The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [101]
“Much obliged to ye, lad. Here, then, give him this—and that wee bawbee’s for yourself.” He handed over the note he’d prepared, enclosing the introduction from Sir Melchior and asking for an interview, along with a lavish thrupenny bit.
His role as a rich vulgarian thus promisingly begun, he furthered it by openly gaping at the imposing house and its extensive grounds as he walked slowly up the drive after the servant. It was an old house—he hadn’t yet seen a newly built one in Ireland—but well kept up, its dark stonework freshly pointed and the chimneys—fourteen, he counted them—all alight and drawing well. Six good horses in the far pasture, including one that he wouldn’t have minded seeing closer to—a big dark bay with a white blaze and a nice arse end; good muscle, he thought approvingly. A good-sized lawn spread out before the house, a gardener pushing a heavy roller over it with no perceptible enthusiasm, and the gardens themselves had a dull, prosperous gleam to their leaves, wet with the drizzling rain.
He was in no great doubt that he’d be admitted, and by the time he’d reached the door, there was a butler standing in it to take his hat and cloak and show him to a drawing room. Like the house itself, it was richly appointed—there was a huge silver candlestick, with six beeswax tapers shedding a gracious light—but lacking any great sense of style. He wandered slowly around the room, fingering the ornaments: a Meissen figurine of a woman, a dove perched on her hand, taking a comfit from her lips; a longcase clock with three dials, showing the time, the barometric pressure, and the phase of the moon; a tobacco humidor made of a dark, unfamiliar kind of wood that he thought might be African; a footed silver bowl full of sugared violets, jumbled and broken among a handful of ginger-nut biscuits; a vicious-looking club with a peculiar knob at the end; a curious piece of something … He picked it up to examine closer. It was a rectangular strip, perhaps ten inches by five (he measured it automatically, using the joints of his left middle finger as gauge), made of small, odd beads—what were they made of? Not glass … Shell?—strung on a woven thread in an interesting pattern of blue and white and black.
Surely no woman had assembled these things. He wondered just what the owner of such a magpie collection would be like. For all their delving into the man’s antecedents, the Greys had given Jamie no coherent picture of Siverly’s personality. Carruthers had painted a vivid portrait of the man—but his record was concerned only with the man’s crimes and did little to reveal the man himself.
“A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain,” he thought to himself. He had himself met personable villains. And amiable fools whose actions did more damage than deliberately wicked men. His mouth set at the memory of Charles Edward Stuart. He had no doubt that this Siverly was a villain—but what kind of villain?
A heavy, limping step came down the hall, and Major Siverly came in. He was still an imposing man, nearly as tall as Jamie himself, though a good deal older now and going to paunch. His face was slab-sided, the skin faintly gray, as though he’d been cut from the same rock as his house, and while he had adopted an expression of welcome, this was unable to conceal the clear lines of harshness and open cruelty in his face.
Jamie offered his hand and a cordial greeting, thinking to himself that any soldier unlucky enough to draw Siverly as a commander would have known at once what he was in for. “Failure to suppress a mutiny” was one of the charges against him.
“Your servant, sir,” Siverly said politely, offering his hand in return. He looked Jamie over with a practiced glance—nay a fool, no, Jamie thought, as he made his own courtesies—but if he recalled Jamie, there was no hint of it in his manner.
“So Melchior Williamson says that you’ve something in which I might have an interest,” Siverly said abruptly. No offer of refreshment, nor even a seat, Jamie noted. Evidently he was