The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [155]
Grey was staggered. “What? What for?”
Hal gave him a raised eyebrow. “After you exposed Bernard Adams as a Jacobite plotter two years ago? And then what Fraser said to Twelvetrees at the Beefsteak? Everyone thinks you challenged him because of his treasonous behavior—not that they know what that was, thank God.”
“But that—I didn’t—”
“Well, I know you didn’t, ass,” his brother said. “But as you didn’t take out a notice in the newpapers saying he’d called you a pederast and you took exception to it—and he didn’t take out a notice saying he thought you were a menace to society and proposed to support his opinion by force of arms—the public has as usual made up its own mind.”
Grey’s left arm was in a sling, but he rubbed his right hand hard over his stubbled face. He was disturbed by the news but not sure what to do about it, if anything could be done, once—
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said. “The newspapers have got hold of it.”
“Oh, yes.” A muscle twitched at the corner of Hal’s mouth. “Minnie’s saved a few of the better ones for you. When you’re feeling up to it.”
Grey gave Hal a look. “When I feel up to it,” he said, “I have a thing or two to say to your wife.”
Hal smiled broadly at that. “Be my guest,” he said. “And I hope you’ve a fine day for it.” He got up, jostling Grey’s bad leg. “Are you hungry? Cook has some revolting gruel for you. Also burnt toast with calf’s-foot jelly.”
“For God’s sake, Hal!” The mingled outrage and pleading in his voice appeared to move his brother.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Hal leaned over and patted him quite gently on his good shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re not dead. Wasn’t sure for a bit.”
Hal went out before he could reply. Tears welled in John’s eyes, and he dashed at them with the sleeve of his nightshirt, muttering irritably in a vain attempt to convince himself that he wasn’t moved.
Before he got very far with this, his attention was distracted by noise in the hallway: the sort of disturbance caused by small boys attempting to be quiet, with loud whisperings and shushings, punctuated by shoving and bumping into walls.
“Come in,” he called, and the door opened. A small head poked cautiously round the corner.
“Hallo, Ben. What’s a-do?”
Benjamin’s face, apprehensive, relaxed at once in delight.
“You all right, Uncle? Mama said if the sword—”
“I know, I’d be dead. But I’m not, now, am I?”
Ben squinted carefully at him, dubious, but decided to take this statement at face value and, turning round, rushed to the door, hissing something into the passage. He came dashing back, now followed by his younger brothers, Adam and Henry. All of them leapt on the bed, though Benjamin and Adam prevented Henry—who was only five and didn’t know better—from trying to sit in Grey’s lap.
“Can we see where the sword went in, Uncle?” Adam asked.
“I suppose so.” The wound had a dressing, but the doctor was coming later to change it, so no harm in pulling it off, he supposed. He unbuttoned his nightshirt one-handed and rather gingerly detached the bandage. His nephews’ awed admiration was more than adequate recompense for the discomfort involved.
After the initial chorus of “Ooh!” Ben leaned forward to look more closely. It was a fairly impressive wound, Grey admitted, glancing down; whichever surgeon had seen to him—he hadn’t been in any condition to notice—had lengthened the original slash so as to be able to pick out the fragments of his sternum that Twelvetrees’s saber had dislodged and the bits of his shirt that had been driven into the wound. The result was a six-inch gash across the already scarred left side of his upper chest, a nasty dark red crisscrossed with coarse black stitches.
“Does it hurt?” Ben asked seriously.
“Not so bad,” Grey said. “The itching on my leg’s worse.”
“Lemme see!” Henry began to scrabble at the bedclothes. The resultant squabble among the three brothers nearly pitched Grey onto the floor, but he managed to raise his voice enough to restore order, whereupon he pulled back the blanket and lifted his nightshirt to display the slash across the top