Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [164]
It had undeniably been the dinner party of the season. People not fortunate enough to have been present would be claiming for months that they had been, bolstering their case with bits of repeated gossip and distorted description.
I had finally got my hands on Mary long enough to force another strong dose of poppy juice down her throat. She collapsed in a pitiful heap of bloodstained clothes, leaving me free to turn my attention to the three-sided argument going on among Jamie, the General, and Mr. Hawkins. Alex had the good sense to stay unconscious, and I arranged his limp form neatly alongside Mary’s on the landing, like a couple of dead mackerel. They looked like Romeo and Juliet laid out in the public square as a reproach to their relatives, but the resemblance was lost on Mr. Hawkins.
“Ruined!” he kept shrieking. “You’ve ruined my niece! The Vicomte will never have her now! Filthy Scottish prick! You and your strumpet”—he swung on me—“whore! Procuress! Seducing innocent young girls into your vile clutches for the pleasure of bastardly scum! You—” Jamie, with a certain long-suffering grimness, put a hand on Mr. Hawkins’s shoulders, turned him about, and hit him, just under the fleshy jaw. Then he stood abstractedly rubbing his abused knuckles, watching as the stout wine merchant’s eyes rolled upward. Mr. Hawkins fell back against the paneling and slid gently down the wall into a sitting position.
Jamie turned a cold blue gaze on General d’Arbanville, who, observing the fate of the fallen, wisely put down the wine bottle he had been waving, and took a step back.
“Oh, go ahead,” urged a voice behind my shoulder. “Why stop now, Tuarach? Hit all three of them! Make a clean sweep of it!” The General and Jamie focused a glance of united dislike on the dapper form behind me.
“Go away, St. Germain,” Jamie said. “This is none of your affair.” He sounded weary, but raised his voice in order to be heard above the uproar below. The shoulder seams of his coat had been split, and folds of his linen shirt showed white through the rents.
St. Germain’s thin lips curved upward in a charming smile. Plainly the Comte was having the time of his life.
“Not my affair? How can such happenings not be the affair of every public-spirited man?” His amused gaze swept the landing, littered with bodies. “After all, if a guest of His Majesty has so perverted the meaning of hospitality as to maintain a brothel in his house, is that not the—no, you don’t!” he said, as Jamie took a step toward him. A blade gleamed suddenly in his hand, appearing as though by magic from the ruffled lace cascading over his wrist. I saw Jamie’s lip curl slightly, and he shifted his shoulders inside the ruins of his coat, settling himself for battle.
“Stop it at once!” said an imperious voice, and the two Duverneys, older and younger, pushed their way onto the already overcrowded landing. Duverney the younger turned and waved his arms commandingly at the herd of people on the stairs, who were sufficiently cowed by his scowl to move back a step.
“You,” said the elder Duverney, pointing at St. Germain. “If you have any feeling of public spirit, as you suggest, you will employ yourself usefully in removing some of those below.”
St. Germain locked eyes with the banker, but after a moment, the noble shrugged, and the dagger disappeared. St. Germain turned without comment and made his way downstairs, pushing those before him and loudly urging them to leave.
Despite his exhortations, and those of Gérard, the younger Duverney, behind him, the bulk of the dinner guests departed, brimming with scandal, only upon the arrival of the King’s Guard.
Mr. Hawkins, recovered by this time, at once lodged a charge of kidnapping and pandering against Jamie. For a moment, I really thought Jamie was going to hit him again; his muscles bunched under the azure velvet,