Dragonfly in Amber

Page 23

He paused, and drew a deep breath before speaking. His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and he uncurled them with conscious effort.
"No," he said. "No, I dinna forbid ye." His voice shook slightly with the effort to control it. "But if I asked you?"
I looked down then, and stared at his reflection in the polished tabletop. At first, the idea of visiting L'Hôpital des Anges had seemed merely an interesting idea, an attractive alternative to the endless gossip and petty intrigues of Parisian society. But now…I could feel the muscles of my arms swell as I clenched my own fists. I didn't just want to work again; I needed to.
"I don't know," I said at last.
He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
"Will ye think about it, Claire?" I could feel his eyes on me. After what seemed a long time, I nodded.
"I'll think about it."
"Good." His tension broken, he turned restlessly away. He wandered round the drawing room, picking up small objects and putting them down at random, finally coming to roost by the bookshelf, where he leaned, staring unseeingly at the leather-bound titles. I came tentatively up beside him, and laid a hand on his arm.
"Jamie, I didn't mean to upset you."
He glanced down at me and gave me a sidelong smile.
"Aye, well. I didna mean to fight wi' you, either, Sassenach. I'm short-tempered and over-touchy, I expect." He patted my hand in apology, then moved aside, to stand looking down at his desk.
"You've been working hard," I said soothingly, following him.
"It's not that." He shook his head, and reached out to flip open the pages of the huge ledger that lay in the center of the desk.
"The wine business; that's all right. It's a great deal of work, aye, but I dinna mind it. It's the other." He gestured at a small stack of letters, held down by an alabaster paperweight. One of Jared's, it was carved in the shape of a white rose—the Stuarts' emblem. The letters it secured were from Abbot Alexander, from the Earl of Mar, from other prominent Jacobites. All filled with veiled inquiry, misty promises, contradictory expectations.
"I feel as though I'm fighting feathers!" Jamie said, violently. "A real fight, something I could get my hands on, that I could do. But this…" He snatched up the handful of letters from the desk, and tossed them into the air. The room was drafty, and the papers zigzagged wildly, sliding under furniture and fluttering on the carpet.
"There's nothing to get hold of," he said helplessly. "I can talk to a thousand people, write a hundred letters, drink wi' Charles 'til I'm blind, and never know if I'm getting on or not."
I let the scattered letters lie; one of the maids could retrieve them later.
"Jamie," I said softly. "We can't do anything but try."
He smiled faintly, hands braced on the desk. "Aye. I'm glad you said ‘we,' Sassenach. I do feel verra much alone with it all sometimes."
I put my arms around his waist and laid my face against his back.
"You know I wouldn't leave you alone with it," I said. "I got you into it in the first place, after all."
I could feel the small vibration of a laugh under my cheek.
"Aye, you did. I wilna hold it against ye, Sassenach." He turned, leaned down, and kissed me lightly on the forehead. "You look tired, mo duinne. Go up to bed, now. I've a bit more work to do, but I'll join ye soon."
"All right." I was tired tonight, though the chronic sleepiness of early pregnancy was giving way to new energy; I was beginning to feel alert in the daytime, brimming with the urge to be active.
I paused at the door on my way out. He was still standing by the desk, staring down into the pages of the open ledger.
"Jamie?" I said.
"Aye?"
"The hospital—I said I'd think about it. You think, too, hm?"
He turned his head, one brow sharply arched. Then he smiled, and nodded briefly.
"I'll come to ye soon, Sassenach," he said.
It was still sleeting, and tiny particles of frozen rain rattled against the windows and hissed into the fire when the night wind turned to drive them down the flue. The wind was high, and it moaned and grumbled among the chimneys, making the bedroom seem all the cozier by contrast. The bed itself was an oasis of warmth and comfort, equipped with goose-down quilts, huge fluffy pillows, and Jamie, faithfully putting out British Thermal Units like an electric storage heater.
His large hand stroked lightly across my stomach, warm through the thin silk of my nightdress.
"No, there. You have to press a little harder." I took his hand and pressed the fingers downward, just above my pubic bone, where the uterus had begun to make itself obvious, a round, hard swelling a little larger than a grapefruit.
"Aye, I feel it," he murmured. "He's really there." A tiny smile of awed delight tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he looked up at me, eyes sparkling. "Can ye feel him move, yet?"
I shook my head. "Not yet. Another month or so, I think, from what your sister Jenny said."
"Mmm," he said, kissing the tiny bulge. "What d'ye think of ‘Dalhousie,' Sassenach?"
"What do I think of ‘Dalhousie' as what?" I inquired.
"Well, as a name," he said. He patted my stomach. "He'll need a name."
"True," I said. "Though what makes you think it's a boy? It might just as easily be a girl."
"Oh? Oh, aye, that's true," he admitted, as though the possibility had just occurred to him. "Still, why not start with the boys' names? We could name him for your uncle who raised you."
"Umm." I frowned at my midsection. Dearly as I had loved my uncle Lamb, I didn't know that I wanted to inflict either "Lambert" or "Quentin" on a helpless infant. "No, I don't think so. On the other hand, I don't think I'd want to name him for one of your uncles, either."
Jamie stroked my stomach absently, thinking.
"What was your father's name, Sassenach?" he asked.
I had to think for a moment to remember.
"Henry," I said. "Henry Montmorency Beauchamp. Jamie, I am not having a child named ‘Montmorency Fraser,' no matter what. I'm not so keen on ‘Henry,' either, though it's better than Lambert. How about William?" I suggested. "For your brother?" His older brother, William, had died in late childhood, but had lived long enough for Jamie to remember him with great affection.
His brow was furrowed in thought. "Hmm," he said. "Aye, maybe. Or we could call him…"
"James," said a hollow, sepulchral voice from the flue.
"What?" I said, sitting straight up in bed.
"James," said the fireplace, impatiently. "James, James!"
"Sweet bleeding Jesus," said Jamie, staring at the leaping flames on the hearth. I could feel the hair standing up on his forearm, stiff as wire. He sat frozen for a moment; then, a thought occurring to him, he jumped to his feet and went to the dormer window, not bothering to put anything on over his shirt.
He flung up the sash, admitting a blast of frigid air, and thrust his head out into the night. I heard a muffled shout, and then a scrabbling sound across the slates of the roof. Jamie leaned far out, rising on his toes to reach, then backed slowly into the room, rain-dampened and grunting with effort. He dragged with him, arms clasped about his neck, the form of a handsome boy in dark clothing, thoroughly soaked, with a bloodstained cloth wrapped around one hand.
The visitor caught his foot on the sill and landed clumsily, sprawling on the floor. He scrambled up at once, though, and bowed to me, snatching off his slouch hat.
"Madame," he said, in thickly accented French. "I must beg your pardon, I arrive so without ceremony. I intrude, but it is of necessity that I call upon my friend James at such an unsocial hour."
He was a sturdy, good-looking lad, with thick, light-brown hair curling loose upon his shoulders, and a fair face, cheeks flushed red with cold and exertion. His nose was running slightly, and he wiped it with the back of his wrapped hand, wincing slightly as he did so.
Jamie, both eyebrows raised, bowed politely to the visitor.
"My house is at your service, Your Highness," he said, with a glance that took in the general disorder of the visitor's attire. His stock was undone and hung loosely around his neck, half his buttons were done up awry, and the flies of his breeches flopped partially open. I saw Jamie frown slightly at this, and he moved unobtrusively in front of the boy, to screen me from the indelicate sight.
"If I may present my wife, Your Highness?" he said. "Claire, my lady Broch Tuarach. Claire, this is His Highness, Prince Charles, son of King James of Scotland."
"Um, yes," I said. "I'd rather gathered that. Er, good evening, Your Highness." I nodded graciously, pulling the bedclothes up around me. I supposed that under the circumstances, I could dispense with the usual curtsy.
The Prince had taken advantage of Jamie's long-winded introduction to fumble his trousers into better order, and now nodded back at me, full of Royal dignity.
"It is my pleasure, Madame," he said, and bowed once more, making a much more elegant production of it. He straightened and stood turning his hat in his hands, obviously trying to think what to say next. Jamie, standing bare-legged in his shirt alongside, glanced from me to Charles, seemingly at an equal loss for words.
"Er…" I said, to break the silence. "Have you had an accident, Your Highness?" I nodded at the handkerchief wrapped around his hand, and he glanced down as though noticing it for the first time.
"Yes," he said, "ah…no. I mean…it is nothing, my lady." He flushed redder, staring at his hand. His manner was odd; something between embarrassment and anger. I could see the stain on the cloth spreading, though, and put my feet out of bed, groping for my dressing gown.
"You'd better let me have a look at it," I said.
The injury, exposed with some reluctance by the Prince, was not serious, but it was unusual.
"That looks like an animal bite," I said incredulously, dabbing at the small semicircle of puncture wounds in the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Prince Charles winced as I squeezed the flesh around it, meaning to cleanse the wound by bleeding before binding it.
"Yes," he said. "A monkey bite. Disgusting, flea-ridden beast!" he burst out. "I told her she must dispose of it. Undoubtedly the animal is diseased!"
I had found my medicine box, and now applied a thin layer of gentian ointment. "I don't think you need worry," I said, intent on my work. "So long as it isn't rabid, that is."
"Rabid?" The Prince went quite pale. "Do you think it could be?" Plainly he had no idea what "rabid" might mean, but wanted no part of it.
"Anything's possible," I said cheerfully. Surprised by his sudden appearance, it was just beginning to dawn on me that it would save everyone a great deal of trouble in the long run, if this young man would succumb gracefully to some quick and deadly disease. Still, I couldn't quite find it in my heart to wish him gangrene or rabies, and I tied up his hand neatly in a fresh linen bandage.
He smiled, bowed again, and thanked me very prettily in a mixture of French and Italian. Still apologizing effusively for his untimely visit, he was towed away by Jamie, now respectably kilted, for a drink downstairs.
Feeling the chill of the room seep through gown and robe, I crawled back into bed and drew the quilts up under my chin. So this was Prince Charles! Bonnie enough, to be sure; at least to look at. He seemed very young—much younger than Jamie, though I knew Jamie was only a year or two older. His Highness did have considerable charm of manner, though, and quite a bit of self-important dignity, despite his disordered dress. Was that really enough to take him to Scotland, at the head of an army of restoration? As I drifted off, I wondered exactly what the heir to the throne of Scotland had been doing, wandering over the Paris rooftops in the middle of the night, with a monkey bite on one hand.
The question was still on my mind when Jamie woke me sometime later by sliding into bed and planting his large, ice-cold feet directly behind my knees.
"Don't scream like that," he said, "you'll wake the servants."
"What in hell was Charles Stuart doing running about the rooftops with monkeys?" I demanded, taking evasive action. "Take those bloody ice cubes off me."
"Visiting his mistress," said Jamie succinctly. "All right, then; stop kicking me." He removed the feet and embraced me, shivering, as I turned to him.
"He has a mistress? Who?" Stimulated by whiffs of cold and scandal, I was quickly waking up.
It's Louise de La Tour," Jamie explained reluctantly, in response to my prodding. His nose looked longer and sharper than usual, with the thick brows drawn together above it. Having a mistress was bad enough, in his Scottish Catholic view, but it was well known that royalty had certain privileges in this regard. The Princesse Louise de La Tour was married, however. And royalty or not, taking a married woman as one's mistress was positively immoral, his cousin Jared's example notwithstanding.
"Ha," I said with satisfaction. "I knew it!"
"He says he's in love with her," he reported tersely, yanking the quilts up over his shoulders. "He insists she loves him too; says she's been faithful only to him for the last three months. Tcha!"
"Well, it's been known to happen," I said, amused. "So he was visiting her? How did he get out on the roof, though? Did he tell you that?"
"Oh, aye. He told me."
Charles, fortified against the night with several glasses of Jared's best aged port, had been quite forthcoming. The strength of true love had been tried severely this evening, according to Charles, by his inamorata's devotion to her pet, a rather ill-tempered monkey that reciprocated His Highness's dislike and had more concrete means of demonstrating its opinions. Snapping his fingers under the monkey's nose in derision, His Highness had suffered first a sharp bite in the hand, and then the sharper bite of his mistress's tongue, exercised in bitter reproach. The couple had quarreled hotly, to the point that Louise, Princesse de Rohan, had ordered Charles from her presence. He had expressed himself only too willing to go—never, he emphasized dramatically, to return.
The Prince's departure, however, had been considerably hampered by the discovery that the Princesse's husband had returned early from his evening of gaming, and was comfortably ensconced in the anteroom with a bottle of brandy.
"So," said Jamie, smiling despite himself at the thought, "he wouldna stay with the lassie, but he couldna go out of the door—so he threw up the sash and jumped out on the roof. He got down almost to the street, he said, along the drainage pipes; but then the City guard came along, and he had to scramble back up to stay out of their sight. He had a rare time of it, he said, dodging about the chimneys and slipping on the wet slates, until it occurred to him that our house was only three houses down the row, and the rooftops close enough to hop them like lily pads."
"Mm," I said, feeling warmth reestablish itself around my toes. "Did you send him home in the coach?"
"No, he took one of the horses from the stable."
"If he's been drinking Jared's port, I hope they both make it to Montmartre," I remarked. "It's a good long way."
"Well, it will be a cold, wet journey, no doubt," said Jamie, with the smugness of a man virtuously tucked up in a warm bed with his lawfully wedded wife. He blew out the candle and pulled me close against his chest, spoon-fashion.
"Serve him right," he murmured. "A man ought to be married."
The servants were up before dawn, polishing and cleaning in preparation for entertaining Monsieur Duverney at a small, private supper in the evening.
"I don't know why they bother," I told Jamie, lying in bed with my eyes closed, listening to the bustle downstairs. "All they need do is dust off the chess set and put out a bottle of brandy; he won't notice anything else."
He laughed and bent to kiss me goodbye. "That's all right; I'll need a good supper if I'm to go on beating him." He patted my shoulder in farewell. "I'm going to the warehouse, Sassenach; I'll be home in time to dress, though."
In search of something to do that would take me out of the servants' way, I finally decided to have a footman escort me down to the Rohans'. Perhaps Louise could use a bit of solace, I thought, after her quarrel of the night before. Vulgar curiosity, I told myself primly, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
When I returned in the late afternoon, I found Jamie slouched in a chair near the bedroom window with his feet propped on the table, collar undone and hair rumpled as he pored over a sheaf of scribbled papers. He looked up at the sound of the door closing, and the absorbed expression melted into a broad grin.
"Sassenach! There you are!" He swung his long legs down and came across to embrace me. He buried his face in my hair, nuzzling, then drew back and sneezed. He sneezed again, and let go of me to grope in his sleeve for the handkerchief he carried there, military style.
"What do ye smell like, Sassenach?" he demanded, pressing the linen square to his nose just in time to muffle the results of another explosive sneeze.
I reached into the bosom of my dress and plucked the small sachet from between my br**sts.
"Jasmine, roses, hyacinth, and lily of the valley.…ragweed, too, apparently," I added as he snorted and wheezed into the capacious depths of the handkerchief. "Are you all right?" I looked around for some means of disposal, and settled for dropping the sachet into a stationery box on my desk at the far side of the room.
"Aye, I'll do. It's the hya…hya…hyaCHOO!"
"Goodness!" I hastily flung the window open, and motioned to him. He obligingly stuck his head and shoulders out into the wet drizzle of the morning, breathing in gusts of fresh, hyacinth-free air.
"Och, that's better," he said with relief, pulling in his head a few minutes later. His eyes widened. "What are ye doing now, Sassenach?"
"Washing," I explained, struggling with the back laces of my gown. "Or getting ready to, at least. I'm covered with oil of hyacinth," I explained, as he blinked. "If I don't wash it off, you're liable to explode."
He dabbed meditatively at his nose and nodded.
"You've a point there, Sassenach. Shall I have the footman fetch up some hot water?"
"No, don't bother. A quick rinse should take most of it off," I assured him, unbuttoning and unlacing as quickly as possible. I raised my arms, reaching behind my head to gather my hair into a bun. Suddenly Jamie leaned forward and grasped my wrist, pulling my arm into the air.