Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon Page A

found the glow came from a clay firepot burning in the lee of a crude lean-to, propped against a tree. The lean-to was deserted—was, in fact, too small to shelter anything larger than a dog. He had no more than an instant to think this odd, when instinct made him turn and look behind.
    There were two of them, one with a club, the other unarmed.
    Stocky shapes, black and ragged, hunched under split burlap sacks that covered heads and shoulders, hiding their faces.
    “Stand and deliver!” said a hoarse Irish voice.
    “Else we squash yer head in like a rotten turnip!” said another just like it.
    He hadn’t worn a sword to the salon. He did have his accustomed dagger, though, worn beneath his waistcoat.
    “Bugger off,” he said briefly, unbuttoning his coat and producing this. He made small circles with the blade, the metal gleaming dull in what little light there was.
    A dagger was not the weapon of choice when facing someone armed with a club, but it was what he had. He backed slowly, jabbing the blade at them, hoping to acquire enough distance to turn and run before they charged him.
    To his surprise, they seemed turned to stone at his words.
    “It’s him, so ’tis!” one of them hissed to the other. “The major!”
    “O’Higgins?” he said, straightening in disbelief. “O’Higgins!” he bellowed. But they had fled, uttering Irish blasphemies that floated back to him through the snow.
    He replaced the dagger and rebuttoned his greatcoat, fumbling a bit, his fingers shaking a little from the shock of the encounter.
    The bloody O’Higgins brothers. Grossly misnamed by their pious mother for a pair of archangels, their baptismal names of Raphael and Michael shortened for common use to Rafe and Mick. Not twins, but so similar in appearance that they often masqueraded as each other in order to escape trouble. And worked in concert to get into it.
    He was morally sure they were deserters from the Irish Brigade, but the recruiting sergeant had given them their shillings and their uniforms before Grey had set eyes on them. They weren’t the worst of soldiers, though given to more alarming varieties of free enterprise than most.
    He squinted through the gloom in the direction they had taken. Sure enough, Hyde Park barracks lay that way, though he couldn’t see the buildings through the trees, dark as it was by now. At a guess, the O’Higginses had come to dice and drink with friends quartered there—or to attend some social event such as a cockfight—and realizing a sudden need for cash, had improvised in their usual slipshod but imaginative manner.
    Shaking his head, he kicked the firepot over and scattered the glowing coals, which hissed red and died in the snow. He’d deal with the O’Higginses in the morning.
    By the time he reached the Serpentine road, he was thickly plastered with snow, his blood had chilled appreciably, and he was beginning to regret not having picked the firepot up and taken it with him, the detriment to his appearance notwithstanding. Despite his gloves, his fingers had gone numb, as had his face, and the stiffness of his cheeks reminded him of the man lying on the pavement outside White’s the night before.
    The royal swan-keepers had removed the swans for the winter, and the lake was frozen, but not so hard that he would trust his weight to it. Covered with snow, soft patches would be invisible, and all he needed now was to crash through the ice and be submerged in freezing water and decaying duckweed. Sighing, he turned left to make his way round the lake.
    Well, perhaps he would remember to ask Hal whether the man’s identity and fate had been determined, once the other matter was settled. And while he was asking…the events of the afternoon had almost made him forget his mother’s odd behavior at breakfast. In the shock of learning of Geneva’s death, he had not at once thought of connecting her reaction to the mention of Jamie Fraser with the appearance of the journal