He felt no compunction in thus blackening George’s name; to his manner of thinking, George had accomplished that reasonably well for himself—and if a posthumous revelation of his actions could help to save the innocent, that might compensate in some small way for the innocent lives Everett had taken or ruined as the price of his ambition.

As for Dashwood and the others . . . let them look to themselves. He who sups wi’ the De’il, needs bring a lang spoon. Grey smiled faintly, hearing the Scots proverb in memory. Jamie Fraser had said it on the occasion of their first meal together—casting Grey as the Devil, he supposed, though he had not asked.

Grey was not a religious man, but he harbored a persistent vision: an avenging angel presiding over a balance on which the deeds of a man’s life were weighed—the bad to one side, the good to the other—and George Everett stood before the angel naked, bound and wide-eyed, waiting to see where the wavering balance might finally come to rest. He hoped this night’s work should be laid to George’s credit, and wondered briefly how long the accounting might go on, if it was true that a man’s deeds lived after him.

Jamie Fraser had told him once of purgatory, that Catholic conception of a place prior to final judgment, where souls remained for a time after death, and where the fate of a soul might still be affected by the prayers and Masses said for it. Perhaps it was true; a place where the soul waited, while each action taken during life played itself out, the unexpected consequences and complications following one another like a collapsing chain of dominoes down through the years. But that would imply that a man was responsible not only for his conscious actions, but for all the good and evil that might spring from them forever, unintended and unforeseen; a terrible thought.

He straightened, feeling at once drained and keyed up. He was exhausted, but completely awake—in fact, sleep had never seemed so far away. Every nerve was raw, and all his muscles ached with unrelieved tension.

The house lay silent around him, its inhabitants still sleeping the drugged sleep of wine and sated sensuality. Rain began to fall, the soft ping of raindrops striking the glass accompanied by a harsh, fresh scent that came cold through the cracks of the casement, cutting through the stale air of the house and through the fog that filled his brain.

“Nothing like a long walk home in a driving rain to clear the cobwebs,” he murmured to himself. He had left his hat somewhere—perhaps in the library—but felt no desire to go in search of it. He made his way to the stair, down to the second floor, and along the gallery toward the main staircase that would take him down to the door.