A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [357]
“Well, they won’t think that if I go with you, will they?”
“Oh, God.”
At this point, he dropped his head into his hands and massaged his scalp vigorously, presumably under the impression that this would help him figure out some means of thwarting me.
“Where is your sense of compassion for your fellow man?” I demanded. “You wouldn’t want some hapless fellow to be facing a session with Dr. Fentiman’s syringe, just because you—”
“As long as I’m no required to face it myself,” he assured me, raising his head, “my fellow man is welcome to the wages of sin, and serve him just right, too.”
“Well, I’m rather inclined to agree,” I admitted. “But it isn’t only them. It’s the women. Not just the whores; what about all the wives—and the children—of the men who get infected? You can’t let all of them die of the pox, if they can be saved, surely?”
He had by this time assumed the aspect of a hunted animal, and this line of reasoning did not improve it.
“But—the penicillin doesna always work,” he pointed out. “What if it doesna work on the whores?”
“It’s a possibility,” I admitted. “But between trying something that might not work—and not trying at all . . .” Seeing him still looking squiggle-eyed, I dropped the appeal to reason and resorted to my best weapon.
“What about Young Ian?”
“What about him?” he replied warily, but I could see that my words had caused an instant vision to spring up in his mind. Ian was not a stranger to brothels—thanks to Jamie, inadvertent and involuntary as the introduction had been.
“He’s a good lad, Ian,” he said, stoutly. “He wouldna . . .”
“He might,” I said. “And you know it.”
I had no idea of the shape of Young Ian’s private life—if he had one. But he was twenty-one, unattached, and so far as I could see, a completely healthy young male of the species. Hence . . .
I could see Jamie coming reluctantly to the same conclusions. He had been a virgin when I married him, at the age of twenty-three. Young Ian, owing to factors beyond everyone’s control, had been introduced to the ways of the flesh at a substantially earlier age. And that particular innocence could not be regained.
“Mmphm,” he said.
He picked up the towel, rubbed his hair ferociously with it, then flung it aside, and gathered back the thick, damp tail, reaching for a thong to bind it.
“If it were done when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly,” I said, watching with approval. “I think I’d best come, too, though. Let me fetch my box.”
He made no response to this, merely setting grimly about the task of making himself presentable. Luckily he hadn’t been wearing his coat or waistcoat during the contretemps in the street, so was able to cover the worst of the damage to his shirt.
“Sassenach,” he said, and I turned to find him regarding me with a bloodshot glint.
“Yes?”
“Ye’ll pay for this.”
MRS. SYLVIE’S ESTABLISHMENT was a perfectly ordinary-looking two-storied house, small and rather shabby. Its shingles were curling up at the ends, giving it a slight air of disheveled surprise, like a woman taken unawares with her hair just out of rollers.
Jamie made disapproving Scottish noises in his throat at sight of the sagging stoop and overgrown yard, but I assumed that this was merely his way of covering discomfiture.
I was not quite sure what I had been expecting Mrs. Sylvie to be—the only madam of my acquaintance having been a rather elegant French émigré in Edinburgh—but the proprietor of Cross Creek’s most popular bawdy house was a woman of about twenty-five, with a face as plain as piecrust, and extremely prominent ears.
In fact, I had momentarily assumed her to be the maid, and only Jamie’s greeting her politely as “Mrs. Sylvie” informed me that the madam herself had answered the door. I gave Jamie a sideways look, wondering just how he came to be acquainted with her, but then looked again and realized that he had noted the good quality of her gown and the large brooch upon her bosom.
She looked from him to me,