Диана Гэблдон - A Breath of Snow and Ashes 6

Fraser’s brows rose in astonishment.

“This? Are ye sur—”

“Take it.” He reached out then, and closed Jamie’s fingers around it with his own. The contact was fleeting, but his hand tingled, and he closed his own fist, hoping to keep the sensation.

“Thank you,” Jamie said again, quietly.

“It is—my very great pleasure.” The party below was breaking up—Brianna was taking her leave, the baby held in her arms, her husband and son already halfway down the walk. William bowed, hat off, the shape of his chestnut head so perfectly echoing that of the red—

Suddenly, Lord John could not bear to see them part. He wished to keep that, too—the sight of them together. He closed his eyes and stood, hands on the sill, feeling the movement of the breeze past his face. Something touched his shoulder, very briefly, and he felt a sense of movement in the air beside him.

When he opened his eyes again, all three of them were gone.

119

LOTH TO DEPART

September 1776

ROGER WAS LAYING THE LAST OF the water pipes when Aidan and Jemmy popped up beside him, sudden as a pair of jack-in-the-boxes.

“Daddy, Daddy, Bobby’s here!”

“What, Bobby Higgins?” Roger straightened up, feeling his back muscles protest, and looked toward the Big House, but saw no sign of a horse. “Where is he?”

“He went up to the graveyard,” Aidan said, looking important. “D’ye think he’s gone to look for the ghost?”

“I doubt it,” Roger said calmly. “What ghost?”

“Malva Christie’s,” Aidan said promptly. “She walks. Everybody says so.” He spoke bravely, but wrapped his arms about himself. Jemmy, who plainly hadn’t heard that bit of news before, looked wide-eyed.

“Why does she walk? Where’s she going?”

“Because she was murrrrderrred, silly,” Aidan said. “Folk what are murdered always walk. They’re lookin’ for the one who killed them.”

“Nonsense,” Roger said firmly, seeing the uneasy look on Jemmy’s face. Jem had known Malva Christie was dead, of course; he’d gone to her funeral, along with all the other children on the Ridge. But he and Brianna had simply told the boy that Malva had died, not that she had been murdered.

Well, Roger thought grimly, little hope of keeping something like that secret. He hoped Jem wouldn’t have nightmares.

“Malva’s not walking about looking for anyone,” he said, with as much conviction as he could infuse into his voice. “Her soul is in heaven with Jesus, where she’s happy and peaceful—and her body . . . well, when people die, they don’t need their bodies anymore, and so we bury them, and there they stay, all tidy in their graves, until the Last Day.”

Aidan looked patently unconvinced by this.

“Joey McLaughlin saw her, two weeks ago Friday,” he said, bobbing up and down on his toes. “A-flittin’ through the wood, he said, all dressed in black—and howlin’ most mournful!”

Jemmy was beginning to look truly upset. Roger laid down the spade, and picked Jem up in his arms.

“I expect Joey McLaughlin was a bit the worse for a dram too much,” he said. Both boys were entirely familiar with the concept of drunkenness. “If it was flitting through the wood howling, it was most likely Rollo he saw. Come on, though, we’ll go find Bobby, and ye’ll see Malva’s grave for yourselves.”

He put out a hand to Aidan, who took it happily and chattered like a magpie all the way up the hill.

And what was Aidan going to do, when he left? he wondered. The idea of leaving, at first so abrupt as to seem completely unreal, unthinkable, had been filtering into his consciousness, day by day. As he worked at the chores, dug the trenches for Brianna’s water pipes, carried hay, chopped wood, he would try to think: “Not much longer.” And yet it seemed impossible that one day he would not be on the Ridge, would not push open the door to the cabin and find Brianna involved in some fiendish experiment on the kitchen table, Jem and Aidan madly vrooming around her feet.

The feeling of unreality was even more pronounced when he preached of a Sunday or went round as minister—if yet without portfolio—to visit the sick or counsel the troubled. Looking into all those faces—attentive, excited, bored, dour, or preoccupied—he simply couldn’t believe that he meant to go, callously to abandon them all. How would he tell them? he wondered, with a sort of anguish at the thought. Especially the ones he felt most responsible for—Aidan and his mother.

He’d prayed about it, looking for strength, for guidance.

And yet . . . and yet the vision of Amanda’s tiny blue fingernails, the faint wheeze of her breathing, never left him. And the looming stones by the creek on Ocracoke seemed to grow nearer, more solid, day by day.

Bobby Higgins was indeed in the graveyard, his horse tethered under the pines. He was sitting by Malva’s grave, head bowed in contemplation, though he looked up at once when Roger and the boys appeared. He looked pale and somber, but scrambled to his feet and shook Roger’s hand.

“I’m glad to see ye back, Bobby. Here, you lot go and play, aye?” He set Jemmy down, and was pleased to see that after one suspicious glance at Malva’s grave—adorned with a wilted bunch of wildflowers—Jemmy went off quite happily with Aidan to hunt for squirrels and chipmunks in the wood.

“I—er—wasn’t expecting to see you again,” he added a little awkwardly. Bobby looked down, slowly dusting pine needles from his breeches.

“Well, zur . . . the fact of the matter is, I’ve come to stay. If so be as that’s agreeable,” he added hastily.

“To stay? But—of course it’s fine,” Roger said, recovering from his surprise. “Have you—that is—you’ve not had a falling-out with his Lordship, I hope?”

Bobby looked astonished at the thought, and shook his head decidedly.

“Oh, no, zur! His Lordship’s been proper kind to me, ever since he took me on.” He hesitated, biting his lower lip. “It’s only—well, ye see, zur, there’s a deal of folk what come to stay with his Lordship these days. Politicals, and—and army folk.”

Despite himself, he touched the brand on his cheek, which had faded now to a pinkish scar but was still apparent—and always would be. Roger understood.

“You weren’t comfortable there any longer, I suppose?”

“That’s it, zur.” Bobby gave him a grateful look. “Time was, ’twas just his Lordship and me and Manoke the cook. Sometimes a guest would come for dinner or to stay a few days, but ’twas all easy and what ye might call simple. When I went for to run messages or errands for his Lordship, folk would stare, but only for the first time or two; after that, they’d be used to this”—he touched his face again—“and it was all right. But now . . .” He trailed off unhappily, leaving Roger to imagine the probable response of British army officers, starched, polished, and either openly disapproving of this blot on the service—or painfully polite.

“His Lordship saw the difficulty; he’s good that way. And he said as how he would miss me, but if I chose to seek my fortune elsewhere, he would give me ten pounds and his best wishes.”

Roger whistled respectfully. Ten pounds was a very respectable sum. Not a fortune, but quite enough to set Bobby on his road.

“Very nice,” he said. “Did he know ye meant to come here?”

Bobby shook his head.

“I wasn’t sure myself,” he admitted. “Once, I should—” He cut himself off abruptly, with a glance at Malva’s grave, then turned back to Roger, clearing his throat.