The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (938 page)

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.

“I imagine we can accommodate each other, then,” I said, returning the smile. “I ought not to ask, I suppose—I don’t intend to hold you up; I’ll give you what you need for your friend—but with thought of possible future trade, have you got more laudanum?”

He continued to smile, but his gaze sharpened—he had rather unusual eyes, that pale gray often described as “spit-colored.”

“Why, yes,” he said slowly. “I have quite a bit. Do you … require it regularly?”

It occurred to me that he was wondering whether I was an addict; it wasn’t at all uncommon, in circles where laudanum was easily obtainable.

“I don’t use it myself, no,” I replied equably. “And I administer it to those in need with considerable caution. But relief of pain is one of the more important things I can offer some of the people who come to me—God knows I can’t offer many of them cure.”

His brows went up at that. “That’s a rather remarkable statement. Most persons in your profession seem to promise cure to nearly everyone.”

“How does that saying go? ‘If wishes were horses, beggars might ride’?” I smiled, but without much humor. “Everyone wants a cure, and certainly there’s no physician who doesn’t want to give them one. But there are a lot of things beyond the power of any physician, and while you might not tell a patient that, it’s as well to know your own limits.”

“You think so?” He tilted his head, regarding me curiously. “Do you not think that the admission of such limits,
a priori—
and I do not mean only in the medical way, but in any arena of endeavor—that such an admission in itself
establishes limits?
That is, might that expectation prevent one from accomplishing all that is possible, because one assumes that something is
not
possible and therefore does not strive with all one’s power to achieve it?”

I blinked at him, rather surprised.

“Well … yes,” I said slowly. “If you put it that way, I rather think I agree with you. After all”—I waved a hand toward the tent flap, indicating the surrounding army—“if I didn’t
—we
didn’t—believe that one can accomplish things beyond all reasonable expectation, would my husband and I be
here
?”

He laughed at that.

“Brava, ma’am! Yes, an impartial observer would, I think, call this venture
sheer madness. And they might be right,” he added, with a rueful tilt of the head. “But they’ll have to defeat us, nonetheless. We shan’t give up.”

I heard voices outside: Jamie, talking casually with someone, and in the next moment he had ducked inside the tent.

“Sassenach,” he began, “can ye come and—” He stopped dead, seeing my visitor, and drew up a bit, with a formal bow. “Sir.”

I glanced back at the visitor, surprised; Jamie’s manner made it clear that this was a superior officer of some sort; I’d thought him perhaps a captain or a major. As for the officer himself, he nodded, friendly but reserved.

“Colonel. Your wife and I have been discussing the philosophy of endeavor. What do you say—does a wise man know his limits, or a bold one deny them? And which way do you declare yourself?”

Jamie looked mildly startled and glanced at me; I lifted one shoulder an inch.

“Ah, well,” he said, switching his attention back to my visitor. “I’ve heard it said that a man’s reach must exceed his grasp—or what’s a heaven for?”

The officer stared at him for an instant, mouth open, then laughed with delight and slapped his knee.

“You and your wife are two of a kind, sir!
My
kind. That’s splendid; do you recall where you heard it?”

Jamie did; he’d heard it from me, more than once over the years. He merely smiled and shrugged, though.

“A poet, I believe, but I’ve forgot the name.”

“Well, a perfectly expressed sentiment, nonetheless, and I mean to go and try it on Granny directly—though I imagine he’ll just blink stupidly at me through his spectacles and bleat about supplies.
There’s
a man who knows his limits,” he remarked to me, still good-humored but with a distinct edge in his voice. “Knows his own damnably low limits and won’t let anyone else exceed them. A heaven’s not for the likes of him.”

That last remark went beyond edgy; the smile had faded from his face, and I glimpsed a hot anger at the back of his pale eyes. I had a moment of disquiet; “Granny” could only be General Gates, and this man was plainly a disaffected member of the high command. I sincerely hoped Robert Browning and I hadn’t just landed Jamie in the middle of something.

“Well,” I said, trying to make light of it, “they can’t defeat you if you won’t give up.”

The shadow that had rested on his brow cleared and he smiled at me, merry-eyed once more.

“Oh, they’ll never defeat me, Mrs. Fraser. Trust me!”

“I will,” I assured him, turning to open one of my boxes. “Let me get the Jesuit bark for you … er …” I hesitated, not knowing his rank, and he noticed, clapping a hand to his forehead in apology.

“My apologies, Mrs. Fraser! What can you think of a man who bursts into your presence, rudely demanding medicaments and failing even to introduce himself properly?”

He took the small package of shredded bark from my hand, retaining the hand itself, and bowed low over it, gently kissing my knuckles.

“Major General Benedict Arnold. Your servant, ma’am.”

Jamie looked after the departing general, a slight frown on his face. Then he glanced back at me and the frown disappeared instantly.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach? Ye look as though you’re about to fall over.”

“I might, at that,” I said rather faintly, and groped for my stool. I sat on it and discovered the new bottle of laudanum on the table beside me. I picked it up, finding the solid weight of it a reassurance that I hadn’t imagined the gentleman who’d just left us.

“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.

“Why should ye not like—oh.” His face changed. “Ye know something about him?”

“Yes, I do. And it’s not something I want to know.” I swallowed, feeling a little ill. “He’s not a traitor yet—but he will be.”

Jamie glanced back over his shoulder, to be sure we were not overheard, then came and sat on the patient’s stool, taking my hands in his.

“Tell me,” he said, low-voiced.

There were limits to what I
could
tell him—and, not for the first time, I regretted not having paid more attention to Bree’s history homework, as that formed the nucleus of my specific knowledge regarding the American Revolution.

“He fought on our—on the American side for some time, and was a brilliant soldier, though I don’t know any of the details of that. But at some point, he became disillusioned, decided to switch sides, and began making overtures to the British, using a man called John André as his go-between—André was captured and hanged, I know that much. But I think Arnold got away to England. For an American
general
to turn his coat … it was such a spectacular act of treason that the name ‘Benedict Arnold’ became a synonym for traitor.
Will
become, I mean. If someone commits some horrible act of betrayal, you call them ‘a Benedict Arnold.’ ”

The sick feeling hadn’t gone away. Somewhere—right this minute—one Major John André was happily going about his business, presumably without the slightest notion of what lay in his future.

“When?” Jamie’s fingers pressing mine drew my attention away from Major André’s impending doom and back to the more urgent matter.

“That’s the problem,” I said helplessly. “I don’t know. Not yet—I
think
not yet.”

Jamie thought for a moment, brows drawn down.

“I’ll watch him, then,” he said quietly.

“Don’t,” I said, by reflex. We stared at each other for a long moment, recalling Charles Stuart. It hadn’t escaped either of us that attempting to interfere with history could have serious unintended consequences—if in fact it could be done at all. We had no notion what it was that might turn Arnold from patriot—which he certainly was at the moment—to the traitor he would
be. Was his fight with Gates the niggling grain of sand that would form the heart of a treacherous pearl?

“You don’t know what small thing might affect someone’s mind,” I pointed out. “Look at Robert the Bruce and that spider.”

That made him smile.

“I’ll gang warily, Sassenach,” he said. “But I’ll watch him.”

HAT TRICK

On a quiet autumn morning, crisp and golden, a British deserter entered the American camp. Burgoyne was sending out a reconnaissance force, he said. Two thousand men, to test the strength of the American right wing.

“Granny Gates’s eyes nearly popped through his spectacles,” Jamie told me, hastily reloading his cartridge box. “And nay wonder.”

General Arnold, present when the news came, urged Gates to send out a strong force against this foray. Gates, true to form, had been cautious, and when Arnold requested permission to go out and see for himself what the British were about, had given his subordinate a cold look and said, “I am afraid to trust you, Arnold.”

“Matters rather went downhill from there,” Jamie said, grimacing slightly. “The end of it all was that Gates said to him—and I quote ye exactly, Sassenach—‘General Arnold, I have nothing for you to do. You have no business here.’ ”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the morning air. Was this the moment? The thing that had—or would—turn Benedict Arnold against the cause he had fought for? Jamie saw what I was thinking, for he lifted one shoulder and said simply, “At least it’s nothing to do wi’ us this time.”

“That
is
a comfort,” I said, and meant it. “Take care, will you?”

“I will,” he said, taking up his rifle.

This time, he was able to kiss me goodbye in person.

The British reconnaissance had a double purpose: not only to see exactly where the Americans were—for General Burgoyne had no real idea; American deserters had stopped coming in long since—but also to acquire much-needed forage for the remaining animals. Consequently, the leading companies stopped in a promising wheat field.

William sent his infantrymen to sit down in double rows among the standing grain, while the foragers began cutting the grain and loading it on horses. A lieutenant of dragoons, a black-headed Welshman named Absolute, waved from the other side of the field and called him to a game of hazard in his tent in the evening. He had just taken breath to call back when the man beside him let out a gasp and crumpled to the ground. He never heard the bullet, but ducked to the ground, calling out to his men.