The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [186]
Jamie reached the bed in two steps, grabbed Wilberforce by the shoulders, pulled him off Isobel, punched him in the face, and sent him staggering into the wall. He picked up the candlestick and bent to take one hasty glance between Isobel’s legs, but saw neither blood nor any other sign of recent intrusion, so put down the candlestick, yanked her night rail down over her legs, lifted her off the bed, and headed for the window, then on second thought went back for a blanket.
Someone was calling up the stairs, wanting to know was anything wrong?
Jamie bared his teeth at Wilberforce and ripped the side of his hand across his own throat, ordering silence. The lawyer was on the floor, back pressed against the door, but at this made an earnest attempt to scrabble backward through it.
“I can’t, I can’t,” Isobel was saying, breathless. He didn’t know if she meant she couldn’t climb down the ladder in the dark or was only hysterical, but he hadn’t time to ask her. He hoisted her over his shoulder, threw the blanket on top of her, stood on the sill, and stepped backward out into the night.
The ladder, while stout enough for its purpose, hadn’t been intended for elopements. The rung snapped under his foot and he slid most of the way to the ground, clinging to the rails in terror as the ladder slewed sideways. He hit the ground—still standing—and lost both his grip and Isobel. The ladder fell sideways with a clattering thud, Isobel with a thump and a stifled shriek.
He picked up the lass and ran for the mule, Isobel whimpering and digging her fingernails into his neck. He slapped her briefly on the bum to make her stop, put her up on the mule, untied it, and made for the road as the door of the inn opened and a truculent male voice said—from the safety of the lighted interior—“I see you, you bugger! I see you!”
Isobel said not a word on the way back to Helwater.
JOHN GREY WAS LYING in his bed, contentedly reading Mrs. Hagwood’s Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry, when he heard a great rustling and bumping in the corridor outside. Tom had gone to bed long since in the servants’ attic, so Grey flung back the covers, reaching for his banyan. He had barely got this on when there was a brief, imperative thump at his door that shivered its boards, as though someone had kicked it.
Someone had.
He wrenched the door open and Jamie Fraser walked in, dripping wet carrying someone wrapped in a blanket. Breathing heavily, he crossed the room and deposited his burden on Grey’s rumpled bed with a grunt. The burden let out a small squeak and clutched the blanket round itself.
“Isobel?” Grey glanced wildly at Fraser. “What’s happened? Is she hurt?”
“You need to soothe her and put her back where she belongs,” Fraser said, in very decent German. This startled Grey nearly as much as the intrusion, though an instant’s thought supplied the explanation—Isobel spoke French but not German.
“Jawohl,” he replied, giving Fraser a sideways look. He hadn’t known Fraser spoke German, and a brief thought of Stephan von Namtzen flashed through his mind. Christ, what might they have said to each other in Fraser’s hearing? That didn’t matter now, though.
“What’s happened, my dear?”
Isobel was hunched on the edge of the bed, snuffling and hiccuping. Her face was bloated and red, her blond hair loose, damp and tangled about her shoulders. Grey sat down gingerly beside her and rubbed her back gently.
“I’b ad idiot,” Isobel said thickly, and buried her face in her hands.
“She tried to elope with the lawyer—Wilberforce,” Jamie said in English. “Her maid came and got me and I went after them.” Jamie returned to German and acquainted Grey with the situation in a few blunt sentences, including his intelligence regarding Wilberforce’s wife and the precise situation in which he had found the lawyer and Isobel.
“The schwanzlutscher hadn’t penetrated her, but it was close enough to give her a shock,” he said, looking down dispassionately