The house hummed quietly around me, with dinner preparations taking place belowstairs. No company was expected tonight, so the usual bustle was subdued; we ate simply when alone.
I sat down on the bed and closed my eyes, folding my hands across my swelling stomach, the lock of hair gripped tight, as though I could keep him safe, so long as I didn’t let go.
Had I been in time? Had the police found Jack Randall before Jamie did? What if they had arrived concurrently, or just in time to find Jamie challenging Randall to a formal duel? I rubbed the lock of hair between thumb and forefinger, splaying the cut ends in a small spray of roan and amber. Well, if so, at least they would both be safe. In prison, perhaps, but that was a minor consideration by contrast to other dangers.
And if Jamie had found Randall first? I glanced outside; the light was fading fast. Duels were traditionally fought at dawn, but I didn’t know whether Jamie would have waited for morning. They might at this moment be facing each other, somewhere in seclusion, where the clash of steel and the cry of mortal wounding would attract no attention.
For a mortal fight it would be. What lay between those two men would be settled only by death. And whose death would it be? Jamie’s? Or Randall’s—and with him, Frank’s? Jamie was likely the better swordsman, but as the challenged, Randall would have the choice of weapons. And success with pistols lay less with the skill of the user than with his fortune; only the best-made pistols aimed true, and even those were prone to misfire or other accidents. I had a sudden vision of Jamie, limp and quiet on the grass, blood welling from an empty eye socket, and the smell of black powder strong among the scents of spring in the Boìs de Boulogne.
“What in hell are you doing, Claire?”
My head snapped up, so hard I bit my tongue. Both his eyes were present and in their correct positions, staring at me from either side of the knife-edged nose. I had never seen him with his hair so close-clipped before. It made him look like a stranger, the strong bones of his face stark beneath the skin and the dome of his skull visible under the short, thick turf of his hair.
“What am I doing?” I echoed. I swallowed, working some moisture back into my dry mouth. “What am I doing? I’m sitting here with a lock of your hair in my hand, wondering whether you were dead or not! That’s what I’m doing!”
“I’m not dead.” He crossed to the armoire and opened it. He wore his sword, but had changed clothes since our visit to Sandringham’s house; now he was dressed in his old coat—the one that allowed him free movement of his arms.
“Yes, I noticed,” I said. “Thoughtful of you to come tell me.”
“I came to fetch my clothes.” He pulled out two shirts and his full-length cloak and laid them across a stool while he went to rummage in the chest of drawers for clean linen.
“Your clothes? Where on earth are you going?” I hadn’t known what to expect when I saw him again, but I certainly hadn’t expected this.
“To an inn.” He glanced at me, then apparently decided I deserved more than a three-word explanation. He turned and looked at me, his eyes blue and opaque as azurite.
“When I sent ye home in the coach, I walked for a bit, until I had a grip on myself once more. Then I came home to fetch my sword, and returned to the Duke’s house to give Randall a formal challenge. The butler told me Randall had been arrested.”
His gaze rested on me, remote as the ocean depths. I swallowed once more.
“I went to the Bastille. They told me you’d sworn to an accusation against Randall, saying he’d attacked you and Mary Hawkins the other night. Why, Claire?”
My hands were shaking, and I dropped the lock of hair I had been holding. Its cohesion disturbed by handling, it disintegrated, and the fine red hairs spilled loose across my lap.
“Jamie,” I said, and my voice was shaking, too, “Jamie, you can’t kill Jack Randall.”
One corner of his mouth twitched, very slightly.
“I dinna ken whether to be touched at your concern for my safety, or to be offended at your lack of confidence. But in either case, you needna worry. I can kill him. Easily.” The last word was spoken quietly, with an underlying tone that mingled venom with satisfaction.
“That isn’t what I mean! Jamie—”
“Fortunately,” he went on, as though not hearing me, “Randall has proof that he was at the Duke’s residence all during the evening of the rape. As soon as the police finish interviewing the guests who were present, and satisfy themselves that Randall is innocent—of that charge, at least—then he’ll be let go. I shall stay at the inn until he’s free. And then I shall find him.” His eyes were fixed on the wardrobe, but plainly he was seeing something else. “He’ll be waiting for me,” he said softly.
He stuffed the shirts and linen into a traveling-bag and slung his cloak over his arm. He was turning to go through the door when I sprang up from the bed and caught him by the sleeve.
“Jamie! For God’s sake, Jamie, listen to me! You can’t kill Jack Randall because I won’t let you!”
He stared down at me in utter astonishment.
“Because of Frank,” I said. I let go of his sleeve and stepped back.
“Frank,” he repeated, shaking his head slightly as though to clear a buzzing in his ears. “Frank.”
“Yes,” I said. “If you kill Jack Randall now, then Frank…he won’t exist. He won’t be born. Jamie, you can’t kill an innocent man!”
His face, normally a pale, ruddy bronze, had faded to a blotchy white as I spoke. Now the red began to rise again, burning the tips of his ears and flaming in his cheeks.
“An innocent man?”
“Frank is an innocent man! I don’t care about Jack Randall—”
“Well, I do!” He snatched up the bag and strode toward the door, cloak streaming over one arm. “Jesus God, Claire! You’d try to stop me taking my vengeance on the man who made me play whore to him? Who forced me to my knees and made me suck his cock, smeared with my own blood? Christ, Claire!” He flung the door open with a crash and was in the hallway by the time I could reach him.
It had grown dark by now, but the servants had lit the candles, and the hallway was aglow with soft light. I grasped him by the arm and yanked at him.
“Jamie! Please!”
He jerked his arm impatiently out of my grasp. I was almost crying, but held back the tears. I caught the bag and pulled it out of his hand.
“Please, Jamie! Wait, just for a year! The child—Randall’s—it will be conceived next December. After that, it won’t matter. But please—for my sake, Jamie—wait that long!”
The candelabra on the gilt-edged table threw his shadow huge and wavering against the far wall. He stared up at it, hands clenched, as though facing a giant, blank-faced and menacing, that towered above him.
“Aye,” he whispered, as though to himself, “I’m a big chap. Big and strong. I can stand a lot. Yes, I can stand it.” He whirled on me, shouting.
“I can stand a lot! But just because I can, does that mean I must? Do I have to bear everyone’s weakness? Can I not have my own?”
He began to pace up and down the hall, the shadow following in silent frenzy.
“You cannot ask it of me! You, you of all people! You, who know what…what…” He choked, speechless with rage.
He hit the stone wall of the passage repeatedly as he walked, smashing the side of his fist viciously into the limestone wall. The stone swallowed each blow in soundless violence.
He turned back and came to a halt facing me, breathing heavily. I stood stock-still, afraid to move or speak. He nodded once or twice, rapidly, as though making up his mind about something, then drew the dirk from his belt with a hiss and held it in front of my nose. With a visible effort, he spoke calmly.
“You may have your choice, Claire. Him, or me.” The candle flames danced in the polished metal as he turned the knife slowly. “I cannot live while he lives. If ye wilna have me kill him, then kill me now, yourself!” He grabbed my hand and force
d my fingers around the handle of the dirk. Ripping the lacy jabot open, he bared his throat and yanked my hand upward, fingers hard around my own.
I pulled back with all my strength, but he forced the tip of the blade against the soft hollow above the collarbone, just below the livid cicatrice that Randall’s own knife had left there years before.
“Jamie! Stop it! Stop it right now!” I brought my other hand down on his wrist as hard as I could, jarring his grip enough to jerk my fingers free. The knife clattered to the floor, bouncing from the stones to a quiet landing on a corner of the leafy Aubusson carpet. With that clarity of vision for small details that afflicts life’s most awful moments, I saw that the blade lay stark across the curling stem of a bunch of fat green grapes, as though about to sever it and cut them free of the weft to roll at our feet.
He stood frozen before me, face white as bone, eyes burning. I gripped his arm, hard as wood beneath my fingers.
“Please believe me, please. I wouldn’t do this if there were any other way.” I took a deep, quivering breath to quell the leaping pulse beneath my ribs.
“You owe me your life, Jamie. Not once, twice over. I saved you from hanging at Wentworth, and when you had fever at the Abbey. You owe me a life, Jamie!”
He stared down at me for a long moment before answering. When he did, his voice was quiet again, with an edge of bitterness.
“I see. And ye’ll claim your debt now?” His eyes burned with the clear, deep blue that burns in the heart of a flame.
“I have to! I can’t make you see reason any other way!”
“Reason. Ah, reason. No, I canna say that reason is anything I see just now.” He folded his arms behind his back, gripping the stiff fingers of his right hand with the curled ones of his left. He walked slowly away from me, down the endless hall, head bowed.
The passage was lined with paintings, some lighted from below by torchere or candelabra, some from above by the gilded sconces; a few less favored, skulked in the darkness between. Jamie walked slowly between them, glancing up now and again as though in converse with the wigged and painted gallery.
The hall ran the length of the second floor, carpeted and tapestried, with enormous stained-glass windows set into the walls at either end of the corridor. He walked all the way to the far end, then, wheeling with the precision of a soldier on parade, all the way back, still at a slow and formal pace. Down and back, down and back, again and again.
My legs trembling, I subsided into a fauteuil near the end of the passage. Once one of the omnipresent servants approached obsequiously to ask if Madame required wine, or perhaps a biscuit? I waved him away with what politeness I could muster, and waited.
At last he came to a halt before me, feet planted wide apart in silver-buckled shoes, hands still clasped behind his back. He waited for me to look up at him before he spoke. His face was set, with no twitch of agitation to betray him, though the lines near his eyes were deep with strain.
“A year, then” was all he said. He turned at once and was several feet away by the time I struggled out of the deep green-velvet chair. I had barely gained my feet when he suddenly whirled back past me, reached the huge stained-glass window in three strides, and smashed his right hand through it.
The window was made up of thousands of tiny colored panes, held in place by strips of melted lead. Though the entire window, a mythological scene of the Judgment of Paris, shuddered in its frame, the leading held most of the panes intact; in spite of the crash and tinkle, only a jagged hole at the feet of Aphrodite let in the soft spring air.
Jamie stood a moment, pressing both hands tight into his midriff. A dark red stain grew on the frilled cuff, lacy as a bridal shirt. He brushed past me once again as I moved toward him, and stalked away unspeaking.
* * *
I collapsed once more into the armchair, hard enough to make a small puff of dust rise from the plush. I lay there limp, eyes closed, feeling the cool night breeze wash over me. The hair was damp at my temples, and I could feel my pulse, quick as a bird’s, racing at the base of my throat.
Would he ever forgive me? My heart clenched like a fist at the memory of the knowledge of betrayal in his eyes. “How could you ask it?” he had said. “You, you who know…” Yes, I knew, and I thought the knowing might tear me from Jamie as I had been torn from Frank.
But whether Jamie could forgive me or not, I could never forgive myself, if I condemned an innocent man—and one I had once loved.
“The sins of the fathers,” I murmured to myself. “The sins of the fathers shall not be visited upon the children.”
“Madame?”
I jumped, opening my eyes to find an equally startled chambermaid backing away. I put a hand to my pounding heart, gasping for air.
“Madame, you are unwell? Shall I fetch—”
“No,” I said, as firmly as I could. “I am quite well. I wish to sit here for a time. Please go away.”
The girl seemed only too anxious to oblige. “Qui, Madame!” she said, and vanished down the corridor, leaving me gazing blankly at a scene of amorous love in a garden, hanging on the opposite wall. Suddenly cold, I drew up the folds of the cloak I had had no time to shed, and closed my eyes again.
* * *
It was past midnight when I went at last to our bedroom. Jamie was there, seated before a small table, apparently watching a pair of lacewings fluttering dangerously around the single candlestick which was all the light there was in the room. I dropped my cape on the floor and went toward him.
“Don’t touch me,” he said. “Go to bed.” He spoke almost abstractedly, but I halted in my tracks.
“But your hand—” I started.
“It doesn’t matter. Go to bed,” he repeated.
The knuckles of his right hand were laced with blood, and the cuff of his shirt was stiff with it, but I would not have dared touch him then had he had a knife stuck in his belly. I left him staring at the death-dance of the lacewings and went to bed.
I woke sometime near dawn, with the first light of the coming day fuzzing the outlines of the furniture in the room. Through the double doors to the anteroom, I could see Jamie as I had left him, still seated at the table. Now the candle was burnt out, the lacewings gone, and he sat with his head in his hands, fingers furrowed in the brutally cropped hair. The light stole all color from the room; even the hair spiking up like flames between his fingers was quenched to the color of ashes.
I slid out of bed, cold in the thin embroidered nightdress. He didn’t turn as I came up behind him, but he knew I was there. When I touched his hand he let it drop to the table, and allowed his head to fall back until it rested just below my breasts. He sighed deeply as I rubbed it, and I felt the tension begin to go out of him. My hands worked their way down over neck and shoulders, feeling the chill of his flesh through the thin linen. Finally I came around in front of him. He reached up and grasped me around the waist, pulling me to him and burying his head in my nightdress, just above the round swell of the unborn child.
“I’m cold,” I said at last, very softly. “Will you come and warm me?”
After a moment, he nodded, and stumbled blindly to his feet. I led him to bed, stripped him as he sat unresisting, and tucked him under the quilts. I lay in the curve of his arm, pressed tight against him, until the chill of his skin had faded and we lay ensconced in a pocket of soft warmth.
Tentatively, I laid a hand on his chest, stroking lightly back and forth until the nipple stood up, a tiny nub of desire. He laid his hand over mine, stilling it. I was afraid he would push me away, and he did, but only so that he could roll toward me.
The light was growing stronger, and he spent a long time just looking down at my face, stroking it from temple to chin, drawing his thumb down the line of my throat and out along the wing of my collarbone.
“God, I do love you,” he whispered, as though to himself. He kissed me, preventing response, and circling one breast with his maimed right hand, prepared to take me.
/> “But your hand—” I said, for the second time that night.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, for the second time that night.
PART FOUR
Scandale
22
THE ROYAL STUD
The coach bumped slowly over a particularly bad stretch of road, one left pitted and holed by the winter freeze and the beating of spring rains. It had been a wet year; even now, in early summer, there were moist, boggy patches under the lush growth of gooseberry bushes by the sides of the road.
Jamie sat beside me on the narrow, padded bench that formed one seat of the coach. Fergus sprawled in the corner of the other bench, asleep, and the motion of the coach made his head rock and sway like the head of a mechanical doll with a spring for its neck. The air in the coach was warm, and dust came through the windows in small golden spurts whenever we hit a patch of dry earth.