The Scottish Prisoner

The Belly of a Flea

THE ICE HAD BEEN BROKEN BETWEEN GREY AND JAMES FRASER, but Grey still felt considerable delicacy about the resumption of what might be called normal relations. He hadn’t forgotten that conversation in the stables at Helwater, and he was damned sure Fraser hadn’t, either.

True, they would be in close company in Ireland and must find a way to ignore the past for the sake of working together—but no need to force the matter before time.

Still, he remained acutely aware of Fraser’s presence in the house. Everyone did. Half the servants were afraid of him, the others simply unsure what to do with him. Hal dealt with him courteously, but with a sense of wary formality; Grey thought that Hal might be having the occasional doubt about the wisdom of his decision to conscript Fraser, and smiled grimly at the thought. Mi

Tom Byrd had been terrified of the big Scot, having had an unsettling experience with him at Helwater—though Grey thought that was more a matter of Tom, who was quite sensitive to social nuance, picking up the violent vibrations occurring between himself and Fraser, than of personal interaction.

When informed that he would be attending to Captain Fraser’s valeting, in addition to Grey’s, though, Tom had grasped the nettle manfully and been very helpful in compiling the tailor’s list. He was passionate in the matter of male clothing and had lost quite a bit of his nervousness in the discussion of what might be suitable.

To Grey’s surprise, Tom Byrd was in the parlor when he came down in the morning, and the valet stuck his head out into the hall to hail him.

“The captain’s new clothes have come, me lord! Come see!”

Tom turned a beaming face on Grey as he entered the parlor. The furniture was draped with muslin-wrapped shapes, like small Egyptian mummies. Tom had unwrapped one of these and now laid out a bottle-green coat with gilt buttons, spreading the skirts lovingly over the settee.

“That bundle on the pianoforte is shirts,” he informed Grey. “I didn’t like to take them up, in case the captain was asleep.”

Grey glanced out the window, which showed the sun well up; it must be eight o’clock, at least. The notion that Fraser might be having a lie-in was ludicrous; he doubted the man had ever slept past dawn in his life, and he certainly hadn’t done it any time in the last fifteen years. But Tom’s remark indicated that the Scot hadn’t either appeared for breakfast or sent for a tray. Could he be ill?

He was not. The sound of the front door opening and closing turned Grey toward the hall in time to see Fraser stride past, face flushed fresh with the morning’s air.

“Mr. Fraser!” he called, and Fraser swung round, surprised but not disturbed. He came in, ducking automatically beneath the lintel. One brow was arched in inquiry, but there was no hint in his face of disquiet or of that closed expression that hid anger, fear, or calculation.

He’s only been for a walk; he hasn’t seen anyone, Grey thought, and was slightly ashamed of the thought. Who, after all, would he see in London?

“Behold,” Grey said, smiling, and gestured toward the muslin parcels. Tom had unwrapped a suit of an odd purplish brown and was stroking the pile.

“Would you look at this, sir?” Tom said, so pleased with the garments that he momentarily overcame his nervousness of Fraser. “I’ve never seen such a color in me life—but it’ll suit you prime!”

To Grey’s surprise, Fraser smiled back, almost shyly.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said, and put out a hand to stroke the fabric. “In France. Couleur puce, it was called. The Duc d’Orleans had a suit made of it, and verra proud of it he was, too.”

Tom’s eyes were round. He looked quickly at Grey—had his employer known that his prisoner hobnobbed with French dukes?—then back at Fraser.

“Pee-yuse?” he said, trying out the word. “Color of a … what’s a peeyuse, then?”

Fraser actually laughed at that, and Grey felt a startled small burst of pleasure at the sound.

“A flea,” Fraser told Tom. “The whole of the name means ‘the color of the belly of a flea,’ but that’s a bit much, even for the French.”

Tom squinted at the coat one-eyed, evidently comparing it to fleas he had known. “It’s not like that word pew-cell, is it? Would that be like a little-bitty flea?”

Fraser’s mouth twitched, and his eyes darted toward Grey.

“Pucelle?”he said, pronouncing it in good French. “I, erm, don’t think so, though I might of course be mistaken.”

Grey felt his ribs creak slightly but managed to speak casually. “Where did you come across the word pucelle, Tom?”

Tom considered for a moment.

“Oh. Colonel Quarry, when he was here last week. He asked me could I think of anything that rhymed with pew-cell. ‘Usual’ was all I could think of, and he didn’t think much o’ that, I could tell, though he wrote it down in his notebook, just in case, he said.”

“Colonel Quarry writes poetry,” Grey explained to Fraser, getting another lifted brow in return. “Very … um … individual style of verse.”

“I know,” Fraser said, to Grey’s utter astonishment. “He asked me once if I could think of a suitable rhyme for ‘virgin.’ ”

“He did? When?”

“At Ardsmuir,” Fraser said, with no apparent emotion, from which Grey concluded that Harry hadn’t actually shown the Scot any of his poetry. “Over di

“Though for what the observation is worth, pucelleis the French word for ‘virgin,’ ” Grey told Tom. He glanced at Fraser. “Perhaps he couldn’t manage the verse in English, abandoned it, and later decided to try it in French?”

Fraser made a small sound of amusement, but Tom was still frowning.

“Have French virgins got fleas, do you think?”

“I never met a Frenchwoman I felt I could ask,” Grey said. “But I have met a good many fleas, and they tend not to be respecters of persons, let alone of purity.”

Tom shook his head, dismissing this bit of natural philosophy as beyond him, and returned with an air of relief to his natural sphere of competence.

“Well, then. There’s the pee-yuse velvet suit, the blue silk, the brown worsted, and two coats for everyday, bottle-green and sapphire, and three waistcoats, two plain and a yellow one with fancy-work. Dark breeches, white breeches, stockings, shirts, small-clothes …” He pointed at various parcels here and there about the room, consulting the list in his head. “Now, the shoes haven’t come yet, nor the riding boots. Will those do for the Beefsteak, do you think, me lord?” He squinted doubtfully at the shoes on Jamie’s feet, these being the sturdy objects borrowed from Lady Joffrey’s chairman. They had been buffed and polished to the limits of the bootboy’s capability but were not intrinsically fashionable.

Grey joined Tom’s scrutiny and lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“Change the buckles, and they’ll do. Take the silver-gilt ones from my brown calfskin court shoes. Mr. Fraser?” He motioned delicately at Jamie’s feet, and Jamie obligingly stepped out of the objects in question, allowing Tom to take them away.

Fraser waited until Tom was safely out of hearing before inquiring, “The Beefsteak?”

“My club. The Society for the Appreciation of the English Beefsteak. We are taking di