Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(186)

He swallowed.

“You’ve proved it,” he said at last. “Whatever it…What was it you wanted to prove again?”

Between the tightness of her stays and his weight, she hadn’t enough breath to laugh, but she managed a small smile.

“That I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh.” His breathing was growing slower, deeper. He isn’t wheezing, she thought.

“I didn’t want—I didn’t mean—to hurt you, either,” he said softly. For an instant she saw him hesitate: should he pull away? But then decision settled on his features once more and he bent his head and kissed her. Slowly.

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” she assured him when he stopped.

“Mendatrix. That means ‘liar.’ Shall I—”

“No, you shan’t,” she said firmly. Over the first shock, her brain was now working again. “This is never going to happen again, so I mean to enjoy it—if such a thing is possible,” she added, a little dubiously.

He didn’t laugh, either, and his smile was only a trace—but it reached his eyes. The fire was hot on her skin.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Let me prove it.”



Some little time later…

HE PUT OUT a hand to her and, dazed, she took it. His cold fingers closed tight on hers, and hers on his.

He took her to the back stairs, where he let go her hand—the stairs were too narrow to go side by side—and went down before her, glancing back now and then to be sure she hadn’t disappeared or fallen. He looked as dazed as she felt.

Noise echoed up the wooden stairwell from the kitchens below—pots clanging, voices calling to and fro, the clash of crockery, a crash and subsequent cursing. The scent of roasting meat struck her in a gust of warm air, and she was suddenly ravenous.

He took her hand again and drew her away from the smell of food, through a plain, dim, unvarnished corridor into a larger one, with a canvas floor cloth that muffled their footsteps, into a broad corridor with a Turkey carpet in blue and gold and candles flickering in the bronze plates of reflectors that shed a bright, soft light over everything. Servants flitted past them like ghosts, carrying trays, jugs, garments, bottles, eyes averted.

It was like walking through a soundless dream: something between curiosity and nightmare, where you had no notion where you were going or what lay before you but were obliged to keep on walking.

He stopped abruptly and looked at her as though he’d found her walking through his dream—and perhaps it was, she thought, perhaps it was. He put a hand very lightly on her breast for an instant, fixing her in place, then vanished round a corner.

With him gone, her stunned senses began to awaken. She could hear music and voices, laughter. A strong smell of hot punch and wine; she’d drunk nothing save that first glass of champagne but now felt very drunk indeed. She opened and closed her fingers slowly, still feeling the grasp of his hand, hard and chilled.

Suddenly he was there again, and she felt his presence like a blow to her chest. He had her cape in his hand and swung it open, round her, enveloping her. As though it was part of the same movement, he took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely. Let go, panting, then did it again.

“You—” she said, but then stopped, having no idea what to say.

“I know,” he said, as though he did, and with a hand under her elbow led her somewhere—she wasn’t noticing anything anymore—and then there was a whoosh of cold, rainy night air and he was helping her up the step of a hansom cab.

“Where do you live?” he said, in an almost normal voice.

“Southwark,” she said, sheer instinct preventing her from giving him her real address. “Bertram Street, Number Twenty-two,” she added, inventing wildly.

He nodded. His face was white, his eyes dark in the night. The place between her legs burned and felt slippery. He swallowed and she saw his throat move, slick with rain and gleaming in the light from the lantern; he hadn’t put on his neckcloth or his waistcoat, and his shirt was open under his scarlet coat.

He took her hand.

“I will call upon you tomorrow,” he said. “To inquire after your welfare.”

She didn’t answer. He turned her hand over and kissed her palm. Then the door was shut and she was rattling alone over wet cobbles, her hand closed tight on the warmth of his breath.

She couldn’t think. She felt wetness seep into her petticoats, with the slightly sticky feel of blood. The only thing floating through her mind was a remark of her father’s. “The English are notorious bores about virginity.”





16





SIC TRANSIT


IT WASN’T THAT HARD to disappear. The O’Higgins brothers were masters of the art, as they assured her.

“Leave it to us, sweetheart,” Rafe said, taking the purse she handed him. “To a Londoner, the world beyond the end of his street is as furrin as the pope. All ye need do is keep away from the places folk are used to seein’ ye.”

She hadn’t had much choice. She wasn’t going anywhere near the Duke of Pardloe or his friend Quarry or the Twelvetrees brothers. But there was still business to be done before she could go back to Paris—books to be both sold and bought, shipments made and received—and a few bits of more-private business, as well.