The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (199 page)

“My valet,” said the Duke calmly. “Albert Danton, by name. A good fellow with neckcloths and stockings, but a trifle excitable, as so many of these Frenchmen are. Incredibly superstitious, too.” He frowned disapprovingly at the closed door. “Bloody papists, with all these saints and smells and such. Believe anything at all.”

My breathing was slowing, though my heart still banged against the whalebones of my bodice. I had trouble drawing a deep breath.

“You filthy, disgusting, outrageous.… 
pervert
!”

The Duke seemed bored by this, and nodded negligently.

“Yes, yes, my dear. All that, I’m sure, and more. A trifle unlucky, too, at least on that occasion.”

“Unlucky? Is that what you’d call it?” Unsteadily, I moved to the love seat, and sat down. My hands were shaking with nerves, and I clasped them together, hidden in the folds of my skirt.

“On several counts, my dear lady. Just look at it.” He spread out both hands in graceful entreaty. “I send Danton to dispose of you. He and his companions decide to entertain themselves a bit first; that’s all well and good, but in the process, they get a good look at you, leap unaccountably to the conclusion that you’re a witch of some kind, lose their heads entirely and run off. But not before debauching my goddaughter, who is present by accident, thus ruining all chance of the excellent marriage I had painstakingly arranged for her. Consider the irony of it!”

The shocks were coming thick and fast, and I hardly knew which to respond to first. There seemed one particularly striking statement in this speech, though.

“What do you mean ‘dispose of me’?” I demanded. “Do you mean to say you actually tried to have me
killed
?” The room seemed to be swaying a bit, and I took a deep gulp of tea as being the nearest thing to a restorative available. It wasn’t terribly effective.

“Well, yes,” Sandringham said pleasantly. “That was the point I was endeavoring to make. Tell me, my dear, would you care for a cup of sherry?”

I eyed him narrowly for a moment. Having just stated that he’d tried to have me killed, he now expected me to accept a cup of sherry from his hands?

“Brandy,” I said. “Lots of it.”

He giggled in that high-pitched way again, and made his way to the sideboard, remarking over his shoulder, “Captain Randall said you were a most diverting woman. Quite an encomium from the Captain, you know. He hasn’t much use for women ordinarily, though they swarm over him. His looks, I suppose; it can’t be his manner.”

“So Jack Randall
does
work for you,” I said, taking the glass he handed me. I had watched him pour out two glasses, and was sure that both contained nothing but brandy. I took a large and sorely needed swallow.

The Duke matched me, blinking his eyes at the effect of the pungent liquid.

“Of course,” he said. “Often the best tool is the most dangerous. One doesn’t hesitate to use it on that account; one merely makes sure to take adequate precautions.”

“Dangerous, eh? Just how much do you know about Jonathan Randall?” I asked curiously.

The Duke tittered. “Oh, virtually everything, I should think, my dear. Most likely a great deal more than you do, in fact. It doesn’t do to employ a man like that without having a means at hand to control him, you know. And money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.”

“Unlike blackmail?” I said dryly.

He sat back, hands clasped across his bulging stomach, and regarded me with bland interest.

“Ah. You are thinking that blackmail might work both ways, I suppose?” He shook his head, dislodging a few grains of snuff that floated down onto the silk waistcoat.

“No, my dear. For one thing, there is something of a difference in our stations. While rumor of that sort might affect my reception in some circles of society, that is not a matter of grave concern to me. While for the good Captain—well, the army takes a very dim view of such unnatural predilections. The penalty is often death, in fact. No, not much comparison, really.” He cocked his head to one side, so far as the multiple chins allowed.

“But it is neither the promise of wealth nor the threat of exposure that binds John Randall to me,” he said. The small, watery blue eyes gleamed in their orbits. “He serves me because I can give him what he desires.”

I eyed the corpulent frame with unconcealed disgust, making His Grace shake with laughter.

“No, not that,” he said. “The Captain’s tastes are somewhat more refined than that. Unlike my own.”

“What, then?”

“Punishment,” he said softly. “But you know that, don’t you? Or at least your husband does.”

I felt unclean simply from being near him, and rose to get away. The shards of the alabaster tobacco jar lay on the floor, and I kicked one inadvertently, so that it pinged off the wall, ricocheting and spinning off under the love seat, reminding me of the recent Danton.

I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to discuss the subject of my aborted murder with him, but it seemed at the moment preferable to some alternatives.

“What did you want to kill me for?” I asked abruptly, turning to face him. I glanced quickly over the collection of objects on a piecrust table, looking for a suitable weapon of defense, just in case he still felt the urge.

He didn’t seem to. Instead, he bent laboriously over and picked up the teapot—miraculously unbroken—and set it upright on the restored tea table.

“It seemed expedient at the time,” he said calmly. “I had learned that you and your husband were attempting to thwart a particular affair in which I had interested myself. I considered removing your husband instead, but it seemed too dangerous, what with his close relation to two of the greatest families in Scotland.”

“Considered removing him?” A light dawned—one of many that were going off in my skull like fireworks. “Was it you who sent the seamen who attacked Jamie in Paris?”

The Duke nodded in offhand manner.

“That seemed the simplest method, if a bit crude. But then, Dougal Mac-Kenzie turned up in Paris, and I wondered whether in fact your husband was in fact working
for
the Stuarts. I became unsure where his interests lay.”

What I was wondering was just where the
Duke
’s interests lay. This odd speech made it sound very much as though he was a secret Jacobite—and if so, he’d done a really masterly job of keeping his secrets.

“And then,” he went on, delicately placing the teapot’s lid back in place, “there was your growing friendship with Louis of France. Even had your husband failed with the bankers, Louis could have supplied Charles Stuart with what he needed—provided you kept your pretty nose out of the affair.”

He frowned closely at the scone he was holding, flicked a couple of threads off it, then decided against eating it and tossed it onto the table.

“Once it became clear what was really happening, I tried to lure your husband back to Scotland, with the offer of a pardon; very expensive, that was,” he said reflectively. “And all for nothing, too!

“But then I recalled your husband’s apparent devotion to you—quite touching,” he said, with a benevolent smile that I particularly disliked. “I supposed that your tragic demise might well distract him from the endeavor in which he was engaged without provoking the sort of interest his own murder would have involved.”

Suddenly thinking of something, I turned to look at the harpsichord in the corner of the room. Several sheets of music adorned its rack, written in a fine, clear hand.
Fifty thousand pounds, upon the occasion of Your Highness’s setting foot in Scotland
. Signed S. “S,” of course, for Sandringham. The Duke laughed, in apparent delight.

“That was really very clever of you, my dear. It must have been you; I’d heard of your husband’s unfortunate inability with music.”

“Actually, it wasn’t,” I replied, turning back from the piano. The table at my side lacked anything useful in the way of letter openers or blunt objects, but I hastily picked up a vase, and buried my face in the mass of hothouse flowers it held. I closed my eyes, feeling the brush of cool petals against my suddenly heated cheeks. I didn’t dare to look up, for fear my telltale face would give me away.

For behind the Duke’s shoulder, I had seen a round, leathery object, shaped like a pumpkin, framed by the green velvet draperies like one of the Duke’s exotic art objects. I opened my eyes, peering cautiously through the petals, and the wide, snaggle-toothed mouth split in a grin like a jack-o’-lantern’s.

I was torn between terror and relief. I had been right, then, about the beggar near the gate. It was Hugh Munro, an old companion from Jamie’s days as a Highland outlaw. A one-time schoolmaster, he had been captured by the Turks at sea, disfigured by torture, and driven to beggary and poaching—professions he augmented by successful spying. I had heard he was an agent of the Highland army, but hadn’t realized his activities had brought him so far south.

How long had he been there, perched like a bird on the ivy outside the second-story window? I didn’t dare try to communicate with him; it was all I could do to keep my eyes fixed on a point just above the Duke’s shoulder, gazing with apparent indifference into space.

The Duke was regarding me with interest. “Really? Not Gerstmann, surely? I shouldn’t have thought he had a sufficiently devious mind.”

“And you think I do? I’m flattered.” I kept my nose in the flowers, speaking distractedly into a peony.

The figure outside released his grip on the ivy long enough to bring one hand up into view. Deprived of his tongue by his Saracen captors, Hugh Munro’s hands spoke for him. Staring intently at me, he pointed deliberately, first at me, then at himself, then off to one side. The broad hand tilted and the first two fingers became a pair of running legs, racing away to the east. A final wink, a clenched fist in salute, and he was gone.

I relaxed, trembling slightly with reaction, and took a deep, restorative breath. I sneezed, and put the flowers down.

“So you’re a Jacobite, are you?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” the Duke answered genially. “The question is, my dear—are you?” Completely unselfconscious, he took off his wig and scratched his fair, balding head before putting it back on.

“You tried to stop the effort to restore King James to his throne when you were in Paris. Failing at that, you and your husband appear now to be His Highness’s most loyal supporters. Why?” The small blue eyes showed nothing more than a mild interest, but it wasn’t a mild interest that had tried to have me killed.

Ever since finding out who my host was, I had been trying as hard as I could to remember what it was that Frank and the Reverend Mr. Wakefield had once said about him.
Was
he a Jacobite? So far as I could recall, the verdict of history—in the persons of Frank and the Reverend—was uncertain. So was I.

“I don’t believe I’m going to tell you,” I said slowly.

One blond brow arched high, the Duke took a small enameled box from his pocket and abstracted a pinch of the contents.

“Are you sure that’s wise, my dear? Danton is still within call, you know.”

“Danton wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole,” I said bluntly. “Neither would you, for that matter. Not,” I added hastily, seeing his mouth open, “on that account. But if you want so badly to know which side I’m on, you aren’t going to kill me before finding out, now, are you?”

The Duke choked on his pinch of snuff and coughed heavily, thumping himself on the chest of his embroidered waistcoat. I drew myself up and stared coldly down my nose at him as he sneezed and spluttered.

“You’re trying to frighten me into telling you things, but it won’t work,” I said, with a lot more confidence than I felt.

Sandringham dabbed gently at his streaming eyes with a handkerchief. At last he drew a deep breath, and blew it out between plump, pursed lips as he stared at me.

“Very well, then,” he said, quite calmly. “I imagine my workmen have finished their alterations to your quarters by now. I shall summon a maid to take you to your room.”

I must have gawped foolishly at him, for he smiled derisively as he hoisted himself out of his chair.

“To a point, you know, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whatever else you may be or whatever information you may possess, you have one invaluable attribute as a houseguest.”

“And what’s that?” I demanded. He paused, hand on the bell, and smiled.

“You’re Red Jamie’s wife,” he said softly. “And he
is
fond of you, my dear, is he not?”

As prisons go, I had seen worse. The room measured perhaps thirty feet in each dimension, and was furnished with a lavishness exceeded only by the sitting room downstairs. The canopied bed stood on a small dais, with baldachins of ostrich feathers sprouting from the corners of its damask drapes, and a pair of matching brocaded chairs squatted comfortably before a huge fireplace.

The maidservant who had accompanied me in set down the basin and ewer she carried, and hurried to light the ready-laid fire. The footman laid his covered supper-tray on the table by the door, then stood stolidly in the doorway, dishing any thoughts I might have had of trying a quick dash down the hall. Not that it would do me much good to try, I thought gloomily; I’d be hopelessly lost in the house after the first turn of the corridor; the bloody place was as big as Buckingham Palace.

“I’m sure His Grace hopes as you’ll be comfortable, ma’am,” said the servant, curtsying prettily on her way out.

“Oh, I’ll bet he does,” I said, ungraciously.

The door closed behind her with a depressingly solid thud, and the grating sound of the big key turning seemed to scrape away the last bit of insulation covering my raw nerves.

Shivering in the chill of the vast room, I clutched my elbows and walked to the fire, where I subsided into one of the chairs. My impulse was to take advantage of the solitude to have a nice private little fit of hysterics. On the other hand, I was afraid that if I allowed my tight-reined emotions any play at all, I would never get them in check again. I closed my eyes tight and watched the red flicker of the firelight on my inner eyelids, willing myself to calmness.