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.
John nodded again, wordless. He cleared his throat, though, and found a few.
“Isobel told me that he was lost once, at Helwater, when he was three or so—wandering alone in a fog on the fells. Sometimes I see that. Sometimes … other things.”
William had always told him stories, written him letters. Of being trapped in Quebec during a long, cold winter. Hunting, lost overnight, feet freezing, the eerie light of the Arctic sky thrumming overhead, falling through ice into dark water … To William, this was mere adventure, and John enjoyed hearing about it—but in the dark of his dreams, such things came back twisted, cold as ghosts and filled with foreboding.
“And battle,” Hal said, almost under his breath. He was leaning back against the brick wall of a tavern, his eyes on the polished toes of his boots. “Yes. You see those things when you’re a father. Even when you’re not asleep.”
John nodded but didn’t say anything. He felt a bit better, to have spoken. Of course Hal thought such things. Henry badly wounded in battle, and Benjamin … He thought of William, digging up a grave in the dark, expecting to find his cousin’s body …. He’d dreamed of digging up a grave himself, and finding William in it.
Hal heaved a sigh and straightened up.
“Tell Fraser that William is here,” he said quietly. “Just mention it, casually. Nothing more. He’ll send the girl.”
“You think so?”
Hal glanced at him and took his elbow, steering him out of the alley.
“You think he cares less about William than you do?”
42
Sasannaich Clann Na Galladh!
JAMIE READ THE LETTER through twice, his lips tightening at the same place, halfway down the first page—and then again, at the end. It wasn’t actually unusual for him to react to one of John’s letters that way, but when he did, it was normally because it held unwelcome news of the war, of William, or of some incipient action on the part of the British government that might be about to result in Jamie’s imminent arrest or some other domestic inconvenience.
This, however, was the first letter John had sent in nearly two years—since before Jamie’s return from the dead to find me married to John Grey, and before he had punched John in the eye as a result of this news and inadvertently caused his lordship to be arrested and nearly hanged by the American militia. Well, turnabout was fair play, I supposed ….
No point in putting it off.
“What does John have to say?” I asked, keeping my voice pleasantly neutral. Jamie glanced up at me, snorted, and took off his spectacles.
“He wants Brianna,” he said shortly, and pushed the letter across the table to me.
I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder, but Bree had gone to the springhouse with a box of freshly made goat’s cheeses. I pulled my spectacles out of my pocket.
“I take it you noticed that last bit?” I said, glancing up when I’d finished reading.
“‘My son William has resigned his Commission and is presently staying with me in Savannah, making use of his new-found Leisure to contemplate his Future, as he has now attained his Majority’? Aye, I did.” He glared at the letter, then at me. “Contemplate his future? What is there to contemplate, for God’s sake? He’s an earl.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be an earl,” I said mildly.
“It’s not something ye’ve got a choice about, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s like a birthmark; ye’re born with it.”
He was frowning down at the letter, lips tight.
I gave him an exasperated look, which he sensed, for he glanced up and raised his brows at me.
“What are ye giving me that sort of look for?” he demanded. “It’s not my f—” He stopped, almost in time.
“Well, let’s not say ‘fault’—nobody’s blaming you, but—”
“Nobody but William. He’s blaming me.” He exhaled through his nose, then took a breath and shook his head. “And no without reason. See, this is why I didna want Brianna telling him! If he’d never seen me nor found out the truth, he’d be in England right now, takin’ care of his lands and tenants, happy as a—” He stopped, groping.
“Clam?” I suggested. “What makes you think he isn’t happy at the moment? Perhaps he just hasn’t been able to arrange passage back to England yet.”
“Clam?” He looked at me for an instant, brows raised, then dismissed all clams with an abrupt gesture. “I wouldna be happy in his position, and I dinna see how an honorable man could be.”
“Well, he is very like you.” I was hoping to keep the conversation focused on William, and avoid notice of John, but I should have known that was futile. He snatched up the letter, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire with a very rude Gaelic expression.
“Mac na galladh! First he takes my son, then he swives my wife, and now he’s tryin’ to suborn my daughter!”
“Oh, he is not!” I’d been keeping a lid on my own temper, but the flames of rage curling round the edges of the room were getting too warm; I was growing brown and crispy. “He just wants Bree to go and talk to her brother! Can’t you see that, you bloody … Scot?”
That stopped him for an instant, and I saw a startled spark of amusement in his eyes, though it didn’t reach his mouth. He did breathe, though, that was an improvement.
“Talk to her brother,” he repeated. “Why? Does he think Brianna will sing my praises to such an extent that William will forget that I’m the reason he’s a bastard? And even if he decided to forgive me for that, it wouldna help him settle his mind to be an earl.” He snorted. “Left to the influence of that den o’ snakes, I’d no be surprised if Brianna ended up sailing off to England wi’ them to paint portraits of the Queen.”
“I have no idea what John thinks,” I said evenly. “But since he says ‘contemplate his future,’ I assume that he means William has doubts. Brianna is an outsider in this; she’d have a different perspective on things. She could listen without getting personally involved.”
“Ha,” he said. “That lassie is personally involved in every damned thing she touches. She gets it from you,” he added, with an accusing look at me.
“And she doesn’t give up on anything she’s made up her mind to do,” I said, settling back in my chair and folding my hands in my lap. “She gets that from you.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment.”
That did get the breath of a laugh, though he stayed on his feet. He’d gone the color of the tomatoes in my garden at the height of his speech, but this was fading back to his normal ruddy bronze. I relaxed a little, too, and took a breath.
“You know one thing about John, though.”
“I ken a number of things about him—most of which I wish I didn’t. Which one thing d’ye mean?”
“He knows your daughter loves you. And that no matter what she and William have to say to each other, that will be part of the conversation.”
He blinked, disconcerted.
“I—well, aye, maybe … but—”
“Do you think he cares for William any less than you do?”
The atmosphere had cooled, and I could feel my heart rate slowing down. Jamie had turned his back and was leaning on the mantelpiece, looking into the fire. The letter had burned but was still visible, a curled black leaf on the hearth. The fingers of his right hand tapped slowly against the stone.
At last he sighed and turned round.
“I’ll talk to Brianna,” he said.