11
USEFUL OCCUPATIONS
“Who is that peculiar little man?” I asked Jamie curiously. The man in question was making his way slowly through the groups of guests gathered in the main salon of the de Rohans’ house. He would pause a moment, scanning the group with a critical eye, then either shrug a bony shoulder and pass on, or suddenly step in close to a man or woman, hold something to their face and issue some sort of command. Whatever he was doing, his actions appeared to be the occasion of considerable hilarity.
Before Jamie could answer, the man, a small, wizened specimen in gray serge, spotted us, and his face lit up. He swooped down on Jamie like a tiny bird of prey suddenly descending upon a large and startled rabbit.
“Sing,” he commanded.
“Eh?” Jamie blinked down at the little figure in astonishment.
“I said ‘Sing,’ ” answered the man, patiently. He prodded Jamie admiringly in the chest. “With a resonating cavity like that, you should have a wonderful volume.”
“Oh, he has volume,” I said, amused. “You can hear him across three squares of the city when he’s roused.”
Jamie shot me a dirty look. The little man was circling him, measuring the breadth of his back and tapping on him like a woodpecker sampling a prime tree.
“I can’t sing,” he protested.
“Nonsense, nonsense. Of course you can. A nice, deep baritone, too,” the little man murmured approvingly. “Excellent. Just what we need. Here, a bit of help for you. Try to match this tone.”
Deftly whipping a small tuning fork from his pocket, he struck it smartly against a pillar and held it next to Jamie’s left ear.
Jamie rolled his eyes heavenward, but shrugged and obligingly sang a note. The little man jerked back as though he’d been shot.
“No,” he said disbelievingly.
“I’m afraid so,” I said sympathetically. “He’s right, you know. He really can’t sing.”
The little man squinted accusingly at Jamie, then struck his fork once more and held it out invitingly.
“Once more,” he coaxed. “Just listen to it, and let the same sound come out.”
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 satisfied 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.
“So I sheathed my blade and smoothed back my hair, and stood there—half-expectin’ her to come and throw herself into my arms, I suppose.”
“Um,” I said, delicately. “I gather she didn’t?”
“Well, I didna ken anything about women then, did I?” he demanded. “No, she came and threw herself on him, of course.” He made a Scottish noise deep in his throat, one of self-derision and humorous disgust. “Married him a month later, I heard.”
“Aye, well.” He shrugged suddenly, with a rueful smile. “So my heart was broken. Went home to Scotland and moped about for weeks, until my father lost patience wi’ me.” He laughed. “I even thought of turning monk over it. Said to my father over supper one night as I thought perhaps in the spring I’d go across to the Abbey and become a novice.”
I laughed at the thought. “Well, you’d have no difficulty with the vow of poverty; chastity and obedience might come a bit harder. What did your father say?”
He grinned, teeth white in a dark face. “He was eating brose. He laid down the spoon and looked at me for a moment. Then he sighed and shook his head, and said, ‘It’s been a long day, Jamie.’ Then he picked up the spoon again and went back to his supper, and I never said another word about it.”
He looked up the slope to the terrace, where those not dancing strolled to and fro, cooling off between dances, sipping wine and flirting behind fans. He sighed nostalgically.
“Aye, a verra pretty lass, Annalise de Marillac. Graceful as the wind, and so small that ye wanted to tuck her inside your shirt and carry her like a kitten.”
I was silent, listening to the faint music from the open doors above, as I contemplated the gleaming satin slipper that encased my size-nine foot.
After a moment, Jamie became aware of my silence.
“What is it, Sassenach?” he asked, laying a hand on my arm.
“Oh, nothing,” I said with a sigh. “Only thinking that I rather doubt anyone will ever describe me as ‘graceful as the wind.’ ”
“Ah.” His head was half-turned, the long, straight nose and firm chin lighted from behind by the glow of the nearest lantern. I could see the half-smile on his lips as he turned back toward me.
“Well, I’ll tell ye, Sassenach, ‘graceful’ is possibly not the first word that springs to mind at thought of you.” He slipped an arm behind me, one hand large and warm around my silk-clad shoulder.
“But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul,” he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple.
“And, Sassenach,” he whispered, “your face is my heart.”
It was the shifting of the wind, several minutes later, that parted us at last with a fine spray from the fountain. We broke apart and rose hastily, laughing at the sudden chill of the water. Jamie inclined his head inquiringly toward the terrace, and I took his arm, nodding.
“So,” I observed, as we made our way slowly up the wide steps to the ballroom, “you’ve learnt a bit more about women now, I see.”
He laughed, low and deep, tightening his grasp on my waist.
“The most important thing I’ve learned about women, Sassenach, is which one to choose.” He stepped away, bowing to me, and gesturing through the open doors to the brilliant scene inside. “May I have this dance, milady?”
I spent the next afternoon at the d’Arbanvilles’, where I met the King’s singing-master once again. This time, we found time for a conversation, which I recounted to Jamie after supper.
“You what?” Jamie squinted at me, as though he suspected me of pulling some practical joke.
“I said, Herr Gerstmann suggested that I might be interested in meeting a friend of his. Mother Hildegarde is in charge of L’Hôpital des Anges—you know, the charity hospital down near the cathedral.”
“I know where it is.” His voice was marked by a general lack of enthusiasm.
“He had a sore throat, and that led to me telling him what to take for it, and a bit about medicines in general, and how I was interested in diseases and, well, you know how one thing leads to another.”
“With you, it customarily does,” he agreed, sounding distinctly cynical. I ignored his tone and went on.
“So, I’m going to go to the hospital tomorrow.” I stretched on tiptoe to reach down my medicine box from its shelf. “Maybe I won’t take it along with me the first time,” I said, scanning the contents meditatively. “It might seem too pushing. Do you think?”
“Pushing?” He sounded stunned. “Are ye meaning to visit the place, or move into it?”
“Er, well,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I, er, thought perhaps I could work there regularly. Herr Gerstmann says that all the physicians and healers who go there donate their time. Most of them don’t turn up every day, but I have plenty of time, and I could—”
“Plenty of time?”
“Stop repeating everything I say,” I said. “Yes, plenty of time. I know it’s important to go to salons and supper parties and all that, but it doesn’t take all day—at least it needn’t. I could—”
“Sassenach, you’re with child! Ye dinna mean to go out to nurse beggars and criminals?” He sounded rather helpless now, as though wondering how to deal with someone who had suddenly gone mad in front of him.
“I hadn’t forgotten,” I assured him. I pressed my hands against my belly, squinting down.
“It isn’t really noticeable yet; with a loose gown I can get away with it for a time. And there’s nothing wrong with me except the morning sickness; no reason why I shouldn’t work for some months yet.”
“No reason, except I wilna have ye doing it!” Expecting no company this evening, he had taken off his stock and opened his collar when he came home. I could see the tide of dusky red advancing up his throat.
“Jamie,” I said, striving for reasonableness. “You know what I am.”
“You’re my wife!”
“Well, that, too.” I flicked the idea aside with my fingers. “I’m a nurse, Jamie. A healer. You have reason to know it.”
He flushed hotly. “Aye, I do. And because ye’ve mended me when I’m wounded, I should think it right for ye to tend beggars and prostitutes? Sassenach, do ye no ken the sort of people that L’Hôpital des Anges takes in?” He looked pleadingly at me, as though expecting me to return to my senses any minute.
“What difference does that make?”
He looked wildly around the room, imploring witness from the portrait over the mantelpiece as to my unreasonableness.
“You could catch a filthy disease, for God’s sake! D’ye have no regard for your child, even if ye have none for me?”
Reasonableness was seeming a less desirable goal by the moment.
“Of course I have! What kind of careless, irresponsible person do you think I am?”
“The kind who would abandon her husband to go and play with scum in the gutter!” he snapped. “Since you ask.” He ran a big hand through his hair, making it stick up at the crown.
“Abandon you? Since when is it abandoning you to suggest really doing something, instead of rotting away in the d’Arbanvilles’ salon, watching Louise de Rohan stuff herself with pastry, and listening to bad poetry and worse music? I want to be useful!”
“Taking care of your own household isna useful? Being married to me isna useful?” The lacing round his hair broke under the stress, and the thick locks fluffed out like a flaming halo. He glared down his nose at me like an avenging angel.
“Sauce for the gander,” I retorted coldly. “Is being married to me sufficient occupation for you? I don’t notice you hanging round the house all day, adoring me. And as for the household, bosh.”
“Bosh? What’s bosh?” he demanded.
“Stuff and nonsense. Rot. Horsefeathers. In other words, don’t be ridiculous. Madame Vionnet does everything, and does it several dozen times better than I could.”
This was so patently true that it stopped him for a moment. He glared down at me, jaw working.
“Oh, aye? And if I forbid ye to go?”
This stopped me for a moment. I drew myself up and looked him up and down. His eyes were the color of rain-dark slate, the wide, generous mouth clamped in a straight line. Shoulders broad and back erect, arms folded across his chest like a cast-iron statue, “forbidding” was precisely the word that best described him.
“Do you forbid me?” The tension crackled between us. I wanted to blink, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking off my own steely gaze. What would I do if he forbade me to go? Alternatives raced through my mind, everything from planting the ivory letter-opener between his ribs to burning down the house with him in it. The only idea I rejected absolutely was that of giving in.
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 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.”