Dragonfly In Amber

I relaxed, trembling slightly with reaction, and took a deep, restorative breath. I sneezed, and put the flowers down.

“So you’re a Jacobite, are you?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” the Duke answered genially. “The question is, my dear – are you?” Completely unselfconscious, he took off his wig and scratched his fair, balding head before putting it back on.

“You tried to stop the effort to restore King James to his throne when you were in Paris. Failing at that, you and your husband appear now to be His Highness’s most loyal supporters. Why?” The small blue eyes showed nothing more than a mild interest, but it wasn’t a mild interest that had tried to have me killed.

Ever since finding out who my host was, I had been trying as hard as I could to remember what it was that Frank and the Reverend Mr. Wakefield had once said about him. Was he a Jacobite? So far as I could recall, the verdict of history – in the persons of Frank and the Reverend – was uncertain. So was I.

“I don’t believe I’m going to tell you,” I said slowly.

One blond brow arched high, the Duke took a small enameled box from his pocket and abstracted a pinch of the contents.

“Are you sure that’s wise, my dear? Danton is still within call, you know.”

“Danton wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole,” I said bluntly. “Neither would you, for that matter. Not,” I added hastily, seeing his mouth open, “on that account. But if you want so badly to know which side I’m on, you aren’t going to kill me before finding out, now, are you?”

The Duke choked on his pinch of snuff and coughed heavily, thumping himself on the chest of his embroidered waistcoat. I drew myself up and stared coldly down my nose at him as he sneezed and spluttered.

“You’re trying to frighten me into telling you things, but it won’t work,” I said, with a lot more confidence than I felt.

Sandringham dabbed gently at his streaming eyes with a handkerchief. At last he drew a deep breath, and blew it out between plump, pursed lips as he stared at me.

“Very well, then,” he said, quite calmly. “I imagine my workmen have finished their alterations to your quarters by now. I shall summon a maid to take you to your room.”

I must have gawped foolishly at him, for he smiled derisively as he hoisted himself out of his chair.

“To a point, you know, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whatever else you may be or whatever information you may possess, you have one invaluable attribute as a houseguest.”

“And what’s that?” I demanded. He paused, hand on the bell, and smiled.

“You’re Red Jamie’s wife,” he said softly. “And he is fond of you, my dear, is he not?”

As prisons go, I had seen worse. The room measured perhaps thirty feet in each dimension, and was furnished with a lavishness exceeded only by the sitting room downstairs. The canopied bed stood on a small dais, with baldachins of ostrich feathers sprouting from the corners of its damask drapes, and a pair of matching brocaded chairs squatted comfortably before a huge fireplace.

The maidservant who had accompanied me in set down the basin and ewer she carried, and hurried to light the ready-laid fire. The footman laid his covered supper-tray on the table by the door, then stood stolidly in the doorway, dishing any thoughts I might have had of trying a quick dash down the hall. Not that it would do me much good to try, I thought gloomily; I’d be hopelessly lost in the house after the first turn of the corridor; the bloody place was as big as Buckingham Palace.

“I’m sure His Grace hopes as you’ll be comfortable, ma’am,” said the servant, curtsying prettily on her way out.

“Oh, I’ll bet he does,” I said, ungraciously.

The door closed behind her with a depressingly solid thud, and the grating sound of the big key turning seemed to scrape away the last bit of insulation covering my raw nerves.

Shivering in the chill of the vast room, I clutched my elbows and walked to the fire, where I subsided into one of the chairs. My impulse was to take advantage of the solitude to have a nice private little fit of hysterics. On the other hand, I was afraid that if I allowed my tight-reined emotions any play at all, I would never get them in check again. I closed my eyes tight and watched the red flicker of the firelight on my i

After all, I was in no danger for the moment, and Hugh Munro was on his way to Jamie. Even if Jamie had lost my trail over the course of the week’s travel, Hugh would find him and lead him right. Hugh knew every cottar and tinker, every farmhouse and manor within four parishes. A message from the speechless man would travel through the network of news and gossip as quickly as the wind-driven clouds passed over the mountains. If he had made it down from his lofty perch in the ivy and safely off the Duke’s grounds without being apprehended, that was.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said aloud, “the man’s a professional poacher. Of course he made it.” The echo of my words against the ornate white-plaster ceiling was somehow comforting.

“And if so,” I continued firmly, still talking to hear myself, “then Jamie will come.”

Right, I thought suddenly. And Sandringham’s men will be waiting for him, when he does. You’re Red Jamie’s wife, the Duke had said. My one invaluable attribute. I was bait.

“I’m a salmon egg!” I exclaimed, sitting up straight in my chair. The sheer indignity of the image summoned up a small but welcome spurt of rage that pushed the fear back a little way. I tried to fan the flames of anger by getting up and striding back and forth, thinking of new names to call the Duke next time we met. I’d gotten as far in my compositions as “skulking pederast,” when a muffled shouting from outside distracted my attention.

Pushing back the heavy velvet drapes from the window, I found that the Duke had been as good as his word. Stout wooden bars crisscrossed the window frame, latticed so closely together that I could scarcely thrust an arm between them. I could see, though.

Dusk had fallen, and the shadows under the park trees were black as ink. The shouting was coming from there, matched by answering cries from the stables, where two or three figures suddenly appeared, bearing lit torches.

The small, dark figures ran toward the wood, the fire of their pine torches streaming backward, flaring orange in the cold, damp wind. As they reached the edge of the park, a knot of vaguely human shapes became visible, tumbling onto the grass before the house. The ground was wet, and the force of their struggle left deep gashes of black in the winter-dead lawn.

I stood on tiptoe, gripping the bars and pressing my head against the wood in an effort to see more. The light of the day had failed utterly, and by the torchlight, I could distinguish no more than the occasional flailing limb in the riot below.

It couldn’t be Jamie, I told myself, trying to swallow the lump in my throat that was my heart. Not so soon, not now. And not alone, surely he wouldn’t have come alone? For I could see by now that the fight centered on one man, now on his knees, no more than a hunched black shape under the fists and sticks of the Duke’s gamekeepers and stable-lads.

Then the hunched figure sprawled flat, and the shouting died, though a few more blows were given for good measure before the small gang of servants stood back. A few words of conversation were exchanged, inaudible from my vantage point, and two of the men stooped and seized the figure beneath the arms. As they passed beneath my third-floor window on their way toward the back of the house, the torchlight illuminated a pair of dragging, sandal-shod feet, and the tatters of a grimy smock. Not Jamie.

One of the stable-lads scampered alongside, triumphantly carrying a thick leather wallet on a strap. I was too far above to hear the clink of the tiny metal ornaments on the strap, but they glittered in the torchlight, and all the strength went from my arms in a rush of horror and despair.