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November 23 - December 10, 2021
“I have heard of double agents, and met them, too,” he said, more or less politely. “But damned if I’ve seen one less able to make up his mind. Would you care to tell me which side you’re really on?”
“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.
She didn’t reply at once, but went to the sideboard and took down a bulbous black bottle. He recognized it; it was the German brandy Papa and Uncle Hal called black brandy, though the name was really “Blood of Martyrs.” He waved it away impatiently. “I don’t need a drink.” “Smell it.” She’d uncorked the bottle and now held it under his nose. He took an impatient sniff, then stopped. And sniffed again, more cautiously. “I don’t pretend to be a judge of brandy,” Amaranthus said, watching him. “But Father Pardloe did give me a glass of this once. And it didn’t smell—or taste—like this.” “You
...more
“A few weeks ago, Father Pardloe asked me did I know what foxglove is. I told him I did, and that he’d seen it—Mrs. Anderson has quite a lot of it bordering the front walk of her garden.” She took a short breath, as though her corset was too tight, and met William’s eye. “I told him it was poisonous. And I found that”—she nodded at the bottle—“locked up in the strongbox in his office. He gave me a key some time ago,” she added pointedly, “because all of my jewelry is in it.”
Denys Randall.
What does he have to do with Richardson? Was there a Randall family secret about time traveling inlaws in the future and Frank came across that, TOO?!
An instant later, she was hugging him, but not with the fervor of a lover. More the action of a stranded swimmer reaching for a floating log, he thought.
She's probably wondering who disappears next
“A bad man,” William said, his lips feeling stiff. “God knows who he really is, but he seems to be—I don’t know, exactly. ‘Major General Inspector of the Army’? I’ve never heard of such an office, but—”
There was a rather solid-looking clock and the bottle of brandy, but both were some distance away, on the far side of the cabin…God damn it, that was his bottle of brandy! He recognized the handwritten label, even at this distance. The bastard had been burgling his house!
“I’m well aware of it.” There was a note of grimness in that remark, and it gave Grey an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“I think you have a good idea what I mean, Colonel. She told you, didn’t she? She’s the most intemperate woman I’ve ever met, in this century or any other.” Grey started involuntarily at that, and cursed himself as he saw the look of satisfaction in Richardson’s eyes. What the devil did I just tell him? “Ah, yes. Well, then—” Richardson leaned forward. “I am also—what Mrs. Fraser, and her daughter and grandchildren, are.”
Grey shut his eyes and waited a moment, sighed deeply, and opened them. “I’d hoped I was dreaming, but you’re still there, I see,” he said. “Is that my brandy? If so, give me some. I’m not listening to this sort of thing sober.”
Plainly the man wasn’t going to shut up until he’d got his entire theory laid out—such people never did.
When had he taken it off? And why?
Wtf
“I mean—it was Culloden, but…it was different.”
Since Jenny
But I could see his face; it shone like the sun.” This description of his late godfather was more than peculiar; Murtagh had been one of the more dour specimens of Scottish manhood ever produced in the Highlands.
“I dinna ken, quite…there was Alex Kincaid, and Ronnie…” “Ronnie MacNab?” I blurted, astonished. “Aye,” he said, scarcely noticing my interruption. His brows were drawn inward in concentration, and there was still something of an odd radiance about his own face. “My father was there, too, and my grandsire—”
Bizarre
I didn’t want to point out to him that everyone he’d mentioned so far was dead. Many of them hadn’t even been on the field that day—Alex Kincaid had died at Prestonpans, and Ronnie MacNab…I glanced involuntarily at the fire, glowing on the new black slate of the hearthstone. But Jamie was still looking into the depths of his dream.
“Did you take your clothes off in your dream?” I asked, touching his bare chest. He looked down at my finger, blank-faced. Then let his breath out explosively.
“God. I’d forgot that part. It was him—Jack Randall. He came out o’ nowhere, walking through the fight, stark naked.” “What?” “Well, dinna ask me, Sassenach, I dinna ken why. He just…was.” His hand floated back to his chest, gingerly touching the small hollow in his breastbone. “And I dinna ken why I was, either. I just…was.”
“Jesus, it looks like a coconut,” Roger blurted from his spot kneeling on the floor behind me. “ARRRGHHHH! NGGGGHHH! I’m going to kill you! You—effing—”
“Fanny? If he falls over, drag him out of the way.”
“Where’s his Apgar?” Fanny said, frowning at the baby. “Is that what you call his—”
A light tap on the doorjamb announced the advent of Patience and Prudence Hardman, their faces alight with curiosity.
So where the hell are Jem and Mandy? It's THEIR mother and THEIR new sibling? Details, diana!!!
Roger and Jamie looked hastily away,
“Nay, ye dinna want to have a Jemmy and a Jamie,” he objected. “They’ll never ken who’s bein’ called.
Bree declaring emphatically that she wasn’t having little Anonymous going without a name for months,
She yawned and looked up at Jamie, who was looking at the little boy with such tenderness that it struck me in the heart and tears came to my eye.
“And Ian, maybe?”
Isn't Ian one of Jem's names???
“Here, Grandda,” Roger said, and carefully laid wee David William Ian Fraser MacKenzie in his grandfather’s arms, the little boy’s head cupped in Jamie’s big hand, held gently as a soap bubble. Fanny, straightening up beside me with an armful of soiled and reeking linens, turned from this beatific scene and looked at me seriously. “I am never getting married,” she said.
Palatine Germans
not meaning to tell her about Locke’s letter and his thoughts—just wanting the momentary comfort of her presence.
He seldom did, having a superstitious fear about attracting misfortune by dwelling on it.
Jeez imagine if he did dwell....🙃
“Ye’ll take care of her, aye?” he said at last, speaking soft to the bees. “If she comes to you and says I’m gone, ye’ll feed her and take heed for her?”
“I trust ye with her,”
If ye’d been talking with a dead man for the last year, ye might reasonably have some doubts, he thought.
Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (damned if I’ll put his name in this) Fraser,
Ha! Love petty jamie!
his tools (those were for Brianna,
whether it was love, sinful pride, or something even worse, he couldn’t die without leaving something of himself to William. And I’m no dying without claiming William in public, whether I’m there to see his face when he hears it or not.
…one hundred Pounds in Gold, the three Casks of Whisky marked with JFS, and my green Bible. May he find Succor and Wisdom in its Pages. “He might find more in the whisky,” Jamie murmured to himself, but his soul felt lighter.
Slainte 🥃
Ten pounds each to all of the grandchildren, by name. It made him happy, seeing the whole list. Jem, Mandy, Davy, Germain, Joanie, Félicité—he made a small cross on the paper for Henri-Christian, and felt his throat grow tight—and the new wee boys, Alexandre and Charles-Claire. And any further issue of…any of my children. That was an odd feeling, to think not only that Brianna might bear more bairns but also Marsali—her sister Joan, if she married (damn, he’d forgot to put Joanie with his other children; more scratching out…)—or William’s wife, whoever she might be.
From only Fergus, even though Jenny and Ian cared for him, to Marsali and Joanie, to leaving William unclaimed, to FINALLY learning of and then seeing Bree, to this absolute clan!🥺🥰 Plus Ian's family who haven't yet been addressed.
He thought being a ghost might well be interesting…There were a number of folk he wouldn’t mind calling on in such a state, just to see the looks on their faces…
👻
Damn, he’d forgotten Jenny, Ian, and Rachel, and wee Hunter James Little Wolf—and Rachel’s new unknown, who wasn’t due until the spring.
Aha here they are
I hadn’t thought that no one—besides me—would bring anything substantial in the way of food or medical supplies, nor did I realize that none of the militia leaders knew where we were going.
(Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, I thought. Had Frank’s parents actually named him after Benjamin Franklin? Calm down, Beauchamp, you’re becoming hysterical…)
“And I said that if ye were molested or troubled in any way, I would take my men right away and fight on my own.” Consequently, I wasn’t troubled or molested, and while the staring and muttering continued for a bit, it didn’t take more than a week of my attending to the minor accidents and ills that beset an army until that stopped, too. I had become the company medic, and there were no more questions as to what I was doing there.
Even Roger was visibly armed, with pistol and knife, though he normally didn’t carry his gun loaded and primed. “I stand a much better chance hitting someone on the head with it,” he’d told me. “Carrying it loaded just means I could shoot myself in the foot more easily.”
Mandy came up the steps covered in mud, to show me a bone she’d found by the lake and ask who’d owned it. I took it, looked at it, and told her it was from the backbone of a beaver, and she looked at me and asked did I hear animals.”
“No, I don’t think I did know that.”
“I asked her that, and she said they can, aye—but not everybody. Just each other and their parents. And you, but not so much.”
