“Word will come that I have been lost at sea—swept overboard by a swamping wave. Such things happen.” He glanced toward the bed where Maria Mayrhofer lay, still and beautiful and yellow as a carving of ancient ivory.

“I daresay they do,” Grey had said quietly, thinking once more of Jamie Fraser.

Trevelyan moved to stand by the bed, looking down. He took the woman’s hand, stroking it, and Grey saw her fingers tighten, very slightly; light quivered in the emerald teardrop of the ring she wore.

“If she dies, it will be the truth,” Trevelyan said softly, his eyes on her still face. “I shall take her in my arms and step over the rail; we will rest together, on the bottom of the sea.”

Grey moved to stand beside him, close enough to feel the brush of his sleeve.

“And if she does not?” he asked. “If you both survive the treatment?”

Trevelyan shrugged, so faintly that Grey might not have noticed were he not so close.

“Money will not buy health, nor happiness—but it has its uses. We will live in India, as man and wife; no one will know who she was—nothing will matter, save we are together.”

“May God bless you and grant you peace,” Grey murmured, reordering his dress—though he spoke to Maria Mayrhofer, rather than Trevelyan. He smoothed the edge of his waistcoat and stepped out from behind the screen, back into the maelstrom of the party.

Within a few steps, he was stopped by Lieutenant Stubbs, burnished to a high gloss and sweating profusely.

“Hallo, Malcolm. Enjoying yourself?”

“Er . . . yes. Of course. A word, old fellow?”

A boom from the river made speech momentarily impossible, but Grey nodded, beckoning Stubbs to a relatively quiet alcove near the foyer.

“I should speak to your brother, I know.” Stubbs cleared his throat. “But with Melton not here, you’re by way of being head of the family, aren’t you?”

“For my sins,” Grey replied guardedly. “Why?”

Stubbs cast a lingering glance through the French doors; Olivia was visible on the terrace, laughing at something said to her by Lord Ramsbotham.

“Not as though your cousin hasn’t better prospects, I know,” he said, a little awkwardly. “But I have got five thousand a year, and when the Old One—not that I don’t hope he lives forever, mind, but I am the heir, and—”

“You want my permission to court Olivia?”

Stubbs avoided his eye, gazing vaguely off toward the musicians, who were fiddling industriously away at the far end of the room.

“Um, well, more or less done that, really. Hope you don’t mind. I, er, we were hoping you might see your way to a marriage before the regiment leaves. Bit hasty, I know, but . . .”

But you want a chance to leave your seed in a willing girl’s belly, Grey added silently, in case you don’t come back.