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 nodded, looking out at the night, which spread its velvet cloak around us—momentarily spangled by a shower of sparks that shot out of the chimney on the other side of the house, fading to black before they touched down.
“I can’t stop Benedict Arnold,” I said quietly. “I couldn’t stop him, even if he was here right in front of me this minute. Could I?” I turned my head to him, appealing.
“No,” he said very softly, and took my hand. His was large and strong, but as cold as my own. “Come lie wi’ me, Sassenach. I’ll warm ye and we’ll watch the moon come down.”
SOMETIME LATER, WE lay curled together, naked in the cool night, happy in the warmth of each other’s body. The moon was coming down in the west, a sliver of silver that let the stars shine bright. The pale canvas rustled and murmured overhead, the scents of fir and oak and cypress surrounded us, and a random firefly, distracted from its business by a passing wind current, landed on the pillow by my head and sat for a moment, its abdomen pulsing with a regular cool-green light.
“Oidhche mhath, a charaid,” Jamie said to it. It waved its antennae in an amiable fashion and sailed off, circling down toward the distant flicker of its comrades on the ground.
“I wish we could keep our bedroom like this,” I said wistfully, watching its tail light disappear into the darkness below. “It’s so lovely, being part of the night.”
“Nay so much when it rains.” Jamie lifted his chin toward our canvas ceiling. “Dinna fash, though; I’ll have a solid roof on before snow flies.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, and laughed. “Do you remember our first cabin, when it snowed and the roof leaked? You insisted on going up to fix it, in the pelting blizzard—and stark naked.”
“Well, and whose fault was that?” he inquired, though without rancor. “Ye wouldna let me go up in my shirt; what choice did I have?”
“You being you, none at all.” I rolled over and kissed him. “You taste like apple pie. Is there any left?”
“No. I’ll go down and fetch ye a bite, though.”
I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“No, don’t. I’m not really hungry and I’d rather just stay like this. Mm?”
“Mmphm.”
He rolled toward me, then scooted down the bed and lifted himself between my thighs.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, as he settled comfortably into position.
“I should think that was obvious, Sassenach.”
“But you’ve just been eating apple pie!”
“It wasna that filling.”
“That … wasn’t quite what I meant …” His thumbs were thoughtfully stroking the tops of my thighs, and his warm breath was stirring the hairs on my body in a very disturbing way.
“If ye’re afraid of crumbs, Sassenach, dinna fash—I’ll pick them off after I’ve finished. Is it baboons ye said that do that? Or was it fleas they pick?”
“I don’t have fleas” was all I could manage in the way of a witty riposte, but he laughed, settled his shoulders, and set to work.
“I like it when ye scream, Sassenach,” he murmured a little later, pausing for breath.
“There are children downstairs!” I hissed, fingers buried in his hair.
“Well, try to sound like a catamount, then …”
A LITTLE LATER, I asked, “How far is it from here to Philadelphia?”
He didn’t answer at once, but gently massaged my bottom with one hand. Finally, he said, “Ken what Roger Mac said to me once? That to an Englishman, a hundred miles is a long way; to an American, a hundred years is a long time.”
I turned my head a little, to look at him. His eyes were fixed on the sky and his face was tranquil, but I knew what he was saying.
“How long, then?” I asked quietly, and laid a hand over his heart, to feel the reassurance of its slow, strong beating. He smelled of my own musk and his, and a tremor from the last little while echoed up my spine. “How long do we have, do you think?”
“Not long, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Tonight, it’s as far away as the moon. Tomorrow it may be in the dooryard.” The hairs on his chest had risen, whether from chilly air or the conversation, and he grasped my hand, kissed it, and sat up.
“Have ye ever heard of a man called Francis Marion, Sassenach?”
I paused in the act of reaching for my shift. He’d spoken very casually, and I glanced briefly at him. He had his back turned, and the scars on it were a mesh of fine silver lines.
“I might have,” I replied, looking critically at the hem of my shift. Slightly grubby, but it would do for one more day. I pulled it over my head and reached for my stockings. “Francis Marion … Was he known as the Swamp Fox?” I had vague memories of watching a Disney show by that name, and I thought the character’s name had been something Marion …
“He isn’t yet,” Jamie said, turning to look over his shoulder at me. “What d’ye know of him?”
“Very little, and that only from a television show. Though Bree could probably still sing the theme song—er, that’s music that was played at the beginning of each … er, performance.”
“The same music each time, ye mean?” A brow cocked with interest.
“Yes. Francis Marion … I recall him being captured by a British redcoat and tied to a tree in one episode, so he probably was a …” I stopped dead.
“Now,” I said, with that odd qualm of dread and awe that always came when I ran into one of Them. First Benedict Arnold, and now … “Francis Marion is … now, you mean.”
“So Brianna says. But she didna remember much about him.”
“Why are you interested in him, particularly?”
“Ach.” He relaxed, back on firmer ground. “Have ye ever heard of a partisan band, Sassenach?”
“Not unless you mean a political party, and I’m quite sure you don’t.”
“Like Whigs and Tories? No, I don’t.” He picked up the jug of wine, poured a cup, and handed it to me. “A partisan band is much like a band o’ mercenaries, save that they mostly dinna work for money. Something like a private militia, but a good deal less orderly in its habits.”
I’d seen a good many militia companies during the Monmouth campaign, and this made me laugh.
“I see. What does a partisan band do, then?”
He poured a cup of his own and lifted it to me in brief toast.
“Apparently they roam about, troubling Loyalists, killing freed slaves, and in general bein’ a burr under the saddle of the British army.”
I blinked. Walt Disney had apparently decided to omit a few things from the 1950s version of the Swamp Fox, and no wonder.
“Killing freed slaves? Whatever for?”
“The British are in the habit o’ freeing slaves who undertake to join the army. So Roger Mac says. Apparently Mr. Marion took—will take?—exception to this.” He frowned. “I think he’s maybe no doing it yet. I’ve not heard of any such thing, at least.”
I took a mouthful of the wine. It was muscat wine, cool and sweet, and it went down well on a night full of shadows.
“And where is Mr. Swamp Fox doing this?”
“Somewhere in South Carolina; I didna take notice of the details—I was taken up by the notion, ken?”
“Of a partisan band, you mean?” I’d been uneasy since I pulled my stockings on and had the absurd thought that perhaps I should take them off again. No running away from this particular conversation, though.
The fingers of his right hand moved slowly against his thigh, the soundless drumbeat of his thinking.