Dragonfly in Amber, Page 39

  “Who hit me?” he barked.

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” answered Jamie, raising one eyebrow. “Come along, man, we havena got all night.”

  * * *

  “This is never going to work,” I muttered, stabbing pins decorated with brilliants at random through my hair. “She ought to have medical care, for one thing. She needs a doctor!”

  “She has one,” Jamie pointed out, lifting his chin and peering down his nose into the mirror as he tied his stock. “You.” Stock tied, he grabbed a comb and pulled it hurriedly through the thick, ruddy waves of his hair.

  “No time to braid it,” he muttered, holding a thick tail behind his head as he rummaged in a drawer. “Have ye a bit of ribbon, Sassenach?”

  “Let me.” I moved swiftly behind him, folding under the ends of the hair and wrapping the club in a length of green ribbon. “Of all the bloody nights to have a dinner party on!”

  And not just any dinner party, either. The Duke of Sandringham was to be guest of honor, with a small but select party to greet him. Monsieur Duverney was coming, with his eldest son, a prominent banker. Louise and Jules de La Tour were coming, and the d’Arbanvilles. Just to make things interesting, the Comte St. Germain had also been invited.

  “St. Germain!” I had said in astonishment, when Jamie had told me the week before. “Whatever for?”

  “I do business with the man,” Jamie had pointed out. “He’s been to dinner here before, with Jared. But what I want is to have the opportunity of watching him talk to you over dinner. From what I’ve seen of him in business, he’s not the man to hide his thoughts.” He picked up the white crystal that Master Raymond had given me and weighed it thoughtfully in his palm.

  “It’s pretty enough,” he had said. “I’ll have it set in a gold mounting, so you can wear it about your neck. Toy with it at dinner until someone asks ye about it, Sassenach. Then tell them what it’s for, and make sure to watch St. Germain’s face when ye do. If it was him gave ye the poison at Versailles, I think we’ll see some sign of it.”

  What I wanted at the moment was peace, quiet, and total privacy in which to shake like a rabbit. What I had was a dinner party with a duke who might be a Jacobite or an English agent, a Comte who might be a poisoner, and a rape victim hidden upstairs. My hands shook so that I couldn’t fasten the chain that held the mounted crystal; Jamie stepped behind me and snicked the catch with one flick of his thumb.

  “Haven’t you got any nerves?” I demanded of him. He grimaced at me in the mirror and put his hands over his stomach.

  “Aye, I have. But it takes me in the belly, not the hands. Have ye some of that stuff for cramp?”

  “Over there.” I waved at the medicine box on the table, left open from my dosing of Mary. “The little green bottle. One spoonful.”

  Ignoring the spoon, he tilted the bottle and took several healthy gulps. He lowered it and squinted at the liquid within.

  “God, that’s foul stuff! Are ye nearly ready, Sassenach? The guests will be here any minute.”

  Mary was concealed for the moment in a spare room on the second floor. I had checked her carefully for injuries, which seemed limited to bruises and shock, then dosed her quickly with as large a slug of poppy syrup as seemed feasible.

  Alex Randall had resisted all Jamie’s attempts to send him home, and instead had been left to stand guard over Mary, with strict instructions to fetch me if she woke.

  “How on earth did that idiot happen to be there?” I asked, scrabbling in the drawer for a box of powder.

  “I asked him that,” Jamie replied. “Seems the poor fool’s in love with Mary Hawkins. He’s been following her to and fro about the town, drooping like a wilted flower because he knows she’s to wed Marigny.”

  I dropped the box of powder.

  “H-h-he’s in love with her?” I wheezed, waving away the cloud of floating particles.

  “So he says, and I see nay reason to doubt it,” Jamie said, brushing powder briskly off the bosom of my dress. “He was a bit distraught when he told me.”

  “I should imagine so.” To the conflicting welter of emotions that filled me, I now added pity for Alex Randall. Of course he wouldn’t have spoken to Mary, thinking the devotion of an impoverished secretary nothing compared to the wealth and position of a match with the House of Gascogne. And now what must he feel, seeing her subjected to brutal attack, virtually under his nose?

  “Why in hell didn’t he speak up? She would have run off with him in a moment.” For the pale English curate, of course, must be the “spiritual” object of Mary’s speechless devotion.

  “Randall’s a gentleman,” Jamie replied, handing me a feather and the pot of rouge.

  “You mean he’s a silly ass,” I said uncharitably.

  Jamie’s lip twitched. “Well, perhaps,” he agreed. “He’s also a poor one; he hasna the income to support a wife, should her family cast her off—which they certainly would, if she eloped with him. And his health is feeble; he’d find it hard to find another position, for the Duke would likely dismiss him without a character.”

  “One of the servants is bound to find her,” I said, returning to an earlier worry in order to avoid thinking about this latest manifestation of tragedy.

  “No, they won’t. They’ll all be busy serving. And by the morning, she may be recovered enough to go back to her uncle’s house. I sent round a note,” he added, “to tell them she was staying the night with a friend, as it was late. Didna want them searching for her.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sassenach.” His hands on my shoulders stopped me, and he peered over my shoulder to meet my eyes in the mirror. “We canna let her be seen by anyone, until she’s able to speak and to act as usual. Let it be known what’s happened to her, and her reputation will be ruined entirely.”

  “Her reputation! It’s hardly her fault she was raped!” My voice shook slightly, and his grip on my shoulders tightened.

  “It isna right, Sassenach, but it’s how it is. Let it be known that she’s a maid no more, and no man will take her—she’ll be disgraced, and live a spinster to the end of her days.” His hand squeezed my shoulder, left it, and returned to help guide a pin into the precariously anchored hair.

  “It’s all we can do for her, Claire,” he said. “Keep her from harm, heal her as best we can—and find the filthy bastards who did it.” He turned away and groped in my casket for his stick pin. “Christ,” he added softly, speaking into the green velvet lining, “d’ye think I don’t know what it is to her? Or to him?”

  I laid my hand on his groping fingers and squeezed. He squeezed back, then lifted my hand and kissed it briefly.

  “Lord, Sassenach! Your fingers are cold as snow.” He turned me around to look earnestly into my face. “Are you all right, lass?”

  Whatever he saw in my face made him mutter “Christ” again, sink to his knees, and pull me against his ruffled shirtfront. I gave up the pretense of courage, and clung to him, burying my face in the starchy warmth.

  “Oh, God, Jamie. I was so scared. I am so scared. Oh, God, I wish you could make love to me now.”

  His chest vibrated under my cheek with his laugh, but he hugged me closer.

  “You think that would help?”

  “Yes.”

  In fact, I thought that I would not feel safe again, until I lay in the security of our bed, with the sheltering silence of the house all about us, feeling the strength and the heat of him around and within me, buttressing my courage with the joy of our joining, wiping out the horror of helplessness and near-rape with the sureness of mutual possession.

  He held my face between his hands and kissed me, and for a moment, the fear of the future and the terror of the night fell away. Then he drew back and smiled. I could see his own worry etched in the lines of his face, but there was nothing in his eyes but the small reflection of my face.

  “On account, then,” he said softly.

  * * *

  We had reached the se
cond course without incident, and I was beginning to relax slightly, though my hand still had a tendency to tremble over the consommé.

  “How perfectly fascinating!” I said, in response to a story of the younger Monsieur Duverney’s, to which I wasn’t listening, my ears being tuned for any suspicious noises abovestairs. “Do tell me more.”

  I caught Magnus’s eye as he served the Comte St. Germain, seated across from me, and beamed congratulations at him as well as I could with a mouthful of fish. Too well trained to smile in public, he inclined his head a respectful quarter-inch and went on with the service. My hand went to the crystal at my neck, and I stroked it ostentatiously as the Comte, with no sign of perturbation on his saturnine features, dug into the trout with almonds.

  Jamie and the elder Duverney were close in conversation at the other end of the table, food ignored as Jamie scribbled left-handed figures on a scrap of paper with a stub of chalk. Chess, or business? I wondered.

  As guest of honor, the Duke sat at the center of the table. He had enjoyed the first courses with the gusto of a natural-born trencherman, and was now engaged in animated conversation with Madame d’Arbanville, on his right. As the Duke was the most obviously prominent Englishman in Paris at the time, Jamie had thought it worthwhile cultivating his acquaintance, in hopes of uncovering any rumors that might lead to the sender of the musical message to Charles Stuart. My attention, though, kept straying from the Duke to the gentleman seated across from him—Silas Hawkins.

  I had thought I might just die on the spot and save trouble all round when the Duke had walked through the door, gesturing casually over his shoulder, and saying, “I say, Mrs. Fraser, you do know Hawkins here, don’t you?”

  The Duke’s small, merry blue eyes had met mine with a look of guileless confidence that his whims would be accommodated, and I had had no choice but to smile and nod, and tell Magnus to be sure another place was set. Jamie, seeing Mr. Hawkins as he came through the door of the drawing room, had looked as though he were in need of another dose of stomach medicine, but had pulled himself together enough to extend a hand to Mr. Hawkins and start a conversation about the quality of the inns on the road to Calais.

  I glanced at the carriage clock over the mantelpiece. How long before they would all be gone? I mentally tallied the courses already served, and those to come. Nearly to the sweet course. Then the salad and cheese. Brandy and coffee, port for the men, liqueurs for the ladies. An hour or two for stimulating conversation. Not too stimulating, please God, or they would linger ’til dawn.

  Now they were talking of the menace of street gangs. I abandoned the fish and picked up a roll.

  “And I have heard that some of these roving bands are composed not of rabble, as you would expect, but of some of the younger members of the nobility!” General d’Arbanville puffed out his lips at the monstrousness of the idea. “They do it for sport—sport! As though the robbery of decent men and the outraging of ladies were nothing more than a cockfight!”

  “How extraordinary,” said the Duke, with the indifference of a man who never went anywhere without a substantial escort. The platter of savouries hovered near his chin, and he scooped half a dozen onto his plate.

  Jamie glanced at me, and rose from the table.

  “If you’ll excuse me, mesdames, messieurs,” he said with a bow, “I have something rather special in the way of port that I would like to have His Grace taste. I’ll fetch it from the cellar.”

  “It must be the Belle Rouge,” said Jules de La Tour, licking his lips in anticipation. “You have a rare treat in store, Your Grace. I have never tasted such a wine anywhere else.”

  “Ah? Well, you soon will, Monsieur le Prince,” the Comte St. Germain broke in. “Something even better.”

  “Surely there is nothing better than Belle Rouge!” General d’Arbanville exclaimed.

  “Yes, there is,” the Comte declared, looking smug. “I have found a new port, made and bottled on the island of Gostos, off the coast of Portugal. A color rich as rubies, and a flavor that makes Belle Rouge taste like colored water. I have a contract for delivery of the entire vintage in August.”

  “Indeed, Monsieur le Comte?” Silas Hawkins raised thick, graying brows toward our end of the table. “Have you found a new partner for investment, then? I understood that your own resources were.…depleted, shall we say? following the sad destruction of the Patagonia.” He took a cheese savoury from the plate and popped it delicately into his mouth.

  The Comte’s jaw muscles bulged, and a sudden chill descended on our end of the table. From Mr. Hawkins’s sidelong glance at me, and the tiny smile that lurked about his busily chewing mouth, it was clear that he knew all about my role in the destruction of the unfortunate Patagonia.

  My hand went again to the crystal at my neck, but the Comte didn’t look at me. A hot flush had risen from his lacy stock, and he glared at Mr. Hawkins with open dislike. Jamie was right; not a man to hide his emotions.

  “Fortunately, Monsieur,” he said, mastering his choler with an apparent effort, “I have found a partner who wishes to invest in this venture. A fellow countryman, in fact, of our gracious host.” He nodded sardonically toward the doorway, where Jamie had just appeared, followed by Magnus, who bore an enormous decanter of the Belle Rouge port.

  Hawkins stopped chewing for a moment, his mouth unattractively open with interest. “A Scotsman? Who? I didn’t think there were any Scots in the wine business in Paris besides the house of Fraser.”

  A definite gleam of amusement lit the Comte’s eyes as he glanced from Mr. Hawkins to Jamie. “I suppose it is debatable whether the investor in question could be considered Scottish at the moment; nonetheless, he is milord Broch Tuarach’s fellow countryman. Charles Stuart is his name.”

  This bit of news had all the impact the Comte might have hoped for. Silas Hawkins sat bolt upright with an exclamation that made him choke on the remnants of his mouthful. Jamie, who had been about to speak, closed his mouth and sat down, regarding the Comte thoughtfully. Jules de La Tour began to spray exclamations and globules of spit, and both d’Arbanvilles made ejaculations of amazement. Even the Duke took his eyes off his plate and blinked at the Comte in interest.

  “Really?” he said. “I understood the Stuarts were poor as church mice. You’re sure he’s not gulling you?”

  “I have no wish to cast aspersions, or arouse suspicions,” chipped in Jules de La Tour, “but it is well known at Court that the Stuarts have no money. It is true that several of the Jacobite supporters have been seeking funds lately, but without luck, so far as I have heard.”

  “That’s true,” interjected the younger Duverney, leaning forward with interest. “Charles Stuart himself has spoken privately with two bankers of my acquaintance, but no one is willing to advance him any substantial sum in his present circumstances.”

  I shot a quick glance at Jamie, who answered with an almost imperceptible nod. This came under the heading of good news. But then what about the Comte’s story of an investment?

  “It is true,” he said belligerently. “His Highness has secured a loan of fifteen thousand livres from an Italian bank, and has placed the entire sum at my disposal, to be used in commissioning a ship and purchasing the bottling of the Gostos vineyard. I have the signed letter right here.” He tapped the breast of his coat with satisfaction, then sat back and looked triumphantly around the table, stopping at Jamie.

  “Well, milord,” he said, with a wave at the decanter that sat on the white cloth in front of Jamie, “are you going to allow us to taste this famous wine?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jamie murmured. He reached mechanically for the first glass.

  Louise, who had sat quietly eating through most of the dinner, noted Jamie’s discomfort. A kind friend, she turned to me in an obvious effort to change the course of the conversation to a neutral topic.

  “That is a beautiful stone you wear about your neck, ma chère,” she said, gesturing at my crystal. “Where did you get it?
”

  “Oh, this?” I said. “Well, in fact—”

  I was interrupted by a piercing scream. It stopped all conversation, and the brittle echoes of it chimed in the crystals of the chandelier overhead.

  “Mon Dieu,” said the Comte St. Germain, into the silence. “What—”

  The scream was repeated, and then repeated again. The noise spilled down the wide stairway and into the foyer.

  The guests, rising from the dinner table like a covey of flushed quail, also spilled into the foyer, in time to see Mary Hawkins, clad in the shredded remnants of her shift, lurch into view at the top of the stair. There she stood, as though for maximum effect, mouth stretched wide, hands splayed across her bosom, where the ripped fabric all too clearly displayed the bruises left by grappling hands on her breasts and arms.