The Fiery Cross (89 page)

My attention was distracted from Perseus by a steaming mug of this beverage, thrust beneath my nose in invitation.

“Do have some, Mrs. Fraser.” It was Lloyd Stanhope, roundly amiable. “You wouldn’t want to take a chill, dear lady.”

There was no danger of that, given the increasing warmth of the day, but I accepted the cup, enjoying the scent of cinnamon and honey that wafted from it.

I leaned to one side, looking for Jamie, but he was still nowhere to be seen. A group of gentlemen arguing the merits of Virginia tobacco versus indigo as a crop were clustered round one side of Perseus, while the statue’s rear aspect now sheltered three young girls, who were glancing at it from behind their fans, red-faced and giggling.

“. . . unique,” Phillip Wylie was saying to someone. The eddies of conversation had brought him back to my side. “Absolutely unique! Black pearls, they’re called. Never seen anything like them, I’ll wager.” He glanced round and, seeing me, reached out to touch my elbow lightly. “I collect you have spent some time in France, Mrs. Fraser. Have you seen them there, perhaps?”

“Black pearls?” I said, scrambling to catch hold of the threads of the conversation. “Well, yes, a few. I recall the Archbishop of Rouen had a small Moorish page boy who wore a very large one in his nose.”

Stanhope’s jaw sagged ludicrously. Wylie stared at me for a split second, then uttered a whoop of laughter so loud that both the tobacco lobby and the giggling girls stopped dead and stared at us.

“You will be the death of me, my dear lady,” Wylie wheezed, as Stanhope declined into choked snorts of mirth. Wylie drew out a lacy kerchief and dabbed delicately at the corners of his eyes, lest tears of merriment blotch his powder.

“Really, Mrs. Fraser, have you not seen my treasures?” He grasped my elbow and propelled me out of the crowd with surprising skill. “Come, let me show you.”

He guided me smoothly through the gathering throng and past the side of the house, where a flagged path led toward the stables. Another crowd—mostly men—was clustered round the paddock, where Jocasta’s groom was throwing down hay for several horses.

There were five of them—two mares, a couple of two-year-olds, and a stallion. All five black as coal, with coats that gleamed in the pale spring sun, even shaggy as they were with winter hair. I was no expert in horse conformation, but knew enough by now to notice the deep chests, barreled vaults, and sculpted quarters, which gave them a peculiar but deeply appealing look of elegant sturdiness. Beyond the beauties of conformation and coat, though, what was most striking about these horses was their hair.

These black horses had great floating masses of silky hair—almost like women’s hair—that rose and fluttered with their movements, matching the graceful fall of their long, full tails. In addition, each horse had delicate black feathers decorating hoof and fetlock, that lifted like floating milkweed seed with each step. By contrast to the usual rawboned riding horses and rough draft animals used for haulage, these horses seemed almost magical—and from the awed comment they were occasioning among the spectators, might as well have come from Fairyland as from Phillip Wylie’s plantation in Edenton.

“They’re yours?” I spoke to Wylie without looking at him, unwilling to take my eyes away from the enchanting sight. “Wherever did you get them?”

“Yes,” he said, his usual affectations erased by simple pride. “They are mine. They are Friesians. The oldest breed of warm-bloods—their lineage can be traced back for centuries.

“As to where I got them”—he leaned over the fence, extending a hand palm-up and wiggling his fingers toward the horses in invitation—“I have been breeding them for several years. I brought these at Mrs. Cameron’s invitation; she has it in mind perhaps to purchase one of my mares, and suggested that one or two of her neighbors might also be interested. As for Lucas, here, though”—the stallion had come over, recognizing his owner, and was submitting gracefully to having his forehead rubbed—“he is not for sale.”

Both mares were heavily in foal; Lucas was the sire, and so had been brought, Wylie said, as proof of the bloodlines. That, I thought, privately amused, and for purposes of showing him off. Wylie’s “black pearls” were exciting keen interest, and a number of the horse-breeding gentlemen from the neighborhood had gone visibly green with envy at sight of Lucas. Phillip Wylie preened like a cock grouse.

“Oh, there ye are, Sassenach.” Jamie’s voice came suddenly in my ear. “I was looking for you.”

“Were you, indeed?” I said, turning away from the paddock. I felt a sudden warmth under my breastbone at sight of him “And where have
you
been?”

“Oh, here and there,” Jamie said, undisturbed by my tone of accusation. “A verra fine horse indeed, Mr. Wylie.” A polite nod, and he had me by the arm and headed back toward the lawn before Wylie’s murmured “Your servant, sir” had been quite voiced.

“What are ye doing out here wi’ wee Phillip Wylie?” Jamie asked, picking his way through a flock of house slaves, who streamed past from the cookhouse with platters of food steaming alluringly under white napkins.

“Looking at his horses,” I said, putting a hand over my stomach in hopes of suppressing the resounding borborygmi occasioned by the sight of food. “And what have you been doing?”

“Looking for Duncan,” he said, guiding me round a puddle. “He wasna in the necessary, nor yet the smithy, the stables, the kitchen, the cookhouse. I took a horse and rode out to the tobacco-barns, but not a smell of the man.”

“Perhaps Lieutenant Wolff has assassinated him,” I suggested. “Disappointed rival, and all that.”

“Wolff?” He stopped, frowning at me in consternation. “Is yon gobshite here?”

“In the flesh,” I replied, waving my fan toward the lawn. Wolff had taken up a station next the refreshment tables, his short, stout figure unmistakable in its blue and white naval uniform. “Do you suppose your aunt invited him?”

“Aye, I do,” he said, sounding grim but resigned. “She couldna resist rubbing his nose in it, I expect.”

“That’s what I thought. He’s only been here for half an hour or so, though—and if he goes on mopping it up at that rate,” I added, looking disapprovingly at the bottle clutched in the Lieutenant’s hand, “he’ll be out cold before the wedding takes place.”

Jamie dismissed the Lieutenant with a contemptuous gesture.

“Well, then, let him pickle himself and welcome, so long as he only opens his mouth to pour drink in. Where’s Duncan hidden himself, though?”

“Perhaps he’s thrown himself in the river?” It was meant as a joke, but I glanced toward the river nonetheless, and saw a boat headed for the landing, the oarsman standing in the prow to throw his mooring rope to a waiting slave. “Look—is that the priest at last?”

It was; a short, tubby figure, black soutane hiked up over hairy knees as he scrambled ignominiously onto the dock, with the help of a push from the boatmen below. Ulysses was already hurrying down to the landing, to greet him.

“Good,” Jamie said, in tones of satisfaction. “We’ve a priest, then, and a bride. Two of three—that’s progress. Here, Sassenach, wait a bit—your hair’s coming down.” He traced the line of a fallen curl slowly down my back, and I obligingly let the shawl fall back from my shoulders.

Jamie put up the curl again, with a skill born of long practice, then kissed me gently on the nape of the neck, making me shiver. He wasn’t immune to the prevailing airs of spring, either.

“I suppose I must go on looking for Duncan,” he said, with a tinge of regret. His fingers lingered on my back, thumb delicately tracing the groove of my spine. “Once I’ve found him, though . . . there must be some place here with a bit of privacy to it.”

The word “privacy” made me lean back against Jamie, and glance toward the riverbank, where a clump of weeping willows sheltered a stone bench—quite a private and romantic spot, especially at night. The willows were thick with green, but I caught a flash of scarlet through the drooping branches.

“Got him!” I exclaimed, straightening up so abruptly that I trod on Jamie’s toe. “Oh—sorry!”

“Nay matter,” he assured me. He had followed the direction of my glance, and now drew himself up purposefully. “I’ll go and fetch him out. Do ye go up to the house, Sassenach, and keep an eye on my aunt and the priest. Dinna let them escape until this marriage is made.”

JAMIE MADE HIS WAY down the lawn toward the willows, absently acknowledging the greetings of friends and acquaintances as he went. In truth, his mind was less on Duncan’s approaching nuptials than on thoughts of his own wife.

He was generally aware that he had been blessed in her beauty; even in her usual homespun, knee-deep in mud from her garden, or stained and fierce with the blood of her calling, the curve of her bones spoke to his own marrow, and those whisky eyes could make him drunk with a glance. Besides, the mad collieshangie of her hair made him laugh.

Smiling to himself even at the thought, it occurred to him that he
was
slightly drunk. Liquor flowed like water at the party, and there were already men leaning on old Hector’s mausoleum, glaze-eyed and slack-jawed; he caught a glimpse of someone behind the thing, too, having a piss in the shrubbery. He shook his head. There’d be a body under every bush by nightfall.

Christ. One thought of bodies under bushes, and his mind had presented him with a blindingly indecent vision of Claire, lying sprawled and laughing under one, breasts falling out of her gown and the dead leaves and dry grass the same colors as her rumpled skirts and the curly brown hair between her—He choked the thought off abruptly, bowing cordially to old Mrs. Alderdyce, the Judge’s mother.

“Your servant, ma’am.”

“Good day to ye, young man, good day.” The old lady nodded magisterially and passed by, leaning on the arm of her companion, a long-suffering young woman who gave Jamie a faint smile in response to his salute.

“Master Jamie?” One of the maids hovered beside him, holding out a tray of cups. He took one, smiling his thanks, and drank half its contents in a gulp.

He couldn’t help it. He had to turn and look after Claire. He caught no more than a glimpse of the top of her head among the crowd on the terrace—she wouldn’t wear a proper cap, of course, the stubborn wee besom, but had some foolishness pinned on instead, a scrap of lace caught up with a cluster of ribbons and rose hips. That made him want to laugh, too, and he turned back toward the willows, smiling to himself.

It was seeing her in the new gown that did it. It had been months since he’d seen her dressed like a lady, narrow-waisted in silk, and her white breasts round and sweet as winter pears in the low neck of her gown. It was as though she were suddenly a different woman; one intimately familiar and yet still excitingly strange.

His fingers twitched, remembering that one rebel lock, spiraling free down her neck, and the feel of her slender nape—and the feel of her plump warm arse through her skirts, pressed against his leg. He had not had her in more than a week, what with the press of people round them, and was feeling the lack acutely.

Ever since she had shown him the sperms, he had been uncomfortably aware of the crowded conditions that must now and then obtain in his balls, an impression made forcibly stronger in situations such as this. He kent well enough that there was no danger of rupture or explosion—and yet he couldn’t help but think of all the shoving going on.

Being trapped in a seething mass of others, with no hope of escape, was one of his own personal visions of Hell, and he paused for a moment outside the screen of willow trees, to administer a brief squeeze of reassurance, which he hoped might calm the riot for a bit.

He’d see Duncan safely married, he decided, and then the man must see to his own affairs. Come nightfall, and if he could do no better than a bush, then a bush it would have to be. He pushed aside a swath of willow branches, ducking to go through.

“Duncan,” he began, and then stopped, the swirl of carnal thoughts disappearing like water down a sewer. The scarlet coat belonged not to Duncan Innes but to a stranger who turned toward him, with surprise equal to his own. A man in the uniform of His Majesty’s army.

THE LOOK OF MOMENTARY startlement faded from the man’s face, almost as quickly as Jamie’s own surprise. This must be MacDonald, the half-pay soldier Farquard Campbell had mentioned to him. Evidently Farquard had described him to MacDonald, as well; he could see the man had put a name to him.

MacDonald held a cup of punch, as well; the slaves had been busy. He drained the cup deliberately, then set it down on the stone bench, wiping his lips on the back of his hand.

“Colonel Fraser, I presume?”

“Major MacDonald,” he replied, with a nod that mingled courtesy with wariness. “Your servant, sir.”

MacDonald bowed, punctilious.

“Colonel. If I might command a moment of your time?” He glanced over Jamie’s shoulder; there were giggles on the riverbank behind them, and the excited small screams of very young women pursued by very young men. “In private?”

Jamie noted the usage of his militia title with a sour amusement, but nodded briefly, and discarded his own cup, still half-full, alongside the Major’s.

He tilted his head toward the house in inquiry; MacDonald nodded and followed him out of the willows, as loud rustlings and squealings announced that the bench and its sheltering trees had now become the province of the younger element. He wished them good luck with it, privately noting the location for his own possible use, after dark.

The day was cold but still and bright, and a number of guests, mostly men who found the civilized atmosphere within too suffocating for their tastes, were clustered in argumentative groups in the corners of the terrace, or strolling round the paths of the newly-sprouting garden, where their tobacco pipes might fume in peace. Assessing the latter venue as the best means of avoiding interruption, Jamie led the Major toward the brick-lined path that curved toward the stables.

“Have you seen Wylie’s Friesians?” the Major asked as they rounded the house, making casual conversation ’til they should be safely out of earshot.