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 suppose you could wait ’til the child’s born and see who it looks like,” I suggested. I could—within fairly broad limits—discern blood types. That might help, but I thought I wouldn’t suggest it right this moment.
Just as well, since both of them ignored me.
“That’s why I said I want Agnes,” she said. “I’ve decided that I must accept your offer to provide transport for my son and his household. When he heard of your banishing the men who … followed him … he declared that he could no longer remain here, without supporters and at your … mercy.”
“My mercy,” Jamie muttered, drumming his fingers briefly on the table. “Hmmphm. Evidently I’ve an endless store o’ that. So?”
“Gilbert and Oliver will of course accompany us,” she went on, ignoring this. “They naturally do not wish to abandon Agnes …”
“Agnes has a home,” Jamie broke in impatiently. “Here. Abandon her, forbye!”
“Surely you will admit that they have a responsibility to the girl,” Elspeth said, lowering her strong gray brows at him in a way that made her look like a very stern owl.
“I will,” he said. “But I’ll not see her taken from her home unless she wants to go and I’m assured of her future welfare. I can find her a good husband here, ken?”
“I am offering you exactly such an assurance,” she snapped. “Do you dare to imply that I would see her abused in any way?”
“Ye’re an auld woman,” Jamie pointed out, rather brusquely. “What if ye die on the way to wherever ye’re takin’ your son?”
“Er … where are you taking him?” I interjected, more in hopes of stopping the conversation going straight off the rails than because I wanted to know.
“Would you die, if you knew someone was completely dependent upon you?” she shot back, ignoring me.
He paused for a moment and took a breath before replying evenly.
“Ye havena always got a choice about it, Elspeth.”
Elspeth’s nostrils flared as she inhaled, but she replied calmly.
“Yes,” she said, “you do. Barring being shot through the heart or struck by lightning,” she added, as one obliged to honesty. “But one of the few advantages to being an old woman is that no one shoots them. As for the lightning, I shall leave that to God, but my trust in Him is considerable.
“As to our destination,” she said, turning to me as though Jamie had ceased to exist, “Charles Town. There are navy warships there, and a large number of smaller frigates and army transports. Charles has written to Sir Henry Clinton, asking the favor of transport back to England aboard one of these. Sir Henry has known our family for many years and will certainly grant us the courtesy. Now, as to Agnes—” She switched her focus back to Jamie. “I will admit that my desire to take her with us is not solely for her benefit; plainly, I need her.”
There was a long moment of silence, with that simple declaration hanging in the air.
She did. The two young lieutenants would manage the physical difficulties of travel and provide protection for her and Charles. But she would need help, in caring both for her son’s demanding physical needs and for her own. Granted, she could easily engage a maidservant, but given Agnes’s delicate situation …
No one had mentioned the other aspect of that situation aloud, but Elspeth was more than perceptive enough to have grasped the fact that—everything else quite aside—she was an answer to prayer for Jamie.
I estimated the pregnancy at roughly three months, and it was a matter of weeks, if not days, before Agnes’s situation was known all over the Ridge. And it was, naturally, Jamie’s responsibility as her employer to resolve the situation in some publicly satisfactory manner. Finding the young man responsible and obliging him to marry Agnes would be the usual thing, but under the circumstances … To have your unmarried maidservant growing visibly pregnant in your house—or hastily married off to someone who was patently not the father—was to invite speculation that you had had something to do with her condition. And we’d both been there before …. I shivered, the echo of Malva’s denunciation, “It was him!” ringing in my ears.
“Speaking as Agnes’s … er, other loco parentis …” I said. Jamie and Elspeth both smiled, involuntarily, but I ignored them and pushed on. “I have a small condition to suggest. I’ll help you to persuade Agnes, because I think it’s really the best way of handling her predicament. But if she decides to go with you, I want an assurance that you’ll provide her with an education …”
“Agnes?” Both of them had spoken together, and while Jamie’s intonation indicated doubt and Elspeth’s, amusement, their unanimity did give me a moment’s pause.
“Education to do what, Sassenach?” Jamie asked. “Fanny’s taught her to read, and she can write her name and count to a hundred. What else d’ye think she’d find useful?”
“Well …” It was true that while Agnes was pretty, amiable, kind, and willing, and had a certain shrewd perception born of experience, she wasn’t a natural student. Still, there was no telling what might happen to her, and I wanted her to be … safe.
“She should know enough arithmetic to be able to handle money,” I said, finally. “And she should have a little money to handle. Of her own.”
“Done,” Elspeth said quietly. “My son will settle a modest amount on her, independent of her husband—whoever that turns out to be,” she added, a little bleakly. “And I’ll see to her education myself.”
No one spoke for a moment, and I began to hear the normal sounds of the house, the clumps and squeaks and rattling and barking, and the sound of distant conversation that the tension of our discussion had blocked out.
Footsteps crossed the ceiling over our heads, quick and light, and I caught a murmur and the giggle of young girls, amused. I relaxed a little. Fanny would miss Agnes cruelly, but at least she would have the Hardman girls for company.
“I’ll go and talk to Agnes now,” I said.
122
The Militia Rides Out
JAMIE KNELT AND SLICED the stitching of the burlap bag, folded back the top, and breathed deep. Huffed all his air out and breathed deeper, then sniffed thoughtfully. A rich, nourishing smell, nutty and sweet. No scent of mold, at least not at the top. Down at the bottom, though, where the damp settled …
He rose and pushed back one set of the big sliding doors that Bree had built for both sides of the malting shed, so they could open it up in fine weather. And it was a fine day, one fit for birdsong, rambling the woods, and maybe fishing a bit near sunset. A morning fit for small, peaceful jobs like replacing a board in the malting floor that had caught fire and was blackened enough that it might taint the flavor of the roasting grain. Fit for judging the quality of the barley on hand. He’d harvested two hundredweight of grain from his own fields in the autumn, and bought another hundredweight from the trading post, but they’d had time to malt, brew, and distill only half of it, what with an early winter, bad weather, and the disturbance at the Lodge in February. He scratched his chest; the scar was well healed, but he could still feel it pull when he stretched his arms wide.
He dragged the bag near the open doorway for light and dumped it carefully over the floor, kneeling and spreading it with his hands, looking for sprouting, damp, mold, bugs, or any of the other things you might not want in your whisky. And as a last check, chewed a few grains, then spat them out into the grass.