“Let go,” I snarled as we swept past the guards in the anteroom. “You’re breaking my arm.”
“Good,” he muttered. “As soon as I’ve got ye in private, I’m going to break your neck.” But I caught sight of the curl of his mouth, and knew the gruffness was only a facade.
Once in our apartment, with the door safely shut, he pulled me to him, leaned against the door and laughed, his cheek pressed to the top of my head.
“Thank ye, Sassenach,” he said, wheezing slightly.
“You’re not angry?” I asked, voice somewhat muffled in his shirtfront. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Nay, I’m no minding it.” he said, releasing me. “God, I wouldna ha’ cared if ye’d said ye meant to set me on fire in the Great Gallery, so long as I could leave His Highness and come to rest for a bit. I’m tired to death of the man, and every muscle I’ve got is aching.” A sudden spasm of coughing shook his frame, and he leaned against the door once more, this time for support.
“Are you all right?” I stretched up on tiptoe to feel his forehead. I wasn’t surprised, but was somewhat alarmed, to feel how hot his skin was beneath my palm.
“You,” I said accusingly, “have a fever!”
“Aye well, everyone’s got a fever, Sassenach,” he said, a bit crossly. “Only some are hotter than others, no?”
“Don’t quibble,” I said, relieved that he still felt well enough to chop logic. “Take off your clothes. And don’t say it,” I added crisply, seeing the grin forming as he opened his mouth to reply. “I have no designs whatever on your disease-ridden carcass, beyond getting it into a nightshirt.”
“Oh, aye? Ye dinna think I’d benefit from the exercise?” He teased, beginning to unfasten his shirt. “I thought ye said exercise was healthy.” His laugh turned suddenly to an attack of hoarse coughing that left him breathless and flushed. He dropped the shirt on the floor, and almost immediately began to shiver with chill.
“Much too healthy for you, my lad.” I yanked the thick woolen nightshirt over his head, leaving him to struggle into it as I got him out of kilt, shoes, and stockings. “Christ, your feet are like ice!”
“You could…warm them…for me.” But the words were forced out between chattering teeth, and he made no protest when I steered him toward the bed.
He was shaking too hard to speak by the time I had snatched a hot brick from the fire with tongs, wrapped it in flannel, and thrust it in at his feet.
The chill was hard but brief, and he lay still again by the time I had set a pan of water to steep with a handful of peppermint and black currant.
“What’s that?” he asked, suspiciously, sniffing the air as I opened another jar from my basket. “Ye dinna mean me to drink it, I hope? It smells like a duck that’s been hung ower-long.”
“You’re close,” I said. “It’s goose grease mixed with camphor. I’m going to rub your chest with it.”
“No!” He snatched the covers protectively up beneath his chin.
“Yes,” I said firmly, advancing with purpose.
In the midst of my labors, I became aware that we had an audience. Fergus stood on the far side of the bed, watching the proceedings with fascination, his nose running freely. I removed my knee from Jamie’s abdomen and reached for a handkerchief.
“And what are you doing here?” Jamie demanded, trying to yank the front of his nightshirt back into place.
Not noticeably disconcerted by the unfriendly tone of this greeting, Fergus ignored the proffered handkerchief and wiped his nose on his sleeve, meanwhile staring with round-eyed admiration at the broad expanse of muscular, gleaming chest on display.
“The skinny milord sent me to fetch a packet he says you have for him. Do all Scotsmen have such quantities of hair upon their chests, milord?”
“Christ! I forgot all about the dispatches. Wait, I’ll take them to Cameron myself.” Jamie began to struggle up in bed, a process that brought his nose close to the site of my recent endeavors.
“Phew!” He flapped the nightshirt in an effort to dispel the penetrating aroma, and glared accusingly at me. “How am I to get this reek off me? D’ye expect me to go out in company smellin’ like a dead goose, Sassenach?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I expect you to lie quietly in bed and rest, or you’ll be a dead goose.” I uncorked a fairly high-caliber glare of my own.
“I can carry the package, milord,” Fergus was assuring him.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” I said, noting the boy’s flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. I put a hand to his forehead.
“Don’t tell me,” said Jamie sarcastically. “He’s got a fever?”
“Yes, he has.”
“Ha,” he said to Fergus with gloomy satisfaction. “Now you’re for it. See how you like bein’ basted.”
A short period of intense effort saw Fergus tucked up in his pallet by the fire, goose grease and medicinal hot tea administered lavishly all round, and a clean handkerchief deposited beneath the chin of each sufferer.
“There,” I said, fastidiously rinsing my hands in the basin. “Now, I will take this precious packet of dispatches across to Mr. Cameron. You will both rest, drink hot tea, rest, blow your nose, and rest, in that order. Got it, troops?”
The tip of a long, reddened nose was barely visible above the bedclothes. It oscillated slowly back and forth as Jamie shook his head.
“Drunk wi’ power,” he remarked disapprovingly to the ceiling. “Verra unwomanly attitude, that.”
I dropped a kiss on his hot forehead and swung my cloak down from its hook.
“How little you know of women, my love,” I said.
* * *
Ewan Cameron was in charge of what passed for intelligence operations at Holyrood. His quarters were at the end of the west wing, tucked away near the kitchens. On purpose, I suspected, having witnessed the man’s appetite in action. Possibly a tapeworm, I thought, viewing the officer’s cadaverous countenance as he opened the packet and scanned the dispatches.
“All in order?” I asked after a moment. I had to repress the automatic urge to add “sir.”
Startled from his train of thought, he jerked his head up from the dispatches and blinked at me.
“Um? Oh!” Recalled to himself, he smiled and hastened to make apologies.
“I’m sorry, Mistress Fraser. How impolite of me to forget myself and leave you standing there. Yes, everything appears to be in order—most interesting,” he murmured to himself. Then, snapping back to an awareness of me, “Would you be so kind as to tell your husband that I wish to discuss these with him as soon as possible? I understand that he is unwell,” he added delicately, carefully avoiding my eye. Apparently it hadn’t taken Aeneas MacDonald long to relay an account of my interview with the Prince.
“He is,” I said unhelpfully. The last thing I wanted was Jamie leaving his bed and sitting up poring over intelligence dispatches all night with Cameron and Lochiel. That would be nearly as bad as staying up dancing all night with the ladies of Edinburgh. Well, possibly not quite as bad, I amended to myself, recalling the three Misses Williams.
“I’m sure he will attend upon you as soon as he’s able,” I said, pulling the edges of the cloak together. “I’ll tell him.” And I would—tomorrow. Or possibly the next day. Wherever the English forces presently were, I was positive they weren’t within a hundred miles of Edinburgh.
* * *
A quick peek into the bedroom upon my return showed two lumps, immobile beneath the bedclothes, and the sounds of breathing—slow and regular, if a trifle congested—filled the room. Reassured, I removed my cloak and sat down in the sitting room with a preventative cup of hot tea, to which I had added a fair dollop of medicinal brandy.
Sipping slowly, I felt the liquid heat flow down the center of my chest, spread comfortably through my abdomen, and begin working its steady way down toward my toes, quick-frozen after a dash across the courtyard, undertaken in preference to the circuitous i
nside passage with its endless stairs and turnings.
I held the cup below my chin, inhaling the pleasant, bitter smell, feeling the heated fumes of the brandy clarify my sinuses. Sniffing, it occurred to me to wonder exactly why, in a city and a building plagued with colds and influenza, my own sinuses remained unclogged.
In fact, aside from the childbed fever, I had not been ill once since my passage through the stone circle. That was odd, I thought; given the standards of hygiene and sanitation, and the crowded conditions in which we frequently lived, I ought surely to have come down at least with a case of sniffles by this time. But I remained as disgustingly healthy as always.
Plainly I was not immune to all diseases, or I would not have had the fever. But the common communicable ones? Some were explainable on the basis of vaccination, of course. I couldn’t, for example, catch smallpox, typhus, cholera, or yellow fever. Not that yellow fever was likely, but still. I set down the cup and felt my left arm, through the cloth of the sleeve. The vaccination scar had faded with time, but was still prominent enough to be detectable; a roughly circular patch of pitted skin, perhaps a half-inch in diameter.
I shuddered briefly, reminded again of Geillis Duncan, then pushed the thought away, diving back into a contemplation of my state of health in order to avoid thinking either of the woman who had gone to a death by fire, or of Colum MacKenzie, the man who had sent her there.
The cup was nearly empty, and I rose to refill it, thinking. An acquired immunity, perhaps? I had learned in nurses’ training that colds are caused by innumerable viruses, each distinct and ever-evolving. Once exposed to a particular virus, the instructor had explained, you became immune to it. You continued to catch cold as you encountered new and different viruses, but the chances of meeting something you hadn’t been exposed to before became smaller as you got older. So, he had said, while children caught an average of six colds per year, people in middle age caught only two, and elderly folk might go for years between colds, only because they had already met most of the common viruses and become immune.
Now there was a possibility, I thought. What if some types of immunity became hereditary, as viruses and people co-evolved? Antibodies to many diseases could be passed from mother to child, I knew that. Via the placenta or the breast milk, so that the child was immune—temporarily—to any disease to which the mother had been exposed. Perhaps I never caught cold because I harbored ancestral antibodies to eighteenth-century viruses—benefiting from the colds caught by all my ancestors for the past two hundred years?
I was pondering this entertaining idea, so caught up in it that I hadn’t bothered to sit down, but was sipping my tea standing in the middle of the room, when a soft knock sounded on the door.
I sighed impatiently, annoyed at being distracted. I didn’t bother to set the cup down, but came to the door prepared to receive—and repel—the expected inquiries about Jamie’s health. Likely Cameron had come across an unclear passage in a dispatch, or His Highness had thought better of his generosity in dismissing Jamie from attendance at the ball. Well, they would get him out of bed tonight only over my dead and trampled body.
I yanked open the door, and the words of greeting died in my throat. Jack Randall stood in the shadows of the doorway.
* * *
The wetness of the spilled tea soaking through my skirt brought me to my senses, but he had already stepped inside. He looked me up and down with his usual air of disdainful appraisal, then glanced at the closed bedroom door.
“You are alone?”
“Yes!”
The hazel glance flickered back and forth between me and the door, assessing my truthfulness. His face was lined from ill health, pale from poor nutrition and a winter spent indoors, but showed no diminution of alertness. The quick, ruthless brain had retreated a bit further back, behind the curtain of those ice-glazed eyes, but it was still there; no doubt of that.
Making his decision, he grasped me by the arm, scooping up my discarded cloak with his other hand.
“Come with me.”
I would have allowed him to chop me in pieces before I made a sound that would cause the bedroom door to open.
We were halfway down the corridor outside before I felt it safe to speak. There were no guards stationed within the confines of the staff quarters, but the grounds were heavily patrolled. He couldn’t hope to get me through the rockery or the side gates without detection, let alone through the main palace entrance. Therefore, whatever he wanted with me, it must be a business that could be conducted within the precincts of Holyrood.
Murder, perhaps, in revenge for the injury Jamie had done him? Stomach lurching at the thought, I inspected him as closely as I could as we walked swiftly through the pools of light cast from the candleholders on the wall. Not intended for decoration or for graciousness, the candles in this part of the palace were small and widely spaced and the flames feeble, meant only to provide sufficient light to assist visitors returning to their chambers.
He wasn’t in uniform, and appeared completely unarmed. He was dressed in nondescript homespun, with a thick coat over plain brown breeks and hose. Nothing but the straightness of his carriage and the arrogant tilt of his unwigged head gave evidence of his identity—he could easily have slipped inside the grounds with one of the parties arriving for the ball, posing as a servant.
No, I decided, glancing warily at him as we passed from dimness to light, he wasn’t armed, though his hand clamped around my arm was hard as iron. Still, if it was strangling he had in mind, he wouldn’t find me an easy victim; I was nearly as tall as he was, and a good deal better nourished.
As though he sensed my thought, he paused near the end of the corridor and turned me to face him, hands tight above my elbows.
“I mean you no harm,” he said, low-voiced but firm.
“Tell me another one,” I said, estimating the chances of anyone hearing me if I screamed here. I knew there would be a guard at the foot of the stair, but that was on the other side of two doors, a short landing, and a long staircase.
On the other hand, it was stalemate. If he couldn’t take me farther, neither could I summon aid where I was. This end of the corridor was sparsely populated, and such residents as there were would undoubtedly be in the other wing now, either attending the ball or serving at it.
He spoke impatiently.
“Don’t be idiotic. If I wished to kill you, I could do it here. It would be a great deal safer than taking you outside. For that matter,” he added, “if I meant you harm, inside or out, why should I have brought your cloak?” He lifted the garment from his arm in illustration.
“How the hell should I know?” I said, though it seemed a definite point. “Why did you bring it?”
“Because I wish you to go outside with me. I have a proposal to make to you, and I will brook no chance of being overheard.” He glanced toward the door at the end of the corridor. Like all the others in Holyrood, it was constructed in the cross-and-Book style, the upper four panels arranged to form a cross, the lower two panels standing tall, forming the likeness of an open Bible. Holyrood had once been an abbey.
“Will you come into the church? We can speak there without fear of interruption.” This was true; the church adjoining the palace, part of the original Abbey, was abandoned, rendered unsafe by lack of maintenance over the years. I hesitated, wondering what to do.
“Think, woman!” He gave me a slight shake, then released me and stood back. The candlelight silhouetted him, so that his features were no more than a dark blur facing me. “Why should I take the risk of entering the palace?”
This was a good question. Once he had left the shelter of the Castle in disguise, the streets of Edinburgh were open to him. He could have lurked about the alleys and wynds until he caught sight of me on my daily expeditions, and waylaid me there. The only possible reason not to do so was the one he gave; he needed to speak to me without risk of being overseen or overheard.
He saw conclusion dawn in my face
, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He spread the cloak, holding it for me.
“You have my word that you will return from our conversation unmolested, Madam.”
I tried to read his expression, but nothing showed on the thin, chiseled features. The eyes were steady, and told me no more than would my own, seen in a looking glass.
I reached for the cloak.
“All right,” I said.
We went out into the dimness of the rock garden, passing the sentry with no more than a nod. He recognized me, and it was not unusual for me to go out at night, to attend to an urgent case of sickness in the city. The guard glanced sharply at Jack Randall—it was usually Murtagh who accompanied me, if Jamie could not—but dressed as he was, there was no hint of the Captain’s real identity. He returned the guard’s glance with indifference, and the door of the palace closed behind us, leaving us in the chill dark outside.