The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [150]
Grey looked down into his tea, quite moved.
“Thank you, Tom,” he said, when he could trust his voice. “I shall be very happy to have you with me.”
IN FACT, he was glad of Tom’s company. The young man didn’t speak, seeing that Grey was in no mood for conversation, but sat opposite him in the carriage, Grey’s best cavalry saber balanced carefully on his knees.
He would have a second, though. Hal had asked Harry Quarry to meet Grey at the ground.
“Not only for moral support,” Hal had said. “I want there to be a witness.” His mouth thinned. “Just in case.”
Grey had wondered, in case of what? Some chicanery on the part of Twelvetrees? The sudden appearance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, roused by the noise? He didn’t ask, though, fearing that the “just in case” Hal had in mind involved having someone present to memorize Grey’s dying words—unless you took the blade through the eye or the roof of the mouth, you usually did have a few moments while bleeding to death in which to compose your epitaph or send an elegantly phrased farewell to your beloved.
He thought of that now and wondered briefly just what Jamie Fraser would do, if made the recipient of some particularly florid sentiment of a personal nature, with Grey safely out of neck-breaking range. The thought made him grin. He caught sight of Tom’s shocked expression and hastily erased the grin, replacing it with a grave look more suitable to the occasion.
Maybe Harry would write his epitaph. In verse.
Master me … Damn, he never had found the other line to his couplet. Or did he need two lines? Me/be—that rhymed. Maybe it was two lines, not one. If it was really two lines he had, then he clearly needed two more to make a quatrain …
The carriage pulled to a halt.
He emerged into a fresh, cool dawn and stood still, breathing, while Tom made his way out, handling the sword gingerly in its scabbard. There were two other carriages pulled up, waiting under the dripping trees; it had rained in the night, though the sky had cleared.
The grass will be wet. Bad footing.
Little jolts of electricity were running through him, tightening his muscles. The feeling reminded him—vividly—of his experience of being shocked by an electric eel the year before, and he paused to stretch, easing the tightness in chest and arm. It was the bloody eel that had led to his last duel, the one in which Nicholls was killed. At least if he killed Twelvetrees this morning, it would be on purpose …
Not if.
“Come on,” he said to Tom, and they walked past the other carriages, nodding to the coachmen, who returned their salutes, sober-faced. The horses’ breath rose steaming.
The last time he had been here, it was for a garden party to which his mother had required him to escort her.
Mother … Well, Hal would tell her if … He put the thought aside. It didn’t do to think too much.
The big wrought-iron gates were closed and padlocked, but the small man-gate beside them was open. He passed through and walked toward the open ground on the far side of the garden, his heels ringing on the wet flagstones.
Best fight in stocking feet, he thought—no, barefoot, and then came out from under an archway covered with climbing roses into the open ground. Twelvetrees stood at the far side, under some kind of tree flocked with white blossoms. Grey was interested—and relieved—to see that Reginald Twelvetrees was not with his brother. He recognized Joseph Honey, a captain of the Lancers, who was evidently Twelvetrees’s second, and a man with his back turned, who from his dress—and the box by his feet—appeared to be a surgeon. Apparently, Twelvetrees planned to survive, if wounded.
Well, he would, wouldn’t he? he thought, almost absently. He was already beginning the withdrawal from conscious thought, his body relaxing, easing, rising into eagerness for the fight. He felt well, very well. The western sky had changed to a luminous violet, the final stars almost gone. Behind him, the eastern sky had gone to pink and gold; he felt the breath of dawn on the back of his neck.