The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [163]
“Edward Twelvetrees. He brought me the outline of the plan but hadn’t yet collected a full list of those involved. ‘The Wild Hunt,’ they called themselves—most poetic, but what can you expect from the Irish? Edward’s untimely death”—a small note of irony was detectable in Mr. Bowles’s voice—“kept us from knowing the names of all the men involved. And while your brother’s worthy attempt to arrest the conspirators succeeded in bagging some of the prey, it alarmed others, who have either fled the country to cause trouble elsewhere or who have merely sunk into hiding.”
Grey opened his mouth, but could find nothing to say. The wound in his chest throbbed hotly with his heartbeat, but what was worse, what burned across his mind, was his memory of Reginald Twelvetrees’s face, set like granite, witnessing the destruction of his brother’s name.
“I thought you ought to know,” Bowles said, almost kindly. “Good day, my lord.”
HE’D ONCE SEEN Minnie’s cook take a sharpened spoon and cut the flesh of a melon out in little balls. He felt as though each of Bowles’s words had been a jab of that spoon, slicing out neat chunks of his heart and bowels, one at a time, scraping him to the rind.
He didn’t remember coming back to Argus House. Just suddenly found himself at the door, Nasonby blinking at him in consternation. The man said something; he waved a hand in vague dismissal and walked into the library—thank God Hal’s not here; I have to tell him, but, God, not now!—and out through the French doors, across the garden. His only thought was to find refuge, though he knew there could be none.
Behind the shed, he sat down carefully on the upturned bucket, put his elbows on his knees, and sank his head in his hands.
He could hear the watch ticking in his pocket, each tiny sound seeming to last forever, the stream of them endless. How impossibly long it would be before he died, for only that could put an end to the echo of Bowles’s words in the hollow of his mind.
He had no idea how long he sat there, eyes closed, listening to the reproach of his own heartbeat. He didn’t bother opening his eyes when footsteps came to a stop before him and the coolness of someone’s shadow fell on his hot face.
There was a brief sigh, then big hands took him by the arms and lifted him bodily to his feet.
“Come wi’ me,” Fraser said quietly. “Walk. It will be easier to say what’s happened, walking.”
He opened his mouth to protest but hadn’t the strength to resist. Fraser took his arm and propelled him firmly through the back gate. There was a narrow lane there, wide enough for barrows and tradesmen’s wagons, but at this hour of the day—it was late, he thought dimly, the whole of the lane was in shadow—there were only a few female servants loitering near the gates of the big houses, gossiping or waiting to walk out with a young man. These glanced at the two men sidelong but turned their heads away, lowering their voices as they continued their conversations. He wished passionately that he was one of those women, had a right still to engage in the ordinariness of life.
There was a lump in his throat, hard and round as a walnut. He didn’t see how words would ever find their way past it. But Fraser kept hold of his arm, guiding him out into the street, into Hyde Park.
It was nearly dark, save for the pinprick campfires of the tramps and gypsies who came into the park by night, and there were few of these. At the corner where pamphleteers, electioneers, and those possessed of strong opinions stood to speak, a larger fire was burning, dying down unattended, with a smell of charred paper. A figure hung from the branch of a nearby tree, an effigy that someone had tried to set on fire, but the fire had gone out, leaving the figure blackened and stinking, the pale square of paper pinned to its chest unreadable in the dark.
They’d made nearly half a circuit of the park before he found the first words, Fraser walking patiently beside him, no longer holding his arm, and he missed the touch … but the words came at last, at first disjointed,