Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [118]
The inhabitants of the street scattered before him like geese, startled by the sight of a hurtling Scotsman, kilts flying around his churning knees. He didn’t stop to look behind; by the shouts of indignant passersby, he could tell that the assailants were still in pursuit.
This part of the city was seldom patrolled by the King’s Guard, and the crowd itself offered little protection other than a simple obstruction that might slow his pursuers. No one was likely to interfere in a matter of violence on a foreigner’s behalf.
“There are no alleys off the Rue Pelletier. I needed at least to get to a place where I could draw my sword and have a wall at my back,” Jamie explained. “So I pushed at the doors as I passed, ’til I hit one that opened.”
Dashing into a gloomy hallway, past a startled porter, and through a hanging drape, he had shot into the center of a large, well-lighted room, and come to a screeching halt in the middle of one Madame Elise’s salon, the scent of perfume heavy in his nostrils.
“I see,” I said, biting my lip. “I, um, trust you didn’t draw your sword in there?”
Jamie narrowed his eyes at me, but didn’t deign to reply directly.
“I’ll leave it to you, Sassenach,” he said dryly, “to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”
My imagination proved fully equal to this task, and I burst out laughing.
“God, I wish I could have seen you!” I said.
“Thank God ye didn’t!” he said fervently. A furious blush glowed on his cheekbones.
Ignoring remarks from the fascinated inmates, Jamie had made his way awkwardly through what he described, shuddering, as “tangles o’ bare limbs,” until he had spotted Fergus against one wall, regarding the intruder with a round-eyed astonishment.
Seizing upon this unexpected manifestation of maleness, Jamie had gripped the lad by the shoulder, and fervently implored him to show the way to the nearest exit, without loss of a moment.
“I could hear a hurly-burly breakin’ out in the hallway,” he explained, “and I kent they were in after me. I didna want to be having to fight for my life wi’ a lot of naked women getting in the way.”
“I can see that the prospect might be daunting,” I agreed, rubbing my upper lip. “But obviously he got you out.”
“Aye. He didna hesitate a moment, the dear lad. ‘This way, Monsieur!’ he says, and it was up the stair, and through a room, and out a window onto the roof, and awa’ wi’ us both.” Jamie cast a fond glance at his new employee.
“You know,” I observed, “there are some wives who wouldn’t believe one word of a story like that.”
Jamie’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“They wouldna? Whyever not?”
“Possibly,” I said dryly, “because they aren’t married to you. I’m pleased that you escaped with your virtue intact, but for the moment, I’m rather more interested in the chaps who chased you in there.”
“I didna have a great deal of leisure to think about it at the time,” Jamie replied. “And now that I have, I still couldna say who they were, or why they were hunting me.”
“Robbery, do you think?” The cash receipts of the wine business were conveyed between the Fraser warehouse, the Rue Tremoulins, and Jared’s bank by strongbox, under heavy guard. Still, Jamie was very visible among the crowds near the river docks, and was undoubtedly known to be a wealthy foreign merchant—wealthy by contrast with most of the denizens of that neighborhood, at any rate.
He shook his head, flicking crumbs of dried mud off his shirtfront.
“It might be, I suppose. But they didna try to accost me; it was straightout murder they meant.”
His tone was quite matter-of-fact, but it gave me rather a wobbly feeling in the knees, and I sank down onto a settee. I licked my lips, gone suddenly dry.
“Who—who do you think…?”
He shrugged, frowning as he scooped up a dab of icing from the plate and licked it off his finger.
“The only man I could think of who’s threatened me is the Comte St. Germain. But I canna think what he’d gain from