The Fiery Cross, Page 73

  her story, but needed none to finish it. Her hands folded into fists, pressed hard against the white linen of her shift, as though to stanch the bleeding of a desecrated womb.

  "It had gone dark by then," she said, and her voice was remote, detached. "I saw the glow of fires against the sky to the north."

  Cumberland's troops were spreading outward, burning and pillaging. They reached Rovo, where Clementina and Seonag were with their families, and set the manor house afire. Jocasta never learned whether they had died in the fire, or later, starved and freezing in the cold Highland spring.

  "So Hector saved his fife-and mine, for what it was worth then," she said, still detached. "And of course, he saved the gold." Her fingers sought the ring again, and turned it slowly round upon its rod, so the stones caught the lampfight, glimmering.

  "Indeed," Jamie murmured. His eyes were fixed on the blind face, watching her intently. It struck me suddenly as unfair that he should watch her so, almost judging, when she could not look back, or even know how he looked at her. I touched him, and he glanced aside at me, then took my hand, squeezing it hard.

  Jocasta put aside the rings and rose, restless now that the worst part of the story was told. She moved toward the window seat, knelt there, and brushed back the curtains. It was hard to believe her blind, seeing her move with such purposc-and yet this was her room, her place, and every item in it was scrupulously placed so that she could find her way. She pressed her hands against the icy glass and the night outside, and a white fog of condensation flared around her fingers like cold flames.

  "Hector bought this place with the gold we brought," she said. "The land, the mill, the slaves. To do him credit"-her tone suggested that she was not inclined to do any such thing-"the worth of it now is due in great part to his own work. But it was the gold that bought it, to begin with."

  "What of his oath?" Jamie asked softly.

  "What of it?" she said, and uttered a short laugh. "Hector was a practical man. The Stuarts were finished; what need had they of gold, in Italy?" "Practical," I repeated, surprising myself; I hadn't meant to speak, but I

  thought I had heard something odd in the way she spoke the word.

  Evidently, I had. She turned around to face us, turning toward my voice. She was smiling, but a chill ran down my backbone at the sight of it.

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  "Aye, practical," she said, nodding. "My daughters were dead; he saw no reason to waste tears upon them. He never spoke of them, and would not let me speak, either. He had been a man of worth once, he would be, again-not so easy here, had anyone known." She breathed out, a heavy sound of stifled anger. "I daresay there are none in this land who even ken I was once a mother."

  "You still are," said Brianna softly. "That much I know." She glanced at me, and her blue eyes met mine, dark with understanding. I felt the sting of tears behind the smile I gave her back. Yes, that much she knew, as did I.

  So did Jocasta; the fines of her face relaxed for a moment, fiiry and remembered despair displaced for a moment by longing. She walked slowly to where Brianna sat on her stool, and laid her free hand on Bree's head. It rested there for a moment, then slid down, the long, sensitive fingers probing Brianna's strong cheekbones, her wide lips and long, straight nose, tracing the small track of the wetness down her cheek.

  "Aye, a leannan," she said softly. "Ye ken what I mean. And ye ken now, why I would leave this place to you-or to your blood?"

  Jamie coughed, breaking in before Bree could answer.

  "Aye," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "So that is what ye told the Irishman tonight? Not all the story, to be sure-but that ye have no gold here?" Jocasta's hands dropped from Brianna's face and she turned to face Jamie. "Aye, I told them. Him. Told him that for all I kent, those chests were still

  buried in the wood in Scotland; he was welcome, I said, to go and dig there, and it suited him." One corner of her mouth curled up in a bitter smile.

  "He wasna inclined to take your word for it?" She shook her head, lips pressed together.

  "He wasna a gentleman," she said again. "I canna say how it might have fallen out-for I sat near the bed, and I keep a wee knife beneath my pillowi I wouldna have suffered him to lay hands on me unscathed. Before I could reach for it, though, I heard footsteps in the dressing room."

  She waved a hand toward the door near the fireplace; her dressing room lay beyond, joining her bedroom to another-the room that had once been Hector Cameron's, and was now presumably Duncan's.

  The intruders had heard the footsteps, too; the Irishman hissed something to his friend, then moved away from Jocasta, toward the hearth. The other fellow had come close then, and seized her from behind, a hand across her mouth.

  "All I could tell ye from that was that the fellow wore a cap pulled low over his head, and he stank of liquor, as though he'd poured it over himself instead of drinking it." She made a brief grimace of distaste.

  The door had opened, Duncan had come in, and the Irishman had apparently leapt from behind the open door and clubbed him over the head.

  "I dinna recall a thing," Duncan said ruefully. "I came to bid Miss-that is, my wife-good night. I recall settin' my hand upon the knob of the door, and next thing, I was lyin' here wi' my head split open." He touched the lump tenderly, then looked at Jocasta with an anxious concern.

  "You are all fight, yourself, mo cbridbe? The bastards didna offer ye ill use?" He stretched out a hand to her, then, realizing that she could not see him, tried

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  to sit up. He collapsed with a stifled groan, and she stood up at the sound, coming hurriedly to the bedside.

  "of course I am all right," she said, crossly, groping until she found his hand. "Save for the distress of thinking myself about to be a widow for the fourth time." She let out a sigh of exasperation and sat down beside him, smoothing back a swath of loosened hair from her face.

  "I couldna tell what had happened; I only heard the thud, and a dreadful groan as ye fell. Then the Irishman came back toward me, and the creature holding me let go."

  The Irishman had informed her pleasantly that he did not believe a word of her claim that there was no gold at River Run. He was convinced that the gold was here, and while he would not dream of offering harm to a lady, the same inhibitions did not obtain with respect to her husband.

  "if I didna tell him where it was, he said, he and his companion would set in to cut wee bits off Duncan, beginning with his toes, and advancing to his ballocks," Jocasta said bluntly. Duncan hadn't much blood in his face to begin with, but what there was drained away at this. Jamie glanced at Duncan, then away, clearing his throat.

  "Ye were convinced he meant it, I suppose." of my hand to show me "He'd a good sharp knife; he ran it across the palm

  that he was in earnest." She opened her free hand; sure enough, a hair-thin red line ran across the heel of it.

  She shrugged.

  "Well, I supposed I couldna have that. So I made pretense of reluctance, until the Irishman went to pick up one of Duncan's feet-then I wept and carried on, in hopes that someone would hear, but the damned servants had gone to bed, and the guests were too busy drinking my whisky and fornicating in the grounds and stables to hear." rimson. Jamie saw it and At this last remark, Bree's face flamed a sudden c

  coughed, avoiding my eye.

  ,Aye. So then-" ed under the floor of the "So then I told them at last that the gold was buri

  shed outside the kitchen garden." The look of satisfaction returned briefly to her face. "I thought they would come upon the body and Would put them off their stride for a bit. By the time they'd nerved themselves to dig, I hoped I should have found some way to escape or to give the alarm-and so I did."

  They had bound and gagged her hastily and gone to the shed, threatening to return and resume operations where they had left off, should they discover she had been lying to them. They had made no great job of the gag, though, and she had soon succeeded in tearing i
t away and kicking out a windowpane, through which to shout for help.

  "So I am thinking that when they opened the door to the shed and saw the corpse, they must have dropped their lantern in shock, and so set fire to the place." She nodded in grim satisfaction. "A small price. I could but wish I thought they had gone up with it!"

  "Ye dinna suppose they set the fire on purpose?" Duncan asked. He was looking a little better, though still gray and ill. "To cover any marks of digging?" Jocasta shrugged, dismissing the notion.

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  "To what end? There was nothing to be found there, and they dug themselves to China." She was beginning to relax a little, a normal color returning to her face, though her broad shoulders had begun to droop with exhaustion.

  Silence fell among us, and I became aware that there had been rising noises downstairs for some minutes now; male voices and footsteps. The various search parties had returned, but it was apparent from the tired, disgruntled tones that no suspects had been apprehended.

  The candle on the table had burned very low by now; the flame stretched high near my elbow as the wick reached its last inch. One of the candles on the mantelpiece guttered and went out in a fragrant wisp of beeswax smoke. Jamie glanced automatically at the window; it was still dark outside, but the character of the night had changed, as it does soon before dawn.

  The curtains moved silently, a chilly, restless air breathing through the room. Another candle went out. A second sleepless night was telling on me; I felt cold all over, numb and disembodied, and the various horrors I had seen and heard had begun to fade into unreality in my mind, with nothing save a lingering strong scent of burning to bearAitness to them.

  There seemed no more to say or to do. Ulysses came back, sliding discreetly into the room with a fresh candlestick and a tray holding a bottle of brandy and several glasses. Major MacDonald reappeared briefly to report that indeed, they had found no sign of the miscreants. I checked both Duncan and Jocasta briefly, and then left Bree and Ulysses to put them to bed.

  Jamie and I made our way downstairs in silence. At the bottom of the staircase, I turned to him. He was white with fatigue, his features drawn and set as though he had been carved of marble, his hair and beard stubble dark in the shadowed light.

  "They'll come back, won't they?" I said quietly.

  He nodded, and taking my elbow, led me toward the kitchen stair. J*

  TME-A-TtTE, WITH CRUMBCAKE

  0 EARLY IN THE YEAR, the kitchen in the cellar of the house was Still in use, with the summer cookhouse reserved for messier or maloclorous preparations. Roused by the commotion, all the slaves were up and

  working, though a few looked as though they would collapse into the nearest corner and go back to sleep at the first opportunity. The chief cook, though, was wide-awake, and it was clear that no one was sleeping on ber watch.

  The kitchen was warm and welcoming, the windows still dark, walls red with hearth-glow, and the air suffused with the comforting scents of broth, hot

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  bread, and coffee. I thought this would be an excellent place to sit down and recuperate for a bit before toddling off to bed, but evidently Jamie had other ideas.

  . He paused in conversation with the cook, just long enough for politeness, acquiring in the process not only an entire fresh crumb cake, dusted with cirma'Inon and soaked with melted butter, but a large jug of freshly brewed coffee. Then he made his farewells, scooped me up off the stool onto which I had thankfully subsided, and we were off again, into the cool wind of the dying night.

  i I had a very odd sense of d6j vu as he turned down the brick path toward the stables. The light was just the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, with the same pinprick stars just fading from the same blue-gray sky. The same faint breath of spring passed by, and my skin shivered in memory.

  - But we were walking sedately side by side, not flying-and overlaid on my memories of the day before were the unsettling odors of blood and burning. With each step I felt as though I were about to reach out to push through the swinging doors of a hospital; that the hum of fluorescent light and the subdued reek of medicines and floor polish were about to engulf me.

  "Lack of steep," I murmured to myself.

  "Time enough for sleep later, Sassenach," Jamie replied. He shook himself briefly, throwing off tiredness as a dog shakes off water. "There's a thing or two to be done, first." He shifted the paper-wrapped cake, though, and took hold of my elbow with his free hand, in case I was about to fall facefirst into the cabbage bed from fatigue.

  I I wasn't. I had meant only that it was the lack of sleep that was giving me the mildly hallucinatory feeling of being back in a hospital. For years, as an intern, resident, and mother, I had worked through long sleepless shifts, learning to fiinction-and function well-despite complete exhaustion,

  It was that same feeling that was stealing over me now, as I passed through simple sleepiness and out again, into a state of artificially heightened alertness.

  I felt cold and shrunken, as though I inhabited only the innermost core of my body, insulated from the world around me by a thick layer of inert flesh. At the same time, every tiny detail of my surroundings seemed unnaturally vivid, from the delicious fragrance of the food Jamie carried and the rustle of his coat skirts, to the sound of someone singing in the distant slave quarters and the spikes of sprouting corn in the vegetable beds beside the path.

  The sense of lucid detachment stayed with me, even as we followed the turn of the path toward the stables. A thing to be done, he'd said. I supposed that he did not mean he intended to repeat yesterday's performance. If he proposed a more sedate form of orgy, though, involving cake and coffee, it seemed peculiar to hold it in the stable, rather than the parlor.

  The side door was unbarred; he pushed it open, and the warm scents of hay and sleeping animals rushed out.

  "Who is it?" said a soft, deep voice from the shadows inside. Roger. Of course; he hadn't been among the mob in Jocasta's room.

  "Fraser," Jamie replied, equally softly, and drew me inside, closing the door behind us.

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  Roger stood silhouetted against the dim glow of a lantern, near the end of the row of loose-boxes. He was wrapped in a cloak, and the fight shone in a reddish nimbus round his dark hair as he turned toward us.

  "How is it, a Smebraich?" Jamie handed him the jug of coffee. Roger's cloak fell back as he reached for it, and I saw him thrust a pistol into the waist of his breeches with his other hand. Without comment, he pulled the cork and lifted the jug to his mouth, lowering it several moments later with an expression of sheer bliss. He sighed, breath steaming.

  "Oh, God," he said fervently. "That's the best thing I've tasted in months." "Not quite," Sounding faintly amused, Jan-tie took the jug back and handed him the wrapped crumb cake. "How is he, then?"

  "Noisy at first, but he's been quiet for a bit. I think he may be asleep." Already tearing at the butter-soaked wrappings, Roger nodded toward the loose- box. Jamie took down the lantern from its hook and held it high over the barred gate. Peering under his arm, I could see a huddled shape, half-buried in the straw at the back of the box.

  "Mr. Wylie?" Jamie called, still softly. "Are ye asleep, sit?" The shape stirred, with a rustling of hay.

  "I am not, sit," came the reply, in tones of cold bitterness. The shape began slowly to unfold itself, and Phillip Wylie rose to his feet, shaking straw from his clothes.

  I had certainly seen him appear to better advantage. Several buttons were missing from his coat, one shoulder seam was split, and both knees of his breeches hung loose, the buckles burst and his stockings drooping in unseemly fashion about his shins. Someone had evidently hit him in the nose; a trickle of blood had dried on his upper lip, and there was a splotch of crusty brown on the embroidered silk of his waistcoat.

  Despite the deficiencies of his wardrobe, his manner was unimpaired, bfing one of icy outrage.

  "Yo
u will answer for this, Fraser, by God you will!

  "Aye, I will," Jamie said, unperturbed. "At your pleasure, sir. But not before I've had answers from yourself, Mr. Wylie." He unlatched the gate of the loosebox and swung it open. "Come out. 51

  Wylie hesitated, unwilling either to remain in the box, or to come out of it at Jamie's command. I saw his nostrils twitch, though; evidently he had caught scent of the coffee. That seemed to decide him, and he came out of the box, head held high. He brushed within a foot of me, but kept his eyes straight ahead, affecting not to see me.

  Roger had collected two stools and an upturned bucket. I took the latter and shoved it modestly into the shadows, leaving Jamie and Wylie to seat themselves within easy strangling distance of each other. Roger himself retired discreetly into the shadows beside me with the crumb cake, looking interested.

  Wylie accepted the jug of coffee stiffly, but a few deep swallows seemed to restore his composure to a noticeable degree. He lowered it at last and breathed audibly, his features a little more relaxed.

  "I thank you, sir." He handed the jug back to Jamie with a small bow and sat bolt upright on his stool, tenderly adjusting his wig, which had survived the

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  evening's adventures, but was much the worse for its experiences. "Now, then. May I inquire the reason for this ... this ... unspeakable behavior?"

  "Ye may, sit," Jamie replied, drawing himself up straight in turn. "I wish to discover the nature of your associations with a certain Stephen Bonnet, and your knowledge of his present whereabouts."

  Wylie's face went almost comically blank. "Who?"

  "Stephen Bonnet."

  Wylie began to turn toward me, to ask for clarification, then recalled that he was not acknowledging my presence. He glowered at Jamie, dark brows drawn down.

  "I have no acquaintance with any gentleman of that name, Mr. Fraser, and thus no knowledge of his movements-though if I did, I greatly doubt that I should feel myself obliged to inform you of them."

  "No?" Jamie took a thoughtfiil sip of coffee, then handed the jug to me. "What of the obligations of a guest toward his host, Mr. Wylie?"

  The dark brows rose in astonishment. "What do you mean, sir?"

  "I take it that you are not aware, sit, that Mrs. Innes and her husband were assaulted last evening, and an attempt at robbery made upon them?"

  Wylie's mouth fell open. Either he was a very good actor, or his surprise was genuine. Given my acquaintance with the young man to date, I thought he was no kind of actor,

  "I was not. Who-" A thought struck him, and bewilderment vanished in renewed outrage. His eyes bulged slightly. "You think that I was concerned in this-this-"

  "Dastardly enterprise?" Roger suggested. He seemed to be enjoying himself, relieved of the boredom of guard duty. "Aye, I expect we do. A bit of crumb cake with your coffee, sir?" He held out a chunk of cake; Wylie stared at it for a moment, then leaped to his feet, striking the cake out of Roger's hand.

  "You blackguard!" He rounded on Jamie, fists clenched. "You dare to imply that I am a thief?"

  Jamie rocked back a little on his stool, chin lifted.

  "Aye, I do," he said coolly. "Ye tried to steal my wife from under my nosewhy should ye scruple at my aunt's goods?"

  Wylie's face flushed a deep and ugly crimson. Had it not been a wig, his hair would have stood on end.

  "You ... absolute ... cunt!" he breathed. Then he launched himself at Jamie. Both of them went over with a crash, in a flurry of arms and legs.

  I leaped back, clasping the coffee jug to my bosom. Roger lunged toward the fray, but I snatched at him, catching his cloak to hold him back.

  Jamie had the advantage of size and skill, but Wylie was by no means a novice in the art of fisticuffs, and was in addition propelled by a berserk rage. Given a few moments more, Jamie would have him hammered into submission, but I was not inclined to wait.

  Monstrously irritated with the pair of them, I stepped forward and upended the coffee jug. It wasn't boiling, but hot enough. There were simultaneous yelps of surprise, and the two men rolled apart, scrambling and shaking

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  themselves. I thought I heard Roger laugh behind, me, but when I whirled on him, he had assumed a look of straight-faced interest. He raised his eyebrows at me, and crammed another chunk of cake into his mouth.

  I turned back to find Jamie already on his feet, and Wylie rising from his knees, both soaked with coffee, and both with expressions implying that they intended to resume proceedings at the point where I had interrupted them. I pushed my way between them and stamped my foot.

  "I have bloody well had enough of this!"

  "I haven't!" Wylie said hotly. "He has impugned my honor, and I demand-" "Oh, to hell with your beastly honor-and yours, too!" I snarled, glaring from him to Jamie. Jamie, who had evidently been going to say something equally inflammatory, contented himself instead with a resounding snort.

  I kicked one of the fallen stools, and pointed at it, still glaring at Jamie. "Sit!"

  Plucking the soaked fabric of his shirt away from his chest, he righted the stool and sat on it, with immense dignity.

  Wylie was less inclined to pay attention to me, and was carrying on with further remarks about his honor. I kicked him in the shin. This time, I was wearing stout boots. He yelped and hopped on one foot, holding his affronted leg.