Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [106]
“What in hell was Charles Stuart doing running about the rooftops with monkeys?” I demanded, taking evasive action. “Take those bloody ice cubes off me.”
“Visiting his mistress,” said Jamie succinctly. “All right, then; stop kicking me.” He removed the feet and embraced me, shivering, as I turned to him.
“He has a mistress? Who?” Stimulated by whiffs of cold and scandal, I was quickly waking up.
It’s Louise de La Tour,” Jamie explained reluctantly, in response to my prodding. His nose looked longer and sharper than usual, with the thick brows drawn together above it. Having a mistress was bad enough, in his Scottish Catholic view, but it was well known that royalty had certain privileges in this regard. The Princesse Louise de La Tour was married, however. And royalty or not, taking a married woman as one’s mistress was positively immoral, his cousin Jared’s example notwithstanding.
“Ha,” I said with satisfaction. “I knew it!”
“He says he’s in love with her,” he reported tersely, yanking the quilts up over his shoulders. “He insists she loves him too; says she’s been faithful only to him for the last three months. Tcha!”
“Well, it’s been known to happen,” I said, amused. “So he was visiting her? How did he get out on the roof, though? Did he tell you that?”
“Oh, aye. He told me.”
Charles, fortified against the night with several glasses of Jared’s best aged port, had been quite forthcoming. The strength of true love had been tried severely this evening, according to Charles, by his inamorata’s devotion to her pet, a rather ill-tempered monkey that reciprocated His Highness’s dislike and had more concrete means of demonstrating its opinions. Snapping his fingers under the monkey’s nose in derision, His Highness had suffered first a sharp bite in the hand, and then the sharper bite of his mistress’s tongue, exercised in bitter reproach. The couple had quarreled hotly, to the point that Louise, Princesse de Rohan, had ordered Charles from her presence. He had expressed himself only too willing to go—never, he emphasized dramatically, to return.
The Prince’s departure, however, had been considerably hampered by the discovery that the Princesse’s husband had returned early from his evening of gaming, and was comfortably ensconced in the anteroom with a bottle of brandy.
“So,” said Jamie, smiling despite himself at the thought, “he wouldna stay with the lassie, but he couldna go out of the door—so he threw up the sash and jumped out on the roof. He got down almost to the street, he said, along the drainage pipes; but then the City guard came along, and he had to scramble back up to stay out of their sight. He had a rare time of it, he said, dodging about the chimneys and slipping on the wet slates, until it occurred to him that our house was only three houses down the row, and the rooftops close enough to hop them like lily pads.”
“Mm,” I said, feeling warmth reestablish itself around my toes. “Did you send him home in the coach?”
“No, he took one of the horses from the stable.”
“If he’s been drinking Jared’s port, I hope they both make it to Montmartre,” I remarked. “It’s a good long way.”
“Well, it will be a cold, wet journey, no doubt,” said Jamie, with the smugness of a man virtuously tucked up in a warm bed with his lawfully wedded wife. He blew out the candle and pulled me close against his chest, spoon-fashion.
“Serve him right,” he murmured. “A man ought to be married.”
* * *
The servants were up before dawn, polishing and cleaning in preparation for entertaining Monsieur Duverney at a small, private supper in the evening.
“I don’t know why they bother,” I told Jamie, lying in bed with my eyes closed, listening to the bustle downstairs. “All they need do is dust off the chess set and put out a bottle of brandy; he won’t notice anything else.”
He laughed and bent to kiss me goodbye. “That’s all right; I’ll need a good supper if I’m to go on beating him.” He patted my shoulder in farewell. “I’m going to the warehouse, Sassenach; I’ll be home in time to dress, though.”
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