* * *
“…and in consequence of the regrettable infirmity that prevents me from personal attendance upon Your Highness, I send by the hand of my son and heir a token of the loyalty—nay, make that ‘regard’—a token of the regard in which I have long cherished His Majesty and Your Highness.” Lord Lovat paused, frowning at the ceiling.
“What shall we send, Gideon?” he asked the secretary. “Rich-looking, but not so much I can’t say it was only a trifling present of no importance.”
Gideon sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. A stout, middle-aged man with thinning hair and round red cheeks, he plainly found the heat of the bedroom fire oppressive.
“The ring your lordship had from the Earl of Mar?” he suggested, without hope. A drop of sweat fell from his double chin onto the letter he was taking down, and he surreptitiously blotted it with his sleeve.
“Not expensive enough,” his lordship judged, “and too many political associations.” The mottled fingers tapped pensively on the coverlet as he thought.
Old Simon had done it up brown, I thought. He was wearing his best nightshirt, and was propped up in bed with an impressive panoply of medicines arrayed on the table, attended by his personal physician, Dr. Menzies, a small man with a squint who kept eyeing me with considerable doubt. I supposed the old man simply distrusted Young Simon’s powers of imagination, and had staged this elaborate tableau so that his heir might faithfully report Lord Lovat’s state of decrepitude when he presented himself to Charles Stuart.
“Ha,” said his lordship with satisfaction. “We’ll send the gold and sterling picnic set. That’s rich enough, but too frivolous to be interpreted as political support. Besides,” he added practically, “the spoon’s dented. All right then,” he said to the secretary, “let’s go on with ‘As Your Highness is aware…’ ”
I exchanged a glance with Jamie, who hid a smile in response.
“I think you’ve given him what he needs, Sassenach,” he had told me as we undressed after our fateful dinner the week before.
“And what’s that?” I asked, “an excuse to molest the maidservants?”
“I doubt he bothers greatly wi’ excuses of that sort,” Jamie said dryly. “Nay, you’ve given him a way to walk both sides—as usual. If he’s got an impressive-sounding disease that keeps him to his bed, then he canna be blamed for not appearing himself wi’ the men he promised. At the same time, if he sends his heir to fight, the Stuarts will credit Lovat with keeping his promise, and if it goes wrong, the Old Fox will claim to the English that he didna intend to give any aid to the Stuarts, but Young Simon went on his own account.”
“Spell ‘prostatitis’ for Gideon, would ye, lass?” Lord Lovat called to me, breaking into my thoughts. “And mind ye write it out carefully, clot,” he said to his secretary, “I dinna want His Highness to misread it.”
“P-r-o-s-t-a-t-i-t-i-s,” I spelled slowly, for Gideon’s benefit. “And how is it this morning, anyway?” I asked, coming to stand by his lordship’s bedside.
“Greatly improved, I thank ye,” the old man said, grinning up at me with a fine display of false teeth. “Want to see me piss?”
“Not just now, thanks,” I said politely.