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.
“It was like being pecked to death by a flock of small parrots,” he told Hal. “Screeching, and feathers everywhere.”
“Never mind parrots,” Hal said shortly. He’d been out himself, to a more formal—and doubtless less noisy—gathering at the home of a Mrs. Roma Sars, where he’d talked to some of the politicals who’d been at Prévost’s luncheon.
“I was hoping to talk to Monsieur Soissons and find out how the devil bloody Percy comes to be here, when he’s supposed to be dead—or at least decently pretending to be—but Soissons wasn’t in the way,” Hal replied shortly. He’d got his stock off, and the dark-red mark across his neck suggested that he’d been choking back words of one kind and another all afternoon. “Where was it you said you’d met the fellow last?”
John undid his own leather stock and closed his eyes, sighing with relief.
“I met him at the American camp in a place called Coryell’s Ferry, just before Monmouth. I told you about that.”
Hal wiped his face with a discarded towel, evidently used previously for blacking boots, and tossed it into the corner.
“And how the devil did he come to be there, for that matter?”
John shook his head. What did it matter now, after all? Still, he wasn’t going to explain just how it was that Percy had escaped being hanged for the crime of sodomy; he’d rather Hal didn’t expire of apoplexy just yet.
“About how you got yourself arrested by the Americans, escaped, and showed up after the battle in camp with a homicidal Mohawk Indian purporting to be James Fraser’s nephew? More or less,” Hal said, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Mostly less, I imagine. You didn’t mention Percy, at any rate.”
John blinked in a noncommittal sort of way and tilted his head toward the door. Brisk footsteps were coming down the corridor; doubtless Hal’s valet, coming to extract Hal from the bondage of his dress uniform.
To his surprise, however, the footsteps belonged to William, mildly disheveled but evidently sober.
“I need to find Banastre Tarleton,” he said, without preamble. “How do you suggest I do that?”
“What d’you want him for?” Hal inquired, sitting down in a wooden chair. “And if you want help, turnabout’s fair play—help me get these bloody boots off. They’re John’s, and they’re killing me.”
“It’s not my fault you’ve got bunions,” John said. “Totally fitting for an infantry commander, though, you’ll admit. No one can say you don’t do your job thoroughly.”
Hal gave him a mildly evil look, then put his hands on William’s head to brace himself as William wrestled one boot loose.
“Do you know where Tarleton is?” he asked John, who shook his head.
“Neither do I,” Hal said, addressing the cowlick on top of William’s head, which swirled neatly clockwise before sticking up. Just like his father’s, John thought.
“Clinton’s chief clerk would know,” Grey said, and cleared his throat. “His name’s Ronson—Captain Geoffrey Ronson, if you please.”
“Fine.” William jerked the boot off and nearly shot backward off the campaign chest he was sitting on. He tossed the muddy boot on the hearth rug and inspected his chest, to be sure his beetles had suffered no damage. “Where the devil is Sir Henry keeping himself these days?”
“New York, for the moment,” Hal said, sticking out his other foot. “I’d bet reasonable money that Tarleton is still with him. Tarleton’s cavalry riders were Clinton’s new toy at Monmouth, and I doubt he’s had all his fun with them yet.”
William grunted as the second boot came off, and laid it with its fellow on the rug.
“So, shall I write to Tarleton directly, care of Sir Henry?”
John and Hal exchanged glances.
“I think I would,” Hal said, with a slight shrug. “Just don’t put anything in the letter that you don’t want the world to know about. Some clerks are discreet and a hell of a lot of them aren’t.”
“Speaking of which,” John said, eyeing his son. “Would it be indiscreet of us to ask why you want to find Banastre Tarleton?”
William shook his head, then smoothed the dislodged cowlick back into the dark mass of his hair.
“Denys Randall told me at the luncheon yesterday that it was Ban Tarleton who first got the letter from Middlebrook Encampment about Ben dying there. He evidently gave it to Ezekiel Richardson, and thus—” He made a spiraling gesture indicating the letter’s eventual arrival to Hal’s hand. “So I want to know why Tarleton got it, and how.”
“Very reasonable,” Hal agreed. “But I doubt it’ll be that easy.” He lowered his brows and stared at William, very directly. “What I tell you goes no further, William. Not to your Indian friend, your lover—if you have one, and no, I don’t want to know—or anyone else.”
William refrained from rolling his eyes, but only just. John looked down to hide a smile.
“Tace is the Latin for a candle,” William said obligingly, and laid a hand over his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”
Hal snorted, but nodded.
“Right. Sir Henry is tired of making feints at the Americans around New York and Virginia. He wants a bold stroke, and he’s got his eye upon Charles Town. If he hasn’t already left New York to go take it from the Americans, he will, within the next few months.”
“Who told you that?” John asked, surprised.
“Three different men at luncheon, all of whom begged me to keep it quiet.”
“I see what you mean about discretion, Uncle,” William said, openly amused.
“I,” said Hal coldly, “am the Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot. You are …” His voice trailed off as he gazed at William, bareheaded and slightly rumpled in his civilian finery, but still with the straight-backed bearing of a soldier.
I don’t suppose that will ever leave him, John thought. It hasn’t left his father.
“… not a serving officer at the moment,” Hal finished, choosing to be tactful for once.
William nodded agreeably.
“That’s fortunate, isn’t it?” he said. “As you aren’t my commanding officer, you can’t forbid me to go look for Tarleton if I like.”
48
A Face in the Water
“FANNY AND CYRUS SITTING in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Roger said as he came into the surgery. I laughed, but looked guiltily over my shoulder.
“They’d better not be. Jamie’s roaming about like a wolf, seeking whom he may devour.” Cyrus was a very tall, very thin lad from one of the fisher-folk families, though I didn’t know which one. He’d sat down next to Fanny at church one Sunday and had been appearing now and then near her like a tall, bashful ghost. I’d never heard him speak and wondered whether he had any English. Fanny’s Gaelic was so far limited to commonplaces like, “Pass me a bannock, please,” and the Lord’s Prayer, but I supposed they might be of an age where young people are naturally tongue-tied in each other’s presence.
“They’re not,” Roger assured me. “I just saw them on the creek bank, sitting a decorous two feet apart, Cyrus with his hands folded so tight in his lap that he must be cutting off the circulation. Who’s Jamie seeking to devour, and why?”