Dragonfly In Amber - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 83
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The clatter of running feet approaching seemed finally to rouse him. His two helpers, hearing the sound, dropped his arms and fled precipitately, leaving him to his fate. With a muffled curse, he made his way down the nearest alley, hopping and hobbling as he tried to yank his breeches up around his waist.
“Au secours! Au secours! Gendarmes!” A breathless voice was shouting down the alleyway for help, as its owner fumbled his way in our direction, stumbling over rubbish in the dark. I hardly thought a footpad or other miscreant would be staggering down an alleyway shouting for the gendarmerie, though in my present state of shock, almost nothing would have surprised me.
I was surprised, though, when the black shape that flapped out of the alley proved to be Alexander Randall, swathed in black cape and slouch hat. He glanced wildly around the small cul-de-sac, from Murtagh, masquerading as a bag of rubbish, to me, standing frozen and gasping against a wall, to the huddled shape of Mary, nearly invisible among the other shadows. He stood helpless for a moment, then whirled and clambered up the iron gate from which our assailants had emerged. From the top of this, he could just reach the lantern suspended from the rafter above.
The light was a comfort; pitiful as was the sight it revealed, at least it banished the lurking shadows that threatened at any moment to turn into new dangers.
Mary was on her knees, curled into herself. Head buried in her arms, she was shaking, in total silence. One shoe lay on its side on the cobbles, silver buckle winking in the swaying light of the lantern.
Like a bird of ill omen, Alex swooped down beside her.
“Miss Hawkins! Mary! Miss Hawkins! Are you all right?”
“Of all the damn-fool questions,” I said with some asperity as she moaned and shrank away from him. “Naturally she isn’t all right. She’s just been raped.” With a considerable effort, I pried myself from the comforting wall at my back, and started toward them, noting with clinical detachment that my knees were wobbling.
They gave way altogether in the next moment as a huge, batlike shape swooped down a foot in front of me, landing on the cobbles with a substantial thud.
“Well, well, look who’s dropped in!” I said, and started to laugh in an unhinged sort of way. A large pair of hands grabbed me by the shoulders and administered a good shake.
“Be quiet, Sassenach,” said Jamie, blue eyes gleaming black and dangerous in the lanternlight. He straightened up, the folds of his blue velvet cloak falling back over his shoulders as he stretched his arms toward the roof from which he had jumped. He could just grasp the edge of it, standing on his toes.
“Well, come down, then!” he said impatiently, looking up. “Put your feet over the edge onto my shoulders, and ye can slide down my back.” With a grating of loose roof slates, a small black figure wriggled its way cautiously backward, then swarmed down the tall figure like a monkey on a stick.
“Good man, Fergus.” Jamie clapped the boy casually on the shoulder, and even in the dim light I could see the glow of pleasure that rose in his cheeks. Jamie surveyed the landscape with a tactician’s eye, and with a muttered word, sent the lad down the alley to keep watch for approaching gendarmes. The essentials taken care of, he squatted down before me once more.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” he inquired.
“Nice of you to ask,” I said politely. “Yes, thanks. She’s not so well, though.” I waved vaguely in Mary’s direction. She was still rolled into a ball, shuddering and quaking like a jelly, oozing away from Alex’s fumbling efforts to pat her.
Jamie spared no more than a glance at her. “So I see. Where in hell is Murtagh?”
“Over there,” I answered. “Help me up.”
I staggered over to the gutter, where the sack that held Murtagh was heaving to and fro like an agitated caterpillar, emitting a startling mixture of muffled profanities in three languages.
Jamie drew his dirk, and with what seemed to be a rather callous disregard for the contents, slit the sack from end to end. Murtagh popped out of the opening like a Jack out of its box. Half his spiky black hair was pasted to his head by whatever noisome liquid the bag had rested in. The rest stood on end, lending a fiercer cast to a face rendered already sufficiently warlike by a large purple knot on the forehead and a rapidly darkening eye.
“Who hit me?” he barked.
“Well, it wasn’t me,” answered Jamie, raising one eyebrow. “Come along, man, we havena got all night.”
“This is never going to work,” I muttered, stabbing pins decorated with brilliants at random through my hair. “She ought to have medical care, for one thing. She needs a doctor!”
“She has one,” Jamie pointed out, lifting his chin and peering down his nose into the mirror as he tied his stock. “You.” Stock tied, he grabbed a comb and pulled it hurriedly through the thick, ruddy waves of his hair.
“No time to braid it,” he muttered, holding a thick tail behind his head as he rummaged in a drawer. “Have ye a bit of ribbon, Sassenach?”
“Let me.” I moved swiftly behind him, folding under the ends of the hair and wrapping the club in a length of green ribbon. “Of all the bloody nights to have a dinner party on!”
And not just any dinner party, either. The Duke of Sandringham was to be guest of honor, with a small but select party to greet him. Monsieur Duverney was coming, with his eldest son, a prominent banker. Louise and Jules de La Tour were coming, and the d’Arbanvilles. Just to make things interesting, the Comte St. Germain had also been invited.
“St. Germain!” I had said in astonishment, when Jamie had told me the week before. “Whatever for?”
“I do business with the man,” Jamie had pointed out. “He’s been to dinner here before, with Jared. But what I want is to have the opportunity of watching him talk to you over dinner. From what I’ve seen of him in business, he’s not the man to hide his thoughts.” He picked up the white crystal that Master Raymond had given me and weighed it thoughtfully in his palm.
“It’s pretty enough,” he had said. “I’ll have it set in a gold mounting, so you can wear it about your neck. Toy with it at dinner until someone asks ye about it, Sassenach. Then tell them what it’s for, and make sure to watch St. Germain’s face when ye do. If it was him gave ye the poison at Versailles, I think we’ll see some sign of it.”
What I wanted at the moment was peace, quiet, and total privacy in which to shake like a rabbit. What I had was a dinner party with a duke who might be a Jacobite or an English agent, a Comte who might be a poisoner, and a rape victim hidden upstairs. My hands shook so that I couldn’t fasten the chain that held the mounted crystal; Jamie stepped behind me and snicked the catch with one flick of his thumb.
“Haven’t you got any nerves?” I demanded of him. He grimaced at me in the mirror and put his hands over his stomach.
“Aye, I have. But it takes me in the belly, not the hands. Have ye some of that stuff for cramp?”
“Over there.” I waved at the medicine box on the table, left open from my dosing of Mary. “The little green bottle. One spoonful.”
Ignoring the spoon, he tilted the bottle and took several healthy gulps. He lowered it and squinted at the liquid within.
“God, that’s foul stuff! Are ye nearly ready, Sassenach? The guests will be here any minute.”
Mary was concealed for the moment in a spare room on the second floor. I had checked her carefully for injuries, which seemed limited to bruises and shock, then dosed her quickly with as large a slug of poppy syrup as seemed feasible.
Alex Randall had resisted all Jamie’s attempts to send him home, and instead had been left to stand guard over Mary, with strict instructions to fetch me if she woke.
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