A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [356]
He smiled, took me by the shoulders, and leaned his head forward until his forehead met mine with a small thunk! I could feel him trembling slightly, but wasn’t sure whether it was laughter or exhaustion. Then he straightened up, kissed my forehead, and took me by the arm.
Neil Forbes sat in the middle of the street, legs splayed and careful hair disheveled. He was black with tar from the shoulder to the knee on one side. He’d lost a shoe, and helpful parties were trying to pick the feathers off him. Jamie led me in a wide circle round him, nodding pleasantly as we passed.
Forbes looked up, glowering, and said something muffled, heavy face twisting in dislike. On the whole, I thought it was just as well I couldn’t hear him.
IAN AND FERGUS HAD gone off with the majority of the rioters, no doubt to commit mayhem elsewhere. Jamie and I retired to the Sycamore, an inn on River Street, to seek refreshment and make repairs. Jamie’s hilarity gradually subsided as I picked tar and feathers off him, but was significantly quenched by hearing an account of my visit to Dr. Fentiman.
“Ye do what with it?” Jamie had flinched slightly during my recounting of the tale of Stephen Bonnet’s testicle. When I reached a description of the penis syringes, he crossed his legs involuntarily.
“Well, you work the needlelike bit down in, of course, and then flush a solution of something like mercuric chloride through the urethra, I suppose.”
“Through the, er . . .”
“Do you want me to show you?” I inquired. “I left my basket at the Bogueses’, but I can get it, and—”
“No.” He leaned forward and planted his elbows firmly on his knees. “D’ye suppose it burns much?”
“I can’t think it’s at all pleasant.”
He shuddered briefly.
“No, I shouldna think so.”
“I don’t think it’s really effective, either,” I added thoughtfully. “Pity to go through something like that, and not be cured. Don’t you think?”
He was watching me with the apprehensive air of a man who has just realized that the suspicious-looking parcel sitting next to him is ticking.
“What—” he began, and I hurried to finish.
“So you won’t mind going round to Mrs. Sylvie’s and making the arrangements for me to treat the girls, will you?”
“Who is Mrs. Sylvie?” he asked suspiciously.
“The owner of the local brothel,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Dr. Fentiman’s maid told me about her. Now, I realize that there might be more than one brothel in town, but I think that Mrs. Sylvie must certainly know the competition, if there is any, so she can tell you—”
Jamie drew a hand down over his face, pulling down his lower eyelids so that the bloodshot appearance of his eyes was particularly emphasized.
“A brothel,” he repeated. “Ye want me to go to a brothel.”
“Well, I’ll go with you if you like, of course,” I said. “Though I think you might manage better alone. I’d do it myself,” I added, with some asperity, “but I think they might not pay any attention to me.”
He closed one eye, regarding me through the other, which looked as though it had been sandpapered.
“Oh, I rather think they would,” he said. “So this is what ye had in mind when ye insisted on coming to town with me, is it?” He sounded a trifle bitter.
“Well . . . yes,” I admitted. “Though I really did need cinchona bark. Besides,” I added logically, “if I hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have found out about Bonnet. Or Lucas, for that matter.”
He said something in Gaelic, which I interpreted roughly as an indication that he could have lived quite happily in ignorance of either party.
“Besides, you’re quite accustomed to brothels,” I pointed out. “You had a room in one, in Edinburgh!”
“Aye, I did,” he agreed. “But I wasna marrit, then—or rather I was, but I—aye, well, I mean it quite suited me, at the time, to have folk think that I—” He broke off