“Real, is it?” I asked, taking a seat at the scarred oak table.
Master Raymond glanced upward, smiling.
“My crocodile? Oh, to be sure, madonna. Gives the customers confidence.” He jerked his head toward the shelf that ran along the wall just above eye height. It was lined with white fired-porcelain jars, each ornamented with gilded curlicues, painted flowers and beasts, and a label, written in elaborate black script. Three of the jars closest to me were labeled in Latin, which I translated with some difficulty—crocodile’s blood, and the liver and bile of the same beast, presumably the one swinging sinisterly overhead in the draft from the main shop.
I picked up one of the jars, removed the stopper and sniffed delicately.
“Mustard,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “and thyme. In walnut oil, I think, but what did you use to make it nasty?” I tilted the jar, critically examining the sludgy black liquid within.
“Ah, so your nose is not purely decorative, madonna!” A wide grin split the toadlike face, revealing hard blue gums.
“The black stuff is the rotted pulp of a gourd,” he confided, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “As for the smell … well, that actually is blood.”
“Not from a crocodile,” I said, glancing upward.
“Such cynicism in one so young,” Raymond mourned. “The ladies and gentlemen of the Court are fortunately more trusting in nature, not that trust is the emotion that springs immediately to mind when one thinks of an aristocrat. No, in fact it is pig’s blood, madonna. Pigs being so much more available than crocodiles.”
“Mm, yes,” I agreed. “That one must have cost you a pretty penny.”
“Fortunately, I inherited it, along with much of my present stock, from the previous owner.” I thought I saw a faint flicker of unease in the depths of the soft black eyes, but I had become oversensitive to nuances of expression of late, from watching the faces at parties for tiny clues that might be useful to Jamie in his manipulations.
The stocky little proprietor leaned still closer, laying a hand confidentially on mine.
“A professional, are you?” he said. “I must say, you don’t look it.”
My first impulse was to jerk my hand away, but his touch was oddly comfortable; quite impersonal, but unexpectedly warm and soothing. I glanced at the frost riming the edge of the leaded-glass panes, and thought that that was it; his ungloved hands were warm, a highly unusual condition for anyone’s hands at this time of year.
“That depends entirely upon what you mean by the term ‘professional,’ ” I said primly. “I’m a healer.”
“Ah, a healer?” He tilted back in his chair, looking me over with interest. “Yes, I thought so. Anything else, though? No fortune-telling, no love philtres?”
I felt a twinge of conscience, recalling my days on the road with Murtagh, when we had sought Jamie through the Highlands of Scotland, telling fortunes and singing for our suppers like a couple of Gypsies.
“Nothing like that,” I said, blushing only slightly.
“Not a professional liar, at any rate,” he said, eyeing me in amusement. “Rather a pity. Still, how may I have the pleasure of serving you, madonna?”
I explained my needs, and he nodded sagely as he listened, the thick gray hair swinging forward over his shoulders. He wore no wig within the sanctum of his shop, nor did he powder his hair. It was brushed back from a high, wide forehead, and fell straight as a stick to his shoulders, where it ended abruptly, as though cut with a blunt pair of scissors.
He was easy to talk to, and very knowledgeable indeed about the uses of herbs and botanicals. He took down small jars of this and that, shaking bits out and crushing the leaves in his palm for me to smell or taste.
Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of raised voices in the shop. A nattily-dressed footman was leaning across the counter, saying something to the shopgirl. Or rather, trying to say something. His feeble attempts were being thrown back in his teeth by a gale of withering Provençale from the other side of the counter. It was too idiomatic for me to follow entirely, but I caught the general drift of her remarks. Something involving cabbages and sausages, none of it complimentary.
I was musing on the odd tendency of the French to bring food into virtually any kind of discussion, when the shop door banged suddenly open. Reinforcements swept in behind the footman, in the guise of a rouged and flounced Personage of some sort.
“Ah,” murmured Raymond, peering interestedly beneath my arm at the drama unfolding in his shop. “La Vicomtesse de Rambeau.”
“You know her?” The shopgirl evidently did, for she abandoned her attack on the footman and shrank back against the cabinet of purges.
“Yes, madonna,” said Raymond, nodding. “She’s rather expensive.”
I saw what he meant, as the lady in question picked up the evident source of altercation, a small jar containing a pickled plant of some kind, took aim, and flung it with considerable force and accuracy into the glass front of the cabinet.
The crash silenced the commotion at once. The Vicomtesse pointed one long, bony finger at the girl.
“You,” she said, in a voice like metal shavings, “fetch me the black potion. At once.”
The girl opened her mouth as though to protest, then, seeing the Vicomtesse reaching for another missile, shut it and fled for the back room.
Anticipating her entrance, Raymond reached resignedly above his head and thrust a bottle into her hand as she came through the door.
“Give it to her,” he said, shrugging. “Before she breaks something else.”
As the shopgirl timidly returned to deliver the bottle, he turned to me, pulling a wry face.
“Poison for a rival,” he said. “Or at least she thinks so.”
“Oh?” I said. “And what is it really? Bitter cascara?”
He looked at me in pleased surprise.
“You’re very good at this,” he said. “A natural talent, or were you taught? Well, no matter.” He waved a broad palm, dismissing the matter. “Yes, that’s right, cascara. The rival will fall sick tomorrow, suffer visibly in order to satisfy the Vicomtesse’s desire for revenge and convince her that her purchase was a good one, and then she will recover, with no permanent harm done, and the Vicomtesse will attribute the recovery to the intervention of the priest or a counterspell done by a sorcerer employed by the victim.”
“Mm,” I said. “And the damage to your shop?” The late-afternoon sun glinted on the shards of glass on the counter, and on the single silver écu that the Vicomtesse had flung down in payment.
Raymond tilted a palm from side to side, in the immemorial custom of a man indicating equivocation.
“It evens out,” he said calmly. “When she comes in next month for an abortifacient, I shall charge her enough not only to repair the damage but to build three new cases. And she’ll pay without argument.” He smiled briefly, but without the humor he had previously shown. “It’s all in the timing, you know.”
I was conscious of the black eyes flickering knowledgeably over my figure. I didn’t show at all yet, but I was quite sure he knew.
“And does the medicine you’ll give the Vicomtesse next month work?” I asked.
“It’s all in the timing,” he replied again, tilting his head quizzically to one side. “Early enough, and all is well. But it is dangerous to wait too long.”
The note of warning in his voice was clear, and I smiled at him.
“Not for me,” I said. “For reference only.”
He relaxed again.
“Ah. I didn’t think so.”
A rumble from the street below proclaimed the passing of the Vicomtesse’s blue-and-silver carriage. The footman waved and shouted from behind as pedestrians were forced to scramble for the shelter of doors and alleyways to avoid being crushed.
“A la lanterne,” I murmured under my breath. It was rare that my unusual perspective on current affairs afforded me much satisfaction, but this was certainly one occasion
when it did.
“Ask not for whom the tumbril calls,” I remarked, turning to Raymond. “It calls for thee.”
He looked mildly bewildered.
“Oh? Well, in any case, you were saying that black betony is what you use for purging? I would use the white, myself.”
“Really? Why is that?”
And with no further reference to the recent Vicomtesse, we sat down to complete our business.
9
THE SPLENDORS OF VERSAILLES
I closed the door of the drawing room quietly behind me and stood still a moment, gathering courage. I essayed a restorative deep breath, but the tightness of the whalebone corseting made it come out as a strangled gasp.
Jamie, immersed in a handful of shipping orders, glanced up at the sound and froze, eyes wide. His mouth opened, but he made no sound.
“How do you like it?” Handling the train a bit gingerly, I stepped down into the room, swaying gently as the seamstress had instructed, to show off the filmy gussets of silk plissé let into the overskirt.
Jamie shut his mouth and blinked several times.
“It’s … ah … red, isn’t it?” he observed.
“Rather.” Sang-du-Christ, to be exact. Christ’s blood, the most fashionable color of the season, or so I had been given to understand.
“Not every woman could wear it, Madame,” the seamstress had declared, speech unhampered by a mouthful of pins. “But you, with that skin! Mother of God, you’ll have men crawling under your skirt all night!”
“If one tries, I’ll stamp on his fingers,” I said. That, after all, was not at all the intended effect. But I did mean to be visible. Jamie had urged me to have something made that would make me stand out in the crowd. Early-morning fog notwithstanding, the King had evidently remembered him from his appearance at the lever, and we had been invited to a ball at Versailles.
“I’ll need to get the ears of the men with the money,” Jamie had said, making plans with me earlier. “And as I’ve neither great position nor power myself, it will have to be managed by making them seek my company.” He heaved a sigh, looking at me, decidedly unglamorous in my woolen bedgown.
“And I’m afraid in Paris that means we’ll have to go out a bit in society; appear at Court, if it can be managed. They’ll know I’m a Scot; it will be natural for folk to ask me about Prince Charles, and whether Scotland is eagerly awaiting the return of the Stuarts. Then I can assure them discreetly that most Scots would pay a good price not to have the Stuarts back again—though it goes against the grain a bit to say so.”
“Yes, you’d better be discreet,” I agreed. “Or the Bonnie Prince may set the dogs on you next time you go to visit.” In accordance with his plan to keep abreast of Charles’s activities, Jamie had been paying weekly duty calls on the small house at Montmartre.
Jamie smiled briefly. “Aye. Well, so far as His Highness, and the Jacobite supporters are concerned, I’m a loyal upholder of the Stuart cause. And so long as Charles Stuart is not received at Court and I am, the chances of his finding out what I’m saying there are not great. The Jacobites in Paris keep to themselves, as a rule. For the one thing, they haven’t the money to appear in fashionable circles. But we have, thanks to Jared.”
Jared had concurred—for entirely different reasons—in Jamie’s proposal that we widen the scope of Jared’s usual business entertaining, so that the French nobility and the heads of the wealthy banking families might beat a path to our door, there to be seduced and cozened with Rhenish wine, good talk, fine entertainment, and large quantities of the good Scotch whisky that Murtagh had spent the last two weeks shepherding across the Channel and overland to our cellars.
“It’s entertainment of one kind or another that draws them, ye ken,” Jamie had said, sketching out plans on the back of a broadsheet poem describing the scurrilous affair between the Comte de Sévigny and the wife of the Minister of Agriculture. “All the nobility care about is appearances. So to start with, we must offer them something interesting to look at.”
Judging from the stunned look on his face now, I had made a good beginning. I sashayed a bit, making the huge overskirt swing like a bell.
“Not bad, is it?” I asked. “Very visible, at any rate.”
He found his voice at last.
“Visible?” he croaked. “Visible? God, I can see every inch of ye, down to the third rib!”
I peered downward.
“No, you can’t. That isn’t me under the lace, it’s a fining of white charmeuse.”
“Aye well, it looks like you!” He came closer, bending to inspect the bodice of the dress. He peered into my cleavage.
“Christ, I can see down to your navel! Surely ye dinna mean to go out in public like that!”
I bristled a bit at this. I had been feeling a trifle nervous myself over the general revealingness of the dress, the fashionable sketches the seamstress had shown me notwithstanding. But Jamie’s reaction was making me feel defensive, and thus rebellious.
“You told me to be visible,” I reminded him. “And this is absolutely nothing, compared to the latest Court fashions. Believe me, I shall be modesty personified, in comparison with Madame de Pérignon and the Duchesse de Rouen.” I put my hands on my hips and surveyed him coldly. “Or do you want me to appear at Court in my green velvet?”
Jamie averted his eyes from my décolletage and tightened his lips.
“Mphm,” he said, looking as Scotch as possible.
Trying to be conciliatory, I came closer and laid a hand on his arm.
“Come now,” I said. “You’ve been at Court before; surely you know what ladies dress like. You know this isn’t terribly extreme by those standards.”
He glanced down at me and smiled, a trifle shamefaced.
“Aye,” he said. “Aye, that’s true. It’s only … well, you’re my wife, Sassenach. I dinna want other men to look at you the way I’ve looked at those ladies.”
I laughed and put my hands behind his neck, pulling him down to kiss me. He held me around the waist, his thumbs unconsciously stroking the softness of the red silk where it sheathed my torso. His touch traveled upward, sliding across the slipperiness of the fabric to the nape of my neck. His other hand grasped the soft roundness of my breast, swelling up above the tethering grip of the corsets, voluptuously free under a single layer of sheer silk. He let go at last and straightened up, shaking his head doubtfully.
“I suppose ye’ll have to wear it, Sassenach, but for Christ’s sake be careful.”
“Careful? Of what?”
His mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
“Lord, woman, have ye no notion what ye look like in that gown? It makes me want to commit rape on the spot. And these damned frog-eaters havena got my restraint.” He frowned slightly. “You couldna … cover it up at bit at the top?” He waved a large hand vaguely in the direction of his own lace jabot, secured with a ruby stickpin. “A … ruffle or something? A handkerchief?”
“Men,” I told him, “have no notion of fashion. But not to worry. The seamstress says that’s what the fan is for.” I flipped the matching lace-trimmed fan open with a gesture that had taken fifteen minutes’ practice to perfect, and fluttered it enticingly over my bosom.
Jamie blinked meditatively at this performance, then turned to take my cloak from the wardrobe.
“Do me the one favor, Sassenach,” he said, draping the heavy velvet over my shoulders. “Take a larger fan.”
* * *
In terms of attracting notice, the dress was an unqualified success. In terms of the effects on Jamie’s blood pressure, it was somewhat more equivocal.
He hovered protectively at my elbow, glaring ferociously at any male who glanced in my direction, until Annalise de Marillac, spotting us from across the room, came floating in our direction, her delicate features wreathed in a welcoming smile. I felt the smile freezing on my own face. Annalise de Marillac was an “acquaintance”—he said—of Jamie’s, from his former residence in Pari
s. She was also beautiful, charming, and exquisitely tiny.
“Mon petit sauvage!” she greeted Jamie. “I have someone you must meet. Several someones, in fact.” She tilted a head like a china doll in the direction of a group of men, gathered around a chess table in the corner, arguing heatedly about something. I recognized the Duc d’Orléans, and Gérard Gobelin, a prominent banker. An influential group, then.
“Come and play chess for them,” Annalise urged, placing a mothlike hand on Jamie’s arm. “It will be a good place for His Majesty to meet you, later.”
The King was expected to appear after the supper he was attending, sometime in the next hour or two. In the meantime, the guests wandered to and fro, conversing, admiring the paintings on the walls, flirting behind fans, consuming confits, tartlets, and wine, and disappearing at more or less discreet intervals into the odd little curtained alcoves. These were cleverly fitted into the paneling of the rooms, so that you scarcely noticed them, unless you got close enough to hear the sounds inside.
Jamie hesitated, and Annalise pulled a bit harder.
“Come along,” she urged. “Have no fear for your lady”—she cast an appreciative glance at my gown—“she won’t be alone long.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jamie muttered under his breath. “All right, then, in a moment.” He disengaged himself momentarily from Annalise’s grasp and bent to whisper in my ear.
“If I find ye in one of those alcoves, Sassenach, the man you’re with is dead. And as for you …” His hands twitched unconsciously in the direction of his swordbelt.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You swore on your dirk you’d never beat me again. What price the Holy Iron, eh?”
A reluctant grin tugged at his mouth.
“No, I wilna beat ye, much as I’d like to.”
“Good. What do you mean to do, then?” I asked, teasing.
“I’ll think of something,” he replied, with a certain grimness. “I dinna ken what, but ye wilna like it.”
And with a final glare round and a proprietary squeeze of my shoulder, he allowed Annalise to lead him away, like a small but enthusiastic tug towing a reluctant barge.
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