The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [25]
“You’ll have time now,” said Roberts, in an odd, half-strangled voice. “It won’t take long.”
Jamie nearly took the punch, not expecting it. But the man gave clear notice, falling back on his heel and pulling back his fist as though he meant to hurl a stone, and Jamie dodged by reflex. Roberts shot past, unbalanced, and came up with a thud, catching himself on the fence. The horses who were tied to it all shied, stamping and snorting, not liking this kind of nonsense so early in the day.
“What the devil d’ye think you’re doing?” Jamie asked, more in a tone of curiosity than hostility. “Or, more to the point, what d’ye think I’ve done?”
Roberts pushed away from the fence, his face congested. He was not quite as tall as Jamie but heavier in the body.
“You know damned well what you’ve done, you Scotch bugger!”
Jamie eyed the man and lifted one brow.
“A guessing game, is it? Aye, well, then. Someone pissed in your shoes this morning, and the bootboy said it was me?”
Surprise lifted Roberts’s scowl for an instant.
“What?”
“Or someone’s gone off wi’ his lordship’s sealing wax?” He reached into the pocket of his breeches and drew out the stub of black wax. “He gave it to me; ye can ask him.”
Fresh blood crimsoned Roberts’s cheeks; the household staff objected very much to Jamie being allowed to write letters and did as much as they dared to obstruct him. To Roberts’s credit, though, he swallowed his choler and, after breathing heavily for a moment, said, “Betty. That name ring a bell?”
It rang a whole carillon. What had the gagging wee bitch been saying?
“I ken the woman, aye.” He spoke warily, keeping an eye on Roberts’s feet and a hand on Augustus’s bridle.
Roberts’s lip curled. He was good-looking, in a heavy-featured way, but the sneer didn’t flatter him.
“You ken the woman, do you, cully? You’ve bloody interfered with her!”
“I’ll tell,” she’d said, thrusting out her chin at him. She hadn’t said who she’d tell—nor that she’d tell the truth.
“No,” he said calmly, and, wrapping Augustus’s rein neatly round the fence rail, he stepped away from the horses and turned to face Roberts squarely. “I haven’t. Did ye ask her where and when? For I’m reasonably sure I havena been out of sight o’ the stables in a month, save for takin’ the horses out.” He nodded toward the waiting string, not taking his eyes off the footman. “And she canna have left the house to meet me on the fells.”
Roberts hesitated, and Jamie took the chance to press back.
“Ye might ask yourself, man, why she’d say such a thing to you.”
“What? Why shouldn’t she say it to me?” The footman drew his chin into his heavy neck, the better to glower.
“If she wanted me arrested or whipped or gaoled, she’d ha’ complained to his lordship or the constable,” Jamie pointed out, his tone still civil. “If she wanted me beaten to a pudding, she’d have told Morgan and Billings, as well, because—meaning nay disrespect—I dinna think ye can manage that on your own.”
The beginnings of doubt were flickering over Roberts’s heavy countenance.
“But she—”
“So either she thought she’d put a flea in your ear about me and there’d be a punch-up that would do neither of us any good—or she didna think ye’d come to me but that ye’d maybe be roused on her behalf.”
“Roused?” Roberts sounded confused.
Jamie drew breath, aware for the first time that his heart was pounding.
“Aye,” he said. “The lass didna say I’d raped her, now, did she? No, of course not.”
“Noo …” Roberts had gone from confusion to open doubt now. “She said you’d been a-cupping of her, toying with her breasts and the like.”
“Well, there ye are,” Jamie said, with a small wave toward the house. “She was only meaning to make ye jealous, in hopes that ye’d be moved to do something o’ the kind yourself. That,” he added helpfully, “or she meant to get ye into trouble. I hope the lass hasna got anything against ye.”
Roberts’s brow darkened, but with an inward thought. He glanced up at Jamie.
“I hadn’t had it in mind to strike you,” he said, with a certain formality. “I only meant to tell you to keep away from her.