The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [75]
“No hope o’ cream, then, I suppose,” he murmured, and shut the eye.
“You’d best leave him to us, miss,” said an English voice, sounding rather self-important.
“Yes,” said another, also English, but testy. “Leave the coffee, too, for God’s sake.”
There was a soft green light about the mermaid, and a small striped fish swam out of her hair, nosing its way down between her breasts. Lucky fish.
“What do you think, me lord?” said the first voice, now dubious. “Cold water down his neck, maybe?”
“Splendid idea,” said the second voice, now cordial. “You do it.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t want to presume, me lord.”
“I’m sure he isn’t violent, Tom.”
“Just as you say, me lord. But he might turn nasty, mightn’t he? Gentlemen do, sometimes, after a hard night.”
“I trust you do not speak from personal experience, Tom?”
“Certainly not, me lord!”
“Opium doesn’t take you like that, anyway,” said the second voice, coming nearer. It sounded distracted. “It does give you the most peculiar dreams, though.”
“Is he still asleep, do you think?” The first voice was coming nearer, too. He could feel someone’s breath on his face. The mermaid took offense at this familiarity and vanished. He opened his eyes, and Tom Byrd, who had been hovering over him with a wet sponge, let out a small shriek and dropped it on his chest.
With a detached sense of interest, he watched his own hand rise into the air and pluck the sponge off his shirt, where it was making a wet patch. He had no particular idea what to do with it next, though, and dropped it on the floor.
“Good morning.” John Grey’s face came into view behind Tom, wearing an expression of cautious amusement. “Are you feeling somewhat more human this morning?”
He wasn’t sure but nodded nonetheless and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He didn’t feel badly, but very strange. There was a wicked taste in his mouth, though, and he held out a hand to Tom Byrd, who was advancing on him slowly, coffee held before him like a flag of truce.
The cup Tom put in his hand was warm, and he sat for a moment, regaining his senses. The air smelled of peat smoke, cooking meat, and something vaguely nasty of a vegetable nature—scorched cabbage. His slow mind located the word.
He took a grateful mouthful of coffee and found a few more words.
“We’re in Ireland, then, are we?”
“Yes, thank God. Are you always—” Grey cut himself off.
“I am.”
“Jesus.” Grey shook his head in disbelief. “Rather fortunate that you were not transported after Culloden, then. I doubt you would have survived the voyage.”
Jamie gave him a narrow look—it was owing to Grey’s personal intervention that he had not been transported, and he hadn’t been at all pleased at the time—but evidently Grey meant nothing now beyond the obvious, and he merely nodded, sipping coffee.
A soft knock came at the door, which stood half open, and Quinn’s long face came poking round the jamb. Had Jamie’s reflexes been halfway normal, he might have dropped the coffee. As it was, he merely sat there, staring stupidly at the Irishman, whose existence he’d forgotten in the maze of opium dreams.
“Beggin’ your pardon, good sirs,” Quinn said, with an engaging smile round the room. “I hoped to inquire after the gentleman’s welfare, but I see he’s quite himself again, may God set a flower on his head.”
Quinn advanced into the room, uninvited, but Grey recovered his manners instantly and offered him coffee, then sent Tom down to order up some breakfast, as well.
“It’s pleased I am to see ye so far recovered, sir,” Quinn said to Jamie, and reached into his pocket, coming out with a corked bottle. He pulled the cork and poured a thin stream of pungent whiskey into Jamie’s coffee. “Perhaps this will aid in your complete return to the land o’ the living?”
Jamie’s sense of self-preservation was jumping up and down somewhere in the back of his mind, trying