Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [106]
“And what’s this?” he asked.
Murtagh raised one sketchy brow. “Your share o’ the wagers, what else?”
Jamie shook his head and made to toss the bag back.
“I didna wager anything.”
Murtagh raised a hand to stop him. “You did the work. You’re a verra popular fellow at the moment, at least wi’ those that backed ye.”
“But not with Dougal, I don’t suppose,” I interjected.
Murtagh was one of those men who always looked a bit startled to find that women had voices, but he nodded politely enough.
“Aye, that’s true. Still, I dinna see as that should trouble ye,” he said to Jamie.
“No?” A glance passed between the two men, with a message I didn’t understand. Jamie blew his breath out softly through his teeth, nodding slowly to himself.
“When?” he asked.
“A week. Ten days, perhaps. Near a place called Lag Cruime. You’ll know it?”
Jamie nodded again, looking more content than I had seen him in some time. “I know it.”
I looked from one face to the other, both closed and secretive. So Murtagh had found out something. Something to do with the mysterious “Horrocks” perhaps? I shrugged. Whatever the cause, it appeared that Jamie’s days as an exhibition were over.
“I suppose Dougal can always tap-dance instead,” I said.
“Eh?” The secretive looks changed to looks of startlement.
“Never mind. Sleep well.” I picked up my box of medical supplies and went to find my own rest.
12
THE GARRISON COMMANDER
We were drawing nearer to Fort William, and I began to ponder seriously what my plan of action should be, once we had arrived there.
It depended, I thought, upon what the garrison commander was likely to do. If he believed that I was a gentlewoman in distress, he might provide me with temporary escort toward the coast and my putative embarkation for France.
But he might be suspicious of me, turning up in the company of the MacKenzies. Still, I was patently not a Scot myself; surely he would not be inclined to think me a spy of some sort? That was evidently what Colum and Dougal thought—that I was an English spy.
Which made me wonder what I was meant to be spying on? Well, unpatriotic activities, I supposed; of which, collecting money for the support of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, pretender to the throne, was definitely one.
But in that case, why had Dougal allowed me to see him do it? He could easily enough have sent me outside before that part of the proceedings. Of course, the proceedings had all been held in Gaelic, I argued with myself.
Perhaps that was the point, though. I remembered the odd gleam in his eyes and his question, “I thought ye had no Gaelic?” Perhaps it was a test, to see whether I really was ignorant of the language. For an English spy scarcely would have been sent into the Highlands, unable to speak with more than half the people there.
But no, the conversation I had overheard between Jamie and Dougal would seem to indicate that Dougal was indeed a Jacobite, though Colum apparently was not—yet.
My head was beginning to buzz with all these suppositions, and I was glad to see that we were approaching a fairly large village. Likely that meant a good inn, as well, and a decent supper.
The inn was in fact commodious, by the standards I had grown accustomed to. If the bed was apparently designed for midgets—and flea-bitten ones, at that—at least it was in a chamber to itself. In several of the smaller inns, I had slept on a settle in the common room, surrounded by snoring male forms and the humped shadows of plaid-wrapped shapes.
Customarily I fell asleep immediately, whatever the sleeping conditions, worn out by a day in the saddle and an evening of Dougal’s politicizing. The first evening in an inn, though, I had remained awake for a good half-hour, fascinated by the remarkable variety of noises the male respiratory apparatus could produce. An entire dormitory full of student nurses couldn’t come close.
It occurred to me, listening to the chorus, that men in a hospital ward seldom really snore. Breathe heavily, yes. They gasp,