“I had.”

Oswald cocked an eyebrow, plainly inviting him to elaborate, but he kept silent.

Twelvetrees fixed him with a cold eye.

“With which regiment, when, how long?”

Blast.

“I served informally with the Forty-sixth, sir—my brother’s regiment—Lord Melton, that is—during the Jacobite campaign in Scotland under General Cope. Was detailed to a gun crew belonging to the Royal Artillery after taking up my commission, and trained there for six months before coming back to the Forty-sixth. More recently, I was seconded to a Hanoverian regiment in Germany, and saw service there with a Prussian artillery company.”

He saw no need to add that this service had consisted largely of eating sausages with the gun crew. And as for his so-called service with Cope…the less said about that, the better. He had, however, actually commanded the firing of cannon, which the members of the board very likely had not, Twelvetrees included.

“Cope?” said the baronet, seeming to rouse a bit at the name. “Gentleman Johnny?” He laughed, and the colonel’s hatchet face tightened.

“Yes, sir.” Oh, God.Please God, he hadn’t heard the story.

Apparently not; the man merely hummed a snatch of that mocking Scotch song, “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye walkin’ yet?” and broke off, looking amused.

“Cope,” he repeated, shaking his head. “You must have been very young at the time, Major?”

“Sixteen, sir.” He felt his blood rise and his cheeks flush. Nearly half a lifetime. Dear God, how long would he have to live, in order to escape the memory of Prestonpans, and goddamned Jamie Fraser?

Twelvetrees was not amused, and cast a cold glance at the nobleman.

“Had you commanded a gun in battle, prior to Crefeld?” Bloody-minded sod.

“Yes, sir,” Grey replied, keeping his voice calm. “At Falkirk.” They’d put him in charge of a gun and allowed him to fire several shots at an abandoned church before retreating, for the sake of practice.

Oswald emitted a hum of interest.

“And what sort of gun did you command on that occasion, Major?”

“A murderer, sir,” he replied, naming a small and very old-fashioned cannon, left over from the last century.

“Not quite so murderous as Tom Pilchard, though, eh, Major?”

He must have looked as blank as he felt, for Oswald kindly elaborated.

“The gun you served at Crefeld, Major. You did not know its name?”

“No, sir,” he said, and could not help adding, “we were not formally introduced, owing to the circumstances.”

He knew before he said it that it was a mistake, but nerves and irritation had got the best of him; the constant thumping from the proving ground beyond the house made the floor shake every few minutes, and sweat was running down his sides inside his shirt. The price of his momentary lapse was a blistering ten-minute lecture from Twelvetrees on respect for the army—in the person of himself, he gathered—and the dignity of His Majesty’s commission. All the while Grey sat upright as a ramrod, saying, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” with a countenance of perfect blankness, and Oswald wheezed with open amusement.

The baronet waited through the colonel’s tirade with ill-concealed impatience, stripping the barbs from his quill one by one, so that tiny feathers strewed the table and flew up in a cloud as he drummed his fingers.

From the corner of his eye, Grey saw the clerk lean back, looking faintly entertained. The man rubbed his ink-stained fingers, clearly grateful for the momentary break in the proceedings.

When at last the colonel subsided—with a final ugly jab at his brother, his brother’s regiment, and Grey’s late father—the baronet cleared his throat with a menacing growl and sat forward to take his own turn.

Grey was inclined to think that the growl was aimed as much at Twelvetrees as at himself—-noblemen did not like to hear others of their ilk rubbished in public, regardless of circumstance. The lack of amity among the members of the commission had become increasingly apparent during the questioning, but that observation was of little value to him personally.

The clerk, seeing the end of his brief vacation, picked up his quill again with an audible sigh.

Marchmont—that was it! Lord Marchmont—he wasa baronet—set about a brisk dissection of Grey’s experience, background, education, and family, ending with a sudden pointed inquiry as to when Grey had last seen Edgar DeVane.

“Edgar DeVane?” Grey repeated blankly.

“Your brother, I believe?” Marchmont said, with elaborate patience.

“Yes, sir,” Grey said respectfully, thinking, What the devil…? Edgar?“I beg pardon, sir. Your question took me unexpectedly. I believe I last saw my half brother”—he leaned a little on the words—“near Christmas last.” He remembered the occasion, certainly; Edgar’s wife, Maude, had badgered her husband into bringing the family to London for a month, and Grey had accompanied her and her two daughters in their raids on the Regent and Bond Street shops, in the capacity of native bearer. He recalled thinking at the time that Edgar’s affairs must be prospering markedly; either that, or he would return to Sussex bankrupt.

He waited. Marchmont squinted at him, tapping the mangled quill on the papers in front of him.

“Christmas,” the baronet repeated. “Have you been in correspondence with DeVane since then?”

“No,” he replied promptly. While he assumed that Edgar was in fact literate, he’d never seen anything of a written nature purporting to emanate from his half brother. His mother kept up a dutiful correspondence with all four of her sons, but the Sussex half of that particular exchange was sustained entirely by the efforts of Maude.

“Christmas,” Marchmont repeated again, frowning. “And when had you last seen DeVane, prior to that?”

“I do not recall, sir; my apologies.”

“Oh, now, I am afraid that won’t do, my lord.” Oswald was still looking genial, but light glittered from his spectacles. “We must insist upon an answer.”

A louder than usual boom from beyond the house made the clerk start in his seat and grab for his inkwell. Grey might easily have started likewise, were he not so taken aback by this sudden insistence upon his half brother’s whereabouts and relations with himself. He could only conclude that the commission had lost its collective mind.

Twelvetrees added his own bit to this impression, glowering at him under iron-gray brows.

“We are waiting, Major.”

Ought he to choose some date at random? he wondered. Would they investigate to discover whether he told the truth?

Knowing what sort of response it might provoke, he replied firmly, “I am sorry, sir. I see Edgar DeVane very infrequently; prior to last Christmas, I suppose that it might have been more than a year—two, perhaps—since I have spoken to him.”

“Or written?” Marchmont pounced.

He didn’t know that, either, but there was much less chance that anyone could prove him wrong.

“I think that I may have written to him when—” His words were drowned out by the whistle of some large missile, very near at hand, followed by a tremendous crash. He kept himself in his chair only by seizing the seat of it with both hands, and gulped air to keep his voice from shaking. “—when I was seconded to the Graf von Namtzen’s regiment. That—that would have been in—in—’57.”

“Can they not still that infernal racket?” Marchmont’s nerves seemed also to have become frayed by the bombardment. He sat upright and slapped a hand on the table. “Mr. Simpson!”

The black-coated functionary appeared in the doorway with an inquiring look.

“Tell them to stop banging away out there, for God’s sake,” the baronet said peevishly.

“I am afraid that the Ordnance Office is a power unto itself, my lord,” Simpson said, shaking his head sadly at the thought of such intransigence.