Dragonfly in Amber, Page 26

  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 breasts.

  “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.

  “What are you doing?” I said, startled.

  “What have you done, Sassenach?” he demanded. He was staring under my arm.

  “Shaved,” I said proudly. “Or rather, waxed. Louise had her servante aux petits soins—you know, her personal groomer?—there this morning, and she did me, too.”

  “Waxed?” Jamie looked rather wildly at the candlestick by the ewer, then back at me. “You put wax in your oxters?”

  “Not that kind of wax,” I assured him. “Scented beeswax. The grooming lady heated it, then spread the warm wax on. Once it’s cooled, you just jerk it off,” I winced momentarily in recollection, “and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “My uncle Bob wouldna countenance any such goings-on,” said Jamie severely. “What in hell would ye do that for?” He peered closely at the site, still holding my wrist up. “Didn’t it hur…hurt…choof!” He dropped my hand and backed up rapidly.

  “Didn’t it hurt?” he asked, handkerchief to nose once more.

  “Well, a bit,” I admitted. “Worth it, though, don’t you think?” I asked, raising both arms like a ballerina and turning slightly to and fro. “First time I’ve felt entirely clean in months.”

  “Worth it?” he said, sounding a little dazed. “What’s it to do wi’ clean, that you’ve pulled all of the hairs out from under your arms?”

  A little belatedly, I realized that none of the Scottish women I had encountered employed any form of depilation. Furthermore, Jamie had almost certainly never been in sufficiently close contact with an upper-class Parisienne to know that many of them did. “Well,” I said, suddenly realizing the difficulty an anthropologist faces in trying to interpret the more singular customs of a primitive tribe. “It smells much less,” I offered.

  “And what’s wrong wi’ the way ye smell?” he said heatedly. “At least ye smelt like a woman, not a damn flower garden. What d’ye think I am, a man or a bumblebee? Would ye wash yourself, Sassenach, so I can get within less than ten feet of ye?”

  I picked up a cloth and began sponging my torso. Madame Laserre, Louise’s groomer, had applied scented oil all over my body; I rather hoped it would come off easily. It was disconcerting to have him hovering just outside sniffing range, glaring at me like a wolf circling its prey.

  I turned my back to dip the cloth into the bowl, and said offhandedly over my shoulder, “Er, I did my legs, too.”

  I stole a quick glance over my shoulder. The original shock was fading into a look of total bewilderment.

  “Your legs dinna smell like anything,” he said. “Unless you’ve been walkin’ knee-deep in the cow-byre.”

  I turned around and pulled my skirt up to my knees, pointing one toe forward to display the delicate curves of calf and shin.

  “But they look so much nicer,” I pointed out. “All nice and smooth; not like Harry the hairy ape.”

  He glanced down at his own fuzzy knees, offended.

  “An ape, am I?”

  “Not you, me!” I said, getting exasperated.

  “My legs are any amount hairier than yours ever were!”

  “Well, they’re supposed to be; you’re a man!”

  He drew in breath as though about to reply, then let it out again, shaking his head and muttering something to himself in Gaelic. He flung himself back into the chair and sat back, watching me through narrowed eyes, every now and then muttering to himself again. I decided not to ask for a translation.

  After most of my bath had been accomplished in what might best be described as a charged atmosphere, I decided to attempt conciliation.

  “It might have been worse, you know,” I said, sponging the inside of one thigh. “Louise had all her body hair removed.”

  That startled him back into English, at least temporarily.

  “What, she’s taken the hairs off her honeypot?” he said, horrified into uncharacteristic vulgarity.

  “Mm-hm,” I replied, pleased that this vision had at least distracted him from my own distressingly hairless condition. “Every hair. Madame Laserre plucked out the stray ones.”

  “Mary, Michael, and Bride!” He closed his eyes tightly, either in avoidance, or the better to contemplate the prospect I had described.

  Evidently the latter, for he opened his eyes again and glared at me, demanding, “She’s goin’ about now bare as a wee lassie?”

  “She says,” I replied delicately, “that men find it erotic.”

  His eyebrows nearly met his hairline, a neat trick for someone with such a classically high brow.

  “I do wish you would stop that muttering,” I remarked, hanging the cloth over a chairback to dry. “I can’t understand a word you say.”

  “On the whole, Sassenach,” he replied, “that’s as well.”

  12

  L’HôPITAL DES ANGES

  All right,” Jamie said resignedly over breakfast. He pointed a spoon at me in warning. “Go ahead, then. But you’ll take Murtagh as escort, besides the footman; it’s a poor neighborhood near the cathedral.”

 
; “Escort?” I sat up straight, pushing back the bowl of parritch which I had been eyeing with something less than enthusiasm. “Jamie! Do you mean you don’t mind if I visit. L’Hôpital des Anges?”

  “I don’t know if I mean that, exactly,” he said, spooning in his own parritch in a businesslike way. “But I expect I’ll mind a lot more if ye don’t. And if ye work at the Hôpital, at least it will keep ye from spending all your time with Louise de Rohan. I suppose there are worse things than associating wi’ beggars and criminals,” he said darkly. “At least I don’t expect you’ll come home from a hospital wi’ your privates plucked bare.”

  “I’ll try not,” I assured him.

  * * *

  I had seen a number of good hospital matrons in my time, and a few of the really excellent ones, who had exalted a job into a vocation. With Mother Hildegarde, the process had been reversed, with impressive results.