“Aye—in his bloody immoral French way.” Jamie reached back to untie the lace that held his hair back. He had not plaited it again when we left Moubray’s, and it fell soft and loose on his shoulders, framing the broad cheekbones and long straight nose, so that he looked like one of the fiercer Italian angels of the Renaissance.
“Was it the Archangel Michael who drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?” I asked, stripping off his stockings.
He gave a slight chuckle. “Do I strike ye so—as the guardian o’ virtue? And Fergus as the wicked serpent?” His hands came under my elbows as he bent to lift me up. “Get up, Sassenach; ye shouldna be on your knees, serving me.”
“You’ve had rather a time of it today yourself,” I answered, making him stand up with me. “Even if you didn’t have to kill anyone.” There were large blisters on his hands, and while he had wiped away most of the soot, there was still a streak down the side of his jaw.
“Mm.” My hands went around his waist to help with the waistband of his breeches, but he held them there, resting his cheek for a moment against the top of my head.
“I wasna quite honest wi’ the lad, ye ken,” he said.
“No? I thought you did wonderfully with him. He felt better after he talked to you, at least.”
“Aye, I hope so. And may be the prayers and such will help—they canna hurt him, at least. But I didna tell him everything.”
“What else is there?” I tilted up my face to his, touching his lips softly with my own. He smelled of smoke and sweat.
“What a man most often does, when he’s soul-sick wi’ killing, is to find a woman, Sassenach,” he answered softly. “His own, if he can; another, if he must. For she can do what he cannot—and heal him.”
My fingers found the lacing of his fly; it came loose with a tug.
“That’s why you let him go with the second Mary?”
He shrugged, and stepping back a pace, pushed the breeches down and off. “I couldna stop him. And I think perhaps I was right to let him, young as he is.” He smiled crookedly at me. “At least he’ll not be fashing and fretting himself over that seaman tonight.”
“I don’t imagine so. And what about you?” I pulled the chemise off over my head.
“Me?” He stared down at me, eyebrows raised, the grimy linen shirt hanging loose upon his shoulders.
I glanced behind him at the bed.
“Yes. You haven’t killed anyone, but do you want to…mmphm?” I met his gaze, raising my own brows in question.
The smile broadened across his face, and any resemblance to Michael, stern guardian of virtue, vanished. He lifted one shoulder, then the other, and let them fall, and the shirt slid down his arms to the floor.
“I expect I do,” he said. “But you’ll be gentle wi’ me, aye?”
29
CULLODEN’S LAST VICTIM
In the morning, I saw Jamie and Ian off on their pious errand, and then set off myself, stopping to purchase a large wicker basket from a vendor in the street. It was time I began to equip myself again, with whatever I could find in the way of medical supplies. After the events of the preceding day, I was beginning to fear I would have need of them before long.
Haugh’s apothecary shop hadn’t changed at all, through English occupation, Scottish Rising, and the Stuart’s fall, and my heart rose in delight as I stepped through the door into the rich, familiar smells of hartshorn, peppermint, almond oil, and anise.
The man behind the counter was Haugh, but a much younger Haugh than the middle-aged man I had dealt with twenty years before, when I had patronized this shop for tidbits of military intelligence, as well as for nostrums and herbs.
The younger Haugh did not know me, of course, but went courteously about the business of finding the herbs I wanted, among the neatly ranged jars on his shelves. A good many were common—rosemary, tansy, marigold—but a few on my list made the young Haugh’s ginger eyebrows rise, and his lips purse in thoughtfulness as he looked over the jars.
There was another customer in the shop, hovering near the counter, where tonics were dispensed and compounds ground to order. He strode back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, obviously impatient. After a moment, he came up to the counter.
“How long?” he snapped at Mr. Haugh’s back.
“I canna just say, Reverend,” the apothecary’s voice was apologetic. “Louisa did say as ’twould need to be boiled.”
The only reply to this was a snort, and the man, tall and narrow-shouldered in black, resumed his pacing, glancing from time to time at the doorway to the back room, where the invisible Louisa was presumably at work. The man looked slightly familiar, but I had no time to think where I had seen him before.
Mr. Haugh was squinting dubiously at the list I had given him. “Aconite, now,” he muttered. “Aconite. And what might that be, I wonder?”
“Well, it’s poison, for one thing,” I said. Mr. Haugh’s mouth dropped open momentarily.
