Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [208]
“I’ll send word of the ship and her sailing so soon as I may. And I’ll see ye within the month off Spain. You’ll have the money before then?”
Jamie nodded. “Oh, aye. By next week, I imagine.” Jared’s business had prospered under Jamie’s stewardship, but the cash reserves were not sufficient to purchase entire shiploads of port, while still fulfilling the other commitments of the House of Fraser. The chess games had borne fruit in more than one regard, though, and Monsieur Duverney the younger, a prominent banker, had willingly guaranteed a sizable loan for his father’s friend.
“It’s a pity we can’t bring the stuff into Paris,” Jamie had remarked during the planning, “but St. Germain would be sure to find out. I expect we’ll do best to sell it through a broker in Spain—I know a good man in Bilbao. The profit will be much smaller than it would be in France, and the taxes are higher, but ye canna have everything, can ye?”
“I’ll settle for paying back Duverney’s loan,” I said. “And speaking of loans, what’s Signore Manzetti going to do about the money he’s loaned Charles Stuart?”
“Whistle for it, I expect,” said Jamie cheerfully. “And ruin the Stuarts’ reputation with every banker on the Continent while he’s about it.”
“Seems a bit hard on poor old Manzetti,” I observed.
“Aye well. Ye canna make an omelet wi’out breakin’ eggs, as my auld grannie says.”
“You haven’t got an auld grannie,” I pointed out.
“No,” he admitted, “but if I had, that’s what she’d say.” He had dropped the playfulness then, momentarily. “It’s no verra fair to the Stuarts, forbye. In fact, should any of the Jacobite lords come to know what I’ve been doing, I expect they’d call it treason, and they’d be right.” He rubbed a hand over his brow, and shook his head, and I saw the deadly seriousness that his playfulness covered.
“It canna be helped, Sassenach. If you’re right—and I’ve staked my life so far on it—then it’s a choice between the aspirations of Charles Stuart and the lives of a hell of a lot of Scotsmen. I’ve no love for King Geordie—me, wi’ a price on my head?—but I dinna see that I can do otherwise.”
He frowned, running a hand through his hair, as he always did when thinking or upset. “If there were a chance of Charles succeeding…aye, well, that might be different. To take a risk in an honorable cause—but your history says he willna succeed, and I must say, all I know of the man makes it seem likely that you’re right. They’re my folk and my family at stake, and if the cost of their lives is a banker’s gold…well, it doesna seem more a sacrifice than that of my own honor.”
He shrugged in half-humorous despair. “So now I’ve gone from stealing His Highness’s mail to bank robbery and piracy on the high seas, and it seems there’s nay help for it.”
He was silent for a moment, looking down at his hands, clenched together on the desk. Then he turned his head to me and smiled.
“I always wanted to be a pirate, when I was a bairn,” he said. “Pity I canna wear a cutlass.”
* * *
I lay in bed, head and shoulders propped on pillows, hands clasped lightly over my stomach, thinking. Since the first alarm, there had been very little bleeding, and I felt well. Still, any sort of bleeding at this stage was cause for alarm. I wondered privately what would happen if any emergency arose while Jamie was gone to Spain, but there was little to be gained by worrying. He had to go; there was too much riding on that particular shipload of wine for any private concerns to intrude. And if everything went all right, he should be back well before the baby was due.
As it was, all personal concerns would have to be put aside, danger or no. Charles, unable to contain his own excitement, had confided to Jamie that he would shortly require two ships—possibly more—and had asked his advice on hull design and the mounting of deck cannon. His father’s most recent letters from Rome had betrayed a slight tone of questioning—with his acute Bourbon nose for politics, James Stuart smelled a rat, but plainly hadn