The Scottish Prisoner

Tom looked pleased and, after a bit of thumbing, cleared his throat and read:

“Dueling is a Great Evil, which a Christian Gentleman should strive always to avoid. Should appeal to Reason fail to resolve Conflict and Honor prevent gracious Capitulation, a Gentleman should then seek the Assistance of Friends, who by dint of Persuasion may bring your Opponent to a sense of Christian Obligation and Responsibility. However …”

Someone must have given it to Grey’s father—his name was inscribed on the flyleaf—but Grey couldn’t imagine his father having actually purchased such a book himself.

Still, Grey reflected, he’d take The Gentleman Instructedany day in preference to Tom’s usual favorite, Arbuthnot’s Ailments, from which he was accustomed to regale Grey, in tones of gloomy relish, with descriptions of exactly what happened to persons so reckless as to neglect the proper balance of their humors. Allowing one’s phlegm to get the upper hand was particularly dire, he understood, and cleared his throat in reflex at the thought, spitting neatly into the fire, which hissed and sizzled at the insult.

“Should Armed Conflict prove unavoidable, the Gentleman should give his Opponent every Opportunity for Withdrawal without loss of Reputation. To this end, such Epithets as ‘Coward,’ ‘Seducer,’ ‘Fop,’ or most particularly ‘Dog’ are strongly discouraged to be used.”

Grey was begi

He relaxed against the backstop of his portmanteau and, with belly pleasantly full and lulled by Tom’s reading, fell into a half dream in which he called Siverly out. A duel would be so much more straightforward, he reflected drowsily. “Have at you, sir!”And a straight thrust through the heart … Well, no, better through the guts; the poltroon didn’t deserve a clean, uncomplicated death.

He’d been out a few times, mostly with swords. Inconsequential encounters—both parties drunk, hasty words, perhaps a blow—that neither one could find enough coherence to apologize for while preserving any countenance.

The advantage to dueling while drunk, he’d found, was that there wasn’t any sense of fear or urgency about it; it was an elevated sort of feeling, literally—he felt as though he stood a little above himself, living at a faster pace, so that he saw every move, every thrust, as though performed in exquisite slow motion. The grunt of effort, the tickle of sweat, and the smell of his opponent’s body were vivid punctuations of their dance, and the sense of being intensely alive was intoxicating in itself.

He always won; it didn’t occur to him that he might not. A decent fight, a simple stab, a quick slash that drew a little blood, honor satisfied, and they stood together, chests heaving, often laughing and leaning on each other, still drunk. He hadn’t had that sort of duel in years, though.

“Ye’ve been out now and then yourself, haven’t ye, Jamie?”

Distracted by memory, Grey hadn’t noticed that Tom had stopped reading, but was pulled from his thoughts by Qui

“Once or twice,” Jamie muttered, averting his eyes. He picked up a stick and poked the fire u

“In the Bois de Boulogne, wasn’t it? With some Englishman. I recall hearing about it—a famous fight! And did ye not end in the Bastille for it?” Qui

Fraser glanced round with a truly awful look in his eyes, and had Qui

John himself leapt in, wanting above all to disrupt the conversation.

“I once killed a man by accident during a duel—or thought I had. It was the last duel I fought; I think it might be the last altogether. A most distressing experience.”

That duel had been with pistols. He hadn’t been drunk then. He’d been suffering the aftereffects of being electrocuted by an electric eel, and the entire experience had been so unreal that he still didn’t trust his memories of it. He had no idea how it had begun, still less how it had finished.

His opponent had died, and he regretted that—though not very much, he admitted to himself; Nicholls had been a boor and a waste to society, and, besides, he’d asked for it. Still, his death had been an accident, and Grey really preferred to kill on purpose, when it was necessary.

Interrupted, but not offended, Tom shut the book with his finger in it to hold his place and leaned forward, face wary. That duel had sent him and Lord John to Canada; he hadn’t been there when Grey killed Nicholls but certainly remembered the occasion, and it occurred to Grey to wonder whether Tom had chosen the Gentleman’s admonition against dueling on purpose.

Qui

“I meant to delope—to fire up into the air?” Qui

“An accident, sure. But are ye saying that really wasn’t the way of it, at all?”

“I am, indeed. It was months later that I received a letter from the surgeon, informing me that the man had had a congenital weakness of the heart—an aneurysm, he called it—that had burst as a result of the shock. It wasn’t my shot at all that had killed him—or only indirectly—and Dr. Hunter said that he might have died at any time.”

“Dr. Hunter?” Qui

“Dr. John Hunter, yes,” Grey said warily, suddenly on dicey ground. He hadn’t meant to mention Hunter by name—and hadn’t expected either of the men to know that name, either. Hunter did indeed have a most unsavory reputation, being rapacious in the collection of bodies for dissection. And the question as to just how Dr. Hunter knew of Nicholls’s aneurysm …

“God between us and evil,” Qui

Grey coughed and, glancing to the side, caught Tom’s eye. He hadn’t shown Tom Dr. Hunter’s letter, but Tom was his valet and knew things. Tom coughed, too, and neatly closed his book.

“It’s a nightmare I have sometimes,” Qui

“I shall keep a lookout, Qui

Qui

“It’s a bargain, Jamie dear,” he said. “And I shall do the same for you, shall I? Though I’m not sure I should be able to tell the difference between your skeleton and that of a gorilla, now.”

“And where would ye ever have seen a gorilla, Qui

“In Paris, of course. King Louis’s zoo. The King of France is most generous to his subjects,” Qui