Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
- Автор: Гэблдон Диана
- Серия: Outlander #9
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Delacorte Press
- ISBN: 978-1-473-51900-8
- Жанр: Исторические приключения
Электронная книга - «Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone». Краткое содержание книги:
The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep. Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s—among them disease, starvation, and an impending war—was indeed the safer choice for their family. Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity—and thus his own—and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.
Hal nodded, exhaling.
“I’ll do that.” His mind, released from immediate dread, took flight. “Do you think that fellow Penobscot or whatever he’s called—you know, Campbell’s mapmaker—do you think he might be able to draw a passing likeness of young Trevor? I should like Minnie to see him.”
And if anything should happen to the boy, at least we’d have that ….
“Alexander Penfold, you mean,” John said. “I’ve never seen him draw anything more complex than a compass rose, but let me ask round a bit. I might just know of a decent portrait painter.” He smiled then, and lifted his newly filled cup. “To your grandson, then. Prosit!”
“Prosit,” Hal echoed, and drank the rest of the brandy without stopping to breathe.
41
Awkward Sod
JOHN GREY TOOK UP his penknife—a small French thing cased in rosewood and extremely sharp—and cut a fresh quill with a sense of anticipation. In the course of his life to date, he reckoned that he’d written more than a hundred letters to Jamie Fraser, and had always experienced a slight frisson at the thought of impending connection—whatever the nature of that connection might be. It always happened, no matter whether the letters were written in friendship, in affection—or in anxious warning, in anger, or in longings that went up in flames and the smell of burning, leaving bitter ash behind.
This one, though, would be different.
August 13, A.D. 1779
To James Fraser, Fraser’s Ridge
Royal Colony of North Carolina
He envisioned Jamie in his chosen habitat amid the wilderness, his hands hard and smooth with calluses and his hair bound back with a leather lace, companion to Indians, wolves, and bears. And companioned also by his female accoutrements, to be sure …
From Lord John Grey, Oglethorpe Street, No. 12
Savannah, Royal Colony of Georgia
He wanted to begin with the salutation “My dear Jamie,” but he hadn’t yet earned back the right to do that. He would, though.
“In another thousand years or so …” he murmured, dipping the quill again. “Or … maybe sooner.”
Ought it to be “General Fraser”?
“Ha,” he muttered. No point in putting the man’s back up a priori …
Mr. Fraser,
I write to offer a Commission of Employment to your Daughter. I have often spoken of her Gifts as an Artist to Friends and Acquaintances, and recently one such Acquaintance—a Mr. Alfred Brumby, a Merchant of Savannah—admired several Sketches she had sent to me and inquired whether I might have the Goodness to perform the Office of Ambassador for him in obtaining your Consent for your Daughter to travel to Savannah in order to paint a Portrait of his new Wife.
Brumby is a wealthy Gentleman, and quite able to afford both a handsome Fee (if your Daughter should wish it, I will be most happy to negotiate the Price for her) and the Expenses of her Journey and her Lodgings whilst in Savannah.
He smiled a little to himself at the thought of Brianna Fraser MacKenzie—and Claire Fraser—and what either woman might say in answer to his offer of assistance in her affairs.
I can assure you that Mr. Brumby is a Gentleman and his Establishment beyond reproach (lest you fear that I propose to kidnap the young Woman for my own fell Purposes).
“Which,” he murmured to himself, “is exactly what I do propose to do, you awkward sod …”
If he’d been at all circumspect about it, Fraser would have been immediately suspicious of his motives. But in a long career of soldiery and diplomacy, he’d seen just how often the bald-faced truth, spoken in all seriousness, might be taken for a jest. He continued, tongue firm in his cheek:
In all Seriousness, I guarantee her Safety, and that of any Friend or Family Member you may choose to send with her.
Might Jamie come himself? That would be deeply interesting … bloody dangerous, though …
In these unsettled times, you will of course have great Concern for the Well-being of Travelers—and it may perhaps strike you that inviting a young Woman of outspoken Republican Sentiments to take up temporary Residence in a City presently under the Control of His Majesty’s Army might be injudicious.
With a Sense of your probable Feelings regarding the Rebel Cause, I will spare you a full Enumeration of my Reasons, but I assure you—there is not the slightest Risk that Savannah will suffer Invasion or Conquest by the Americans, and Brianna will not be exposed to physical Harm.
He stopped to consider, twiddling the quill. Should he mention the French?
What could Fraser possibly know already, perched up there in his mountainous lair? Granted, the man wrote—and presumably received—letters, but given the dramatic circumstances of his resignation of his field general’s commission at Monmouth, John rather doubted that Jamie was exchanging daily notes with George Washington, Horatio Gates, or any other American commander privy to such intelligence.
But what if he did know that Admiral d’Estaing and his navy of frogs might possibly be hopping up onto the beaches of Charles Town or Savannah within a few weeks?
He’d played chess with Jamie Fraser for years and had considerable respect for the man’s abilities. Best sacrifice that particular pawn, then, to draw him away from the lurking knight …
It is true that the French …
No, wait. He paused, frowning at the half-written sentence. What if someone who was not James Fraser happened to get their hands on this missive? And here he was, putting unequivocally sensitive information directly into the hands of the rebels.
“Well, that won’t do …”
“What won’t do? And why aren’t you dressed?” Hal had come in, unnoticed, and was peering at himself in the large looking glass that reflected the French doors at the far side of the study. “Why am I bleeding?” He sounded rather startled.
John took a moment to obliterate the line about the French with a quick swath of ink, then rose to inspect his brother, who was in fact oozing blood from a deep scrape just in front of his left ear. He was trying to stop the blood getting onto his stock, but didn’t appear to have a handkerchief available for the purpose. John reached into the pocket of his banyan and gave Hal his.
“It doesn’t look like a shaving cut. Were you fencing without a mask?” This was intended to be a joke—Hal had never even tried one of the new wire masks, as he seldom used a sword these days unless he meant to kill someone with it, and thought it would be rank cowardice to fight a duel hiding behind a mask.
“No. Oh … I recall. I was just turning in to the street when a young lad shot out of the alley, and two soldiers just behind him shouting, ‘Stop, thief!’ One of them knocked into me and I hit the corner of that church. Didn’t realize I’d hurt myself.” He pressed the handkerchief to his face.
The scrape must have been painful—but he believed Hal hadn’t felt it. Hal was Hal—which meant that he either was oblivious to physical circumstance in times of stress, or pretended to be, to much the same effect. And he was most assuredly under stress these days.
John took the handkerchief back, dipped it into the cup of wine he’d been sipping, and pressed it to the wound again. Hal grimaced slightly, but took hold of the cloth himself.