He was sure his heartbeat must be audible at a distance, hard as it was hammering in his own ears.

“I’d come armed, of course.” He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, as though the egg-and-dart molding told some gripping tale. “A pistol and a dagger in my belt.”

But he hadn’t loaded the pistol. Cursing himself silently, he’d grappled for a moment with the problem: risk the delay of loading, the sound of the shot, plus the possibility of missing, or use the dagger?

“You didn’t think of taking him prisoner?” Percy asked curiously. “Rather than trying to kill him?”

“I did, yes,” Grey said, a slight edge to his voice. “But I was reasonably sure that his own men were somewhere nearby. He was well known, one of the Scottish chiefs; the clans were gathering—he wouldn’t be alone at all, if it weren’t for the woman.

“And it was dark, andthe clearing was completely surrounded by forest. You’ve never seen a Scottish pine forest—two steps into the trees, and a man has vanished from sight. If I tried to take him prisoner, he might either shout for help—and I certainly couldn’t take on a horde of clansmen—or simply dive into the brush and be gone. Which would leave me and the woman as sitting ducks; his men would be on us long before I could get her down off the bloody mountain. But if I could kill him quietly, I thought, then I could get her away to safety before anyone knew. So I drew my dagger.”

“That’s what you meant about courage.” Percy’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “My God, I wouldn’t have had the nerve even to think of doing something like that!”

“Well, you would have been a good deal more intelligent than I was, then,” Grey said dryly.

His face felt hot, flushed both with embarrassment at the memory and with the memory itself, of blood pounding through his body at the prospect of his first kill.

He’d marked out the distance carefully—three paces, to be covered at a bound. Then fling his arm round the man’s head and pull it back, rip the dagger hard across the stretched throat. That’s what Sergeant O’Connell had instructed them to do, taking an enemy unawares in close quarters. They’d practiced, he and several of the younger soldiers, taking it in turn to play victim or killer. He knew just what to do.

“So I did it,” he said, with a sigh. “I flung my arm round his head—and it wasn’t there anymore. Next thing I knew, I was somersaulting through the air.”

The dagger went flying from his sweating fingers. He slammed hard into the earth and something fell on him. He’d fought back by instinct, dazed and breathless, but knowing that he fought for his life. Kicked, punched, clawed, bit—and for the most part, encountered only empty air.

Meanwhile, some elemental force had set about him, and a bone-cracking blow to the ribs drove the rest of the breath out of him. He reached out blindly, something grabbed his arm with a grip of steel and twisted it up his back. He lunged upward in panic, and his arm had snapped like a stick.

“Well…the long and the short of it is that the Englishwoman turned out to be Fraser’s wife,curse her. And I, for my pains, ended up tied to a tree and left for my brother’s men to find in the morning.”

“Jesus! All night, you were there? With your arm broken? You must have been in torment!”

“Well, yes,” Grey admitted reluctantly. “It was more the biting midges, though. And needing desperately to have a pee. I didn’t really notice the arm much.” He didn’t mention the searing pain of the burn along the edge of his jaw, where Fraser had laid the hot blade of his dirk—or his raw back, where he’d rubbed most of the skin off, trying to free himself. None of this bodily discomfort had seemed important, by contrast with the agony of mind occasioned by the realization of the depth of the betrayal he had been led into.

“Meanwhile—” He cleared his throat, determined to finish. “Meanwhile, Fraser and his men had crept round behind the camp, to the artillery park, taken all the wheels off the cannon, and burnt them. Using information I’d given them.”

Percy had been looking at him with sympathy. At this last confession, his mouth fell open. For an instant, shock showed in his eyes. Then he reached over and took Grey’s left arm in both hands, feeling gently through the shirt. The bone was lumpy, where it had healed.

“What did he do to you?” Percy asked quietly. “This Fraser?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Grey said, a little gruffly. “I should have let him kill me.” He had in fact been convinced that Fraser didmean to kill him—and hadn’t spoken. The truth…well, he’d told Hal. He shut his eyes, but didn’t pull his arm away. Percy’s hands were warm, his thumbs gently stroking along the bone.

“It was the woman,” he said, resigned to complete humiliation. “He threatened her. And I—idiot that I was—spoke, in order to save her.”

“Well, what else could you do?” Percy said, his tone so reasonable that Grey opened his eyes and stared at him. Percy smiled a little.

“Of course you would protect the woman,” he said. “You protect everyone, John—I don’t suppose you can help it.”

Astonished, Grey opened his mouth to contest this absurd statement, but was forestalled when Percy leaned forward and kissed him softly.

“You are the bravest man I know,” Percy said, his breath warm on Grey’s cheek. “And you will not convince me otherwise. Still…” He sat back, surveying Grey with interest. “I admit to surprise that you did become a soldier, after thatexperience.”

“My father was a soldier, so was Hal. I never thought of being anything else,” Grey said, truthfully. He managed a crooked smile. “And you do see the world.”

Percy’s face lighted at that.

“I’ve never been outside the British Isles. I’ve always wanted to see Italy—pity there’s no fighting there. Shall I like Germany, do you think?”

Grey recognized Percy’s attempt to leave the subject of his humiliation, and gave him a look saying as much—but accepted it, nonetheless.

“Probably, if you don’t catch the flux. The beer is very good. But as to Italy—perhaps we will go there. In the winter, when the campaigning is done. I should like very much to show you Rome.”

“Oh, I should like that of all things! You have been there—what do you recall most vividly?”

Grey blinked. In truth, his impressions of Rome were largely jumbles of ancient stone: the flat black paviors of the Appian Way, the marble baths of Caracalla, the dark, grease-smelling pits of the catacombs, their heaps of dusty brown skulls seeming as much a part of the cave as the rock itself.

“The seagulls on the Tiber,” he said suddenly. “They call all night long, in Rome. You hear their cries ringing from the stones of the streets. It’s strangely moving.”

“Seagulls?” Percy looked incredulous. “There are seagulls on the Thames, for God’s sake.” Grey glanced at the window, dark now, and streaked with rain.

“Yes. It’s…different in Rome. You’ll see,” he said, and rising on his elbow, kissed Percy back.

Chapter 22

Shame

Life, as was its wont, became still busier. After their impromptu supper, Grey did not see Percy again for nearly a week, save for brief glimpses across the parade ground or a quick exchange of smiles as they passed in a corridor. He had no time to wish for more. The pressure of events was increasing, day by day, and he could feel responsibility wrapped like a strangling vine about his spinal cord, reaching eager fingers into the base of his skull.

He hadn’t been home in three days, and was living exclusively on stale coffee, Cornish pasties, and the odd gulp of brandy. Something, he thought, was going to snap. He hoped it would be only his temper, when the time came, and not someone else’s neck.