The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [19]
“Aye, well,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s four more than Charles Stuart has.”
In spite of the intrigues and rumors that surround them, the King has taken a liking to both Claire and Jamie, and their presence is often required at Royal functions. Claire’s presence is requested at a luncheon held to honor a visiting English nobleman—an old acquaintance of the Frasers’, the Duke of Sandringham. It’s neither the Duke nor Claire’s continuing nausea that causes her to faint in the gardens at Versailles, though; it’s the sudden appearance of a man she knows twice dead.
Then I saw him. I could feel all of the blood draining from my head as my eye traced disbelievingly over the elegant curve of the skull, dark-haired and bold amid the powdered wigs around it. Alarms rang in my head like air-raid sirens, as I fought to accept and repel the impressions that assailed me. My subconscious saw the line of the nose, thought “Frank,” and turned my body to fly toward him in welcome. “Not-Frank,” came the slightly higher, rational center of my brain, freezing me in my tracks as I saw the familiar curve of a half-smiling mouth, repeating, “You know it’s not Frank” as the muscles of my calves knotted. And then the lurch into panic and the clenching of hands and stomach, as the slower processes of logical thought came doggedly on the trail of instinct and knowledge, seeing the high brow and the arrogant tilt of the head, assuring me of the unthinkable. It could not be Frank. And if it were not, then it could only be …
“Jack Randall.” It wasn’t my voice that spoke, but Jamie’s, sounding oddly calm and detached. Attention attracted by my peculiar behavior, he had looked where I was looking and had seen what I had seen.
He didn’t move. So far as I could tell through the increasing haze of panic, he didn’t breathe. I was dimly aware of a nearby servant peering curiously upward at the towering form of the frozen Scottish warrior next to me, silent as a statue of Mars. But all my concern was for Jamie.
To draw arms in the presence of the King was death. Murtagh was on the far side of the garden, much too far away to help. Two more paces would bring Randall within hearing distance. Within sword’s reach. I laid a hand on his arm. It was rigid as the steel of the swordhilt under his hand. The blood roared in my ears.
“Jamie,” I said. “Jamie!” And fainted.
The new arrival is not Jack Randall, though, but rather his younger brother, Alexander Randall, who shares a striking family resemblance, but appears to be quite the opposite of his vicious brother in personality and temperament. Jack was a soldier and a sadist; Alex is a curate, a gentle, intellectual young man who serves as the Duke’s chaplain and secretary. He is also, Claire learns, Mary Hawkins’s secret love, though it seems impossible for the young couple ever to marry, given Alexander’s impoverished state and Mary’s (as yet unannounced) engagement to the Vicomte Marigny.
Jamie has nothing against Alexander Randall—save his physical resemblance to his brother. Alexander’s arrival in Paris triggers further nightmares, though, in which Jamie feels the touch of Jack Randall on his skin, and hears his dead voice, murmuring obscenity in the dark. He wakes from these dreams sweating and ill, but will not let Claire comfort him, choosing instead to fight the ghost of Jack Randall within his own mind.
At an outing to the Royal stables at Argentan, the Duke of Sandringham approaches Claire with an interesting proposition; if Jamie will agree to return to Scotland and abandon Charles Stuart, a pardon can be arranged.
Why? Jamie wonders. The Duke owes him nothing, and can hope for nothing from him. Does the Duke—or possibly the English Crown, using the Duke as agent—intend to deprive Stuart of his allies, in the hope of thwarting his efforts?
Claire and Jamie plan a dinner party, at which they hope both to divine the Duke’s purposes—is he a secret Jacobite, or the opposite?—and to gain