Read Outlander Novella [01] The Space Between for Free Online Page B

they
were
angels and told her their names, she wouldn’t recognize them anyway, so perhaps that’s why they didn’t bother.
    Well, so. Did this particular voice mean that Charles Pépin was a villain? She squinted closely at him. He didn’t look it. He had a strong, good-looking face, and Michael seemed to like him—after all, Michael must be a fair judge of character, she thought, and him in the wine business.
    What was it Monsieur Charles Pépin oughtn’t to do, though? Did he have some wicked crime in mind? Or might he be bent on doing away with himself, like that poor wee gomerel on the boat? There was still a trace of slime on her hand, from the seaweed.
    She rubbed her hand inconspicuously against the skirt of her dress, frustrated. She hoped the voices would stop once she was in the convent. That was her nightly prayer. But if they didn’t, at least she might be able to tell someone there about them without fear of being packed off to a madhouse or stoned in the street. She’d have a confessor, she knew that much. Maybe he could help her discover what God had meant, landing her with a gift like this, and no explanation what she was to do with it.
    In the meantime, Monsieur Pépin would bear watching; she should maybe say something to Michael before she left.
Aye, what?
she thought, helpless.
    Still, she was glad to see that Michael grew less pale as they all carried on, vying to feed him tidbits, refill his glass, tell him bits of gossip. She was also pleased to find that she mostly understood what they were saying, as she relaxed. Jared—that would be Jared Fraser, Michael’s elderly cousin, who’d founded the wine company, and whose house this was—was still in Germany, they said, but was expected at any moment. He had sent a letter for Michael, too; where was it? No matter, it would turn up … and Madame Nesle de La Tourelle had had a fit, a veritable
fit
, at court last Wednesday, when she came face-to-face with Mademoiselle de Perpignan wearing a confection in the particular shade of pea green that was de La Tourelle’s alone, and God alone knew why, because she always looked like a cheese in it, and had slappedher own maid so hard for pointing this out that the poor girl flew across the rushes and cracked her head on one of the mirrored walls—and cracked the mirror, too, very bad luck that, but no one could agree whether the bad luck was de La Tourelle’s, the maid’s, or de Perpignan’s.
    Birds
, Joan thought dreamily, sipping her wine.
They sound just like cheerful wee birds in a tree, all chattering away together
.
    “The bad luck belongs to the seamstress who made the dress for de Perpignan,” Michael said, a faint smile touching his mouth. “Once de La Tourelle finds out who it is.” His eye lighted on Joan then, sitting there with a fork—an actual fork, and silver, too!—in her hand, her mouth half open in the effort of concentration required to follow the conversation.
    “Sister Joan—Sister Gregory, I mean—I’m that sorry, I was forgetting. If ye’ve had enough to eat, will ye have a bit of a wash, maybe, before I deliver ye to the convent?”
    He was already rising, reaching for a bell, and before she knew where she was, a maidservant had whisked her off upstairs, deftly undressed her, and, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the discarded garments, wrapped Joan in a robe of the most amazing green silk, light as air, and ushered her into a small stone room with a copper bath in it, then disappeared, saying something in which Joan caught the word
“eau.”
    She sat on the wooden stool provided, clutching the robe about her nakedness, head spinning with more than wine. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to put herself in the way of praying. God was everywhere, she assured herself, embarrassing as it was to contemplate him being with her in a bathroom in Paris. She shut her eyes harder and firmly began the rosary, starting with the Joyful Mysteries.
    She’d