* * *
The house was at once deathly still and full of noises; boards squeaked loud beneath our feet and our garments rustled like leaves in a gale. The walls seemed to breathe with the settlings of wood, and small, half-heard sounds beyond the corridor suggested the secretive burrowings of animals underground. And over all was the deep and frightening silence of a great, dark house, sunk in a sleep that must not be broken.
Mary’s hand was tight on my arm, as we crept down the hall behind Jamie. He moved like a shadow, hugging the wall, but quickly, for all his silence.
As we passed one door, I heard the sound of soft footsteps on the other side. Jamie heard them, too, and flattened himself against the wall, motioning Mary and me ahead of him. The plaster of the wall was cold against the palms of my hands, as I tried to press backward into it.
The door opened cautiously, and a head in a puffy white mobcap poked out, peering down the hall in the direction away from us.
“Hullo?” it said in a whisper. “Is that you, Albert?” A tickle of cold sweat ran down my spine. A housemaid, apparently expecting a visitation from the Duke’s valet, who seemed to be keeping up the reputation of Frenchmen.
I didn’t think she was going to consider an armed Highlander an adequate substitute for her absent lover. I could feel Jamie tense beside me, trying to overcome his scruples against striking a woman. Another instant, and she would turn, see him, and scream the house down.
I stepped out from the wall.
“Er, no,” I said apologetically, “I’m afraid it’s only me.”
The maidservant started convulsively, and I took a swift step past, so that she was facing me, with Jamie still behind her.
“Sorry to alarm you,” I said, smiling cheerily. “I couldn’t sleep, you see. Thought I’d try a spot of hot milk. Tell me, am I headed right for the kitchens?”
“Eh?” The maid, a plump miss in her early twenties, gaped unbecomingly, exposing evidence of a distressing lack of concern for dental hygiene. Luckily, it wasn’t the same maid who had seen me to my room; she might not realize that I was a prisoner, not a guest.
“I’m a guest in the house,” I said, driving the point home. Continuing on the principle that the best defense is a good offense, I stared accusingly at her.
“Albert, eh? Does His Grace know that you are in the habit of entertaining men in your room at night?” I demanded. This seemed to hit a nerve, for the woman paled and dropped to her knees, clutching at my skirt. The prospect of exposure was so alarming that she didn’t pause to ask exactly why a guest should be wandering about the halls in the wee hours of the morning, wearing not only gown and shoes, but a traveling cloak as well.
“Oh, mum! Please, you won’t say nothing to His Grace, will you? I can see you’ve a kind face, mum, surely you’d not want to see me dismissed from my place? Have pity on me, my lady, I’ve six brothers and sisters still at home, and I…”
“Now, now,” I soothed, patting her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell the Duke. You just go back to your bed, and…” Talking in the sort of voice one uses with children and mental patients, I eased her, still volubly protesting her innocence, back into the small closet of a room.
I shut the door on her and leaned against it for support. Jamie’s face loomed up from the shadows before me, grinning. He said nothing, but patted me on the head in congratulation, before taking my arm and urging me down the hall once more.
Mary was waiting under the window on the landing, her nightrobe glowing white in the moonlight that beamed momentarily through scudding clouds outside. A storm was gathering, from the looks of it, and I wondered whether this would help or hinder our escape.
Mary clutched at Jamie’s plaid as he stepped onto the landing.
“Shh!” she whispered. “Someone’s coming!”
Someone was; I could hear the faint thud of footsteps coming from below, and the pale wash of a candle lit the stairwell. Mary and I looked wildly about, but there was absolutely no place to hide. This was a back stair, meant for the servants’ use, and the landings were simple squares of flooring, totally unrelieved by furniture or convenient hangings.
Jamie sighed in resignation. Then, motioning me and Mary back into the hallway from which we had come, he drew his dirk and waited, poised in the shadowed corner of the landing.
Mary’s fingers clutched and twined with mine, squeezing tight in an agony of apprehension. Jamie had a pistol hanging from his belt, but plainly couldn’t use it within the house—and a servant would realize that, making it useless for threat. It would have to be the knife, and my stomach quivered with pity for the hapless servant who was just about to come face-to-face with fifteen stone of keyed-up Scot and the threat of black steel.
I was taking stock of my apparel, and thinking that I could spare one of my petticoats to be used for bindings, when the bowed head of the candle-bearer came in sight. The dark hair was parted down the middle and slicked with a stinkingly sweet pomade that at once brought back the memory of a dark Paris street and the curve of thin, cruel lips beneath a mask.
My gasp of recognition made Danton look up sharply, one step below the landing. The next instant, he was grasped by the neck and flung against the wall of the landing with a force that sent the candlestick flying through the air.
Mary had seen him too.
“That’s him!” she exclaimed, in her shock forgetting either to whisper or to stutter. “The man in Paris!”
Jamie had the feebly struggling valet squashed against the wall, held by one muscled forearm pressed across his chest. The man’s face, fading in and out as the light ebbed and flooded with the passing clouds, was ghastly pale. It grew paler in the next moment, as Jamie laid the edge of his blade against Danton’s throat.
I stepped onto the landing, not sure either what Jamie would do, or what I wanted him to do. Danton let out a strangled moan when he saw me, and made an abortive attempt to cross himself.
“La Dame Blanche!” he whispered, eyes starting in horror.
Jamie moved with sudden violence, grasping the man’s hair and jerking his head back so hard that it thumped against the paneling.
“Had I time, mo garhe, ye would die slow,” he whispered, and his voice lacked nothing in conviction, quiet as it was. “Count it God’s mercy I have not.” He yanked Danton’s head back even further, so I could see the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed convulsively, his eyes fixed on me in fear.
“You call her ‘Dame Blanche,’ ” Jamie said, between his teeth. “I call her wife! Let her face be the last that ye see, then!”
The knife ripped across the man’s throat with a violence that made Jamie grunt with the effort, and a dark sheet of blood sprayed over his shirt. The stench of sudden death filled the landing, with a wheezing, gurgling sound from the crumpled heap on the floor that seemed to go on for a very long time.
The sounds behind me brought me finally to my senses: Mary, being violently sick in the hallway. My first coherent thought was that the servants were going to have the hell of a mess to clean up in the morning. My second was for Jamie, seen in a flash of the fleeting moon. His face was spattered and his hair matted with droplets of blood, and he was breathing heavily. He looked as though he might be going to be sick, too.
I turned toward Mary, and saw, far beyond her down the hall, the crack of light behind an opening door. Someone was coming to investigate the noise. I grabbed the hem of her nightrobe, wiped it roughly across her mouth, and seized her by the arm, tugging her toward the landing.
“Come on!” I said. “Let’s get out of here!” Starting from his dazed contemplation of Danton’s corpse, Jamie shook himself suddenly, and returning to his senses, turned to the stair.
He seemed to know where we were going, leading us through the darkened corridors without hesitation. Mary stumbled along beside me, puffing, her breath loud as an engine in my ear.
At the scullery door, Jamie came to a sudden halt, and gave a low whistle. This was returned immediately, and the door swung open on a darkness inhabited by indistinct forms. One of these detached itself from the murk and hastened forward. A few muttered words were exchanged, and the man—whichever it was—reached for Mary and pulled her into the shadows. A cold draft told me there was an open door somewhere ahead.
Jamie’s hand on my shoulder steered me through the obstacles of the darkened scullery and some smaller chamber that seemed to be a lumber room of some sort; I barked my shin against something, but bit back the exclamation of pain.
Out in the free night at last, the wind seized my cloak and whirled it out in a exuberant balloon. After the nerve-stretching trek through the darkened house, I felt as though I might take wing, and sail for the sky.
The men around me seemed to share the mood of relief; there was a small outbreak of whispered remarks and muffled laughter, quickly shushed by Jamie. One at a time, the men flitted across the open space before the house, no more than shadows under the dancing moon. At my side, Jamie watched as they disappeared into the woods of the park.
“Where’s Murtagh?” he muttered, as though to himself, frowning after the last of his men. “Gone to look for Hugh, I suppose,” he said, in answer to his own question. “D’ye ken where he might be, Sassenach?”
I swallowed, feeling the wind bite cold beneath my cloak, memory killing the sudden exhilaration of freedom.
“Yes,” I said, and told him the bad news, as briefly as I could. His expression darkened under its mask of blood, and by the time I had finished, his face was hard as stone.
“D’ye mean just to stand there all night,” inquired a voice behind us, “or ought we to sound an alarm, so they’ll know where to look first?”
Jamie’s expression lightened slightly as Murtagh appeared from the shadows beside us, quiet as a wraith. He had a cloth-wrapped bundle under one arm; a joint from the kitchens, I thought, seeing the blotch of dark blood on the cloth. This impression was borne out by the large ham he had tucked beneath the other arm, and the strings of sausages about his neck.
Jamie wrinkled his nose, with a faint smile.
“Ye smell like a butcher, man. Can ye no go anywhere without thinkin’ of your stomach?”
Murtagh cocked his head to one side, taking in Jamie’s blood-spattered appearance.
“Better to look like the butcher than his wares, lad,” he said. “Shall we go?”