"Ah." His head was half-turned, the long, straight nose and firm chin lighted from behind by the glow of the nearest lantern. I could see the half-smile on his lips as he turned back toward me.
"Well, I'll tell ye, Sassenach, ‘graceful' is possibly not the first word that springs to mind at thought of you." He slipped an arm behind me, one hand large and warm around my silk-clad shoulder.
"But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple.
"And, Sassenach," he whispered, "your face is my heart."
It was the shifting of the wind, several minutes later, that parted us at last with a fine spray from the fountain. We broke apart and rose hastily, laughing at the sudden chill of the water. Jamie inclined his head inquiringly toward the terrace, and I took his arm, nodding.
"So," I observed, as we made our way slowly up the wide steps to the ballroom, "you've learnt a bit more about women now, I see."
He laughed, low and deep, tightening his grasp on my waist.
"The most important thing I've learned about women, Sassenach, is which one to choose." He stepped away, bowing to me, and gesturing through the open doors to the brilliant scene inside. "May I have this dance, milady?"
I spent the next afternoon at the d'Arbanvilles', where I met the King's singing-master once again. This time, we found time for a conversation, which I recounted to Jamie after supper.
"You what?" Jamie squinted at me, as though he suspected me of pulling some practical joke.
"I said, Herr Gerstmann suggested that I might be interested in meeting a friend of his. Mother Hildegarde is in charge of L'Hôpital des Anges—you know, the charity hospital down near the cathedral."
"I know where it is." His voice was marked by a general lack of enthusiasm.
"He had a sore throat, and that led to me telling him what to take for it, and a bit about medicines in general, and how I was interested in diseases and, well, you know how one thing leads to another."
"With you, it customarily does," he agreed, sounding distinctly cynical. I ignored his tone and went on.
"So, I'm going to go to the hospital tomorrow." I stretched on tiptoe to reach down my medicine box from its shelf. "Maybe I won't take it along with me the first time," I said, scanning the contents meditatively. "It might seem too pushing. Do you think?"
"Pushing?" He sounded stunned. "Are ye meaning to visit the place, or move into it?"
"Er, well," I said. I took a deep breath. "I, er, thought perhaps I could work there regularly. Herr Gerstmann says that all the physicians and healers who go there donate their time. Most of them don't turn up every day, but I have plenty of time, and I could—"
"Plenty of time?"
"Stop repeating everything I say," I said. "Yes, plenty of time. I know it's important to go to salons and supper parties and all that, but it doesn't take all day—at least it needn't. I could—"
"Sassenach, you're with child! Ye dinna mean to go out to nurse beggars and criminals?" He sounded rather helpless now, as though wondering how to deal with someone who had suddenly gone mad in front of him.
"I hadn't forgotten," I assured him. I pressed my hands against my belly, squinting down.
"It isn't really noticeable yet; with a loose gown I can get away with it for a time. And there's nothing wrong with me except the morning sickness; no reason why I shouldn't work for some months yet."
"No reason, except I wilna have ye doing it!" Expecting no company this evening, he had taken off his stock and opened his collar when he came home. I could see the tide of dusky red advancing up his throat.
"Jamie," I said, striving for reasonableness. "You know what I am."
"You're my wife!"
"Well, that, too." I flicked the idea aside with my fingers. "I'm a nurse, Jamie. A healer. You have reason to know it."
He flushed hotly. "Aye, I do. And because ye've mended me when I'm wounded, I should think it right for ye to tend beggars and prostitutes? Sassenach, do ye no ken the sort of people that L'Hôpital des Anges takes in?" He looked pleadingly at me, as though expecting me to return to my senses any minute.
"What difference does that make?"
He looked wildly around the room, imploring witness from the portrait over the mantelpiece as to my unreasonableness.
"You could catch a filthy disease, for God's sake! D'ye have no regard for your child, even if ye have none for me?"
Reasonableness was seeming a less desirable goal by the moment.
"Of course I have! What kind of careless, irresponsible person do you think I am?"
"The kind who would abandon her husband to go and play with scum in the gutter!" he snapped. "Since you ask." He ran a big hand through his hair, making it stick up at the crown.
"Abandon you? Since when is it abandoning you to suggest really doing something, instead of rotting away in the d'Arbanvilles' salon, watching Louise de Rohan stuff herself with pastry, and listening to bad poetry and worse music? I want to be useful!"
"Taking care of your own household isna useful? Being married to me isna useful?" The lacing round his hair broke under the stress, and the thick locks fluffed out like a flaming halo. He glared down his nose at me like an avenging angel.
"Sauce for the gander," I retorted coldly. "Is being married to me sufficient occupation for you? I don't notice you hanging round the house all day, adoring me. And as for the household, bosh."
"Bosh? What's bosh?" he demanded.
"Stuff and nonsense. Rot. Horsefeathers. In other words, don't be ridiculous. Madame Vionnet does everything, and does it several dozen times better than I could."
This was so patently true that it stopped him for a moment. He glared down at me, jaw working.
"Oh, aye? And if I forbid ye to go?"
This stopped me for a moment. I drew myself up and looked him up and down. His eyes were the color of rain-dark slate, the wide, generous mouth clamped in a straight line. Shoulders broad and back erect, arms folded across his chest like a cast-iron statue, "forbidding" was precisely the word that best described him.
"Do you forbid me?" The tension crackled between us. I wanted to blink, but wouldn't give him the satisfaction of breaking off my own steely gaze. What would I do if he forbade me to go? Alternatives raced through my mind, everything from planting the ivory letter-opener between his ribs to burning down the house with him in it. The only idea I rejected absolutely was that of giving in.
He paused, and drew a deep breath before speaking. His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and he uncurled them with conscious effort.
"No," he said. "No, I dinna forbid ye." His voice shook slightly with the effort to control it. "But if I asked you?"
I looked down then, and stared at his reflection in the polished tabletop. At first, the idea of visiting L'Hôpital des Anges had seemed merely an interesting idea, an attractive alternative to the endless gossip and petty intrigues of Parisian society. But now…I could feel the muscles of my arms swell as I clenched my own fists. I didn't just want to work again; I needed to.
"I don't know," I said at last.
He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
"Will ye think about it, Claire?" I could feel his eyes on me. After what seemed a long time, I nodded.
"I'll think about it."
"Good." His tension broken, he turned restlessly away. He wandered round the drawing room, picking up small objects and putting them down at random, finally coming to roost by the bookshelf, where he leaned, staring unseeingly at the leather-bound titles. I came tentatively up beside him, and laid a hand on his arm.
"Jamie, I didn't mean to upset you."
He glanced down at me and gave me a sidelong smile.
"Aye, well. I didna mean to fight wi' you, either, Sassenach. I'm short-tempered and over-touchy, I expect." He patted my hand in apology, then moved aside, to stand looking down at his desk.
"You've been working hard," I said soothingly, following him.
"It's not that." He shook his head, and reached out to flip open the pages of the huge ledger that lay in the center of the desk.
"The wine business; that's all right. It's a great deal of work, aye, but I dinna mind it. It's the other." He gestured at a small stack of letters, held down by an alabaster paperweight. One of Jared's, it was carved in the shape of a white rose—the Stuarts' emblem. The letters it secured were from Abbot Alexander, from the Earl of Mar, from other prominent Jacobites. All filled with veiled inquiry, misty promises, contradictory expectations.
"I feel as though I'm fighting feathers!" Jamie said, violently. "A real fight, something I could get my hands on, that I could do. But this…" He snatched up the handful of letters from the desk, and tossed them into the air. The room was drafty, and the papers zigzagged wildly, sliding under furniture and fluttering on the carpet.
"There's nothing to get hold of," he said helplessly. "I can talk to a thousand people, write a hundred letters, drink wi' Charles 'til I'm blind, and never know if I'm getting on or not."