Free Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon Page A

he hadn’t enough breath even to think of speaking. His lips were still blue and his face paper-white, in spite of the temperature.
    The first cup of joint-fir tea helped briefly, the heat and moisture doing as much as the herb; joint fir did contain epinephrine and was the only really good treatment for asthma I had available—but there wasn’t enough of the active principle in a cup of the stuff after only ten minutes’ brewing. Even the momentary sense of relief steadied him, though. His hand turned, fingers linking with mine, and he squeezed back.
    A fighter. I knew one when I saw one and smiled involuntarily.
    “Start three more cups, please, Jenny?” If he drank them slowly—and he couldn’t do more than sip briefly between gasps—and continuously, we should have got a decent amount of stimulant into him by the end of the sixth, most-concentrated cup. “And, Mrs. Figg, if you would boil three handfuls of the joint fir and half that of spikenard in a pint of coffee for aquarter hour, then let it steep?” If he wasn’t going to die, I wanted a concentrated tincture of Ephedra easily on hand; this obviously wasn’t his first attack, and—if it wasn’t his last—there’d be another sometime. And quite possibly sometime soon.
    The back of my mind had been ticking through diagnostic possibilities, and now that I was fairly sure he was going to survive the moment, I could spare time to think about them consciously.
    Sweat was pouring down the fine-cut bones of his face; I’d got his coat, waistcoat, and leather stock off first thing, and his shirtfront was pasted to his chest, his breeches black-wet in the creases of his groin. No wonder, though, between the heat of the day, his exertions, and the hot tea. The blue tinge was fading from his lips, and there was no sign of edema in face or hands . . . no distention of the blood vessels in his neck, in spite of his effort.
    I could hear the crackling rales in his lungs easily without a stethoscope, but he showed no thoracic enlargement; his torso was as trim as John’s, a bit narrower through the chest. Probably not a chronic obstructive pulmonary condition, then . . . and I didn’t think he had congestive heart failure. His color when I met him had been good, and his pulse was presently thumping against my fingers very steadily, fast, but no flutters, no arrhythmia . . .
    I became aware of Germain hovering by my elbow, staring interestedly at the duke, who was now sufficiently himself as to lift an eyebrow in the boy’s direction, though still unable to speak.
    “Mmm?” I said, before resuming my now-automatic counting of breaths.
    “I’m only thinking, Grand-mère , as how himself there”—Germain nodded at Pardloe—“might be missed. Had I maybe best carry a message to someone, so as they aren’t sending out soldiers after him? The chairmen will talk, will they not?”
    “Ah.” That was a thought, all right. General Clinton, for one, certainly knew that Pardloe was in my company when last seen. I had no idea with whom Pardloe might be traveling or whether he was in command of his regiment. If he was , people would be looking for him right now; an officer couldn’t be gone from his place for long without someone noticing.
    And Germain—an observant lad, if ever there was one—was right about the chairmen. Their numbers meant they were registered with the central chairmen’s agency in Philadelphia; it would be the work of a moment for the general’s staff to locate numbers Thirty-Nine and Forty and find out where they’d delivered the Duke of Pardloe.
    Jenny, who had been tending the array of teacups, stepped in now with the next and knelt by Pardloe, nodding to me that she would see to his breathing while I talked to Germain.
    “He told the chairmen to bring me to the King’s Arms,” I said to Germain, taking him out onto the porch, where we could confer unheard. “And I met him at General Clinton’s office in the—”
    “I ken where