Hal gave him a narrow look, and repeated with some emphasis, “Lord Creemore is ill. Very ill, I’m told. He hasn’t been out of his house in two months.”
“Ah!” said Grey, realization dawning. “George Longstreet.” He ate the sardines in two bites and washed them down with a gulp of champagne. “Probably not in any condition to hire thugs and plant documents, you think?”
“I think not. Here comes that tedious ass Adams; you talk to him—if I do, I’ll throttle him.” With a perfunctory nod, Hal strode past the Ordnance minister and shouldered his way into the crowd. Sighing, Grey drained his champagne glass, put it on a passing tray, and took a fresh one.
“Mr. Adams,” he said. “Your servant, sir.”
“Wasn’t that Lord Melton?” Bernard Adams, who was short of sight, squinted dubiously toward the end of the room where Hal had made his escape. “I wanted to speak with him, regarding the extravagance of his request for…”
Grey drained another glass, listening to the tall clock in the corner chiming midnight, and thought how pleasant it would be to turn into a pumpkin and sit inert at Adams’s feet, impervious to the man’s blather.
Instead, he fixed his eyes on the mole to the right of Adams’s mouth, nodding and grimacing periodically as he worked his way methodically through three more glasses of champagne and a plate of bacon savories.
Dropping into bed three hours later, in a haze of fatigue and alcohol, he managed to remain awake for a few seconds, in which he wondered whether he would recognize Percy Wainwright upon his return from Ireland, let alone remember what to do with him.
Chapter 17
In Which a Marriage Takes Place,
among Other Things
On the 27th of February, the marriage of General Sir of George Stanley and Benedicta, Dowager Countess Melton, was celebrated at the church of St. Margaret’s, the parish church of Westminster Abbey.
It was not a large wedding, but one done in the best of taste, as Horace Walpole, one of the guests, remarked approvingly. Olivia had had the church decorated simply with evergreen boughs, done up in ribbons of gold tissue, and the scent of pine and cedar lent a welcome freshness to the at mosphere of ancient wax and bodies kept too long enclosed. Composed in equal parts of military dignitaries, politicals, and social ornaments, the congregation shone nearly as brightly as the four hundred candles, a-glimmer with gold lace and diamonds.
“With my goods I thee endow, with my body I thee worship…”
Grey, in the front pew with Percy Wainwright, was close enough to see the expression on the general’s face, which surprised him with its soft intensity. He was the more surprised—and not a little taken aback—to catch an answering flash of response from the countess’s eyes.
He experienced that peculiar crawling of the flesh that attends any child’s sudden realization that a parent must not only have engaged at some comfortably primeval date in the theoretical carnal act that resulted in his own existence—but was capable of doing it again in the all-too-physical present.
He glanced quickly at Percy, to see whether this frissonof horror was shared, but saw only an expression of subdued wistfulness on Percy’s mobile face. Of course it would not be the same, he reminded himself; the general was in fact not Percy’s father. There would be no bar to his imagining—he choked thatline of thought off at the root, staring hard at Percy in order to avoid looking at the wedding couple.
The light from one of the stained-glass windows caught a few tiny dark bristles, missed in shaving, just beneath Percy’s lower lip. It shone through the amber irises of his eyes and touched his flesh with rose and gold.
Grey sincerely hoped that his new brother was not thinking—Percy looked suddenly sideways and met his eyes. Grey took a deep breath and looked away, fixing his gaze on a stained-glass window illustrating the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, roasted on a gridiron.
They stood close together, the full skirts of their coats brushing. He felt a stirring among the folds of blue velvet, and Percy’s hand brushed his.
No more than a touch, but he breathed deep, and embarrassment faded into awareness.
Tonight.
They had made a solemn pact, the two of them. After the wedding breakfast, they would go away and spend the rest of the day—and the night—together, though hell should bar the way.
Grey crooked one finger round one of Percy’s, very briefly, then let go. He realized that his thoughts had gone well beyond the limits of what was suitable in church, and tried to force his attention back to the solemn spiritual event being enacted in front of him. Though why the church had thought to put things like “with my body I thee worship” into the service…
He caught sight of Olivia, discreetly lurking behind one of the slender stone pillars—far too slender to hide her current grand proportions. He smiled, then noticed that her face was pale, set in a pained grimace. No doubt recalling her own nuptials and missing Malcolm, he thought sympathetically.
It might be two years before the gallant Captain Stubbs returned, by which time his first offspring would be—
Olivia’s grimace deepened, and her face went purple. Grey gripped the back of the pew in sudden consternation, and Percy glanced curiously at him. Grey lifted his chin, trying to indicate Olivia’s alarming behavior, but Percy’s view of her was blocked by the pillar and a carved wooden screen. He frowned at Grey in puzzlement, and Grey leaned forward a bit, trying to see whether—but Olivia had disappeared.
The bishop was discoursing comfortably upon the honorable estate of marriage and looked well set to continue upon this course for some time. Grey tried by means of various small jerks of the head and grimacing of his own to alert one of the women on the other side of the aisle, but—beyond frowns of puzzlement from the elderly Havisham sisters and a flirtatious glance behind her fan from Lady Sheridan—was unable to elicit any response.
“What is it?” Percy whispered.
“Don’t know.” She couldn’t possibly have fainted without someone noticing. Perhaps gone outside for air?
“Maybe nothing. Stay here,” he whispered back, and slipping past Percy, left the pew as quietly as he might and walked rapidly down the side aisle, head lowered and the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, as though he might be indisposed.
He reached the vestibule and flung open the heavy outer door, causing a premature flurry of “hurrahs!” and a smart clash of swords from the waiting honor guard, who snapped into formation, making an archway for the happy couple.
Contorting his face into what he hoped was apology, Grey made abortive waving motions at the indignant swordsmen and shut the door hastily upon a chorus of disgruntled oaths.
Muttering a few of his own, he made his way back into the church and along the right-hand aisle, glancing furtively into the alcove that held the baptismal font, up into the crowded galleries—for God’s sake, an enormously pregnant woman could not simply vanish in the midst of a crowded church!
He ducked into the secluded side chapel, but no one was there. A single candle burned before the statue on the altar, a rather blank-faced thing with outspread hands—Christ Intercessor, he thought Olivia had said it was. At this point, though, he’d take help where he could get it.
“Ah…perhaps you wouldn’t mind lending a hand?” he whispered, not knowing any official prayers for the purpose. “If you please.” With a polite nod, he withdrew and resumed his hunt, this time going back down the nave toward the door. What if she had meant to go out, but been overcome before reaching the egress?