“Care to come along?” Quarry straightened and shrugged on his coat. “Not too late, you know.”

“I thank you, no.” Grey rose and stretched, feeling every bone in his back creak with the effort. “I’m going home, before I starve to death.”

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
(A Little Night Music)

It was well past dark when Grey returned to his mother’s house in Jermyn Street. In spite of his hunger, he was deliberately late, having no desire to face either his mother or Olivia before he had decided upon a course of action with regard to Joseph Trevelyan.

Not late enough, though. To his dismay, he saw light blazing through all the windows and a liveried footman standing by the portico, obviously there to admit invited guests and repel those unwanted. A voice within was upraised in some sort of song, accompanied by the sounds of flute and harpsichord.

“Oh, God. It isn’t Wednesday, is it, Hardy?” he pleaded, ascending the steps toward the footman, who smiled at sight of him, bowing as he opened the door.

“Yes, my lord. Has been all day, I’m afraid.”

Normally, he rather enjoyed his mother’s weekly musicales. However, he was in no condition to be sociable at the moment. He ought to go and spend the night at the Beefsteak—but that meant an arduous journey back across London, and he was perished with hunger.

“I’ll just slip through to the kitchen,” he said to Hardy. “Don’t tell the Countess I’m here.”

“No indeed, my lord.”

He stole soft-footed into the foyer, pausing for a moment to judge the terrain. Because of the warm weather, the double doors into the main drawing room stood open, to prevent the occupants being suffocated. The music, a lugubrious German duet with a refrain of “Den Tod”—“O Death”—would drown the noise of his footsteps, but he would be in plain view for the second or two required to sprint across the foyer and into the hall that led to the kitchens.

He swallowed, mouth watering heavily at the scents of roast meat and steamed pudding that wafted toward him from the recesses of the house.

Another of the footmen, Thomas, was visible through the half-open door of the library, across the foyer from the drawing room. The footman’s back was turned to the door, and he carried a Hanoverian military helmet, ornately gilded and festooned with an enormous spray of dyed plumes, obviously wondering where to put the ridiculous object.

Grey pressed himself against the wall and eased farther into the foyer. There was a plan. If he could attract Thomas’s attention, he could use the footman as a shield to cross the foyer, thus gain the safety of the staircase, and make it to the sanctuary of his own chamber, whilst Thomas went to fetch him a discreet tray from the kitchen.