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.
Richardson regarded him for a long moment, then, with a brief nod to himself, rose and fetched a leather folder from the shelf and sat down again. He opened the folder and removed an official-looking document, complete with seal and stamp, though Grey couldn’t tell from where he sat whose seal it was.
“Are you familiar with a man named Neil Stapleton?” Richardson asked, cocking one brow.
“In what sense, familiar?” Grey asked, raising both of his. “I might have heard the name, but if so, it’s been some time.” It had been some time, but the name “Neil Stapleton”—better known to Grey as Neil the Cunt—had struck him in the pit of the stomach with the force of a two-pound round shot. He hadn’t seen Stapleton in many years, but he certainly hadn’t forgot the man.
“Perhaps I should have inquired as to whether you knew him … in the biblical sense?” Richardson asked, watching Grey’s face. He pushed the document toward Grey, whose eyes fixed at once on the heading: Confession of Neil Patrick Stapleton.
No, he thought. Bloody hell, no …
He took up the document, glad in a remote way to see that his hands weren’t shaking, and read a moderately detailed and quite accurate account of what had occurred between himself and Neil Stapleton on the night of April 14, 1759, and again on the afternoon of May 9 of the same year.
He laid down the document and stared at Richardson over it.
“What did you do to him?” he asked. His stomach tightened at the thought of what they—for surely it was a “they” and not this man alone—might have done to a man like Neil.
“Do to him?” Richardson said, looking bland.
“Blackmail, bribery, torture …? He didn’t write this of his own free will. What sane man would?” And whatever else he might be, Neil had never been lacking in his wits.
Richardson shrugged.
“Is he alive?” Grey said, between his teeth.
“Do you care?” Richardson seemed only faintly interested. “Oh—but of course you do. If he were dead, you could claim that this document is a forgery. But I’m afraid that Mr. Stapleton is, in fact, still alive, though I naturally cannot guess as to how long he’ll stay in that condition.”
Grey stared at him. Was the fellow actually now threatening to have Neil killed? But that made no sense.
“He is, however, in London. Fortunately, though, I have additional … testimony, shall we say?—nearer to hand.” He rose and went to the cabin door, opened it, and put his head out.
“Come in,” he said, and stepped back to allow Percy Wainwright room to enter.
PERCY LOOKED DREADFUL, Grey thought. He was disheveled, his neckcloth missing, and his curly, graying hair matted in spots, sticking up in others. He was pale as skimmed milk, with dark circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves were bloodshot and fixed on Grey at once.
“John,” he said, a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat, hard, then looked away and said, “I’m sorry, John. I’m not brave. You’ve always been brave, but I never have.”
This was no more than the truth, acknowledged between them and part of the love they’d once shared; John had always been willing to be brave for both of them. He felt a tinge of sympathetic pity beneath the larger sense of annoyance—and the very much larger sense of fear.
“So you made him sign a statement of confession, too,” he said to Richardson, doing his best to keep calm.
Richardson pursed his lips and opened the folder again, this time drawing out a longer document. Well, it would be longer, wouldn’t it? Grey thought. How long were we lovers?
“Unnatural acts and incest,” Richardson remarked, turning over the pages of the new document. “Dear me, Lord John. Dear me.”
“Sit down, Percy,” Grey said, feeling unutterably tired. He caught a brief glimpse of the document’s heading, though, and his spirits rose a fraction of an inch. Confession of P. Wainwright, it said. So Percy had kept that one last bit of self-respect; he hadn’t given Richardson his real first name. He tried to catch Percy’s eye, but his erstwhile stepbrother was looking down at his hands, folded in his lap like a schoolchild’s.
You did try to warn me, didn’t you?
“You’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble for nothing, Mr. Richardson,” he said coolly. “I don’t care what you do with these documents; a gentleman does not submit to blackmail.”
“Actually, almost all of them do,” Richardson said, almost apologetically. “As it is, though, I’m not blackmailing you.”
“You’re not?” Grey waved a hand at the folder and its small sheaf of papers. “What on earth is this charade in aid of, then?”
Richardson folded his own hands on the desktop, leaned back, and looked at Grey, evidently assembling his thoughts.
“I have a list,” he said, finally. “Of persons whose actions have led—either directly or indirectly, but without doubt—to a particular outcome. In some cases, the person him—or her—self performs the action; in others, he or she merely facilitates it. Your brother is one who will facilitate a particular course of action that in turn will decide this war.”
“What?” … actions have led … will facilitate … will decide … He shot a sideways glance at Percy, who was looking up, but with an attitude of complete bewilderment, and no wonder.
“What, indeed?” Richardson had been watching the play of thoughts on Grey’s face. “I may be mistaken, but I believe that your brother intends to make a speech to the House of Lords. And I further believe that the effects of that speech will affect the will of the British army—and hence Parliament—to pursue this war.”
Percy was listening to this in total bewilderment, and Grey didn’t blame him.
“I desire that your brother not make that speech,” Richardson concluded. “And I think that your life and honor are probably the only things that would prevent him doing so.” He cocked his head to one side, watching Grey.
Grey blinked.
“If you think that, plainly you don’t know my brother.”
Richardson smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression.
“You’ve seen a man hanged for sodomy.”
“I have.” He had, in fact, not only attended that hanging but had pulled on Bates’s legs in the desperate hope of hastening his end. He found that one hand was idly rubbing his chest, in the place where Bates had kicked him.
“The American colonies are no more tolerant of perversion than is England—probably less. Though you might have the luck to be stoned to death by a mob rather than formally hanged,” he added judiciously, and nodded toward the papers on the desk. “Your brother will appreciate the position, I assure you. You—and Mr. Wainwright—will remain aboard as my guests, while copies of these statements are delivered to your brother. What happens to you after that will depend upon His Grace.”
He closed the folder, picked it up, and bowed.
“I’ll have some food brought. Good day, gentlemen.”
137
Infamous and Scandalous Acts
WILLIAM’S FIRST RESPONSE TO learning of his father’s disappearance was to go and look for him. He began at General Prévost’s headquarters.
No one had seen Lieutenant Colonel Lord John Grey, he was told. They would like very much to know where he was, though, as Regimental Colonel His Grace the Duke of Pardloe had left responsibility for the soldiers remaining in Savannah in Colonel Lord John’s hands, and while the executive officers over these soldiers were fully capable of keeping the men fit and in order, they would certainly appreciate more specific orders, when these should be forthcoming.