By My Sword Alone by David Black (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

incumbent of the throne of France had all but bankrupted this country, even before the war that ended with the Treaty of Utrecht back in the year thirteen. Which was why Mr Law, already an established banker here, had proposed certain financial innovations to restore the nation’s fortunes. They worked. Only too well. He created a boom, which greed soon transformed into bust. And Mr Law’s name has suffered in consequence. So you see, I am no position to beg favours here. I merely stand guard over his personal monies that are not transportable … and to help Mr Dillon, who is the representative of our rightful king, James, to disburse certain pensions to those of the king’s followers still here who have fallen on hard times. These are not large sums however, I assure you. But there will be sufficient crumbs from them to keep your body and soul together until we find some way to secure you better prospects. So, Master Lindsay, while the path ahead will not be easy for you, do not wholly despair. There are friends at hand, who will at least do what is possible.’

If his aim was to get out of the country safely, be it to Spain, or, as Mr Dillon later suggested, to join the king’s court at Rome, then an ally of greater influence must be found. For, Crawford assured him, ‘It will not be long before my Lord Stair will mark your presence, if he hasn’t already … then you will be watched, and all hope of a quick, safe, clandestine passage out of the country will be gone.’

And then, Ségolène had swept him from the shadows, and into the safety of plain sight.

*

She heard his horse’s hooves on the cobbles of her courtyard, and the day’s irritations immediately set in. He wouldn’t just dismount, and come immediately to see her; he never did. What was difficult about just handing that dizzy filly of his over to a groom like everybody else did? No. He had to go and stable her himself, strip off the tack, do the brush down, whisper to it and stick an apple in its stupid mouth. Sophie, he called it. Honestly! Why would you give a girl’s name to a horse? Why couldn’t he call the damn thing something sensible, like ‘Lightning’ or ‘Prancer’ or ‘Turnip’?

The comtesse was in her morning room with friends, sipping sherbets, chattering. She rationed these audiences to the other ladies of her set to keep them sweet. The little gatherings also had the other twin advantages of reminding her regularly of her own superiority, and serving as a low level intelligence trawl on all the doings going around her. To have James Lindsay come barging in on them, demanding her attention, would have sent just the right message, and provoked just the right twinges of jealousy.

But no; he couldn’t even play the rough soldier when she wanted him to. She knew he’d be off to have a bath instead.

And he couldn’t even do that like a gentleman, having a servant undress him while scullery maids boiled the water and carried it up to the tub in his rooms. No. He’d be down there in the sculleries; wandering in, saying hello, heaving the full jugs onto the range because they were, ‘too heavy for slips of lassies like you!’ Talking to the servants like they were people. She’d tried explaining, but it was like talking to a gatepost.

But the real fury was with herself; that she was even thinking these thoughts; that she allowed such clutter to enter her head. That she even cared.

James indeed carried up the water for his own bath. He would have got one of the ostlers, but they were busy. And he undressed himself; having some poker-faced, powdered-up dandy of a footman making free of his person was not something he would tolerate. He’d made that plain to Ségolène from the start.

He sank into the piping hot water, and he thought of all his nights on the hard ground to extract the maximum pleasure. He’d done that every time he’d got into a bath since his escape from Glenshiel. Now he had a more extensive repertoire to compare; the hard lying on the deck of the Hilde, the nights in that cell in Lille. And he reflected on how much was to be said for soft living – the good and the bad. Heady aromas might have assisted in the emphasising the contrast, but he drew the line at scented essences in his bath water. Just one more of the little things he had found it hard to adapt to in life as a gentleman here in Paris.

Take the servants, for example. He had grown up in a clan tradition. The true clans were all but gone now, the extended families where the chief was a father in the literal sense. Now, a chief merely presided over the folk who lived upon his land and paid him rents. But the notion continued. And a chief was still supposed to serve his folk as well as rule them, supposed to regard his people as a responsibility, not a chattel. Where James had come from that meant there was natural society between you and your folk. Unlike here, in this place of entitlement and licence.

He knew it made Ségolène angry, his talking to the servants, but it wasn’t rebellion on James’ part. It was that he didn’t know how not to.

At first, it hadn’t mattered to him. At first, there had been the utter, all-consuming immediacy of intimacy with a woman. He still smiled when he remembered Ségolène’s exquisite squeal of delight when she realised she was to be the first to pluck him.

And there he was, back thinking about Ségolène again.

Having been denied the closeness of women since the death of his mother, whom he really did not remember in any