Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone (Outlander, #9)

by Diana Gabaldon

“I have no idea what John thinks,” I said evenly. “But since he says ‘contemplate his future,’ I assume that he means William has doubts. Brianna is an outsider in this; she’d have a different perspective on things. She could listen without getting personally involved.” “Ha,” he said. “That lassie is personally involved in every damned thing she touches. She gets it from you,” he added, with an accusing look at me. “And she doesn’t give up on anything she’s made up her mind to do,” I said, settling back in my chair and folding my hands in my lap. “She gets that from you.” “Thank you.” “It wasn’t necessarily a compliment.”

“All right,” he said, lowering his hand. “What is it ye have in mind, then, mo nighean ruadh?” Roger gave a mild snort of amusement at hearing him call Brianna “my redhaired lass,” and I smiled into my whisky. It neatly carried the simultaneous implications that whatever she had in mind was likely reckless to an alarming degree—and that her propensity for such recklessness had likely come from her redheaded sire.

“Not to recruit, a bhalaich. To sit in the silence and ask forgiveness.”

“I haven’t an heir. Are you suggesting—” “Yes, exactly.” She nodded approvingly at him. “You marry me and as soon as I have a son, you can give him your title, and either retire into private life and breed dachshunds or perhaps pretend to commit suicide and go off to become anyone you like.” “Leaving you—” “Leaving me as the dowager countess of whatever your estate is called, I forget. That might be slightly better than being the Duke of Pardloe’s penurious daughter-in-law, mightn’t it?”

So where is this heading? If she covering her ass, Ben IS dead, or a complete fraud and schemer?

“It was like being pecked to death by a flock of small parrots,” he told Hal. “Screeching, and feathers everywhere.”

“FANNY AND CYRUS SITTING in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Roger said as he came into the surgery. I laughed, but looked guiltily over my shoulder. “They’d better not be. Jamie’s roaming about like a wolf, seeking whom he may devour.”

“Meaning he’s damned if he’ll do it but he can’t just tell them to go directly to hell without passing Go. If he did, the only thing stopping them from adding the Ridge to their visiting list would be distance.”

“Yes and no. He’s modest about it, but he is the Worshipful Master. And frankly, any place with him in it tends to be his territory.”

His adoptive father—who had been, in fact, his great-uncle—had been a Presbyterian minister,

We know..... editor???

“Get out of the garden!” Roger bellowed. The crunching noises of feet through turnips ceased instantly, and he dismissed the potential damage from his mind, needing all his attention to detach Mandy from his soggy leg while trying to say comforting things to Fanny.

What a clusterf*ck.....!

Ambulance and police…aye, that would be Claire and Jamie, he thought with a tinge of wry amusement.

Whoever had drawn it had been a talented artist—but the girl on the page had been something special in herself. Beautiful, yes, but with a sense of…what? Vitality, attraction—but she also gave off an air of challenge, he thought. And while the beautiful mouth and sidelong glance offered a seductive half smile, they communicated also determination—and a sense of simmering rage that raised the hairs on Roger’s nape. He remembered that this girl had killed a man with her own hands, and with premeditation. To save her little sister from a fate she knew too well.

“Well, it will still smell like sauerkraut,” Jamie said, unlidding one of the crocks. “But cabbage will mostly damp other smells, so the fish—or whatever it was—willna be so bad. Besides, Claire says your nose gets used to anything and then ye willna be bothered about it.” “Oh, does she?” Roger muttered. His mother-in-law was not the one who was going to travel three hundred miles with a wagonload of reeking barrels and three children shouting, “Pee-yew!” all the way to the coast.

“The good news is that with a current like that, you won’t get leeches. What she said to Da—or what she quoted herself as having said, which isn’t necessarily the same thing—was: ‘You’re telling me that you mean to turn a perfectly respectable Presbyterian minister into a gunrunner, and send him in a wagon full of dodgy gold and illegal whisky to buy a load of guns from an unknown smuggler, in company with your daughter and three of your grandchildren?’ ”

“That would buy us a little time, at least.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “I like the way ye say ‘us,’ Sassenach.” I flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I know it’s you that has to do the dirty work. But—” “I wasna joking, Sassenach,” he said softly, and smiled at me. “If I get torn limb from limb doin’ this, who’s going to stitch me back together, if not you?”

That, and the fact that George Washington was so furious with Charles Lee’s behavior on the field at Monmouth that he was unlikely to turn on Jamie Fraser—a man who had followed him through those fields and fought alongside his men with courage and gallantry.

“But what I likely will do,” he said into his chest, “is to send Cleveland and the others each a bottle o’ the two-year-old whisky, along wi’ a letter saying that my barley’s just been cut and I canna leave it to rot, or there’ll be no whisky next year.”

He laughed and poured a ewer of water over his head, then set it down and stood for a moment, hands braced on the washstand, head down, dripping into the basin—and all over the floor.

The chair was remarkably helpful for soothing babies or small, wiggly children that I wanted to examine—and just as helpful for calming my own mind when I had to retreat from the stresses of daily life, in order to avoid throttling people.

“For entertainment?” I smiled. While both Roger and the captain had small but devoted congregations, there were not a few of the Ridge inhabitants who would come to listen to anyone willing to get up and talk, and who sat through all of the Sunday services, including Rachel’s meetings, later comparing critical opinions of each preacher’s remarks.

Editor, again.

He picked up the gin bottle and smelled it thoughtfully. “Rhubarb, ye say. If I drink more of this, will it give me the shits?” “I don’t know. Try it and see,” I advised him, holding out my own cup for more.

He paused, head bent, looking down at the ground, where a small pile of fresh mule apples marked Clarence’s mood. “Ye healed me of something a good deal worse, Sassenach,” he said, and touched my hand gently. He’d touched me with his right hand, the maimed one. “I didn’t,” I protested. “You did that yourself—you had to. All I did was…er…” “Drug me wi’ opium and fornicate me back to life? Aye, that.” “It wasn’t fornication,” I said, rather primly—though my hand turned, my fingers lacing tight with his. “We were married.” “Aye, it was,” he said, and his mouth tightened, as well as his grip. “It wasna only you I was swiving, and ye ken that as well as I do.” If I did, it wasn’t anything I was ever going to admit, let alone discuss, and I let it lie.

“But I grant ye, neither of us could do the like for Frances. Maybe Cyrus can—by not touchin’ her.” He kissed my hand, let it go, and bent to pick up his hammer.

I liked this thought

as I turned back, I saw Jamie. He was on his knees on the hearth, looking down at the dead little girl, with an expression on his face that stopped my heart.

“All the colors o’ the earth,” he said, and smoothed the hair from my face. “But here, all about your face—it’s the color of moonlight, mo ghràidh.”

Rachel was very fond of her mother-in-law, but then she adored Oggy and loved Ian madly—and she really didn’t want the company of any of them just now.

“Much the same. I gave them a bit of Uncle Jamie’s whisky.” “How very hospitable of thee, Ian.” “That wasna exactly my intention, but I suppose I should take credit for it, if it makes ye think more highly of me.”

“Fearless?” she said, incredulous. “Me?” She made a noise that Rachel would have spelled as “Psssht.” “I’ve been scairt to the bone since I was ten years old, a leannan. But ye get used to it, ken?”

“I kent mine—and if ye ever want to know what she looked like, just go and have a keek at Brianna, for she’s Ellen MacKenzie Fraser to the life—though a wee bit bigger.”

“Oh, no scairt for myself, a nighean, I dinna think I’ve ever worrit about bein’ killed or the like. No, scairt for them. Scairt I wouldna be able to manage, to take care o’ them.” “Them?” “Jamie and Da,” Jenny said, frowning a little at the squashy ground under her feet. It had rained hard the night before, and even the open ground was muddy. “I didna ken how to take care of them. I kent well I couldna fill my mother’s place for either one. See, I thought they’d die wi’out her.”

“Well, no,” she said mildly. “Thee has a point.”

“But…” The words died in his throat. He kent his mother well enough to see that she meant it. And no matter what the Frasers said their motto was, he kent fine that it might as well have been Stubborn as a Rock. He’d seen that look on Uncle Jamie’s face often enough to recognize it now.

“Besides,” he said, shrugging. “She says she’s comin’ with us. So she is.”

Jamie had pulled his plaid up over his head to keep the drips out. Old and worn as his plaid was, it was still warm and still shed water. I should have told Claire I want to be buried in it if a bear gets the better of me; it’ll be cozy against the grave-damp.

Besides, they had only a few quilts and one woolen trade blanket he’d got from a Moravian trader. A good bear rug would be a comfort to Claire in the deep cold nights; she felt the cold more now than the last time they’d spent a winter on the Ridge.

A goat has a mind of its own.” “Aye, and so do you. Ian always said ye liked the goats because they’re just as stubborn as you are.” She gave him a long, level look. “Pot,” she said succinctly. “Kettle,” he replied, flicking a plucked grass stem toward her nose. She grabbed it out of his hand and fed it to the goat.

Jenny relaxed and drew breath, and, taking up the conversation where she’d left it, asked, “D’ye hold it against me, that I made ye marry Laoghaire?” He gave her a look. “What makes ye think ye could make me do anything I didna want to, ye wee fussbudget?” “What the devil is a fussbudget?” she demanded, frowning up at him. “A bag of nuisance, so far as I can tell,” he admitted. “Jemmy calls Mandy that.” A sudden dimple appeared near Jenny’s mouth, but she didn’t actually laugh. “Aye,” she said. “Ye ken what I mean.”

To his surprise, she drew out a string of gleaming pearls, the gold crucifix and medal bright in the rising sun. “Ye brought your good rosary?” he asked. “I didna ken that—thought ye’d have left it for one of your lasses.” “Good” was putting it lightly. That rosary had been made in France and likely cost as much as a good saddle horse—if not more. It was their mother’s rosary—Brian had given it to Jenny when he’d given Ellen’s pearl necklace to Jamie.

“Dinna mind it, a bràthair,” she said softly. “He had a good death, and you with him at the end.” “How would you know it was a good death?” Emotion made him speak more roughly than he meant, but she only blinked once, and then her face settled again. “Ye told me, eejit,” she said dryly. “Several times. D’ye not recall that?” He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. “I told ye? How? I dinna ken what happened.”

And once more the dream came down on him and he was in it. Cold. So cold the voice froze in his throat, rain and sweat plastering wet cloth to his body and the icy wind cutting through his bones as easily as through his clothes. He tried—he had tried—to call out, to stop Murtagh before he reached the English soldiers. But it would have taken more than muskets and British cannon to stop Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, let alone Jamie’s voice, and he didn’t stop, bounding over the tumps of the moor grass, water bursting like broken glass under his feet as he went.

“For all those to hame in Scotland,” Jenny said without hesitation, then paused and looked up at him. “Laoghaire, too, d’ye think?” “Aye, her, too,” he said, smiling despite himself. “So long as ye put in that poor bastard she’s married to, as well.”

Before he could find a single word, she held up the rosary in front of his face. “I’m leavin’ this with you, ken—it’s for Mandy, just in case I dinna come back. Ye ken well enough what sorts of things can happen when ye’re traveling,” she added, with a small moue of disapproval. “Traveling,” he said. “Traveling? Ye mean to—to—” The thought of his sister, small, elderly, and stubborn as an alligator sunk in the mud, marching north through two armies, in dead of winter, beset by brigands, wild animals, and half a dozen other things he could think of if he’d time for it…

“Where Young Ian goes, Rachel says she’s goin’, too, and that means so does the wee yin. Ye dinna think I mean to leave my youngest grandchild to the mercies of bears and wild Indians, do ye? That’s a rhetorical question,” she added, with a pleased air of having put a stop to him. “That means I dinna expect ye to answer it.” “Ye wouldna ken a rhetorical question from a hole in the ground if I hadna told ye what one was!” “Well, then, ye should recognize one when it bites ye on the nose,” she said, sticking her own lang neb up in the air.

The thought of Jenny’s going was a dirk right through his heart. It hurt to breathe. He knew she could tell; she didn’t look at him but coiled up the pearl rosary neatly and, taking his hand, dropped it into his palm. “Keep it for me,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and if I dinna come back, give it to Mandy, when she’s old enough.” “Jenny…” he said softly.

“Mandy’s the farthest out, aye?” she said. “As far as I can reach. The youngest girl of Mam’s blood. Let her take it on, then.” He swallowed, hard. “I will,” he said, and closed his hand over the beads, warm from his sister’s touch, warm with her prayers. “I swear, sister.” “Well, I ken that, clot-heid,” she said, smiling up at him. “Come and help me catch these goats.”

“You’d be happy enough to sleep in the woods along the way, and Rachel’s young and strong, and doubtless she’d do it for love of ye. But if ye think ye can make your mother travel seven hundred miles, sleeping by the side of the road and eating what ye can catch along the way…think again, aye?”

“A woman?” Ian glanced involuntarily at Auntie Claire, too. She was laughing at something Jem had once said to her, her face flushed from the heat of the fire and her mad hair escaping from the scarf she had bound round her head.

Terrific description of Claire, and I love that Jamie is sending Ian to look in on Sylvia.❤️

Wee Orrie Higgins was minding Oggy and apparently trying to teach him to play patty-cake, though the bairn couldn’t manage more than waving his chubby arms and crowing.

Wth?? Oggie was born ~June and it's fall, the story keeps making him sound like a toddler?!

“Not me, for God’s sake!” “I didna think it was, Uncle!” “Aye, ye did,” Uncle Jamie said dryly. “But beyond rubbing horseradish liniment into my backside and poulticing my back, the woman never laid a hand on me—or I on her, all right?”

“But if she’s entertaining men that come to her house, you find that out and make sure that none of them are threatening her or seem a danger to her or her wee lassies.” “And if they are…?” “Take care of it.”

Damn straight!