Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [180]
He let out a startled “Whoof!” as I struck him amidships, and clutched me by the arms to keep upright as we swayed and staggered together.
“I’m sorry,” I began, breathlessly. “I thought you were—oh, Jesus H. fucking Christ!”
My initial impression—that I had encountered Alexander Randall—had lasted no more than the split second necessary to see the eyes above that finely chiseled mouth. The mouth was much like Alex’s, bar the deep lines around it. But those cold eyes could belong to only one man.
The shock was so great that for a moment everything seemed paradoxically normal; I had an impulse to apologize, dust him off, and continue my pursuit, leaving him forgotten in the corridor, as just a chance encounter. My adrenal glands hastened to remedy this impression, dumping such a dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream that my heart contracted like a squeezed fist.
He was recovering his own breath by now, along with his momentarily shattered self-possession.
“I am inclined to concur with your sentiments, Madam, if not precisely with their manner of expression.” Still clutching me by the elbows, he held me slightly away from him, squinting to see my face in the shadowed hall. I saw the shock of recognition blanch his features as my face came into the light. “Bloody hell, it’s you!” he exclaimed.
“I thought you were dead!” I wrenched at my arms, trying to free them from the iron-tight grip of Jonathan Randall.
He let go of one arm, in order to rub his middle, surveying me coldly. The thin, fine-cut features were bronzed and healthy; he gave no outward sign of having been trampled five months before by thirty quarter-ton beasts. Not so much as a hoofprint on his forehead.
“Once more, Madam, I find myself sharing your sentiments. I was under a very similar misapprehension concerning your state of health. Possibly you are a witch, after all—what did you do, turn yourself into a wolf?” The wary dislike stamped on his face was mingled with a touch of superstitious awe. After all, when you turn someone out into the midst of a pack of wolves on a cold winter evening, you rather expect them to cooperate by being eaten forthwith. The sweatiness of my own palms and the drumlike beating of my heart were testimony to the unsettling effect of having someone you thought safely dead suddenly rise up in front of you. I supposed he must be feeling a trifle queasy as well.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The urge to annoy him—to disturb that icy calm—was the first emotion to surface from the seething mass of feelings that had erupted within me at sight of his face. His fingers tightened on my arm, and his lips thinned. I could see his mind working, starting to tick off possibilities.
“If it wasn’t yours, whose body did Sir Fletcher’s men take out of the dungeon?” I demanded, trying to take advantage of any break in his composure. An eyewitness had described to me the removal of “a rag doll, rolled in blood”—presumably Randall—from the scene of the cattle stampede that had masked Jamie’s escape from that same dungeon.
Randall smiled, without much humor. If he was as rattled as I, he didn’t show it. His breathing was a trifle faster than usual, and the lines that edged mouth and eyes cut deeper than I remembered, but he wasn’t gasping like a landed fish. I was. I took in as much oxygen as my lungs would allow and tried to breathe through my nose.
“It was my orderly, Marley. Though if you aren’t answering my questions, why should I answer yours?” He looked me up and down, carefully evaluating my appearance: silk gown, hair ornaments, jewelry, and stockinged feet.
“Married a Frenchman, did you?” he asked. “I always did think you were a French spy. I trust your new husband keeps you in better order than…”
The words died in his throat