“Wee gomerel,” he muttered, shaking his head. Despite their history, he felt a bit sorry for Betty. He was also curious about her.
She hadn’t been friendly to him today, not quite that. But she’d spoken to him with more intimacy than she’d ever shown before. He would have expected her to ignore him, or be short with him, after what had passed between them. But no. Why was that?
“She wants to be married,” the lass had said of Isobel. Perhaps Mrs. Betty did, as well. She was the age for it, or a wee bit beyond. He’d thought—and blushed at his presumption—that she only wanted to bed him, whether out of lewdness or curiosity, he couldn’t tell. He was nearly sure that she knew about Geneva and him. But what if she’d fixed on him as a husband, in preference to George Roberts? God, had Grey said anything to her? The thought disturbed him very much.
On the face of it, he thought no woman in her right mind would consider him in that light. He’d neither money, property, nor freedom, doubted he even could wed, without the permission of Lord John Grey. Betty could be in no ignorance of his circumstances; the entire estate knew exactly what—if not exactly who—he was.
Who. Aye, who. Examining his feelings—a mixture of surprise, alarm, and a mild revulsion—he was a bit bothered to find that part of it was pride, and pride of a particularly sinful kind. Betty was a common girl, the daughter of a poor tenant of Dunsany’s—and he was both startled and discomfited to find that, in spite of present circumstance, he still thought of himself as the laird of Lallybroch.
“Well, that’s foolish,” he muttered, batting away a cloud of whining small flies that clustered round his head. He’d married Claire without a single thought of his place or hers. For all he’d known then, she was a—well, no. He smiled a little, involuntarily. He’d been an exile and an outlaw, with a price on his head. And he’d never have taken her for a slattern or peasant.
“I would have taken ye even if that was so, lass,” he said softly. “I’d have had ye, no matter if I’d known the truth from the start.”
He felt a little better, about himself, at least. That was the main root of his feeling regarding Betty, after all. Only that he could not countenance the thought of marrying again. That—
He stopped dead, catching sight of the corner of the wall where Quinn had sat, the Irishman’s strange light eyes glowing with fervor. Betty was Quinn’s sister-in-law; of course she knew who Jamie was. Had been.
The wind touched his neck with a sudden, different chill, and he turned at once, to see the fog coming down. He stood up in haste. Fogs on the fells were swift, sudden, and dangerous. He could see this one moving, a dirty great swell like a wild beast poking its head above the rocks, tendrils of mist creeping over the ground like the tentacles of an octopus.
He was running down the slope and looking to the horses, who had all stopped feeding and were standing with their heads up, looking toward the fog and switching their tails uneasily. He’d have the hobbles off in seconds—best run to the Dunsanys and make them pack up at once; he’d get the horses while they were about their business.
Thinking this, he looked for the party and found them. Counted them automatically. Three heads and a—Three. Only three. He flung himself down the hill, leaping rocks and stumbling over tussocks.
“Where’s William?” he gasped, as the three adults turned shocked faces on him. “The boy? Where is he?”
The boy was not quite three; he could not have gone far. He couldn’t. So Jamie told himself, trying to control the panic that was creeping into his mind as fast as the fog was covering the ground.
“Stay here, and stay together!” he said to Isobel and Lady Dunsany, both of whom blinked at him in surprise. “Call out for the lad, keep calling out—but dinna move a step. Here, hold the horses.” He thrust the bundled reins into Wilberforce’s hand, and the lawyer opened his mouth as though to protest, but Jamie didn’t stay to hear it.
“William!” he bellowed, plunging into the fog.
“Willie! Willie!” The women’s higher voices obligingly took up the call, regular as a bell on a ship’s buoy, and serving the same purpose. “Willie! Where are youuuu?”
The air had changed quite suddenly, no longer clear but soft and echoing; sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“William!” The sound bounced off the stones and the short, leathery turf. “William!”
He was moving up the slope, Jamie could tell that much. Perhaps William had gone to explore the shepherd’s hut. Wilberforce had joined the women now in calling out but was doing it in counterpoint, rather than in unison with them.
Jamie had the feeling that he could not breathe, that the fog was choking him—but this was nonsense. Pure illusion.
“William!”
His shins thumped into the fallen wall of the shepherd’s hut. He could not see more than the faintest outline of the stones but felt his way inside and crawled quickly along the walls, calling out for the boy. Nothing.
Fogs might last an hour, or a day.
“Willie-iam-Wil-Willy-iam-WILLIE!”
Jamie gritted his teeth. If they didn’t keep quiet now and then, he couldn’t hear Willie shouting back. If the boy was capable of shouting. The footing was treacherous, the grass slippery, the ground rocky. And if he went all the way to the bottom of the slope, the moss …
He went higher, among the tumbled stones. Staggered from one to another, feeling round their bases, stubbing his toes. The fog was cold in his chest, aching. His foot came down on something soft—Willie’s jacket—and his heart leapt.
“WILLIAM!”
Was that a sound, a whimper? He stopped dead, trying to listen, trying to hear through the whisper of the moving fog and the distant voices, cacophonous as a ring of church bells.
And then, quite suddenly, he saw the boy curled up in a rocky hollow, the yellow of his shirt showing briefly through an eddy in the fog. He lunged and seized William before he could disappear, clutched him to his bosom, saying, “It’s all right, a chuisle, it’s all right now, dinna be troubled, we’ll go and see your grannie, aye?”
“Mac! Mac, Mac! Oh, Mac!”
Willie clung to him like a leech, trying to burrow into his chest, and he wrapped his arms tight around the boy, too overcome to speak.
To this point, he could not really have said that he loved William. Feel the terror of responsibility for him, yes. Carry thought of him like a gem in his pocket, certainly, reaching now and then to touch it, marveling. But now he felt the perfection of the tiny bones of William’s spine through his clothes, smooth as marbles under his fingers, smelled the scent of him, rich with the incense of innocence and the faint tang of shit and clean linen. And thought his heart would break with love.
40
Gambit
Grey saw Jamie now and then, mostly in the distance as he went about his work. They had had no opportunity to speak, though—and he could not seem to invent a pretext, let alone think what he might say if he found one. He felt amazingly self-conscious, like a boy unable to say anything to an attractive girl. He’d be blushing, next thing, he thought, disgusted with himself.
Still, the fact remained that he really had nothing to say to Jamie anymore—or Jamie to him. Well, not nothing, he corrected himself. They’d always had a great deal to say to each other. But there was no excuse for conversation now.
Three days before his scheduled departure, he rose in the morning with the conviction that he must speak with Fraser, somehow. Not in the stiff manner of an interview between paroled prisoner and officer of the Crown—simply a few words, as man to man. If he could have that, he could go back to London with an easy heart, knowing that sometime, somewhere, there was the possibility that they might be friends again, even if that time and place could not be here and now.
It was no good anticipating an unknown battle. He ate his breakfast and told Tom to dress him for riding. Then he put on his hat and, heart beating a little faster than usual, went down toward the stables.
> He saw Jamie from a long way off; he couldn’t be mistaken for any other man, even without the signal fire of his dark-red hair. He had it tailed today, not plaited, and the ends fluttered against the white of his shirt like tiny flames.
William was with him, trotting at his heels, chattering like a magpie. Grey smiled to see him; the little boy was in his tiny breeches and a loose shirt and looked a proper little horseman.
He hesitated for a moment, waiting to see what Fraser was about; better if he did not interrupt the day’s work. But they were headed for the paddock, and he followed them at a distance.
A young man he didn’t know was waiting there; he bobbed his head at Fraser, who offered a hand and said something to him. Perhaps this was the new groom; Dunsany had said something about needing a new man to replace Hanks, over tea last night.
The men spoke for a few minutes, Fraser gesturing toward the group of horses in the paddock. There were three horses there, frisky two-year-old stallions, who nipped and shoved one another, galloping up and down in play. Fraser took a coiled halter rope from the fence post, and a bag of oats, and handed these to the young man.
The new groom took them gingerly, then opened the gate and went into the paddock. Grey saw that his nervousness vanished as soon as he was in with the horses; that was a good sign. Fraser seemed to think so, too—he gave a small nod to himself and crossed his forearms on the top rail, settling himself to watch.
Willie yanked at the side of Fraser’s breeches, obviously wanting to get up and see. Rather than pick the boy up, though, Fraser nodded, bent, and showed Willie how to put a foot up on the rail and then pull himself up. With a large hand cupped under his bottom to supply a boost, William made it to the upper rail and clung there, crowing with pleasure. Fraser smiled at him and said something, then turned back to watch how the groom was getting on.
Perfect. Grey could go and watch, too: nothing more natural.
He came up beside Fraser, nodded briefly to him, and leaned in his turn on the fence. They watched in silence for a few moments; the new man had successfully whistled the stallions in, shaking his bagful of oats, and had slipped the halter rope around the neck of one of the young horses. The others, finding the oats gone, shook their manes and frisked away; the roped one tried to go with them and, displeased to find himself tied, jerked back.
Grey watched with interest to see what the groom would do; he didn’t pull on the rope but rather swarmed inward along it and, with a hand on the stallion’s mane, was on his back in an instant. He turned his face toward Fraser, flashing a grin, and Fraser laughed, turning up his thumb in approval.
“Well done!” he called. “Take him round a few times, aye?”
“Well done!” Willie piped, and hopped up and down on the fence rail like a sparrow.
Fraser put out a hand to touch the boy’s shoulder, and he quieted at once. All three of them watched the groom take the horse barebacked round the paddock, sticking in spite of all attempts to shake or rear, until the stallion gave up and trotted peacefully along.
The sense of excitement ebbed to one of pleasant half attention. And, quite suddenly, Grey knew what to say.
“Queen’s knight,” he said quietly. “To queen two.” It was, he knew, a dangerous opening.
Fraser didn’t move, but Grey felt his sideways glance. After an instant’s hesitation, he replied, “King’s knight to bishop two,” and Grey felt his heart lighten. It was the answer to the Torremolinos Gambit, the one he had used on that far-off, disastrous evening at Ardsmuir, when he had first laid his hand on Jamie Fraser’s.
“Well done, well done, well done,” Willie was chanting softly to himself. “Well done, well done, well done!”
41
A Moonlicht Flicht
It was not yet teatime, but the sun hovered just above the leafless copper beeches; the dark came earlier every day. Jamie was walking back from the distant barn where the farm horses were kept. Three young men from the village tended these, feeding, brushing, and mucking out; Jamie came daily when the horses were brought in, to check for injury, lameness, cough, and general ill health, for the farm horses were, in their own way, nearly as valuable as the stud.
Joe Gore, one of the farmhands, was outside the barn, looking out for him, and looking anxious. The instant he saw Jamie, he broke into a clumsy run, waving his arms.
“Fanny’s gone missing!” he blurted.
“How?” Jamie asked, startled. Fanny was a big Belgian draft horse, fawn in color, who stood seventeen hands at the shoulder. Not easily mislaid, even in the fading light.
“Well, I dunno, do I?” Joe was scared, and defensive with it. “Ike hit a stone and bent t’ wheel rim, so’m he unhitched wagon and left her while he brung wheel to smithy. I go up to get her, and she’s nay bloody there, is she?”
“Ye checked the walls and hedges, aye?” Jamie was already moving, heading for the distant cornfield, Joe at his heels. That field was not fenced but was bordered by drystone dikes on three sides, a windbreak hedgerow to the north. The notion of Fanny jumping the walls was just this side of absurd, but she might conceivably have broken through the hedge; she was a powerful horse.
“Think I’m green? ’Course I did!”
“We’ll go round by the road.” Jamie jerked his chin toward the road that edged the property to the east; it was the border of Helwater’s land and made along the high ground, offering a view of the whole of the back fields.
They had barely reached the road, though, when Joe gave a shout of relief, pointing. “There she is! Who the devil’s that atop her?”
Jamie squinted for a moment into the glare of the fading sun and felt a lurch of alarm—for the small figure perched on Fanny’s back, kicking its heels in frustration against the draft horse’s great placid sides, was Betty Mitchell.
Fanny had been plodding stolidly along when first sighted, but now the big head reared up, nostrils flaring, and she broke into a thumping gallop. Betty screamed and fell off.
Jamie left Fanny to Joe, who seized the horse by the mane and was half-dragged toward the barn as Fanny made single-mindedly for her manger. Jamie squatted by Betty but was relieved to see her already struggling to rise, using the most unladylike language he’d heard since Claire had left him.
“What—” he began, seizing her under the arms, but she didn’t wait for him to finish.
“Isobel!” she gasped. “That frigging lawyer’s got her! You’ve got to go!”
“Go where?” He set her firmly on her feet, but she swayed alarmingly, and he gripped her arms to steady her. “Mr. Wilberforce, ye mean?”
“Who bloody else?” she snapped. “He came to take her driving, in a gig. She was already out in the yard with her bonnet on, getting in, when I saw her from the window. I ran down and said, whatever was she thinking? She wasn’t going off with him by herself—Lady D would have my head!”
She paused to breathe heavily, gathering herself.
“She tried to make me stay, but he laughed and said I was quite right; ’twasn’t proper for an unmarried young woman to be out with a man unchaperoned. She made a face, but she giggled at him and said, oh, all right, then, she supposed I could come.”
Betty’s hair was coming down in thick hanks round her face; she brushed one back with a “Tcha!” of irritation, then turned round and pointed up the road.
“We got up to the edge of Helwater, and he stops to look at the view. We all got out, and I’m standing there thinking it’s perishing cold and me come out with no more than my shawl and cross with Isobel for being a thoughtless ninny, and all of a sudden Mr. Wilberforce grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me off the road and into a ditch, the fucking bastard! Look at that, just look!” She seized a handful of her muddied skirt and shook it under Jamie’s nose, showing him a great rent in the fabric.
“Where’s he gone, do ye know?”
“I can bloody guess! Gretna fucking Green, that’s where!”
“Jesus Christ!” He took a d
eep breath, trying to think. “He’ll never get there tonight—not in a gig.”
She shrugged, exasperated. “Why are you standing here? You’ve got to go after them!”
“Me? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because you can ride fast! And because you’re big enough to make her bloody come back with you! And you can keep it quiet!”
When he did not move at once, she stamped her foot. “Are you deaf? You have to go now! If he takes her maidenhead, she’s stuffed more ways than one. The bugger’s got a wife already.”
“What? A wife?”
“Will you stop saying ‘What’ like a bloody parrot?” she snapped. “Yes! He married a girl in Perthshire, five or six years back. She left him and went back to her parents, and he came to Derwentwater. I heard it from—well, never bloody mind! Just—just—go!”
“But you—”
“I’ll manage! GO!” she bellowed, her face scarlet in the glare of the sinking sun.
He went.
His first impulse was to go back to the house, to the main stable. But that would take too long—and embroil him in awkward explanations that would not only delay his leaving but rouse the whole household.
“And you can keep it quiet,” Betty had said.
“Aye, fat chance,” he muttered, half-running for the barn. But if there was any chance of keeping this from becoming an open scandal, he had to admit that it probably lay with him, little as he liked it.
There was no possibility of pursuing Wilberforce on one of the farm horses, even were they not knackered from the day’s work. But there were two fine mules, Whitey and Mike, who were kept to draw the hay wagon. They were broken to the saddle, at least, and had spent the day in pasture. He might just …
By the time he’d reached this point in his thoughts, he was already rifling through the tack in search of a snaffle and, ten minutes later, was mounted on a surprised and affronted Whitey, trotting toward the road, the three stable-hands staring after them with their mouths hanging open. He saw Betty in the distance, limping toward the house, her entire figure emanating indignation.
The Lord John Series 4-Book Bundle Page 143