Dragonfly in Amber

  “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 a
ir, 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.”