Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [199]
“Jésus,” whispered Monsieur Prudhomme.
It took very little time, but it seemed a lot longer, watching the heaving of sweat-darkened flanks, and the play of light on swirling hair and the sheen of great muscles, tense and straining in the flexible agony of mating.
Everyone was very quiet as we left the shed. Finally the Duke laughed, nudged Jamie, and said, “You are accustomed to such sights, my lord Broch Tuarach?”
“Aye,” Jamie answered. “I’ve seen it a good many times.”
“Ah?” the Duke said. “And tell me, my lord, how does the sight make you feel, after so many times?”
One corner of Jamie’s mouth twitched as he replied, but he remained otherwise straight-faced.
“Verra modest, Your Grace,” he said.
* * *
“What a sight!” the Duchesse de Neve said. She broke a biscuit, dreamy-eyed, and munched it slowly. “So arousing, was it not?”
“What a prick, you mean,” said Madame Prudhomme, rather coarsely. “I wish Philibert had one like that. As it is…” She cocked an eyebrow toward a plate of tiny sausages, each perhaps two inches long, and the ladies seated on the picnic cloth broke into giggles.
“A bit of chicken, please, Paul,” said the Comtesse St. Germain to her pageboy. She was young, and the bawdy conversation of the older ladies was making her blush. I wondered just what sort of marriage she had with St. Germain; he never took her out in public, save on occasions like this, where the presence of the Bishop prevented his appearing with one of his mistresses.
“Bah,” said Madame Montresor, one of the ladies-in-waiting, whose husband was a friend of the Bishop’s. “Size isn’t everything. What difference if it’s the size of a stallion’s, if he lasts no longer than one? Less than two minutes? I ask you, what good is that?” She held up a cornichon between two fingers and delicately licked the tiny pale-green pickle, the pink tip of her tongue pointed and dainty. “It isn’t what they have in their breeches, I say; it’s what they do with it.”
Madame Prudhomme snorted. “Well, if you find one who knows how to do anything with it but poke it into the nearest hole, tell me. I would be interested to see what else can be done with a thing like that.”
“At least you have one who’s interested,” broke in the Duchesse de Neve. She cast a glance of disgust at her husband, huddled with the other men near one of the paddocks, watching a harnessed mare being put through her paces.
“Not tonight, my dearest,” she imitated the sonorous, nasal tones of her husband to perfection. “I am fatigued.” She put a hand to her brow and rolled her eyes up. “The press of business is so wearing.” Encouraged by the giggles, she went on with her imitation, now widening her eyes in horror and crossing her hands protectively over her lap. “What, again? Do you not know that to expend the male essence gratuitously is to court ill-health? Is it not enough that your demands have worn me to a nubbin, Mathilde? Do you wish me to have an attack?”
The ladies cackled and screeched with laughter, loud enough to attract the attention of the Bishop, who waved at us and smiled indulgently, provoking further gales of hilarity.
“Well, at least he is not expending all his male essence in brothels—or elsewhere,” said Madame Prudhomme, with an eloquently pitying glance at the Comtesse St. Germain.
“No,” said Mathilde gloomily. “He hoards it as though it were gold. You’d think there was no more to be had, the way he…oh, Your Grace! Will you not have a cup of wine?” She smiled charmingly up at the Duke, who had approached quietly from behind. He stood smiling at the ladies, one fair brow slightly arched. If he had heard the subject of our conversation, he gave no sign of it.
Seating himself beside me on the cloth, His Grace made casual, witty conversation with the ladies, his oddly high-pitched voice forming no contrast to theirs. While he seemed to pay close attention to the conversation, I noticed that his eyes strayed periodically to the small cluster of men who