A Breath of Snow and Ashes (170 page)

“That’s not what I asked,” she said, a noticeable edge in her voice. “I asked why my father shot him.”

He sighed. She could have found gainful employment with the Spanish Inquisition, he thought ruefully; no chance of escape or evasion.

“I understand that his Lordship, apprehending that the newborn infant was in fact not of his blood, intended to expunge the stain upon his honor by dropping the child out of the window, onto the slates in the courtyard thirty feet below,” he said bluntly.

Her face had paled perceptibly.

“How did he find out?” she demanded. “And if Da was a groom, why was he there? Did the earl know he was—responsible?” She shuddered, plainly envisioning a scene in which Jamie was summoned to the earl’s presence, to witness the death of his illegitimate offspring before facing a similar fate himself. John had no difficulty in discerning her imagination; he had envisioned such a scene himself, more than once.

“An acute choice of words,” he replied dryly. “Jamie Fraser is ‘responsible’ for more than any man I know. As to the rest, I have no idea. I know the essentials of what happened, because Isobel knew; her mother was present and presumably told her only the briefest outline of the incident.”

“Huh.” She kicked a small stone, deliberately. It skittered across the packed sand in front of her, ending a few feet away. “And you never asked Da about it?”

The stone lay in his line of march; he kicked it neatly as he walked, rolling it back into her path.

“I have never spoken to your father regarding Geneva, Ellesmere, or William himself—save to inform him of my marriage to Isobel and to assure him that I would fulfill my responsibilities as William’s guardian to the best of my ability.”

She set her foot on the stone, driving it into the soft sand, and stopped.

“You never said
anything
to him? What did he say to you?” she demanded.

“Nothing.” He returned her stare.

“Why did you marry Isobel?”

He sighed, but there was no point in evasion.

“In order to take care of William.”

The thick red brows nearly touched her hairline.

“So you got married, in spite of—I mean, you turned your whole life upside down, just to take care of Jamie Fraser’s illegitimate son? And neither one of you ever
talked
about it?”

“No,” he said, baffled. “Of course not.”

Slowly, the brows came down again, and she shook her head.

“Men,” she said cryptically. She glanced back toward the town. The air was calm, and a haze from the chimneys of Wilmington lay heavy above the trees. No roofs showed; it might have been a dragon that lay sleeping on the shore, for all that could be seen. The low, rumbling noise was not a reptilian snore, though; a small but constant stream of people had been passing by the track, headed for the town, and the reverberations of an increasing crowd were clearly audible, whenever the wind was right.

“It’s nearly dark. I have to go back.” She turned toward the lane that led into town, and he followed, relieved for the moment, but under no illusion that the inquisition was over.

She had only one more question, though.

“When are you going to tell him?” she asked, turning to look at him as she reached the edge of the trees.

“Tell who what?” he replied, startled.

“Him.”
She frowned at him, irritated. “William. My brother.” The irritation faded as she tasted the word. She was still pale, but a sort of excitement had begun to glow beneath her skin. Lord John felt as though he had eaten something that violently disagreed with him. A cold sweat broke out along his jaw, and his guts clenched into fistlike knots. His knees turned to water.

“Are you quite mad?” He grasped at her arm, as much to keep from stumbling as to prevent her going off.

“I gather he doesn’t know who his father really is,” she said with a bit of asperity. “Given that you and Da never talked to each other about it, you probably didn’t see any point talking to
him,
either. But he’s grown up now—he has a right to know, surely.”

Lord John closed his eyes with a low moan.

“Are you all right?” she asked. He felt her bending close to inspect him. “You don’t look very good.”

“Sit.” He sat himself, back to a tree, and pulled her down beside him on the ground. He breathed deeply, keeping his eyes closed while his mind raced. Surely she was joking? Surely not, his cynically observant self assured him. She had a marked sense of humor, but it wasn’t in evidence at the moment.

She couldn’t. He couldn’t let her. It was inconceivable that she—but how could he stop her? If she wouldn’t listen to him, perhaps Jamie or her mother . . .

A hand touched his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t stop to think.”

Relief filled him. He felt his bowels begin to uncramp, and opened his eyes to see her gazing at him with a peculiar sort of limpid sympathy that he didn’t understand at all. His bowels promptly convulsed again, making him fear that he was about to suffer an embarrassing attack of flatulence on the spot.

His bowels had read her better than he had.

“I should have thought,” she reproached herself. “I should have known how you’d feel about it. You said it yourself—he’s
your
son. You’ve raised him all this time, I can see how much you love him. It must make you feel terrible to think of William finding out about Da and maybe blaming you for not telling him sooner.” Her hand was massaging his collarbone in what he assumed was meant to be a soothing gesture. If that was her intent, the movement had singularly failed.

“But—” he began, but she had taken his hand in both hers and was squeezing it earnestly, her blue eyes shimmering with tears.

“He won’t,” she assured him. “William would never stop loving you. Believe me. It was the same for me—when I found out about Da. I didn’t want to believe it at first; I
had
a father, and I loved him, and I didn’t want another one. But then I met Da, and it was—he was . . . who he is—” She shrugged slightly, and lifted one hand to wipe her eyes on the lace at her wrist.

“But I haven’t forgotten my other father,” she said very softly. “I never will. Never.”

Touched despite the general seriousness of the situation, Lord John cleared his throat.

“Yes. Well. I am sure your sentiments do you great credit, my dear. And while I hope that I likewise enjoy William’s affectionate regard at present and will continue to do so in future, that is really not the point I was endeavoring to make.”

“It’s not?” She looked up, wide-eyed, tears clumping her lashes into dark spikes. She was really a lovely young woman, and he felt a small twinge of tenderness.

“No,” he said, quite gently under the circumstances. “Look, my love. I told you who William is—or who he thinks he is.”

“Viscount Whatnot, you mean?”

He sighed deeply.

“Quite. The five people who know of his true parentage have expended considerable effort for the last eighteeen years, to the end that no one—William included—should ever have cause to doubt that he
is
the ninth Earl of Ellesmere.”

She looked down at that, her thick brows knitted, lips compressed. Christ, he hoped that her husband had succeeded in locating Jamie Fraser in time. Jamie Fraser was the only person who had a hope of being more effectually stubborn than his daughter.

“You don’t understand,” she said finally. She looked up, and he saw that she had come to some decision.

“We’re leaving,” she said abruptly. “Roger and I and the—the children.”

“Oh?” he said cautiously. This might be good news—on several counts. “Where do you propose to go? Will you remove to England? Or Scotland? If England or Canada, I have several social connexions who might be of—”

“No. Not there. Not anywhere you have ‘connexions.’” She smiled painfully at him, then swallowed before continuing.

“But you see—we’ll be gone. For—for good. I won’t—I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.” That realization had just dawned on her; he saw it on her face, and despite the strength of the pang it gave him, he was deeply moved by her obvious distress at the thought.

“I will miss you very much, Brianna,” he said gently. He had been a soldier most of his life, and then a diplomat. He had learned to live with separation and absence, with the occasional death of friends left behind. But the notion of never seeing this odd girl again caused him a most unexpected degree of grief. Almost, he thought with surprise, as though she were his own daughter.

But he had a son, as well, and her next words snapped him back to full alertness.

“So you see,” she said, leaning toward him with an intentness that he would otherwise have found charming, “I have to talk to William, and tell him. We’ll never have another chance.” Then her face changed, and she put a hand to her bosom.

“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “Mandy—Amanda, my daughter—she needs to be fed.”

And with that, she was up and gone, scudding across the sand of the racetrack like a storm cloud, leaving the threat of destruction and upheaval in her wake.

117

SURELY JUSTICE AND MERCY
SHALL FOLLOW ME

July 10, 1776

T
HE TIDE TURNED FROM THE EBB just before five o’clock in the morning. The sky was fully light, a clear pale color without clouds, and the mudflats beyond the quay stretched gray and shining, their smoothness marred here and there by weed and stubborn sea grass, sprouting from the mud like clumps of hair.

Everyone rose with the dawn; there were plenty of people on the quay to see the small procession go out, two officers from the Wilmington Committee of Safety, a representative from the Merchants Association, a minister carrying a Bible, and the prisoner, a tall, wide-shouldered figure, walking bare-headed across the stinking mud. Behind them all came a slave, carrying the ropes.

“I don’t want to watch this,” Brianna said under her breath. She was very pale, her arms folded over her middle as though she had a stomachache.

“Let’s go, then.” Roger took her arm, but she pulled back.

“No. I have to.”

She dropped her arms and stood straight, watching. People around them were jostling for a better view, jeering and catcalling so loudly that whatever was said out there was inaudible. It didn’t take long. The slave, a big man, grabbed the mooring post and shook it, testing for steadfastness. Then stood back, while the two officers backed Stephen Bonnet up to the stake and wrapped his body with rope from chest to knees. The bastard wasn’t going anywhere.

Roger thought he should be searching his heart for compassion, praying for the man. He couldn’t. Tried to ask forgiveness, and couldn’t do that, either. Something like a ball of worms churned in his belly. He felt as though he were himself tied to a stake, waiting to drown.

The black-coated minister leaned close, his hair whipping in the early morning breeze, mouth moving. Roger didn’t think that Bonnet made any reply, but couldn’t tell for sure. After a few moments, the men doffed their hats, stood while the minister prayed, then put them on again and headed back toward shore, their boots squelching, ankle-deep in the sandy mud.

The moment the officials had disappeared, a stream of people poured out onto the mud: sightseers, hopping children—and a man with a notebook and pencil, who Roger recognized as Amos Crupp, the current proprietor of the
Wilmington Gazette.

“Well, that’ll be a scoop, won’t it?” Roger muttered. No matter what Bonnet actually said—or didn’t—there would undoubtedly be a broadsheet hawked through the streets tomorrow, containing either a lurid confession or mawkish reports of remorse—perhaps both.

“Okay, I
really
can’t watch this.” Abruptly, Brianna turned, taking his arm.

She made it past the row of warehouses before turning abruptly to him, burying her face in his chest and bursting into tears.

“Ssh. It’s okay—it’s going to be all right.” He patted her, tried to infuse some conviction into the words, but his own throat had a lump in it the size of a lemon. He finally took her by the shoulders and held her away from him, so that he could look into her eyes.

“Ye don’t have to do it,” he said.

She stopped crying and sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve like Jemmy—but wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“It’s—I’m okay It’s not even
him.
It’s just—just everything. M-Mandy”—her voice wavered on the word—“and meeting my brother—Oh, Roger, if I can’t tell him, he’ll never know, and I’ll never see him or Lord John again. Or Mama—” Fresh tears overwhelmed her, welling up in her eyes, but she gulped and swallowed, forcing them back.

“It’s not him,” she said in a choked, exhausted voice.

“Maybe it’s not,” he said softly. “But ye still don’t have to do it.” His stomach still churned, and his hands felt shaky, but resolution filled him.

“I should have killed him on Ocracoke,” she said, closing her eyes and brushing back strands of loosened hair. The sun was higher now, and bright. “I was a coward. I th-thought it would be easier to let—let the law do it.” She opened her eyes, and now did meet his gaze, her eyes reddened but clear. “I can’t let it happen this way, even if I hadn’t given my word.”

Roger understood that; he felt the terror of the tide coming in, that inexorable creep of water, rising in his bones. It would be nearly nine hours before the water reached Bonnet’s chin; he was a tall man.

“I’ll do it,” he said very firmly.

She made a small attempt at a smile, but abandoned it.

“No,” she said. “You won’t.” She looked—and sounded—absolutely drained; neither of them had slept much the night before. But she also sounded determined, and he recognized Jamie Fraser’s stubborn blood.

Well, what the hell—he had some of that blood, too.

“I told ye,” he said. “What your father said, that time.
‘It is myself who kills for her.’
If it has to be done”—and he was obliged to agree with her; he couldn’t stand it, either—“then I’ll do it.”

She was getting a grip on herself. She wiped her face with a fold of her skirt, and took a deep breath before meeting his eyes again. Hers were deep and vivid blue, much darker than the sky.

“You told me. And you told me why he said that, too—what he said to Arch Bug:
‘There is a vow upon her.’
She’s a doctor; she doesn’t kill people.”

The hell she doesn’t,
Roger thought, but better judgment prevented his saying so. Before he could think of something more tactful, she went on, placing her hands flat on his chest.

“You have one, too,” she said. That stopped him cold.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh, yes, you do.” She was quietly emphatic. “Maybe it isn’t official yet—but it doesn’t need to be. Maybe it doesn’t even have words, the vow that you took—but you did it, and I know it.”

He couldn’t deny it, and was moved that she
did
know it.

“Aye, well . . .” He put his hands over hers, clasping her long, strong fingers. “And I made one to you, too, when I told ye. I said I would never put God before my—my love for you.” Love. He couldn’t believe that he was discussing such a thing in terms of love. And yet, he had the queerest feeling that that was exactly how she saw it.

“I don’t have that sort of vow,” she said firmly, and pulled her hands out of his. “And I gave my word.”

She had gone with Jamie after dark the night before, to the place where the pirate was being held. Roger had no idea what sort of bribery or force of personality had been employed, but they had been admitted. Jamie had brought her back to their room very late, white-faced, with a sheaf of papers that she handed over to her father. Affidavits, she said; sworn statements of Stephen Bonnet’s business dealings with various merchants up and down the coast.

Roger had given Jamie a murderous look, and got the same back, with interest.
This is war,
Fraser’s narrowed eyes had said.
And I will use any weapon I can.
But all he had said was, “Good night, then,
a nighean,
” and touched her hair with tenderness before departing.

Brianna had sat down with Mandy and nursed her, eyes closed, refusing to speak. After a time, her face eased from its white, strained lines, and she burped the baby and laid her sleeping in her basket. Then she came to bed, and made love to him with a silent fierceness that surprised him. But not as much as she surprised him now.

“And there’s one other thing,” she said, sober and slightly sad. “I’m the only person in the world for whom this isn’t murder.”

With that, she turned and walked away fast, toward the inn where Mandy waited to be fed. Out on the mudflats, he could still hear the sound of excited voices, raucous as gulls.

AT TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon, Roger helped his wife into a small rowboat, tied to the quay near the row of warehouses. The tide had been coming in all day; the water was more than five feet deep. Out in the midst of the shining gray stood the cluster of mooring posts—and the small dark head of the pirate.

Brianna was remote as a pagan statue, her face expressionless. She lifted her skirts to step into the boat, and sat down, the weight in her pocket clunking against the wooden slat as she did so.

Roger took up the oars and rowed, heading toward the posts. They would arouse no particular interest; boats had been going out ever since noon, carrying sightseers who wished to look upon the condemned man’s face, shout taunts, or clip a strand of his hair for a souvenir.

He couldn’t see where he was going; Brianna directed him left or right with a silent tilt of her head. She could see; she sat straight and tall, her right hand hidden in her skirt.

Then she lifted her left hand suddenly, and Roger lay on the oars, digging with one to slew the tiny craft around.

Bonnet’s lips were cracked, his face chapped and crusted with salt, his lids so reddened that he could barely open his eyes. But his head lifted as they drew near, and Roger saw a man ravished, helpless and dreading a coming embrace—so much that he half welcomes its seductive touch, yielding his flesh to cold fingers and the overwhelming kiss that steals his breath.

“Ye’ve left it late enough, darlin’,” he said to Brianna, and the cracked lips parted in a grin that split them and left blood on his teeth. “I knew ye’d come, though.”

Roger paddled with one oar, working the boat close, then closer. He was looking over his shoulder when Brianna drew the gilt-handled pistol from her pocket, and put the barrel to Stephen Bonnet’s ear.

“Go with God, Stephen,” she said clearly, in Gaelic, and pulled the trigger. Then she dropped the gun into the water and turned round to face her husband.

“Take us home,” she said.