Dragonfly In Amber - Gabaldon Diana. Страница 45

Wasting no time, he slid adroitly onto the other chair, lifting my feet into his lap. He clasped my silk-stockinged toes fervently against his crotch.

“Ah, ma petite! Such delicacy! Your beauty distracts me!”

I thought it must, if he was under the delusion that my feet were particularly delicate. Raising one to his lips, he nibbled at my toes.

“C’est un cochon qui vit dans la ville, c’est un cochon qui vit…”

I jerked my foot from his grasp and stood up hastily, rather impeded by my voluminous petticoats.

“Speaking of cochons who live in the city,” I said, rather nervously, “I don’t think my husband would be at all pleased to find you here.”

“Your husband? Pah!” He dismissed Jamie with an airy wave of the hand. “He will be occupied for some time, I am sure. And while the cat’s away… come to me, ma petite souris; let me hear you squeak a bit.”

Presumably intending to fortify himself for the fray, the Vicomte produced an enameled snuffbox from his pocket, deftly sprinkled a line of dark grains along the back of his hand, and wiped it delicately against his nostrils.

He took a deep breath, eyes glistening in anticipation, then jerked his head as the curtain was suddenly thrust aside with a jangling of brass rings. His aim distracted by the intrusion, the Vicomte sneezed directly into my bosom with considerable vigor.

I shrieked.

“You disgusting man!” I said, and walloped him across the face with my closed fan.

The Vicomte staggered back, eyes watering. He tripped over my size-nine shoes, which lay on the floor, and fell headfirst into the arms of Jamie, who was standing in the doorway.

“Well, you did attract a certain amount of notice,” I said at last.

“Bah,” he said. “The salaud’s lucky I didna tear off his head and make him swallow it.”

“Well, that would have provided an interesting spectacle,” I agreed dryly. “Sousing him in the fountain was nearly as good, though.”

He looked up, his frown replaced with a reluctant grin.

“Aye, well. I didna drown the man, after all.”

“I trust the Vicomte appreciates your restraint.”

He snorted again. He was standing in the center of a sitting room, part of a small appartement in the palace, to which the King, once he had stopped laughing, had assigned us, insisting that we should not undertake the return journey to Paris tonight.

“After all, mon chevalier,” he had said, eyeing Jamie’s large, dripping form on the terrace, “we should dislike exceedingly for you to take a chill. I feel sure that the Court would be deprived of a great deal of entertainment in such a case, and Madame would never forgive me. Would you, sweetheart?” He reached out and pinched Madame de La Tourelle playfully on one nipple.

His mistress looked mildly annoyed, but smiled obediently. I noticed, though, that once the King’s attention had been distracted, it was Jamie on whom her gaze lingered. Well, he was impressive, I had to admit, standing dripping in the torchlight with his clothes plastered to his body. That didn’t mean I liked her doing it.

He peeled his wet shirt off and dropped it in a sodden heap. He looked even better without it.

“As for you,” he said, eyeing me in a sinister manner, “did I not tell ye to stay away from those alcoves?”

“Yes. But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” I asked politely.

“What?” He stared at me as though I had lost my mind on the spot.

“Never mind; it’s a bit out of your frame of reference. I only meant, did you meet anyone useful before you came to defend your marital rights?”

He rubbed his hair vigorously with a towel plucked from the washstand. “Oh, aye. I played a game of chess with Monsieur Duverney. Beat him, too, and made him angry.”

“Oh, that sounds promising. And who’s Monsieur Duverney?”

He tossed me the towel, grinning. “The French Minister of Finance, Sassenach.”

“Oh. And you’re pleased because you made him angry?”

“He was angry at himself for losing, Sassenach,” Jamie explained. “Now he won’t rest until he’s beaten me. He’s coming round to the house on Sunday to play again.”

“Oh, well done!” I said. “And in the process, you can assure him that the Stuarts’ prospects are exceedingly dim, and convince him that Louis doesn’t want to assist them financially, blood kin or not.”

He nodded, combing back his wet hair with both hands. The fire had not yet been lit, and he shivered slightly.

“Where did you learn to play chess?” I asked curiously. “I didn’t know you knew how.”

“Colum MacKenzie taught me,” he said. “When I was sixteen, and spent a year at Castle Leoch. I had tutors for French and German and mathematics and such, but I’d go up to Colum’s room for an hour every evening to play chess. Not that it usually took him an hour to beat me,” he added ruefully.

“No wonder you’re good,” I said. Jamie’s uncle Colum, the victim of a deforming disease that had deprived him of most of his mobility, made up for it with a mind that would have put Machiavelli to shame.

Jamie stood up and unbuckled his swordbelt, narrowing his eyes at me. “Dinna think I don’t know what you’re up to, Sassenach. Changing the subject and flattering me like a courtesan. Did I not tell ye about those alcoves?”

“You said you didn’t mean to beat me,” I reminded him, sitting a bit farther back in my chair, just to be on the safe side.

He snorted again, tossing the swordbelt onto the chest of drawers and dropping his kilt next to the sodden shirt.

“Do I look the sort of man would beat a woman who’s with child?” he demanded.

I eyed him doubtfully. Stark naked, with his hair in damp red snarls and the white scars still visible on his body, he looked as though he had just leaped off a Viking ship, rape and pillage on his mind.

“Actually, you look capable of just about anything,” I told him. “As for the alcoves, yes, you told me. I suppose I should have gone outside to take my shoes off, but how was I to know that idiot would follow me in and begin nibbling on my toes? And if you don’t mean to beat me, just what did you have in mind?” I took a firm grip on the arms of my chair.

He lay down on the bed and grinned at me.

“Take off that whore’s dress, Sassenach, and come to bed.”

“Why?”

“Well, I canna wallop you, or drench ye in the fountain.” He shrugged. “I meant to give ye a terrible scolding, but I dinna think I can keep my eyes open long enough.” He gave a terrific yawn, then blinked and grinned at me again. “Remind me to do it in the morning, eh?”

“Better, is it?” Jamie’s dark-blue eyes were clouded with worry. “Is it right for ye to be sick so much, Sassenach?”

I pushed the hair back from my sweaty temples and dabbed a damp towel over my face.

“I don’t know whether it’s right,” I said weakly, “but at least I believe it’s normal. Some women are sick all through.” Not a pleasant thought at the moment.

Jamie glanced, not at the gaily painted clock on the table, but as usual, out the window at the sun.

“Do ye feel well enough to go down to breakfast, Sassenach, or ought I to tell the chambermaid to bring up something on a tray?”

“No. I’m quite all right now.” And I was. In the odd way of morning sickness, once the inexorable nausea had had its way with me, I felt perfectly fine within a moment or two. “Let me just rinse my mouth.”

As I bent over the basin, sluicing cool water over my face, there was a rap at the door of the appartement. Likely the servant who had been dispatched to the house in Paris to bring us fresh clothes, I thought.

To my surprise, though, it was a courtier, with a written invitation to lunch.

“His Majesty is dining today with an English nobleman,” the courtier explained, “newly arrived in Paris. His Majesty has summoned several of the prominent English merchants from the Cite to lunch, for the purpose of providing His Grace the Duke with the company of some of his countrymen. And someone pointed out to His Majesty that Madame your wife is an English lady, too, and thus should be invited to attend.”