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.
“Wine?” he asked.
“Claire Fraser,” John replied, with a shrug. His ex-wife’s notions of medicine occasionally made sense, and even army surgeons would wash a wound with wine, now and then.
“Ah.” Hal had experienced Claire Fraser’s medical attentions at close range, and merely nodded, pressing the stained handkerchief to his cheek.
“Why ought I to be dressed?” John asked, glancing sidelong at his unfinished letter. He was debating whether to tell Hal what he intended. His brother had an unusually penetrating mind, when he was in the mood, and he knew Jamie Fraser quite well. On the other hand, there were things in John’s own relationship—such as it was—with Jamie Fraser that he would just as soon not have his brother penetrate.
“I’m meant to be meeting Prévost and his staff in half an hour, and you’re meant to be with me. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No. Is my function purely ornamental, or shall I go armed?”
“Armed. Prévost wants to discuss bringing Maitland’s troops up from Beaufort,” Hal said.
“You expect this discussion to be acrimonious?”
“No, but I may add my own bit of acrimony to the meeting. I don’t like the men sitting about here with nothing to occupy them save drink and the local whores.”
“Oh.” John felt a momentary tightness in his chest at mention of whores, but Hal’s face showed no sign that the word had brought Jane Pocock to mind. John dug his dagger, pistol, and shot pouch out of his chest and laid them on the bed, next to his clean white stockings. “Very well, then.”
He dressed, more or less efficiently, and handed Hal his leather stock, turning round so his brother could fasten it at the back. His hair hadn’t yet grown past his shoulders; Hal brushed the stubby tail that passed for a queue irritably aside.
“Haven’t you found a new valet yet?”
“Haven’t time to train one.” He could feel Hal’s warm breath and cool fingers on the back of his neck, and found the touch soothing.
“What’s keeping you so busy?” Hal’s voice was sharp; he was under strain.
“Your daughter-in-law, my son, my presumed son, your son, and, you know, minor bits of regimental business.” He turned round to face Hal, dropping the chain of his gorget over his head. Hal had the grace to look slightly abashed, though he snorted.
“You need a valet. I’ll find you one. Come on.”
Prévost’s headquarters were in a large mansion on the edge of St. James Square, no more than a ten-minute walk, and the day was fine. It was warm and sunny, with a light breeze blowing toward the sea, and it was also Market Day. The brothers Grey made their way along Bay Street toward the City Market, through a throng of people and the bracing smells of vegetables and fresh fish.
“Here’s a question for you,” John said, dodging a woman with a tray of dripping oysters suspended from her neck and a bucket of beer in each hand. “You know Jamie Fraser. Do you think he’d be susceptible to money?”
Hal frowned.
“In what way? Everyone’s susceptible to money, under the right circumstances. I assume you don’t mean bribery.”
“No. In fact, I’m concerned that what I’m proposing to him shouldn’t strike him as bribery.”
Hal’s brows went up in surprise. “What the devil do you want him to do?”
“Give his assent—and encouragement—to the idea of his daughter coming to Savannah in order to paint a portrait. I’ve said I’d make sure she’s decently paid for it, but I—”
“A portrait of you?” Hal gave him an amused glance. “I’d like to see it. A present for Mother, or are you courting?”
“I hadn’t had either of those prospects in mind. The portrait isn’t to be of me, in any case; Alfred Brumby wants a picture made of his new wife.”
Hal grinned. “The fair Angelina?”
John smiled, too. Young Mrs. Brumby was good-looking, but there was something about her that simply made people want to laugh.
“If anyone is capable of capturing Mrs. Brumby’s ineffable nature on canvas, it might be Brianna MacKenzie.”
“But that’s not why you want to lure the young woman out of her aerie, is it? There must be other portrait painters in the colony of Georgia, surely?”
They were approaching Prévost’s headquarters; the shouts and measured thuds of drilling came faintly through the morning mist from the open ground at the end of Jones Street. Redcoats were beginning to thicken in the crowd of people thronging up Montgomery Street.
“You mistake my purpose,” John said, turning sideways to allow a hurrying lady with wide panniers, a parasol, two servants, and a small dog to pass him. “Your pardon, madam … And I hope Jamie Fraser does as well.”
Hal glanced sharply at him but was prevented from speaking by the passage of two tanner’s lads, scarves wrapped round their faces and carrying an enormous basket between them, from which the eye-watering reek of dog ordure emerged like an evil djinn.
Hal apparently had got a lungful of the stuff, and coughed until his eyes watered. John eyed him; his brother was prone to attacks of wheezing and shortness of breath. In this instance, though, he got control of himself, spat several times, pounded his chest with a fist, and shook himself, breathing heavily.
“What … purpose?” he said.
“I mentioned my son? Brianna Fraser is William’s half sister.”
“Oh. So she would be. I hadn’t thought of that.” Hal adjusted his hat, disarranged by the coughing fit. “He’s not met her?”
“Briefly, a few years ago—but he had no notion who she was. I know the young woman quite well, however, and while she is quite as obstinate as either one of her parents, she has a kind heart. She would be curious about her brother—and if there’s anyone who could talk sensibly to him about his … difficulties … it would likely be her.”
“Hmph.” Hal considered that for a few steps. “Are you sure that’s wise? If she’s Fraser’s daughter—wait, you said ‘both her parents.’ Is she also Claire Fraser’s daughter?”
“She is,” John said, in a tone indicating that this was probably all his brother required to know about Brianna. Apparently it was, for Hal laughed.
“She may persuade him to turn his coat and fight for the rebels, might she not?”
“If there is one trait that Jamie Fraser has succeeded in passing to all his offspring,” John said dryly, “it’s stubbornness. Forceful as she is, I doubt she could persuade William of anything whatever.”
“Then—”
“I want him to stay,” John blurted. “Here. At least until he’s made up his mind. About everything.” “Everything” encompassing William’s paternity, his career with the army, his title, and the estates to whose control he had just ascended, having reached his majority.
“Oh.” Hal stopped dead, looking at his brother, then glanced down the street. Prévost’s headquarters stood at the far corner, a large gray house with the normal trickle of officers and civilians going in and out under the eyes of the two soldiers guarding the door.
Hal took John’s arm and pulled him into the side street, less crowded.
John’s heart was thumping. He hadn’t articulated his fears, even to himself, but the letter to Jamie had brought them clearly to the surface of his mind.
Hal looked at him, one dark brow arched.
John closed his eyes and took a breath deep enough to keep his voice level.
“I have dreams,” he said. “Not every night. Often, though.”
“Of William.” It wasn’t a question, but John nodded and opened his eyes. Hal’s face was attentive, his eyes direct and bloodshot. “Dead?” Hal asked. “Lost?”