The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [352]
“No.” Doctor Fentiman’s sallow cheeks began to show spots of red. “I—if I had thought . . .”
I leaned toward him, and laid a consoling hand on his arm.
“I’m sure you did all that anyone could possibly do,” I said. “She wasn’t bleeding at all from the mouth when you saw her last night, was she?”
He shook his head, hunching deeper into his cloak.
“No. Still, I blame myself, I really do.”
“One does,” I said ruefully. “There’s always that sense that one should have been able to do something more.”
He caught the depth of feeling in my voice and turned toward me, looking surprised. The tension in him relaxed a little, and the red color began to fade from his cheeks.
“You have . . . a most remarkably sympathetic understanding, Mrs. Fraser.”
I smiled at him, not speaking. He might be a quack, he might be ignorant, arrogant, and intemperate—but he had come at once when called, and had fought for his patient to the best of his ability. That made him a physician, in my book, and deserving of sympathy.
After a moment, he put his hand over mine. We sat in silence, watching the river go by, dark brown and turbid with silt. The stone bench was cold under me, and the morning breeze kept sticking chilly fingers under my shift, but I was too preoccupied to take much note of such minor discomforts. I could smell the drying blood on his clothes, and saw again the scene in the attic. What on earth had the woman died of?
I prodded him gently, asking tactful questions, extracting what details he had gleaned, but they were not helpful. He was not an observant man at the best of times, and it had been very early and the attic dark. He grew easier with the talking, though, gradually purging himself of that sense of personal failure that is the frequent price of a physician’s caring.
“I hope Mrs. Cameron—Mrs. Innes, I mean—will not feel that I have betrayed her hospitality,” he said uneasily.
That seemed a rather odd way to put it. On the other hand . . . Betty had been Jocasta’s property. I supposed that beyond any sense of personal failure, Dr. Fentiman was also contemplating the possibility that Jocasta might blame him for not preventing Betty’s death, and try to claim recompense.
“I’m sure she’ll realize that you did all you could,” I said soothingly. “I’ll tell her so, if you like.”
“My dear lady.” Doctor Fentiman squeezed my hand with gratitude. “You are as kind as you are lovely.”
“Do you think so, Doctor?”
A male voice spoke coldly behind me, and I jumped, dropping Dr. Fentiman’s hand as though it were a high-voltage wire. I whirled on the bench to find Phillip Wylie, leaning against the trunk of the willow tree with a most sardonic expression on his face.
“‘Kind’ is not the word that springs most immediately to mind, I must say. ‘Lewd,’ perhaps. ‘Wanton,’ most certainly. But ‘lovely,’ yes—I’ll give you that.”
His eyes raked me from head to toe with an insolence that I would have found absolutely reprehensible—had it not suddenly dawned on me that Dr. Fentiman and I had been sitting hand in hand in what could only be called a compromising state of dishabille, both still in our nightclothes.
I stood up, drawing my dressing gown round me with great dignity. His eyes were fixed on my breasts—with a knowing expression? I wondered. I folded my arms under my breasts, lifting my bosom defiantly.
“You forget yourself, Mr. Wylie,” I said, as coldly as possible.
He laughed, but not as though he thought anything were funny.
“I forget myself? Have you not forgotten something, Mrs. Fraser? Such as your gown? Do you not find it a trifle cold, dressed like that? Or do the good doctor’s embraces warm you sufficiently?”
Doctor Fentiman, as shocked as I was by Wylie’s appearance, had got to his feet and now pushed his way in front of me, his thin cheeks mottled with fury.
“How dare you, sir! How do you have the infernal presumption to speak to a lady in such fashion? Were I armed, sir, I should call you out upon the instant, I swear it!”
Wylie had been staring boldly