Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

CHARLES’S WIFE, EULALIE, was in the small parlor, surrounded by a huddle of women. All of them turned to see who had come, many of them lifting their handkerchiefs automatically in preparation for a fresh outbreak of tears. All of them blinked at Michael, then turned to Eulalie, as though for an explanation.

Eulalie’s eyes were red but dry. She looked as though she had been dried in an oven, all the moisture and color sucked out of her, her face paper-white and drawn tight over her bones. She, too, looked at Michael, but without much interest. He thought she was too much shocked for anything to matter much. He knew how she felt.

“Monsieur Murray,” she said tonelessly, as he bowed over her hand. “How kind of you to call.”

“I…offer my condolences, madame, mine and my cousin’s. I hadn’t…heard. Of your grievous loss.” He was almost stuttering, trying to grasp the reality of the situation. What the devil had happened to Charles?

Eulalie’s mouth twisted.

“Grievous loss,” she repeated. “Yes. Thank you.” Then her dull self-absorption cracked a little and she looked at him more sharply. “You hadn’t heard. You mean—you didn’t know? You came to see Charles?”

“Er…yes, madame,” he said awkwardly. A couple of the women gasped, but Eulalie was already on her feet.

“Well, you might as well see him, then,” she said, and walked out of the room, leaving him with no choice but to follow her.

“They’ve cleaned him up,” she remarked, opening the door to the large parlor across the hall. She might have been talking about a messy domestic incident in the kitchen.

Michael thought it must in fact have been very messy. Charles lay on the large dining table, this adorned with a cloth and wreaths of greenery and flowers. A woman clad in gray was sitting by the table, weaving more wreaths from a basket of leaves and grasses; she glanced up, her eyes going from Eulalie to Michael and back.

“Leave,” said Eulalie with a flip of the hand, and the woman got up at once and went out. Michael saw that she’d been making a wreath of laurel leaves and had the sudden absurd thought that she meant to crown Charles with it, in the manner of a Greek hero.

“He cut his throat,” Eulalie said. “The coward.” She spoke with an eerie calmness, and Michael wondered what might happen when the shock that surrounded her began to dissipate.

He made a respectful sort of noise in his throat and, touching her arm gently, went past her to look down at his friend.

“Tell him not to do it.”

The dead man didn’t look peaceful. There were lines of stress in his countenance that hadn’t yet smoothed out, and he appeared to be frowning. The undertaker’s people had cleaned the body and dressed him in a slightly worn suit of dark blue; Michael thought that it was probably the only thing he’d owned that was in any way appropriate in which to appear dead, and suddenly missed his friend’s frivolity with a surge that brought unexpected tears to his eyes.

“Tell him not to do it.” He hadn’t come in time. If I’d come right away, when she told me—would it have stopped him?

He could smell the blood, a rusty, sickly smell that seeped through the freshness of the flowers and leaves. The undertaker had tied a white neckcloth for Charles—he’d used an old-fashioned knot, nothing that Charles himself would have worn for a moment. The black stitches showed above it, though, the wound harsh against the dead man’s livid skin.

His own shock was beginning to fray, and stabs of guilt and anger poked through it like needles.

“Coward?” he said softly. He didn’t mean it as a question, but it seemed more courteous to say it that way. Eulalie snorted, and, looking up, Michael met the full charge of her eyes. No, not shocked any longer.

“You’d know, wouldn’t you,” she said, and it wasn’t at all a question, the way she said it. “You knew about your slut of a sister-in-law, didn’t you? And Babette?” Her lips curled away from the name. “His other mistress?”

“I—no. I mean…Léonie told me yesterday. That was why I came to talk to Charles.” Well, he would certainly have mentioned Léonie. And he wasn’t going anywhere near the mention of Babette, whom he’d known about for quite some time. But, Jesus, what did the woman think he could have done about it?

“Coward,” she said, looking down at Charles’s body with contempt. “He made a mess of everything—everything!—and then couldn’t deal with it, so he runs off and leaves me alone, with children, penniless!”

“Tell him not to do it.”

Michael looked to see if this was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. She was burning now, but with fear as much as anger, her frozen calm quite vanished.

“The…house…?” he began, with a rather vague wave around the expensive, stylish room. He knew it was her family house; she’d brought it to the marriage.

She snorted.

“He lost it in a card game last week,” she said bitterly. “If I’m lucky, the new owner will let me bury him before we have to leave.”

“Ah.” The mention of card games jolted him back to an awareness of his reason for coming here. “I wonder, madame, do you know an acquaintance of Charles’s—the Comte St. Germain?” It was crude, but he hadn’t time to think of a graceful way to come to it.

Eugenia blinked, nonplussed.

“The comte? Why do you want to know about him?” Her expression sharpened into eagerness. “Do you think he owes Charles money?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll certainly find out for you,” Michael promised her. “If you can tell me where to find Monsieur le Comte.”

She didn’t laugh, but her mouth quirked in what might in another mood have been humor.

“He lives across the street.” She pointed toward the window. “In that big pile of—where are you going?”

But Michael was already through the door and into the hallway, boot heels clattering on the parquet in his haste.



THERE WERE FOOTSTEPS coming up the stairs; Joan started away from the window but then craned back, desperately willing the door across the street to open and let Michael out. What was he doing there?

That door didn’t open, but a key rattled in the lock of the door to the room. In desperation, she tore the rosary from her belt and pushed it through the hole in the window, then dashed across the room and threw herself into one of the repulsive chairs.

It was the comte. He glanced round, worried for an instant, and then his face relaxed when he saw her. He came toward her, holding out his hand.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, mademoiselle,” he said, very courtly. “Come, please. I have something to show you.”