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.
She smiled fully at that. She had a lovely smile.
“So we are. You must call me Cousin Amaranthus, then—it’s a plant,” she added, with the slightly resigned air of one frequently obliged to make this explanation. “Amaranthus retroflexus. Of the family Amaranthaceae. Commonly known as pigweed.”
Trevor, who to this point had been perched on his mother’s knee, goggling stupidly at William, now made an urgent noise and reached out toward him. Fearing lest the child escape his mother’s clutches and pitch face-first onto the brick pathway, William grabbed him round the midsection and hoisted him onto his own knee, where the little boy stood, wobbling and crowing, beaming into William’s face. Despite himself, William smiled back. The boy was handsome, when not screeching, with soft dark hair and the pale-blue eyes common to the Greys.
“Wotcha, then, Trev?” he said, lowering his head and pretending to butt the child, who giggled and clutched at his hair.
“He looks quite like Benjamin,” he said, extracting his ears from Trevor’s grip. “And my uncle. I hope I don’t give you pain by saying so?” he added, suddenly unsure. She shook her head, though, and her smile turned rueful.
“No. It’s as well that he does. Your uncle was somewhat suspicious of me, I think. We married rather in haste,” she explained, in answer to William’s inquiring look, “and while Benjamin did write to tell his father of the marriage, his letter apparently didn’t reach England before His Grace left for the colonies. So when I discovered that His Grace was in Philadelphia, and wrote to him myself …” She lifted one shoulder in a graceful shrug and glanced toward the house.
“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Is he an Indian?”
William felt a sudden weight come back, one that he’d shed without noticing it over the last few minutes.
“Yes,” he said. “His mother was half Indian, half French, he says. Though I can’t say to what Indian nation she might have belonged. She died when he was an infant, and he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Quebec.”
Amaranthus was interested. She leaned forward, looking toward the house.
“And his father?” she asked. “Or does he know anything of his father?”
William glanced involuntarily at the house again, but all was silent.
“As to that,” he said, groping for something to say that was not a lie, but still something short of the full truth, “it’s a long story—and it’s not my story to tell. All I can say is that his father was a British soldier.”
“I did notice his hair,” Amaranthus said, dimpling. “Most remarkable.” She glanced past him at the house, and reached to take the baby back. “Will you be staying with his lordship?”
“I don’t think so.” Still, the thought of being home—even if home was a place he’d never been before—swept through him with a sudden longing. Apparently Amaranthus perceived this, for she leaned toward him and put a gentle hand on his.
“Will you not stay—just for a bit? I know Uncle John would like it; he misses you very much. And I should like to know you better.”
The simple sincerity of this statement moved him.
“I—should like to,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t—that is, it may depend upon my friend. Upon his conversation with my father.”
“I see.” She petted Trevor, smoothing his soft hair and snuggling him into her shoulder. William had a sudden pang of envy, seeing it. Amaranthus, though, rose and stood swaying with the child in her arms, her own light hair lifting in the breeze as she looked at the house.
“I should like to go inside, but I don’t want to disturb them. I wonder what can be taking so long?”
32
Lhude Sing Cuccu!
JOHN GREY STOOD FOR a moment, blinking at the door through which his son had just vanished, and feeling just behind him the enormous quandary perched on a tiny gilt chair. Without the slightest notion what might happen next, he turned round and said the only thing possible in the circumstances.
“Would you like some brandy, Mr. Cinnamon?”
The young man sprang up at once, graceful in spite of his size and the look of profound anxiety stamped upon his broad features. The mixture of dread and hope in John Cinnamon’s eyes wrung Grey’s heart, and he put a hand gently on the young man’s arm, turning him toward the sturdiest piece of furniture available, a wide-armed chair with a solid oak frame.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to this object. “And let me get you something to drink. I daresay you need it.” I certainly do, he thought, heading for the door that led into the kitchen. What in God’s name am I to say to him?
Neither the time consumed in finding brandy, nor the ceremonious pouring of it, provided him with any answers. He sat down in the green-striped wing chair and picked up his own brandy, feeling a most peculiar mix of dismay and exhilaration.
“I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance again, Mr. Cinnamon,” he said, smiling. “I last saw you at the age of six months or so, I believe. You’ve grown.”
Cinnamon flushed a little at this—an improvement over the pallor with which he’d entered the room—and bobbed his head awkwardly.
“I—thank you,” he blurted. “For seeing to my welfare all these years.”
Grey lifted a hand in brief dismissal, but asked curiously, “How many years has it been? How old are you?”
“Twenty, sir—or ought I to call you ‘my lord’ or ‘Excellency’?” he asked, anxiety still evident.
“‘Sir’ is quite all right,” Grey assured him. “May I ask how you fell into company with my—with William?”
Having a straightforward story to tell seemed to relax the young man somewhat, and by the time he’d got through it all, the brandy in his glass had sunk to amber dregs and his manner was substantially less anxious. With Cinnamon’s size in mind, Grey had poured with a lavish hand.
Manoke, he thought, with mingled exasperation and amusement. No point in being angry; Manoke made his own rules, and always had. At the same time, though … Despite the intermittent and casual nature of their relationship, Grey trusted the Indian more than anyone, with the exception of his own brother or Jamie Fraser. Manoke wouldn’t put Cinnamon on his trail for the sake of mischief; either he’d thought Cinnamon likely was his son and therefore had a right to know it—or having met William as an adult, he’d thought that Grey might need another son.
Perhaps he did, he thought, with a small clench of the belly. If William chose to deal with the problem of his paternity by simply disappearing … or even if he didn’t … but no. It wouldn’t do, he concluded, with a surprising sense of regret.
“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Cinnamon,” he said, eyes on the brandy as he poured another glass for the young man. “I must begin by apologizing.”
“Oh, no!” Cinnamon burst out, sitting upright. “I would never expect you to—I mean, there’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, there is. I ought to have written down a brief account of your circumstances when I put you in the care of the Catholic brothers at Gareon, rather than simply leave you there with nothing but a name. It is difficult, though,” he added with a smile, “to look at a six-month-old child and envision the … er … ultimate result of passing time. Somehow, one never thinks that children will grow up.” He had a passing vision of Willie at the age of two and a half, small and fierce—and already beginning to resemble his real father.
Cinnamon looked down at his very broad hands, braced on his knees—and then, as though he couldn’t help it, stared at Grey’s slender hand, still wrapped around the brandy bottle. Then he looked up at Grey’s face, searching for kinship.