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.
“You—you—how fucking dare you?” Some vestigial thought of the kids above kept her from shrieking, and the words emerged in a strangled snarl. Her intent showed clearly; Roger’s eyes sprang wide and he grabbed her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, low-voiced and even. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She struggled for a moment, wanting the simple relief of violence, but he wouldn’t let go, and she stopped and sat there, tears spurting as the only means of releasing the pressure.
He let go of her arm and put his own around her shoulders. She felt the cold of his wet shirt and skin, the sogginess of her own hems, but the heat of fear and frustration rose in her like steam.
She clung to Roger’s arm as though it were a handy tree root in a flood. She was sobbing and urgently trying not to at the same time, afraid the clench of emotion would seize her heart and throw it into commotion again, but unable to hold out anymore against the need to let go, to tell him everything.
“I’m s-sorry,” she kept gasping, and he clutched her tighter to him, rocking her a little, rubbing her back with his free hand.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “Bree, forgive me. I didn’t mean to—I really didn’t mean—”
“Doh,” she said thickly, and sat back a little from him, wiping her knuckles under her streaming nose. “You don’t—it’s nod you. I know you want another baby, but—”
“Not if you don’t,” he assured her, though she could hear the longing in his voice. “I wouldn’t risk you, Bree. If you’re afraid, if you—”
“Oh, God.” She waved a hand to stop him. She’d stopped sobbing and was just huddled in his arms, breathing. Her heart was beating. Normally.
“Lub-dub,” she said. “Lub-dub, lub-dub … that’s what textbooks say a heartbeat sounds like. But it doesn’t, really.”
Momentary silence. He stroked her hair, cautiously.
“No?”
“No.” She took a deep, free breath, feeling it go all the way to her fingertips. “And no, I’m not crazy, either.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” He released her gently and looked searchingly into her face. “Are ye all right, Bree?” He looked so anxious that she nearly started crying again, out of remorse.
“Sort of …” She gulped, sniffed, and made a huge effort to sit up straight and get hold of herself. At this point, she realized that Roger was sitting beside her in nothing but his wet-tailed shirt and she started to laugh, but caught herself, fearing that it might all too easily become hysterics.
“Put on your pants and I’ll tell you everything,” she said, straightening her shoulders.
“Mummeeeeeee!” Mandy was calling from the edge of the roadway above, waving her arms. “Mummy, we’re hunnnnngry!”
“I’ll get them something,” Roger said, hastily reassuming his breeches. “You wash your face and … drink water. Take it easy and I’ll be right back.”
He scrambled up the bank, calling for Jem and Germain, and after a minute, she’d pulled herself together enough to do as he’d said—wash and have a drink of water. The water from the stream was good: cold and fresh, with a faint spicy taste of watercress, and having something—even water—in her stomach seemed to settle her.
Thump. Thump. Thump. True, there was a lesser thump following the main one, but it was the solid, reassuring rhythm of the thump that gave her—well, gave her heart. She smiled at the thought and wiped her wet hands through her hair, which had come loose from its ribbon.
She was kneeling on the grass beside the wheel when Roger came down again, bearing gifts in the form of two boiled eggs, a chunk of dry bread rubbed with olive oil and garlic, and a bottle of ale. She started with the ale.
“It’s not so bad,” she said, nodding at the wheel. “One of the sawed felloes came loose, but it’s not broken. I can fit it back and put a wire screw in—”
“To hell with the wheel,” he said, though mildly. “Eat an egg and tell me what’s going on.” His face showed nothing but concern, but the set of his shoulders said he wouldn’t leave it.
She took a long drink of ale for fortitude, stifled a belch, and told him.
“I keep thinking that it will just go away. That once it stops, it won’t happen again. But I keep listening for it, on edge … and then it doesn’t happen for a week, two weeks, three … and I’ve started to relax and then wham! There it is again.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry I fell apart. But you know, it’s kind of like pregnancy—there’s this thing inside you, part of you, but you can’t control it and it just takes your body and … does things with it.” She glanced down and began picking fragments of eggshell out of the grass.
“And it might kill you,” she said, very softly. “Though Mama says it’s not life threatening—except for the maybe-giving-you-a-stroke thing.”
“Leave those—eggshells are part of the landscape.” He took her unresisting hand and kissed it gently. “Do you have willow bark with you?”
“Yes. Mama made up a kit for me.” She smiled a little, despite the situation, and gestured up the hill, toward the lopsided wagon. “In my bag. Twenty-four packets of willow bark, each good for a three-cup brew. She thought that would last me until we got to Charleston.
“One more thing,” she said, and took a deep, snuffling breath. Her nose was beginning to clear and she could breathe again.
“Aye?”
“Pregnancy and this—heart thing. Mama says that it’s like a lot of other things—pregnancy might make it go away, either temporarily or even permanently. But it might also make it a lot worse.” She blew her nose on a wet handkerchief. “And she didn’t say this, but I thought of it later—what if it’s something … I mean, Mandy’s heart. Did I—give that to her?”
“No,” he said firmly. “No, we know that’s a common birth defect. Patent ductus arteriosus, your mum said. You didn’t cause it. Though …”
She wanted to believe him, but the doubts and thoughts she’d been suppressing for the last few months were all bubbling out.
“Your great-whatever-grandfather. Buck. He had something wrong with his heart, didn’t he?”
Roger’s face went momentarily blank.
“Aye, he did,” he said slowly. “But it—I mean, it seemed to be an effect of coming through the stones.” His hand went to his own chest, unconsciously, and he rubbed it slowly. “He was having an … attack, a seizure … right when we came through. But then it got better—and then it got much worse later. That’s when we met Hector McEwan.”
Her breathing was a lot easier. There was something about logical thought that short-circuited emotion. Maybe that’s why people said you should count to ten when you were upset …
“I wish I’d asked him more about it,” she said. “But”—she touched her own chest, where her twitchy heart was presently beating quietly—“I wasn’t having anything like this at the time.”
She could see that he didn’t want to say it, but she could tell what he was thinking, because it was the logical conclusion and she was thinking it, too.
“Maybe it—the damage, if that’s what it is—gets worse, the more often you do it? Travel, I mean?”
“God, I don’t know.” He glanced up the hill. The kids’ voices were fainter; they were off in the woods on the other side of the road. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt Jem, or … or me. Or your mother. But—it only just occurred to me: your mother traveled through the stones while she was pregnant with you. Maybe that …?” He touched her chest, gently.