“How on earth did that idiot happen to be there?” I asked, scrabbling in the drawer for a box of powder.

“I asked him that,” Jamie replied. “Seems the poor fool’s in love with Mary Hawkins. He’s been following her to and fro about the town, drooping like a wilted flower because he knows she’s to wed Marigny.”

I dropped the box of powder.

“H-h-he’s in love with her?” I wheezed, waving away the cloud of floating particles.

“So he says, and I see nay reason to doubt it,” Jamie said, brushing powder briskly off the bosom of my dress. “He was a bit distraught when he told me.”

“I should imagine so.” To the conflicting welter of emotions that filled me, I now added pity for Alex Randall. Of course he wouldn’t have spoken to Mary, thinking the devotion of an impoverished secretary nothing compared to the wealth and position of a match with the House of Gascogne. And now what must he feel, seeing her subjected to brutal attack, virtually under his nose?

“Why in hell didn’t he speak up? She would have run off with him in a moment.” For the pale English curate, of course, must be the “spiritual” object of Mary’s speechless devotion.

“Randall’s a gentleman,” Jamie replied, handing me a feather and the pot of rouge.

“You mean he’s a silly ass,” I said uncharitably.

Jamie’s lip twitched. “Well, perhaps,” he agreed. “He’s also a poor one; he hasna the income to support a wife, should her family cast her off – which they certainly would, if she eloped with him. And his health is feeble; he’d find it hard to find another position, for the Duke would likely dismiss him without a character.”

“One of the servants is bound to find her,” I said, returning to an earlier worry in order to avoid thinking about this latest manifestation of tragedy.

“No, they won’t. They’ll all be busy serving. And by the morning, she may be recovered enough to go back to her uncle’s house. I sent round a note,” he added, “to tell them she was staying the night with a friend, as it was late. Didna want them searching for her.”

“Yes, but-”

“Sassenach.” His hands on my shoulders stopped me, and he peered over my shoulder to meet my eyes in the mirror. “We canna let her be seen by anyone, until she’s able to speak and to act as usual. Let it be known what’s happened to her, and her reputation will be ruined entirely.”

“Her reputation! It’s hardly her fault she was raped!” My voice shook slightly, and his grip on my shoulders tightened.

“It isna right, Sassenach, but it’s how it is. Let it be known that she’s a maid no more, and no man will take her – she’ll be disgraced, and live a spinster to the end of her days.” His hand squeezed my shoulder, left it, and returned to help guide a pin into the precariously anchored hair.

“It’s all we can do for her, Claire,” he said. “Keep her from harm, heal her as best we can – and find the filthy bastards who did it.” He turned away and groped in my casket for his stick pin. “Christ,” he added softly, speaking into the green velvet lining, “d’ye think I don’t know what it is to her? Or to him?”

I laid my hand on his groping fingers and squeezed. He squeezed back, then lifted my hand and kissed it briefly.

“Lord, Sassenach! Your fingers are cold as snow.” He turned me around to look earnestly into my face. “Are you all right, lass?”

Whatever he saw in my face made him mutter “Christ” again, sink to his knees, and pull me against his ruffled shirtfront. I gave up the pretense of courage, and clung to him, burying my face in the starchy warmth.

“Oh, God, Jamie. I was so scared. I am so scared. Oh, God, I wish you could make love to me now.”

His chest vibrated under my cheek with his laugh, but he hugged me closer.

“You think that would help?”

“Yes.”

In fact, I thought that I would not feel safe again, until I lay in the security of our bed, with the sheltering silence of the house all about us, feeling the strength and the heat of him around and within me, buttressing my courage with the joy of our joining, wiping out the horror of helplessness and near-rape with the sureness of mutual possession.

He held my face between his hands and kissed me, and for a moment, the fear of the future and the terror of the night fell away. Then he drew back and smiled. I could see his own worry etched in the lines of his face, but there was nothing in his eyes but the small reflection of my face.

“On account, then,” he said softly.

We had reached the second course without incident, and I was beginning to relax slightly, though my hand still had a tendency to tremble over the consomme.

“How perfectly fascinating!” I said, in response to a story of the younger Monsieur Duverney’s, to which I wasn’t listening, my ears being tuned for any suspicious noises abovestairs. “Do tell me more.”

I caught Magnus’s eye as he served the Comte St. Germain, seated across from me, and beamed congratulations at him as well as I could with a mouthful of fish. Too well trained to smile in public, he inclined his head a respectful quarter-inch and went on with the service. My hand went to the crystal at my neck, and I stroked it ostentatiously as the Comte, with no sign of perturbation on his saturnine features, dug into the trout with almonds.

Jamie and the elder Duverney were close in conversation at the other end of the table, food ignored as Jamie scribbled left-handed figures on a scrap of paper with a stub of chalk. Chess, or business? I wondered.

As guest of honor, the Duke sat at the center of the table. He had enjoyed the first courses with the gusto of a natural-born trencherman, and was now engaged in animated conversation with Madame d’Arbanville, on his right. As the Duke was the most obviously prominent Englishman in Paris at the time, Jamie had thought it worthwhile cultivating his acquaintance, in hopes of uncovering any rumors that might lead to the sender of the musical message to Charles Stuart. My attention, though, kept straying from the Duke to the gentleman seated across from him – Silas Hawkins.

I had thought I might just die on the spot and save trouble all round when the Duke had walked through the door, gesturing casually over his shoulder, and saying, “I say, Mrs. Fraser, you do know Hawkins here, don’t you?”

The Duke’s small, merry blue eyes had met mine with a look of guileless confidence that his whims would be accommodated, and I had had no choice but to smile and nod, and tell Magnus to be sure another place was set. Jamie, seeing Mr. Hawkins as he came through the door of the drawing room, had looked as though he were in need of another dose of stomach medicine, but had pulled himself together enough to extend a hand to Mr. Hawkins and start a conversation about the quality of the inns on the road to Calais.

I glanced at the carriage clock over the mantelpiece. How long before they would all be gone? I mentally tallied the courses already served, and those to come. Nearly to the sweet course. Then the salad and cheese. Brandy and coffee, port for the men, liqueurs for the ladies. An hour or two for stimulating conversation. Not too stimulating, please God, or they would linger ’til dawn.

Now they were talking of the menace of street gangs. I abandoned the fish and picked up a roll.

“And I have heard that some of these roving bands are composed not of rabble, as you would expect, but of some of the younger members of the nobility!” General d’Arbanville puffed out his lips at the monstrousness of the idea. “They do it for sport – sport! As though the robbery of decent men and the outraging of ladies were nothing more than a cockfight!”

“How extraordinary,” said the Duke, with the indifference of a man who never went anywhere without a substantial escort. The platter of savouries hovered near his chin, and he scooped half a dozen onto his plate.