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.
“I am a son of the house, so to speak,” Fergus said, sitting down with a brief wave of the hand toward the door.
“I didn’t ask,” Roger murmured, and Fergus laughed.
“You needn’t ask if Marsali knows about this place, either,” he assured Roger. “I won’t say I have no secrets from my wife—I think every man must require a few secrets—but this is not one of them.”
Roger’s heart was beginning to slow down, and he fished out a semi-clean handkerchief with which to mop his face. He found himself avoiding the tiny patch Miss Marigold’s fingers had touched, and scrubbed it briefly before putting the hankie away.
“The men we have just left,” Fergus said, dabbing his own face. “I recognize them.”
“Yes?”
“The fop—this is Percival Beauchamp, though I believe he used another name—perhaps more than one. He has approached me more than once with a similar taradiddle—that I was the son of a highborn man, had title to land—” He made a very French grimace of disdain, and Roger, already entertained by his pronunciation of “taradiddle,” made a similar grimace in order to keep from laughing.
“Now,” Fergus went on, hunching closer and lowering his voice, “at that time, he was attending the Comte de La Fayette as some sort of aide-de-camp. I dismissed him—I had met him once before that, and refused to speak with him then—and he went so far as to threaten me. Chienne,” he added, with contempt.
“Chienne?” Roger asked, careful with the pronunciation. “You think he’s a female dog?”
Fergus looked surprised.
“Well, there are other words,” he said, and wrinkled his brow as though trying to summon a few, “but surely you noticed …?”
“Er …” A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the atmosphere rose behind Roger’s ears. “Actually, no. I just thought he was a, um, Frenchman. Ornamental, you know?”
Fergus burst out laughing.
Roger coughed. “So. Ye’re saying that Percival whatever-he’s-calling-himself is what people in Scotland might call a Nancy-boy. D’ye think that’s got anything to do with … the present situation?”
Fergus was still simmering with mirth, but he shook his head.
“Oui, but perhaps only because a man with such tastes—when they are known, and plainly they are—cannot be trusted, because he is always subject to the threat of public exposure. You must look at the man who controls him.”
Roger felt a touch of uneasiness. Well, in honesty, he’d been uneasy since they walked into the house on Hasell Street.
“Who do you suppose that is?”
Fergus glanced at him in surprise, then shook his head in mild reproof.
“I tell you, mon frère, you require a great deal more experience in the fields of sin, if you hope to be a good minister.”
“Ye’re suggesting that I send for Miss Marigold and ask for lessons?”
“Well, no,” Fergus said, giggling slightly. “Your wife would—but that’s not what I meant. Only that your own goodness, which is undeniable”—he smiled at Roger, with a warmth in his eyes that touched Roger deeply—“is one thing, but to help those of your flock who lack that goodness, you need to understand something of evil and thus the struggle that afflicts them.”
“I wouldn’t say you’re wrong,” Roger said warily. “But I know more than one man of the cloth who’s got himself in serious trouble while seeking that sort of education.”
Fergus lifted one shoulder, laughing.
“You can learn a great deal from whores, mon frère, but I agree that perhaps you should not make such inquiries alone. Still,” he said, sobering, “that’s not what I meant by evil.”
“No. But you said you’ve had passages with this Percival before. He didn’t strike me as—”
“He’s not. He’s a whore; he has likely been one all his life.” Seeing Roger’s expression, he didn’t smile, but one corner of his mouth lifted. “What is it they say? ‘It takes one to know one.’”
Roger felt a sudden contraction of his stomach muscles, as though he’d been lightly punched. He’d known that Fergus had been a child-whore in Paris, before encountering Jamie Fraser, who had engaged him as a pickpocket—but he’d forgotten.
“Monsieur Beauchamp is too old to sell his arse, of course, but he will sell himself. From necessity,” Fergus added dispassionately. “A person who has lived like that for a long time ceases to believe that they have any value beyond what someone will pay for.”
Roger was silent, thinking not so much of the recent Percival Beauchamp but of Fergus—and of Jane and Fanny Pocock.
“When you say ‘evil,’ though …” he began slowly.
“There were only two men in that room,” Fergus said simply. “Besides us, I mean.”
“Jesus.” He tried to think what the tall man had said or done that might have given Fergus the conviction—and it was a conviction, he could see that much in Fergus’s face—that the man was evil. “I can’t even remember what he looked like.”
“In my experience, the Devil seldom walks up and introduces himself to you by name,” Fergus said dryly. “All I can tell you is that I know evil when I see it—and I saw it on that man.”
Fergus stood up and went to the window, pulling back the lace curtain to look out. He drew a large black bandanna out of his pocket and wiped his face with it. “So the ink stains don’t show,” he said briefly, seeing Roger notice.
“So what do you plan to do about … this? If anything?”
Fergus exhaled strongly through his long French nose.
“You tell me that the city will soon fall to the British. These crétins offer me ridiculous daydreams. But”—he raised a monitory hook to stop Roger butting in—“they do have money, and they do mean business. I just don’t know what sort of business, and the guardian angel on my shoulder thinks I don’t want to find out.”
“Wise man, your guardian angel.”
Fergus nodded and was still, staring at the river in the distance as it went about its murky business. After a moment, he glanced at Roger.
“Brianna told Marsali that Lord John Grey had promised her a military escort to see her safely to Savannah.”
“Yes. But we don’t need it. No one’s going to bother a wagon full of children and sauerkraut.”
“Nonetheless.” Fergus stood up and shucked his coat, plucking the soaked linen of his shirt away from his chest. “Will you ask your wife to send a note to Lord John at once, please? Ask him to send his escort as soon as possible. We’re coming with you. I think the printing press might draw notice.”
75
No Smoke without Fire
BRIANNA WOKE SUDDENLY, IN the disoriented state that occurs when you’ve gone to sleep in a strange place and don’t recall immediately where you are. She’d been dreaming—of what? Her heart was racing, and any minute it was going to—
Damn! The wings started fluttering in her chest, like a flock of agitated bats trapped in her shift. She sat up, cursing under her breath, and struck herself hard in the chest, in hopes of startling her heartbeat back into regularity; sometimes that worked. Not this time. She swung her feet out of bed, planted them on the cold, damp floorboards, and took a deep breath, only to cough and let it out with a gasp.
“Roger!” she whispered as loudly as she could, trying to not wake the children to panic, and shook him by the arm. “Roger! Get up—I smell smoke!”
She remembered now where they were. They were sleeping in the loft, and with her eyes no longer clouded by sleep, now she could see the smoke she was smelling, white wisps slipping over the edge of the loft like ghosts, moving silently but with a horrifying speed.