Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (90 page)

She flushed red, her face drawing inward, and he made a conscious effort not to start back. A Fraser in an unleashed temper was a substance to be treated with caution, whether it was Mandy or Jamie. Easier if they were small enough that you could pick them up and take them somewhere quiet, of course, and/or threaten to smack their bottoms…

Luckily, while Jamie and Claire were as distinctive as night and day in terms of their personalities, both of them were logical and fair-minded, and their daughter had inherited both those traits.

She made a soft rumbling noise in her throat and drew a deep breath, her face relaxing.

“I know that,” she said, and raised her brows in brief apology. “I knew it, I mean. I hadn’t thought about it, though.”

“You
did
kill Stephen Bonnet,” he pointed out, in palliation. “He wasn’t afraid of your da.”

“Yes, after you and Da caught him and tied him up for me and the good citizens of Wilmington staked him out in the river.” She snorted. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I was scared stiff.”

“You were,” he said. “I was there.” He’d rowed her out over the shimmering brown water, in the early afternoon, in a small boat smeared with fish scales and the mud that made the river brown.

She’d sat across from him, the pistol in her pocket, and he could see her arm in memory, rigid as iron as she’d clutched the gun, and the small pulse in her throat, beating like a hummingbird’s. He’d wanted urgently to tell her again that she didn’t have to do this; that if she couldn’t bear the idea of Stephen Bonnet drowning, then he’d do it for her. But she’d made up her mind, and he knew she would never turn back from a job she thought was hers. And so they’d rowed out into the harbor, in a silence louder than the screams of waterbirds and the lap of the incoming tide and the echo of a gunshot not yet fired.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and he saw that her eyes glistened with tears that she wouldn’t let fall because she hated to be weak. “You didn’t try to stop me.”

“I would have, if I thought there was any chance ye’d listen,” he said gruffly, but both of them knew it wasn’t true, and she squeezed his hand, then let go and took a deep breath.

“Then there was Rob Cameron,” she said, “and the nutters who were lying in wait at Lallybroch, wanting to take the kids. I couldn’t have fought off the nutters all by myself—and thank God for Ernie Buchan and Lionel Menzies! But I did smack Rob on the head with a junior cricket bat and laid him out cold.” She glanced at him with the flicker of a real smile. “So there.”

“Well done,” he said softly, and managed with some effort to suppress both his resurgent rage at Cameron and his guilt for not being there. “My braw lass.”

She laughed, and wiped her nose on the back of her free hand.

“I already knew you were a good husband,” she said. “But you’ll be a
great
minister.”

She leaned forward then and he took her in his arms, feeling her weight warm and heavy with her trust.

“Thanks,” he said softly, against her hair. It was smooth and warm on his lips. “But I can’t be either one of those things alone, aye?”

For a moment, she was silent. Then she pulled back enough to look at him, her face tear-streaked but solemn now, and beautiful.

“You won’t be alone,” she said. “Even if God’s not there when you need Him, I’ll be there—standing just behind you.”

ROGER CLIMBED THE LADDER
to the loft, surprising his wife, who was crawling about on her hands and knees.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Mandy’s sock,” she replied, sitting back on her heels with a small groan. “You know how people say something or other is a backbreaking job? That’s not hyperbole when it comes to laundry. What are
you
looking for?”

“You.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the printshop below was vacant at the moment, though he could hear voices in the kitchen. “Fergus asked me to go with him on an errand, and he asked me to bring a knife. So I thought I’d give you this for safekeeping—you know, in case we’re going to meet a highway robber and get his life story for the front page,” he added, trying to make a feeble joke of it. His wife was having none of his humors, and heaved herself to her feet with a hand on a barrel of varnish, her eyes fixing him with a look of dark-blue suspicion.

She kept her eyes on him while taking the paper from his hand and unfolding it, glancing away only to read it.

“What is this?”

“It’s a warehouse certificate. You’ve seen them before, surely? Your da has a fistful of them in his strongbox.”

“I have,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “Why do you have a warehouse certificate to a warehouse in Charlotte?”

“Because so far as either I or Frank Randall knows, there won’t be any significant fighting in Charlotte. That’s where I sent the, um, guano. I thought nobody would notice, and nobody did.”

She gave the certificate a careful look, and he saw her note that he’d put her name on it as well as his. Under the circumstances, she didn’t seem to find that comforting.

“So,” he said heartily, “we’ll be back before supper. Oh—and Mandy’s sock is over there, under the candle snuffer.”

FEELING THAT IT
didn’t behoove a not-quite-ordained minister to walk about in a black coat with a large knife on his belt in plain view, Roger put on his second-best coat, this being a rather shabby brown number with a visible mend in the sleeve and wooden buttons. Fergus viewed this with approval.

“Yes, very good,” he said. “You look as though you could do business.” The tone of his voice made it clear what kind of business he meant, but Roger assumed this to be a joke.

“Oh, so I’m meant to be your henchman?” He fell into step next to Fergus, who was wearing the same clothes he wore for printing, but with a blue coat little better than Roger’s over them.

“We will hope it doesn’t come to that,” Fergus said thoughtfully. “But it’s as well to be prepared.”

Roger stopped abruptly and grabbed Fergus’s sleeve, bringing him to a halt.

“Would you care to tell me just who we’re going to see? And how many of them?”

“Only one, so far as I know,” Fergus assured him. “His name is Percival Beauchamp.”

That didn’t sound like the eighteenth-century version of a gangster, a dangerous pirate, or a smuggler of uncustomed goods, but names could be deceiving.

“A soldier brought me a note last week,” Fergus said, presumably in explanation. “He was not in uniform, but I could tell. And I think he was from the British army, which I considered to be unusual.”

Very unusual. Though there
were
occasional red-coated soldiers to be seen in Charles Town now and then, these usually being messengers bound for General Lincoln’s headquarters, presumably with threatening missives urging the general to consider his situation.

Fergus waved the matter of the note-bearing soldier aside for the moment.

“The note was from Monsieur Beauchamp, saying that he was in residence in Charles Town for a short time and would request the honor of a brief visit at his
hôtel.
”

“Do you know this Beauchamp?” Roger asked curiously. The name rang a faint bell. “He can’t be a relative of Claire’s, can he?”

Fergus gave him a startled glance.

“Surely not,” he said, though his tone wasn’t quite that sure. “It isn’t an uncommon French name. But, yes, I know him.”

“I gather it isn’t altogether a cordial acquaintanceship?” Roger touched the knife on his belt; it was the Highland dirk that Jamie had given him, an impressive foot-long bit of weaponry with a carved hilt bearing the name of St. Michael and a small image of the archangel. He rather admired the capacity of Catholics to sincerely seek peace while pragmatically acknowledging the necessity for occasional violence.

A brief look of amusement flitted across Fergus’s saturnine features.

“Non,”
he said. “But let me tell you. This Beauchamp has tried to speak with me several times, offering assorted things—but chiefly, offering me the truth—or what he says is the truth—about my parents.”

Roger glanced at him.

“Even an orphan must have
had
parents at one time,” Fergus said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I have never known anything about mine, and I take leave to doubt that Monsieur Beauchamp does, either.”

“But if that’s the case, why pretend he does?”

“I don’t know, but I suppose we’re about to find out.” Fergus sounded grimly resigned to the prospect. He squared his shoulders, preparing to go on, but Roger’s hand hadn’t left his sleeve.

“Why?” Roger said quietly. “Why talk to him at all?”

The Adam’s apple bobbed in Fergus’s lean throat as he swallowed, but he met Roger’s eyes straight on.

“If I must lose my livelihood here, if I can no longer be a printer—then I must find a new place, or a new way to support my family, to protect them,” he said simply. “It may be that Monsieur Beauchamp will show me such a way.”

THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR
Beauchamp’s address was a grand house on Hasell Street, and Fergus’s knock upon the door was answered by a butler whose livery probably cost more than Bonnie the printing press. This worthy gave no sign of wondering why two vagabonds should have appeared on his master’s doorstep, but upon hearing Fergus’s name, bowed low and ushered them inside.

It was a hot day outside, and the thick velvet drapes at the windows were drawn to keep as much heat out as possible. They kept out all daylight as well, and the parlor into which they were shown was so dark that the single lamp on a table near the window glowed like a pearl inside an oyster.

Roger thought it was rather like being inside an oyster himself: surrounded by a slick, oppressive moistness, the constant touch of mucus on the skin. Granted, the room in which they had been shut was not as searing as the glaring cobblestones outside, but it wasn’t a hell of a lot cooler, either.

“Like being poached, instead of fried,” he whispered to Fergus, mopping his face with the lace-trimmed handkerchief he’d forgotten to exchange for a workman’s bandanna. Fergus blinked at him in momentary confusion, but before Roger could explain, the door opened and Percival Beauchamp walked in, smiling.

Roger didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this chap wasn’t it. Beauchamp wasn’t French, for one thing. When he greeted them—with great courtesy—accepted Fergus’s introduction of Roger, and thanked them effusively for coming, his voice was that of an educated Englishman—but not one educated at Eton or Harrow. Roger thought that the traces of an underlying accent came from somewhere near the edges of the Thames—Southwark, or maybe Lambeth? He was dressed in the height of Paris style—or at least Roger assumed that must be what it was, with six-inch cuffs, a yellow silk waistcoat embroidered with swallows, and a lot of lace. He wore his own hair, though, dark and very curly, casually tied back with a plum-colored silk ribbon.

“I thank you for your kind attention, messieurs,” he said again. “Allow me to send for wine.”

“Non,”
Fergus said. He pulled an ink-stained handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat pooling in his deep eye sockets. “This place is like a Turkish bath. I have come to hear what you have to say, monsieur. Say it.”

Beauchamp pursed his lips as though about to whistle, but then relaxed, still smiling, and gestured them to a pair of ornately brocaded chairs near the empty hearth. He also went to the door and, in spite of Fergus’s refusal, ordered some refreshments to be brought.

When a tray of pastries with a decanter of iced negus had been delivered, he asked the butler to pour out a glass for each of them and then sat down facing them. His eyes flicked over Roger, but all his attention was for Fergus.

“I said to you on a previous occasion, monsieur, that I wished to acquaint you with the facts of your birth. These are…somewhat dramatic, and I am afraid that you may find some of them distressing. I apologize.”

“Tais-toi,”
Fergus said roughly. Roger didn’t understand all of what he said next, but it seemed to be an invitation to Beauchamp to shit something or other—possibly the truth?—out of his backside.

Beauchamp blinked, but sat back, took a sip of wine, and patted his lips.

“You are the son of le Comte Saint Germain,” he said, and paused, as though expecting a reaction. Fergus just stared at him. Roger felt a small rivulet of sweat run down the seam of his back like water from a melting ice cube.

“And your mother’s name was Amélie Élise LeVigne Beauchamp.” Roger heard Fergus’s sudden intake of breath.

“You know that name?” Beauchamp sounded surprised but eager. He leaned forward, his face intent, nacreous in the lamplight.

“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,”
Fergus said.
“Mais elle est morte.”

THERE WAS A
moment’s silence, broken only by the distant, bustling hum of the house’s domestic staff.

“She
is
dead.” Beauchamp’s voice was gentle, but Fergus jerked a little, as though stung by a wasp. Beauchamp drew a long, careful breath, then leaned forward.

“You knew her, you said.”

Fergus nodded, once, a jerky movement quite unlike him.

“I knew her by name. I did not know she was my mother.” He caught Roger’s look of surprise from the corner of his eye and turned to face him, turning a shoulder to Beauchamp, the bringer of unwelcome news.