No one wanted to talk now, anyway. Uncomfortable as I was, I could feel the quick tingle of arousal through my br**sts, and a tightening of my swollen belly as the mare once more answered the stallion's call.
Percherons are very large horses. A big one stands over five feet at the shoulder, and the rump of a well-fed mare is almost a yard across, a pale, dappled gray or shining black, adorned with a waterfall of black hair, thick as my arm at the root of it.
The stallion burst from his stall toward the tethered mare with a suddenness that made everyone fall back from the fence. Puffs of dust flew up in clouds as the huge hooves struck the packed dirt of the pen, and drops of saliva flew from his open mouth. The groom who had opened his stall door jumped aside, tiny and insignificant next to the magnicent fury let loose in the pen.
The mare curvetted and squealed in alarm, but then he was on her, and his teeth closed on the sturdy arch of her neck, forcing her head down into submission. The great swathe of her tail swept high, leaving her naked, exposed to his lust.
"Jésus," whispered Monsieur Prudhomme.
It took very little time, but it seemed a lot longer, watching the heaving of sweat-darkened flanks, and the play of light on swirling hair and the sheen of great muscles, tense and straining in the flexible agony of mating.
Everyone was very quiet as we left the shed. Finally the Duke laughed, nudged Jamie, and said, "You are accustomed to such sights, my lord Broch Tuarach?"
"Aye," Jamie answered. "I've seen it a good many times."
"Ah?" the Duke said. "And tell me, my lord, how does the sight make you feel, after so many times?"
One corner of Jamie's mouth twitched as he replied, but he remained otherwise straight-faced.
"Verra modest, Your Grace," he said.
"What a sight!" the Duchesse de Neve said. She broke a biscuit, dreamy-eyed, and munched it slowly. "So arousing, was it not?"
"What a prick, you mean," said Madame Prudhomme, rather coarsely. "I wish Philibert had one like that. As it is…" She cocked an eyebrow toward a plate of tiny sausages, each perhaps two inches long, and the ladies seated on the picnic cloth broke into giggles.
"A bit of chicken, please, Paul," said the Comtesse St. Germain to her pageboy. She was young, and the bawdy conversation of the older ladies was making her blush. I wondered just what sort of marriage she had with St. Germain; he never took her out in public, save on occasions like this, where the presence of the Bishop prevented his appearing with one of his mistresses.
"Bah," said Madame Montresor, one of the ladies-in-waiting, whose husband was a friend of the Bishop's. "Size isn't everything. What difference if it's the size of a stallion's, if he lasts no longer than one? Less than two minutes? I ask you, what good is that?" She held up a cornichon between two fingers and delicately licked the tiny pale-green pickle, the pink tip of her tongue pointed and dainty. "It isn't what they have in their breeches, I say; it's what they do with it."
Madame Prudhomme snorted. "Well, if you find one who knows how to do anything with it but poke it into the nearest hole, tell me. I would be interested to see what else can be done with a thing like that."
"At least you have one who's interested," broke in the Duchesse de Neve. She cast a glance of disgust at her husband, huddled with the other men near one of the paddocks, watching a harnessed mare being put through her paces.
"Not tonight, my dearest," she imitated the sonorous, nasal tones of her husband to perfection. "I am fatigued." She put a hand to her brow and rolled her eyes up. "The press of business is so wearing." Encouraged by the giggles, she went on with her imitation, now widening her eyes in horror and crossing her hands protectively over her lap. "What, again? Do you not know that to expend the male essence gratuitously is to court ill-health? Is it not enough that your demands have worn me to a nubbin, Mathilde? Do you wish me to have an attack?"
The ladies cackled and screeched with laughter, loud enough to attract the attention of the Bishop, who waved at us and smiled indulgently, provoking further gales of hilarity.
"Well, at least he is not expending all his male essence in brothels—or elsewhere," said Madame Prudhomme, with an eloquently pitying glance at the Comtesse St. Germain.
"No," said Mathilde gloomily. "He hoards it as though it were gold. You'd think there was no more to be had, the way he…oh, Your Grace! Will you not have a cup of wine?" She smiled charmingly up at the Duke, who had approached quietly from behind. He stood smiling at the ladies, one fair brow slightly arched. If he had heard the subject of our conversation, he gave no sign of it.
Seating himself beside me on the cloth, His Grace made casual, witty conversation with the ladies, his oddly high-pitched voice forming no contrast to theirs. While he seemed to pay close attention to the conversation, I noticed that his eyes strayed periodically to the small cluster of men who stood by the paddock fence. Jamie's kilt was bright even amid the gorgeous cut velvets and stiffened silk.
I had had some hesitation in meeting the Duke again. After all, our last visit had ended in the arrest of Jonathan Randall, upon my accusation of attempted rape. But the Duke had been all charming urbanity on this outing, with no mention of either of the Randall brothers. Neither had there been any public mention of the arrest; whatever the Duke's diplomatic activities, they seemed to rank highly enough to merit a Royal seal of silence.
On the whole, I welcomed the Duke's appearance at the picnic cloth. For one thing, his presence kept the ladies from asking me—as some bold souls did every so often, at parties—whether it was true about what Scotsmen wore beneath their kilts. Given the mood of the present party, I didn't think my customary reply of "Oh, the usual" would suffice.
"Your husband has a fine eye for horses," the Duke observed to me, freed for a moment when the Duchesse de Neve, on his other side, leaned across the cloth to talk to Madame Prudhomme. "He tells me that both his father and his uncle kept small but quite fine stables in the Highlands."
"Yes, that's true." I sipped my wine. "But you've visited Colum MacKenzie at Castle Leoch; surely you've seen his stable for yourself." I had in fact first met the Duke at Leoch the year before, though the meeting had been brief; he had left on a hunting expedition shortly before I was arrested for witchcraft. I thought surely he must have known about that, but if so, he gave no sign of it.
"Of course." The Duke's small, shrewd blue eyes darted left, then right, to see whether he was observed, then shifted into English. "At the time, your husband informed me that he did not reside upon his own estates, owing to an unfortunate—and mistaken—charge of murder laid against him by the English Crown. I wondered, my lady, whether that charge of outlawry still holds?"
"There's still a price on his head," I said bluntly.
The Duke's expression of polite interest didn't change. He reached absently for one of the small sausages on the platter.
"That is not an irremediable matter," he said quietly. "After my encounter with your husband at Leoch, I made some inquiries—oh, suitably discreet, I assure you, my dear lady. And I think that the matter might be arranged without undue difficulty, given a word in the right ear—from the right sources."
This was interesting. Jamie had first told the Duke of Sandringham about his outlawry at Colum MacKenzie's suggestion, in the hopes that the Duke might be persuaded to intervene in the case. As Jamie had not in fact committed the crime in question, there could be little evidence against him; it was quite possible that the Duke, a powerful voice among the nobles of England, could indeed arrange to have the charges dismissed.
"Why?" I said. "What do you want in return?"
The sketchy blond brows shot upward, and he smiled, showing small white even teeth.
"My word, you are direct, are you not? Might it not be only that I appreciate your husband's expertise and assistance in the selection of horses, and would like to see him restored to a place where that skill might once again be profitably exercised?"
"It might be, but it isn't," I said. I caught Madame Prudhomme's sharp eyes on us, and smiled pleasantly at him. "Why?"
He popped the sausage whole into his mouth and chewed it slowly, his bland round face reflecting nothing more than enjoyment of the day and the meal. At last he swallowed and patted his mouth delicately with one of the linen napkins.
"Well," he said, "as a matter of supposition only, you understand—"
I nodded, and he went on. "As a matter of supposition, then, perhaps we may suppose that your husband's recent friendship with—a certain personage recently arrived from Rome? Ah, I see you understand me. Yes. Let us suppose that that friendship has become a matter of some concern to certain parties who would prefer this personage to return peaceably to Rome—or alternatively, to settle in France, though Rome would be better—safer, you know?"
"I see." I took a sausage myself. They were richly spiced, and little bursts of garlic wafted up my nose at each bite. "And these parties take a sufficiently serious view of this friendship to offer a dismissal of the charges against my husband in return for its severance? Again, why? My husband is no one of great importance."