“What in God’s name is the matter with you?” Hal asked, very quietly.

“The same thing that’s the matter with you,” Grey said. He took his hat and coat from the hallstand and bowed. “Good night,” he said politely. “Your Grace.”

Chapter 3

Pet Criminal

Once home, he could not sleep, and after a restless hour spent churning the bedclothes into knots, he got up, poked the fire into life, and sat by the window with a blanket round his shoulders, watching the snow come down.

Ice crystals coated the glass like clouded lace, but Grey barely noticed the cold; he was burning. And not with the fires of sudden lust this time—rather, with the desire to walk across town to his brother’s house, drag Hal from his bed, and assault him.

He could—he supposed—understand why Hal had never mentioned the wager to him. In the wake of the scandal following the duke’s death, Grey had been shipped off promptly to some of his mother’s distant relatives in Aberdeen. He had spent two grim years in that gray stone city, during which time he had seen his brother only once.

And when he had come back to England, Hal had been virtually a stranger, so preoccupied with the business of re constituting the regiment that he had no time to spare for either friends or family. And then…well, then he himself had met Hector, and in the cataclysms of personal discovery that followed that event had had no attention to spare for anyone else, either.

The brothers had only come to know each other again when Grey took up his commission with the regiment, and discovered that he shared the family taste and talent for soldiering. Certainly Hal had not forgotten the wager, but as it had plainly never been settled, it was conceivable that it might not have occurred to him to speak of it, years after the fact.

No, what was galling him was not that Hal had never mentioned the wager, but the fact that his brother had never told himopenly that he believed their father had not been a traitor. Grey had lived on the tacit assumption that this was the case, but the matter had never been mentioned between them—and a casual observer would have drawn quite a different impression from Hal’s actions, taking these as the efforts of a man to live down shame and scandal, repudiating his patrimony in the process.

In fact, Grey admitted to himself, he had only assumed that Hal shared his faith in their father because he could not bear to think otherwise. If he were honest with himself, he must admit now that if Hal had not spoken to him of the matter, it was as much because he had never brought it up as because Hal had avoided discussion. He had been afraid to hear what he feared was the truth: that Hal knew something unpleasant and certain about the duke that he did not, but had spared him that knowledge out of kindness.

While it was good to discover the truth of Hal’s feelings now, any sense of relief he might have felt in the discovery was obscured by outrage. The fact that he knew the outrage to be largely unjustified only made it worse.

Worst of all was a sense of self-disgust, a feeling that he had wronged Hal—if only in his thoughts—and anger at the sense that he had been betrayed into committing injustice.

He got up, restless, and strode round the room, careful to step softly. His mother’s room lay below his.

He couldn’t even have it out with Hal, as that would involve his admitting to doubts that he preferred to keep buried, particularly now that they had been disproved. At least, his doubts regarding Hal had been disproved. As to his father…what the devil did that page from the missing journal mean? Who had left it? And why had his mother told Hal the duke had burnt the journal, when clearly he had not?

He glanced at the floor beneath his feet, debating the wisdom of going down and rousing his mother in order to ask her. But Hal had wished to speak to her alone; Grey supposed that was his right. Still, if either one of them thought he would be fobbed off now with further evasions or easy reassurances…He realized that he was clenching his fists, and opened them.

“You are grossly mistaken,” he said softly, and rubbed his palm against his leg. “Both of you.”

He had left his watch open on the desk. It chimed softly now, and he picked it up, holding it toward the fire to see the time—half two. He set it down again, next to the journal that also lay there, one of his father’s. He’d taken the volume at random from the library and brought it upstairs with him, for no good reason. Only feeling the need to touch it.

He laid a hand gently on the cover. Rough-tanned leather, the pages sewn in. It was like all the duke’s journals, made to withstand travel and the vicissitudes of campaign.

…watched the Perseids fall before the dawn twilight this morning, with V. and John. We lay upon the lawn, and counted more than sixty meteors within the space of an hour, at least a dozen very bright, with a visible tinge of blue or green.

He repeated the sentence to himself, making sure he had it word for word. That was the only sentence on the page Hal had burned that mentioned himself by name; a nugget of gold.

He hadn’t remembered that night at all, until the casual record brought it back: cool damp from the lawn seeping through his clothes, excitement overcoming the pull of sleep and the longing for his warm bed. Then the “Ah!” from his father and Victor—yes, “V.” was Victor Arbuthnot, one of his father’s astronomical friends. Was Arbuthnot still alive? he wondered. The sudden jerk of his heart at sight of the first shooting star—a brief and silent streak of light, startling as though a star had indeed fallen suddenly from its place.

That was what he most remembered—the silence. The men had talked at first, chatting casually; he had paid no attention, half-dreaming as he was. But then their conversation had faded, and the three of them lay flat on their backs, faces turned upward to the heavens, waiting together. Silent.

Poets spoke of the song of the heavens, the music of the spheres—and God knew, it was true. The silence of the stars chimed in the heart.

He paused by the window, looking up into a lavender sky, fingers pressed against the icy glass. No stars tonight; the snowflakes came down out of the dark, rushing toward him, endless, uncountable. Silent, too, but not like the stars. Falling snow whispered secrets to itself.

“And you are a fanciful idiot,” he said out loud, and turned away from the window. “Be writing poetry, next thing.”

He made himself lie down, and lay staring up at the plastered ceiling. Remembering the stargazing had quieted him, though he thought he would not sleep. Too many thoughts swirled through his brain, endless and confusing as the snowflakes. Missing journals, reappearing pages, ancient wagers—was that wager at the root of the animus between his brother and Colonel Twelvetrees? And the so-called sodomite conspiracy—had that anything to do with his family’s affairs? He might as well try to fit the falling snowflakes together in a way that made sense.

It was only as his eyes closed that he realized that while snowflakes cannot fit, they do accumulate. One upon another, until the sheer mass of them forms a crust that a man might walk upon—or fall through.

He would wait and see how deep the drifts lay, come morning.

In the morning, though, a letter came.

“Geneva Dunsany is dead.” Benedicta, Dowager Countess of Melton, set down the black-bordered letter very gently by her plate, her face pale. The footman froze in the act of presenting more toast.