Free The Custom of the Army by Diana Gabaldon

hand, admiring the workmanship, but then set it aside. He sipped his brandy for a bit, watching the official document as though it might explode. He was reasonably sure it would.
    He weighed the document in his hand and felt the breeze from his window lift the pages a little, like the flap of a sail just before it fills and bellies with a snap.
    Waiting wouldn’t help. And Hal plainly knew what it said, anyway; he’d tell Grey eventually, whether he wanted to know or not. Sighing, he put by his brandy and broke the seal.
    I, Bernard Donald Adams, do make this confession of my own free will …
    Was it? he wondered. He did not know Adams’s handwriting, could not tell whether the document had been written or dictated—no, wait. He flipped over the sheets and examined the signature. Same hand. All right, he had written it himself.
    He squinted at the writing. It seemed firm. Probably not extracted under torture, then. Perhaps it was the truth.
    “Idiot,” he said under his breath. “Read the goddamned thing and have done with it!”
    He drank the rest of his brandy at a gulp, flattened the pages upon the stone of the parapet, and read, at last, the story of his father’s death.

    The duke had suspected the existence of a Jacobite ring for some time and had identified three men whom he thought involved in it. Still, he made no move to expose them until the warrant was issued for his own arrest, upon the charge of treason. Hearing of this, he had sent at once to Adams, summoning him to the duke’s country home at Earlingden.
    Adams did not know how much the duke knew of his own involvement but did not dare to stay away, lest the duke, under arrest, denounce him. So he armed himself with a pistol and rode by night to Earlingden, arriving just before dawn.
    He had come to the conservatory’s outside doors and been admitted by the duke. Whereupon “some conversation” had ensued.
    I had learned that day of the issuance of a warrant for arrest upon the charge of treason, to be served upon the body of the Duke of Pardloe. I was uneasy at this, for the duke had questioned both myself and some colleagues previously, in a manner that suggested to me that he suspected the existence of a secret movement to restore the Stuart throne
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    I argued against the duke’s arrest, as I did not know the extent of his knowledge or suspicion, and feared that, if placed in exigent danger himself, he might be able to point a finger at myself or my principal colleagues, these being Victor Arbuthnot, Lord Creemore, and Sir Edwin Bellman. Sir Edwin was urgent upon the point, though, saying that it would do no harm; any accusations made by Pardloe could be dismissed as simple attempts to save himself, with no grounding in fact—while the fact of his arrest would naturally cause a widespread assumption of guilt and would distract any attentions that might at present be directed toward us
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    The duke, hearing of the warrant, sent to my lodgings that evening and summoned me to call upon him at his country home immediately. I dared not spurn this summons, notknowing what evidence he might possess, and therefore rode by night to his estate, arriving soon before dawn
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    Adams had met the duke there, in the conservatory. Whatever the form of this conversation, its result had been drastic.
    I had brought with me a pistol, which I had loaded outside the house. I meant this only for protection, as I did not know what the duke’s demeanor might be
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    Dangerous, evidently. Gerard Grey, Duke of Pardloe, had also come armed to the meeting. According to Adams, the duke had withdrawn his pistol from the recesses of his jacket—whether to attack or merely threaten was not clear—whereupon Adams had drawn his own pistol in panic. Both men fired; Adams thought the duke’s pistol had misfired, since the duke could not have missed at the distance.
    Adams’s shot did not missfire, nor did it miss its target, and seeing the blood upon the duke’s bosom, Adams