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November 23 - December 10, 2021
“The trouble, lass,” he said, eyes fixed on the road ahead, “is just that. Gold does work everywhere. That’s why everyone wants it. And in turn, that’s why ye dinna want it to be widely known that ye have it—let alone in any quantity.” He turned his head toward her for a fraction of a moment, one eyebrow raised. “I would ha’ thought…I mean, from what ye told me about yon Rob Cameron…I thought ye’d know that.”
“Evidently you still look like you might have done the sorts of things that would get your picture on a Wanted poster,” she said, with a feeble attempt at humor.
Same maybe as above...
“Mind,” he said at last, “it’s nay a good thing to have done the sorts of things that earn ye a reputation as a madman that kills without thought or mercy. But looked at from the other side—it’s nay altogether a bad thing to have such a reputation.”
They went on without speaking further, the silence between them easier. But when they stopped to camp, just after moonrise, they ate without fire and she slept lightly and woke often, always seeing him near her, in the black shadow of a tree, his rifle by his right hand and a loaded pistol on his left.
There’s quite a thin line, sometimes, between a scientist and a voyeur, and I was aware that I was walking it, but Mrs. Cunningham was undeniably a mystery.
It was a raw emerald, a long rectangular crystal of cloudy green in a matrix of rough rock. I looked at it for several moments, rubbing my thumb gently over the surface. “You never know when it might come in handy, do you?” I said, under my breath, and tucked it into my bag.
He smiled at the memory of Jamie, passing round one of the earliest bottles of his own distilling, eyeing the drinkers closely in case any of them should fall over or die suddenly.
“I think it’s a wise man who knows how to be flexible in times such as these,” Roger countered, keeping his temper. “If he weren’t capable of walking between two fires, he’d have been ashes long since—and so would the people who depend on him.”
Roger went on, “As for whether there are principles Jamie Fraser will stand by, yes, there are, and God help anyone who stands between him and what he thinks he must do.
“Brianna said thee would be here with the captain, arranging matters for the new meetinghouse, so I thought I should join thy discussion.” She was wearing pale-gray calico with a dark-blue fichu, and the combination made her eyes go a deep, mysterious green.
Roger made a modest gesture of dismissal, but flushed a little with pleasure at the compliment; Jamie didn’t say such things lightly.
“Ye dinna think it makes a difference, do ye? That Jem’s mine by blood and Germain by love?”
Jem was an open, sweet-tempered lad, and Germain knew a good deal more about how people worked than did the average eleven-year-old ex-pickpocket, and shortly the three of them were to be seen everywhere together,
“I can’t give ye absolution—but I can listen.”
“Aye.” Jamie’s voice was husky and he cleared his throat, ducking his head, a little shy. “Aye, that’ll do fine. D’ye remember the night we took Claire back from the bandits?”
A thread of rueful amusement tinged his voice; Claire’s glass face was famous.
Mandy was here, and I didn’t think her insistent curiosity and voluble opinions would be of help in the present situation.
Mini-Claire💗
In other words, Claire, she IS your Mini-Me, as much as Jem is Jamie's😂
“Yess,” she said, in that cold, remote way. “It means two things. You can be got with child, and you can start to earn money.”
“You don’t really think that we intend you to be a whore, Fanny?” She heard the incredulousness in my voice, and blinked. Once. Then looked down again.
“I mean—we didn’t take you in because we thought you…you’d be profitable to us in some way. Not at all.” She turned her face away, with an almost inaudible sniffing noise. This was getting worse by the moment. I had a sudden memory of Brianna as a young teenager, and spending hours in her bedroom, mired in futile reassurances—no, you aren’t ugly; of course you’ll have a boyfriend when it’s time; no, everybody doesn’t hate you. I hadn’t been good at it then, and clearly those particular maternal skills hadn’t improved with age.
“Really, Fanny,” I said. “Speaking as one who knows both of them rather well, I can assure you that no one in the world could make either one of those men do anything whatever against his will. Mr. Fraser is stubborn as a rock, and his son is just like him. How long have you known William?” “Not…long,” she said, uncertain. “But—but he tried to save J-Jane. She liked him.” Sudden tears welled in her eyes, and she turned her face back into the pillow. “Oh,” I said, much more softly. “I see. You’re thinking of her. Of Jane.” Of course.
“Sassenach?” Jamie’s voice came from the doorway, husky with sleep. “What’s amiss? I rolled over and found Jem in my bed, instead of you.” He spoke calmly, but his eyes were fixed on Fanny’s shivering back. He glanced at me, one eyebrow raised, and moved his head slightly toward the doorjamb. Did I want him to leave?
“Ah,” Jamie said softly, and before I could stop him, he had bent down and gathered her gently up into his arms. I stiffened for an instant, afraid of having a man touch her just now—but she turned in to him at once, flinging her arms about his neck and sobbing into his chest.
“What happened to Fanny’s sister, Grannie?” I hesitated, looking down at him. He was only nine. And surely it was his parents’ place to tell him what they thought he should know. But Fanny was his friend—and God knew, she needed a friend she could trust. “Come down with me,” I said, turning him toward the stair with a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll tell you while I make more tea. And don’t bloody tell your mother I did.”
I tried to think whether I should tell him not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but on the one hand, he clearly hadn’t meant it that way—and for another, I was a blackened pot in that particular regard.
“I’d miss Mandy, if she killed somebody and got—” He gulped at the thought. I was somewhat concerned to note that the notion of Mandy killing someone apparently seemed reasonable to him, but then…
It was no more than a sketch, but the artist had caught a spark of life. Jane had been lovely in outline, straight-nosed and with a delicate, ripe mouth, but there was neither flirtation nor demureness in her expression. She was looking half over her shoulder, half smiling, but with an air of mild scorn in her look.
Behind me, I heard Jamie say, quite casually, “Frances, no man will ever take ye against your will, while I live.” There was a startled silence, and I turned round to see Fanny staring up at him. He touched her hand, very gently. “D’ye believe me, Frances?” he said quietly. “Yes,” she whispered, after a long moment, and all the tension left her body in a sigh like the east wind.
I made a small sound and hitched closer, laying my head in the curve of his shoulder, and his arm came round me. We lay still, silent, listening to the night and the house around us. Full of our family—but with one small angel hovering in the calm sweet air, peaceful as rising smoke.
Jamie said nothing, but I felt his hand move, under my hair. His middle finger folded down and the outer ones stood up straight, making the sign of the horns, against evil.
What does she say? Blood will tell? Here comes the superstitious Highlander😂
“Even if everything ye’ve made yourself think was somehow true—and it’s not, Sassenach; ye ken it’s not—but if it were somehow true, it wouldna make any difference. The woman in Frances’s locket is dead now, and so is our Faith.”
VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI
I was hoping this wasn't a Broger chapter as soon as I saw the title posting 🤪
Hoping for a multi pov chapter, and no ick factor, from ANYone. The kids scare me too.... Gimme a little Fersali or Ian/Rachel or even gives us a little Dottie and Denzell news or something !
“See,” he went on, and came up beside me, now anxious to explain, “I was teachin’ her le Français, she wants to learn it, so I was telling her the words for leech, and waterweed, and how to say things like, ‘Give me food, please,’ and ‘Go away, ye wicked sod.’ ” “How do you say, ‘Go away, you wicked sod’?” I asked, diverted. “Va t’en, espèce de méchant,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll remember that,” I said. “Never know when it might come in handy.”
Fergus had been born and grown up in a Paris brothel, to the age of nine, when Jamie had inadvertently collected him.
The best description yet! Way better than hired
“And what did you say?” I asked, hoping I sounded entirely calm. He swung round and glared at me, as though it were somehow my fault. He had a mustache of cream, absurdly touching. “I said awa’ and bile your heid! What else?” “What indeed?” I said lightly. “I’ll talk to Grand-père about it.”
By contrast with what he’d just told me, three hundred pounds of pork chops, lard, and rotting intestines seemed trivial.
“My stomach is full of snot?” She sounded so horrified that I had to bite my tongue and turn away for a moment, under the pretext of fetching a clean slide.
“Mrs. Higgins,” he gasped. “She got kilt by a bear. Mam’s bringing her.” “Killed,” I said automatically, and then, “What!”
Def spoiler so marking. But love Claire on autopilot correcting grammar first, then realizing the context of what was said.
AIDAN WAS WHITE as milk and he kept blinking his swollen red eyes, though he’d stopped greeting. He hadn’t stopped shaking. Jamie put a hand on the lad’s shoulder and could feel the tremble coming up from the earth through Aidan’s flesh.
Every instinct he had was for avoiding the house, where Claire and the women would be laying Amy out. But he’d been younger than Aidan was now when his own mother died, and he remembered the desolation of being shut out, sent away from the house while the women opened the windows and doors, covered the mirror, and went purposefully about with bowls of water and herbs, completing the secret rituals of taking his mother away from him. Besides, he thought bleakly, glancing down at the blanched wee lad stumbling along beside him, the boy had seen his mother dying in her blood little more than an
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Brianna was nearly as good as Jamie at hiding her feelings when she had to, but she wasn’t hiding anything now, and I saw the fear and anguish underneath the shock. She couldn’t bear to deal with Amy’s shattered body—and so had come to do so. Fraser, I thought, moved by her bravery as much as by her grief.
Ian didn’t disappoint the lad. He was carrying his own long rifle, with shot pouch and cartridge box, but had also brought a very large and wicked-looking knife, thrust through his belt unsheathed, and had a strung bow and a birch-bark quiver over his shoulder. He was shirtless, in buckskin leggings and loincloth, but had taken a moment to say his own prayers and apply his hunting paint: his forehead was red above the eyebrows and a thick white stripe ran down the bridge of his nose, with another on each side, running from cheekbone to jaw. White, he’d told Jamie, was for vengeance, or to
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Aidan—who knew Ian quite well in his Scottish person—had never seen him in purely Mohawk form before. He made a small whoof noise, awed. Jamie hid a smile, picking up his own dirk and the oilstone on which to sharpen it.
“Ach, Ian,” he said, suddenly noting his nephew’s bare chest. “D’ye maybe ken where my claw’s gone? The bear claw the Tuscarora gave me, I mean.” He hadn’t thought of the thing in years. He’d lent it to Ian some time back, to wear on a hunting trip. But it maybe wouldn’t be a bad thing to have with him just now, if it was handy. “Aye, I do.” Ian had sat down to fold up Aidan’s cartridges, quick and neat, and didn’t look up. “I gave it to my cousin William.” “Your cou— Oh.” He considered Ian, who still didn’t look up. “And when was this?” “Ach. Some time ago,” Ian said airily. “When I got him
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I heard the baying of Gillebride’s dogs in the near distance, and the thunder of Bluebell’s feet as she raced down the hall to meet them. They should be all right together; the MacMillan dogs were both male. Bluey was a female and not in heat, and as Jamie had told me in a wry moment, dogs don’t bite bitches. “Doesna always work the other way round, mind,” he’d said, and I didn’t quite smile at the memory, but felt the air press less heavily on me for a moment.
“I was by the creek. Your grandson passed me on his way to MacMillan’s and told me what was a-do. So I went along to Mr. Higgins and asked for his wife’s shroud.” She lifted the cloth slightly in illustration, and I saw the embroidered edges, done in greens, blues, and pinks. “Oh.” That Amy would have her shroud already prepared hadn’t occurred to me at all—though it should have. “Er…thank you, Mrs. Cunningham. That was very thoughtful of you.”
Common ground, finally.
Gillebride—his name meant “Oystercatcher,” he’d told me—calling
Named after GMacB?? Forgot to note earlier...
“Nay,” she said softly, her own eyes fixed on Amy. “I’ve buried three husbands and four bairns myself. Ye always want to look upon their faces, one last time. Nay matter what’s happened to them.”
Hmm will we get a bit more of HER story?
