Longstreet nodded, a hand pressed to his chest.

“A warning. They—both times, they were meant only to knock you senseless, and to leave a th-third page of the journal in your pocket. I had not expected you to f-fight back.”

“Sorry about that.” Grey rubbed his left arm. He had left off the sling, and it was beginning to throb. “What the devil was the point of this—this charade?”

Longstreet leaned back in his chair, sighing deeply.

“Justice,” he said softly. “Call it a sop to my conscience. I chose my cousin, as I said. But it became clear to me some months ago that he was dying. Once he was beyond the reach of the law…I could tell the truth. But I dared not do it openly—not then.” A brief smile flitted across his face. “I had something to lose, then.”

He had read the journal carefully, and selected three pages, all of them mentioning the name of Victor Arbuthnot.

“That was the only thing those pages had in common.” To leave a page in Melton’s office would arouse alarm; another sent to the countess would increase it; to leave the third with Grey, following a physical attack, would, he thought, insure that the pages were carefully studied—Arbuthnot’s name would spring out of the comparison, and the Greys would go looking for him. And so far past the event, Arbuthnot would likely admit to the truth himself. If he did not…Longstreet would still have the option of revealing the truth in some other way.

“That actually worked,” Grey admitted, though his displeasure over the stratagem had not abated in the slightest. “But Arbuthnot didn’t know my father had been murdered, either.”

What matters more?Longstreet had asked him. The life of a man, or the honor of his name when he is dead?Both, Grey thought. Longstreet had chosen; Grey had no choice.

“Who in bloody hellkilled my father?” he demanded in frustration.

Longstreet closed his eyes.

“I don’t know.” The doctor had been growing visibly more exhausted as he spoke, needing to pause for breath at shorter intervals, coughing in short, harsh bursts that made Grey’s own chest ache in sympathy. He flapped a limp hand toward the journal.

“You know…what I know.”

Grey sat for a moment, trying not to burst with the force of the questions that boiled in his brain. But Longstreet did not have the answers to most of them, and the one thing he did know—the name of Mr. A—Grey could not bring himself to ask.

He rose, clutching the journal, and one final question came to mind that Longstreet might be able to answer.

“My brother challenged Nathaniel Twelvetrees to a duel,” he said abruptly. “Do you know why?”

Longstreet opened his eyes and looked up, faintly surprised.

“Don’t you? Ah, I see not. I suppose Melton wouldn’t refer to the matter. Twelvetrees had…seduced his wife.”

Grey felt as though Longstreet had suddenly punched him violently in the chest.

“His wife.” It came to him, with a sense of mingled horror and relief, that Longstreet did not mean Minnie, but Esmй, his brother’s first wife—who had been French and beautiful. She died in childbirth—and the child with her. Had the child been Hal’s? he wondered, appalled. He remembered Hal’s tearing grief at her death, but had not understood the half of his brother’s feelings. His own heart burned at the thought.

“Thank you,” he said, for lack of anything else to say to Longstreet, and turned to go. One final thought occurred to him.

“One last thing,” he said, turning back, curious. “Would you have killed me? Had my brother not been there when you removed the shrapnel from my chest?”

Longstreet put back his head and surveyed Grey carefully, his eyes alive with ironic intelligence, still bright in his drawn face. Slowly, he shook his head.

“Had I met you in a dark alley, perhaps. H-had we met in a duel, certainly.” He paused to breathe. “But you came…to me as a patient.” He coughed again, and tapped his chest.

“Do no…harm,” he wheezed, and closed his eyes.

The housekeeper, who had been standing silently in the shadows of the hall, came in, not looking at Grey. She went to Longstreet, knelt beside him, and smoothed the hair from his face, her touch tender. Longstreet did not open his eyes, but put up a hand, slowly, and laid it over hers.

Grey had dismissed the coach, not knowing how long his interview might take. It would be easy enough to find a cab, but he chose to walk, scarcely knowing which path he took.

His mind was a stew of revelation, shock, conjecture—and frustration. Beneath it all was a substratum of grief—for his father, for his mother, for Hal. His own grief seemed inconsequent, and yet magnified by all he now knew of his family’s past.

The pressure in his chest made it painful to breathe, but he didn’t worry about the remaining shrapnel; only stopped now and then when his breath grew too short to continue. At length, he found himself on the shore of the Thames, where he found an overturned dory and sat on it, the journal tucked under his coat, watching the brown water swirl past, lapping up the shore as the tide came in. He let his thoughts go, exhausted, and his mind emptied, little by little.

Spatters of rain passed over him, but toward sunset, the clouds overhead began to thin and drift apart.

A conclusion is simply the point at which you give up thinking.He gave up, and as he rose stiffly to his feet, found that a conclusion had indeed formed itself in his mind, much as a pearl forms inside an oyster.

He had been confessor to Longstreet. It was time he sought his own.

Chapter 32

The Path of Honor

Idid as you asked, Lord John,” Dunsany said, his voice lowered, as though someone might overhear—though they were quite alone in the library.

“As I—oh!” Grey recollected, belatedly, his request that James Fraser might be afforded the opportunity to write letters. “I thank you, sir. Was there…any result from the experiment, do you know?”

Dunsany nodded, his narrow brow furrowed in concern.

“He did send a number of letters—ten in all, I believe. As you specified, I did not open them”—his expression indicated that he thought this a grave mistake—“but I did take note of the directions upon them. Three were sent to a place in the Highlands, to a Mrs. Murray, two to Rome, and the remainder to France. I kept a list of the names….” He fumbled with the drawer of his desk, but Grey stopped him with a gesture.

“I thank you, sir. Perhaps later. Did he receive any reply to these missives?”

“Yes, several.” Dunsany seemed expectant, but Grey only nodded, without asking for details.

The question of hidden Jacobites, which had once seemed so vital, was eclipsed. What had his mother said? Let the past bury its dead.It had to, he supposed; the present was all he could deal with.

He went on conversing with Dunsany, expressing interest in the affairs of Helwater, and later, listening to the county gossip of Lady Dunsany and Isobel, but without actually noticing any of it. He did see that relations seemed to have healed between Lord and Lady Dunsany; they sat close together at teatime, and their hands touched now and then over the bread and butter.

“How does your grandson fare?” Grey inquired at one point, hearing wailing overhead.

“Oh, wonderfully well,” Lord Dunsany assured him, beaming.

“He’s teething, poor lad,” Lady Dunsany said, though not seeming distressed at her grandson’s pain. “He’s such a comfort to us.”

“He has sixteeth, Lord John!” Isobel told him, with the manner of one imparting vital and exciting intelligence.

“Indeed?” he said politely. “I am staggered.”

He thought the meal would never end, but it did, and he was at last allowed to escape to his room. He did not stop there, though, but went quietly down the back stair and out. To the stable.