Drums of Autumn

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, and whirled, looking up into Bonnet’s face.

  “I’ve a ship waiting,” he said. “A little way upriver. Will you come with me, then?”

  She shook her head. She still held the gun, but didn’t need it now. He was no threat to her.

  Still he didn’t go, but lingered, staring down at her, a small frown between his brows. His face was gaunt, hollowed and shadowed by the distant fire. The surface of the river was aflame now, small tongues of fire flickering from the dark water as a slick of turpentine spread across it.

  “Is it true?” he asked abruptly. He asked no permission, but set his hands on her belly. It tightened at his touch, rounding in another of those breathless, painless squeezes, and a look of astonishment crossed his face.

  She jerked away from his touch, pulling her cloak together, and nodded, unable to speak.

  He seized her chin in his hand and peered into her face—assessing her truthfulness, perhaps? Then he let go, and stuck a finger into his mouth, groping in the recesses of his cheek.

  He took her hand, and put something wet and hard in her palm.

  “For his maintenance, then,” he said, and grinned at her. “Take care of him, sweetheart!”

  And then he was gone, bounding long-legged up the riverbank, silhouetted like a demon in the flickering light. The turpentine flowing into the water had caught fire, and roiling billows of scarlet light shot upward, floating pillars of fire that lit the riverbank bright as day.

  She half raised the musket, finger on the trigger. He was no more than twenty yards away, a perfect shot. Not by your hand. She lowered the gun, and let him go.

  The warehouse was fully ablaze by now; the heat from it beat against her cheeks and blew the hair back from her face.

  “I have a ship upriver,” he’d said. She squinted into the glare. The fire had nearly filled the river, a great floating slick that bloomed from bank to bank in a fiery garden of unfolding flames. Nothing could come through that blinding wall of light.

  Her other fist was still closed around the object he had given her. She opened her hand and looked down at the wet black diamond that gleamed in her palm, the fire glowing red and bloody in its facets.

  PART TWELVE

  Je T’Aime

  63

  FORGIVENESS

  River Run, May 1770

  That is the most stubborn woman I have ever met!” Brianna huffed into the room like a ship in full sail, and subsided onto the love seat by the bed, billowing.

  Lord John Grey opened one eye, bloodshot under his turban of bandages.

  “Your aunt?”

  “Who else?”

  “You have a looking glass in your room, do you not?” His mouth curved, and after a reluctant moment, so did hers.

  “It’s her bloody will. I told her I don’t want River Run, I can’t own slaves—but she won’t change it! She just smiles as though I were a six-year-old having a tantrum and says by the time it happens, I’ll be glad of it. Glad of it!” She snorted and flounced into a more comfortable position. “What am I going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” She turned the force of her displeasure on him. “How can I do nothing?”

  “To begin with, I should be extremely surprised if your aunt were not immortal, several of that particular race of Scots seem to be. However”—he waved a hand in dismissal—“should this prove untrue, and should she persist in her delusions that you would prove a good mistress to River Run—”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t?” she said, pride stung.

  “You cannot run a plantation of this size without slaves, and you decline to own them for reasons of conscience, or so I was given to understand. Though a less likely Quaker I have never seen.” He narrowed his open eye, indicating the immense tent of purple-striped muslin in which she was swathed. “Returning to the point at issue—or one of them—should you find yourself the unwilling recipient of a number of slaves, arrangements can undoubtedly be made to free them.”

  “Not in North Carolina. The Assembly—”

  “No, not in North Carolina,” he agreed patiently. “If the occasion should arise, and you find yourself in possession of slaves, you will simply sell them to me.”

  “But that’s—”

  “And I will take them to Virginia, where manumission is much less stringently controlled. Once they are freed, you will return my money. At this point, you will be totally destitute and lacking in property, which appears to be your chief desire, second only to preventing any possibility of personal happiness by ensuring that you cannot marry the man you love.”

  She pleated a handful of muslin between her fingers, frowning at the big sapphire that shone on her hand.

  “I promised I’d listen to him first.” She cast a narrow eye at Lord John. “Though I still say it’s emotional blackmail.”

  “So much more effective than any other kind,” he agreed. “Almost worth a cracked pate, to finally hold the whip hand on a Fraser.”

  She ignored this.

  “And I only said I’d listen. I still think when he knows everything, he’ll—he can’t.” She put a hand on her enormous belly. “You couldn’t, could you? Care—really care, I mean—for a child that wasn’t yours?”

  He moved higher on the pillow, grimacing slightly.

  “For the sake of its parent? I expect I could.” He opened both eyes and looked at her, smiling. “Indeed, I was under the impression that I had been doing so for some time.”

  She looked momentarily blank, before a tide of pink flowed up from the scooped neck of her bodice. She was charming when she blushed.

  “You mean me? Well, yes, but—I mean—I’m not a baby, and you’re not having to claim me as your own.” She gave him a direct blue look, at odds with the lingering pinkness of her cheeks. “And I did hope it wasn’t all for my father’s sake.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then reached out and squeezed her hand.

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said gruffly. He let go, and lay back with a small groan.

  “Are you feeling worse?” she asked anxiously. “Shall I get you something? Some tea? A poultice?”

  “No, it’s only the blasted headache,” he said. “The light makes it throb.” He shut his eyes again.

  “Tell me,” he said without opening them, “why is it that you seem so convinced that a man could not care for a child unless it were the fruit of his loins? As it is, my dear, I did not mean to refer to you when I said I had been doing such a thing myself. My son—my stepson—is in fact the son of my late wife’s sister. By tragic accident, both of his parents died within a day of each other, and my wife Isobel and her parents raised him from babyhood. I married Isobel when Willie was six or so. So you see, there is no blood between us at all—and yet were any man to impugn my affection for him, or to say he is not my son, I would call him out on the instant for it.”

  “I see,” she said, after a moment. “I didn’t know that.” He cracked an eyelid; she was still twisting her ring, looking pensive.

  “I think…” she began, and glanced at him. “I think I’m not so worried about Roger and the baby. If I’m honest—”

  “Heaven forfend you should be otherwise,” he murmured.

  “If I’m honest,” she went on, glowering at him, “I think I’m worried more about how it would be between us—between Roger and me.” She hesitated, then took the plunge.

  “I didn’t know Jamie Fraser was my father,” she said. “Not all the time I was growing up. After the Rising, my parents were separated; they each thought the other was dead. And so my mother married again. I thought Frank Randall was my father. I didn’t find out otherwise until after he died.”

  “Ah.” He viewed her with increased interest. “And was this Randall cruel to you?”

  “No! He was…wonderful.” Her voice broke slightly, and she cleared her throat, embarrassed. “No. He was the best father I could have had. It’s just that I thought m
y parents had a good marriage. They cared for each other, they respected each other, they—well, I thought everything was fine.”

  Lord John scratched at his bandages. The doctor had shaved his head, a condition which, in addition to affronting his vanity, itched abominably.

  “I fail to see the difficulty, as applied to your present situation.”

  She heaved a huge sigh.

  “Then my father died, and…we found out that Jamie Fraser was still alive. My mother went to join him, and then I came. And—it was different. I saw how they looked at each other. I never saw her look at Frank Randall that way—or him at her.”

  “Ah, yes.” A small gust of bleakness swept through him. He’d seen that look once or twice; the first time, he had wanted desperately to put a knife through Claire Randall’s heart.

  “Do you know how rare such a thing is?” he asked quietly. “That peculiar sort of mutual passion?” The one-sided kind was common enough.

  “Yes.” She had half turned, her arm along the back of the love seat, and was looking out through the French doors, over the burgeoning spread of the spring flower beds below.

  “The thing is—I think I had it,” she said, even more quietly. “For a little while. A very little while.” She turned her head and looked at him, with eyes that let him see clear through her.

  “If I’ve lost it—then I have. I can live with that—or without it. But I won’t live with an imitation of it. I couldn’t stand that.”

  * * *

  “It looks like you may get me by default.” Brianna put the breakfast tray over his lap and collapsed heavily into the love seat, making the joints groan.

  “Don’t riddle with a sick man,” he said, picking up a piece of toast. “What do you mean?”

  “Drusus just came racing into the cookhouse, saying he saw two riders coming down through Campbell’s fields. He said he was sure one of them was my father—he said it was a big man with red hair; God knows there aren’t that many like him.”

  “Not many, no.” He smiled briefly, his eyes traveling over her. “So, two riders?”

  “It must be Da and my mother. So they haven’t found Roger. Or they did, and he—didn’t want to come back.” She twisted the big sapphire on her finger. “Good thing I have a fallback, isn’t it?”

  Lord John blinked, and made haste to swallow his mouthful of toast.

  “If by that extraordinary metaphor, you mean that you intend to marry me after all, I assure you—”

  “No.” She gave him a halfhearted smile. “Just teasing.”

  “Oh, good.” He took a gulp of tea, closing his eyes to enjoy the fragrant steam. “Two riders. Did your cousin not go with them?”

  “Yes, he did,” she said slowly. “God, I hope nothing’s happened to Ian.”

  “It might be that they experienced any variety of disasters on the journey, which obliged your cousin and your mother to travel behind your father and Mr. MacKenzie. Or your cousin and MacKenzie behind your parents.” He waved a hand, indicating innumerable possibilities.

  “I guess you’re right.” She still looked peaked, and Lord John suspected she had cause. Comforting possibilities were all very well for the short term, but the colder probabilities were inclined to triumph over the longer course—and whoever accompanied Jamie Fraser, they would be arriving shortly, with the answers to all questions.

  He pushed back the unfinished breakfast and leaned back against his pillows.

  “Tell me—how far does your remorse extend for having nearly gotten me killed?”

  She colored and looked uncomfortable.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I ask you to do something you do not wish to, will your sense of guilt and obligation compel you to do it nonetheless?”

  “Oh, more blackmail. What is it?” she asked warily.

  “Forgive your father. Whatever has happened.”

  Pregnancy had made her complexion more delicate; all her emotions ebbed and flowed just under the surface of that apricot skin. A touch would bruise her.

  He reached out and laid a hand very gently along her cheek.

  “For your sake, as well as his,” he said.

  “I already have.” Her lashes covered her eyes as she looked down; her hands lay still in her lap, the blue fire of his sapphire glowing on her finger.

  The sound of hooves came clearly through the open French doors, rattling on the gravel drive.

  “Then I think you had better go down and tell him so, my dear.”

  She pursed her lips, and nodded. Without a word, she stood up and floated out the door, disappearing like a storm cloud over the horizon.

  * * *

  “When we heard that there were two riders coming, and one of them Jamie, we feared lest something had happened to your nephew, or MacKenzie. Somehow, it occurred to neither of us to think that anything had happened to you.”

  “I’m immortal,” she murmured, peering alternately into his eyes. “Didn’t you know?” The pressure of her thumbs lifted from his eyelids and he blinked, still feeling her touch.

  “You have a slight enlargement of one pupil, but very small. Grip my fingers and squeeze as hard as you can.” She held out her index fingers and he obliged, annoyed to feel the weakness of his grip.

  “Did you find MacKenzie?” He was further annoyed not to be able to control his curiosity.

  She gave him a quick, wary glance from those sherry-colored eyes, and returned her gaze to his hands.

  “Yes. He’ll be coming along. A little later.”

  “Will he?” She caught the tone of his question and hesitated, then looked at him directly.

  “How much do you know?”

  “Everything,” he said, and had the momentary satisfaction of seeing her startled. Then one side of her mouth curved up.

  “Everything?”

  “Enough,” he amended sardonically. “Enough to ask whether your statement of Mr. MacKenzie’s return is knowledge on your part or wishful thinking.”

  “Call it faith.” Without so much as a by-your-leave, she tugged loose the strings of his nightshirt and spread it open, exposing his chest. Rolling a sheet of parchment deftly into a tube, she applied one end of it to his breast, putting her ear to the other end.

  “I beg your pardon, madame!”

  “Hush, I can’t hear,” she said, making small shushing motions with one hand. She proceeded to move her tube to different parts of his chest, pausing now and then to thump experimentally or prod him in the liver.

  “Have you moved your bowels yet today?” she inquired, poking him familiarly in the abdomen.

  “I decline to say,” he said, pulling his nightshirt back together with dignity.

  She looked more outrageous even than usual. The woman must be forty at least, yet she showed no more sign of age than a fine webbing of lines at the corners of her eyes, and threadings of silver in that ridiculous mass of hair.

  She was thinner than he remembered, though it was hard to judge of her figure, dressed as she was in a barbaric leather shirt and trouserings. She’d plainly been in the sun and weather for some time; her face and hands had baked a delicate soft brown, that made the big golden eyes that much more startling when they turned full on one—which they now did.

  “Brianna says that Dr. Fentiman trephined your skull.”

  He shifted uncomfortably under the sheets.

  “I am told that he did. I am afraid I was not aware of it at the time.”

  Her mouth quirked slightly.

  “Just as well. Would you mind if I look at it? It’s only curiosity,” she went on, with unaccustomed delicacy. “Not medical necessity. It’s only that I’ve never seen a trepanation.”

  He closed his eyes, giving up.

  “Beyond the state of my bowels, I have no secrets from you, madame.”

  He tilted his head, indicating the location of the hole in his head, and felt her cool fingers slide under the bandage, lifting the gauze and allowing a breath of air to soot
he his hot head.

  “Brianna is with her father?” he asked, eyes still closed.

  “Yes.” Her voice was softer. “She told me—us—a little of what you’d done for her. Thank you.”

  The fingers left his skin and he opened his eyes.

  “It was my pleasure to be of service to her. Perforated skull and all.”

  She smiled faintly.

  “Jamie will be up to see you in a bit. He’s…talking to Brianna in the garden.”

  He felt a small stab of anxiety.

  “Are they—in accord?”

  “See for yourself.” She put an arm behind him, and with amazing strength for a woman with such fine bones, levered him upright. Just beyond the balustrade he could see the two figures at the bottom of the garden, heads close together. As he watched, they embraced, then broke apart, laughing at the awkwardness caused by Brianna’s shape.

  “I think we got here just in time,” Claire murmured, looking at her daughter with a practiced eye. “It isn’t going to be much longer.”

  “I confess to some gratitude at your prompt arrival,” he said, letting her ease him back onto the pillows and smooth his bedding. “I have barely survived the experience of being your daughter’s nursemaid; I fear serving as her midwife would finish me completely.”

  “Oh, I nearly forgot.” Claire reached into a nasty-looking leather pouch around her neck. “Brianna said to give this back to you—she won’t need it anymore.”

  He held out his hand, and a tiny spark of brilliant blue fell into his palm.

  “Jilted, by God!” he said, and grinned.

  64

  BOTTOM OF THE NINTH

  It’s like baseball,” I assured her. “Long stretches of boredom, punctuated by short periods of intense activity.”

  She laughed, then stopped abruptly, grimacing.

  “Ugh. Intense, yeah. Whew.” She smiled, a little lopsidedly. “At least at baseball games you get to drink beer and eat hot dogs in the boring parts.”

  Jamie, grasping at the only part of this conversation that made sense, leaned forward.

  “There’s a crock of small beer, cool in the pantry,” he said, peering anxiously at Brianna. “Will I fetch it in?”

  “No,” I said. “Not unless you want some; alcohol wouldn’t be good for the baby.”