IN WHICH MRS. FIGG TAKES A HAND
JAMIE’S BREATH CAME SHORT, and he found that he was clenching and unclenching his fists as he turned in to Chestnut Street. Not as a means of controlling his temper—he had it well leashed and it would stay that way—but only to let out more of the energy inside him.
He was trembling with it, with the need to see her, touch her, have her tight against him. Nothing else mattered. There’d be words, there needed to be words—but those could wait. Everything could wait.
He’d left Rachel and Ian at the corner of Market and Second, to go on to the printshop to find Jenny, and he spared an instant’s quick prayer that his sister and the wee Quaker might get on well together, but this vanished like smoke.
There was a burning just under his ribs that spread through his chest and throbbed in his restless fingers. The city smelled like burning, too; smoke hung under a lowering sky. He noted automatically the signs of looting and violence—a half-burnt wall, the smudge of soot like a giant thumbprint on the plaster, broken windows, a woman’s cap snagged on a bush and left to hang limp in the heavy air—and the streets around him were full of people, but not those going about their business. Mostly men, many of them armed, half of them walking warily, glancing about, the rest standing in loose knots of excited conversation.
He didn’t care what was happening, providing only that it wasn’t happening to Claire.
There it was, Number 17; the neat brick three-story house that he’d rushed into—and out of—three days ago. The sight of it hit him in the pit of the stomach. He’d been in there perhaps five minutes and recalled every second. Claire’s hair, half brushed and clouding up around his face as he bent to her, smelling of bergamot, vanilla, and her own green scent. Her warmth and solidness in his arms, his hands; he’d grabbed her by the arse, her lovely round arse so warm and firm under the thin shift, and his palms tingled with the memory of instant lust. And no more than an instant later . . .
He pushed the vision of William out of his mind. William could wait, too.
His knock at the door was answered by the rotund black woman he’d seen on his first arrival, and he greeted her in much the same way, though with not quite the same words.
“Good day to ye, madam. I’ve come for my wife.” He stepped inside, past her open mouth and raised brows, and paused, blinking at the damage.
“What happened?” he demanded, rounding on the housekeeper. “Is she all right?”
“I expect she is, if you’re meaning Lady John,” the woman said, with a heavy emphasis on the name. “As to all this”—she rotated smoothly on her axis, gesturing toward the gouged, blood-smeared wall, the broken banister, and the iron skeleton of a chandelier, lying drunkenly in a corner of the foyer—“that would be Captain Lord Ellesmere. Lord John’s son.” She narrowed her eyes and glared at Jamie in a way that made it apparent to him that she knew damned well what had happened in the hallway above when he’d come face-to-face with William—and she was not at all pleased.
He hadn’t time to worry about her feelings and pushed past her as politely as possible, heading up the stairs as quickly as his twitching back muscles would allow.
As he reached the top of the stair, he heard a woman’s voice—but not Claire’s. To his astonishment, it was his sister’s voice, and he approached the farthest bedroom to see her back blocking the doorway. And over her shoulder . . .
He’d felt unreal ever since his conversation with William at the roadside. Now he was convinced that he was hallucinating, because what he thought he saw was the Duke of Pardloe, face contorted in annoyance, rising from a chair, clad in nothing but a nightshirt.
“Sit down.” The words were spoken quietly, but their effect on Pardloe was instantaneous. He froze, and everything in his face save his eyes went blank.
Leaning forward, Jamie peered over Jenny’s shoulder to see a large Highland dag in her hand, its eighteen-inch barrel trained steady on the duke’s chest. What he could see of her face was white and set like marble. “Ye heard me,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Very slowly, Pardloe—yes, it really was him, Jamie’s eyes informed his dazed mind—took two steps backward and lowered himself into the chair. Jamie could smell the gunpowder in the priming pan and thought the duke very likely could, too.
“Lord Melton,” Jenny said, moving slightly so as to have him silhouetted against the dim light that filtered through the shutters. “My good-sister said that you’re Lord Melton—or were. Is that so?”
“Yes,” Pardloe said. He wasn’t moving, but Jamie saw that he had sat down with his legs flexed under him; he could be out of the chair in one lunge, if he chose. Very quietly, Jamie edged to the side. He was close enough that Jenny should have sensed him behind her, but he could see why she didn’t; her shoulder blades were pressed together in concentration, sharp-edged under the cloth as a pair of hawk’s wings.
“It was your men who came to my house,” she said, her voice low. “Came more than once, to loot and destroy, to take the food from our mouths. Who took my husband away”—for an instant, the barrel trembled, but then steadied again—“away to the prison where he took the ill that killed him. Move one inch, my lord, and I’ll shoot ye in the guts. Ye’ll die quicker than he did, but I daresay ye willna think it fast enough.”
Pardloe didn’t say a word but moved his head a fraction of an inch to indicate that he’d understood her. His hands, which had been clutching the arms of the chair, relaxed. His eyes left the pistol—and saw Jamie. His mouth fell open, his eyes sprang wide, and Jenny’s finger whitened on the trigger.
Jamie got a hand under the gun just as it went off in a puff of black smoke, the crack of the firing simultaneous with the explosion of a china figure on the mantelpiece.
Pardloe sat frozen for an instant, then—very carefully—reached up and removed a large shard of porcelain from his hair.
“Mr. Fraser,” he said, in a voice that was almost steady. “Your servant, sir.”
“Your most obedient, Your Grace,” Jamie replied, suffering an insane urge to laugh, and kept from it only by the sure knowledge that his sister would immediately reload and shoot him at point-blank range if he did. “I see ye’re acquainted with my sister, Mrs. Murray.”
“Your—dear lord, she is.” Pardloe’s eyes had flicked back and forth between their faces, and he now drew a long, slow breath. “Is your entire family given to irascibility?”
“We are, Your Grace, and I thank ye for the compliment,” Jamie said, and laid a hand on Jenny’s back. He could feel her heart going like a trip-hammer, and her breath was coming in shallow pants. Putting the pistol aside, he took her hand in both of his. It was cold as ice in spite of the temperature in the room, which was slightly hotter than Hades, with the window shuttered and boarded over.
“Would ye be so amiable as to pour out a dram of whatever’s in that decanter, Your Grace?”
Pardloe did and approached warily, holding out the glass—it was brandy; Jamie could smell the hot fumes.
“Don’t let him out,” Jenny said, getting hold of herself. She glared at Pardloe and took the brandy, then glared at Jamie. “And where in the name of St. Mary Magdalene have you been these three days past?”
Before he could answer, heavy footsteps came hastily down the hallway and the black housekeeper appeared in the doorway, breathing audibly and holding a silver-inlaid fowling piece in a manner suggesting that she knew what to do with it.
“The two of you can just sit yourselves down this minute,” she said, moving the barrel of the gun back and forth between Pardloe and Jamie in a businesslike fashion. “If you think you’re going to take that man out of here, you—”
“I told you—I beg your pardon, madam, but would ye honor me with your name?”
“You—what?” The housekeeper blinked, disconcerted. “I—Mrs. Mortimer Figg, if it’s any of your business, and I doubt that.”
“So do I,” Jamie assured her, not sitting down. The duke, he saw, had. “Mrs. Figg, as I said to ye downstairs, I’ve come for my wife and nothing more. If ye’ll tell me where she is, I’ll leave ye to your business. Whatever that may be,” he added, with a glance at Pardloe.
“Your wife,” Mrs. Figg repeated, and the barrel swiveled toward him. “Well, now. I’m thinking that perhaps you ought just to sit down and wait until his lordship comes and we see what he has to say about all this.”
“Dinna be daft, Jerusha,” said Jenny, rather impatiently. “Ye ken Claire’s my brother’s wife; she told ye that herself.”
“Claire?” exclaimed Pardloe, standing up again. He had been drinking from the decanter and still held it carelessly in one hand. “My brother’s wife?”
“She’s no such thing,” Jamie said crossly. “She’s mine, and I’ll thank someone to tell me where the devil she is.”
“She’s gone to a place called Kingsessing,” Jenny said promptly. “To pick herbs and the like. We’ve been doctoring this mac na galladh—” She scowled at Pardloe. “Had I kent who ye were, a mh’ic an diabhail, I’d ha’ put ground glass in your food.”
“I daresay,” Pardloe murmured, and took another gulp from the decanter. He turned his attention to Jamie. “I don’t suppose that you know where my brother is at the moment?”
Jamie stared at him, a sudden feeling of unease tickling the back of his neck. “Is he not here?”
Pardloe made a wide gesture round the room, wordlessly inviting Jamie to look. Jamie ignored him and turned to the housekeeper. “When did ye see him last, madam?”
“Just before he and you skedaddled out the attic window,” she replied shortly, and prodded him in the ribs with the barrel of the fowling piece. “What have you done with him, fils de salope?”
Jamie edged the barrel gingerly aside with one finger. The fowling piece was primed but not yet cocked.
“I left him in the woods outside the city, two days ago,” he said, a sudden feeling of disquiet tightening the muscles at the base of his spine. He backed against the wall, discreetly pressing his arse into it to ease his back. “I expected to find him here—with my wife. Might I inquire how you come to be here, Your Grace?”
“Claire kidnapped him,” Jenny said, before Pardloe could speak. The duke’s eyes bulged slightly, though whether at the remark or at the fact that Jenny was reloading her pistol, Jamie couldn’t tell.
“Oh, aye? What did she want him for, did she say?”
His sister gave him a look.
“She was afraid he’d turn the city upside down looking for his brother and you’d be taken up in the kerfuffle.”
“Aye, well, I think I’m safe enough now,” he assured Jenny. “Ought ye to turn him loose, d’ye think?”
“No,” she said promptly, pounding home her ball and patch. She reached into her apron and came out with a tiny powder horn. “We canna do that; he might die.”
“Oh.” He considered this for a moment, watching the duke, whose face had assumed a slight purple tinge. “Why is that?”
“He canna breathe properly, and she was afraid if she let him loose before he was quite over it, he’d die in the street, and her conscience wouldna let her do that.”
“I see.” The urge to laugh was back, but he controlled it manfully. “So ye were about to shoot him in the house, in order to keep him from dyin’ in the street.”
Her dark-blue eyes narrowed, though she kept her gaze fixed on the powder she was pouring into the priming pan.
“I wouldna really have shot him in the guts,” she said, though from the press of her lips it was apparent that she’d have liked nothing more. “I’d just have winged him in the leg. Or maybe shot off a couple o’ toes.”
Pardloe made a sound that might have been outrage, but, knowing the man as he did, Jamie recognized it as smothered laughter. He hoped his sister wouldn’t. He opened his mouth to ask just how long Pardloe had been held captive, but before he could speak, there was a knock at the door below. He glanced at Mrs. Figg, but the housekeeper was still regarding him with narrowed eyes and made no move either to lower the fowling piece or to go downstairs and answer the door.
“Come in!” Jamie shouted, sticking his head out into the hall, then jerking back into the room before Mrs. Figg should take it into her head that he was attempting to escape and discharge a load of buckshot into his backside.
The door opened, closed, and there was a pause as the caller apparently looked around the devastated entry, then light, quick steps came up the stairs.
“Lord John!” breathed Mrs. Figg, her stern face lightening.
“In here!” called the duke, as the steps reached the landing. An instant later, the slight, bespectacled form of Denzell Hunter appeared in the doorway.
“Merde!” said Mrs. Figg, bringing her shotgun to bear on the newcomer. “I mean, Shepherd of Judea! Who in the name of the Holy Trinity are you?”
HUNTER WAS NEARLY as pale as Jenny, Jamie thought. Nonetheless, he didn’t blink or pause but walked up to Pardloe and said, “I am Denzell Hunter, Friend Grey. I am a physician, come at the request of Claire Fraser to attend thee.”
The duke dropped the decanter, which fell over and disgorged the few drops it still contained onto the braided hearth rug.
“You!” he said, drawing himself abruptly to his full height. He was in fact no taller than Hunter, but it was obvious that he had the habit of command. “You are the skulking fellow who has had the temerity to seduce my daughter, and you dare come here and offer to physic me? Get out of my sight, before I—” At this point, it dawned on Pardloe that he was in his nightshirt and unarmed. Nothing daunted, he seized the decanter from the floor and swung it at Denzell’s head.
Denzell ducked, and Jamie got hold of Pardloe’s wrist before he could try again. Denny straightened up, fire glinting behind his spectacles.
“I take issue both with thy description of my behavior and thy slur upon thy daughter’s reputation,” he said sharply. “I can only conceive that the order of thy mind is deranged by illness or drugs, for surely the man who sired and reared such a person as Dorothea could not speak so meanly of her or have so little faith in her strength of character and her virtue as to think that anyone might seduce her.”
“I’m sure His Grace didna mean physical seduction,” Jamie said hastily, twisting Pardloe’s wrist to make him let go of the decanter.
“Is it the act of a gentleman, sir, to induce a young woman to run away with him? Ow! Let go, damn you!” he said, dropping the decanter as Jamie jerked his arm up behind his back. It fell to the hearth and burst in a shower of glass, but the duke disregarded this entirely.
“A gentleman would have sought the approval of the young lady’s father, sir, before ever venturing to speak to her!”
“I did,” Denzell said more mildly. “Or, rather, I did write to thee at once, apologizing for having been unable to speak with thee in person beforehand, and explaining that Dorothea and I wished to become betrothed and sought thy blessing upon our desire. I doubt thee received my letter before embarking for America, though.”
“Oh, thee did, did thee? Your desire?” Pardloe snorted, tossing a hank of loosened hair out of his face. “Will you let go of me, you bloody Scotchman! What do you think I’m going to do, strangle him with his own neckcloth?”
“Ye might,” Jamie said, easing his grip but keeping hold of Pardloe’s wrist. “Jenny, would ye put that pistol somewhere out of His Grace’s reach?”
Jenny promptly handed the freshly loaded pistol to Denzell, who took it by reflex, then regarded the thing in his hand in astonishment. “You need it more than I do,” she said, and looked grimly at the duke. “If ye shoot him, we’ll all swear it was self-defense.”
“We will not,” said Mrs. Figg indignantly. “If you think I’m going to tell his lordship I let his brother be murdered in cold blood—”
“Friend Jamie,” Denny interrupted, holding out the pistol. “I should feel much happier was thee to release Dorothea’s father and take charge of this. I think that might increase the civility of our conversation.”
“It might,” Jamie said dubiously, but let go of Pardloe and took the pistol.
Denny approached the duke, edging glass shards out of the way, and looked carefully into his face.
“I will be pleased to speak and counsel with thee, Friend, and offer any reassurances that lie within my power regarding thy daughter. But thy breathing alarms me, and I would examine thee first.”
The duke was in fact making a faint wheezing noise, and Jamie noted that the purple tinge to his face had become more pronounced. At Denzell’s remark, this was augmented by a wash of dull red.
“You don’t touch me, you qu . . . quack-salver!”
Denzell glanced round and seized upon Jenny as the most likely source of information.
“What did Friend Claire say regarding him, in terms of ailment and treatment?”
“Asthma, and joint fir brewed in coffee. She calls it Ephedra.” Jenny replied promptly, turning to add to Pardloe, “Ye ken, I didna have to tell him that. I might ha’ let ye strangle, but I suppose that’s no a Christian way to carry on. Are Quakers Christians, by the by?” she asked Denny curiously.
“Yes,” he replied, advancing cautiously on Pardloe, whom Jamie had forced to sit down by pressing on his shoulder. “We believe the light of Christ is present in all men—though in some cases, perceiving it is somewhat difficult,” he added, under his breath but loud enough for Jamie—and the duke—to hear.
Pardloe appeared to be trying to whistle, blowing with pursed lips, meanwhile glaring at Denzell. He gasped in air and managed a few more words.
“I will . . . not be doctored . . . by you, sir.” Another pause for blowing and gasping. Jamie noticed Mrs. Figg stir uneasily and take a step toward the door. “I will not . . . leave my . . . daughter in your . . . clutches—” Blow. Gasp. “If you kill me.” Blow. Gasp. “Nor risk . . . you sav . . . ing my life . . . and putting . . . me in . . . your . . . debt.” The effort involved in getting that one out turned him a ghastly gray, and Jamie was seriously alarmed.
“Has he medicine, Jenny?” he asked urgently. His sister compressed her lips but nodded, and, with a final glare at the duke, scurried out of the room.
With the ginger air of one embracing a crocodile, Denzell Hunter crouched, took hold of the duke’s wrist, and peered closely into his eyes, these organs repaying his inspection by narrowing in the most threatening fashion manageable by a man dying of suffocation. Not for the first time, Jamie suffered a reluctant admiration for Pardloe’s strength of character—though he was likewise obliged to admit that Hunter’s nearly matched it.
His concentration on the tableau before him was broken by the sound of an excited fist hammering the front door below. The door opened, and he heard his nephew Ian exclaim, “Mam!” in a hoarse voice, concurrent with his sister’s astonished “Ian!” Jamie stepped out of the room and, reaching the shattered banister in a few steps, saw his sister engulfed and all but obliterated by her tall son’s embrace.
Ian’s eyes were closed and his cheeks wet, arms wrapped tight round his small mother, and Jamie felt a sudden lump in his own throat. What would he not give to embrace his daughter that way once more?
A slight motion drew his eye, and he saw Rachel Hunter standing shyly back, smiling at mother and son, her own eyes filled with tears. She dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief, then, happening to glance up, saw Jamie above and blinked.
“Miss Rachel,” he said, smiling down at her. He pointed at a jug standing on the occasional table by the door, which he assumed was Pardloe’s medicine. “Might ye bring that wee jug up here? Quickly?” He could hear Pardloe’s heavy breathing from the room behind him; it didn’t seem to be getting worse but was still worrying.
The gasping was momentarily drowned out by the footsteps of Mrs. Figg, appearing behind him with her fowling piece. She peered over the banister at the touching scene below, then at Rachel Hunter, trotting up the stairs, jug in hand.
“And who is this?” she demanded of Jamie, not quite brandishing her weapon under his nose.
“Dr. Hunter’s sister,” he told her, interposing his body between Rachel, who looked taken aback, and the agitated housekeeper. “Your brother wants the stuff in the jug, Miss Rachel.”
Mrs. Figg made a low rumbling noise but stepped back and allowed Rachel to pass. With a bleak look down at Jenny and Ian, who had now separated enough to speak and were waving their hands and interrupting each other in excited Gàidhlig, she vanished back into the bedroom on Rachel’s heels. Jamie hesitated, wanting to rush out the front door and head for Kingsessing, but a sense of morbid responsibility obliged him to follow her.
Denny had pulled up the stool from the dressing table and was still holding Pardloe’s wrist, addressing him in calm tones.
“Thee is in no immediate danger, as thee likely knows. Thy pulse is strong and regular, and while thy breathing is clearly compromised, I think—ah, is this the tincture the Scotswoman mentioned? I thank thee, Rachel; will thee pour—” But Rachel, long accustomed to medical situations, was already decanting into the brandy glass some blackish-brown stuff that looked like the contents of a spittoon.
“Shall I—” Denzell’s attempt to hold the glass for the duke was preempted by Pardloe’s seizing the glass for himself and taking a gulp that all but choked him on the spot. Hunter calmly observed the coughing and spluttering, then handed him a handkerchief.
“I have heard it theorized that such cataclysms of breath as thee is experiencing may be precipitated by violent exercise, a rapid change of temperature, exposure to smoke or dust, or, in some cases, by a surge of violent emotion. In the present instance, I believe I may possibly have caused thy crisis by my appearance, and if so, I ask thy pardon.” Denny took the handkerchief and handed Pardloe back the glass, wise enough not to tell him to sip the stuff.
“Perhaps I may make some recompense for this injury, though,” he said. “I gather thy brother is not at home, since I can’t suppose that he would remain absent from this gathering unless he were dead in the cellar, and I should hope that’s not the case. Has thee seen him recently?”
“I have—not.” Pardloe’s breathing was in fact growing smoother and his face a more normal color, though the expression on it was still feral. “Have you?”
Hunter took off his spectacles and smiled, and Jamie was struck by the kindness of his eyes. He glanced at Rachel; her eyes were hazel, rather than her brother’s soft olive brown, and, while good-natured, were much warier. Jamie thought wariness a good thing in a woman.
“I have, Friend. Thy daughter and I discovered him in a militia camp some distance from the city. He had been taken prisoner, and—” Pardloe’s exclamation collided with Jamie’s, and Hunter patted the air with his hand, begging attention. “We were able to assist his escape, and, since he’d been injured during his capture, I treated him; his injuries were not intrinsically serious.”
“When?” Jamie asked. “When did ye see him?” His heart had given a small, disquietingly happy lurch at the news that John Grey was not dead.
“Last night,” Denny told him. “We heard of his escape this morning and heard nothing of his recapture as we made our way back to Philadelphia, though I asked each group of regulars or militia we encountered. He will have needed to go with care, both woods and roads being alive with men, but I imagine he’ll be with you soon.”
Pardloe drew a long, deep breath.
“Oh, God,” he said, and closed his eyes.