“I promised ye I would.” He spoke softly, head bent as he rearranged the folds of his plaid.
I stood up, feeling mildly dizzy, and leaned against the wall to keep my balance as I brushed sand and straw from my feet. The rough feel of the bricks behind me was a vivid reminder, and I spread my hands out against them, bracing myself against the rush of recalled sensation.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” He turned his head sharply to look up at me, sensing my movement.
“Yes. Yes,” I repeated. “Fine. Just … I’m fine. And you?”
He looked pale and scruffy, his face stubbled and hollow with strain, eyes smudged black from a long and sleepless night. He met my eyes for a moment, then glanced away. A hint of color showed on his cheekbones, and he swallowed audibly.
“I—” he began, then stopped. He got to his feet and stood before me. His formal queue had come undone, and the tails of his hair splayed over his shoulder, glimmering redly as the bar of light from the door lit him.
“Ye dinna hate me?” he asked abruptly. Taken by surprise, I laughed.
“No,” I said. “Do you think I should?”
His mouth twitched a little, and he rubbed his knuckles across it, scraping on the stubble of his beard.
“Well, maybe so,” he said, “but I’m glad if ye don’t.”
He took my hands gently in his own, his thumb rubbing lightly across the interlaced pattern of my silver ring. His hands were cold, chilled by the dawn.
“Whyever do you think I might hate you?” I asked. “Because of the rings, do you mean?” Granted, I would have been upset and furious with him, had he lost either one. Since he hadn’t … Of course, he had caused me to worry all night about where he was and what he was doing, to say nothing of sneaking into my room and making improper advances to my feet. Perhaps I ought to be annoyed with him, after all.
“Well, starting wi’ that,” he said dryly. “I havena let my pride get the better of me in some time, but I couldna seem to stop myself, what with wee Phillip Wylie preenin’ about, smirkin’ at your breasts, and—”
“He was?” I hadn’t noticed that part.
“He was,” Jamie said, glowering momentarily at the thought. Then he dismissed Phillip Wylie, returning to the catalogue of his own sins.
“And then, draggin’ ye out of the house in your shift and going after ye like a ravening beast—” He gently touched my neck, where I could still feel the tingling soreness of a bite mark.
“Oh. Well, I quite liked that part, actually.”
“You did?” His eyes flicked wide and blue in momentary startlement.
“Yes. Though I rather think I have bruises on my bottom.”
“Oh.” He looked down, apparently abashed, though the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “I’m sorry for that. When I’d finished—at the whist, I mean—I couldna think of anything but finding ye, Sassenach. I went up and down that stair a dozen times, going to your door, and back away again.”
“Oh, you did?” I was pleased to hear this, as it seemed to increase the odds that he had in fact been my midnight visitor.
He picked up a hank of my rumpled hair and ran his fingers gently through it.
“I kent I couldna sleep, and thought, well, I shall go out and walk in the night for a time, and I would, but then I should find myself again outside your room, not knowing how I’d come there, but only trying to think how I might get to ye—trying to will ye to come out to me, I suppose.”
Well, that explained my dreams of wild stallions, I thought. The place where he had bitten my neck throbbed slightly. And where had he brought me? A stable. King of Ireland, forsooth.
He squeezed my hands lightly.
“I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come.…” He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. “Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi’ your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye.…” He shook his head slowly.
“I did think I should die, if I didna have ye,” he said softly. “Just then.”
I reached up to stroke his face, his beard a soft bristle on my palm.
“Wouldn’t want you to die,” I whispered, tucking back a lock of hair behind his ear.
We smiled at each other then, but whatever else we might have said was interrupted by a loud whinny from one of the horses, followed by stamping noises. We were interfering with their breakfast.
I dropped my hand and Jamie bent to pick up his coat, which lay half-buried in the straw. He didn’t lose his balance as he bent, but I saw him wince as the blood went suddenly to his head.
“Did you have a terrible lot to drink last night?” I asked, recognizing the symptoms.
He straightened up with a small grunt of amusement.
“Aye, quarts,” he said, ruefully. “Ye can tell?”
A person with much less experience than I had could have told at a distance of roughly half a mile; putting aside the more obvious indications of recent intoxication, he smelled like a distillery.
“It didn’t impair your card playing, evidently,” I said, being tactful. “Or was Phillip Wylie similarly affected?”
He looked surprised, and slightly affronted.
“Ye dinna think I’d get besotted whilst I was playing, do ye? And with your rings at stake? No, that was after—MacDonald fetched a bottle of champagne and another of whisky, and insisted that we must celebrate our winnings in proper style.”
“MacDonald? Donald MacDonald? He was playing with you?”
“Aye, he and I were partnered against Wylie and Stanhope.” He shook the coat, sending bits of straw flying. “I couldna say what sort of soldier he was, but the man’s a fine hand at the whist, to be sure.”
Mention of the words “fine hand” reminded me. He’d come to the door of my room, he said; he hadn’t mentioned coming in. Had he, and been too far gone between liquor and longing to recall doing it? Had I, dazed with dreams of equine lust, imagined the whole thing? Surely not, I thought, but shook off the sense of vague disquiet engendered by the memory, in favor of another word from his remark.
“You said winnings?” In the stress of the moment, it had only seemed important that he had kept my rings, but it occurred to me belatedly that those were only his stake. “What did you take off Phillip Wylie?” I asked, laughing. “His embroidered coat buttons? Or his silver shoe buckles?”
His face had an odd expression as he glanced at me.
“Well, no,” he said. “I took his horse.”
He swung his coat round my shoulders, put an arm round my waist, and led me down the main aisle of the stable block, past the loose-boxes and stalls.
Joshua had come in quietly, through the other door, and was working at the far end of the stable, silhouetted against the light from the open double-doors as he pitchforked hay into the end stall. As we reached him, he glanced at us and nodded in greeting, his face carefully neutral at the sight of us, bedraggled, barefoot, and prickled with straw. Even in a household with a blind mistress, a slave knew what not to see.
No business of his, his downcast countenance said clearly. He looked nearly as tired as I felt, eyes heavy and bloodshot.
“How is he?” Jamie asked, lifting his chin toward the stall. Josh perked up a bit at the inquiry, putting down his pitchfork.
“Oh, he’s bonnie,” he said, with an air of satisfaction. “A bonnie lad, Mr. Wylie’s Lucas.”
“Indeed he is,” Jamie agreed. “Only he’s mine now.”
“He’s what?” Josh goggled at him, openmouthed.
“He’s mine.” Jamie went to the railing and reached out a hand to scratch the ears of the big stallion, busily engaged in eating hay from his manger.
“Seas,” he murmured to the horse. “Ciamar a tha thu, a ghille mhoir?”
I followed him, peering over his arm at the horse, who lifted his head for a moment, regarded us with a genial eye, snorted, tossed his veil-like mane out of his face, a
nd went back to his breakfast with single-minded intent.
“A lovely creature, is he no?” Jamie was admiring Lucas, a look of distant speculation in his eyes.
“Well, yes, he is, but—” My own admiration was substantially tinged with dismay. If Jamie had set out to avenge his own pride at the cost of Wylie’s, he’d done it in spades. Despite my irritation with Wylie, I couldn’t help a small pang at the thought of how he must be feeling at the loss of his magnificent Friesian.
“But what, Sassenach?”
“Well, just—” I fumbled awkwardly for words. I could scarcely say I felt sorry for Phillip Wylie, under the circumstances. “Just—well, what do you mean to do with him?”
Even I could see that Lucas was totally unsuited to life on Fraser’s Ridge. The thought of plowing or hauling with him seemed sacrilegious, and while I supposed Jamie could use him only for riding … I frowned dubiously, envisioning the boggy bottoms and rocky trails that would threaten those well-turned legs and splinter the glossy hooves; the hanging boughs and undergrowth that would tangle in mane and tail. Gideon the Man-eater was a thousand times better suited to such rough environs.
“Oh, I dinna mean to keep him,” Jamie assured me. He looked at the horse and sighed regretfully. “Though I should dearly love to. But ye’re right; he wouldna do for the Ridge. No, I mean to sell him.”
“Oh, good.” I was relieved to hear this. Wylie would undoubtedly buy Lucas back, no matter what the cost. I found that a comforting thought. And we could certainly use the money.
Joshua had gone out while we were talking. At this point, he reappeared in the doorway, a sack of grain on his shoulder. His previous sluggish air had disappeared, though; his eyes were still bloodshot, but he looked alert, and mildly alarmed.
“Mrs. Claire?” he said. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I met Teresa by the barn just now; she’s says as how there’s summat gone amiss wi’ Betty. I thought ye’d maybe want to know.”
50
BLOOD IN THE ATTIC
The attic room looked like the scene of a murder, and a brutal one, at that. Betty was struggling on the floor beside her overturned bed, knees drawn up and fists doubled into her abdomen, the muslin of her shift torn and saturated with blood. Fentiman was on the floor with her, dwarfed by her bulk but vainly grappling with her spasming body, nearly as smeared with gore as she was.
The sun was fully up now, and pouring in through the tiny windows in brilliant shafts that spotlighted parts of the chaos, leaving the rest in shadowed confusion. Cots were pushed aside and upset, bedding tangled in mounds, worn shoes and bits of clothing scattered like debris among the splotches of fresh blood on the wooden floor.
I hurried across the attic, but before I could reach her, Betty gave a deep, gurgling cough, and more blood gushed from her mouth and nose. She curled forward, arched back, doubled hard again … and went limp.
I fell to my knees beside her, though it was apparent from a glance that her limbs had relaxed into that final stillness from which there could be no hope of revival. I lifted her head and pressed my fingers under her jaw; her eyes had rolled back, only the whites showing. No breath, no sign of a pulse in the clammy neck.
From the quantities of blood spread round the room, I thought there could be very little left in her body. Her lips were blue, and her skin had gone the color of ashes. Fentiman knelt behind her, wigless and white-faced, skinny arms still locked about her heavy torso, holding her slumped body half off the floor.
He was in his nightshirt, I saw, a pair of blue satin breeches hastily pulled on beneath it. The air reeked of blood, bile, and feces, and he was smeared with all those substances. He looked up at me, though he showed no sign of recognition, his eyes wide and blank with shock.
“Dr. Fentiman.” I spoke softly; with the noise of struggle ceased, the attic was stricken with that absolute silence that often follows in the wake of death, and it seemed sacrilege to break it.
He blinked, and his mouth worked a little, but he seemed to have no notion how to reply. He didn’t move, though the spreading pool of blood had soaked through the knees of his breeches. I put a hand on his shoulder; it was bird-boned, but rigid with denial. I knew the feeling; to lose a patient you have fought for is a terrible thing—and yet one all doctors know.
“You have done all you can,” I said, still softly, and tightened my grip. “It is not your fault.” What had happened the day before wasn’t important. He was a colleague, and I owed him what absolution lay in my power to give.
He licked dry lips, and nodded once, then bent to lay the body gently down. A shaft of light skimmed the top of his head, glowing through the scanty bristles of cropped gray hair, and making the bones of his skull seem thin and fragile. He seemed suddenly frail altogether, and let me help him to his feet without protest.
A low moan made me turn, still holding his arm. A knot of female slaves huddled in the shadowed corner of the room, faces stark and dark hands fluttering with distress against the pale muslin of their shifts. There were male voices on the stair outside, muted and anxious. I could hear Jamie, low-voiced and calm, explaining.
“Gussie?” I called toward the women in the corner with the first name that came to mind.
The knot of slaves clung together for a moment, then reluctantly unraveled, and Gussie stepped out, a pale brown moth of a girl from Jamaica, small under a turban of blue calico.
“Madam?” She kept her eyes on mine, steadfastly away from the still form on the floor.
“I’m taking Doctor Fentiman downstairs. I’ll have some of the men come to … to take care of Betty. This …” I made a small gesture toward the mess on the floor, and she nodded, still shocked, but obviously relieved to have something to do.
“Yes, Madam. We do that, quick.” She hesitated, eyes darting round the room, then looked back at me. “Madam?”
“Yes?”
“Someone must go—tell that girl name Phaedre what’s gone with Betty. You tell her, please?”
Startled, I looked, and realized that Phaedre was not among the slaves in the corner. Of course; as Jocasta’s body servant, she would sleep downstairs, near her mistress, even on her wedding night.
“Yes,” I said, uncertainly. “Of course. But—”
“This Betty that girl’s mama,” Gussie said, seeing my incomprehension. She swallowed, tears swimming in her soft brown eyes. “Somebody—can I go, Madam? Can I go tell her?”
“Please,” I said, and stepped back, motioning her to go. She tiptoed past the body, then darted for the door, callused bare feet thumping softly on the boards.
Dr. Fentiman had begun to emerge from his shock. He pulled away from me and stooped toward the floor, making vague groping gestures. I saw that his medical kit had been upset in the struggle; bottles and instruments were strewn across the floor in a litter of metal and broken glass.
Before he could retrieve his kit, though, there was a brief commotion on the stair, and Duncan came into the room, Jamie on his heels. I noticed with some interest that Duncan was still wearing his wedding clothes, though minus coat and waistcoat. Had he been to bed at all? I wondered.
He nodded to me, but his eyes went at once to Betty, now sprawled on the floor, bloody shift crumpled round her broad, splayed thighs. One breast spilled from the torn fabric, heavy and slack as a half-filled pouch of meal. Duncan blinked several times. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his mustache, and took a visible breath. He bent to pluck a quilt from the carnage and laid it gently over her.
“Help me with her, Mac Dubh,” he said.
Seeing what he was about, Jamie knelt and gathered the dead woman up into his arms. Duncan drew himself upright, and turned his face toward the women in the corner.
“Dinna fash yourselves,” he said quietly. “I shall see her taken care of.” There was an unusual note of authority in his voice that made me realize that in spite of his natural modesty, he had accepted the fact that he was master here.
The
men left with their burden, and I heard Dr. Fentiman give a deep sigh. It felt as though the whole attic sighed with him; the atmosphere was still thick with stench and sorrow, but the shock of violent death was dissipating.
“Leave it,” I said to Fentiman, seeing him move again to pick up a bottle lying on the floor. “The women will take care of it.” Not waiting for argument, I took him firmly by the elbow and marched him out the door and down the stair.
People were up; I caught the sounds of rattling dishes from the dining room, and the faint scent of sausages. I couldn’t take him through the public rooms in his current state, nor up to the bedrooms; he was undoubtedly sharing a room with several other men, any of whom might still be abed. For lack of a better idea, I took him outside, pausing to snatch another of the maids’ cloaks from the pegs by the door and wrap it round his shoulders.
So Betty was—or had been—Phaedre’s mother. I hadn’t known Betty well, but I did know Phaedre, and felt grief for her tighten my throat. There was nothing I could do for her just now, though; but perhaps I could help the doctor.
Silent with shock, he followed me obediently as I led him down the side path by the lawns, shielded from view by Hector Cameron’s white-marble mausoleum and its growth of ornamental yew bushes. There was a stone bench by the river, half-hidden under a weeping willow. I doubted anyone would be patronizing it at this hour of the morning.
No one was, though two wine goblets sat on the bench, stained red with beeswing, abandoned remnants of the night’s festivities. I wondered briefly whether someone had been having a romantic rendezvous, and was reminded suddenly of my own midnight tryst. Damn it, I still didn’t know for sure who the owner of those hands had been!
Pushing the nagging question away with the wineglasses, I sat down, gesturing to Doctor Fentiman to join me. It was chilly, but the bench was in full sun at this hour, and the heat was warm and comforting on my face. The Doctor was looking better for the fresh air; vestiges of color had come back into his cheeks, and his nose had resumed its normal roseate hue.
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