An Echo in the Bone (Outlander, #7)

by Diana Gabaldon

“My grandda says the King can kiss his arse,” the boy replied matter-of-factly.

“No. Grannie did, though.” “Well, that’s somewhat more likely,” Mr. MacKenzie murmured, obviously trying not to laugh.

“Challenge?” William gave his diminutive friend a jaundiced look. “Her husband’s roughly three times your size, if you hadn’t noticed.” Osborn laughed, going red in the face. “She’s twice his size! She’d crush you, Dobby.” “And what makes you think I mean to be on the bottom?” Dobson inquired with dignity. Osborn hooted.

“You said that red-haired poppet’s a friend of your father’s?” he whispered to William. “Find out from him where she’s staying, eh?” “Idiot,” hissed Osborn. “She isn’t even pretty! She’s long-nosed as—as—as Willie!”

and both so like the man who had stood beside him, unmoving, but by contrast with Grey, taking in great tearing gulps of air, as though he feared he might never breathe again.

I glanced at the door, listening, but heard nothing save the rustle of trees in the wind. Of course, I thought, I would hear nothing, given that it was Young Ian I was waiting for.

“Well, at least your soul’s had plenty of time to make a getaway,” I muttered, kneeling to check the body before resettling it in its hasty shroud. “And I shouldn’t imagine you want to hang about haunting a pantry, in any case.”

“If ye get within decent pistol shot o’ the man, he can brain ye with his ax. And I’m no going to explain that to Auntie Claire.”

I could see her feet sticking out, with their cracked, worn boots and striped stockings. I had a sudden vision of the Wicked Witch of the West, and clapped a hand to my mouth before anything truly hysterical could escape.

“I shall be lucky to be buried at all, Sassenach. Much more likely I shall be drowned, burnt, or left to rot on some battlefield. Dinna fash yourself. If ye’ve got to dispose of my carcass, just leave it out for the crows.” “I’ll make a note of that,” I said.

“No. I’ll mind leaving the mountains. I’ll mind watching you turn green and puke your guts out on the ship, and I may well mind whatever happens on the way to said ship,

“I’ve sworn to myself,” he said, “that I shallna ever face my son across the barrel of a gun.”

“You didn’t ask what I want done with my body.” I’d meant it at least half in jest, to lighten his mood, but his fingers curled so abruptly over mine that I gasped. “No,” he said softly. “And I never will.” He wasn’t looking at me but at the whiteness before us. “I canna think of ye dead, Claire. Anything else—but not that. I can’t.”

Arch had unbound his hair as a sign of grief; I had never seen it loose before. It was thin, pure white, and wavered about his face like wisps of smoke as he bent and gently lifted the shroud from Murdina’s face.

He fumbled, said something under his breath in Gaelic, then looked up at me, with something near panic in his eyes. I went at once to him, and took the thing from his hand.

Did it not occur to any of them that Mrs. Bug had had something to do with this, herself? Had she not fired at Jamie … but people didn’t always behave intelligently, or well, and did the fact that someone had contributed to their own demise lessen the tragedy of it?

Rest in peace, I thought, and felt a small easing of the tension I’d been under for the last two days. You can go now.

banishing evil spirits with a sharp word and a brandished sausage.

William had just sat down to eat when Perkins, that harbinger of doom, appeared apologetically at his side

He blinked, disoriented and still wrapped in dreams of walking through the Duke of Devonshire’s private zoo, hand in hand with an orangutan.

And Jamie remembers meeting Louis'!

“Well, not smugglers, necessarily; he apparently knew a good many seditionists, thieves, and prostitutes, too.”

“I suppose I have a little time, then. Nayawenne …” I hadn’t spoken her name aloud in several years, and found an odd comfort in the speaking, as though it had conjured her. “She told me that I’d come into my full power when my hair turned white.”

“Now there’s a fearsome thought,” he said, grinning.

Now that the snowmelt had come, I could hardly wait for our departure. I would miss the Ridge and everyone on it—well, almost everyone. Possibly not Hiram Crombie, so much. Or the Chisholms, or—I short-circuited this list before it became uncharitable.

fat, white, and squidgy.” “Squidgy?” he repeated, breaking into a grin.

“A matter of nice judgment,” Jamie agreed, as I dropped the leech into a jar filled with water and duckweed. “When ye’ve done feeding your wee pets, then, come along and I’ll show ye the Spaniard’s Cave.”

I heard the loss in his voice at the mention of Jem.

“But even when it’s a person—ye can’t always go back, aye? Or maybe ye can,” he added, his mouth quirking a little as he glanced up at Jamie, and then at me.

“Well,” Jamie said, his eyes fixed on his work, “she keeps takin’ me in—so I suppose she must be home.”

“Have ye got a penny, a nighean?” said Jamie, next to me. “A what?” “Well, any sort of money will do.”

I rummaged in the pocket tied at my waist, which by this point in our preparations held nearly as large a collection of improbabilities as did Jamie’s sporran.

a grubby half-shilling, covered in lint and biscuit crumbs. “That do you?” I asked, wiping it off and handing it over. “It will,” he said, and held out something toward me. My hand closed automatically over what turned out to be the handle of a knife, and I nearly dropped it in surprise. “Ye must always give money for a new blade,” he explained, half smiling. “So it kens ye for its owner, and willna turn on ye.” “Its owner?”

The hilt was made from a deer’s antler, smooth and warm in my hand—and had been carved with two small depressions, these just fitting my grip. Plainly it was my knife.

“Ye’ll feel safer if ye have it by you,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Oh—just the one more thing. Give it here.” I handed it back, puzzled, and was startled to see him draw the blade lightly across the ball of his thumb. Blood welled up from the shallow cut, and he wiped it on his breeches and stuck his thumb in his mouth, handing me back the knife. “Ye blood a blade, so it knows its purpose,” he explained, taking the wounded digit out of his mouth.

With rare exceptions, Jamie wasn’t given to purely romantic gestures. If he gave me a knife, he thought I’d need it. And not for digging up roots and hacking tree bark, either. Know its purpose, indeed.

“It fits my hand,” I said, looking down and stroking the small groove that fit my thumb. “How did you know to make it so exactly?” He laughed at that. “I’ve had your hand round my cock often enough to know the measure of your grip, Sassenach,” he assured me. I snorted briefly in response to this, but turned the blade and pricked the end of my own thumb with the point. It was amazingly sharp; I scarcely felt it, but a bead of dark-red blood welled up at once. I put the knife into my belt, took his hand, and pressed my thumb to his. “Blood of my blood,” I said. I didn’t make romantic gestures, either.

one from his uncle Hal, and he grinned at sight of that; Uncle Hal’s missives were occasionally confusing, but invariably entertaining—and one in an unfamiliar but feminine-looking hand, with a plain seal.

William coughed and broke the seal. As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal’s opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.

John says you are doing something for Captain Richardson. I know Richardson and I think you shouldn’t.

Uncle Hal was a cunning old devil, William thought, not without admiration.

A tall man is always notable in company; the more so if his glance be direct and his dress neat. William smiled at that.

William had quickly learned when—and how—to be either inconspicuous or outstanding, depending upon the immediate company.

Obnoxiously cumbersome sounded promising.

Obnoxiously cumbersome fulfilled its promise: a book, a bottle of excellent Spanish sherry, a quart of olives to accompany it, and three pairs of new silk stockings.

“Mother buys them by the gross and dispatches them by every carrier, I think. You’re lucky she didn’t think to send you fresh drawers; I get a pair in every diplomatic pouch, and if you don’t think that’s an awkward thing to explain to Sir Henry … Wouldn’t say no to a glass of your sherry, though.”

William was not entirely sure his cousin was joking about the drawers; Adam had a grave mien that served him well in relations with senior officers, and had also the Grey family trick of saying the most outrageous things with a perfectly straight face.

“A signal service to the sensibilities of civilized man,” William assured him gravely, showing off his own ability to hold his liquor and manage his tongue, no matter how many slippery esses might throw themselves in his way.

Suddenly William lost his mind and, grabbing the man who had thrown the stone, took him by the neck and cracked his head against the doorpost of the house. The man stiffened and slumped, his knees giving way, and sat in the street, moaning.

In the light of the fire, he saw the tracks of wetness on Adam’s face and realized that his cousin was crying. So was he.

“Their spunk’s the same, too?” Ian demanded, incredulous. “How can ye tell? Did ye look?” he added, giving me a look of horrified curiosity.