Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [353]
“Perhaps later,” I said, as cool as he. “If not yourself, for whom do you seek my skill?”
He hesitated, but it was far too late for reticence.
“For my brother.”
“Your brother?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice. “Alexander?”
“Since my elder brother William is, so far as I know, virtuously engaged in stewardship of the family estates in Sussex, and in need of no assistance,” he said dryly. “Yes, my brother Alex.”
I spread my hands on the cold stone of a sarcophagus to steady myself.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
* * *
It was a simple enough story, and a sad one. Had it been anyone other than Jonathan Randall who told it, I might have found myself prey to sympathy.
Deprived of his employment with the Duke of Sandringham because of the scandal over Mary Hawkins, and too frail of health to secure another appointment, Alexander Randall had been forced to seek aid from his brothers.
“William sent him two pounds and a letter of earnest exhortations.” Jack Randall leaned back against the wall, crossing his ankles. “William is a very earnest sort, I’m afraid. But he wasn’t prepared to have Alex come home to Sussex. William’s wife is a bit…extreme, shall we say? in her religious opinions.” There was a wisp of amusement in his voice that suddenly made me like him for a moment. In different circumstances, might he have been like the great-grandson he resembled?
The sudden thought of Frank so unsettled me that I missed his next remark.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” I clutched my left hand with my right, fingers pinching tight on my gold wedding ring. Frank was gone. I must stop thinking of him.
“I said that I had procured rooms for Alex near the Castle, so that I might look in on him myself, as my funds did not stretch far enough to allow of employing a proper servant for him.”
But the occupation of Edinburgh had of course made such attendance difficult, and Alex Randall had been left more or less to his own devices for the past month, aside from the intermittent offices of a woman who came in to clean now and then. In ill health to start with, his condition had been worsened by cold weather, poor diet, and squalid conditions until, seriously alarmed, Jack Randall had been moved to seek my help. And to offer for that help, the betrayal of his King.
“Why would you come to me?” I asked at last, turning from the plaque.
He looked faintly surprised.
“Because of who you are.” His lips curved in a slight, self-mocking smile. If one seeks to sell one’s soul, is it not proper to go to the powers of darkness?”
“You really think that I’m a power of darkness, do you?” Plainly he did; he was more than capable of mockery, but there had been none in his original proposal.
“Aside from the stories about you in Paris, you told me so yourself,” he pointed out. “When I let you go from Wentworth.” He turned in the dark, shifting himself on the stone ledge.
“That was a serious mistake,” he said softly. “You should never have left that place alive, dangerous creature. And yet I had no choice; your life was the price he set. And I would have paid still higher stakes than that, for what he gave me.”
I made a slight hissing noise, which I muffled at once, but too late to stop him hearing me. He half-sat on the ledge, one hip resting on the stone, one leg stretched down to balance him. The moon broke through the scudding clouds outside, backlighting him through the broken window. In the dimness, head half-turned and the lines of cruelty around his mouth erased by darkness, I could mistake him again, as I had once before, for a man I had loved. For Frank.
Yet I had betrayed that man; because of my choice, that man would never be. For the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children…and thou shalt destroy him, root and branch, so that his name shall no more be known among the tribes of Israel.
“Did he tell you?” the light, pleasant voice asked from the shadows. “Did he ever tell you all the things that passed between us, him and me, in that small room at Wentworth?