The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (480 page)

“I was afraid you were dead. All of you—Mama, Da, you.” Her hood had fallen back and she made no effort to reclaim it. Her red hair hung in dripping rattails on her shoulders, and droplets clung to her thick red brows.

“The last thing Da said to me—he didn’t say it, even, he wrote it—he had to write it, I wouldn’t talk to him.…” She swallowed and ran a hand beneath her nose, wiping away a pendant drop. “He said—I had to find a way to … to forgive him. B-Bonnet.”

“To do
what
?” She pulled her arm away slightly, and he realized how hard his fingers were digging into her flesh. He loosened his grip, with a small grunt of apology, and she tilted her head briefly toward him in acknowledgment.

“He knew,” she said, and stopped. She turned to face him, her feelings now in hand. “You know what happened to him—at Wentworth.”

Roger gave a short, awkward nod. In actuality, he had no clear notion what had been done to Jamie Fraser—and had no wish to know more than he did. He knew about the scars on Fraser’s back, though, and knew from the few things Claire had said that these were but a faint reminder.

“He knew,” she said steadily. “And he knew what had to be done. He told me—if I wanted to be … whole … again, I had to find a way to forgive Stephen Bonnet. So I did.”

He had Brianna’s hand in his, held so tight that he felt the small shift of her bones. She had not told him, he had not asked. The name of Stephen Bonnet had never been mentioned between them, not until now.

“You did.” He spoke gruffly, and had to stop to clear his throat. “You found him, then? You spoke to him?”

She brushed wet hair back from her face, nodding. Grey had come to her, told her that Bonnet had been taken, condemned. Awaiting transport to Wilmington and execution, he was being held in the cellar beneath the Crown warehouse in Cross Creek. It was there that she had gone to him, bearing what she hoped was absolution—for Bonnet, for herself.

“I was huge.” Her hand sketched the bulge of advanced pregnancy before her. “I told him the baby was his; he was going to die, maybe it would be some comfort to him, to think that there’d be … something left.”

Roger felt jealousy grip his heart, so abrupt in its attack that for a moment, he thought the pain was physical.
Something left
, he thought.
Something of him. And what of me? If I die tomorrow—and I might, girl! Life’s chancy here for me as well as you—what will be left of me, tell me that?

He oughtn’t ask, he knew that. He’d vowed never to voice the thought that Jemmy was not his, ever. If there was a true marriage between them, then Jem was the child of it, no matter the circumstances of his birth. And yet he felt the words spill out, burning like acid.

“So you were sure the child was his?”

She stopped dead and turned to look at him, eyes wide with shock.

“No. No, of course not! If I knew that, I would have told you!”

The burning in his chest eased, just a little.

“Oh. But you told him it was—you didn’t say to him that there was doubt about it?”

“He was going to die! I wanted to give him some comfort, not tell him my life story! It wasn’t any of his goddamn business to hear about you, or our wedding night, or—damn you, Roger!” She kicked him in the shin.

He staggered with the force of it, but grabbed her arm, preventing her from running off.

“I’m sorry!” he said, before she could kick him again, or bite him, which she looked prepared to do. “I’m sorry. You’re right, it wasn’t his business—and it’s not my business, either, to be making you think of it all again.”

She drew in a deep breath through her nose, like a dragon preparing to sear him into ash. The spark of fury in her eyes lessened slightly, though her cheeks still blazed with it. She shook off his hand, but didn’t run away.

“Yes, it is,” she said. She gave him a dark, flat look. “You said there shouldn’t be secrets between us, and you were right. But when you tell a secret, sometimes there’s another one behind it, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. But it’s not— I don’t mean—”

Before he could say more, the sound of feet and conversation interrupted him. Four men came out of the mist, speaking casually in Gaelic. They carried sharpened sticks and nets, and all were barefoot, wet to the knees. Strings of fresh-caught fish gleamed dully in the rain-light.

“A Smeòraich!”
One man, peering out from under the sodden brim of his slouch hat, caught sight of them and broke into a broad grin, as shrewd eyes passed over their dishevelment. “It is yourself, Thrush! And the daughter of the Red One, too? What, can you not restrain yourselves until the darkness?”

“No doubt it is sweeter to taste stolen fruit than to wait on a blessing from a shriveled priest.” Another man thrust back his bonnet on his head, and clasped himself briefly, making clear just what he meant by “shriveled.”

“Ah, no,” said the third, wiping drops from the end of his nose as he eyed Brianna, her cloak pulled tight around her. “He’s no but after singing her a wee wedding song, is he not?”

“I know the words to that song, too,” said his companion, his grin broadening enough to show a missing molar. “But I sing it still more sweetly!”

Brianna’s cheeks had begun to blaze again; her Gaelic was less fluent than Roger’s, but she was certainly able to gather the sense of crude teasing. Roger stepped in front of her, shielding her with his body. The men meant no harm, though; they winked and grinned appreciatively, but made no further comment. The first man pulled off his hat and beat it against his thigh, shedding water, then set to business.

“It’s glad I am to be meeting you thus,
a Òranaiche
. My mother did hear your music at the fire last night, and told it to my aunts and my cousins, how your music was making the blood dance in her feet. So now they will hear nothing but that you must come and sing for the ceilidh at Spring Creek. It is my youngest cousin will be wed, and her the only child of my uncle, who owns the flour mill.”

“It will be a great affair, surely!” put in one of the younger men, the son of the first speaker, by his resemblance to the former.

“Oh, it’s a wedding?” said Roger, in slow, formal Gaelic. “We’ll have an extra herring, then!”

The two older men burst into laughter at the joke, but their sons merely looked bewildered.

“Ah, the lads would not be knowing a herring, was it slapped wet against their cheeks,” said the bonneted man, shaking his head. “Born here, the two of them.”

“And where was your home in Scotland, sir?” The man jerked, surprised at the question, put in clear-voiced Gaelic. He stared at Brianna for a moment, then his face changed as he answered her.

“Skye,” he said softly. “Skeabost, near the foot of the Cuillins. I am Angus MacLeod, and Skye is the land of my sires and my grandsires. But my sons were born here.”

He spoke quietly, but there was a tone in his voice that quelled the hilarity in the younger men as though a damp blanket had been thrown over them. The man in the slouch hat looked at Brianna with interest.

“And were you born in Scotland,
a nighean
?”

She shook her head mutely, drawing the cloak higher on her shoulders.

“I was,” said Roger, answering a look of inquiry. “In Kyle of Lochalsh.”

“Ah,” said MacLeod, satisfaction spreading itself across his weathered features. “It is so, then, that you know all the songs of the Highlands and the Isles?”

“Not all,” said Roger, smiling. “But many—and I will learn more.”

“Do that,” said MacLeod, nodding slowly. “Do that, Singer—and teach them to your sons.” His eye lighted on Brianna, and a faint smile curled on his lips. “Let them sing to my sons, that they will know the place they came from—though they will never see it.”

One of the younger men stepped forward, bashfully holding out a string of fish, which he presented to Brianna.

“For you,” he said. “A gift for your wedding.”

Roger could see one corner of her mouth twitch slightly—with humor or incipient hysteria? he wondered—but she stretched out a hand and took the dripping string with grave dignity. She picked up the edge of her cloak with one hand, and swept them all a deep curtsy.

“Chaneil facal agam dhuibh ach taing,”
she said, in her slow, strangely accented Gaelic. I have no words to say to you but thanks.

The young men went pink, and the older men looked deeply pleased.

“It is good,
a nighean,
” said MacLeod. “Let your husband teach you, then—and teach the
Gaidhlig
to your sons. May you have many!” He swept off his bonnet and bowed extravagantly to her, bare toes squelching in the mud to keep his balance.

“Many sons, strong and healthy!” chimed in his companion, and the two lads smiled and nodded, murmuring shyly. “Many sons to you, mistress!”

Roger made the arrangements for the ceilidh automatically, not daring to look at Brianna. They stood in silence, a foot or two apart, as the men left, casting curious looks behind them. Brianna stared down into the mud and grass where they stood, arms crossed in front of her. The burning feeling was still in Roger’s chest, but now it was different. He wanted to touch her, to apologize again, but he thought that would only make things worse.

In the end, she moved first. She came to him and laid her head on his chest, the coolness of her wet hair brushing the wound in his throat. Her breasts were huge, hard as rocks against his chest, pushing against him, pushing him away.

“I need Jemmy,” she said softly. “I need my baby.”

The words jammed in his throat, caught between apology and anger. He had not realized how much it would hurt to think of Jemmy as belonging to someone else—not his, but Bonnet’s.

“I need him, too,” he whispered at last, and kissed her briefly on the forehead before taking her hand to cross the meadow once again. The mountain above lay shrouded in mist, invisible, though shouts and murmurs, scraps of speech and music drifted down, like echoes from Olympus.

7

SHRAPNEL

The drizzle had stopped by mid-morning, and brief glimpses of pale blue sky showed through the clouds, giving me some hope that it might clear by evening. Proverbs and omens quite aside, I didn’t want the wedding ceremonies dampened for Brianna’s sake. It wouldn’t be St. James’s with rice and white satin, but it could at least be
dry
.

I rubbed my right hand, working out the cramp from the tooth-pulling pliers; Mr. Goodwin’s broken tooth had been more troublesome to extract than I expected, but I had managed to get it out, roots and all, sending him away with a small bottle of raw whisky, and instructions to swish it round his mouth once an hour to prevent infection. Swallowing was optional.

I stretched, feeling the pocket under my skirt swing against my leg with a small but gratifying
chink
. Mr. Goodwin had indeed paid cash; I wondered whether it was enough for an astrolabe, and what on earth Jamie wanted with one. My speculations were disturbed, though, by a small but official-sounding cough behind me.

I turned around to find Archie Hayes, looking mildly quizzical.

“Oh!” I said. “Ah—can I help you, Lieutenant?”

“Weel, that’s as may be, Mistress Fraser,” he said, looking me over with a slight smile. “Farquard Campbell said his slaves are convinced that ye can raise the dead, so it might be as a bit of stray metal would pose no great trial to your skills as a surgeon?”

Murray MacLeod, overhearing, uttered a loud snort at this, and turned away to his own waiting patients.

“Oh,” I said again, and rubbed a finger under my nose, embarrassed. One of Campbell’s slaves had suffered an epileptic seizure four days before, happening to recover abruptly from it just as I laid an exploratory hand on his chest. In vain had I tried to explain what had happened; my fame had spread like wildfire over the mountain.

Even now, a small group of slaves squatted near the edge of the clearing, playing at knucklebones and waiting ’til the other patients should be attended to. I gave them a narrow eye, just in case; if one of them were dying or dangerously ill, I knew they would make no effort to tell me—both from deference to my white patients, and from their confident conviction that if anything drastic should happen while they were waiting, I would simply resurrect the corpse at my own convenience and deal with the problem then.

All of them seemed safely vertical at the moment, though, and likely to remain so for the immediate future. I turned back to Hayes, wiping muddy hands on my apron.

“Well … let me see the bit of metal, why don’t you, and I’ll see what can be done.”

Nothing loath, Hayes stripped off bonnet, coat, waistcoat, stock, and shirt, together with the silver gorget of his office. He handed his garments to the aide who accompanied him, and sat down on my stool, his placid dignity quite unimpaired by partial nakedness, by the gooseflesh that stippled his back and shoulders, or by the murmur of awed surprise that went up from the waiting slaves at sight of him.

His torso was nearly hairless, with the pale, suety color of skin that had gone years with no exposure to sunlight, in sharp contrast to the weathered brown of his hands, face, and knees. The contrasts went further than that, though.

Over the milky skin of his left breast was a huge patch of bluish-black that covered him from ribs to clavicle. And while the nipple on the right was a normal brownish-pink, the one on the left was a startling white. I blinked at the sight, and heard a soft
“A Dhia!”
behind me.

“A Dhia, tha e ’tionndadh dubh!”
said another voice, somewhat louder. By God, he is turning black!

Hayes appeared not to hear any of this, but sat back to let me make my examination. Close inspection revealed that the dark coloration was not natural pigmentation but a mottling caused by the presence of innumerable small dark granules embedded in the skin. The nipple was gone altogether, replaced by a patch of shiny white scar tissue the size of a sixpence.

“Gunpowder,” I said, running my fingertips lightly over the darkened area. I’d seen such things before; caused by a misfire or shot at close range, which drove particles of powder—and often bits of wadding and cloth—into the deeper layers of the skin. Sure enough, there were small bumps beneath the skin, evident to my fingertips, dark fragments of whatever garment he had been wearing when shot.

“Is the ball still in you?” I could see where it had entered; I touched the white patch, trying to envision the path the bullet might have taken thereafter.

“Half of it is,” he replied tranquilly. “It shattered. When the surgeon went to dig it out, he gave me the bits of it. When I fitted them together after, I couldna make but half a ball, so the rest of it must have stayed.”

“Shattered? A wonder the pieces didn’t go through your heart or your lung,” I said, squatting down in order to squint more closely at the injury.

“Oh, it did,” he informed me. “At least, I suppose that it must, for it came in at my breest as ye see—but it’s keekin’ out from my back just now.”

To the astonishment of the multitudes—as well as my own—he was right. I could not only feel a small lump, just under the outer border of his left scapula, I could actually
see
it; a darkish swelling pressing against the soft white skin.

“I will be damned,” I said, and he gave a small grunt of amusement, whether at my surprise or my language, I couldn’t tell.

Odd as it was, the bit of shrapnel presented no surgical difficulty. I dipped a cloth into my bowl of distilled alcohol, wiped the area carefully, sterilized a scalpel, and cut quickly into the skin. Hayes sat quite still as I did it; he was a soldier and a Scot, and as the markings on his breast bore witness, he had endured much worse than this.

I spread two fingers and pressed them on either side of the incision; the lips of the small slit pouted, then a dark, jagged bit of metal suddenly protruded like a stuck-out tongue—far enough for me to grasp it with forceps and pull it free. I dropped the discolored lump into Hayes’s hand, with a small exclamation of triumph, then clapped a pad soaked with alcohol against his back.

He expelled a long breath between pursed lips, and smiled over his shoulder at me.

“I thank ye, Mrs. Fraser. This wee fellow has been wi’ me for some time now, but I canna say as I’m grieved to part company with him.” He cupped his blood-smeared palm, peering at the bit of fractured metal in it with great interest.

“How long ago did it happen?” I asked curiously. I didn’t think the bit of shrapnel had actually passed completely through his body, though it certainly gave the illusion of having done so. More likely, I thought, it had remained near the surface of the original wound, and traveled slowly round the torso, propelled between skin and muscle by Hayes’s movements, until reaching its present location.

“Oh, twenty year and more, mistress,” he said. He touched the patch of tough, numbed white that had once been one of the most sensitive spots on his body. “That happened at Culloden.”

He spoke casually, but I felt gooseflesh ripple over my arms at the name. Twenty years and more … twenty-five, more like. At which point …

“You can’t have been more than twelve!” I said.

“No,” he replied, one eyebrow lifted. “Eleven. My birthday was the next day, though.”

I choked back whatever I might have said in reply. I had thought I had lost my capacity to be shocked by the realities of the past, but evidently not. Someone had shot him—an eleven-year-old boy—at point-blank range. No chance of mistake, no shot gone awry in the heat of battle. The man who had shot him had known it was a child he meant to kill—and had fired, anyway.

My lips pressed tight as I examined my incision. No more than an inch long, and not deep; the fractured ball had lain just below the surface. Good, it wouldn’t need stitching. I pressed a clean pad to the wound and moved in front of him, to fasten the linen strip that bound it in place.

“A miracle you survived,” I said.

“It was that,” he agreed. “I was lyin’ on the ground, and Murchison’s face over me, and I—”

“Murchison!” The exclamation popped out of me, and I saw a flicker of satisfaction cross Hayes’s face. I had a brief premonitory qualm, remembering what Jamie had said about Hayes the night before.
He thinks more than he says, does wee Archie—and he talks quite a lot. Be careful of him, Sassenach.
Well, a little late for caution—but I doubted it could matter; even if it
had
been the same Murchison—

“You’ll ken the name, I see,” Hayes observed pleasantly. “I had heard in England that a Sergeant Murchison of the 26th was sent to North Carolina. But the garrison at Cross Creek was gone when we reached the town—a fire, was it?”

“Er, yes,” I said, rather edgy at this reference. I was glad that Bree had left; only two people knew the whole truth of what had happened when the Crown’s warehouse on Cross Creek burned, and she was one of them. As for the other—well, Stephen Bonnet was not likely to cross paths with the Lieutenant anytime soon—if Bonnet himself was still alive.

“And the men of the garrison,” Hayes pursued, “Murchison and the rest—where have they gone, d’ye know?”

“Sergeant Murchison is dead,” said a deep, soft voice behind me. “Alas.”

Hayes looked beyond me and smiled.

“A Sheumais ruaidh,”
he said. “I did think ye might come to your wife, sooner or later. I’ve been seekin’ ye the morn.”

I was startled at the name, and so was Jamie; a look of surprise flashed across his features, then disappeared, replaced by wariness. No one had called him “Red Jamie” since the days of the Rising.

“I heard,” he said dryly. He sat down on my extra stool, facing Hayes. “Let’s have it, then. What is it?”

Hayes pulled up the sporran that dangled between his knees, rummaged for a moment, and pulled out a square of folded paper, secured with a red wax seal, marked with a crest I recognized. My heart skipped a beat at the sight; I somehow doubted that Governor Tryon was sending me a belated birthday wish.

Hayes turned it over, checked carefully to see that the name inscribed on the front was Jamie’s, and handed it across. To my surprise, Jamie didn’t open it at once, but sat holding it, eyes fixed on Hayes’s face.

“What brought ye here?” he asked abruptly.

“Ah, duty, to be sure,” Hayes answered, thin brows arched in innocent astonishment. “Does a soldier do aught for any other reason?”

“Duty,” Jamie repeated. He tapped the missive idly against his leg. “Aye, well. Duty might take ye from Charleston to Virginia, but there are quicker ways to get there.”

Hayes started to shrug, but desisted at once, as the movement jarred the shoulder I was bandaging.

“I had the Proclamation to bring, from Governor Tryon.”

“The Governor’s no authority over you or your men.”

“True,” Hayes agreed, “but why should I not do the man a service, and I could?”

“Aye, and did he ask ye to do him the service, or was it your own notion?” Jamie said, a distinct tone of cynicism in his voice.

“Ye’ve grown a bit suspicious in your auld age,
a Sheumais ruaidh
,” Hayes said, shaking his head reprovingly.

“That’s how I’ve lived to grow as auld as I have,” Jamie replied, smiling slightly. He paused, eyeing Hayes. “Ye say it was a man named Murchison who shot ye on the field at Drumossie?”

I had finished the bandaging; Hayes moved his shoulder experimentally, testing for pain.

“Why, ye kent that, surely,
a Sheumais ruaidh
. D’ye not recall the day, man?”

Jamie’s face changed subtly, and I felt a small tremor of unease. The fact was that Jamie had almost no memory of the last day of the clans, of the slaughter that had left so many bleeding in the rain—him among them. I knew that small scenes from that day came back to him now and again in his sleep, fragments of nightmare—but whether it was from trauma, injury, or simple force of will, the Battle of Culloden was lost to him—or had been, until now. I didn’t think he wanted it back.

“A great deal happened then,” he said. “I dinna remember everything, no.” He bent his head abruptly, and thrust a thumb beneath the fold of the letter, opening it so roughly that the wax seal shattered into fragments.

“Your husband’s a modest man, Mistress Fraser.” Hayes nodded to me as he summoned his aide with a flip of the hand. “Has he never told ye what he did that day?”

“There was a good bit of gallantry on that field,” Jamie muttered, head bent over the letter. “And quite a bit of the reverse.” I didn’t think he was reading; his eyes were fixed, as though he were seeing something else, beyond the paper that he held.

“Aye, there was,” Hayes agreed. “But it does seem worth remark, when a man’s saved your life, no?”

Jamie’s head jerked up at that, startled. I moved across to stand behind him, a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. Hayes took the shirt from his aide and put it slowly on, smiling in an odd, half-watchful way.

“Ye dinna recall how ye struck Murchison across the head, just as he was set to bayonet me on the ground? And then ye picked me up and carried me from the field, awa to a bittie well nearby? One of the chiefs lay on the grass there, and his men were bathin’ his heid in the water, but I could see he was deid, he lay so still. There was someone there to tend me; they wished ye to stay, too, for ye were wounded and bleeding, but ye would not. Ye wished me well, in the name of St. Michael—and went back then, to the field.”