A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [49]
He screamed and let go both sets of reins. Clarence, my own mule, hearing the racket, set up a loud bray of greeting from his pen, and the two strange mules promptly trotted off in that direction, stirrup leathers bouncing.
Bobby wasn’t badly hurt, though the mule’s teeth had broken the skin; spots of blood seeped through the sleeve of his shirt. As I was turning back the cloth to have a look at it, I heard footsteps on the porch, and looked up to see Lizzie, a large wooden spoon in hand, looking alarmed.
“Bobby! What’s happened?”
He straightened at once, seeing her, assuming nonchalance, and brushed a lock of curly brown hair off his brow.
“Ah, oh! Naught, miss. Bit o’ trouble with tha sons o’ Belial, like. No fear, it’s fine.”
Whereupon his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell over in a dead faint.
“Oh!” Lizzie flew down the steps and knelt beside him, urgently patting his cheek. “Is he all right, Mrs. Fraser?”
“God knows,” I said frankly. “I think so, though.” Bobby appeared to be breathing normally, and I found a reasonable pulse in his wrist.
“Shall we carry him inside? Or should I fetch a burnt feather, do you think? Or the spirits of ammonia from the surgery? Or some brandy?” Lizzie hovered like an anxious bumblebee, ready to fly off in any of several different directions.
“No, I think he’s coming round.” Most faints last only a few seconds, and I could see his chest lift as his breathing deepened.
“Bit o’ brandy wouldn’t come amiss,” he murmured, eyelids beginning to flutter.
I nodded to Lizzie, who vanished back into the house, leaving her spoon behind on the grass.
“Feeling a bit peaky, are you?” I inquired sympathetically. The injury to his arm was no more than a scratch, and I certainly hadn’t done anything of a shocking nature to him—well, not physically shocking. What was the trouble here?
“I dunno, mum.” He was trying to sit up, and while he was white as a sheet, seemed otherwise all right, so I let him. “It’s only, every now and again, I gets these spots, like, whirring round me head like a swarm o’ bees, and then it all goes black.”
“Now and again? It’s happened before?” I asked sharply.
“Yessum.” His head wobbled like a sunflower in the breeze, and I put a hand under his armpit, lest he fall over again. “His Lordship was in hopes you might know summat would stop it.”
“His Lord—oh, he knew about the fainting?” Well, of course he would, if Bobby were in the habit of falling over in front of him.
He nodded, and took a deep, gasping breath.
“Doctor Potts bled me regular, twice a week, but it didn’t seem to help.”
“I daresay not. I hope he was of somewhat more help with your piles,” I remarked dryly.
A faint tinge of pink—he had scarcely enough blood to provide a decent blush, poor boy—rose in his cheeks, and he glanced away, fixing his gaze on the spoon.
“Erm . . . I, um, didn’t mention that to anybody.”
“You didn’t?” I was surprised at that. “But—”
“See, ’twas only the riding. From Virginia.” The pink tinge grew. “I’d not have let on, save I was in such agony after a week on yon bloody horse—saving your presence, mum—I’d no chance of hiding it.”
“So Lord John didn’t know about that, either?”
He shook his head vigorously, making the disheveled brown curls flop back over his forehead. I felt rather annoyed—with myself for having evidently misjudged John Grey’s motives, and with John Grey, for making me feel a fool.
“Well . . . are you feeling a bit better, now?” Lizzie was not appearing with the brandy, and I wondered momentarily where she was. Bobby was still very pale, but nodded gamely, and struggled to his feet, where he stood swaying and blinking, trying to keep his balance. The “M” branded on his cheek stood out, an angry red against the pallid skin.
Distracted by Bobby’s faint, I had ignored the sounds coming from the other side of the house. Now, though, I became aware of voices, and approaching footsteps.
Jamie and the two Browns came into sight round the