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.
“To family,” he said, “and good friends!”
Jamie sat down amid the resultant shouts and poundings on the table that made the dishes dance, smiling too, and warm with it, forbye. The whole room flickered with firelight and the changing faces, lively with talk and food and drink.
He wished that Fergus and Marsali and their bairns were here, too, but Roger had said they’d left Charles Town with the MacKenzies, but then turned north, meaning to have a look at Richmond as a possible place to resume their printing. He said a brief, silent prayer for their safety.
Claire was sat beside him on the bench, wee Mandy sound asleep on her lap, half draped over her arm like a sack of grain and just as heavy. He reached over and lifted the bairn, croodling her against his chest, and Claire bent toward him and rested her head on his shoulder for a moment, in gratitude. He saw her hair and Mandy’s for a moment, their mad curls swirled together, and felt such love that he kent if he died just then, it would be fine.
Claire straightened and he looked up then to see Roger Mac, with something of the same look on his own face. Their eyes met with a perfect understanding. And both of them looked down at the tabletop, smiling amid the scattered crusts and bones.
123
And the Beat Goes on …
THE SOJOURNERS—THE ADULT sojourners—slept rather late in the morning. The children, naturally, popped out of their beds at dawn and ran down to infest the kitchen. Children being what they are, Jem and Mandy had made instant friends with Agnes and the Hardman girls. Mandy was enchanted with Chastity, and insisted upon feeding her breakfast in tiny bites, cheeping at her in a motherly tone, as though Chastity were a baby bird, which made Chastity giggle and snort milk through her nose.
Going out to get a fresh pail of milk from the springhouse, I met Brianna drifting downstairs, dressed but obviously not completely awake yet.
“How are you, sweetheart?” I looked her over carefully; she was paler and thinner than she had been when they’d left for Savannah, but a wagon trip of three hundred miles, through God knew what conditions of weather, warfare, and unpredictable food supplies, managing two horses, a husband, and two children whilst sitting on a load of contraband guns disguised as bat guano, would naturally take it out of one. She looked happy, though.
“I can’t believe the house! It’s …” She flung out a hand and looked round, then laughed. “But Da still hasn’t put a door on your surgery.”
“He’ll get around to it.” I glanced at the kitchen, but the buzzing and giggling was peaceful, and I took her arm, towing her toward the doorless surgery. “Let me listen to your heart. Hop up on the table and lie down.”
She looked as though she wanted to roll her eyes, but hopped, nonetheless, athletic as a grasshopper, and eased herself down, closing her eyes and sighing with pleasure at the feel of the newly padded surface.
“Oh, God. I haven’t had a bed this soft since we left Savannah. Certainly not this clean.” She stretched luxuriously, and I could hear the soft pop of her vertebrae. “Lord John sends his love, by the way.”
“Is that what he said?” I said, smiling as I reached for my Pinard.
“No, he said something much more elegant, but that’s what he meant.” She opened one eye, regarding me shrewdly. “And His Grace the Duke of Pardloe begs me to convey his deepest regards. He wrote sort of a note for you.”
“Sort of?” I’d seen one or two missives from Hal, in the course of my brief marriage to John—and I’d heard a lot more about them from John. “Did he sign it with his whole name?”
“Yes, but he was pretty upset. But you know, stiff upper lip and all that.”
I stared at her.
“Upset? Hal? About what? Undo your laces.”
“That,” she said, squinting down her long nose at her fingers on the laces, “is kind of a long story.” She flicked a glance at me. “I take it Da knew that William was in Savannah when he suggested I go?”
“Lord John mentioned that, yes—in the letter he wrote inviting you to come and paint that society woman’s portrait. How did that work out, by the way?”
She laughed.
“I’ll tell you all about Angelina Brumby and her husband later,” she said. She closed one eye, fixing me with the other. “Don’t try and change the subject. William.”
“You met him?” I couldn’t keep the hope out of my voice, and she opened both eyes.
“I did,” she said, and looked down while she pulled the last lace from its loop. “It was … really good,” she said softly. “He came to the Brumbys’ house—Lord John just sent him to see ‘the Lady Painter’; he hadn’t told him about me, either. What is it with those two?” she demanded suddenly, looking up. “Da and Lord John. Why would they do that? Not tell us about each other being in Savannah, I mean.”
“Shyness,” I said, and smiled a little ruefully. “And they both have a sort of delicacy—though you might not think it. They didn’t want to put any burden of expectation on either you or William.” And Jamie, at least, had been very much afraid that his children might not like each other, and his wish that they would was too important to speak of, even to me.
“They meant well,” I said comfortably. “How is William?”
The underlying delight in her face at being home didn’t ebb, but she shook her head with a small frown of sympathy.
“Poor William. He’s such a good guy, but my God! How does anyone that young manage to have such a complicated life?”
“Your life wasn’t that simple in your early twenties, as I recall …” I untied the ribbon of her shift and placed the flat bell of the Pinard against her chest. “Poor choice of parents, I expect. Deep breath, darling, and hold it.”
She obliged, and I listened. Listened again, moved the Pinard, listened … Lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB … Regular as a metronome and a good, strong sound. I put a hand on her solar plexus, feeling the abdominal pulse, just in case, but that was just as strong, the firm flesh of her belly bouncing a little under my fingers with each beat.
“Everything sounds good,” I said, looking up—and thinking as I saw her face how very beautiful she was in this instant. Home. Safe. Alive.
“Are you all right, Mama?” she said, looking at me suspiciously, because my eyes had gone slightly moist.
“Certainly,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Have you had much trouble with the fibrillation?”
“No,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It happened two or three times on the way to Charleston, and once or twice while we were there. Only twice in Savannah, at least bad enough that I noticed. But I don’t think it’s happened at all—or if it has, only for a few seconds—on the trip back.
“I kept taking the willow bark,” she assured me. “Only after a while, I started grinding the leaves up and making pills out of them with cheese, because the tea made me pee all the time, and I couldn’t stop painting every fifteen minutes to go find a chamber pot. I don’t think cheese would neutralize the willow bark, do you?”
“No,” I said, laughing. “Congratulations—you’ve invented the world’s first cheese-flavored aspirin. They didn’t upset your stomach?”
She shook her head and pulled up the neck of her shift.
“No, but I figured that the cheese might buffer the acid—don’t they tell people with ulcers to drink milk?”