Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [177]
“They might, the ghouls.” I finished my airing and came back to her. “That doesn’t mean you need bury yourself alive and suffocate in the process.” I sat down beside her, and leaned back in my chair, feeling the cool fresh air blow through my hair as it swept the smoke from the room.
She was silent for a long time, toying with the bundles of herbs on the table. Finally she looked up at me, smiling bravely, though her lower lip trembled slightly.
“At least I won’t have to m-marry the Vicomte. Uncle says he’ll n-never have me now.”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
She nodded, looking down at the gauze wrapped square on her knee. Her fingers fiddled restlessly with the string, so that one end came loose and a few crumbs of goldenrod fell out onto the coverlet.
“I…used to th-think about it; what you told me, about how a m-man…” She stopped and swallowed, and I saw a single tear fall onto the gauze. “I didn’t think I could stand to let the Vicomte do that to me. N-now it’s been done…and n-nobody can undo it and I’ll never have to d-do it again…and…and…oh, Claire, Alex will never speak to me again! I’ll never see him again, never!”
She collapsed into my arms, weeping hysterically and scattering herbs. I clutched her against my shoulder and patted her, making small shushing noises, though I shed a few tears myself that fell unnoticed into the dark shininess of her hair.
“You’ll see him again,” I whispered. “Of course you will. It won’t make a difference to him. He’s a good man.”
But I knew it would. I had seen the anguish on Alex Randall’s face the night before, and at the time thought it only the same helpless pity for suffering that I saw in Jamie and Murtagh. But since I had learned of Alex Randall’s professed love for Mary, I had realized how much deeper his own pain must go—and his fear.
He seemed a good man. But he was also a poor, younger son, in ill health and with little chance of advancement; what position he did have was entirely dependent on the Duke of Sandringham’s goodwill. And I had little hope that the Duke would look kindly on the idea of his secretary’s union with a disgraced and ruined girl, who had now neither social connections nor dowry to bless herself with.
And if Alex found somewhere the courage to wed her in spite of everything—what chance would they have, penniless, cast out of polite society, and with the hideous fact of the rape overshadowing their knowledge of each other?
There was nothing I could do but hold her, and weep with her for what was lost.
* * *
It was twilight by the time I left, with the first stars coming out in faint speckles over the chimneypots. In my pocket was a letter written by Mary, properly witnessed, containing her statement of the events of the night before. Once this was delivered to the proper authorities, we should at least have no further trouble from the law. Just as well; there was plenty of trouble pending from other quarters.
Mindful, this time, of danger, I made no objection to Mrs. Hawkins’s unwilling offer to have me and Fergus transported home in the family carriage.
I tossed my hat on the card table in the vestibule, observing the large number of notes and small nosegays that overflowed the salver there. Apparently we weren’t yet pariahs, though the news of the scandal must long since have spread through the social strata of Paris.
I waved away the anxious inquiries of the servants, and drifted upward toward the bedchamber, shedding my outer garments carelessly along the way. I felt too drained to care about anything.
But when I pushed open the bedchamber door and saw Jamie, lying back in a chair by the fire, my apathy was at once supplanted by a surge of tenderness. His eyes were closed and his hair sticking up in all directions, sure sign of mental turmoil at some point. But he opened his eyes at the slight noise of my entrance and smiled at me, eyes clear and blue in the warm light of the candelabrum.
“It’s all right” was all he whispered to me as he gathered me into his arms. “You’re home.” Then we were silent, as we undressed