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November 23 - December 10, 2021
The realization that he’d thought about Da so casually, thinking of him as still alive, made him feel as though he’d missed the last stair and come down staggering.
“Blessed Mother, the look on Laoghaire’s face when she saw the lass! And then the one when she tried to claim Mam’s pearls and Brianna shut her up like a writing desk!”
“Aye…” she said cautiously. “Some taradiddle about stone circles and faeries, as I recall.”
Grrr Jenny (& diana)... twaddle, but asked her to save Ian. And what about the Savannah family talk? Was Jenny in the privy?
“Ye’re tellin’ me your grandson is that Jemmy, and the dark-haired man is…”
He let her alone, remembering all too well the mix of incredulity, bewilderment, and fear that he’d felt when Claire, battered and hysterical after he’d rescued her from the witch trial in Cranesmuir, had finally told him what she was. He also remembered vividly what he’d said at the time. “It would ha’ been easier if ye’d only been a witch.” That made him smile, and he squatted down in front of his sister.
“Last time we met,” she said, “I thought I’d like it if ye kissed my hand, but ye didn’t.”
It reminded me, suddenly and without warning, of making camp on an expedition with my Uncle Lamb: the same higgledy-piggledy bustle of objects, good spirits, relief and happiness, expectation.
So give us Wee Claire and Uncle Lamb!!!
“I hope ye like this house, Sassenach,” he said, and took a deep gulp of air, “because I’m never building ye another.”
And bless, O bless to me the angeling of my rest;
No wonder it was familiar, TFC? Now I need to look it up!
Edit: yep, ch 25.
“Do they actually make books now for children Mandy’s age?” I asked, looking down at her. Bree had said she could read a bit already, but I’d never seen anything in an eighteenth-century printshop that looked like it would be comprehensible—let alone appealing—to a three-year-old.
“Okay,” Bree said, and opened it. “Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”
That made Fanny, Jemmy, and Roger laugh, which turned Mandy incandescent with rage. She might not have the red hair, I thought, but she had the Fraser temper, in spades.
I could have told him—but if he hadn’t learned it from sharing a household with assorted Frasers for years, it wouldn’t do any good to tell him now—that the very last thing you should say to one in full roar was “Calm down.” Like putting out an oil fire on your stove by throwing a glass of water on it.
My grandma was a "Frazee" and her temper was inherited and I've been trying to get 'someone' to understand this for years!!
Jamie reached out, wrapped an arm round her middle, gathered her in, and put a big hand on the nape of her neck. “Hush, a nighean,” he said, and she did. She was panting like a little steam engine, red-faced and teary, but she stopped.
“Oh.” He relaxed at once, having total faith in his grandfather’s ability to charm anything from an unbroken horse to a rabid hedgehog.
“Everybody shut up,” she said firmly. “I read.”
Oh, Mandy, how I wish I could say this!!!!
“For presents,” Bree said, half apologetically. “I thought about it for a long time. I didn’t know if I’d ever find you—any of you—” she added, with a serious glance at Roger. “And I wanted to bring something that would last, even if it got destroyed or lost.”
Art imitating 2016 fic 😂
“It’s what folk will have found out—then. Things about healing that ye dinna ken yet, yourself. Though I’m guessing ye do ken not to eat shite?”
“They all go together,” Roger said gruffly. “It’s all one story, I mean, but printed in three volumes.” “Oh, aye?” Jamie turned over one of the books gingerly, as though afraid it might disintegrate in his hands. “It’s glued, is it? The binding?” “Aye,” Roger said, smiling. “It’s called a paperback, that sort of wee book. They’re cheap and light.” Jamie weighed the book on his hand and nodded, but he was already reading the back cover. “Frodo Baggins,” he read aloud, and looked up, baffled. “A Welshman?” “Not exactly. Brianna thought the tale might speak to ye,” Roger said, his smile deepening
...more
“Oh,” I said, and the tone of my voice made Jamie look at me, rather than at the hardbound book in its plastic-covered dust jacket. The Soul of a Rebel, it said. The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution. By Franklin W. Randall, PhD. Bree was looking at Jamie, a small anxious frown between her brows, but at this, she turned to me. “I haven’t read it yet,” she said. “But you—either of you,” she added, glancing between me and Jamie, “are welcome to read it anytime. If you want to.” I met Jamie’s eyes. His brows lifted briefly and he looked away.
“That’s just the Prologue,” I assured him. “You could skip that, if you like.” He shook his head, eyes fixed on the page, smiling. “If the author thought it was worth his writing it down, then it’s worth my reading it. I dinna mean to miss a single word.”
Hahahaha!!!
A book—any book—had a meaning well beyond its contents for a man who’d lived years at a time with little or no access to the printed word, and only the memory of stories to provide him and his companions escape from desperate circumstances.
“No.” I felt a small qualm at the admission. The fact was that while I’d read all of Frank’s articles, books, and essays during what I thought of as our first marriage, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read any of the books he’d written during our second go, save a brief look at one that dealt with the aftermath of Culloden, when I began to search for the men of Lallybroch.
“So it came down to a question of ships, no?” Jamie had been sitting, intent, fingers tapping lightly against his thigh, but now straightened up. “Would there be a great difference, did ye think? Between a ship built in 1739 and one built in 1775 or so?”
What I wondered! Advantages and disadvantages.
“From your point of view, a floating plank on the trout pond would be just as bad as the Queen Mary—that’s a really big ship.”
“Aye, well, I expect the food would be better on the latter,” he said, unperturbed by my teasing. “And as long as I had your wee stabbers in my face, I could choose on that basis. So, did ye ken the weather changed a great deal in forty years?” he asked, returning the conversation to Bree, who shook her head.
Jamie’s face changed and he looked down at the floor, suddenly abashed. “Ye…read it?” he asked, and cleared his throat.
“I—we—you can’t really talk, but you’re sort of aware of who’s with you, who you’re holding on to. But Mandy—and Jem, a little—are…kind of stronger than either Roger or me. And I—we—could hear Mandy, saying, ‘Grandda! Blue pictsie!’ And suddenly, we were…all on the same page, I guess you could say.”
“It’s okay, Grandda,” he said, his voice froggy with sleep. “Don’t cry. Ye got us here safe.”
“It’ll be one of these days for everyone, mo ghràidh. If it weren’t, people wouldn’t think they need a minister. As for your da…as long as your mother’s here, I think he’ll be all right, no matter what.”
“I think everybody feels like that about them both. If they’re here, everything will be all right.”
“Aye. The essential social services of Fraser’s Ridge,” he said dryly. “Your mother’s the ambulance and your da’s the police.”
Oh lord....
“Oh, me?” she said. “I think maybe I’m the armorer.” She smiled, but the look in her eyes was serious. “We’re going to need one.”
He’d last seen John Cinnamon three years before, in Quebec,
Had to go look this up because parts of ECHO are a blur (thank you kindle search!); also John Cinnamon features more memorably in the LJG stories (via Lord John's cousin-in-law).
And Fraser had given that help, hadn’t he? At once and without question. Not only for Jane, but for her little sister, Frances.
he could certainly have given Fanny safely into Lord John’s keeping. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t even thought about it.
No. No, I am not sorry. The words echoed in his ear, and the touch of a big, warm hand cupped his cheek for an instant.
It was deep twilight now, one of his favorite times of day here.
Like father, like son. See ch15 DRUMS. Jamie loves twilight and tells Claire of being born circa-supper time (6:30)
McCoy.
Bones? 😂
“John Quincy it is. I’m Brianna Fraser MacKenzie.”
Seriously? They never met??
“Myers?” he said, handing me the bag of rabbits. “Did ye inquire after his balls?”
“Fine-lookin’ woman, your daughter,” Myers said, shaking his head in admiration. “Seen precious few women that size, and none of ’em what you’d call handsome. All pretty lively, though. How did she come to wed a preacher? You wouldn’t think a prayin’ man would be able to do right by her—I mean, in the ways of the flesh, as you might—”
Love him!!
I could see quite a few similarities between John Quincy Myers and a bee, in terms of gathering news, and smiled at the thought. I wondered if he’d be offended at finding out that someone had kept a juicy piece of gossip from him, but on the whole, I doubted that anyone did. He had a gentleness that invited confidence, and I was sure that he kept many people’s secrets.
“…for your Grandda and Grannie,” Germain read, and looked up, grinning hugely at me.
This whole section is 🥺
“Maman,” he whispered, and pressed the letter to his chest.
It wouldn’t be stretching things to say that what happened next was the worst physical experience of my life, as I lay on the ground in a spinning world of leaves and sky and overwhelming pain, bleeding to death and listening to a courier from General Lee trying to get Jamie to abandon me in the mud.
“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…”
There's our #FriskyFrasers I missed them❤️ The earlier scene hardly counts 😂
