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.
EMERGENCE FROM THE coach was like hatching out of a chrysalis, he thought, stretching his long-folded legs and his aching back before reaching to help Amaranthus out of their traveling womb. Air, sunlight, and above all, space! He yawned uncontrollably and air flooded into him, inflating him back to his proper dimensions.
He’d intended to take Amaranthus back to Uncle Hal’s quarters, and hesitated for a moment, but she said firmly that she’d rather go to Lord John’s house first.
“I trust Uncle John to listen,” she’d said. “And fond as I am of Father Pardloe—why are you looking like that? I am fond of him. I’m just never sure what he’ll do about things. And Ben’s his son, after all.”
“Good point,” William admitted. “Mind, I doubt my father knows what Hal will do, either, but he’s used to dealing with the effects, at least.”
“Exactly,” she’d said, and spoke no more on the drive through the city, only glancing at her reflection in the coach’s window and touching her hair now and then.
The door of Number 12, Oglethorpe Street opened before he could knock, his first inkling that something was wrong.
“Oh, you found her!” Miss Crabb was looking over his shoulder at Amaranthus, her lean face shifting between pleased relief and a desire to stay irritated. “The baby’s asleep.
“His Grace has gone to Charles Town,” the housekeeper added, stepping back to let them in. “He thought he’d be back within two weeks, but sent a letter that came two days ago that he was detained at my lord Cornwallis’s pleasure.”
Amaranthus had disappeared up the stairs in search of Trevor, so this explanation was delivered to William.
“I see,” he said, stepping inside. “Did my father go with His Grace?” It was evident that Lord John wasn’t in the house, because if he had been, he’d be present right now.
Miss Crabb’s abiding expression of discontent had shifted, showing something of uneasiness.
“No, my lord,” she said. “He went out day before yesterday, and he hasn’t come back.”
136
Two Days Previously
THE NOTE HAD ARRIVED at Number 12 Oglethorpe Street just after luncheon. It had been a casual meal, ham sandwiches and a bottle of beer, consumed in the cookhouse while Lord John watched Moira dealing with an enormous turbot that had been delivered that morning. The woman knew how to wield a cleaver, he thought, despite her recalcitrant attitude toward tomatoes. A pity; she was plainly capable of turning any tomato into an instant ketchup with one blow. He watched with keen anticipation as she squinted at the fish—it was so large that it hung off the sides of the small table—deciding upon the direction of her next attack.
Before she could strike, though, a shadow fell through the open door of the cookhouse and there was a brief knock upon its jamb.
“Mein Herr?” It was Gunter, an ostler from the livery stables Hal patronized, obsequious in his leather apron.
“Ja? Was ist das?” Grey asked. He saw Moira blink, momentarily suspend her next thwack, and swivel her head from him to Gunter and back, squinting suspiciously.
Gunter shrugged, raising his brows in abnegation of responsibility, and handed over a neatly folded note, sealed with candle wax, and waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate that someone at the livery had given it to him. Grey fumbled in his pocket for a coin, came out with a penny and a shilling, handed over the shilling, and took the note with a brief word of thanks.
He’d thought at first that it was something for Hal, but the note was addressed to Lord John Grey, in a neat, secretarial style quite at odds with the note’s casually obscure delivery. The message inside was in the same hand, but just as puzzling as the exterior.
My Lord,
I am told that you once employed a Man by the name of Thomas Byrd. This Man took Passage from England upon my Ship, the Pallas, and paid for his Passage upon Embarkation. However, he has formed an Attachment to a Young Person he met aboard—and this Young Person did not pay for her Passage, having instead stowed away in the Hold. Mr. Byrd says he will pay for her Passage, to avoid her being taken up by the Sheriff and gaoled, but does not possess ready Cash for this Purpose. Being reluctant to commit such a comely young Woman to the local Prison, I asked whether Mr. Byrd might have Friends who would bear his Expenses. He demurred, not wishing to presume upon his Acquaintance, but I had heard him mention your Name, whilst onboard, and so I take the Liberty of informing you of his Circumstances.
Should you wish to assist Mr. Byrd, or at least to speak with him, he is still aboard us. Pallas is docked at the eastern-most Warehouse Quay.
Your most humble and obedient Servant, sir,