Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [182]
“Why didn’t you stop?” I demanded of the coachman. He shrugged, safely impervious atop his perch.
“The master ordered me to drive you home without delay, Madame.” He picked up the whip and touched it lightly to the off-horse’s rump.
“Wait!” I shouted. “I want to go back!” But he only hunched himself turtle-like into his shoulders, pretending not to hear me, as the coach rattled off.
Fuming with impotence, I turned toward the door, where the small figure of Fergus appeared, thin brows raised questioningly at my appearance.
“Where’s Murtagh?” I snapped. The little clansman was the only person I could think of who might be able first, to find Jamie, and secondly, to stop him.
“I don’t know, Madame. Maybe down there.” The boy nodded in the direction of the Rue Gamboge, where there were several taverns, ranging in respectability from those where a traveling lady might dine with her husband, to the dens near the river, which even an armed man might hesitate to enter alone.
I laid a hand on Fergus’s shoulder, as much for support as in exhortation.
“Run and find him, Fergus. Quickly as you can!”
Alarmed by my tone, he leaped off the step and was gone, before I could add “Be careful!” Still, he knew the lower levels of Paris life much better than I did; no one was better adapted to eeling through a tavern crowd than an ex-pickpocket. At least I hoped he was an ex-pickpocket.
But I could worry effectively about only one thing at a time, and visions of Fergus being captured and hanged for his activities receded before the vision Jamie’s final words to Randall had evoked.
Surely, surely he would not have gone back into the Duke’s house? No, I reassured myself. He had no sword. Whatever he might be feeling—and my soul sank within me to think of what he felt—he wouldn’t act precipitously. I had seen him in battle before, mind working in an icy calm, severed from the emotions that could cloud his judgment. And for this, above all things, surely he would adhere to the formalities. He would seek the rigid prescriptions, the formulae for the satisfaction of honor, as a refuge—something to cling to against the tides that shook him, the bone-deep surge of bloodlust and revenge.
I stopped in the hallway, mechanically shedding my cloak and pausing by the mirror to straighten my hair. Think, Beauchamp, I silently urged my pale reflection. If he’s going to fight a duel, what’s the first thing he’ll need?
A sword? No, couldn’t be. His own was upstairs, hanging on the armoire. While he might easily borrow one, I couldn’t imagine his setting out to fight the most important duel of his life armed with any but his own. His uncle, Dougal MacKenzie, had given it to him at seventeen, seen him schooled in its use, taught him the tricks and the strengths of a left-handed swordsman, using that sword. Dougal had made him practice, left hand against left hand, for hours on end, until, he told me, he felt the length of Spanish metal come alive, an extension of his arm, hilt welded to his palm. Jamie had said he felt naked without it. And this was not a fight to which he would go naked.
No, if he had needed the sword at once, he would have come home to fetch it. I ran my hand impatiently through my hair, trying to think. Damn it, what was the protocol of dueling? Before it came to swords, what happened? A challenge, of course. Had Jamie’s words in the hallway constituted that? I had vague ideas of people being slapped across the face with gloves, but had no idea whether that was really the custom, or merely an artifact of memory, born of a film-maker’s imagination.
Then it came to me. First the challenge, then a place must be arranged—a suitably circumspect place, unlikely to come to the notice of the police or the King’s Guard. And to deliver the challenge, to arrange the place, a second was required. Ah. That was where he had gone, then; to find his second. Murtagh.
Even if Jamie found Murtagh before Fergus did, still there would be the formalities to arrange. I began to breathe a little easier, though my heart