Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [167]
“You permit, milady?” he said, feeling it as I tensed in surprise. “The ladies used to say it helped them, if they were feeling worried or upset.”
I relaxed again under the soothing touch.
“I permit,” I said. “Thank you.” After a moment, I said, “What ladies, Fergus?”
There was a momentary hesitation, as of a spider disturbed in the building of a web, and then the delicate ordering of strands resumed.
“At the place where I used to sleep, milady. I couldn’t come out because of the customers, but Madame Elise would let me sleep in a closet under the stairs, if I was quiet. And after all the men had gone, near morning, then I would come out and sometimes the ladies would share their breakfast with me. I would help them with the fastening of their underthings—they said I had the best touch of anyone,” he added, with some pride, “and I would comb their hair, if they liked.”
“Mm.” The soft whisper of the brush through my hair was hypnotic. Without the clock on the mantel, there was no telling time, but the silence of the street outside meant it was very late indeed.
“How did you come to sleep at Madame Elise’s, Fergus?” I asked, barely suppressing a yawn.
“I was born there, milady,” he answered. The strokes of the brush grew slower, and his voice was growing drowsy. “I used to wonder which of the ladies was my mother, but I never found out.”
* * *
The opening of the sitting-room door woke me. Jamie stood there, red-eyed and white-faced with fatigue, but smiling in the first gray light of the day.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming back,” I said, a moment later, into the top of his head. His hair had the faint acrid scent of stale smoke and tallow, and his coat had completed its descent into total disreputability, but he was warm and solid, and I wasn’t disposed to be critical about the smell of the head I was cradling next my bosom.
“So was I,” he said, somewhat muffled, and I could feel his smile. The arms around my waist tightened and released, and he sat back, smoothing my hair out of my eyes.
“God, you are so beautiful,” he said softly. “Unkempt and unslept, wi’ the waves of your hair all about your face. Bonny love. Have ye sat here all night long, then?”
“I wasn’t the only one.” I motioned toward the floor, where Fergus lay curled up on the carpet, head on a cushion by my feet. He shifted slightly in his sleep, mouth open a bit, soft pink and full-lipped as the baby he so nearly was.
Jamie laid a big hand gently on his shoulder.
“Come on, then, laddie. Ye’ve done well to guard your mistress.” He scooped the boy up and laid him against his shoulder, mumbling and sleepy-eyed. “You’re a good man, Fergus, and ye’ve earned your rest. Come on to your bed.” I saw Fergus’s eyes flare wide in surprise, then half-close as he relaxed, nodding in Jamie’s arms.
I had opened the shutters and rekindled the fire by the time Jamie returned to the sitting room. He had shed his ruined coat, but still wore the rest of last night’s finery.
“Here.” I handed him a glass of wine, and he drank it standing, in three gulps, shuddered, then collapsed onto the small sofa, and held out the cup for more.
“Not a drop,” I said, “until you tell me what’s going on. You aren’t in prison, so I assume everything’s all right, but—”
“Not all right, Sassenach,” he interrupted, “but it could be worse.”
After a great deal of argument to and fro—a good deal of it Mr. Hawkins’s reiterations of his original impressions—the judge-magistrate who had been hustled out of his cozy bed to preside over this impromptu investigation had ruled grumpily that since Alex Randall was one of the accused, he could hardly be considered an impartial witness. Nor could I, as the wife and possible accomplice of the other accused. Murtagh had been, by his own testimony, insensible during the alleged attack, and the child Claudel was not legally capable of bearing witness.
Clearly, Monsieur le Juge had said, aiming a vicious glare at the Guard Captain, the only person capable of providing the truth of the matter was