* * *
“You,” I said, advancing menacingly on Master Raymond, crouched defensively behind his worktable, beneath the protective aegis of his stuffed crocodile. “You! You bloody frog-faced little worm!”
“Me, madonna? I have done you no harm, have I?”
“Aside from causing me to have violent diarrhea in the presence of thirty-odd people, making me think I was having a miscarriage, and scaring my husband out of his skin, no harm at all!”
“Oh, your husband was present?” Master Raymond looked uneasy.
“He was,” I assured him. It was in fact with considerable difficulty that I had succeeded in preventing Jamie from coming up to the apothecary’s shop and extracting, by force, such information as Master Raymond possessed. I had finally persuaded him to wait with the coach outside, while I talked to the amphibious proprietor.
“But you aren’t dead, madonna,” the little herbalist pointed out. He had no brows to speak of, but one side of his wide, heavy forehead crinkled upward. “You could have been, you know.”
In the stress of the evening and the physical shakiness that followed, I had rather overlooked this fact.
“So it wasn’t just a practical joke?” I said, a little weakly. “Someone really meant to poison me, and I’m not dead only because you have scruples?”
“Perhaps my scruples are not entirely responsible for your survival, madonna; it is possible that it was a joke—I imagine there are other purveyors from whom one might obtain bitter cascara. But I have sold that substance to two persons within the last month—and neither of them asked for it.”
“I see.” I drew a long breath, and wiped the perspiration from my brow with my glove. So we had two potential poisoners loose; just what I needed.
“Will you tell me who?” I asked bluntly. “They might buy from someone else, next time. Someone without your scruples.”
He nodded, his wide, froggy mouth twitching in thought.
“It is a possibility, madonna. As for the actual purchasers, I doubt that information would help you. They were servants; plainly acting on the orders of a master. One was maid to the Vicomtesse de Rambeau; the other a man I did not recognize.”
I drummed my fingers on the counter. The only person who had made threats against me was the Comte St. Germain. Could he have hired an anonymous servant to procure what he thought was poison, and then slipped it into my glass himself? Casting my mind back to the gathering at Versailles, I thought it certainly possible. The goblets of wine had been passed around on trays by servants; while the Comte had not come within arm’s length of me himself, it would have been no great problem to bribe a servant to give me a particular glass.
Raymond was eyeing me curiously. “I would ask you, madonna, have you done something to antagonize la Vicomtesse? She is a very jealous woman; this would not be the first time she has sought my aid in disposing of a rival, though fortunately her jealousies are short-lived. The Vicomte has a roving eye, you understand—there is always a new rival to displace her thoughts of the last one.”
I sat down, uninvited.
“Rambeau?” I said, trying to attach the name to a face. Then the mists of memory cleared, revealing a stylishly dressed body and a homely round face, both liberally splashed with snuff.
“Rambeau!” I exclaimed. “Well, yes, I’ve met the man, but all I did was to smack him across the face with my fan when he bit my toes.”
“In some moods, that would be sufficient provocation for la Vicomtesse,” Master Raymond observed. “And if so, then I believe you are likely safe from further attacks.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “And if it wasn’t the Vicomtesse?”
The little apothecary hesitated for a moment, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the morning sun that shone through the lozenged panes behind me. Then he made up his mind, and turned toward the stone table where his alembics simmered, jerking his head at me to follow.
“Come with me, madonna. I have something for you.”
To my surprise, he ducked beneath the table and disappeared. As he didn’t come back, I bent down and peered under the table myself. A bed of charcoal was glowing on the hearth, but there was space to either side of it. And in the wall beneath the table, concealed by the shadows, was the darker space of an opening.
With only a little hesitation, I kilted up my skirts and waddled under the table after him.
On the other side of the wall, there was room to stand up, though the room was quite small. The building’s outer structure gave no hint of it.
Two walls of the hidden room were taken up by a honeycomb of shelves, each cell dustless and immaculate, each displaying the skull of a beast. The impact of the wall was enough to make me take a step backward; all the empty eyes seemed trained on me, teeth bared in gleaming welcome.
I blinked several times before I was able to locate Raymond, crouched cautiously at the foot of this ossuary like the resident acolyte. He held his arms raised nervously before him, eying me rather as though he expected me either to scream or to throw myself upon him. But I had seen sights a good deal more grisly than a mere rank of polished bone, and walked forward calmly to examine them more closely.
He had everything, it seemed. Tiny skulls, of bat, mouse and shrew, the bones transparent, little teeth spiked in pinpoints of carnivorous ferocity. Horses, from the huge Percherons, with massive scimitar-shaped jaws looking eminently suitable for flattening platoons of Philistines, down to the skulls of donkeys, as stubbornly enduring in their miniature curves as those of the enormous draft horses.
They had a certain appeal, so still and so beautiful, as though each object held still the essence of its owner, as if the lines of bone held the ghost of the flesh and fur that once they had borne.
I reached out and touched one of the skulls, the bone not cold as I would have expected, but strangely inert, as though the vanished warmth, long gone, hovered not far off.
I had seen human remains treated with far less reverence; the skulls of early Christian martyrs jammed cheek by bony jowl together in heaps in the catacombs, thigh bones tossed in a pile like jackstraws underneath.
“A bear?” I said, speaking softly. A big skull, this one, the canine teeth curved for ripping, but the molars oddly flattened.
“Yes, madonna.” Seeing that I was not afraid, Raymond relaxed. His hand floated out, barely skimming the curves of the blunt, solid skull. “You see the teeth? An eater of fish, of meat”—a small finger traced the long, wicked curve of the canine, the flat serrations of molar—“but a grinder of berries, of grubs. They seldom starve, because they will eat anything.”
I turned slowly from side to side, admiring, touching one here and there.
“They’re lovely,” I said. We spoke in quiet tones, as though to speak loudly might rouse the silent sleepers.
“Yes.” Raymond’s fingers touched them as mine did, stroking the long frontal bones, tracing the delicate squamosal arch of the cheek. “They hold the character of the animal, you see. You can tell much about what was, only from what is left.”
He turned over one of the smaller skulls, pointing out the swelling bulges on the underside, like small, thin-walled balloons.
“Here—the canal of the ear enters into these, so that the sounds echo within the skull. Hence the sharp ears of the rat, madonna.”
“Tympanic bullae,” I said, nodding.
“Ah? I have but little Latin. My names for such things are…my own.”
“Those…” I gestured upward. “Those are special, aren’t they?”
“Ah. Yes, madonna. They are wolves. Very old wolves.” He lifted down one of the skulls, handling it with reverent care. The snout was long and canid, with heavy canines and broad carnassial teeth. The sagittal crest rose stark and commanding from the back of the skull, testimony to the heavy muscles of the brawny neck that had once supported it.
Not a soft dull white like the other skulls, these were stained and streaked with brown, and shone glossy with much polishing.
“Such beasts are no more, madonna.”
“No more? Extinct, you mean?” I touched it once more, fascinated. “Where on earth did you get them?”
“Not on the earth, madonna. Under it. They came from a peat bog, buried many feet down.”
Looking closely, I could see the differences between these skulls and the newer, whiter ones on the opposite wall. These animals had been larger than ordinary wolves, with jaws that might have cracked the leg bones of a running elk or torn the throat from a fallen deer.
I shuddered slightly at the touch, reminded of the wolf I had killed outside Wentworth Prison, and its pack-mates who had stalked me in the icy twilight, barely six months ago.
“You do not care for wolves, madonna?” Raymond asked. “Yet the bears and the foxes do not trouble you? They also are hunters, eaters of flesh.”
“Yes, but not mine,” I said wryly, handing him back the age-dark skull. “I feel a good deal more sympathy with our friend the elk.” I patted the high jutting nose with some affection.
“Sympathy?” The soft black eyes regarded me curiously. “It is an unusual emotion to feel for a bone, madonna.”
“Well…yes,” I said, slightly embarrassed, “but they don’t really seem like just bones, you know. I mean, you can tell something about them, and get a feeling for what the animal was like, looking at these. They aren’t just inanimate objects.”
Raymond’s toothless mouth stretched wide, as though I had inadvertently said something that pleased him, but he said nothing in reply.
“Why do you have all these?” I asked abruptly, suddenly realizing that racks of animal skulls were hardly the usual appurtenances of an apothecary’s shop. Stuffed crocodiles, possibly, but not all this lot.
He shrugged good-naturedly.
“Well, they are company, of a sort, while I pursue my work.” He gestured toward a cluttered workbench in one corner. “And while they may talk to me of many things, they are not so noisy as to attract the attention of the neighbors. Come here,” he said, changing subjects abruptly. “I have something for you.”
I followed him toward a tall cabinet at the end of the room, wondering.
He was not a naturalist, certainly not a scientist, as I understood the term. He kept no notes, made no drawings, no records that others might consult and learn from. And yet I had the odd conviction that he wanted very much to teach me the things that he knew—a sympathy for bones, perhaps?
The cabinet was painted with a number of odd signs, tailed and whorled, among what appeared to be pentagons and circles; Cabbalistic symbols. I recognized one or two, from some of Uncle Lamb’s historical references.
“Interested in the Cabbala, are you?” I asked, eyeing the symbols with some amusement. That would account for the hidden workroom. While there was a strong interest in occult matters among some of the French literati and the aristocracy, it was an interest kept highly clandestine, for fear of the Church’s cleansing wrath.
To my surprise, Raymond laughed. His blunt, short-nailed fingers pressed here and there on the front of the cabinet, touching the center of one symbol, the tail of another.
“Well, no, madonna. Most Cabbalists tend to be rather poor, so I do not seek their company often. But the symbols do keep curious people out of my cabinet. Which, if you think of it, is no small power for a bit of paint to exercise. So perhaps the Cabbalists are right, after all, when they say these signs hold power?”
He smiled mischievously at me, as the cabinet door swung open. I could see that it was in fact a double cabinet; if a nosy person ignored the warning of the symbols and merely opened the door, he or she would no doubt see only the harmless contents of an apothecary’s closet. But if the proper sequence of hidden catches was pressed, then the inner shelves swung out as well, revealing a deep cavity behind them.
He pulled out one of the small drawers that lined the cavity, and upended it into his hand. Stirring the contents, he plucked out a single large white crystalline stone and handed it to me.
“For you,” he said. “For protection.”
“What? Magic?” I asked cynically, tilting the crystal from side to side in my palm.
Raymond laughed. He held his hand over the desk and let a handful of small colored stones trickle through his fingers, to bounce on the stained felt blotting-pad.
“I suppose you can call it so, madonna. Certainly I can charge more for it when I do.” One fingertip nudged a pale greenish crystal free from the pile of colored stones.
“They have no more—and surely no less—magic than the skulls. Call them the bones of the earth. They hold the essence of the matrix in which they grew, and whatever powers that held, you may find here as well.” He flicked a small yellowish nodule in my direction.
“Sulfur. Grind it with a few other small things, touch it with a match, and it will explode. Gunpowder. Is that magic? Or is it only the nature of sulfur?”
“I suppose it depends who you’re talking to,” I observed, and his face split in a delighted grin.
“If you ever seek to leave your husband, madonna,” he said, chuckling, “be assured that you won’t starve. I said you were a professional, did I not?”
“My husband!” I exclaimed, paling. My mind suddenly made sense of the muffled noises coming from the distant shop. There was a loud thump, as of a large fist brought down with considerable force on a countertop, and the deep rumble of a voice inclined to brook no interference made itself heard amid the babble of other sounds.
“Bloody Christ! I forgot Jamie!”
“Your husband is here?” Raymond’s eyes went wider even than usual, and had he not already been so pale, I imagine he would have gone white, too.
“I left him outside,” I explained, stooping to cross back through the secret opening. “He must have got tired of waiting.”
“Wait, madonna!” Raymond’s hand gripped my elbow, stopping me. He put his other hand over mine, the one that held the white crystal.
“That crystal, madonna. I said it is for your protection.”
“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, hearing my name being shouted outside with increasing volume. “What does it do, then?”
“It is sensitive to poison, madonna. It will change color, in the presence of several harmful compounds.”
That stopped me. I straightened up and stared at him.
“Poison?” I said, slowly. “Then…”
“Yes, madonna. You may be still in some danger.” Raymond’s froglike face was grim. “I cannot say for sure, or from which direction, for I do not know. If I find out, be assured I will tell you.” His eyes flicked uneasily toward the entrance through the hearth. A thunder of blows sounded on the outer wall. “Assure your husband as well, please, madonna.”
“Don’t worry,” I told him, ducking under the low lintel. “Jamie doesn’t bite—I don’t think.”
“I was not worried about his teeth, madonna” came from behind me as I walked duckfooted over the ashes of the hearth.
Jamie, in the act of raising his dagger-hilt to hammer again on the paneling, caught sight of me emerging from the fireplace and lowered it.
“Och, there ye are,” he observed mildly. He tilted his head to one side, watching me brush soot and ashes from the hem of my gown, then scowled at the sight of Raymond peeping cautiously out from under the drying table.
“Ah, and there’s our wee toadling, as well. Has he some explanation, Sassenach, or had I best pin him up wi’ the rest?” Not taking his eyes off Raymond, he nodded toward the wall of the outer workshop, where a number of dried toads and frogs were pinned to a long strip of hanging felt.
“No, no,” I said hastily as Raymond made to duck back into his sanctuary. “He’s told me everything. In fact, he’s been most helpful.”
With some reluctance, Jamie put up his dirk, and I reached down a hand to draw Raymond out of hiding. He flinched slightly at the sight of Jamie.
“This man is your husband, madonna?” he asked, in the tones of someone hoping the answer would be “no.”
“Yes, of course,” I answered. “My husband, James Fraser, my lord Broch Tuarach,” I said, waving at Jamie, though I could scarcely have been referring to anyone else. I waved in the other direction. “Master Raymond.”
“So I gathered,” said Jamie dryly. He bowed and extended a hand toward Raymond, whose head reached a few inches past Jamie’s waist. Raymond touched the outstretched hand briefly and yanked his own back, unable to repress a mild shiver. I stared at him in amazement.
Jamie merely raised one eyebrow, then leaned back and settled himself against the edge of the table. He crossed his arms across his chest.
“All right, then,” he said. “What about it?”
I made most of the explanations, Raymond contributing only monosyllables of confirmation from time to time. The little apothecary seemed deprived of all his normal sly wit, and huddled on a stool near the fire, shoulders hunched in wariness. Only when I had finished with an explanation of the white crystal—and the presumed need for it—did he stir and seem to take on a little life once more.
“It is true, milord,” he assured Jamie. “I do not know, in fact, whether it is your wife or yourself that may be in danger, or perhaps the two of you together. I have heard nothing specific; only the name ‘Fraser,’ spoken in a place where names are seldom named in blessing.”
Jamie glanced sharply at him. “Aye? And you frequent such places, do you, Master Raymond? Are the people you speak of associates of yours?”
Raymond smiled, a little wanly. “I should be inclined to describe them more as a business rivals, milord.”
Jamie grunted. “Mmmphm. Aye, well, and anyone who tries something may get a bit more of a blessing than he’s bargained for.” He touched the dirk at his belt, and straightened up.
“Still, I thank ye for the warning, Master Raymond.” He bowed to the apothecary, but didn’t offer his hand again. “As for the other”—he cocked an eyebrow at me—“if my wife is disposed to forgive your actions, then it isna my place to say more about it. Not,” he added, “that I wouldna advise ye to pop back in your wee hole, the next time the Vicomtesse comes into your shop. Come along then, Sassenach.”
As we rattled toward the Rue Tremoulins, Jamie was silent, staring out the window of the coach as the stiff fingers of his right hand tapped against his thigh.
“A place where names are seldom named in blessing,” he murmured as the coach turned into the Rue Gamboge. “What might that be, I wonder?”
I remembered the Cabbalistic signs on Raymond’s cabinet, and a small shiver raised the hairs on my forearms. I remembered Marguerite’s gossip about the Comte St. Germain, and Madame de Ramage’s warning. I told Jamie about them, and what Raymond had said.
“He may regard it as paint and window dressing,” I finished, “but plainly he knows people who don’t, or who is he looking to keep out of his cabinet?”
Jamie nodded. “Aye. I’ve heard a bit—only a bit—about such goings-on around the Court. I paid no attention at the time, thinking it only silliness, but now I’ll find out a bit more.” He laughed, suddenly, and drew me close to his side. “I’ll set Murtagh to follow the Comte St. Germain. That’ll give the Comte a real demon to play with.”
17
POSSESSION
Murtagh was duly set to watch the comings and goings of the Comte St. Germain, but beyond reporting that the Comte entertained a remarkable number of persons in his home—of both sexes and all classes—detected nothing particularly mysterious. The Comte did have one visitor of note, though—Charles Stuart, who came one afternoon, stayed for an hour, and left.
Charles had begun to require Jamie’s company more frequently on his expeditions through the taverns and low places of the city. I personally thought this had more to do with Jules de La Tour de Rohan’s party, held to celebrate the announcement of his wife’s pregnancy, than it did with any sinister influence of the Comte’s.
These expeditions sometimes lasted well into the night, and I became accustomed to going to bed without Jamie, waking when he crawled in beside me, his body chilled with walking through the evening fog, and the smell of tobacco smoke and liquor clinging to his hair and skin.
“He’s so distraught about that woman that I dinna think he even remembers he’s the heir to the thrones of Scotland and England,” Jamie said, returning from one of these expeditions.
“Goodness, he must be upset,” I said, sarcastically. “Let’s hope he stays that way.”
A week later, though, I woke to the cold gray light of dawn to find the bed beside me still vacant, the coverlet flat and undisturbed.
“Is milord Broch Tuarach in his study?” I leaned over the banister in my nightgown, startling Magnus, who was passing through the lower hall. Perhaps Jamie had chosen to sleep on the sofa in the study, so as not to disturb me.
“No, milady,” he answered, staring up at me. “I came to unbolt the front door, and found that it had never been bolted. Milord did not come home last night.”
I sat down heavily on the top step. I must have looked rather alarming, because the elderly butler nearly sprinted up the stairs to me.
“Madame,” he said, anxiously chafing one of my hands. “Madame, are you all right?”
“I’ve been better, but it isn’t important. Magnus, send one of the footmen to Prince Charles’s house in Montmartre at once. Have him see if my husband is there.”
“At once, milady. And I will send Marguerite up to attend you, as well.” He turned and hurried down the stairs, the soft felt slippers he wore for his morning duties making a soft, shushing noise on the polished wood.
“And Murtagh!” I called after Magnus’s departing back. “My husband’s kinsman. Bring him to me, please!” The first thought that had sprung into my mind was that Jamie had perhaps stayed the night at Charles’s villa; the second, that something had happened to him, whether by accident or by someone’s deliberate intent.
“Where is he?” Murtagh’s cracked voice spoke at the foot of the stair. He had obviously just awakened; his face was creased from whatever he had been lying on, and there were bits of straw in the folds of his ratty shirt.
“How should I know?” I snapped. Murtagh always looked as though he suspected everyone of something, and being rudely wakened had not improved his habitual scowl. The sight of him was nonetheless reassuring; if anything rough was in the offing, Murtagh looked the person to be dealing with it.
“He went out with Prince Charles last night, and didn’t come back. That’s all I know.” I pulled myself up by the banister railing and smoothed down the silk folds of my nightgown. The fires had been lit, but hadn’t had time to warm the house, and I was shivering.
Murtagh rubbed a hand over his face to assist thought.
“Mphm. Has someone gone to Montmartre?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll wait ’til they come back with word. If Jamie’s there, well and good. If he isn’t, mayhap they’ll know when he parted company with His Highness, and where.”
“And what if they’re both gone? What if the Prince didn’t come home either?” I asked. If there were Jacobites in Paris, there were also those who opposed the restoration of the Stuart line. And while assassinating Charles Stuart might not assure the failure of a potential Scottish Rising—he did, after all, have a younger brother, Henry—it might go some way toward damping James’s enthusiasm for such a venture—if he had any to start with, I thought distractedly.
I remembered vividly the story Jamie had told me, of the attempt on his life during which he had met Fergus. Street assassinations were far from uncommon, and there were gangs of ruffians who hunted the Paris streets after dark.
“You’d best go dress yourself, lassie,” Murtagh remarked. “I can see the gooseflesh from here.”
“Oh! Yes, I suppose so.” I glanced down at my arms; I had been hugging myself as suppositions raced through my mind, but to little effect; my teeth were beginning to chatter.
“Madame! You will give yourself a chill, surely!” Marguerite came stumping rapidly up the stairs, and I allowed her to shoo me into the bedroom, glancing back to see Murtagh below, carefully examining the point of his dirk before ramming it home in its sheath.
“You should be in bed, Madame!” Marguerite scolded. “It isn’t good for the child, for you to let yourself be chilled like that. I will fetch a warming pan at once; where is your nightrobe? Get into it at once, yes, that’s right…” I shrugged the heavy woolen nightrobe over the thin silk of my nightgown, but ignored Marguerite’s clucking to go to the window and open the shutters.
The street outside was beginning to glow as the rising sun struck the upper facades of the stone houses along the Rue Tremoulins. There was a good deal of activity on the street, early as it was; maids and footmen engaged in scrubbing steps or polishing brass gate-fittings, barrowmen selling fruit, vegetables, and fresh seafood, crying their wares along the street, and the cooks of the great houses popping up from their basement doors like so many jinni, summoned by the cries of the barrowmen. A delivery cart loaded with coal clopped slowly along the street, pulled by an elderly horse who looked as though he would much rather be in his stable. But no sign of Jamie.
I at last allowed an anxious Marguerite to persuade me into bed, for the sake of warmth, but couldn’t go back to sleep. Every sound from below brought me to the alert, hoping that each footstep on the pavement outside would be followed by Jamie’s voice in the hall below. The face of the Comte St. Germain kept coming between me and sleep. Alone among the French nobility, he had some connection with Charles Stuart. He had, in all likelihood, been behind the earlier attempt on Jamie’s life…and on mine. He was known to have unsavory associations. Was it possible that he had arranged to have both Charles and Jamie removed? Whether his purposes were political or personal made little difference, at this point.
When at last the sound of steps below did come, I was so occupied with visions of Jamie lying in a gutter with his throat cut, that I didn’t realize he was home until the bedroom door opened.
“Jamie!” I sat up in bed with a cry of joy.
He smiled at me, then yawned immensely, making no effort to cover his mouth. I could see a goodly distance down his throat, and observed with relief that it wasn’t cut. On the other hand, he looked distinctly the worse for wear. He lay down on the bed next to me and stretched, long and rackingly, then settled with a half-contented groan.
“What,” I demanded, “happened to you?”
He opened one red-rimmed eye.
“I need a bath,” he said, and closed it again.
I leaned toward him and sniffed delicately. The nose detected the usual smoky smell of closed rooms and damp wool, underlying a truly remarkable combination of alcoholic stenches—ale, wine, whisky, and brandy—which matched the variety of stains on his shirt. And forming a high note to the mixture, a horrible cheap cologne, of a particularly penetrating and noxious pungency.
“You do,” I agreed. I scrambled out of bed and leaning out into the corridor, shouted for Marguerite, sending her on arrival for a hip bath and sufficient water to fill it. As a parting gift from Brother Ambrose, I had several cakes of a fine-milled hard soap, made with attar of roses, and told her to fetch those, as well.
As the maid set about the tedious business of bringing up the huge copper bath-cans, I turned my attention to the hulk on the bed.
I stripped off his shoes and stockings, then loosening the buckle of his kilt, I flipped it open. His hands went reflexively to his crotch, but my eyes were focused elsewhere.
“What,” I said again, “happened to you?”
Several long scratches marked his thighs, angry red welts against the pale skin. And high on the inside of one leg was what could be nothing other than a bite; the toothmarks were plainly visible.
The maid, pouring hot water, cast an interested eye at the evidence and thought fit to put in her tuppence at this delicate moment.
“Un petit chien?” she asked. A little dog? Or something else. While I was far from fluent in the idiom of the times, I had learned that les petits chiens often walked the street on two legs with painted faces.
“Out,” I said briefly in French, with a Head Matron intonation. The maid picked up the cans and left the room, pouting slightly. I turned back to Jamie, who opened one eye, and after a glance at my face, closed it again.
“Well?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he shuddered. After a moment, he sat up and rubbed his hands over his face, the stubble making a rasping noise. He cocked one ruddy eyebrow interrogatively. “I wouldna suppose a gently reared young lady such as yourself would be familiar wi’ an alternate meaning for the term soixante-neuf?”
“I’ve heard the term,” I said, folding my arms across my chest and regarding him with a certain amount of suspicion. “And may I ask just where you encountered that particular interesting number?”
“It was suggested to me—with some force—as a desirable activity by a lady I happened to meet last night.”
“Was that by any chance the lady who bit you in the thigh?”
He glanced down and rubbed the mark meditatively.
“Mm, no. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. That lady seemed preoccupied wi’ rather lower numbers. I think she meant to settle for the six, and the nine could go hang.”
“Jamie,” I said, tapping my foot in a marked manner, “where have you been all night?”
He scooped up a handful of water from the basin and splashed it over his face, letting the rivulets run down among the dark red hairs on his chest.
“Mm,” he said, blinking drops from his thick lashes, “well, let me see. First there was supper at a tavern. We met Glengarry and Millefleurs there.” Monsieur Millefleurs was a Parisian banker, while Glengarry was one of the younger Jacobites, chief of one sept of the MacDonell clan. A visitor in Paris, rather than a resident, he had been much in Charles’s company lately, by Jamie’s report. “And after supper, we went to the Duc di Castellotti’s, for cards.”
“And then?” I asked.
A tavern, apparently. And then another tavern. And then an establishment which appeared to share some of the characteristics of a tavern, but was embellished by the addition of several ladies of interesting appearance and even more interesting talents.
“Talents, eh?” I said, with a glance at the marks on his leg.
“God, they did it in public,” he said, with a reminiscent shudder. “Two of them, on the table. Right between the saddle of mutton and the boiled potatoes. With the quince jelly.”
“Mon dieu,” said the newly returned maid, setting down the fresh bathcan long enough to cross herself.
“You be quiet,” I said, scowling at her. I turned my attention back to my husband. “And then what?”
Then, apparently, the action had become somewhat more general, though still accomplished in fairly public fashion. With due regard to Marguerite’s sensibilities, Jamie waited until she had left for another round of water before elaborating further.
“…and then Castellotti took the fat one with red hair and the small blond one off to a corner, and—”
“And what were you doing all this time?” I broke in on the fascinating recitative.
“Watching,” he said, as though surprised. “It didna seem decent, but there wasna much choice about it, under the circumstances.”
I had been groping in his sporran as he talked, and now fished out not only a small purse, but a wide metal ring, embellished with a coat of arms. I tried it curiously on a finger; it was much larger than any normal ring, and hung like a quoit on a stick.
“Whoever does this belong to?” I asked, holding it out. “It looks like the Duc di Castellotti’s coat of arms, but whoever it belongs to must have fingers like sausages.” Castellotti was an etiolated Italian stringbean, with the pinched face of a man with chronic dyspepsia—no wonder, judging from Jamie’s story. Quince jelly, forsooth!
I glanced up to find Jamie blushing from navel to hairline.
“Er,” he said, taking an exaggerated interest in a mud stain on one knee, “it…doesna go on a man’s finger.”
“Then what…oh.” I looked at the circular object with renewed interest. “Goodness. I’ve heard of them before…”
“You have?” said Jamie, thoroughly scandalized.
“But I’ve never seen one. Does it fit you?” I reached out to try it. He clasped his hands reflexively over his private parts.
Marguerite, arriving with more water, assured him, “Ne vous en fa?tes pas, Monsieur. J’en ai déjà vu un.” Don’t worry yourself, monsieur; I’ve already seen one.
Dividing a glare between me and the maid, he pulled a quilt across his lap.
“Bad enough to spend all night defending my virtue,” he remarked with some asperity, “without havin’ it subjected to comment in the morning.”
“Defending your virtue, hm?” I tossed the ring idly from hand to hand, catching it on opposing index fingers. “A gift, was it?” I asked, “or a loan?”
“A gift. Don’t do that, Sassenach,” he said, wincing. “It brings back memories.”
“Ah yes,” I said, eying him. “Now about those memories…”
“Not me!” he protested. “Surely ye dinna think I’d do such things? I’m a married man!”
“Monsieur Millefleurs isn’t married?”
“He’s not only married, he has two mistresses,” Jamie said. “But he’s French—that’s different.”
“The Duc di Castellotti isn’t French—he’s Italian.”
“But he’s a duke. That’s different, too.”
“Oh, it is, is it? I wonder if the Duchess thinks so.”
“Considering a few things the Duc claimed he learnt from the Duchess, I would imagine so. Isn’t that bath ready yet?”
Clutching the quilt about him, he lumbered from the bed to the steaming tub and stepped in. He dropped the quilt and lowered himself quickly, but not quite quickly enough.
“Enorme!” said the maid, crossing herself.
“C’est tout,” I said repressively. “Merci bien.” She dropped her eyes, blushed, and scuttled out.
As the door closed behind the maid, Jamie relaxed into the tub, high at the back to allow for lounging; the feeling of the times seemed to be that once having gone to the trouble of filling a bath, one might as well enjoy it. His stubbled face assumed an expression of bliss as he sank gradually lower into the steaming water, a flush of heat reddening his fair skin. His eyes were closed, and a faint mist of moisture gleamed across the high, broad cheekbones and shone in the hollows beneath his eyesockets.
“Soap?” he asked hopefully, opening his eyes.
“Yes, indeed.” I fetched a cake and handed it to him, then sat down on a stool alongside the bath. I watched for some time as he scrubbed industriously, fetching him a cloth and a pumice stone, with which he painstakingly rasped the soles of his feet and his elbows.
“Jamie,” I said at last.
“Aye?”
“I don’t mean to quarrel with your methods,” I said, “and we agreed that you might have to go to some lengths, but…did you really have to…”
“To what, Sassenach?” He had stopped washing and was watching me intently, head on one side.
“To…to…” To my annoyance, I was flushing as deeply as he was, but without the excuse of hot water.
A large hand rose dripping out of the water and rested on my arm. The wet heat burned through the thin fabric of my sleeve.
“Sassenach,” he said, “what do ye think I’ve been doing?”
“Er, well,” I said, trying and failing to keep my eyes away from the marks on his thigh. He laughed, though he didn’t sound truly amused.
“O ye of little faith!” he said sardonically.
I withdrew beyond his reach.
“Well,” I said, “when one’s husband comes home covered with bites and scratches and reeking with perfume, admits he’s spent the night in a bawdy house, and…”
“And tells ye flat-out he’s spent the night watching, not doing?”
“You didn’t get those marks on your leg from watching!” I snapped suddenly, then clamped my lips together. I felt like a jealous biddy, and I didn’t care for it. I had vowed to take it all calmly, like a woman of the world, telling myself that I had complete faith in Jamie and—just in case—that you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs. Even if something had happened…
I smoothed the wet spot on my sleeve, feeling the air chill through the cooling silk. I struggled to regain my former light tone.
“Or are those the scars of honorable combat, gained in defending your virtue?” Somehow the light tone didn’t quite come off. Listening to myself, I had to admit that the overall tone was really quite nasty. I was rapidly ceasing to care.
No slouch at reading tones of voice, Jamie narrowed his eyes at me and seemed about to reply. He drew in his breath, then apparently thought better of whatever he had been going to say and let it out again.
“Yes,” he said calmly. He fished about in the tub between his legs, coming up at length with the cake of soap, a roughly shaped ball of white slickness. He held it out on his palm.
“Will ye help me to wash my hair? His Highness vomited on me in the coach coming home, and I reek a bit, all things considered.”
I hesitated a moment, but accepted the olive branch, temporarily at least.
I could feel the solid curve of his skull under the thick, soapy hair, and the welt of the healed scar across the back of his head. I dug my thumbs firmly into his neck muscles, and he relaxed slightly under my hands.
The soap bubbles ran down across the wet, gleaming curves of his shoulders, and my hands followed them, spreading the slickness so that my fingers seemed to float on the surface of his skin.
He was big, I thought. Near him so much, I tended to forget his size, until I saw him suddenly from a distance, towering among smaller men, and I would be struck anew by his grace and the beauty of his body. But he sat now with his knees nearly underneath his chin, and his shoulders filled the tub from one side to the other. He leaned forward slightly to assist my ministrations, exposing the hideous scars on his back. The thick red welts of Jack Randall’s Christmas gift lay heavily over the thin white lines of the earlier floggings.
I touched the scars gently, my heart squeezed by the sight. I had seen those wounds when they were fresh, seen him driven to the edge of madness by torture and abuse. But I had healed him, and he had fought with all the power of a gallant heart to be whole once more, to come back to me. Moved by tenderness, I brushed the trailing ends of his hair aside, and bent to kiss the back of his neck.
I straightened abruptly. He felt my movement and turned his head slightly.
“What is it, Sassenach?” he asked, voice slow with drowsy contentment.
“Not a thing,” I said, staring at the dark-red blotches on the side of his neck. The nurses in the quarters at Pembroke used to conceal them with jaunty scarves tied about their necks the morning after their dates with soldiers from the nearby base. I always thought the scarves were really meant as a means of advertisement, rather than concealment.
“No, not a thing,” I said again, reaching for the ewer on the stand. Placed near the window, it was ice-cold to the touch. I stepped behind Jamie and upended it on his head.
I lifted the silk skirts of my nightdress to avoid the sudden wave that spilled over the side of the bath. He was sputtering from the cold, but too shocked yet to form any of the words I could see gathering force on his lips. I beat him to it.
“Just watched, did you?” I asked coldly. “I wouldn’t suppose you enjoyed it a bit, did you, poor thing?”
He thrust himself back in the tub with a violence that made the water slosh over the sides, splattering on the stone floor, and twisted around to look up at me.
“What d’ye want me to say?” he demanded. “Did I want to rut with them? Aye, I did! Enough to make my balls ache with not doing it. And enough to make me feel sick wi’ the thought of touching one of the sluts.”
He shoved the sopping mass of his hair out of his eyes, glaring at me.
“Is that what ye wanted to know? Are ye satisfied now?”
“Not really,” I said. My face was hot, and I pressed my cheek against the icy pane of the window, hands clenched on the sill.
“Who looks on a woman with lust in his heart hath committed adultery with her already. Is that how ye see it?”
“Is it how you see it?”
“No,” he said shortly. “I don’t. And what would ye do if I had lain wi’ a whore, Sassenach? Slap my face? Order me out of your chamber? Keep yourself from my bed?”
I turned and looked at him.
“I’d kill you,” I said through my teeth.
Both eyebrows shot up, and his mouth dropped slightly with incredulity.
“Kill me? God, if I found you wi’ another man, I’d kill him.” He paused, and one corner of his mouth quirked wryly.
“Mind ye,” he said, “I’d no be verra pleased wi’ you, either, but still, it’s him I’d kill.”
“Typical man,” I said. “Always missing the point.”
He snorted with a bitter humor.
“Am I, then? So you dinna believe me. Want me to prove it to ye, Sassenach, that I’ve lain wi’ no one in the last few hours?” He stood up, water cascading down the stretches of his long legs. The light from the window highlighted the reddish-gold hairs of his body and the steam rose off his flesh in wisps. He looked like a figure of freshly molten gold. I glanced briefly down.
“Ha,” I said, with the maximum of scorn it was possible to infuse into one syllable.
“Hot water,” he said briefly, stepping out of the tub. “Dinna worry yourself, it won’t take long.”
“That,” I said, with delicate precision, “is what you think.”
His face flushed still more deeply, and his hands curled involuntarily into fists.
“No reasoning wi’ you, is there?” he demanded. “God, I spend the night torn between disgust and agony, bein’ tormented by my companions for being unmanly, then come home to be tormented for being unchaste! Mallaichte bàs!”
Looking wildly about, he spotted his discarded clothing on the floor near the bed and lunged for it.
“Here, then!” he said, scrabbling for his belt. “Here! If lusting is adultery and you’ll kill me for adultery, then ye’d best do it, hadn’t ye!” He came up with his dirk, a ten-inch piece of dark steel, and thrust it at me, haft first. He squared his shoulders, presenting the broad expanse of his chest to me, and glared belligerently.
“Go ahead,” he insisted. “Ye dinna mean to be forsworn, I hope? Being so sensitive to your honor as a wife and all?”
It was a real temptation. My clenched hands quivered at my sides with the longing to take the dagger and plant it firmly between his ribs. Only the knowledge that, all his dramatizing aside, he certainly wouldn’t allow me to stab him, stopped me from trying. I felt sufficiently ridiculous, without humiliating myself further. I whirled away from him in a flurry of silk.
After a moment, I heard the clank of the dirk on the floorboards. I stood without moving, staring out of the window at the back courtyard below. I heard faint rustling sounds behind me, and glanced into the faint reflections of the window. My face showed in the windowpane as a smudged oval in a nimbus of sleep-snarled brown hair. Jamie’s naked figure moved dimly in the glass like someone seen underwater, searching for a towel.
“The towel is on the bottom shelf of the ewer-stand,” I said, turning around.
“Thank you.” He dropped the dirty shirt with which he had begun gingerly dabbing himself and reached for the towel, not looking at me.
He wiped his face, then seemed to make some decision. He lowered the towel and looked directly at me. I could see the emotions struggling for mastery on his face, and felt as though I were still looking into the mirror of the window. Sense triumphed in both of us at once.
“I’m sorry,” we said, in unison. And laughed.
The damp of his skin soaked through the thin silk, but I didn’t care.
Minutes later, he mumbled something into my hair.
“What?”
“Too close,” he repeated, moving back a bit. “It was too damn close, Sassenach, and it scared me.”
I glanced down at the dirk, lying forgotten on the floor.
“Scared? I’ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. You knew damned well I wouldn’t do it.”
“Oh, that.” He grinned. “No, I didna think you’d kill me, much as ye might like to.” He sobered quickly. “No, it was…well, those women. What I felt like with them. I didna want them, truly not…”
“Yes, I know,” I said, reaching for him, but he wasn’t stopping there. He held back from me, looking troubled.
“But the…the lusting, I suppose ye’d call it…that was…too close to what I feel sometimes for you, and it…well, it doesna seem right to me.”
He turned away, rubbing at his hair with the linen towel, so his voice came half-muffled.
“I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi’ a woman,” he said softly. “And yet…I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you”—he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders—“and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi’ my hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service…and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.” He ran his hands up under my hair and gripped my face between them, hard.
“I dinna understand myself at all, Sassenach! Or maybe I do.” He released me and turned away. His face had long since dried, but he picked up the fallen towel and wiped the skin of his jaw with it, over and over. The stubble made a faint rasping sound against the fine linen. His voice was still quiet, barely audible from a few feet away.
“Such things—the knowledge of them, I mean—it came to me soon after…after Wentworth.” Wentworth. Where he had given his soul to save my life, and suffered the tortures of the damned in retrieving it.
“I thought at the first that Jack Randall had stolen a bit of my soul, and then I knew it was worse than that. All of it was my own, and had been all along; it was only he’d shown it to me, and made me know it for myself. That’s what he did that I canna forgive, and may his own soul rot for it!”
He lowered the towel and looked at me, face worn with the strains of the night, but eyes bright with urgency.
“Claire. To feel the small bones of your neck beneath my hands, and that fine, thin skin on your breasts and your arms…Lord, you are my wife, whom I cherish and I love wi’ all my life, and still I want to kiss ye hard enough to bruise your tender lips, and see the marks of my fingers on your skin.”
He dropped the towel. He raised his hands and held them trembling in the air before his face, then very slowly brought them down to rest on my head as though in benediction.
“I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, mo duinne, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rutting bull.” His fingers tightened in my hair. “I dinna understand myself!”
I pulled my head back, freeing myself, and took a half-step backward. The blood seemed all to be on the surface of my skin, and a chill ran down my body at the brief separation.
“Do you think it’s different for me? Do you think I don’t feel the same?” I demanded. “That I don’t sometimes want to bite you hard enough to taste blood, or claw you ’til you cry out?”
I reached out slowly to touch him. The skin of his breast was damp and warm. Only the nail of my forefinger touched him, just below the nipple. Lightly, barely touching, I drew the nail upward, downward, circling round, watching the tiny nub rise hard amid the curling ruddy hairs.
The nail pressed slightly harder, sliding down, leaving a faint red streak on the fair skin of his chest. I was trembling all over by this time, but did not turn away.
“Sometimes I want to ride you like a wild horse, and bring you to the taming—did you know that? I can do it, you know I can. Drag you over the edge and drain you to a gasping husk. I can drive you to the edge of collapse and sometimes I delight in it, Jamie, I do! And yet so often I want”—my voice broke suddenly and I had to swallow hard before continuing—“I want…to hold your head against my breast and cradle you like a child and comfort you to sleep.”
My eyes were so full of tears that I couldn’t see his face clearly; couldn’t see if he wept as well. His arms went tight around me and the damp heat of him engulfed me like the breath of a monsoon.
“Claire, ye do kill me, knife or no,” he whispered, face buried in my hair. He bent and picked me up, carrying me to the bed. He sank to his knees, laying me amid the rumpled quilts.
“You’ll lie wi’ me now,” he said quietly. “And I shall use ye as I must. And if you’ll have your revenge for it, then take it and welcome, for my soul is yours, in all the black corners of it.”
The skin of his shoulders was warm with the heat of the bath, but he shivered as with cold as my hands traveled up to his neck, and I pulled him down to me.
And when I had at length taken my last revenge of him, I did cradle him, stroking back the roughened, half-dry locks.
“And sometimes,” I whispered to him, “I wish it could be you inside me. That I could take you into me and keep you safe always.”
His hand, large and warm, lifted slowly from the bed and cupped the small round swell of my belly, sheltering and caressing.
“You do, my own,” he said. “You do.”