The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [158]
“Well, in fact, the public response to your duel with Nicholls was quite subdued compared with this. For one thing, it was hushed up as much as possible, and for another, it was only fought over the honor of a lady rather than the honor of the kingdom. Hal said I needn’t forward the letters to you in Canada, so I didn’t.”
“Thank you.” He made to hand the letters back to her. “Here, burn them.”
“If you insist.” She dimpled at him, but took the pile and stood up. “Oh, wait—you haven’t opened this one.”
“I thought you’d read them all.”
“Only the female ones. This looked more like business.” She picked a plain cover from the stack of hued and scented ones and handed it over. There was no return direction upon the cover, but there was a name, written in a neat, small hand. H. Bowles.
A most extraordinary feeling of revulsion came over him at sight of it, and he suddenly lost his appetite.
“No,” he said, and gave it back. “Burn that one, too.”
34
All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By
HUBERT BOWLES WAS A SPYMASTER. GREY HAD MET HIM some years previously, in connection with a private matter, and had hoped never to meet him again. He couldn’t imagine what the little beast wanted with him now and didn’t propose to find out.
Still, the boys’ visit and the meal had restored him to such an extent that when Tom appeared—as he did with the regularity of a cuckoo clock—to ensure that Grey had not managed to die since last inspected, he let Tom shave him and brush out and plait his hair. Then, greatly daring, he stood up, clinging to Tom’s arm.
“Easy, me lord, easy does it now …” The room wavered slightly, but he steadied himself and, after a moment, the dizziness passed. He limped slowly about, hanging on to Tom, until he was reasonably sure that he would neither fall down nor rip the stitching out of his leg—it pulled a bit, but so long as he was careful, it would likely do.
“All right. I’m going downstairs.”
“No, you’re no—er … yes, me lord,” Tom replied meekly, his initial response quelled by a glare from Grey. “I’ll just, ah, go down in front of you, shall I?”
“So that I can fall on you, if necessary? That’s truly noble, Tom, but I think not. You can follow me and pick up the pieces, if you like.”
He made his way slowly down the main stair, Tom behind him muttering something about all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and then along the main hallway to the library, nodding cordially to Nasonby and inquiring after his bad ankle.
Fraser was indeed sitting in a wing chair near the window, a plate of biscuits and a decanter of sherry at his side, reading Robinson Crusoe. He glanced up at the sound of Grey’s footsteps, and his eyebrows went up—perhaps in surprise at seeing him up and about, or perhaps only in astonishment at his banyan, which was silk, with green and purple stripes.
“Are you not going to tell me that had the sword gone between my ribs, I’d be dead? Everyone else does,” Grey remarked, lowering himself gingerly into the matching wing chair.
Fraser looked faintly puzzled.
“I kent it hadna done that. Ye weren’t dead when I picked ye up.”
“You picked me up?”
“You asked me to, did ye not?” Fraser gave him a look of mild exasperation. “Ye were bleeding like a stuck hog, but it wasna spurting out, and I could feel ye breathing and your heart beating all right while I carried ye back to the coach.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Dammit, couldn’t he have waited a few moments longer to pass out?
To distract himself from pointless regret, he took a biscuit and asked, “Have you spoken with my brother lately?”
“I have. Nay more than an hour ago.” He hesitated, a thumb stuck inside the book to keep his place. “He offered me a sum of money. In reward of my assistance, as he was pleased to put it.”
“Well deserved,” Grey said heartily, hoping that Hal hadn’t been an ass about it.
“I told him it had the stink of blood money and I wouldna touch it … but he pointed out that I hadna done what I’d done for money—and that’s true enough. In fact, he said, he’d forced me to do it—which is not entirely true,