Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(5)
“I should be particularly interested to see your own response, ma’am,” he said respectfully. “So few women have the courage to undertake such an adventure.”
“She doesn’t want to,” Grey said hurriedly.
“Well, perhaps I do,” she said, and gave him a little frown, before glancing at the tank and the long gray form inside it. She gave a brief shiver—but Grey recognized it, from long acquaintance with the lady, as a shiver of anticipation rather than revulsion.
Dr. Hunter recognized it, too. He grinned more broadly and bowed again, extending his arm to Miss Woodford.
“Allow me to secure you a place, ma’am.”
Grey and Nicholls both moved purposefully to prevent him, collided, and were left scowling at each other as Dr. Hunter escorted Caroline to the tank and introduced her to the eel’s owner, a small dark-looking creature named Horace Suddfield.
Grey nudged Nicholls aside and plunged into the crowd, elbowing his way ruthlessly to the front. Hunter spotted him and beamed.
“Have you any metal remaining in your chest, Major?”
“Have I—what?”
“Metal,” Hunter repeated. “Arthur Longstreet described to me the operation in which he removed thirty-seven pieces of metal from your chest—most impressive. If any bits remain, though, I must advise you against trying the eel. Metal conducts electricity, you see, and the chance of burns—”
Nicholls had made his way through the throng, as well, and gave an unpleasant laugh, hearing this.
“A good excuse, Major,” he said, a noticeable jeer in his voice. He was very drunk indeed, Grey thought. Still—
“No, I haven’t,” he said abruptly.
“Excellent,” Suddfield said politely. “A soldier, I understand you are, sir? A bold gentleman, I perceive—who better to take first place?”
And before Grey could protest, he found himself next to the tank, Caroline Woodford’s hand clutching his, her other held by Nicholls, who was glaring malevolently.
“Are we all arranged, ladies and gentlemen?” Suddfield cried. “How many, Dobbs?”
“Forty-five!” came a call from his assistant in the next room, through which the line of participants snaked, joined hand-to-hand and twitching with excitement, the rest of the party standing well back, agog.
“All touching, all touching?” Suddfield cried. “Take a firm grip of your friends, please, a very firm grip!” He turned to Grey, his small face alight. “Go ahead, sir! Grip it tightly, please—just there, just there before the tail!”
Disregarding his better judgment and the consequences to his lace cuff, Grey set his jaw and plunged his hand into the water.
In the split second when he grasped the slimy thing, he expected something like the snap one got from touching a Leyden jar and making it spark. Then he was flung violently backward, every muscle in his body contorted, and he found himself on the floor, thrashing like a landed fish, gasping in a vain attempt to recall how to breathe.
The surgeon, Mr. Hunter, squatted next to him, observing him with bright-eyed interest.
“How do you feel?” he inquired. “Dizzy at all?”
Grey shook his head, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish’s, and with some effort thumped his chest. Thus invited, Mr. Hunter leaned down at once, unbuttoned Grey’s waistcoat, and pressed an ear to his shirtfront. Whatever he heard—or didn’t—seemed to alarm him, for he jerked up, clenched both fists together, and brought them down on Grey’s chest with a thud that reverberated to his backbone.
This blow had the salutary effect of forcing breath out of his lungs; they filled again by reflex, and suddenly he remembered how to breathe. His heart also seemed to have been recalled to a sense of its duty, and began beating again. He sat up, fending off another blow from Mr. Hunter, and sat blinking at the carnage round him.
The floor was filled with bodies. Some still writhing, some lying still, limbs outflung in abandonment; some already recovered and being helped to their feet by friends. Excited exclamations filled the air, and Suddfield stood by his eel, beaming with pride and accepting congratulations. The eel itself seemed annoyed; it was swimming round in circles, angrily switching its heavy body.
Edwin Nicholls was on hands and knees, Grey saw, rising slowly to his feet. He reached down to grasp Caroline Woodford’s arms and help her to rise. This she did, but so awkwardly that she lost her balance and fell face-first into Mr. Nicholls. He in turn lost his own balance and sat down hard, the Honorable Caroline atop him. Whether from shock, excitement, drink, or simple boorishness, he seized the moment—and Caroline—and planted a hearty kiss upon her astonished lips.
Matters thereafter were somewhat confused. He had a vague impression that he had broken Nicholls’s nose—and there was a set of burst and swollen knuckles on his right hand to give weight to the supposition. There was a lot of noise, though, and he had the disconcerting feeling of not being altogether firmly confined within his own body. Parts of him seemed to be constantly drifting off, escaping the outlines of his flesh.
What did remain inside was distinctly jangled. His hearing—still somewhat impaired from the cannon explosion a few months before—had given up entirely under the strain of electric shock. That is, he could hear, but what he heard made no sense. Random words reached him through a fog of buzzing and ringing, but he could not connect them sensibly to the moving mouths around him. He wasn’t at all sure that his own voice was saying what he meant it to, for that matter.