Page 20

In the Loch Iffrin Tavern, three hours south of Drochcala, Lord Greville Nightingale leaned with his elbows on the polished bar, signalling for the bored but pretty girl behind the bar to pour him another whisky.

She kept looking at him, but he wasn’t minded to flirt.

The whisky burned a track down his throat, which was just as well, considering the regrettable interviews in London with first his pompous ass of a brother, Crauford, and then their mother in her dressing room.

He had revenged himself on Crauford by poaching Somers, who was relieved to serve a military man again.

The latter had been far worse: Sylvia, still in her evening gown with a net shawl draped across her shoulders, looking up at him as she waited for her maid to come in.

You must deal with her before she ruins us all.

Cressida, for her part, had disobeyed him: of course she had.

Never mind the fact she’d saved Chas’s skin less than a week past, Greville felt the cold shiver in his belly that usually only came before a battle or some other killing.

It was a sensation he enjoyed, especially when his opponent was a worthy one, which by God she was.

‘Another whisky, if you please.’ Greville shoved his greasy glass back across the bar. The redhead stopped smiling at the look on his face, her eyes darkening with fear.

Greville watched the girl’s gaze flicker towards the door as she handed him the dose.

A battered and ancient stag-horn hung above the lintel; Greville felt an odd sense of being hunted himself.

There was something wrong in all this. He didn’t watch the door swing open but he was very aware of the knife strapped to the inside of his hessian.

There was a low rumble of voices outside and Greville got up and walked to the window.

Pale sunlight glinted off the water outside, but the inn was a good way down a sandy lane from the little quay, and from this vantage point he couldn’t see who was coming.

The girl’s nerves at his presence told their own story: unless for the first time instinct was about to fail him, the Loch Iffrin Tavern was due to receive a company of free-traders. Information, after all, was just as highly prized on the black market as salt or brandy with no tariff.

There was an incoming racket of hobnailed boots on the yard-stones outside and a low rumble of Gaelic.

When the door opened and the smugglers came in, Greville felt a cold touch at the back of his neck.

He remained at the window, ready to draw the knife if he had to.

He sensed the group of men assess and dismiss both him and Somers, who had come in through the far door.

Greville watched sidelong and identified their broad-shouldered young leader, tallying not only the pale brown skin, immaculate linen and unfashionable cocked hat, but also the irritable watchfulness of a man who had more than enough on his plate, as if this free-trading mission were an extra task dealt out to him by a thoughtless employer.

He looked up, glancing at Greville with a flash of recognition before turning away to speak to his men.

That couldn’t be possible: for a start, Greville had never been to this part of Scotland before. He didn’t forget faces, either.

Byron followed them in, bareheaded to reveal dishevelled dark hair with a muffler thrown artlessly about his neck.

The inn-girl stared, wiping the same tot-jug over again.

You had to hand it to the man: he had the same effect on women wherever he went.

Those charms would soon dim if Greville punched his teeth through the back of his throat.

Bloody fool , Greville told himself. What century do you think this is?

‘There’s hot water ready for you, my lord,’ Somers said, with no more than a flickering glance at the newcomers behind which Greville sensed meticulous observation. ‘Interesting company, if I might make so bold. Will you come and shave, your honour?’

‘In a moment,’ Greville said, girding his loins to dine at Drochcala in just a few short hours, at the same table as his lawful wife.

Somers looked as if he was doing his level best not to laugh.

He turned around to face the gathering again – red-faced, weather-beaten men flushed with the cold and the sea air, jackets of oiled wool steaming as pine logs smouldered in the great hearth.

Save Byron himself, busy playing at smugglers, only one was familiar.

He leaned on the bar in a long black greatcoat that might have once been another colour beneath years of grease and soot.

Greville had last laid eyes on Lord Rosmoney’s groom in the Devil’s Acre, in that damp, stuffy bedchamber at the Oxford Arms.

John O’Neill glanced fleetingly across the tavern at Greville, not bothering to conceal an expression of extreme dislike. Did anyone else here know they were in the company of a man who had once blown up the English garrison in Dublin?

Byron himself paid no heed to O’Neill: he was far more intent on their young leader, who was quietly dispensing a series of instructions in Gaelic.

Greville and Somers retreated to the window, acting on the same instinct; Somers had the sense to keep his mouth shut, watching as Byron and his free-trading friends gathered at the bar.

The poet was far more at his ease here among lawbreaking Scots than he’d been in the Craufords’ drawing room, so bound up in his own adventure that he hadn’t yet acknowledged Greville.

If it hadn’t been for the lame foot, Greville wouldn’t have put it past him to join the army.

‘His lordship went out to tour the battlefields of Spain in 1809, as I understand.’ Somers spoke in a well-practised low voice that would not carry, as if he’d just read Greville’s mind.

‘Tour but not fight,’ Greville replied, curt; he hadn’t been at headquarters when Byron visited.

Like everyone else, he’d heard about it afterwards.

He wasn’t about to take Somers into his confidence, but in truth he reserved a particular depth of loathing for civilians drawn to battlefields when they had no business there.

Somers kept his mouth shut, not the sort to stand on his dignity.

Instead, he kept one eye on Byron and his companions.

Greville flexed the fingers of his right hand and cast a quick glance at the girl behind the bar; she’d been looking at him in a certain way, she’d likely be willing.

It would be wiser to quench this thirst before he encountered his wife.

The girl smiled at him, and Greville briefly shut his eyes to imagine kissing her neck, her pulse gathering speed at his touch as he made short work of her skirts.

‘Sir,’ Somers said, quietly.

Byron had chosen to notice them at last, then: Greville looked up, irritable.

Byron smiled, granting the rare gift of his full attention, so paralysing to those who were not immune.

‘Nightingale? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here.

You’re weathering out the summer with Annis Bute as well, I take it?

What have you done to deserve that, Grev?

’ Byron spoke with the drawl he always used when holding one at a distance; after London, Greville wouldn’t have put it past the man to cut him.

‘Where my wife commands, I obey,’ Greville said, enjoying the concealed flash of alarm in the poet’s eyes as he spoke.

‘Oh, please,’ Byron said. ‘You’ve never been anything less than a mastering fool, which as I’ve tried to tell you before is one of the many, many reasons you managed to mislay her for years.’

‘Fuck off, George. I take it Caroline Lamb has rendered literally everywhere else too hot for you to bear, my dear?’

‘God love her, but Caro does nothing by halves and one can’t offend the proprieties,’ Byron said, yawning. ‘I’ve no desire to end in the shoes you were in, with nowhere to go but the Continent. Caro has no understanding of subtlety.’

‘She’s a pain in the bloody arse and always has been,’ Greville said.

As a child, he’d been thrashed no fewer than five times as a direct result of Lady Caroline’s escapades.

Briefly, he closed his eyes and thought of Jamie standing by the window in the library, all youthful clueless arrogance, either not knowing or not caring just how easily Byron might ruin them both with his favour.

Three years ago, Greville had been standing in the same place when Crauford told him never to consider either Summercourt or Crauford House his home again. You of all people , Jamie had said.

Greville turned away from the window to find that Byron was now watching him with a flicker of something unreadable in his expression. He left women making fools of themselves to get just one glimpse of his face, and yet what would remain of the man once Cressida had finished with him?