“Don’t worry about it,” I said, stepping in front of her, to shield her from the waves of people now filling the music room. “You needn’t talk if you don’t want to. Though perhaps you should try to sing,” I said, struck by a thought. “I knew a physician once who specialized in the treatment of stammering; he said that people who stammer don’t do it when they sing.”
Mary Hawkins’s eyes grew wide with astonishment at this. I looked around and saw a nearby alcove, curtained to hide a cozy bench.
“Here,” I said, taking her by the hand. “You can sit in here, so you don’t have to talk to people. If you want to sing, you can come out when we start; if not, just stay in here ’til the party’s over.” She stared at me for a minute, then gave me a sudden blinding smile of gratitude, and ducked into the alcove.
I loitered outside, to prevent any nosy servants from disturbing her hiding place, chatting with passersby.
“How lovely you look tonight, ma chère!” It was Madame de Ramage, one of the Queen’s ladies. An older, dignified woman, she had come to supper in the Rue Tremoulins once or twice. She embraced me warmly, then looked around to be sure that we were unobserved.
“I had hoped to see you here, my dear,” she said, leaning a bit closer and lowering her voice. “I wished to advise you to take care concerning the Comte St. Germain.”
Half-turning in the direction of her gaze, I saw the lean-faced man from the docks of Le Havre, entering the music room with a younger, elegantly dressed woman on his arm. He hadn’t seen me, apparently, and I hastily turned back to Madame de Remage.
“What… has he… I mean…” I could feel myself flushing still more deeply, rattled by the appearance of the saturnine Comte.
“Well, yes, he has been heard to speak of you,” Madame de Ramage said, kindly helping me out of my confusion. “I gather that there was some small difficulty in Le Havre?”
“Something of the kind,” I said. “All I did was to recognize a case of smallpox, but it resulted in the destruction of his ship, and… he wasn’t pleased about it,” I concluded weakly.
“Ah, so that was it.” Madame de Ramage looked pleased. I imagined having the inside story, so to speak, would give her an advantage in the trade of gossip and information that was the commerce of Parisian social life.
“He has been going about telling people that he believes you to be a witch,” she said, smiling and waving at a friend across the room. “A fine story! Oh, no one believes it,” she assured me. “Everyone knows that if anyone is mixed up in such matters, it is Monsieur le Comte himself.”
“Really?” I wanted to ask just what she meant by this, but just then Herr Gerstmann bustled up, clapping his hands as though shooing a flock of hens.
“Come, come, mesdames!” he said. “We are all complete; the singing commences!”
As the chorale hastily assembled near the harpsichord, I looked back toward the alcove where I had left Mary Hawkins. I thought I saw the curtain twitch, but wasn’t sure. And as the music began, and the joined voices rose, I thought I heard a clear, high soprano from the direction of the alcove – but again, I wasn’t sure.
“Verra nice, Sassenach,” Jamie said when I rejoined him, flushed and breathless, after the singing. He grinned down at me and patted my shoulder.
“How would you know?” I said, accepting a glass of wine-punch from a passing servant. “You can’t tell one song from another.”
“Well, ye were loud, anyway,” he said, unperturbed. “I could hear every word.” I felt him stiffen slightly beside me, and turned to see what – or whom – he was looking at.
The woman who had just entered was tiny, scarcely as high as Jamie’s lowest rib, with hands and feet like a doll’s, and brows delicate as Chinese tracery, over eyes the deep black of sloes. She advanced with a step that mocked its own lightness, so she looked as though she were dancing just above the ground.
“There’s Annalise de Marillac,” I said, admiring her. “Doesn’t she look lovely?”
“Oh, aye.” Something in his voice made me glance sharply upward. A faint pink tinged the tips of his ears.
“And here I thought you spent your years in France fighting, not making romantic conquests,” I said tartly.
To my surprise, he laughed at this. Catching the sound, the woman turned toward us. A brilliant smile lit her face as she saw Jamie looming among the crowd. She turned as though to come in our direction, but was distracted by a gentleman, wigged and resplendent in lavender satin, who laid an importuning hand on her fragile arm. She flicked her fan charmingly at Jamie in a gesture of regretful coquetry before devoting her attention to her new companion.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, seeing him still grinning broadly after the lady’s gently oscillating lace skirts.
He snapped suddenly back to an awareness of my presence, and smiled down at me.
“Oh, nothing, Sassenach. Only what ye said about fighting. I fought my first duel – well, the only one, in fact – over Annalise de Marillac. When I was eighteen.”
His tone was mildly dreamy, watching the sleek, dark head bob away through the crowd, surrounded wherever it went by white clusters of wigs and powdered hair, with here and there a fashionably pink-tinged peruke for variety.
“A duel? With whom?” I asked, glancing around warily for any male attachments to the China doll who might feel inclined to follow up an old quarrel.
“Och, he isna here,” Jamie said, catching and correctly interpreting my glance. “He’s dead.”
“You killed him?” Agitated, I spoke rather louder than intended. As a few nearby heads turned curiously in our direction, Jamie took me by the elbow and steered me hastily toward the nearest French doors.
“Mind your voice, Sassenach,” he said, mildly enough. “No, I didna kill him. Wanted to,” he added ruefully, “but didn’t. He died two years ago, of the morbid sore throat. Jared told me.”
He guided me down one of the garden paths, lit by lantern-bearing servants, who stood like bollards at five-yard intervals from the terrace to the fountain at the bottom of the path. In the midst of a big reflecting pool, four dolphins sprayed sheets of water over an annoyed-looking Triton in the center, who brandished a trident rather ineffectually at them.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” I urged as we passed out of hearing of the groups on the terrace. “What happened?”
“All right, then,” he said, resigned. “Well, ye will have observed that Annalise is rather pretty?”
“Oh, really? Well, perhaps, now that you mention it, I can see something of the kind,” I answered sweetly, provoking a sudden sharp look, followed by a lopsided smile.
“Aye. Well, I wasna the only young gallant in Paris to be of the same opinion, nor the only one to lose his head over her, either. Went about in a daze, tripping over my feet. Waited in the street, in hopes of seeing her come out of her house to the carriage. Forgot to eat, even; Jared said my coat hung on me like a scarecrow’s, and the state of my hair didna much help the resemblance.” His hand went absently to his head, patting the immaculate queue that lay clubbed tight against his neck, bound with blue ribbon.
“Forgot to eat? Christ, you did have it bad,” I remarked.
He chuckled. “Oh, aye. And still worse when she began to flirt wi’ Charles Gauloise. Mind ye,” he added fairly, “she flirted with everyone – that was all right – but she chose him for her supper partner ower-often for my taste, and danced with him too much at the parties, and… well, the long and the short of it, Sassenach, is that I caught him kissing her in the moonlight on her father’s terrace one night, and challenged him.”
By this time, we had reached the fountain in our promenade. Jamie drew to a stop and we sat on the rim of the fountain, upwind of the spray from the puff-lipped dolphins. Jamie drew a hand through the dark water and lifted it dripping, abstractedly watching the silver drops run down his fingers.