Dangerous Women (69 page)

Jamie’s hand loosened, and Ian grabbed his arm, tight.

“Don’t,” he said tersely, and yanked Jamie back into the shadow.

“I wasn’t,” Jamie said, but under his breath and not noticing much what he was saying, because his eyes were fixed on what was happening, as much as Ian’s were.

The light from the door spilled over the woman, glowing off her hanging breasts, bared in the ripped neck of her shift. Glowing off her wide round buttocks, too; Mathieu had shoved her skirts up to her waist and was behind her, jerking at his flies one-handed, the other hand twisted in her hair so her head pulled back, throat straining and her face white-eyed as a panicked horse.

“
Pute!
” he said, and gave her arse a loud smack, open-handed. “Nobody says no to me!” He’d got his cock out now, in his hand, and shoved it into the woman with a violence that made her hurdies wobble and knotted Ian from knees to neck.

“Merde,”
Jamie said, still under his breath. Other men and a couple of women had come out into the yard and were gathered round with the others, enjoying the spectacle as Mathieu set to work in a businesslike manner. He let go of the woman’s hair in order to grasp her by the hips and her head hung down, hair hiding her face. She grunted with each thrust, panting bad words that made the onlookers laugh.

Ian was shocked—and shocked as much at his own arousal as at what Mathieu was doing. He’d not seen open coupling before, only the heaving and giggling of things happening under a blanket, now and then a wee flash of pale flesh. This … He ought to look away, he knew that fine. But he didn’t.

Jamie took in a breath, but no telling whether he meant to say something. Mathieu threw back his big head and howled like a wolf and the watchers all cheered. Then his face convulsed, gapped teeth showing in a grin like a skull’s, and he made a noise like a pig gives out when you knock it clean on the head, and collapsed on top of the whore.

The whore squirmed out from under his bulk, abusing him roundly. Ian understood what she was saying now, and would have been shocked anew if he’d had any capacity for being shocked left. She hopped up, evidently not hurt, and kicked Mathieu in the ribs once, then twice, but having no shoes on, didn’t hurt him. She reached for the purse still tied at his waist, stuck her hand in and grabbed a handful of coins, then kicked him once more for luck and stomped off into the house, holding up the neck of her shift. Mathieu lay sprawled on the ground, his breeks around his thighs, laughing and wheezing.

Ian heard Jamie swallow and realized he was still gripping Jamie’s arm. Jamie didn’t seem to have noticed. Ian let go. His face was burning all the way down to the middle of his chest, and he didn’t think it was just torchlight on Jamie’s face, either.

“Let’s … go someplace else,” he said.

“I wish we’d … done something,” Jamie blurted. They hadn’t spoken at all after leaving Le Poulet Gai. They’d walked clear to the other end of the street and down a side alley, eventually coming to rest in a small tavern, fairly quiet. Juanito and Raoul were there, dicing with some locals, but gave Ian and Jamie no more than a glance.

“I dinna see what we
could
have done,” Ian said reasonably. “I mean, we could maybe have taken on Mathieu together and got off with only bein’ maimed. But ye ken it would ha’ started a kebbie-lebbie, wi’ all the others there.” He hesitated, and gave Jamie a quick glance before returning his gaze to his cup. “And … she
was
a whore. I mean, she wasna a—”

“I ken what ye mean.” Jamie cut him off. “Aye, ye’re right. And she did go with the man, to start. God knows what he did to make her take against him, but there’s likely plenty to choose from. I wish—ah, feckit. D’ye want something to eat?”

Ian shook his head. The barmaid brought them a jug of wine, glanced at them, and dismissed them as negligible. It was rough wine that took the skin off the insides of your mouth, but it had a decent taste to it, under the resin fumes, and wasn’t too much watered. Jamie drank deep, and faster than he generally did; he was uneasy in his skin, prickling and irritable, and wanted the feeling to go away.

There were a few women in the place, not many. Jamie had to think that whoring maybe wasn’t a profitable business, wretched as most of the poor creatures looked, raddled and half-toothless. Maybe it wore them down, having to … He turned away from the thought and finding the jug empty, waved to the barmaid for another.

Juanito gave a joyful whoop and said something in Ladino. Looking in that direction, Jamie saw one of the whores who’d been lurking in the shadows come gliding purposefully in, bending down to give Juanito a congratulatory kiss as he scooped in his winnings. Jamie snorted a little, trying to blow the smell of her out of his neb—she’d passed by close enough that he’d got a good whiff of her: a stink of rancid sweat and dead fish. Alexandre had told him that was from unclean privates, and he believed it.

He went back to the wine. Ian was matching him, cup for cup, and likely for the same reason. His friend wasn’t usually irritable or crankit, but if he was well put out, he’d often stay that way until the next dawn—a good sleep erased his bad temper, but ’til then you didn’t want to rile him.

He shot a sidelong glance at Ian. He couldn’t tell Ian about Jenny. He just … couldn’t. But neither could he think about her, left alone at Lallybroch … maybe with ch—

“Oh, God,” he said, under his breath. “No. Please. No.”

“Dinna come back,”
Murtagh had said, and plainly meant it. Well, he
would
go back—but not yet awhile. It wouldn’t help his sister, him going back just now and bringing Randall and the redcoats straight to her like flies to a fresh-killed deer … He shoved that analogy hastily out of sight, horrified. The truth was, it made him sick with shame to think about Jenny, and he tried not to—and was the more ashamed because he mostly succeeded.

Ian’s gaze was fixed on another of the harlots. She was old, in her thirties at least, but had most of her teeth and was cleaner than most. She was flirting with Juanito and Raoul, too, and Jamie wondered whether she’d mind if she found out they were Jews. Maybe a whore couldn’t afford to be choosy.

His treacherous mind at once presented him with a picture of his sister, obliged to follow that walk of life to feed herself, made to take any man who … Blessed Mother, what would the folk, the tenants, the servants, do to her if they found out what had happened? The talk … He shut his eyes tight, hoping to block the vision.

“That one’s none sae bad,” Ian said meditatively, and Jamie opened his eyes. The better-looking whore had bent over Juanito, deliberately rubbing her breast against his warty ear. “If she doesna mislike a Jew, maybe she’d …”

The blood flamed up in Jamie’s face.

“If ye’ve got any thought to my sister, ye’re no going to—to—pollute yourself wi’ a French whore!”

Ian’s face went blank, but then flooded with color in turn.

“Oh, aye? And if I said your sister wasna worth it?”

Jamie’s fist caught him in the eye and he flew backward, overturning the bench and crashing into the next table. Jamie scarcely noticed, the agony in his hand shooting fire and brimstone from his crushed knuckles up his forearm. He rocked to and fro, injured hand clutched between his thighs, cursing freely in three languages.

Ian sat on the floor, bent over, holding his eye and breathing through his mouth in short gasps. After a minute, he straightened up. His eye was puffing already, leaking tears down his lean cheek. He got up, shaking his head slowly, and put the bench back in place. Then he sat down, picked up his cup and took a deep gulp, put it down and blew out his breath. He took the snot-rag Jamie was holding out to him and dabbed at his eye.

“Sorry,” Jamie managed. The agony in his hand was beginning to subside, but the anguish in his heart wasn’t.

“Aye,” Ian said quietly, not meeting his eye. “I wish we’d done something, too. Ye want to share a bowl o’ stew?”

Two days later, they set off for Paris. After some thought, D’Eglise had decided that Rebekah and her maid would travel by coach, escorted by Jamie and Ian. D’Eglise and the rest of the troop would take the money, with some men sent ahead in small groups to wait, both to check the road ahead, and so that they could ride in shifts, not stopping anywhere along the way. The women obviously would have to stop, but if they had nothing valuable with them, they’d be in no danger.

It was only when they went to collect the women at Dr. Hasdi’s residence that they learned the Torah scroll and its custodian, a sober-looking man of middle age introduced to them as Monsieur Peretz, would be traveling with Rebekah. “I trust my greatest treasures to you, gentlemen,” the Doctor told them, through his granddaughter, and gave them a formal little bow

“May you find us worthy of trust, Lord,” Jamie managed in halting Hebrew, and Ian bowed with great solemnity, hand on his heart. Dr. Hasdi looked from one to the other, gave a small nod, and then stepped forward to kiss Rebekah on the forehead.

“Go with God, child,” he whispered, in something close enough to Spanish that Jamie understood it.

All went well for the first day, and the first night. The autumn weather held fine, with no more than a pleasant tang of chill in the air, and the horses were sound. Dr. Hasdi had provided Jamie with a purse to cover the expenses of the journey, and they all ate decently and slept at a very respectable inn—Ian being sent in first to inspect the premises and insure against any nasty surprises.

The next day dawned cloudy, but the wind came up and blew the clouds away before noon, leaving the sky clean and brilliant as a sapphire overhead. Jamie was riding in the van, Ian post, and the coach was making good time, in spite of a rutted, winding road. As they reached the top of a small rise, though, Jamie saw that a small stream had run through the roadbed in the dip below, making a bog some ten feet across. He brought his horse to a sudden stop, raising a hand to halt the coach, and Ian reined up alongside him.

“What—” he began, but was interrupted. The driver had pulled his team up for an instant but, at a peremptory shout from inside the coach, now snapped the reins over the horses’ backs and the coach lunged forward, narrowly missing Jamie’s horse, which shied violently, flinging its rider off into the bushes.

“Jamie! Are ye all right?” Torn between concern for his friend and for his duty, Ian held his horse, glancing to and fro.

“Stop them! Get them!
Ifrinn!
” Jamie scuttled crabwise out of the weeds, face scratched and bright red with fury. Ian didn’t wait, but kicked his horse and lit out in pursuit of the heavy coach, this now lurching from side to side as it ran down into the boggy bottom. Shrill feminine cries of protest from inside were drowned by the driver’s exclamation of “
Ladrones!
”

That was one word he kent in Spanish—“thieves.” One of the
ladrones
was already skittering up the side of the coach like an eight-legged cob, and the driver promptly dived off the box, hit the ground and ran for it.

“Coward!” Ian bellowed, and gave out with a Hieland screech that set the coach-horses dancing, flinging their heads to and fro, and giving the would-be kidnapper fits with the reins. He forced his own horse—who hadn’t liked the screeching any better than the coach-horses—through the narrow gap between the brush and the coach, and as he came even with the driver, had his pistol out. He drew down on the fellow—a young chap with long yellow hair—and shouted at him to pull up.

The man glanced at him, crouched low, and slapped the reins on the horses’ backs, shouting at them in a voice like iron. Ian fired, and missed—but the delay had let Jamie catch them up; he saw Jamie’s red head poke up as he climbed the back of the coach, and there were more screams from inside as Jamie pounded across the roof and launched himself at the yellow-haired driver.

Leaving that bit of trouble to Jamie to deal with, Ian kicked his horse forward, meaning to get ahead and seize the reins, but another of the thieves had beat him to it and was hauling down on one horse’s head. Aye, well, it worked once. Ian inflated his lungs as far as they’d go and let rip.

The coach-horses bolted in a spray of mud. Jamie and the yellow-haired driver fell off the box, and the whoreson in the road disappeared, possibly trampled into the mire. Ian hoped so. Blood in his eye, he reined up his own agitated mount, drew his broadsword, and charged across the road, shrieking like a
ban-sidhe
and slashing wildly. Two thieves stared up at him openmouthed, then broke and ran for it.

He chased them a wee bit into the brush, but the going was too thick for his horse, and he turned back to find Jamie rolling about in the road, earnestly hammering the yellow-haired laddie. Ian hesitated—help him, or see to the coach? A loud crash and horrible screams decided him at once and he charged down the road.

The coach, driverless, had run off the road, hit the bog, and fallen sideways into a ditch. From the clishmaclaver coming from inside, he thought the women were likely all right, and, swinging off his horse, wrapped the reins hastily round a tree and went to take care of the coach-horses before they killed themselves.

It took no little while to disentangle the mess single-handed—luckily the horses had not managed to damage themselves significantly—and his efforts were not aided by the emergence from the coach of two agitated and very disheveled women carrying on in an incomprehensible mix of French and Ladino.

Just as well,
he thought, giving them a vague wave of a hand he could ill-spare at the moment.
It wouldna help to hear what they’re saying.
Then he picked up the word “dead,” and changed his mind. Monsieur Peretz was normally so silent that Ian had in fact forgotten his presence in the confusion of the moment. He was even more silent now, Ian learned, having broken his neck when the coach overturned.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, running to look. But the man was undeniably dead, and the horses were still creating a ruckus, slipping and stamping in the mud of the ditch. He was too busy for a bit to worry about how Jamie was faring, but as he got the second horse detached from the coach and safely tethered to a tree, he did begin to wonder where the wean was.