"A sorry one," he said, and scowled when she laughed. She saw the scowl, but didn't pull back.
"Come in," she said, and took his hand. "You look as though you could do with a drink." He saw her glance at his knuckles, burst and bleeding, and she caught her lower lip behind small white teeth. She didn't seem afraid, though, and he found himself drawn unprotesting into the shadowed doorway after her.
What did it matter? he thought, with a sudden savage weariness. What did anything matter?
IT WASN'T YET MIDDAY, and the only voices in the house were the distant chitter of women. No one was visible in the parlor as they passed, and no one appeared as she led him up a foot-marked staircase to her room. It gave him an odd feeling, as though he might be invisible. He found the notion a comfort; he couldn't bear himself.
She went in before him and threw open the shutters. He wanted to tell her to close them; he felt wretchedly exposed in the flood of sunlight. But it was summer; the room was hot and airless, and he was already sweating heavily. Air swirled in, heavy with the odor of tree sap, and the sun glowed briefly on the smooth top of her head, like the gloss on a fresh conker. She turned and smiled at him.
"First things first," she announced briskly. "Throw off your coat and waistcoat before you suffocate." Not waiting to see whether he would take this suggestion, she turned to reach for the basin and ewer. She filled the basin and stepped back, motioning him toward the wash-stand, where a towel and a much-used sliver of soap stood on worn wood.
"I'll fetch us a drink, shall I?" And with that, she was gone, bare feet pattering busily down the stairs.
Mechanically, he began to undress. He blinked stupidly at the basin, but then recalled that in the better sort of house, sometimes a man was required to wash his parts first. He'd encountered the custom once before, but on that occasion, the whore had performed the ablution for him--plying the soap to such effect that the first encounter had ended right there in the washbasin.
The memory made the blood flame up in his face again, and he ripped at his flies, popping off a button. He was still throbbing all over, but the sensation was becoming more centralized.
His hands were unsteady, and he cursed under his breath, reminded by the broken skin on his knuckles of his unceremonious exit from his father's--no, not his bloody father's house. Lord John's.
"You bloody bastard!" he said under his breath. "You knew, you knew all along!" That infuriated him almost more than the horrifying revelation of his own paternity--that his stepfather, whom he'd loved, whom he'd trusted more than anyone on earth--that Lord John bloody Grey had lied to him his whole life!
Everyone had lied to him.
Everyone.
He felt suddenly as though he'd broken through a crust of frozen snow and plunged straight down into an unsuspected river beneath. Swept away into black breathlessness beneath the ice, helpless, voiceless, a feral chill clawing at his heart.
There was a small sound behind him and he whirled by instinct, aware only when he saw the young whore's appalled face that he was weeping savagely, tears running down his own face, and his wet, half-hard cock flopping out of his breeches.
"Go away," he croaked, making a frantic effort to tuck himself away.
She didn't go away, but came toward him, decanter in one hand and a pair of pewter cups in the other.
"Are you all right?" she asked, eyeing him sideways. "Here, let me pour you a drink. You can tell me all about it."
"No!"
She came on toward him, but more slowly. Through his swimming eyes he saw the twitch of her mouth as she saw his cock.
"I meant the water for your poor hands," she said, clearly trying not to laugh. "I will say as you're a real gentleman, though."
"I'm not!"
She blinked.
"Is it an insult to call you a gentleman?"
Overcome with fury at the word, he lashed out blindly, knocking the decanter from her hand. It burst in a spray of glass and cheap wine, and she cried out as the red soaked through her petticoat.
"You bastard!" she shrieked, and drawing back her arm, threw the cups at his head. She didn't hit him, and they clanged and rolled away across the floor. She was turning toward the door, crying out, "Ned! Ned!" when he lunged and caught her.
He only wanted to stop her shrieking, stop her bringing up whatever male enforcement the house employed. He got a hand on her mouth, yanking her back from the door, grappling one-handed to try to control her flailing arms.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he kept saying. "I didn't mean--I don't mean--oh, bloody hell!" She caught him abruptly in the nose with her elbow and he dropped her, backing away with a hand to his face, blood dripping through his fingers.
Her face was marked with red where he'd held her, and her eyes were wild. She backed away, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Get ... out!" she gasped.
He didn't need telling twice. He rushed past her, shouldered his way past a burly man charging up the stairs, and ran down the alley, realizing only when he reached the street that he was in his shirtsleeves, having left coat and waistcoat behind, and his breeches were undone.
"Ellesmere!" said an appalled voice nearby. He looked up in horror, to find himself the cynosure of several English officers, including Alexander Lindsay, Earl Balcarres.
"Good Christ, Ellesmere, what happened?" Sandy was by way of being a friend, and was already pulling a voluminous, snowy handkerchief from his sleeve. He clapped this to William's nose, pinching his nostrils and insisting that he put his head back.
"Have you been set upon and robbed?" one of the others demanded. "God! This filthy place!"
He felt at once comforted by their company--and hideously embarrassed by it. He was not one of them; not any longer.
"Was it? Was it robbery?" another said, glaring round eagerly. "We'll find the bastards who did it, 'pon my honor we will! We'll get your property back and teach whoever did it a lesson!"
Blood was running down the back of his throat, harsh and iron-tasting, and he coughed, but did his best to nod and shrug simultaneously. He had been robbed. But no one was ever going to give him back what he'd lost today.
Meanwhile, outside Philadelphia, Lord John and Jamie continue an Interesting Conversation ...
HE'D BEEN QUITE RESIGNED TO DYING; HAD EXPECTED IT from the moment that he'd blurted out, "I have had carnal knowledge of your wife." The only question in his mind had been whether Fraser would shoot him, stab him, or eviscerate him with his bare hands.
To have the injured husband regard him calmly and say merely, "Oh? Why?" was not merely unexpected, but ... infamous. Absolutely infamous.
"Why?" John Grey repeated, incredulous. "Did you say 'why'?"
"I did. And I should appreciate an answer."
Now that Grey had both eyes open, he could see that Fraser's outward calm was not quite so impervious as he'd first supposed. There was a pulse beating in Fraser's temple, and he'd shifted his weight a little, like a man might do in the vicinity of a tavern brawl, not quite ready to commit violence, but readying himself to meet it. Perversely, Grey found this sight steadying.
"What do you bloody mean, 'why'?" he said, suddenly irritated. "And why aren't you fucking dead?"
"I often wonder that myself," Fraser replied politely. "I take it ye thought I was?"
"Yes, and so did your wife! Do you have the faintest idea what the knowledge of your death did to her?"
The dark blue eyes narrowed just a trifle.
"Are ye implying that the news of my death deranged her to such an extent that she lost her reason and took ye to her bed by force? Because," he went on, neatly cutting off Grey's heated reply, "unless I've been seriously misled regarding your own nature, it would take substantial force to compel ye to any such action. Or am I wrong?"
The eyes stayed narrow. Grey stared back at them. Then he closed his own eyes briefly and rubbed both hands hard over his face, like a man waking from a nightmare. He dropped his hands
and opened his eyes again.
"You are not misled," he said through clenched teeth. "And you are wrong."
Fraser's ruddy eyebrows shot up--in genuine astonishment, he thought.
"Ye went to her because--from desire?" His voice rose, too. "And she let ye? I dinna believe it."
The color was creeping up Fraser's tanned neck, vivid as a climbing rose. Grey had seen that happen before, and decided recklessly that the best--the only--defense was to lose his own temper first. It was a relief.
"We thought you were dead, you bloody arsehole!" he said, furious. "Both of us! Dead! And we--we--took too much to drink one night--very much too much ... we spoke of you ... and ... Damn you, neither one of us was making love to the other--we were fucking you!"
Fraser's face went abruptly blank and his jaw dropped. Grey enjoyed one split-second of satisfaction at the sight, before a massive fist came up hard beneath his ribs and he hurtled backward, staggered a few steps further, and fell. He lay in the leaves, completely winded, mouth opening and closing like an automaton's.
All right, then, he thought dimly. Bare hands it is.
The hands wrapped themselves in his shirt and jerked him to his feet. He managed to stand, and a wisp of air seeped into his lungs. Fraser's face was an inch from his. Fraser was in fact so close that he couldn't see the man's expression--only a close-up view of two bloodshot blue eyes, both of them berserk. That was enough. He felt quite calm now. It wouldn't take long.
"You tell me exactly what happened, ye filthy wee pervert," Fraser whispered, his breath hot on Grey's face and smelling of ale. He shook Grey slightly. "Every word. Every motion. Everything."
Grey got just enough breath to answer.
"No," he said definitely. "Go ahead and kill me."
Kidnapped and imprisoned in a hydroelectric maintenance tunnel under a dam, Jem rides the workers' train toward whatever awaits him in the dark ...
HE MUST BE GETTING NEAR THE END OF THE TUNNEL. JEM could tell by the way the air pushed back against his face. All he could see was the little red light on the train's dashboard--did you call it a dashboard on a train? he wondered. He didn't want to stop, because that meant he'd have to get out of the train, into the dark. But the train was running out of track, so there wasn't much else he could do.
He pulled back a little bit on the lever that made the train go, and it slowed down. More. Just a little more, and the lever clicked into a kind of slot and the train stopped with a little jerk that made him stumble and grab the edge of the cab.
An electric train didn't make any engine noise, but the wheels rattled on the track and the train made squeaks and clunks as it moved. When it stopped, the noise stopped too. It was really quiet.
"Hey!" he said out loud, because he didn't want to listen to his heart beating. The sound echoed, and he looked up, startled. Mum had said the tunnel was really high, more than thirty feet, but he'd forgot that. The idea that there was a lot of empty space hanging over him that he couldn't see bothered him a lot. He swallowed, and stepped out of the tiny engine, holding on to the frame with one hand.
"Hey!" he shouted at the invisible ceiling. "Are there any bats up there?"
Silence. He'd kind of been hoping there were bats. He wasn't afraid of them--there were bats in the old broch, and he liked to sit and watch them come out to hunt in the summer evenings. But he was alone. Except for the dark.
His hands were sweating. He let go of the metal cab and scrubbed both hands on his jeans. Now he could hear himself breathing, too.
"Crap," he whispered under his breath. That made him feel better, so he said it again. Maybe he ought to be praying instead, but he didn't feel like that, not yet.
There was a door, Mum said. At the end of the tunnel. It led into the service chamber, where the big turbines could be lifted up from the dam if they needed fixing. Would the door be locked?
Suddenly he realized that he'd stepped away from the train and he didn't know whether he was facing the end of the tunnel or back the way he'd come. In a panic, he blundered to and fro, hands out, looking for the train. He tripped over part of the track and fell sprawling. He lay there for a second saying, "Crap-crap-crap-crap-crap!" because he'd skinned both knees and the palm of his hand, but he was OK, really, and now he knew where the track was, so he could follow it and not get lost.
He got up, wiped his nose, and shuffled slowly along, kicking the track every few steps to be sure he stayed with it. He thought he was in front of where the train had stopped, so it didn't really matter which way he was going--either he'd find the train or he'd find the end of the tunnel. And then the door. If it was locked, maybe--
Something like an electric shock ran right through him. He gasped and fell over backward. The only thing in his mind was the idea that somebody had hit him with a light saber like Luke Skywalker's, and for a minute, he thought maybe whoever it was had cut off his head.
He couldn't feel his body, and could see in his mind his body lying bleeding in the dark and his head sitting right there on the train tracks in the dark, not being able to see his body and not even knowing it wasn't attached anymore. He made a breathless kind of a noise that was trying to be a scream, but it made his stomach move and he felt that, he felt it, and suddenly he felt a lot more like praying.
"Gratia ... Deo!" he managed to gasp. It was what Grandda said when he talked about a fight or killing something and this wasn't quite that sort of thing, but it seemed like a good thing to say anyway.
Now he could feel all of himself again, but he sat up and grabbed his neck, just to be sure his head was still on. His skin was jumping in the weirdest way. Like a horse's does when a horse-fly bites it, but all over. He swallowed and tasted sugared silver and he gasped again, because now he knew what had hit him. Sort of.
This wasn't quite like it had been, when they'd all walked into the rocks on Ocracoke. One minute, he'd been in his father's arms and the next minute it was like he was scattered everywhere in little wiggly pieces like the spilled quicksilver in Grannie's surgery. Then he was back together again and Da was still holding him tight enough to squeeze his breath out, and he could hear Da sobbing and that scared him and he had a funny taste in his mouth and little pieces of him were still wiggling around trying to get away but they were trapped inside his skin....
Yeah. That was what was making his skin jump now, and he breathed easier, knowing what it was. That was OK, then, he was OK, it would stop.
It was stopping already, the twitchy feeling going away. He still felt a little shaky, but he stood up. Careful, because he didn't know where it was.
Wait ... he did know. He knew exactly.
"That's weird," he said out loud without really noticing, because he wasn't scared by the dark anymore, it wasn't important.
He couldn't really see it, not with his eyes, not exactly. He squinted, trying to think how he was seeing it, but there wasn't a word for what he was doing. Kind of like hearing or smelling or touching, but not really any of those.
But he knew where it was. It was right there, a kind of ... shiver ... in the air, and when he stared at it, he had a feeling in the back of his mind like really pretty sparkly things, like sun on the sea and the way a candle flame looked when it shone through a ruby, but he knew he wasn't really seeing anything like that.
It went all the way across the tunnel, and up to the high roof, too, he could tell. But it wasn't thick at all, it was thin as air.
He guessed that was why it hadn't swallowed him like the thing in the rocks on Ocracoke had. At least ... he thought it hadn't, and for an instant, worried that maybe he'd gone sometime else. But he didn't think so. The tunnel felt just the same, and so did he, now his skin had stopped jumping. When they'd done it, on Ocracoke, he'd known right away it was different.
He stood there for a minute, just looking and thinking, and then shook his head and turned around, feeling with his foot for the track. He wasn't going back through that, no matter what. He'd just have to hope the doo
r wasn't locked.
Diana Gabaldon, The Scottish Prisoner
(Series: Lord John Grey # 3)
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