Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [138]
He raised one eyebrow cynically at the musical manuscript I had brought back with me from the convent.
“Aye, well. An offer like that is fairly safe, it it’s contingent on either Charles or James setting foot in England. If Charles is in England, it means he’s gotten sufficient backing from other places to get him to Scotland, first. No,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “what’s interesting about this offer is that it’s the first definite sign we’ve seen that the Stuarts—or one of them, at least—are actually making an effort at mounting a restoration attempt.”
“One of them?” I caught the emphasis. “You mean you think James isn’t in on this?” I looked at the coded message with even more interest.
“The message came to Charles,” Jamie reminded me, “and it came from England—not through Rome. Fergus got it from a regular messenger, in a packet marked with English seals; not from a papal messenger. And everything I’ve seen in James’s letters—” He shook his head, frowning. He hadn’t yet shaved, and the morning light caught random sparks of copper among the auburn stubble of his beard.
“The packet had been opened; Charles has seen this manuscript. There was no date on it, so I dinna ken how long ago it came to him. And of course, we don’t have the letters Charles has sent to his father. But there’s no reference in any of James’s letters to anyone who could possibly be the composer, let alone to any definite promises of support from England.”
I could see the direction in which he was heading.
“And Louise de La Tour was babbling about how Charles meant to have her marriage annulled and claim her as his wife, once he was king. So you think perhaps Charles wasn’t just talking through his hat to impress her?”
“Maybe not,” he said. He poured water from the bedroom ewer into the basin and laved his face with water, preparatory to shaving.
“So it’s possible that Charles is acting on his own?” I said, horrified and intrigued by the possibility. “That James has set him up for a masquerade of pretending to start a restoration attempt, in order to keep Louis impressed with the Stuarts’ potential value, but—”
“But Charles isn’t pretending?” Jamie interrupted. “Aye, that’s how it seems. Is there a towel there, Sassenach?” Eyes screwed shut and face dripping, he was patting about on the surface of the table. I moved the manuscript to safety and found the towel, draped over the foot of the bed.
He examined his razor critically, decided it would do, and leaned over my dressing table to look in the mirror as he applied shaving soap to his cheeks.
“Why is it barbaric of me to take the hair off my legs and armpits, and it isn’t barbaric for you to take it off your face?” I asked, watching him draw his upper lip down over his teeth as he scraped under his nose with tiny, delicate strokes.
“It is,” he replied, squinting at himself in the mirror. “But it itches like a fiend if I don’t.”
“Have you ever grown a beard?” I asked curiously.
“Not on purpose,” he replied, half-smiling as he scraped one cheek, “but I’ve had one now and then when I couldna help it—when I lived as an outlaw in Scotland. When it came to a choice between shaving in a cold burn with a dull razor every morning or itching, I chose to itch.”
I laughed, watching him draw the razor along the edge of his jawbone with one long sweep.
“I can’t imagine what you’d look like with a full beard. I’ve only seen you in the stubbly stage.”
He smiled on one side of his mouth, drawing the other up as he scraped under the high, broad cheekbone on that side.
“Next time we’re invited to Versailles, Sassenach, I’ll ask if we may visit the Royal zoo. Louis has a creature there that one of his sea-captains brought him from Borneo, called an orang-utan. Ever seen one?”
“Yes,” I said, “the zoo in London had a pair before the war.”
“Then you’ll know what I look like in a beard,” he said, smiling at me as he finished his shave with a careful negotiation of the curve of his chin. “Scraggly and