“I don’t suppose you wish to kill me?” Grey asked, as lightly as possible. “That would solve my immediate dilemma—and if you dislike your life as much as you appear to, the process would relieve you of that burden, as well. Two birds with one stone.”

With startling swiftness, Fraser plucked a stone from the ground, and in the same motion, hurled it. There was a sickening thump, and jerking round, Grey saw a fallen rabbit, legs kicking in frantic spasm beneath a bush.

Without haste, Fraser walked over, picked it up, and broke its neck with a neat snap. Returning, he dropped the limp body at Grey’s feet.

“Dead is dead, Major,” he said quietly. “It is not a romantic notion. And whatever my own feelings in the matter, my family would not prefer my death to my dishonor. While there is anyone alive with a claim upon my protection, my life is not my own.”

He walked off then, into the chilly twilight, and did not look back.

Grey left Helwater the next day. He did not see Fraser again—did not plan to—but carried a note to the stable at mid-morning. It was deserted, most of the horses gone, and the three grooms with them, as he’d expected.

He had taken some pains with the composition of the note, keeping it as formal and dispassionate as possible. He had, he wrote, informed Lord Dunsany that if Fraser chose to write any letters, to anyone whomsoever (that phrase underlined; he knew that Fraser wrote secretly to his family in the Highlands when he could), he was to be provided with paper and ink, and the letters dispatched under Dunsany’s seal, without question. The letters would not, he added delicately, be read by any save their intended recipients.

He had thought to leave the note, addressed to Fraser, pinned to a railing or stall where it would be easily found. But now he reconsidered; he didn’t know whether the other grooms could read, nor whether their respect for Fraser might restrain their curiosity—but neither he nor Fraser would want the matter to be generally known and talked about.

Ought he to leave the note with Dunsany, to be delivered personally? He felt some delicacy about that; he did not wish Fraser to feel any pressure of Dunsany’s expectations— only yours,he thought grimly. He hesitated for an instant, but then climbed the ladder to the loft where he knew Fraser slept, heart beating like a drum.

The loft was dim, but even in the poor light, it was apparent at once which spot was Fraser’s. There were three striped mattress tickings on the floor, each with a lidded wooden crate beside it for clothes and personal belongings. Two of these were scattered with pipes, tobacco pouches, stray buttons, dirty handkerchiefs, empty beer jugs, and the like. The one on the left, a little distance from the others, was starkly bare, save for a tiny wooden statue of the Virgin and a rush dip, presently extinguished.

He found himself holding his breath, and forced himself to walk normally, footsteps echoing on the boards.

There was a single blanket on the ticking, neatly spread, but speckled with straw. Heaps of matted straw lay around each mattress like a nest; the grooms must pull hay over themselves for extra warmth. No wonder; his breath was white, and the chill of the place numbed his fingers.

The impulse to lift the lid of the box and see what lay within was nearly irresistible. But he had done enough to Jamie Fraser; to intrude into this last small bastion of his privacy would be unforgivable.

With this realization came another; it wouldn’t do. Even to leave the note atop the crate, or discreetly placed beneath the blanket, which had been his first thought, would let Fraser know that Grey had been here—an intimacy in itself that the man would find an unwelcome violation.

“Well, damn it all anyway,” he muttered to himself, and going down the ladder, found a bucket to stand on and pinned the note above the lintel of the tack room, in plain sight, but high enough that only Fraser would be able to reach it easily.

He looked up toward the fells as he left the stable, searching for horsemen, but nothing showed save rags of drifting fog.

Chapter 21

Cowardice

The sailing had been put back two weeks because all of the necessary food and equipment had not yet arrived. Grey arrived at Percy’s rooms at nightfall, soaking wet and chilled to the bone from a day spent shivering in the rain on the docks, negotiating the terms under which the goddamned chandler from Liverpool would actually deliver the barrels of salt pork for which he had been contracted, and the terms under which the ship’s crew—contracted to carry said barrels—would actually load the goddamned barrels into the goddamned hold of the goddamned ship and batten down the goddamned hatches on top of them.

Percy rubbed him dry, gave him fresh clothes, made him lie on the bed, listened to his grievances, and poured him a brandy, which made him think that perhaps he wouldn’t die just yet.

“Do you suppose fighting will be easier than the struggle to get to the battlefield?” Percy asked.

“Yes,” Grey said, with conviction, and sneezed. “Much easier.”

Percy laughed, and went down to fetch supper from the tavern on the corner, returning with bread, cheese, ale, and a pot of something purporting to be oyster stew, which was at least hot.

Grey began to emerge from his condition of sodden misery, enough to talk a little and take note of his surroundings. To his surprise, he saw that Percy had been drawing; a cheap artist’s block and charcoal had been pushed to one side, the top sheet showing the view from the window, roughed in, but rendered with considerable skill and delicacy.

“This is very good,” he said, picking it up. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

Percy shrugged, nonchalant, but clearly pleased by his praise.

“One of my mother’s friends was an artist. He showed me a few things—though warning me that to become an artist was the only certain way to starve.”

Grey laughed, and mellowed by fire, hot food, and ale, made no demur when Percy turned to a clean sheet of paper and began to sketch Grey’s features.

“Go ahead and talk,” Percy murmured. “I’ll tell you if I need you to be still.”

“Whatever do you want a drawing of me for?”

Percy looked up from his work, brown eyes warm but serious in the candlelight.

“I want something of you to keep,” he said. “Just in case.”

Grey stopped, then set down his cup.

“I don’t mean to leave you,” he said quietly. “Did you think I would?”

Percy held his eyes, a faint smile on his lips.

“No,” he said softly. “But you are a soldier, John, and we are going to war. Does it never occur to you that you might be killed?”

Grey rubbed a knuckle over his mouth, disconcerted.

“Well…I suppose so. But I—to tell you the truth, I seldom think about it. After all, I might be run down in the street, or take a chill and die of pleurisy.” He put out a finger and lifted his soggy shirt, hung over a stool to dry before the fire.

“Yes, you might,” Percy said dryly, resuming his work. “The regimental surgeon told me that ten times more men die of the flux or plague or infection than ever are killed by an enemy. No reason you shouldn’t be one of them, now, is there?”

Grey opened his mouth to reply to this, but in fact, there was no good answer.

“I know,” Percy said, head bent over the paper. “You don’t think about that, either.”

Grey sighed, shifting a little.

“No,” he admitted. “Are you worrying?”

Percy’s teeth were set in his lip, his fingers making short, quick lines. After a moment, without looking up, he said suddenly, “I don’t want you to think me a coward.”