The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [43]
“Shall I see you home?” Grey said quietly to von Namtzen as they waited in the hall for the steward to bring their cloaks. His heart was thumping audibly in his ears.
Stephan’s eyes flicked toward Frobisher, but the man was in close conversation with Harry about something.
“I should appreciate your company very much, Lord John,” he said, and though the words were formal, his bloodshot eyes were warm.
They didn’t speak in the coach. The rain had ceased and they left the windows down, the air cold and fresh on their faces. Grey’s thoughts were disordered by the amount of wine drunk with dinner, more so by the tumultuous emotions of the day—and, most of all, by Stephan’s close presence. He was a large man, and his knee vibrated with the coach’s movement, no more than an inch from Grey’s.
As he followed Stephan from the coach, he caught the scent of von Namtzen’s cologne, something faint and spicy—cloves, he thought, and was absurdly reminded of Christmas, and oranges studded thick with cloves, the smell festive in the house.
His hand closed on the orange, cool and round in his pocket, and he thought of other rounded things that might fit in his hand, these warm.
“Fool,” he said to himself, under his breath. “Don’t even think about it.”
It was, of course, impossible not to think about it.
Dismissing the yawning butler who let them in, Stephan led Grey to a small sitting room where a banked fire smoldered in the hearth. He waved Grey to a comfortable chair and took up the poker himself to stir the embers into life.
“You will have something to drink?” he asked, with a nod over his shoulder to a sideboard on which glasses and bottles stood in orderly ranks, graded by size. Grey smiled at the Germanic neatness of the array, but poured a small brandy for himself and—with a glance at Stephan’s broad back—a slightly larger one for his friend.
Several of the bottles were half empty, and he wondered how long Stephan had been in London.
Seated before the fire, they sipped at their drinks in a companionable silence, watching the flames.
“It was kind of you to come with me,” Stephan said at last. “I did not want to be alone tonight.”
Grey lifted one shoulder in dismissal. “I am only sorry that it should be tragedy that brings us together again,” he said, and meant it. He hesitated. “You … miss your wife greatly?”
Stephan pursed his lips a little. “I—well … of course I mourn Louisa,” he said, with more formality than Grey would have expected. “She was a fine woman. Very good at managing things.” A faint, sad smile touched his lips. “No, it is my poor children for whom I am sorrowful.”
The shadow Grey had noted before clouded the broad face, clean-limned as a Teutonic saint’s. “Elise and Alexander … They lost their own mother when they were quite small, and they loved Louisa very much; she was a wonderful mother, as kind to them as to her own son.”
“Ah,” Grey said. “Siggy?” He’d met young Siegfried, Louisa’s son by her first marriage, and smiled at the memory.
“Siggy,” von Namtzen agreed, and smiled a little, too, but the smile soon faded. “He must remain in Lowenstein, of course; he is the heir. And that also is too bad for Lise and Sascha—they are very fond of him, and now he is gone from them, too. It’s better for them to be with my sister. I could not leave them at Lowenstein, but their faces when I had to say farewell to them this afternoon …”
His own face crumpled for a moment, and Grey felt by reflex in his pocket for a handkerchief, but von Namtzen buried his grief in his glass for a moment and got control of himself again.
Grey rose and turned his back tactfully as he refreshed his drink, saying something casual about his cousin Olivia’s child, Cromwell, now aged almost two and the terror of the household.
“Cromwell?” von Namtzen said, clearing his throat and sounding bemused. “This is an English name?”
“Couldn’t be more so.” An explanation of the history of the lord protector