The Outlandish Companion Page 5

  “Ha,” I said, with the maximum of scorn it was possible to infuse into one syllable.

  “Hot water,” he said briefly, stepping out of the tub. “Dinna worry yourself, it won’t take long.”

  “That,” I said, with delicate precision, “is what you think.”

  Fighting jealousy, Claire is reassured to hear that Jamie has conceived a scheme to prevent his carousing comrades from pressing him to join in their debauches; he has told them that Claire is La Dame Blanche—the White Lady, a sorceress whose powers will shrivel his private parts, should he ever be unfaithful to her. Sodden with drink and strongly superstitious, the men believe him, and rumors of La Dame Blanche are soon circulating through Paris—much to Claire’s amusement.

  Between the demands of business and Royal intrigue, Jamie is thoroughly occupied. Between morning sickness and dinner parties, Claire is not. Seeking useful occupation, she volunteers her medical services at L’Hôpital des Anges, a convent hospital run by the redoubtable Mother Hildegarde and her assistant, the dog Bouton.

  Jamie also has acquired an assistant: a French lad met—by accident—in a brothel.

  “He’s to be called Fergus, ”Jamie explained. “His name is really Claudel, but we didna think that sounded verra manly.”

  “But we already have a stable-lad, and a lad to clean the knives and boots,” I objected.

  “Oh, aye, ”Jamie replied. “But we havena got a pickpocket.”

  With the aid of Fergus’s light touch with a mailbag, Jamie keeps a thumb on the secret pulse of Royal politics and learns encouraging news: The Old Pretender, the ex-King James, harbors no hopes for the restoration of his throne. His motive in sending Charles to France was instead a hope of shaming Louis into providing a secure future for the young man, possibly as a general in the French army.

  Perhaps, Jamie and Claire think, with the beginnings of hope, their mission is unnecessary?

  Charles, the Young Pretender, harbors higher aspirations than the French army, though. The Frasers learn with alarm of Charles Stuart’s new venture: an investment in a shipload of port, the proceeds of which might be sufficient to finance the rebellion Stuart dreams of. Still more alarming is Charles’s choice of business partner in this venture—the Comte St. Germain.

  Jamie begins a delicate game, probing among the bankers and nobles, the merchants and diplomats, to find a way to stop this venture from succeeding. Accompanying him to social events despite her growing bulk, Claire does her part in tracking rumor—and in starting it.

  Among Claire’s new acquaintances is a young girl, met at one of Louise de Rohan’s parties: Mary Hawkins, the fifteen-year-old niece of one of Jamie’s business acquaintances. Shy, pretty, and afflicted with a stammer, Mary is ignorant of men in general—and blissfully ignorant of her uncle’s plan to marry her to an elderly and degenerate member of the French aristocracy.

  At first sorry for the girl, and then befriending her, Claire finally realizes why Mary Hawkins’s name seemed so familiar—Claire has seen the name on a genealogical chart; Mary is—or will be—the six-times-great-grandmother of Frank Randall—the wife of Black Jack Randall.

  But how? Jack Randall died at Wentworth Prison, trampled under the hooves of a herd of Highland cattle during Jamie’s rescue months before. And yet… Claire still wears the gold ring of her marriage to Frank, cool and secure on her left hand. How can that be, with the man who sired Frank’s line dead before any child of his could be conceived?

  Jonathan Randall may be dead, but his ghost walks Jamie’s dreams. With the scars of Wentworth Prison still raw on his back, he wakes in a cold sweat, with Randall’s voice in his ears, Randall’s touch on his skin. Refusing to let Claire share the horror of his memories, he fights his demons alone at night, and rises in the morning with his memories clamped tight in a steel box of will.

  Seeking herbal remedies that might ease his sleep, Claire makes the acquaintance of a small, mysterious apothecary, Master Raymond, who warns her both of the dangers of Royal intrigue, and of the Comte, whose sinister reputation is further clouded by rumors of his occult associations. Is the Comte behind the attempt on Jamie’s life in the Paris streets—or Claire’s near-poisoning at Versailles?

  Within the widening circles of intrigue and uncertainty, the Frasers find refuge only within the security of their marriage. As the baby that is the tangible evidence of their love for each other grows in Claire’s womb, she and Jamie draw ever closer together, protecting each other from the shadowy dangers that surround them.

  “Doesn’t it make you feel a bit nervous?” I asked as we went up the stairs. “Never being able to trust anyone?”

  He laughed softly. “Well, I wouldna say anyone, Sassenach. There’s you—and Murtagh, and my sister, Jenny, and her husband, Ian. I’d trust the four of you wi’ my life—I have, for that matter, more than once.”

  I shivered as he pulled back the drapes of the big bed. The fire had been banked for the night, and the room was growing cold.

  “Four people you can trust doesn’t seem like all that many,” I said, unlacing my gown.

  He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the chair. The scars on his back shone silver in the faint light from the night sky outside.

  “Aye, well,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s four more than Charles Stuart has.”

  In spite of the intrigues and rumors that surround them, the King has taken a liking to both Claire and Jamie, and their presence is often required at Royal functions. Claire’s presence is requested at a luncheon held to honor a visiting English nobleman—an old acquaintance of the Frasers’, the Duke of Sandringham. It’s neither the Duke nor Claire’s continuing nausea that causes her to faint in the gardens at Versailles, though; it’s the sudden appearance of a man she knows twice dead.

  Then I saw him. I could feel all of the blood draining from my head as my eye traced disbelievingly over the elegant curve of the skull, dark-haired and bold amid the powdered wigs around it. Alarms rang in my head like air-raid sirens, as I fought to accept and repel the impressions that assailed me. My subconscious saw the line of the nose, thought “Frank,” and turned my body to fly toward him in welcome. “Not-Frank,” came the slightly higher, rational center of my brain, freezing me in my tracks as I saw the familiar curve of a half-smiling mouth, repeating, “You know it’s not Frank” as the muscles of my calves knotted. And then the lurch into panic and the clenching of hands and stomach, as the slower processes of logical thought came doggedly on the trail of instinct and knowledge, seeing the high brow and the arrogant tilt of the head, assuring me of the unthinkable. It could not be Frank. And if it were not, then it could only be …

  “Jack Randall.” It wasn’t my voice that spoke, but Jamie’s, sounding oddly calm and detached. Attention attracted by my peculiar behavior, he had looked where I was looking and had seen what I had seen.

  He didn’t move. So far as I could tell through the increasing haze of panic, he didn’t breathe. I was dimly aware of a nearby servant peering curiously upward at the towering form of the frozen Scottish warrior next to me, silent as a statue of Mars. But all my concern was for Jamie.

  To draw arms in the presence of the King was death. Murtagh was on the far side of the garden, much too far away to help. Two more paces would bring Randall within hearing distance. Within sword’s reach. I laid a hand on his arm. It was rigid as the steel of the swordhilt under his hand. The blood roared in my ears.

  “Jamie,” I said. “Jamie!” And fainted.

  The new arrival is not Jack Randall, though, but rather his younger brother, Alexander Randall, who shares a striking family resemblance, but appears to be quite the opposite of his vicious brother in personality and temperament. Jack was a soldier and a sadist; Alex is a curate, a gentle, intellectual young man who serves as the Duke’s chaplain and secretary. He is also, Claire learns, Mary Hawkins’s secret love, though it seems impossible for the young couple ever to marry, given Alexander’s impoverished
state and Mary’s (as yet unannounced) engagement to the Vicomte Marigny.

  Jamie has nothing against Alexander Randall—save his physical resemblance to his brother. Alexander’s arrival in Paris triggers further nightmares, though, in which Jamie feels the touch of Jack Randall on his skin, and hears his dead voice, murmuring obscenity in the dark. He wakes from these dreams sweating and ill, but will not let Claire comfort him, choosing instead to fight the ghost of Jack Randall within his own mind.

  At an outing to the Royal stables at Argentan, the Duke of Sandringham approaches Claire with an interesting proposition; if Jamie will agree to return to Scotland and abandon Charles Stuart, a pardon can be arranged.

  Why? Jamie wonders. The Duke owes him nothing, and can hope for nothing from him. Does the Duke—or possibly the English Crown, using the Duke as agent—intend to deprive Stuart of his allies, in the hope of thwarting his efforts?

  Claire and Jamie plan a dinner party, at which they hope both to divine the Duke’s purposes—is he a secret Jacobite, or the opposite?—and to gain a clue as to whether the Comte St. Germain is behind the attempts on their lives. As night falls, Claire hurries home from L’Hôpital des Anges to dress for the party, in company with Mary Hawkins, Fergus, and Murtagh, Jamie’s godfather and companion.

  Night is falling, though, and the group is attacked in the darkness of the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. With Murtagh bound and helpless, Mary is thrown to the ground and raped. Claire seems likely to suffer a similar fate when her hood falls back and a shaft of lantern-light illuminates her face.

  “Mother of God!” The hands clutching my arms slackened their grip, and I yanked loose, to see Spotted-shirt, mouth hanging open in horrified amazement below the mask. He backed away from me, crossing himself as he went.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” he babbled, crossing and recrossing. “La Dame Blanche!”

  “La Dame Blanche!” The man behind me echoed the cry, in tones of terror.

  Within moments the assailants have fled, leaving the street empty and disaster in their wake.

  Fergus has run to fetch Jamie. With him comes Alex Randall; too shy and too conscious of his impecunious state to approach her directly, he has been following Mary about the city, hoping for occasional glimpses of his beloved. Freeing Murtagh, Jamie takes them all home—and then, with Claire, must make hasty preparations for a very ill-omened dinner party.

  What I wanted at the moment was peace, quiet, and total privacy in which to shake like a rabbit. What I had was a dinner party with a duke who might be a Jacobite or an English agent, a Comte who might be a poisoner, and a rape victim hidden upstairs.

  The dinner party is the event of the season—one that will be talked about for months, as Claire wryly observes—though not for the usual reasons. The inopportune appearance of a drugged and disheveled Mary Hawkins in the middle of dinner triggers confrontation, fistfights, and general hysteria, ending with Mary Hawkins removed to her uncles house, Silas Hawkins and Alex Randall laid out cold, the Comte St. Germain gloating, and Jamie in the hands of the Paris police.

  Released at dawn, Jamie returns to the house in the Rue Tremoulins, wanting nothing but clean clothes and Claire’s arms. One more conversation awaits him, though—Murtagh kneels at his feet, his dirk held out hilt-first, and asks Jamie formally to take his life. He cannot live, he says, with the shame of having failed in his duty to protect his chief’s wife and unborn child.

  Rather than grant his godfather’s request, Jamie instead lays an oath on Murtagh:

  Jamie’s voice dropped still further, but it was not a whisper. Holding the middle three fingers of his right hand stiff, he laid them together over the hilt of the dirk, at the juncture of haft and tang.

  “I charge ye, then, by your oath to me and your word to my mother—find the men. Hunt them, and when they be found, I do charge ye wi’ the vengeance due my wife’s honor—and the blood of Mary Hawkins’s innocence.”

  He paused a moment, then took his hand from the knife. The clansman raised it, holding it upright by the blade. Acknowledging my presence for the first time, he bowed his head toward me and said, “As the laird has spoken, lady, so I will do. I will lay vengeance at your feet.”

  Jamie decides to conduct his own investigation in other directions—affairs at the dinner party and the interception of a mysterious musical cipher promising aid to the Stuart cause have made it still more urgent to determine where the Duke of Sandringham’s loyalties actually lie.

  Claire accompanies Jamie to the Dukes house, meaning to find an opportunity to steal away and find Alexander Randall. With the attack in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré a matter of public knowledge, Marys marriage to the Vicomte is definitely off. Alex and Mary cannot meet publicly, but Claire means to invite Alex to her house, where he can talk to Mary privately.

  Stealing away from Jamie’s conversation with the Duke, she finds not Alex, but Mary—who has in turn stolen away from her uncle’s house and come to find the man she loves. A sympathetic footman tells the women that they are too late; as a result of the scandal at the dinner party, Alexander Randall has been dismissed from the Duke’s service and is already en route for England.

  Shocked and disbelieving, Mary rushes into the hall, pursued by Claire, eager to prevent the scandal that will result if Mary is found. Dashing around a corner in pursuit, though, Claire forgets Mary entirely, when she crashes headfirst into a man coming the other way.

  He let out a startled “Whoof!” as I struck him amidships, and clutched me by the arms to keep upright as we swayed and staggered together.

  “I’m sorry,” I began, breathlessly.

  “I thought you were—oh, Jesus H. Fucking Christ!”

  My initial impression—that I had encountered Alexander Randall—had lasted no more than the split second necessary to see the eyes above that finely chiseled mouth. The mouth was much like Alex’s, bar the deep lines around it. But those cold eyes could belong to only one man.

  The shock was so great that for a moment everything seemed paradoxically normal; I had an impulse to apologize, dust him off, and continue my pursuit, leaving him forgotten in the corridor, as just a chance encounter. My adrenal glands hastened to remedy this impression, dumping such a dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream that my heart contracted like a squeezed fist.

  He was recovering his own breath by now, along with his momentarily shattered self-possession.

  “I am inclined to concur with your sentiments, madam, if not precisely with their manner of expression.” Still clutching me by the elbows, he held me slightly away from him, squinting to see my face in the shadowed hall, I saw the shock of recognition blanch his features as my face came into the light. “Bloody hell, it’s you!” he exclaimed.

  “I thought you were dead!” I wrenched at my arms, trying to free them from the iron-tight grip of Jonathan Randall.

  He let go of one arm, in order to rub his middle, surveying me coldly. The thin, fine-cut features were bronzed and healthy; he gave no outward sign of having been trampled five months before by thirty quarter-ton beasts. Not so much as a hoofprint on his forehead.

  Claire is shocked by the revelation that Jack Randall still lives, but even more distressed by the effects of this revelation on Jamie—and its possible repercussions.

  Jamie sends her home in the carriage, and disappears. What has he done, what is he doing? He cannot challenge Randall openly at Sandringham’s house—but a challenge is certainly what he intends.

  Desperate with fear and worry, Claire arrives back at Jared’s house, only to find an unexpected visitor—Jamie’s uncle, Dougal MacKenzie. An ardent Jacobite, Dougal is visiting Paris for undisclosed reasons of his own, but is concerned to hear of his nephew’s impending duel. Duelling is illegal, and likely to get the participants locked up in the Bastille—a development that would certainly put a damper on Jamie’s abilities to help Prince Charles.

  Claire has a plan, conceived in desperation
, and enlists Dougal’s help in carrying it out. She will go to the police and denounce Jack Randall as one of the men who attacked her in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. He is, of course, innocent of the charge, but the police will lock him up until he can prove his innocence—giving Claire time to find Jamie.

  The scheme works, and Jamie returns to the house, thwarted of his prey and cold with fury. Jamie is bent on vengeance; nothing will quench the fires of his rage save Jack Randall’s blood. Claire understands, and would be more than willing not only to help, but to kill Randall herself—were it not for one thing: Frank.

  Jack Randall is Frank’s six-times-great-grandfather; the child who will be next in the line of descent that leads to Frank has not yet been conceived. Claire implores Jamie to delay his vengeance only a little while—only a year; time enough for Randall to marry and sire a son. Then, with Frank safe … Jack Randall can die.

  Jamie meets this request with an outburst of fury. How can she expect him to wait, to let a man live who has done to him what Jack Randall has done? Still, his love for Claire—and his sense of obligation to Frank Randall—win out at last, and he grudgingly agrees to wait for the satisfaction of his outraged honor.

  ALL, THE REASONABLE WAYS of stopping Charles Stuart’s venture had so far railed, and the situation is growing more threatening; Charles has ordered two thousand broadswords from Holland, and eyes the ships at anchor with the covetous gaze of a would-be invader. Desperate to stop him, Jamie conceives a bold plan.

  If the ship bearing Stuart’s port is found to have smallpox aboard, the French authorities will destroy it. Ergo, if pox is discovered aboard before the ship reaches port, the Captain will change course for Spain, which does not have such stringent restrictions. And, with a shipload of port on his hands, the Captain may well be persuaded to dispose of it to a handy buyer—Jamie, armed with gold borrowed from the bankers he has cultivated. Murtagh, armed with several of Claire’s herbal concoctions, will play the smallpox victim; Jamie the Captain’s savior. Cargo in hand, Jamie can sell the port in Spain, recover the money, and return to France to pay his debts—leaving Charles Stuart fundless and fuming, but safely stranded, far from Scotland.