Dragonfly in Amber, Page 24

  Patient as ever, Jamie listened carefully to the “A” of the fork, and sang again, producing a sound wedged somewhere in the crack between E-flat and D-sharp.

  “Not possible,” said the little man, looking thoroughly disillusioned. “No one could be that dissonant even on purpose.”

  “I can,” said Jamie cheerfully, and bowed politely to the little man. We had by now begun to collect a small crowd of interested onlookers. Louise de Rohan was a great hostess, and her salons attracted the cream of Parisian society.

  “Yes, he can,” I assured our visitor. “He’s tone-deaf, you see.”

  “Yes, I do see,” the little man said, looking thoroughly depressed. Then he began to eye me speculatively.

  “Not me!” I said, laughing.

  “You surely aren’t tone-deaf as well, Madame?” Eyes glittering like a snake slithering toward a paralyzed bird, the little man began to move toward me, tuning fork twitching like the flicking tongue of a viper.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, holding out a repressive hand. “Just who are you?”

  “This is Herr Johannes Gerstmann, Sassenach.” Looking amused, Jamie bowed again to the little man. “The King’s singing-master. May I present you to my wife, Lady Broch Tuarach, Herr Gerstmann?” Trust Jamie to know every last member of the Court, no matter how insignificant.

  Johannes Gerstmann. Well, that accounted for the faint accent I had detected under the formality of Court French. German, I wondered, or Austrian?

  “I am assembling a small impromptu chorus,” the little singing-master explained. “The voices need not be trained, but they must be strong and true.” He cast a glance of disillusionment at Jamie, who merely grinned in response. He took the tuning fork from Herr Gerstmann and held it inquiringly in my direction.

  “Oh, all right,” I said, and sang.

  Whatever he heard appeared to encourage Herr Gerstmann, for he put away the tuning fork and peered at me interestedly. His wig was a trifle too big, and tended to slide forward when he nodded. He did so now, then pushed the wig carelessly back, and said “Excellent tone, Madame! Really very nice, very nice indeed. Are you acquainted perhaps with Le Papillon?” He hummed a few bars.

  “Well, I’ve heard it at least,” I replied cautiously. “Um, the melody, I mean; I don’t know the words.”

  “Ah! No difficulty, Madame. The chorus is simplicity; like this…”

  My arm trapped in the singing-master’s grip, I found myself being ineluctably drawn away toward the sound of harpsichord music in a distant room, Herr Gerstmann humming in my ear like a demented bumblebee.

  I cast a helpless glance back at Jamie, who merely grinned and raised his cup of sorbet in a farewell salute before turning to take up a conversation with Monsieur Duverney the younger, the son of the Minister of Finance.

  The Rohans’ house—if you could use a mere word like “house” in description of such a place—was alight with lanterns strung through the back garden and edging the terrace. As Herr Gerstmann towed me through the corridors, I could see servants hurrying in and out of the supper rooms, laying linen and silver for the dining that would take place later. Most “salons” were small, intimate affairs, but the Princesse Louise de La Tour de Rohan was an expansive personality.

  I had met the Princesse a week before, at another evening party, and had found her something of a surprise. Plump and rather plain, she had a round face with a small round chin, pale lashless blue eyes, and a star-shaped false beauty mark that did very little to fulfill its function in life. So this was the lady who enticed Prince Charles into ignoring the dictates of propriety? I thought, curtsying in the receiving line.

  Still, she had an air of lively animation about her that was quite attractive, and a lovely soft pink mouth. Her mouth was the most animated part of her, in fact.

  “But I am charmed!” she had exclaimed, grabbing my hand as I was presented to her. “How wonderful to meet you at last! My husband and my father have both sung the praises of milord Broch Tuarach unendingly, but of his delightful wife they have said nothing. I am enchanted beyond measure by your coming, my dear, sweet lady—must I really say Broch Tuarach, or won’t it do if I only say Lady Tuarach? I’m not sure I could remember all of it, but one word, surely, even if such a strange-sounding word—is it Scottish? How enchanting!”

  In fact, Broch Tuarach meant “the north-facing tower,” but if she wanted to call me “Lady North-facing,” it was all right with me. In the event, she quickly gave up trying to remember “Tuarach,” and had since called me only “ma chère Claire.”

  Louise herself was with the group of singers in the music room, fluttering plumply from one to another, talking and laughing. When she saw me, she dashed across the room as fast as her draperies would allow, her plain face alight with animation.

  “Ma chère Claire!” she exclaimed, ruthlessly commandeering me from Herr Gerstmann. “You are just in time! Come, you must talk to this silly English child for me.”

  The “silly English child” was in fact very young; a girl of not more than fifteen, with dark, shiny ringlets, and cheeks flushed so hotly with embarrassment that she reminded me of a brilliant poppy. In fact, it was the cheeks that recalled her to me; the girl I had glimpsed in the garden at Versailles, just before the unsettling appearance of Alexander Randall.

  “Madame Fraser is English, too,” Louise was explaining to the girl. “She will soon make you feel at home. She’s shy,” Louise explained, turning to me without pausing to draw breath. “Talk to her; persuade her to sing with us. She has a delightful voice, I am assured. There, mes enfants, enjoy yourselves!” And with a pat of benediction, she was off to the other side of the room, exclaiming, cajoling, marveling at a new arrival’s gown, pausing to fondle the overweight youth who sat at the harpsichord, twisting ringlets of his hair around her finger as she chattered to the Duc di Castellotti.

  “Makes you rather tired just to watch her, doesn’t it?” I said in English, smiling at the girl. A tiny smile appeared on her own lips and she bobbed her head briefly, but didn’t speak. I thought this must all be rather overwhelming; Louise’s parties tended to make my own head spin, and the little poppy girl could scarcely be out of the schoolroom.

  “I’m Claire Fraser,” I said, “but Louise didn’t remember to tell me your name.” I paused invitingly, but she didn’t reply. Her face got redder and redder, lips pressed tight together, and her fists clenched at her sides. I was a trifle alarmed at her appearance, but she finally summoned the will to speak. She took a deep breath, and raised her chin like one about to mount the scaffold.

  “M-m-my-name is…M-M-M,” she began, and at once I understood her silence and her painful shyness. She closed her eyes, biting her lip savagely, then opened her eyes and gamely had another try. “M-M-Mary Hawkins,” she managed at last. “I d-d-don’t sing,” she added defiantly.

  If I had found her interesting before, I was fascinated now. So this was Silas Hawkins’s niece, the baronet’s daughter, the intended fiancée of the Vicomte Marigny! It seemed a considerable weight of male expectation for such a young girl to bear. I glanced around to see whether the Vicomte was in evidence, and was relieved to find that he wasn’t.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, stepping in front of her, to shield her from the waves of people now filling the music room. “You needn’t talk if you don’t want to. Though perhaps you should try to sing,” I said, struck by a thought. “I knew a physician once who specialized in the treatment of stammering; he said that people who stammer don’t do it when they sing.”

  Mary Hawkins’s eyes grew wide with astonishment at this. I looked around and saw a nearby alcove, curtained to hide a cozy bench.

  “Here,” I said, taking her by the hand. “You can sit in here, so you don’t have to talk to people. If you want to sing, you can come out when we start; if not, just stay in here ’til the party’s over.” She stared at me for a minute, then gave me a sudden blinding smile of gratitude, and ducked into the
alcove.

  I loitered outside, to prevent any nosy servants from disturbing her hiding place, chatting with passersby.

  “How lovely you look tonight, ma chère!” It was Madame de Ramage, one of the Queen’s ladies. An older, dignified woman, she had come to supper in the Rue Tremoulins once or twice. She embraced me warmly, then looked around to be sure that we were unobserved.

  “I had hoped to see you here, my dear,” she said, leaning a bit closer and lowering her voice. “I wished to advise you to take care concerning the Comte St. Germain.”

  Half-turning in the direction of her gaze, I saw the lean-faced man from the docks of Le Havre, entering the music room with a younger, elegantly dressed woman on his arm. He hadn’t seen me, apparently, and I hastily turned back to Madame de Remage.

  “What…has he…I mean…” I could feel myself flushing still more deeply, rattled by the appearance of the saturnine Comte.

  “Well, yes, he has been heard to speak of you,” Madame de Ramage said, kindly helping me out of my confusion. “I gather that there was some small difficulty in Le Havre?”

  “Something of the kind,” I said. “All I did was to recognize a case of smallpox, but it resulted in the destruction of his ship, and…he wasn’t pleased about it,” I concluded weakly.

  “Ah, so that was it.” Madame de Ramage looked pleased. I imagined having the inside story, so to speak, would give her an advantage in the trade of gossip and information that was the commerce of Parisian social life.

  “He has been going about telling people that he believes you to be a witch,” she said, smiling and waving at a friend across the room. “A fine story! Oh, no one believes it,” she assured me. “Everyone knows that if anyone is mixed up in such matters, it is Monsieur le Comte himself.”

  “Really?” I wanted to ask just what she meant by this, but just then Herr Gerstmann bustled up, clapping his hands as though shooing a flock of hens.

  “Come, come, mesdames!” he said. “We are all complete; the singing commences!”

  As the chorale hastily assembled near the harpsichord, I looked back toward the alcove where I had left Mary Hawkins. I thought I saw the curtain twitch, but wasn’t sure. And as the music began, and the joined voices rose, I thought I heard a clear, high soprano from the direction of the alcove—but again, I wasn’t sure.

  * * *

  “Verra nice, Sassenach,” Jamie said when I rejoined him, flushed and breathless, after the singing. He grinned down at me and patted my shoulder.

  “How would you know?” I said, accepting a glass of wine-punch from a passing servant. “You can’t tell one song from another.”

  “Well, ye were loud, anyway,” he said, unperturbed. “I could hear every word.” I felt him stiffen slightly beside me, and turned to see what—or whom—he was looking at.

  The woman who had just entered was tiny, scarcely as high as Jamie’s lowest rib, with hands and feet like a doll’s, and brows delicate as Chinese tracery, over eyes the deep black of sloes. She advanced with a step that mocked its own lightness, so she looked as though she were dancing just above the ground.

  “There’s Annalise de Marillac,” I said, admiring her. “Doesn’t she look lovely?”

  “Oh, aye.” Something in his voice made me glance sharply upward. A faint pink tinged the tips of his ears.

  “And here I thought you spent your years in France fighting, not making romantic conquests,” I said tartly.

  To my surprise, he laughed at this. Catching the sound, the woman turned toward us. A brilliant smile lit her face as she saw Jamie looming among the crowd. She turned as though to come in our direction, but was distracted by a gentleman, wigged and resplendent in lavender satin, who laid an importuning hand on her fragile arm. She flicked her fan charmingly at Jamie in a gesture of regretful coquetry before devoting her attention to her new companion.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, seeing him still grinning broadly after the lady’s gently oscillating lace skirts.

  He snapped suddenly back to an awareness of my presence, and smiled down at me.

  “Oh, nothing, Sassenach. Only what ye said about fighting. I fought my first duel—well, the only one, in fact—over Annalise de Marillac. When I was eighteen.”

  His tone was mildly dreamy, watching the sleek, dark head bob away through the crowd, surrounded wherever it went by white clusters of wigs and powdered hair, with here and there a fashionably pink-tinged peruke for variety.

  “A duel? With whom?” I asked, glancing around warily for any male attachments to the China doll who might feel inclined to follow up an old quarrel.

  “Och, he isna here,” Jamie said, catching and correctly interpreting my glance. “He’s dead.”

  “You killed him?” Agitated, I spoke rather louder than intended. As a few nearby heads turned curiously in our direction, Jamie took me by the elbow and steered me hastily toward the nearest French doors.

  “Mind your voice, Sassenach,” he said, mildly enough. “No, I didna kill him. Wanted to,” he added ruefully, “but didn’t. He died two years ago, of the morbid sore throat. Jared told me.”

  He guided me down one of the garden paths, lit by lantern-bearing servants, who stood like bollards at five-yard intervals from the terrace to the fountain at the bottom of the path. In the midst of a big reflecting pool, four dolphins sprayed sheets of water over an annoyed-looking Triton in the center, who brandished a trident rather ineffectually at them.

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” I urged as we passed out of hearing of the groups on the terrace. “What happened?”

  “All right, then,” he said, resigned. “Well, ye will have observed that Annalise is rather pretty?”

  “Oh, really? Well, perhaps, now that you mention it, I can see something of the kind,” I answered sweetly, provoking a sudden sharp look, followed by a lopsided smile.

  “Aye. Well, I wasna the only young gallant in Paris to be of the same opinion, nor the only one to lose his head over her, either. Went about in a daze, tripping over my feet. Waited in the street, in hopes of seeing her come out of her house to the carriage. Forgot to eat, even; Jared said my coat hung on me like a scarecrow’s, and the state of my hair didna much help the resemblance.” His hand went absently to his head, patting the immaculate queue that lay clubbed tight against his neck, bound with blue ribbon.

  “Forgot to eat? Christ, you did have it bad,” I remarked.

  He chuckled. “Oh, aye. And still worse when she began to flirt wi’ Charles Gauloise. Mind ye,” he added fairly, “she flirted with everyone—that was all right—but she chose him for her supper partner ower-often for my taste, and danced with him too much at the parties, and…well, the long and the short of it, Sassenach, is that I caught him kissing her in the moonlight on her father’s terrace one night, and challenged him.”

  By this time, we had reached the fountain in our promenade. Jamie drew to a stop and we sat on the rim of the fountain, upwind of the spray from the puff-lipped dolphins. Jamie drew a hand through the dark water and lifted it dripping, abstractedly watching the silver drops run down his fingers.

  “Dueling was illegal in Paris then—as it is now. But there were places; there always are. It was his to choose, and he picked a spot in the Bois de Boulogne. Close by the road of the Seven Saints, but hidden by a screen of oaks. The choice of weapon was his, too. I expected pistols, but he chose swords.”

  “Why would he do that? You must have had a six-inch reach on him—or more.” I was no expert, but was perforce learning a small bit about the strategy and tactics of swordfighting; Jamie and Murtagh took each other on every two or three days to keep in practice, clashing and parrying and lunging up and down the garden, to the untrammeled delight of the servants, male and female alike, who all surged out onto the balconies to watch.

  “Why did he choose smallswords? Because he was bloody good with one. Also, I suspected he thought I might kill him accidentally with a pistol, while he knew I’d be satis
fied only to draw blood with a blade. I didna mean to kill him, ye ken,” he explained. “Only to humiliate him. And he knew it. No fool, was our Charles,” he said, ruefully shaking his head.

  The mist from the fountain was making ringlets escape from my coiffure, to curl around my face. I brushed back a wisp of hair, asking, “And did you humiliate him?”

  “Well, I wounded him, at least.” I was surprised to hear a small note of satisfaction in his voice, and raised an eyebrow at him. “He’d learnt his craft from LeJeune, one of the best swordmasters in France.” Jamie explained. “Like fighting a damn flea, it was, and I fought him right-handed, too.” He pushed a hand through his hair once more, as though checking the binding.

  “My hair came loose, midway through,” he said. “The thong holding it broke, and the wind was blowing it into my eyes, so all I could see was the wee white shape of Charles in his shirt, darting to and fro like a minnow. And that’s how I got him, finally—the way ye spear a fish with a dirk.” He snorted through his nose.

  “He let out a skelloch as though I’d run him through, though I knew I’d but pinked him in one arm. I got the hair out of my face at last and looked beyond him to see Annalise standing there at the edge of the clearing, wi’ her eyes wide and dark as yon pool.” He gestured out over the silver-black surface beside us.