“Mphm,” he grunted. “And why not? I get nay rest when I sleep, nor comfort when I’m awake. No wonder if I dinna look like a bridegroom.”

“Oh, but ye do, Father,” said Young Simon maliciously, seeing a chance to get a bit of his own back. “One at the end of his honeymoon, wi’ all the juice sapped out of him.”

“Simon!” said Lady Frances. Still, there was a ripple of laughter around the table at this, and even Lord Lovat’s mouth twitched slightly.

“Aye?” he said. “Well, I’d sooner suffer soreness from that cause, I’ll tell ye, lad.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and pushed away the platter of boiled turnips being offered. He reached for his wineglass, raised it to his nose for a sniff, then morosely put it down again.

“It’s ill-mannered to stare,” he remarked coldly to me. “Or perhaps the English have different standards of politeness?”

I flushed slightly, but didn’t drop my eyes. “I was just wondering – you don’t have an appetite, and you don’t drink. What other symptoms have you?”

“Going to prove yourself some worth, eh?” Lovat leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his broad stomach like an elderly frog. “A healer, my grandson says. A white lady, aye?” He flicked a basilisk glance at Jamie, who simply went on eating, ignoring his grandfather. Lovat grunted, and tilted his head ironically in my direction.

“Well, I dinna drink, lady, for I canna piss, and I’ve little wish to blow up like a pig’s bladder. And I dinna rest, for I rise a dozen times a night to make use of my pot, and damn little use it gets. So what have ye to say to that, Dame Aliset?”

“Father,” murmured Lady Frances, “really, I don’t think you should…”

“Could be an infection of the bladder, but it sounds like prostatitis to me,” I replied. I picked up my wineglass and took a mouthful, savoring it before letting it slide down my throat. I smiled demurely at his lordship across my glass as I set it down.

“Oh, it does?” he said, eyebrows raised high. “And what’s that, pray?”

I pushed back my sleeves and raised my hands, flexing my fingers like a magician about to perform some act of prestidigitation. I held up my left forefinger.

“The prostate gland in males,” I said instructively, “encircles the tube of the urethra – which is the passage that leads from the bladder to the outside.” I clasped two fingers of my right hand in a circle around my left forefinger, in illustration. “When the prostate becomes inflamed or enlarged – and that’s called prostatitis, when it does – it clamps down on the urethra” – I narrowed the circle of my fingers – “cutting off the flow of urine. Very common in older men. Do you see?”

Lady Frances, failing to make any impression on her father with her opinions of proper dinner conversation, was whispering agitatedly to her younger sister, both of them watching me with deeper suspicion than usual.

Lord Lovat watched my little demonstration in fascination.

“Aye, I see,” he said. The slanted cat-eyes narrowed, looking speculatively at my fingers. “What’s to do about it, then, if ye’ve so much learning on the subject?”

I thought, frowning as I searched my memory. I had never actually seen – much less treated – a case of prostatitis, as it wasn’t a condition that much afflicted young soldiers. Still, I had read medical texts where it was described; I remembered the treatment, because it had caused such hilarity among the student nurses, who had pored in fascinated horror over the rather graphic illustrations in the text.

“Well,” I said, “barring surgery, there are really only two things you can do. You can insert a metal rod through the penis and up into the bladder, to force the urethra open” – I jabbed my forefinger through the constricting circle – “or you can massage the prostate itself, to reduce the swelling. Through the rectum,” I added helpfully.

I heard a faint choking noise next to me, and glanced up at Jamie. His eyes were still fixed on his plate, but the tide of crimson was creeping upward from his collar, and the tips of his ears blazed red. He quivered slightly. I looked around the table, to find a phalanx of fascinated gazes fixed on me. The Lady Frances, Aline, and the other women were staring at me with varying expressions, ranging from curiosity to disgust, while the men all wore variations of revolted horror.

The exception to the general reaction was Lord Lovat himself, who was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, eyes half-closed.

“Mmphm,” he said. “Hell of a choice, there. A stick up the cock, or a finger up the backside, eh?”

“More like two or three,” I said. “Repeatedly.” I gave him a small, decorous smile.

“Ah.” A similar small smile decorated Lord Lovat’s mouth, and he slowly lifted his gaze, fixing deep blue eyes on mine with an expression of mockery tinged with challenge.

“That sounds… diverting,” he observed mildly. The slanted eyes slid down over my hands, assessing.

“You’ve lovely hands, my dear,” he said. “Prettily kept, and such long white slender fingers, aye?”

Jamie brought both his own hands down on the table with a crash and stood up. He leaned across the table, bringing his face within a foot of his grandfather’s.

“And you’re needing such attentions, Grandsire,” he said. “I’ll see to it myself.” He spread out his hands on the tabletop, broad and massive, each long finger the rough diameter of a pistol barrel. “It’s no pleasure to me to be stickin’ my fingers up your hairy auld arse,” he informed his grandfather, “but I expect it’s my filial duty to save ye from exploding in a shower of piss, no?”

Frances emitted a faint squeak.

Lord Lovat eyed his grandson with considerable disfavor, then rose slowly from his seat.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said shortly. “I’ll ha’ one of the maidservants do it.” He waved a hand at the company, giving notice that we might continue the meal, and left the hall, pausing to look speculatively at a young serving girl coming in with a platter of sliced pheasant. Eyes wide, she turned sideways to edge past him.

There was a dead silence over the dinner table following his lordship’s exit. Young Simon looked at me and opened his mouth. Then he glanced at Jamie, and closed it again. He cleared his throat.

“I’ll have the salt, if ye please,” he said.

“…and in consequence of the regrettable infirmity that prevents me from personal attendance upon Your Highness, I send by the hand of my son and heir a token of the loyalty – nay, make that ‘regard’ – a token of the regard in which I have long cherished His Majesty and Your Highness.” Lord Lovat paused, frowning at the ceiling.

“What shall we send, Gideon?” he asked the secretary. “Rich-looking, but not so much I can’t say it was only a trifling present of no importance.”

Gideon sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. A stout, middle-aged man with thinning hair and round red cheeks, he plainly found the heat of the bedroom fire oppressive.

“The ring your lordship had from the Earl of Mar?” he suggested, without hope. A drop of sweat fell from his double chin onto the letter he was taking down, and he surreptitiously blotted it with his sleeve.

“Not expensive enough,” his lordship judged, “and too many political associations.” The mottled fingers tapped pensively on the coverlet as he thought.

Old Simon had done it up brown, I thought. He was wearing his best nightshirt, and was propped up in bed with an impressive panoply of medicines arrayed on the table, attended by his personal physician, Dr. Menzies, a small man with a squint who kept eyeing me with considerable doubt. I supposed the old man simply distrusted Young Simon’s powers of imagination, and had staged this elaborate tableau so that his heir might faithfully report Lord Lovat’s state of decrepitude when he presented himself to Charles Stuart.