Read Online Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon - Free Book Online

“Eek!”
    “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, patience exhausted.
    “Iphigenia Stokes,” she replied indignantly. “How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?” She backed up a step, swatting at his sword with a hand whose essential broadness and redness was not disguised by the black shammy mitt covering it.
    “And who are you ?” Grey swung toward the small clergyman, who had been tranquilly enjoying the show from a place of security behind a barrel.
    “Me?” The clerical gentleman looked surprised, but bowed obligingly. “The Reverend Mr. Cobb, sir, curate of St. Giles. I was asked to come and deliver the obsequies for the late Mr. O’Connell, on behalf of Miss Stokes, whom I understand to have had a personal friendship with the deceased.”
    “You what ? A frigging Protestant ?” Francine O’Connell Scanlon stood straight upright, trembling with renewed outrage. Mr. Cobb eyed her warily, but seemed to feel himself safe enough in his retreat, for he bowed politely to her.
    “Interment is to be in the churchyard at St. Giles, ma’am—if you and your husband would care to attend?”
    At this, the entire Irish contingent pressed forward, obviously intending to seize the casket and carry it off by main force. Nothing daunted, Miss Stokes’s escort likewise pushed eagerly to the fore, several of the gentlemen uprooting boards from a sagging fence to serve as makeshift clubs.
    Miss Stokes was encouraging her troops with bellows of “Catholic whore!” while Mr. Scanlon appeared to be of two minds in the matter, simultaneously dragging his wife out of the fray while shaking his free fist in the direction of the Protestants and shouting assorted Irish imprecations.
    With visions of bloody riot breaking out, Grey leapt atop the casket and swung his sword viciously from side to side, driving back all comers.
    “Tom!” he shouted. “Go for the constables!”
    Tom Byrd had not waited for instructions, but had apparently gone for reinforcements during the earlier part of the affray; the word “constables” was barely out of Grey’s mouth, when the sound of running feet came down the street. Constable Magruder and a pair of his men charged into the alley, clubs and pistols at the ready, with Tom Byrd bringing up the rear, panting.
    Seeing the arrival of armed authority, the warring funeral parties drew instantly apart, knives disappearing like magic and clubs dropping to the ground with insouciant casualness.
    “Are you in difficulties, Major?” Constable Magruder called, looking distinctly entertained as he glanced between the two competing widows and then up at Grey on his precarious roost.
    “No, sir . . . I thank you,” Grey replied politely, gasping for breath. He felt the cheap boards of the coffin creak in a sinister fashion as he shifted his weight, and sweat ran down the groove of his back. “If you would care to go on standing there for just a moment longer, though? . . .”
    He drew a deep breath and stepped gingerly down from his perch. He had rolled through a puddle; the seat of his breeches was wet, and he could feel the split where the sleeve seam beneath his right arm had given way. Goddamn it, now what?
    He was inclined toward the simplicity of a Solomonic decree that would award half of Tim O’Connell to each woman, and rejected this notion only because of the time it would take and the fact that his rapier was completely unsuited to the task of such division. If the widows gave him any further difficulties, though, he was sending Tom to fetch a butcher’s cleaver upon the instant, he swore it.
    Grey sighed, sheathed his sword, and rubbed the spot between his brows with an index finger.
    “Mrs. . . . Scanlon.”
    “Aye?” The swelling of her face had gone down somewhat; it was suspicion and fury now that narrowed those diamond eyes of hers.
    “When I called upon you two days ago, you rejected the gift presented by your husband’s comrades in arms, on the grounds