Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [249]
“No, thank God.” I shuddered at the thought. “Did Murtagh stop them?”
“Oh, aye. He’s verra fierce, is Murtagh. He slept across the threshold wi’ his hand on his dirk, until we came safe to port at Bilbao.”
True to forecast, the Scalamandre’s captain, faced with the unprofitable choice of proceeding to Le Havre and forfeiting his cargo, or returning to Spain and cooling his heels while word was sent to Paris, had leaped at the opportunity to dispose of his hold’s worth of port to the new purchaser chance had thrown in his way.
“Not that he didna drive a hard bargain,” Jamie observed, scratching his forearm. “He haggled for half a day—and me dying in my hammock, pissing blood and puking my guts out!”
But the bargain had been concluded, both port and smallpox patient unloaded with dispatch at Bilbao, and—aside from a lingering tendency to urinate vermilion—Jamie’s recovery had been rapid.
“We sold the port to a broker there in Bilbao,” he said. “I sent Murtagh at once to Paris, to repay Monsieur Duverney’s loan—and then…I came here.”
He looked down at his hands, lying quiet in his lap. “I couldna decide,” he said softly. “To come or no. I walked, ye ken, to give myself time to think. I walked all the way from Paris to Fontainebleau. And nearly all the way back. I turned back half a dozen times, thinking myself a murderer and a fool, not knowing if I would rather kill myself or you…”
He sighed then, and looked up at me, eyes dark with reflections of the fluttering leaves.
“I had to come,” he said simply.
I didn’t say anything, but laid my hand over his and sat beside him. Fallen grapes littered the ground under the arbor, the pungent scent of their fermentation promising the forgetfulness of wine.
The cloud-streaked sun was setting, and a blur of gold silhouetted the respectful form of Hugo, looming black in the entrance to the arbor.
“Your pardon, Madame,” he said. “My mistress wishes to know—will le seigneur be staying for supper?”
I looked at Jamie. He sat still, waiting, the sun through the grape leaves streaking his hair with a tiger’s blaze, shadows falling across his face.
“I think you’d better,” I said. “You’re awfully thin.”
He looked me over with a half-smile. “So are you, Sassenach.”
He rose and offered me his arm. I took it and we went in together to supper, leaving the grape leaves to their muted conversation.
* * *
I lay next to Jamie, close against him, his hand resting on my thigh as he slept. I stared upward into the darkness of the bedroom, listening to the peaceful sigh of his sleeping breath, breathing myself the fresh-washed scent of the damp night air, tinged with the smell of wisteria.
The collapse of the Comte St. Germain had been the end of the evening, so far as all were concerned save Louis. As the company made to depart, murmuring excitedly among themselves, he took my arm, and led me out through the same small door by which I had entered. Good with words when required, he had no need of them here.
I was led to the green silk chaise, laid on my back and my skirts gently lifted before I could speak. He did not kiss me; he did not desire me. This was the ritual claiming of the payment agreed upon. Louis was a shrewd bargainer, and not one to forgive a debt he thought owed to him, whether the payment had value to him or not. And perhaps it did, after all; there was more than a hint of half-fearful excitement in his preparations—who but a king would dare to take La Dame Blanche in his embrace?
I was closed and dry, unready. Impatient, he seized a flagon of rose-scented oil from the table, and massaged it briefly between my legs. I lay unmoving, soundless, as the hastily probing finger withdrew, replaced at once by a member little larger, and—“suffered” is the wrong word, there was neither pain nor humiliation involved; it was a transaction—I waited, then, through the quick thrusting, and then he