Ian had now folded his arms on his knees and was resting his forehead on them, his voice muffled in the folds of his plaid. “… dinna ken …” emerged in a strangled croak.
Jamie reached out and dug his fingers hard into Ian’s calf, making his friend unfold with a startled cry that made someone in a distant chamber shift and grunt in their sleep.
“What d’ye mean ye dinna ken? How could ye not notice?” he hissed.
“Ah … well … she … erm … she did me wi’ her hand,” Ian blurted. “Before I could … well.”
“Oh.” Jamie rolled onto his back, somewhat deflated in spirit, if not in flesh. His cock seemed still to want to hear the details.
“Is that seriously wrong?” Ian asked, turning his face toward Jamie again. “Or—well, I canna say I really gave full consent to it, because that wasna what I had in mind doing at all, but …”
“I think ye’re headed for the Bad Place,” Jamie assured him. “Ye meant to do it, whether ye managed or not. And how did it happen, come to that? Did she just … take hold?”
Ian let out a long, long sigh, and sank his head in his hands. He looked as though it hurt.
“Well, we kissed for a bit, and there was more brandy—lots more. She … er … she’d take a mouthful and kiss me and, er … put it into my mouth, and …”
“Ifrinn!”
“Will ye not say ‘Hell!’ like that, please? I dinna want to think about it.”
“Sorry. Go on. Did she let ye feel her breasts?”
“Just a bit. She wouldna take her stays off, but I could feel her nipples through her shift—did ye say something?”
“No,” Jamie said with an effort. “What then?”
“Well, she put her hand under my kilt and then pulled it out again like she’d touched a snake.”
“And had she?”
“She had, aye. She was shocked. Will ye no snort like that?” he said, annoyed. “Ye’ll wake the whole house. It was because it wasna circumcised.”
“Oh. Is that why she wouldna … er … the regular way?”
“She didna say so, but maybe. After a bit, though, she wanted to look at it, and that’s when … well.”
“Mmphm.” Naked demons versus the chance of damnation or not, Jamie thought Ian had had well the best of it this evening. A thought occurred to him. “Why did ye ask if being circumcised hurts? Ye werena thinking of doing it, were ye? For her, I mean?”
“I wouldna say the thought hadna occurred to me,” Ian admitted. “I mean … I thought I should maybe marry her, under the circumstances. But I suppose I couldna become a Jew, even if I got up the nerve to be circumcised—my mam would tear my heid off if I did.”
“No, ye’re right,” Jamie agreed. “She would. And ye’d go to Hell.” The thought of the rare and delicate Rebekah churning butter in the yard of a Highland croft or waulking urine-soaked wool with her bare feet was slightly more ludicrous than the vision of Ian in a skullcap and whiskers—but not by much. “Besides, ye havena got any money, have ye?”
“A bit,” Ian said thoughtfully. “Not enough to go and live in Timbuktoo, though, and I’d have to go at least that far.”
Jamie sighed and stretched, easing himself. A meditative silence fell, Ian no doubt contemplating perdition, Jamie reliving the better bits of his opium dreams, but with Rebekah’s face on the snake-lady. Finally he broke the silence, turning to his friend.
“So … was it worth the chance of goin’ to Hell?”
Ian sighed long and deep once more, but it was the sigh of a man at peace with himself.
“Oh, aye.”
Jamie woke at dawn, feeling altogether well, and in a much better frame of mind. Some kindly soul had brought a jug of sour ale and some bread and cheese. He refreshed himself with these as he dressed, pondering the day’s work.
He’d have to collect a few men to go back and deal with the coach. He supposed the best thing to do with M. Peretz was to fetch him here in the coach, and then see if there were any Jews in the vicinity who might be prevailed upon to bury him—the women insisted that he ought to be buried before sundown. If not … well, he’d cross that road when he came to it.
He thought the coach wasn’t badly damaged; they might get it back upon the road again by noon … How far might it be to Bonnes? That was the next town with an inn. If it was too far, or the coach too badly hurt, or he couldn’t dispose decently of M. Peretz, they’d need to stay the night here again. He fingered his purse, but thought he had enough for another night and the hire of men; the Doctor had been generous.
He was beginning to wonder what was keeping Ian and the women. Though he kent women took more time to do anything than a man would, let alone getting dressed—well, they had stays and the like to fret with, after all … He sipped ale, contemplating a vision of Rebekah’s stays, and the very vivid images his mind had been conjuring ever since Ian’s description of his encounter with the lass. He could all but see her nipples through the thin fabric of her shift, smooth and round as pebbles …
Ian burst through the door, wild-eyed, his hair standing on end.
“They’re gone!”
Jamie choked on his ale.
“What? How?”
Ian understood what he meant, and was already heading for the bed.
“No one took them. There’s nay sign of a struggle, and their things are gone. The window’s open, and the shutters aren’t broken.”
Jamie was on his knees alongside Ian, thrusting first his hands and then his head and shoulders under the bed. There was a canvas-wrapped bundle there, and he was flooded with a momentary relief—which disappeared the instant Ian dragged it into the light. It made a noise, but not the gentle chime of golden bells. It rattled, and when Jamie seized the corner of the canvas and unrolled it, the contents were shown to be nought but sticks and stones, these hastily wrapped in a woman’s petticoat to give the bundle the appropriate bulk.
“Cramouille!” he said, this being the worst word he could think of on short notice. And very appropriate, too, if what he thought had happened really had. He turned on Ian.
“She drugged me and seduced you, and her bloody maid stole in here and took the thing whilst ye had your fat heid buried in her … er …”
“Charms,” Ian said succinctly, and flashed him a brief, evil grin. “Ye’re only jealous. Where d’ye think they’ve gone?”
It was the truth, and Jamie abandoned any further recriminations, rising and strapping on his belt, hastily arranging dirk, sword, and ax in the process.
“Not to Paris, would be my guess. Come on, we’ll ask the ostler.”
The ostler confessed himself at a loss; he’d been the worse for drink in the hay shed, he said, and if someone had taken two horses from the shelter, he hadn’t waked to see it.
“Aye, right,” said Jamie, impatient, and, grabbing the man’s shirtfront, lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the inn’s stone wall. The man’s head bounced once off the stones and he sagged in Jamie’s grip, still conscious but dazed. Jamie drew his dirk left-handed and pressed the edge of it against the man’s weathered throat.