Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon Read Free Book Online Page A

cheeks and over the bridge of his snubbed nose. Despite his obvious youth, though, he radiated a remarkable air of determination.
    “Byrd. Byrd. Oh, Byrd!” Lord John’s sluggish mental processes began to engage themselves. Tom Byrd. Presumably this young man was some relation to the vanished Jack Byrd. “Why are you—oh. Perhaps Mr. Trevelyan has sent you?”
    “Yes, me lord. Colonel Quarry sent him a note last night, saying as how you was going to be looking into the matter of . . . er-hem.” He cleared his throat ostentatiously, with a glance at Adams, who had taken up the shaving brush and was industriously swishing it to and fro in the soap mug, working up a great lather of suds. “Mr. Trevelyan said as how I was to come and assist, whatsoever thing it might be your lordship had need of.”
    “Oh? I see; how kind of him.” Grey was amused at Byrd’s air of dignity, but favorably impressed at his discretion. “What duties are you accustomed to perform in Mr. Trevelyan’s household, Tom?”
    “I’m a footman, sir.” Byrd stood as straight as he could, chin lifted in an attempt at an extra inch of height; footmen were normally employed for appearance as much as for skill, and tended to be tall and well-formed; Byrd was about Grey’s own height.
    Grey rubbed his upper lip, then set aside his teacup and glanced at Adams, who had put down the soap mug and was now holding the razor in one hand, strop in the other, apparently unsure how to employ the two effectively in concert. “Tell me, Byrd, have you any experience at valeting?”
    “No, me lord—but I can shave a man.” Tom Byrd sedulously avoided looking at Adams, who had discarded the strop and was testing the edge of the razor against the edge of his shoe sole, frowning.
    “You can, can you?”
    “Yes, me lord. Father’s a barber, and us boys’d shave the bristles from the scalded hogs he bought for to make brushes of. For practice, like.”
    “Hmm.” Grey glanced at himself in the looking glass above the chest of drawers. His beard came in only a shade or two darker than his blond hair, but it grew heavily, and the stubble glimmered thick as wheat straw on his jaw in the morning light. No, he really couldn’t forgo shaving.
    “All right,” he said with resignation. “Adams—give the razor to Tom here, if you please. Then go and brush my oldest uniform, and tell the coachman I shall require him. Mr. Byrd and I are going to view a body.”
             
    A night lying in the water at Puddle Dock and two days lying in a shed behind Bow Street compter had not improved Timothy O’Connell’s appearance, never his strongest point to begin with. At that, he was at least still recognizable—more than could be said for the gentleman lying on a bit of canvas by the wall, who had apparently hanged himself.
    “Turn him over, if you please,” Grey said tersely, speaking through a handkerchief soaked with oil of wintergreen, which he held against the lower half of his face.
    The two prisoners deputed to accompany him to this makeshift morgue looked rebellious—they had already been obliged to take O’Connell from his cheap coffin and remove his shroud for Grey’s inspection—but a gruff word from the constable in charge propelled them into reluctant action.
    The corpse had been roughly cleansed, at least. The marks of his last battle were clear, even though the body was bloated and the skin extensively discolored.
    Grey bent closer, handkerchief firmly clasped to his face, to inspect the bruises across the back. He beckoned to Tom Byrd, who was standing pressed against the wall of the shed, his freckles dark against the paleness of his face.
    “See that?” He pointed to the black mottling over the corpse’s back and buttocks. “He was kicked and trampled upon, I think.”
    “Yes, sir?” Byrd said faintly.
    “Yes. But you see how the skin is completely discolored upon the dorsal aspect?”
    Byrd gave him a look indicating that he saw