An Echo in the Bone (Outlander, #7)

by Diana Gabaldon

“Ye’ll not find that one a husband for less than ten pound,” she informed the woman bluntly. “Not lookin’ like that. A man would be feart of bein’ bitten when he kissed her. Ian’s right. In fact, ye should be payin’ double for it.”

Plainly this wasn’t going to be settled in a hurry; I could feel both Ian and Marsali settling down to an enjoyable session of tag-team haggling.

I scowled at him and motioned him aside. He blinked at me, but then nodded apology and stepped aside.

“He may well not be. I do know that roughly thirty years ago, he was taken from the brothel by a Scotsman, and that this man was described as of striking appearance, very tall, with brilliant red hair.

“Fraser was described to me variously as a wine merchant, a Jacobite, a Loyalist, a traitor, a spy, an aristocrat, a farmer, an importer—or a smuggler; the terms are interchangeable—with connections reaching from a convent to the Royal court.”

Which was, I thought, an extremely accurate po...

“I did discover a wine merchant named Michael Murray, who, upon hearing this description, told me that it resembled his uncle, one James Fraser, who had emigrated to America more than ten years ago.”

I knew Michael only by name; one of Young Ian’s elder brothers, he had been born after my departure and had already gone to France by the time I returned to Lallybroch—there

I imagine it wouldn’t have been difficult to find someone who’d seen you there, or heard about the incident. You’re rather memorable, after all.” Despite my own agitation, I smiled at the memory of Jamie, aged twenty-five, who had taken temporary refuge in the brothel in question armed—quite coincidentally—with a large sausage, and then escaped through a window, accompanied by a ten-year-old pickpocket and sometime child-whore named Claudel.

Ages again!

He shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed. “Well, aye, perhaps. But to discover quite so much …”

“He looks like a Frenchman,” Fergus observed, echoing his thoughts.

Jamie, beer in hand, studied Fergus’s face in turn. Despite having lived in Scotland since the age of ten, and in America for the last ten years or more, Fergus himself still looked French, he thought. It was something more than a matter of feature; something in the bone itself, perhaps.

The thick dark hair brushed back from that brow was threaded with gray, and it gave Jamie a queer moment to see that; he carried within himself a permanent image of Fergus as the ten-year-old orphaned pickpocket he had rescued from a Paris brothel, and that image sat oddly on the gaunt, handsome face before him.

“I dinna think so.” He didn’t, but was glad of Fergus’s corroboration. Claire had told him her thought—that the man might be some relation of hers, perhaps a direct ancestor. She had tried to be casual about it, dismiss the idea even as she spoke it, but he’d seen the eager light in her eyes and been touched. The fact that she had no family or close kin in her own time had always struck him as a dreadful thing, even while he realized that it had much to do with her devotion to him.

He didn’t think that thought—that Beauchamp might be some actual relation to himself—had crossed Fergus’s mind. Jamie was reasonably sure that Fergus thought of the Frasers of Lallybroch as his only family, other than Marsali and the children, whom he loved with all the fervor of his passionate nature.

“You’re sure you do not wish to investigate the possibility of passage with Monsieur Beauchamp?” “Aye, I’m sure,” Jamie said dryly. “Put myself and my wife in the power of a man I dinna ken and whose motives are suspect, in a wee boat on a wide sea? Even a man who didna suffer from seasickness might boggle at that prospect, no?” Fergus’s face split in a grin. “Milady proposes to stick you full of needles again?” “She does,” Jamie replied, rather crossly. He hated being stabbed repeatedly, and disliked being obliged to appear in public—even within the limited confines of a ship—bristling with spines like some outlandish porcupine. The only thing that would make him do it was the sure knowledge that if he didn’t, he’d be puking his guts out for days on end.

He had come to a stop, though, and appeared to be executing a sort of ungainly jig. This was sufficiently odd, but what was more disturbing was that Fergus’s son Germain was crouched in the street directly in front of the man, and seemed to be hopping to and fro in the manner of an agitated toad.

“I’ve met that man,” he said without preamble. “The man who wants Papa.” “Aye, we saw,” Jamie said, brows raised. “What the devil were ye doing with him?” “Well, I saw him coming, but I did not think he would stop and talk to me if I only shouted at him. So I tossed Simon and Peter into his path.” “Who—” Jamie began, but Germain was already groping within the depths of his shirt. Before Jamie could finish the sentence, the boy had produced two sizable frogs, one green and one a sort of vile yellow color, who huddled together on the bare boards of the table, goggling in a nervous manner.

“Take those accursed creatures off the table, before we are thrown out of here. No wonder you are covered in warts, consorting with les grenouilles!” “Grandmère told me to,” Germain protested, nonetheless scooping up his pets and returning them to captivity. “She did?” Jamie was not usually startled anymore by his wife’s cures, but this seemed odd, even by her standards. “Well, she said there was nothing to do for the wart on my elbow except rub it with a dead frog and bury it—the frog, I mean—at a crossroads at midnight.” “Oh. I think she might possibly have been being facetious. What did the Frenchman say to ye, then?” Germain looked up, wide-eyed and interested. “Oh, he’s not a Frenchman, Grandpère.”

“Oh, aye. He cursed most blasphemous when Simon landed on his shoe—but not the way Papa does.” Germain aimed a bland look at his father, who looked disposed to cuff him again, but desisted at Jamie’s gesture. “He is an Englishman. I’m sure.” “He cursed in English?” Jamie asked. It was true; Frenchmen often invoked vegetables when cursing, not infrequently mingled with sacred references. English cursing generally had nothing to do with saints, sacraments, or cucumbers, but dealt with God, whores, or excrement.

“He did. But I cannot say what he said, or Papa will be offended. He has very pure ears, Papa,” Germain added, with a smirk at his father.

“Leave off deviling your father and tell me what else the man said.” “Aye, well,” Germain said obligingly. “When he saw it was no but a pair o’ wee froggies, he laughed and asked me was I taking them home for my dinner. I said no, they were my pets, and asked him was it his ship out there, because everyone said so and it was a bonny thing, no? I was making out to be simple, aye?” he explained, in case his grandfathe...

I told him no, my frogs suffer from seasickness—like my grandfather.” He turned the smirk on Jamie, who eyed him severely. “Has your father taught ye ‘Ne petez pas plus haute que votre cul’?” “Mama will wash your mouth out with soap if you say things like that,” Germain informed him virtuously. “Do you want me to pick his pocket? I saw him go into the inn on Cherry Street. I could—”

Dragonfly in Amber throwback😂

Jamie felt a cold prickle at the back of his neck, and glanced hastily round to make sure that no one had heard. “Ye’ve been teaching him to—” Fergus looked mildly shifty. “I thought it a pity that the skills should be lost. It is a family legacy, you might say. I do not let him steal things, of course. We put them back.” “We’ll have a word in private later, I think,” Jamie said, giving the pair of them a look full of menace. Christ, if Germain had been caught at it … He’d best put the fear of God into the two of them before they both ended up pilloried, if not hanged from a tree outright for theft.

“No,” he said. “I said I had heard this man had made inquiries concerning me in Edenton?” “Ye’re sure it is you?” Not that the ground in North Carolina crawled with Claudels, but still … “I think so, yes.” Fergus spoke very softly, with an eye on Germain, who had started emitting soft croaks, evidently conversing with the frogs in his shirt. “The person who told me of this said that man had not only a name, but a small information, of sorts. That the Claudel Fraser he sought had been taken from Paris by a tall red-haired Scotsman. Named James Fraser. So I think you cannot speak to him, no.”

“Perhaps … the Baron Amandine is some relation to ye?” The notion seemed the stuff of romances, and likely the sheerest moonshine. But at the same time, Jamie was at a loss to think of some sensible reason for a French nobleman to be hunting a brothel-born bastard across two continents. Fergus nodded, but didn’t reply at once. He was wearing his hook today, rather than the bran-stuffed glove he wore for formal occasions, and delicately scratched his nose with the tip before answering. “For a long time,” he said at last, “when I was small, I pretended to myself that I was the bastard of some great man. All orphans do this, I think,” he added dispassionately. “It makes life easier to bear, to pretend that it will not always be as it is, that someone will come and restore you to your rightful place in the world.” He shrugged. “Then I grew older, and knew this was not true. No one would come to rescue me. But then—” He turned his head and gave Jamie a smile of surpassing sweetness. “Then I grew older still, and discovered that, after all, it was true. I am the son of a great man.” The hook touched Jamie’s hand, hard and capable. “I wish for nothing more.”

McCreary.”

First name Bear

“You mean your”—I groped for some suitable way of putting it—“your, um, very gallant feelings toward me? Well, yes, he does; he was very sympathetic toward you. He knowing from experience what it’s like to be in love with me, I mean,” I added tartly.

And no one knew where Allan was now—save me, Jamie, and Young Ian.

“You are a most uncomfortable woman!”

Episode 704

I’d always had a talent for startling him, but this one took the biscuit.

“Listen to me,” he said, low and fierce. “I have loved three women. One was a witch and a whore, the second only a whore. Ye well may be a witch yourself, but it makes nay whit o’ difference. The love of you has led me to my salvation, and to what I thought was my peace, once I thought ye dead.”

“I shall have no peace while ye live, woman.” Then he lifted my hand and kissed it, stood up, and walked away. “Mind,” he said, turning at the door to look back at me over his shoulder, “I dinna say I regret it.”

Boosting Jamie’s reputation as a card player wasn’t likely to do any harm; he was already well known—if not quite notorious—for his abilities in that line.

“He’s laid down his life for ye once. I’d trust him to do it again.”

Book 10???

“Aye, well, it’s a wise man who kens what he doesna know—and I learn fast, a nighean.”

It didn’t obliterate my memory of Tom Christie’s impassioned, blundering embrace, and I thought it wasn’t meant to; it was meant to show me the difference.

instead reached out and tidily unbuttoned his shirt.

While I was thus engaged, he slid his fingers into my hair, separating a lock which he viewed appraisingly. “It’s not gone white yet. I suppose I’ve a little time, then, before ye get too dangerous for me to bed.” “Dangerous, forsooth,” I said, setting to work on the buttons of his breeks. I wished he had on his kilt. “Exactly what do you think I might do to you in bed?”

He’d got my jacket off and was busily untying my laces, head bent in absorption.

“How’d you like it if I were jealous?” I asked the crown of his head. “I’d like that fine,” he replied, breath warm on my exposed flesh. “And ye were. Of Laoghaire.” He looked up, grinning, eyebrow raised. “Maybe ye still are?”

William proved to be six inches taller than the tallest of Rogers’s crew, and thus ended up awkwardly attired in a flapping shirt of rough linen—the tails left out by necessity, to disguise the fact that the top buttons of his flies were left undone—and canvas breeches that threatened to emasculate him should he make any sudden moves. These could not be buckled, of course, and William elected to emulate Rogers and go barefoot, rather than suffer the indignity of striped stockings that left his knees and four inches of hairy shin exposed between stocking-top and breeches.

He summoned Rogers and the prisoner into the library where he had his office, and—after one brief, astonished look at William’s attire—sent him to his bed.

And evidently her father had had his own private talk with Jem; a good thing, she thought. Jamie’s blend of devout Catholicism and matter-of-fact Highland acceptance of life, death, and things not seen was probably a lot better suited to explaining things like how you could be dead on one side of the stones, but—

Given that Jem was not quite nine,

More bday math ffs b spring (june?) 1770 left 1776 to 1978 now fall (oct) 1980 <8 1/2

“I don’t know what happened to your father,” she said. “But it wasn’t what they told you.”

“I thought … you were so young. You do remember your father?” Roger shook his head, the chambers of his heart clenching hard, grasping emptiness. “No,” he said softly, and bent his head, breathing in the scent of his daughter’s hair. “I remember yours.”

“Nothing, Sassenach. I saw Jem and the wee lass—” A smile came over his face at that. “God, she’s a feisty wee baggage! She minds me o’ you, Sassenach.” This was a dubious compliment as phrased, but I felt a deep glow at the thought.

The small frown was back between his brows. “The broch,” he repeated, and looked at me, helpless. “I dinna ken what it was. Only that I didna want them to go in. It … felt as though there was something inside. Waiting. And I didna like it at all.”

What he didn’t do was talk about himself. Which, in William’s experience, was what most people did best—or at least most frequently.