The Scottish Prisoner Page 15

  She hesitated, and he could feel her calculation but didn't know the exact nature of it. Not how much to trust him, he didn't think--only a fool would trust him with dangerous information, and he was sure the duchess was no fool. How much to tell him, though ...

  "I love my husband, Mr. Fraser," she said at last, softly. "I don't want him--or John, for that matter--to find himself in a position where the Twelvetrees family might do him harm.

  "I want you, if at all possible, to see that that doesn't happen. If your inquiries in Ireland should lead you into contact with Edward Twelvetrees, I implore you, Mr. Fraser: try to keep him away from John, and try to see that whatever he's doing with Major Siverly doesn't intrude into the matter you're dealing with."

  He'd followed her train of thought reasonably well, he thought, and ventured a question to check.

  "Ye mean, whatever the money's about--even if it's going to, or through, Major Siverly--it's not to do wi' the matters covered by the court-martial your husband wants. And, therefore, ye want me to try to keep Lord John from following up any such trail, should he stumble over it?"

  She gave a little sigh.

  "Thank you, Mr. Fraser. I assure you, any entanglement with Edward Twelvetrees cannot help but lead to disaster."

  "For your husband, his brother--or your father?" he asked softly, and heard the sharp intake of her breath. After the briefest instant, though, the low gurgle of her laughter came again.

  "Father always said you were the best of the Jacobite agents," she said approvingly. "Are you still ... in touch?"

  "I am not," he said definitely. "But it had to be your father who told ye about the money. If either Pardloe or Grey knew that, they would have mentioned it when we were making plans with Colonel Quarry."

  There was a small puff of amusement, and the duchess rose, a white blur against the darkness. She brushed down her robe and turned to go, but paused at the door.

  "If you keep my secrets, Mr. Fraser, I will keep yours."

  HE RESUMED HIS BED cautiously; it smelt of her scent--and her body--and while not at all unpleasant, both were unsettling to him. So was her last remark--though upon due contemplation, he thought it had been mere persiflage. He had no secrets that needed keeping anymore--save the one, and there was little chance that she even knew of William's existence, still less that she knew the truth of his paternity.

  He could hear a church bell in the distance, striking the hour--a single, mellow bong. One o'clock, and the solitude of the deep night began to settle around him.

  He thought briefly about what the duchess had told him about the money Twelvetrees was moving into Ireland, but there was nothing he could do with the information, and he was worn out with the strain of being constantly on his guard in this nest of English. His thoughts stretched and frayed, tangled and dissolved, and before the clock struck the half hour, he was asleep.

  JOHN GREY HEARD THE BELL of St. Mary Abbot strike one and put down his book, rubbing his eyes. There were several more in an untidy pile beside him, along with the muddy dregs of the coffee that had been keeping him awake during his researches. Even coffee had its limits, though.

  He had been reading through several versions of the Wild Hunt tale, as collected and recounted by various authorities. While undeniably fascinating, none of these matched with either the language or the events given in Carruthers's version, nor did they shed any particular light upon it.

  If he hadn't known Charlie, hadn't seen the passion and precision with which he had prepared his complaint against Siverly, he would have been tempted to discard the document, concluding that it had been mixed in with the others by mistake. But he did know Charlie.

  The only possibility he had been able to deduce was that Charlie himself did not know the import of the Wild Hunt poem but did know that it had to do with Siverly--and that it was important in some way. And there, for the moment, the matter rested. There was, in all justice, plenty of incriminating material with which to be going on.

  With thoughts of wild faerie hordes, dark woods, and the wail of hunting horns echoing in the reaches of the night, he took his candle and went up to bed, pausing to blow out the lighted sconces that had been left burning for him in the foyer. One of the little boys had wakened earlier with stomachache or nightmare, but the nursery was quiet now. There was no light in the second-floor corridor, but he paused, hearing a sound. Soft footfalls toward the far end of the hallway, and a door opened, spilling candlelight. He caught a glimpse of Minnie, pale in flowing white muslin, stepping through the door into Hal's arms, and heard the whisper of Hal's voice.

  Not wishing them to see him, he hurried quickly up the stairs to the next floor, to hide his candle, and stood there in the dark for a moment, to give them time to retire.

  One of the boys must have been taken sick again. He couldn't think what else Minnie would be doing up at such an hour.

  He listened carefully; the night nursery was one more floor up, but he heard no outcries, no movement in the peaceful dark. Nor was there any noise from the floor below. Evidently, the whole household was now wrapped in slumber--save him.

  He rather liked the feeling of solitude, like this, he alone wakeful, lord of the sleeping world.

  Not quite the lord of the sleeping world. A brief, sharp cry sliced through the dark, and he started as though it had been a drawing pin run into his leg.

  The cry was not repeated but hadn't come from the nursery above. It had definitely come from down the corridor to his left, where the guest rooms lay. And, to his knowledge, no one slept at that end of the corridor save Jamie Fraser. Walking very quietly, he made his way toward Fraser's door.

  He could hear heavy breathing, as of a man wakened from nightmare. Ought he go in? No, you ought not, he thought promptly. If he's awake, he's free of the dream already.

  He was turning to creep back toward the stairs, when he heard Fraser's voice.

  "Could I but lay my head in your lap, lass," Fraser's voice came softly through the door. "Feel your hand on me, and sleep wi' the scent of you about me."

  Grey's mouth was dry, his limbs frozen. He should not be hearing this, was suffused with shame to hear it, but dared not move for fear of making a sound.

  There came a rustling, as of a large body turning violently in the bed, and then a muffled sound--a gasp, a sob?--and silence. He stood still, listening to his own heart, to the ticking of the longcase clock in the hall below, to the distant sounds of the house, settling for night. A minute, by counted seconds. Two. Three, and he lifted a foot, stepping quietly back. One more step, and then heard a final murmur, a whisper so strangled that only the acuteness of his attention brought him the words.

  "Christ, Sassenach. I need ye."

  He would in that moment have sold his soul to be able to offer comfort. But there was no comfort he could give, and he made his way silently down the stairs, missing the last step in the dark and coming down hard.

  14

  Fridstool

  BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, THE INSIDE OF JAMIE'S HEAD WAS buzzing like a hive of bees, one thought vanishing up the arse of the next before he could get hold of it. He badly needed peace to sort through it all, but the house was nearly as busy as his mind. There were servants everywhere. It was as bad as Versailles, he thought. Chambermaids, wee smudgit maids called tweenies who seemed to spend all their time trudging up and down the back stairs with buckets and brushes, footmen, bootboys, butlers ... He'd nearly run down John Grey's young valet in the hallway a minute ago, turning a corner and finding Byrd under his feet, the lad so buried under a heap of dirty linen he was carrying that he could barely see over it.

  Jamie couldn't even sit quietly in his room. If someone wasn't coming in to air the sheets, someone else was coming in to build the fire or take away the rug to be beaten or bring fresh candles or ask whether his stockings needed darning. They did, but still.

  What he needed, he thought suddenly, was a fridstool. As though the thought had released him in some way,
he got up and set off with determination to find one, narrowly avoiding embranglement with two footmen who were carrying an enormous settee up the front stair, it being too wide for the back.

  Not the park. Aside from the possibility of lurking Quinns, the place teemed with people. And while none of them would likely trouble him, the essence of a fridstool was solitude. He turned toward the hall that led toward the back of the house and the garden.

  It was an elderly Anglican nun who'd told him what a fridstool was, just last year. Sister Eudoxia was a distant connection of Lady Dunsany's, who'd come to Helwater to recuperate from what Cook said was the dropsical dispersion.

  Glimpsing Sister Eudoxia sitting in a wicker elbow chair on the lawn, wrinkled eyelids closed against the sun like a lizard's, he'd wondered what Claire would have said of the lady's condition. She wouldn't have called it a dropsical dispersion, he supposed, and smiled involuntarily at the thought, recalling his wife's outspokenness on the matter of such complaints as iliac passions, confined bowels, or what one practitioner called "the universal relaxation of the solids."

  The sister did have the dropsy, though. He'd learned that when he came upon her one evening, quite unexpectedly, leaning on the paddock fence, wheezing, her lips blue.

  "Shall I fetch ye someone, Sister?" he said, alarmed at her appearance. "A maid--shall I send for Lady Dunsany?"

  She didn't answer at once but turned toward him, struggling for breath, and lost her grip on the fence. He seized her as she began to fall and, from sheer necessity, picked her up in his arms. He apologized profusely, much alarmed--what if she were about to die?--looking wildly round for help, but then realized that she was not in fact expiring. She was laughing. Barely able to catch breath but laughing, bony shoulders shaking slightly under the dark cloak she wore.

  "No ... young ... man," she managed at last, and coughed a bit. "I'll be all ... right. Take me--" She ran out of air but pointed a trembling finger toward the little folly that roosted among the trees beyond the stable.

  He was disconcerted but did what she wanted. She relaxed quite naturally against him, and he was moved at sight of the neat parting in her gray hair, just visible at the edge of her veil. She was frail but heavier than he'd thought, and as he lowered her carefully onto the little bench in the folly, he saw that her lower legs and feet were grossly swollen, the flesh puffing over the straps of the sandals she wore. She smiled up at him.

  "Do you know, I believe that is the first time I've found myself in a young man's arms? Quite a pleasant experience; perhaps if I'd had it earlier, I should not have been a nun."

  Dark eyes twinkled up at him from a network of deep wrinkles, and he couldn't help smiling back.

  "I shouldna like to think myself a threat to your vow o' chastity, Sister."

  She laughed outright at that, wheezing gently, then coughed, pounding her chest with one hand.

  "I dinna want to be responsible for your death, either, Sister," he said, eyeing her with concern. Her lips were faintly blue. "Should I not fetch someone for ye? Or at least tell someone to bring ye a bit of brandy?"

  "You should not," she said definitely, and reached into a capacious pocket at her waist, withdrawing a small bottle. "I haven't drunk spirits in more than fifty years, but the doctor says I must have a drop for the sake of my health, and who am I to say him nay? Sit down, young man." She motioned him to the bench beside her with such a firmly authoritative air that he obeyed, after a furtive look round to see that they were not observed.

  She sipped from the bottle, then offered it to him, to his surprise. He shook his head, but she pushed it into his hand.

  "I insist, young man--what is your name? I cannot go on calling you 'young man.' "

  "Alex MacKenzie, Sister," he said, and took a token sip of what was clearly excellent brandy, before handing back the bottle. "Sister, I must go back to my work. Let me fetch someone--"

  "No," she said firmly. "You've done me a service, Mr. MacKenzie, in seeing me to my fridstool, but you will do me a much greater service by not informing the people in the house that I am here." She saw his puzzlement and smiled, exposing three or four very worn and yellowed teeth. It was an engaging smile, for all that.

  "Are you not familiar with the term? Ah. I see. You are Scotch, and yet you knew to call me 'Sister,' from which I deduce that you are a Papist. Perhaps Papists do not have fridstools in their churches?"

  "Perhaps not in Scottish kirks, Sister," he said cautiously. He'd thought at first it might be a sort of closestool or private privy, but probably not if you found them in churches.

  "Well, everyone should have one," she said firmly, "whether Papist or not. A fridstool is a seat of refuge, of sanctuary. Churches--English churches--often have one, for the use of persons seeking sanctuary, though I must say, they aren't used as often these days as in former centuries." She waved a hand knobbed with rheumatism and took another drink.

  "As I no longer have my cell as a place of private retirement, I was obliged to find a fridstool. And I think I have chosen well," she added, with a look of complacency about the folly.

  She had, if privacy was what she wanted. The folly, a miniature Greek temple, had been erected by some forgotten architect, and while the site had much to recommend it in summer, being surrounded by copper beeches and with a view of the lake, it was an inconvenient distance from the house, and no one had visited it in months. Dead leaves lay in drifts in the corners, one of the wooden lattices hung from a corner nail, having been torn loose in a winter storm, and the white pillars that framed the opening were thick with abandoned cobwebs and spattered with dirt.

  "It's a bit chilly, Sister," he said, as tactfully as possible. The place was cold as a tomb, and he didn't want her death on his conscience--let alone laid at his door.

  "At my age, Mr. MacKenzie, cold is the natural state of being," she said tranquilly. "Perhaps it is nature's way of easing us toward the final chill of the grave. Nor would dying of pleurisy be that much more unpleasant--nor much faster--than dying of the dropsy, as I am. But I did bring a warm cloak, as well as the brandy."

  He gave up arguing; he'd known enough strong-minded women to recognize futility when he met it. But he did wish Claire were here, to give her opinion on the old sister's health, perhaps to give her a helpful draught of something. He felt helpless himself--and surprised at the strength of his desire to help the old nun.

  "You may go now, Mr. MacKenzie," she said, quite gently, and laid a hand on his, light as a moth's touch. "I won't tell anyone you brought me here."

  Reluctantly, he rose.

  "I'll come back for ye, how's that?" he said. He didn't want her trying to stagger back to the house by herself. She'd likely fall into the ha-ha and break her neck, if she didn't freeze to death out here.

  She'd pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him, but he'd folded his arms and loomed over her, looking stern, and she laughed.

  "Very well, then. Just before teatime, if you can manage it conveniently. Now go away, Alex MacKenzie, and may God bless you and help you find peace."

  He crossed himself now, thinking of her--and caught a look of horror from one of the kitchen maids, coming through the back gate of Argus House with a long paper-wrapped parcel that undoubtedly contained fish. Not only a Hielandman in the house, but a Papist, too! He smiled at her, gave her a tranquil "Good day," and turned to the left. There were a couple of small sheds near the big glasshouse, probably for the gardeners' use, but it was late enough in the day that the gardeners had gone off for their tea. It might do ...

  He paused for an instant outside the shed, but heard nothing from within and boldly pushed open the door.

  A wave of disappointment passed through him. No, not here. There was a pile of burlap sacks stacked in one corner, the imprint of a body clear upon them, and a jug of beer standing beside it. This was someone's refuge already. He stepped out and closed the door, then on impulse went round behind the shed.

  There was a space about two f
eet wide between the back wall of the shed and the garden wall. Discarded bits of rubbish, broken rakes and hoes, burlap bags of manure filled most of the space--but just within the shelter of the shed, just out of sight of the garden, was an upturned bucket. He sat down on it and let his shoulders slump, feeling truly and blessedly alone for the first time in a week. He'd found his fridstool.

  He spent a moment in mindless relief, then said a brief prayer for the repose of Sister Eudoxia's soul. He thought she would not mind a Papist prayer.

  She'd died two days after his conversation with her, and he'd spent a wretched night after hearing the news, convinced she'd taken a chill from the cold marble of the folly. He was infinitely relieved to learn from the kitchen gossip next day that she'd died peacefully in her sleep, and he tried to remember her in his regular prayers. It had been some time since he had, though, and he was soothed now to imagine her presence near him. Her peaceful spirit didn't intrude upon his necessary solitude.

  Would it be all right, he wondered suddenly, to ask her to look after Willie while he was gone from Helwater?

  It seemed a mildly heretical thought. And yet the thought felt answered at once; it gave him a feeling of ... what? Trust? Confidence? Relief at the sharing of his burden?

  He shook his head, half in dismay. Here he sat in an Englishman's rubbish, talking to a dead Protestant nun with whom he'd had two minutes' real conversation, asking her to look after a child who had grandparents, an aunt, and servants by the score, all anxious to keep him from the slightest harm. He himself couldn't have done a thing for William had he been still at Helwater. And yet he felt absurdly better at the notion that someone else knew about William and would help to watch over him.

  He sat a few moments, letting his mind relax, and slowly it dawned upon him that the only truly important thing in this imbroglio was William. The complications and suspicions and possible dangers of the present situation mattered only insofar as they might prevent his returning to Helwater--no further.

  He took a deep breath, feeling better. Aye, with that made clear, it became possible to think logically about the rest. Well, then.