An Echo in the Bone (Outlander, #7)

by Diana Gabaldon

(on the chance that Roger will be reading this, I will refrain from telling you the manner in which John Hunter discovered how gonorrhea is transmitted—well, no, actually I won’t: he stabbed himself in the penis with a lancet covered in pus from an infected victim and was deeply gratified with the results, according to Denny Hunter, who recounted this interesting incident to your father while bandaging his thumb, which got squashed between two rolling logs—don’t worry, it isn’t broken; just badly bruised). I’d love to see how Mrs. Raven would take this story, but I suppose propriety would prevent young Dr. Hunter telling her.

You are, of course, minding the children’s vaccination schedule.

“Oh!” she said, barely refraining from adding, “Goody!”

“That’s good, ma’am,” Mr. Ormiston interrupted. “The captain said as how he’d send you; I was just a-telling these gentlemen here as they needn’t be concerned, as I was sure you’d know the best way to do it.” And I’m sure they were pleased to hear that, I thought,

“You will ruin the temper of the metal, subjecting it to boiling water!” “No,” I said, keeping my own temper—for the moment.

“Oooh!” said Mrs. Raven, deliciously shocked. This was turning out even better than she had expected.

🤣 Snarky, funny Claire on full display at Ticonderoga!

As for you, madam—” He spat the word, but then stopped dead, momentarily unable to think of anything sufficiently terrible with which to threaten me. Then, “I shall ask your husband to beat you!” he said.

You can ask. It won't happen.🤷‍♀️

“Come ’n’ tickle me, darlin’,” a slurred voice said from the floor. I looked down, to see a leering Mr. Ormiston. He had kept hold of the rum bottle during the wreck, continued to employ it afterward, and, face suffused with rum, was now making random pawing motions in the vicinity of my knee.

This reminds me of JQM and Jamie's comments about men dropping their pants!

“For example, I once heard a farmer whose pig got into the mash tell her that he hoped her intestines would burst through her belly and be eaten by crows.” An impressed “Oo!” from the kids, and he smiled and went on, giving carefully edited versions of some of the more creative things he’d heard his father-in-law say on occasion.

Rob’s archaeologist friend, Michael Callahan, turned out to be a genial bloke in his fifties with thinning sandy hair, sunburned so badly and so often that his face looked like patchwork, dark freckles blotched among patches of raw pink skin.

I thought of remarking that smoking a severed ear prevented that little problem, but thought better of it. I didn’t know whether Ian was still carrying a lawyer’s ear in his sporran, but I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t welcome Mrs. Raven’s eager interest in it, if so. Both he and Jamie made off when they saw her coming, as though she had the plague.

“What are you thinking?” I asked after a moment, fascinated. “I’m not thinking.” “Yes, you are; I can see it on your face.” “Ye don’t want to know.” Sweat was beginning to gleam across his cheekbones, and his eyes had gone to slits. “Oh, yes, I do—oh, wait. If you’re thinking about someone other than me, I don’t want to know.” He opened his eyes at that, and fixed me with a look that ran straight up between my quivering legs. He didn’t stop. “Oh,” I said, a little breathless myself. “Well … when you can talk again, I do want to know, then.” He went on looking at me, with a gaze that now struck me as markedly akin to that of a wolf eyeing a fat sheep. I shifted a little against the wall and waved away a cloud of gnats. He was breathing fast, and I could smell his sweat, musky and acrid. “You,” he said, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed. He crooked the index finger of his free hand at me. “Come here.” “I—” “Now.”

“No,” he said. “I mean to go with you.” He smiled suddenly, and I gripped his hand. “Ye dinna think I mean to leave ye to wander in the wilderness with a parcel o’ diseased half-wits? Even if it does mean getting into a boat,” he added with a touch of distaste. I laughed despite myself. “Not very kind,” I said. “But not inaccurate, either, if you mean Mrs. Raven. You haven’t seen her anywhere, have you?”

“I have to fetch my invalids!” I shouted into Jamie’s ear. “You go and get the things from the barracks.” He shook his head. His flying loose hair was lit up by another lightning flash, and he looked like one of the principal demons himself. “I’m no leaving you,” he said, taking a firm clasp of my arm. “I might never find ye again.”

But he thought he would like to see Rachel Hunter again sometime, and his chance of that was much better if she and her brother had gone with the rebels.

“Oh, I’ll sing them a death song, if it comes to that,” Jamie muttered, half under his breath, and took out one of the pistols from his belt. “You can’t sing,” I said. I hadn’t meant to be funny—I was so frightened that I said it by reflex, the first thing that came into my mind—and he didn’t laugh.

“Dinna be afraid, a nighean,” Jamie whispered, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed. “I’ll not let them take ye. Not alive.” He touched the pistol at his belt.

“Know you,” he murmured. “You’re Big Red’s lady. He make it out of the fort?”

He was tall, slender but broad-shouldered, and I would have known that long stride, that unself-conscious grace, and that arrogant tilt of the head anywhere. He paused, frowning, and turned his head to survey the littered field. His nose was straight as a knife blade, just that tiny bit too long. I closed my eyes for an instant, dizzy, sure I was hallucinating—but opened them again at once, knowing that I wasn’t.

the sheer oddness of hearing Jamie speaking in a cultured English accent made me want to laugh,

Two hours later, a sweating orderly came trundling through the trampled wheat with two large haversacks filled with bandages. Interestingly enough, he headed directly for me, which made me wonder just how William had described me.

“Oh.” He stopped, and taking the strap of his canteen off, handed it to me. It was heavy and gurgled enticingly. “Lieutenant Ellesmere said I was to give you this.” He smiled briefly, the lines of tiredness easing. “He said you looked hot.”

“Lieutenant Ellesmere.” That must be William’s title, I realized. “Thank you. And please thank the lieutenant, if you see him.” He was clearly on the point of departure, but I couldn’t help asking, “How did you know who I was?” His smile deepened as he glanced at my head. “The lieutenant said you’d be the curly-wig giving orders like a sergeant-major.” He looked round the field once more, shaking his head. “Good luck, ma’am.”

I sat beside him—a young wheelwright from New Jersey—checking the membranes of his throat at intervals, giving him as much water as he would take. Not from my canteen, though. William Ransom, bless his soul, had filled his canteen with brandy.

I’d barely got to my feet and raised a hand to smooth my hair when someone else’s hand poked me in the back. I started violently but luckily didn’t scream. “It’s me, Auntie,” Young Ian whispered from the shadows behind me. “Come with—oh, Jesus.” William had come within ten paces of me and, raising his head, had spied Ian. He leapt forward and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me away from the trees. I yelped, as Ian had an equally firm grip on the other arm and was yanking lustily in that direction. “Let her go!” William barked. “The devil I will,” Ian replied hotly. “You let go!” Mrs. Wellman’s little son was on his feet, staring round-eyed and open-mouthed into the forest. “Mama, Mama! Indians!” Shrieks rose from the women near us, and everyone began a mad scramble away from the forest, leaving the wounded to their own devices. “Ah, bugger!” Ian said, letting go in disgust. William didn’t, jerking me with such force that I crashed into him, whereupon he promptly wrapped his arms about my waist and dragged me a little way into the field. “Will ye bloody leave go of my auntie?” Ian said crossly, emerging from the trees. “You!” said William. “What are you—well, never mind that. Your aunt, you say?” He looked down at me. “Are you? His aunt? Wait—no, of course you are.” “I am,” I agreed, pushing at his arms. “Let go.” His grasp loosened a little, but he didn’t release me. “How many others are in there?” he demanded, lifting his chin toward the forest. “If there were any others, ...

Jamie with the flaming arrow from the trailer???

“Is that brandy?” Jamie said, sounding astonished. “Mmm-hmm.” I swallowed, as slowly as I could, and handed the canteen to him. There were a couple of swallows left. “Where did ye get it?” “Your son gave it to me,” I said. “Where are we going?” There was a long pause from the darkness, and then the sound of brandy being drunk.

“He looks like you,” I whispered. His hand stopped moving, still on my shoulder, and he looked down, long lashes hiding his eyes. “I know,” he said, very softly. “Tell me of him. Later, when there’s time.” I heard his footsteps, a rustle in damp leaves, and fell asleep, a prayer for Walter Woodcock half finished in my mind.

She said disparaging things about heroes now and then, but only when he’d hurt himself;

I lunged to the side and got my hand on the cold metal hilt. I had picked up Jamie’s sword before. It was a cavalry sword, larger and heavier than the usual, but I didn’t notice now. I snatched it up and swung it in a two-handed arc that ripped the air and left the metal ringing in my hands.

Can't wait can't wait can't wait!!!!

Among the noise, a nearer voice called out: a uniformed officer, on a bay horse. “Anybody seen that big redheaded bastard who broke the charge?”

“Whoever he is, I tell you, he’s got balls the size of ten-pound shot,” remarked the man whose cheek I was stitching. “And a head of the same consistency,” I murmured.

“Try to think of something else for a minute,” I suggested. “Something pleasant, to take your mind off it.” His brow furrowed for a moment, then relaxed. “Stand up a moment, will ye?” he said. I obligingly stood, wondering what he wanted. He opened his eyes, reached out with his good hand, and took a firm grip of my buttock. “There,” he said. “That’s the best thing I can think of. Having a good hold on your arse always makes me feel steady.”

“Bloody man,” I whispered. “I knew you’d make me cry.”

Then I lay down on the cot beside him, close against him. He lay on his stomach; I could see the small, muscular swell of his buttocks, smooth under the blanket that covered him. On impulse, I laid my hand on his rump and squeezed. “Sweet dreams,” I said, and let the tiredness take me.

“mo nighean donn bhoideach!”

“Seaumais Ruaidh,

He could not reconcile the sight, the feel of it, with the strong memory of how his hand ought to be.

He’d got used to the scars and the stiffness. And yet … he could remember how his young hand had felt, had looked, so easy, limber and painless, folded round the handle of a hoe, the hilt of a sword. Clutching a quill—well, no. He smiled ruefully to himself. That hadn’t been either easy or limber, even with his fingers at their unmarred best.

in curiosity flexed his hand a little. The pain made him gasp, but … his eyes were open, fixed on his hand. The disconcerting sight of his little finger pressed close to the middle one did make his belly clench, but … his fingers curled. It hurt like Christ crucified, but it was just pain; there was no pull, no stubborn hindrance from the frozen finger. It … worked.

“I mean to leave you with a working hand,” He could hear Claire’s voice, breathless but sure. He smiled a little. It didn’t do to argue with the woman over any matter medical.

it looked like a mummified worm.

I gave him a sharp glance, but it wasn’t flummery; he smiled at me again, and I thought that he was one of those unusual men—like Jamie—who actually liked women, beyond the obvious.

Like John, too

I sincerely hoped Robert Browning and I hadn’t just landed Jamie in the middle of something.

“I was mentally prepared to run into George Washington or Benjamin Franklin in person at some point,” I said. “Even John Adams. But I didn’t really expect him … and I liked him,” I added ruefully.

Jamie’s brows were still up, and he glanced at the bottle in my lap as though wondering whether I’d been having a nip.

Which, Jamie saw, was unappreciated by Morgan. He thought old Dan might just give Arnold one in the stones, rank and rheumatism notwithstanding.

He had not even thought about it when he’d fired to miss Fraser. He would kill any other man on the field—but not that one. Then he caught sight of the young soldier on the horse, coat bright red among the thrashing sea of green and blue and homespun, laying about him with his saber, and felt his mouth twitch. Not that one, either.

The young man stood in his stirrups for an instant, dropped, and spurred his horse toward the general, leaving his Hessians to follow as they might.

Shit, he’d bent the rifle.

A young officer, no doubt the general’s aide, knelt in the shadow on the far side of the table, holding the general’s hand, his own head bowed in obvious distress.