I amtelling you,” his mother said, with exaggerated patience. “One such instance might well have been coincidence, and the risks of my telling you wouldn’t justify my doing so. Two is another matter.

“As for not telling you of my suspicions after the first incident…if there was in fact no threat, I didn’t want you or your brother going off and doing something foolish. I still don’t. If you were in danger, though, then of course I had to speak. But as the second attack was in fact brought about by your own actions, it has no connexion, and we are back with an assumption of coincidence.

“If I’d known about your adventure at Tyburn”—and here her eye rested on him with the deepest suspicion; she knew damned well he wasn’t telling her everything, no more than she was telling him everything—“I shouldn’t have felt obliged to break the engagement. You really ought to apologize to Sir George for the inconvenience to his feelings, John.”

The general had been increasingly restive through these explanations, and now burst forth.

“Benedicta! Should anyone—anyone!—be so rash as to offer violence to you or your sons, they will answer to me. Surely you know that!”

The countess regarded him with a sort of exasperated fondness.

“Well, that’s a very gallant speech, Sir George, but the point is that I would prefer my sons to remain alive rather than to be avenged—though I am sure you would make an excellent job of vengeance, should that be necessary,” she added, evidently intending this as a palliative.

Grey was growing increasingly annoyed with the tone of these speeches, and put a stop to them by setting down his own coffee cup with a clatter.

“Why should anyone wish to prevent your marriage?”

It was Sir George who answered that, without hesitation.

“I said I would protect your mother and all that belongs to her—and am capable of doing so, I assure you. If Benedicta did know anything that might threaten one of these men, she might denounce them openly, once married to me.”

Grey was more than affronted at the blatant assumption that he and Hal would be incapable of protecting the countess, but retained sufficient self-control as not to say so. He would admit that, viewed objectively, the general commanded more resources toward this end—and he might possibly be in a better position at least to exert some form of persuasion, if not actual control, upon the countess’s behavior, which he and Hal assuredly could not. The limits of the general’s own influence were just beginning to dawn on Sir George, he saw.

“I…assume that you do notin fact know anything that might be dangerous to one of these men?” the general asked the countess, hesitantly.

“If she does, she isn’t going to tell you,” Grey informed him, forestalling his mother’s answer. “One question, Mother, if you please. Is any one of the men in question a member of the regiment?”

She looked startled at the idea, and blurted, “God, no!” with such feeling as made it evident she spoke the truth.

“Well, then. As both Melton and myself will be embarking withthe regiment in less than a month, I would suppose we can contrive to avoid being killed before that time, if in fact there isany threat. And once in Germany, we shall presumably be safe from attack.” He glanced at his cousin, who had been listening to all of this with her mouth half open, eyes moving back and forth between the speakers like the pendulum of a clock.

“Do you suppose that Olivia is under any threat?”

“I don’t think so,” his mother said slowly. “I doubt that any of them even know that she has come to reside here while Malcolm Stubbs is in America.”

“Then that leaves only your own safety to be secured,” Grey pointed out. “You are bound for the West Indies, are you not, Sir George? If my mother were to accompany you, I daresay that you might be able to protect her from any malicious attempts?”

A look of genial ferocity was spreading across Sir George’s face.

“I should like to see ’em try,” he said. He turned to the countess, his face flushed with animation. “Will you, Bennie? Will you come with me?”

“What, and leave Olivia by herself?”

Olivia sat up straight, enthused.

“Oh, no! I could go to Minnie—she’s often asked me. We should have such fun together—oh, do, Aunt Bennie, do go!”

The countess eyed her niece for a moment, assessing her sincerity, then sighed and turned to Sir George.

“I daresay I will be in much more danger from pestilence, seasickness, and vipers than from anything London can offer. But all right. Yes, I’ll go.”

It was not yet noon, but the bell was rung and sherry sent for, and a general toast drunk to the renewed engagement. It was only as Grey finally went upstairs to get dressed that he recalled his mother’s words regarding probability.

It hadn’t occurred to him to connect his encounter with the O’Higginses in Hyde Park with the later attack by Jed and his companion in Seven Dials. The O’Higginses had, of course, indignantly denied being anywhere in the vicinity, and had produced at least sixteen witnesses to testify that they were virtuously engaged in a drinking bout in a shed behind the barracks at the time of the incident. And even if he was morally sure of their identity, there was nothing to say that they had lain in wait for him;in fact, their recognition of him had been what made them flee. But still…

One attack might be coincidence, the countess had said. Two is another matter.

Grey told Hal the next day about the breaking and reestablishment of the countess’s engagement, with its consequent revelations.

“I heard about the business at Tyburn,” his brother remarked, eyeing him. “Do you want to tell me what thatwas about? Because I don’t for an instant think you just happened to be there.”

Grey was tempted to tell him about the conversation he had had with Captain Bates in Newgate, but there was no way to explain his acquiescence without mention of Hubert Bowles, which in turn might lead to questions neither of them would wish to have either asked or answered.

“No,” he said simply. “Not now.”

Hal accepted this without further comment; he could be ruthless in pursuit of any matter he believed to be his business—but by the same token, was willing to let other people mind their own.