Диана Гэблдон - A Breath of Snow and Ashes 6

Brianna had sat down with Mandy and nursed her, eyes closed, refusing to speak. After a time, her face eased from its white, strained lines, and she burped the baby and laid her sleeping in her basket. Then she came to bed, and made love to him with a silent fierceness that surprised him. But not as much as she surprised him now.

“And there’s one other thing,” she said, sober and slightly sad. “I’m the only person in the world for whom this isn’t murder.”

With that, she turned and walked away fast, toward the inn where Mandy waited to be fed. Out on the mudflats, he could still hear the sound of excited voices, raucous as gulls.

AT TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon, Roger helped his wife into a small rowboat, tied to the quay near the row of warehouses. The tide had been coming in all day; the water was more than five feet deep. Out in the midst of the shining gray stood the cluster of mooring posts—and the small dark head of the pirate.

Brianna was remote as a pagan statue, her face expressionless. She lifted her skirts to step into the boat, and sat down, the weight in her pocket clunking against the wooden slat as she did so.

Roger took up the oars and rowed, heading toward the posts. They would arouse no particular interest; boats had been going out ever since noon, carrying sightseers who wished to look upon the condemned man’s face, shout taunts, or clip a strand of his hair for a souvenir.

He couldn’t see where he was going; Brianna directed him left or right with a silent tilt of her head. She could see; she sat straight and tall, her right hand hidden in her skirt.

Then she lifted her left hand suddenly, and Roger lay on the oars, digging with one to slew the tiny craft around.

Bonnet’s lips were cracked, his face chapped and crusted with salt, his lids so reddened that he could barely open his eyes. But his head lifted as they drew near, and Roger saw a man ravished, helpless and dreading a coming embrace—so much that he half welcomes its seductive touch, yielding his flesh to cold fingers and the overwhelming kiss that steals his breath.

“Ye’ve left it late enough, darlin’,” he said to Brianna, and the cracked lips parted in a grin that split them and left blood on his teeth. “I knew ye’d come, though.”

Roger paddled with one oar, working the boat close, then closer. He was looking over his shoulder when Brianna drew the gilt-handled pistol from her pocket, and put the barrel to Stephen Bonnet’s ear.

“Go with God, Stephen,” she said clearly, in Gaelic, and pulled the trigger. Then she dropped the gun into the water and turned round to face her husband.

“Take us home,” she said.

118

REGRET

LORD JOHN STEPPED INTO HIS ROOM at the inn, and was surprised—astonished, in fact—to discover that he had a visitor.

“John.” Jamie Fraser turned from the window, and gave him a small smile.

“Jamie.” He returned it, trying to control the sudden sense of elation he felt. He had used Jamie Fraser’s Christian name perhaps three times in the last twenty-five years; the intimacy of it was exhilarating, but he mustn’t let it show.

“Will I order us refreshment?” he asked politely. Jamie had not moved from the window; he glanced out, then back at John and shook his head, still smiling faintly.

“I thank ye, no. We are enemies, are we not?”

“We find ourselves regrettably upon opposing sides of what I trust will be a short-lived conflict,” Lord John corrected.

Fraser looked down at him, with an odd, regretful sort of expression.

“Not short,” he said. “But regrettable, aye.”

“Indeed.” Lord John cleared his throat, and moved to the window, careful not to brush against his visitor. He looked out, and saw the likely reason for Fraser’s visit.

“Ah,” he said, seeing Brianna Fraser MacKenzie on the wooden sidewalk below. “Oh!” he said, in a different tone. For William Clarence Henry George Ransom, ninth Earl of Ellesmere, had just come out of the inn and bowed to her.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said, apprehension making his scalp prickle. “Will she tell him?”

Fraser shook his head, his eyes on the two young people below.

“She will not,” he said quietly. “She gave me her word.”

Relief coursed through his veins like water.

“Thank you,” he said. Fraser shrugged slightly, dismissing it. It was, after all, what he desired, as well—or so Lord John assumed.

The two of them were talking together—William said something and Brianna laughed, throwing back her hair. Jamie watched in fascination. Dear God, they were alike! The small tricks of expression, of posture, of gesture . . . It must be apparent to the most casual observer. In fact, he saw a couple pass them and the woman smile, pleased at the sight of the handsome matched pair.

“She will not tell him,” Lord John repeated, somewhat dismayed by the sight. “But she displays herself to him. Will he not—but no. I don’t suppose he will.”

“I hope not,” Jamie said, eyes still fixed on them. “But if he does—he still will not know. And she insisted she must see him once more—that was the price of her silence.”

John nodded, silent. Brianna’s husband was coming now, their little boy held by one hand, his hair as vivid as his mother’s in the bright summer sun. He held a baby in the crook of his arm—Brianna took it from him, turning back the blanket to display the child to William, who inspected it with every indication of politeness.

He realized suddenly that every fragment of Fraser’s being was focused on the scene outside. Of course; he had not seen Willie since the boy was twelve. And to see the two together—his daughter and the son he could never speak to or acknowledge. He would have touched Fraser, put a hand on his arm in sympathy, but knowing the probable effect of his touch, forbore to do it.

“I have come,” Fraser said suddenly, “to ask a favor of you.”

“I am your servant, sir,” Lord John said, terribly pleased, but taking refuge in formality.

“Not for myself,” Fraser said with a glance at him. “For Brianna.”

“My pleasure will be the greater,” John assured him. “I am exceeding fond of your daughter, her temperamental resemblances to her sire notwithstanding.”

The corner of Fraser’s mouth lifted, and he returned his gaze to the scene below.

“Indeed,” he said. “Well, then. I canna tell ye why I require this—but I need a jewel.”

“A jewel?” Lord John’s voice sounded blank, even to his own ears. “What sort of jewel?”

“Any sort.” Fraser shrugged, impatient. “It doesna matter—so long as it should be some precious gem. I once gave ye such a stone—” His mouth twitched at that; he had handed over the stone, a sapphire, under duress, as a prisoner of the Crown. “Though I dinna suppose ye’d have that by ye, still.”

In point of fact, he did. That particular sapphire had traveled with him for the last twenty-five years, and was at this moment in the pocket of his waistcoat.

He glanced at his left hand, which bore a broad gold band, set with a brilliant, faceted sapphire. Hector’s ring. Given to him by his first lover at the age of sixteen. Hector had died at Culloden—the day after John had met James Fraser, in the dark of a Scottish mountain pass.

Without hesitation, but with some difficulty—the ring had been worn a long time, and had sunk a little way into the flesh of his finger—he twisted it off and dropped it into Jamie’s hand.