The Scottish Prisoner

Jamie wondered briefly whether Twelvetrees had given Captain Honey instructions regarding his body, but dismissed the thought as he ran across the grass to his friend.

Take me … ho

33

Billets-Doux

“IF THE BLOW HAD GONE BETWEEN YOUR RIBS, YOU’D BE dead, you know.”

It wasn’t the first time Grey had heard this—it wasn’t even the first time he’d heard it from Hal—but it was the first time he’d had the strength to reply to it.

“I know.” The thrust had in fact—he’d been told, first by Dr. Hunter, and then by Dr. Maguire, the Greys’ family physician, and finally by Dr. Latham, the regimental surgeon—struck him in the third rib, then sliced sideways for two or three inches before the tip of the saber had stuck in the bone of his sternum. It hadn’t hurt at the time; he’d just been conscious of the jolting force of the blow.

“Hurt much?” Hal sat on his bed, peering closely at him.

“Yes. Get off.”

Hal didn’t move.

“In your right mind, are you?”

“Certainly. Are you?” Grey felt extremely cross. It did hurt, his bum had lost all feeling from sitting in bed, and now that the fever had passed, he was very hungry.

“Twelvetrees died this morning.”

“Oh.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, feeling an apologetic gratitude for hunger and pain. “God rest his soul.”

He’d known Twelvetrees was almost certain to die; it was rare to recover from a serious wound to the abdomen, and he’d felt his sword strike bone somewhere deep inside Twelvetrees; he’d gone through the man’s guts, entire. If blood loss and shock didn’t do for a man, infection would. Still, there was a somber finality to the news that jarred him.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “Has Reginald Twelvetrees sent round an official demand for my head yet? Or at least my arrest?”

Hal shook his head, unamused.

“He can’t say a word, not with everyone thinking—and saying—that Edward was a traitor. You’re more or less being hailed as a public hero.”

Grey was staggered. “What? What for?”

Hal gave him a raised eyebrow. “After you exposed Bernard Adams as a Jacobite plotter two years ago? And then what Fraser said to Twelvetrees at the Beefsteak? Everyone thinks you challenged him because of his treasonous behavior—not that they know what that was, thank God.”

“But that—I didn’t—”

“Well, I know you didn’t, ass,” his brother said. “But as you didn’t take out a notice in the newpapers saying he’d called you a pederast and you took exception to it—and he didn’t take out a notice saying he thought you were a menace to society and proposed to support his opinion by force of arms—the public has as usual made up its own mind.”

Grey’s left arm was in a sling, but he rubbed his right hand hard over his stubbled face. He was disturbed by the news but not sure what to do about it, if anything could be done, once—

“Oh, bloody hell,” he said. “The newspapers have got hold of it.”

“Oh, yes.” A muscle twitched at the corner of Hal’s mouth. “Mi

Grey gave Hal a look. “When I feel up to it,” he said, “I have a thing or two to say to your wife.”

Hal smiled broadly at that. “Be my guest,” he said. “And I hope you’ve a fine day for it.” He got up, jostling Grey’s bad leg. “Are you hungry? Cook has some revolting gruel for you. Also burnt toast with calf’s-foot jelly.”

“For God’s sake, Hal!” The mingled outrage and pleading in his voice appeared to move his brother.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Hal leaned over and patted him quite gently on his good shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re not dead. Wasn’t sure for a bit.”

Hal went out before he could reply. Tears welled in John’s eyes, and he dashed at them with the sleeve of his nightshirt, muttering irritably in a vain attempt to convince himself that he wasn’t moved.

Before he got very far with this, his attention was distracted by noise in the hallway: the sort of disturbance caused by small boys attempting to be quiet, with loud whisperings and shushings, punctuated by shoving and bumping into walls.

“Come in,” he called, and the door opened. A small head poked cautiously round the corner.

“Hallo, Ben. What’s a-do?”

Benjamin’s face, apprehensive, relaxed at once in delight.

“You all right, Uncle? Mama said if the sword—”

“I know, I’d be dead. But I’m not, now, am I?”

Ben squinted carefully at him, dubious, but decided to take this statement at face value and, turning round, rushed to the door, hissing something into the passage. He came dashing back, now followed by his younger brothers, Adam and Henry. All of them leapt on the bed, though Benjamin and Adam prevented Henry—who was only five and didn’t know better—from trying to sit in Grey’s lap.

“Can we see where the sword went in, Uncle?” Adam asked.

“I suppose so.” The wound had a dressing, but the doctor was coming later to change it, so no harm in pulling it off, he supposed. He unbuttoned his nightshirt one-handed and rather gingerly detached the bandage. His nephews’ awed admiration was more than adequate recompense for the discomfort involved.

After the initial chorus of “Ooh!” Ben leaned forward to look more closely. It was a fairly impressive wound, Grey admitted, glancing down; whichever surgeon had seen to him—he hadn’t been in any condition to notice—had lengthened the original slash so as to be able to pick out the fragments of his sternum that Twelvetrees’s saber had dislodged and the bits of his shirt that had been driven into the wound. The result was a six-inch gash across the already scarred left side of his upper chest, a nasty dark red crisscrossed with coarse black stitches.

“Does it hurt?” Ben asked seriously.

“Not so bad,” Grey said. “The itching on my leg’s worse.”

“Lemme see!” Henry began to scrabble at the bedclothes. The resultant squabble among the three brothers nearly pitched Grey onto the floor, but he managed to raise his voice enough to restore order, whereupon he pulled back the blanket and lifted his nightshirt to display the slash across the top of his thigh.

It was a shallow wound, though impressively long, and while it did still hurt a bit, he’d been honest in saying the itching was worse. Doctor Maguire had recommended a poultice of magnesium sulfate, soap, and sugar, to draw the poisons from the wounds. Doctor Latham, arriving an hour later, had removed the poultice, saying this was all great nonsense, and air would help to dry the stitches.

Grey had lain inert through both processes, having only enough strength to feel gratitude that Doctor Hunter had not come to give his opinion—he would probably have whipped out his saw and made off with the leg, thus settling the argument. Having renewed his acquaintance with the good doctor, he had somewhat more sympathy with Tobias Qui

“You’ve got a big willy, Uncle John,” Adam observed.

“About the usual for a grown man, I think. Though I believe it’s given fairly general satisfaction.”

The boys all sniggered, though Grey thought that only Benjamin had any idea why, and wondered with interest where Ben’s tutor had been taking him. Adam and Henry were too young yet to go anywhere, being still in the nursery with Na