Drums of Autumn (93 page)

He moved toward her out of the maples’ shadow, and the sun struck his hair with a spray of copper sparks. Half consciously she raised a hand and pushed a strand of hair back from her face, seeing from the corner of her eye the matching gleam of thick red-gold.

“What d’ye want here, lassie?” he asked. Sharp, but not unkind. His voice was deeper than she had imagined; the Highland burr slight but distinct.

“You,” she blurted. Her heart seemed to have wedged itself in her throat; she had trouble forcing any words past it.

He was close enough that she caught the faint whiff of his sweat and the fresh smell of sawn wood; there was a golden scatter of sawdust caught in the rolled sleeves of his linen shirt. His eyes narrowed with amusement as he looked her up and down, taking in her costume. One reddish eyebrow rose, and he shook his head.

“Sorry, lass,” he said, with a half-smile. “I’m a marrit man.”

He made to pass by, and she made a small incoherent sound, putting out a hand to stop him, but not quite daring to touch his sleeve. He stopped and looked at her more closely.

“No, I meant it; I’ve a wife at home, and home’s not far,” he said, evidently wishing to be courteous. “But—” He stopped, close enough now to take in the grubbiness of her clothes, the hole in the sleeve of her coat and the tattered ends of her stock.

“Och,” he said in a different tone, and reached for the small leather purse he wore tied at his waist. “Will ye be starved, then, lass? I’ve money, if you must eat.”

She could scarcely breathe. His eyes were dark blue, soft with kindness. Her eyes fixed on the open collar of his shirt, where the curly hairs showed, bleached gold against his sunburnt skin.

“Are you—you’re Jamie Fraser, aren’t you?”

He glanced sharply at her face.

“I am,” he said. The wariness had returned to his face; his eyes narrowed against the sun. He glanced quickly behind him, toward the tavern, but nothing stirred in the open doorway. He took a step closer to her.

“Who asks?” he said softly. “Have you a message for me, lass?”

She felt an absurd desire to laugh welling up in her throat. Did she have a message?

“My name is Brianna,” she said. He frowned, uncertain, and something flickered in his eyes. He knew it! He’d heard the name and it meant something to him. She swallowed hard, feeling her cheeks blaze as though they’d been seared by a candle flame.

“I’m your daughter,” she said, her voice sounding choked to her own ears. “Brianna.”

He stood stock-still, not changing expression in the slightest. He had heard her, though; he went pale, and then a deep, painful red washed up his throat and into his face, sudden as a brushfire, matching her own vivid color.

She felt a deep flash of joy at the sight, a rush through her midsection that echoed that blaze of blood, recognition of their fair-skinned kinship. Did it trouble him to blush so strongly? she wondered suddenly. Had he schooled his face to immobility, as she had learned to do, to mask that telltale surge?

Her own face felt stiff, but she gave him a tentative smile.

He blinked, and his eyes moved at last from her face, slowly taking in her appearance, and—with what seemed to her a new and horrified awareness—her height.

“My God,” he croaked. “You’re
huge
.”

Her own blush had subsided, but now came back with a vengeance.

“And whose fault is
that,
do you think?” she snapped. She drew herself up straight and squared her shoulders, glaring. So close, at her full height, she could look him right in the eye, and did.

He jerked back, and his face did change then, mask shattering in surprise. Without it, he looked younger; underneath were shock, surprise, and a dawning expression of half-painful eagerness.

“Och, no, lassie!” he exclaimed. “I didna mean it that way, at all! It’s only—” He broke off, staring at her in fascination. His hand lifted, as though despite himself, and traced the air, outlining her cheek, her jaw and neck and shoulder, afraid to touch her directly.

“It’s true?” he whispered. “It is you, Brianna?” He spoke her name with a queer accent—
Bree
anah—and she shivered at the sound.

“It’s me,” she said, a little huskily. She made another attempt at a smile. “Can’t you tell?”

His mouth was wide and full-lipped, but not like hers; wider, a bolder shape, that seemed to hide a smile in the corners of it, even in repose. It was twitching now, not certain what to do.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, I can.”

He did touch her then, his fingers drawing lightly down her face, brushing back the waves of ruddy hair from temple and ear, tracing the delicate line of her jaw. She shivered again, though his touch was noticeably warm; she could feel the heat of his palm against her cheek.

“I hadna thought of you as grown,” he said, letting his hand fall reluctantly away. “I saw the pictures, but still—I had ye in my mind somehow as a wee bairn always—as my babe. I never expected…” His voice trailed off as he stared at her, the eyes like her own, deep blue and thick-lashed, wide in fascination.

“Pictures,” she said, feeling breathless with happiness. “You’ve seen pictures of me? Mama found you, didn’t she? When you said you had a wife at home—”

“Claire,” he interrupted. The wide mouth had made its decision; it split into a smile that lit his eyes like the sun in the dancing tree leaves. He grabbed her arms, tight enough to startle her.

“You’ll not have seen her, then? Christ, she’ll be mad wi’ joy!”

The thought of her mother was overwhelming. Her face cracked, and the tears she had been holding back for days spilled down her cheeks in a flood of relief, half choking her as she laughed and cried together.

“Here, lassie, dinna weep!” he exclaimed in alarm. He let go of her arm and snatched a large, crumpled handkerchief from his sleeve. He patted tentatively at her cheeks, looking worried.

“Dinna weep,
a leannan,
dinna be troubled,” he murmured. “It’s all right,
m’ annsachd
; it’s all right.”

“I’m all right; everything’s all right. I’m just—happy,” she said. She took the handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “What does that mean—
a leannan
? And the other thing you said?”

“You’ll not have the Gaelic, then?” he asked, and shook his head. “No, of course she wouldna have been taught,” he murmured, as though to himself.

“I’ll learn,” she said firmly, giving her nose a last wipe.
“A leannan?”

A slight smile reappeared on his face as he looked at her.

“It means ‘darling,’ ” he said softly. “
M’ annsachd
—my blessing.”

The words hung in the air between them, shimmering like the leaves. They stood still, both stricken suddenly with shyness by the endearment, unable to look away from each other, unable to find more words.

“Fa—” Brianna started to speak, then stopped, suddenly seized with doubt. What should she call him? Not Daddy. Frank Randall had been Daddy to her all her life; it would be a betrayal to use that name to another man—any other man. Jamie? No, she couldn’t possibly; rattled as he was by her appearance, he had still a formidable dignity that forbade such casual use. “Father” seemed remote and stern—and whatever Jamie Fraser might be, he wasn’t that; not to her.

He saw her hesitate and flush, and recognized her trouble.

“You can…call me Da,” he said. His voice was husky; he stopped and cleared his throat. “If—if ye want to, I mean,” he added diffidently.

“Da,” she said, and felt the smile bloom easily this time, unmarred by tears. “Da. Is that Gaelic?”

He smiled back, the corners of his mouth trembling slightly.

“No. It’s only…simple.”

And suddenly it was all simple. He held out his arms to her. She stepped into them and found that she had been wrong; he
was
as big as she’d imagined—and his arms were as strong about her as she had ever dared to hope.

Everything after that seemed to happen in a daze. Overcome by emotion and fatigue, Brianna was conscious of events more as a series of images, sharp as stop-frame photos, than as a moving flow of life.

Lizzie, gray eyes blinking in the sudden light, tiny and pale in the arms of a sturdy black groom with an improbable Scottish accent. A wagon piled with glass and fragrant wood. The polished rumps of horses, and the jolt and creak of wooden wheels. Her father’s voice, deep and warm in her ear, describing a house to be built, high on a mountain ridge, explaining that the windows were a surprise for her mother.

“But no such a surprise as you, lassie!” And a laugh of deep joy that seemed to echo in her bones.

A long ride down dusty roads, and sleeping with her head on her father’s shoulder, his free arm around her as he drove, breathing the unfamiliar scent of his skin, his strange long hair brushing her face when he turned his head.

Then the cool luxury of the big, breezy house, filled with the scent of beeswax and flowers. A tall woman with white hair and Brianna’s face, and a blue-eyed gaze that looked disconcertingly beyond her. Long cool hands that touched her face and stroked her hair with abstract curiosity.

“Lizzie,” she said, and a pretty woman bent over Lizzie, murmuring, “Jesuit bark,” her black hands beautiful against the yellow porcelain of Lizzie’s face.

Hands—so many hands. Everything was done as if by magic, with soft murmurs as they passed her from hand to hand. She was stripped and bathed before she could protest, scented water poured over her, firm, gentle fingers that massaged her scalp as lavender soap was sluiced from her hair. Linen towels and a small black girl who dried her feet and sprinkled them with rice powder.

A fresh cotton gown and floating barefoot over polished floors, to see her father’s eyes light at sight of her. Food—cakes and trifles and jellies and scones—and hot, sweet tea that seemed to replace the blood in her veins.

A pretty blond girl with a frown on her face, who seemed peculiarly familiar; her father called her Marsali. Lizzie, washed and wrapped in a blanket, both frail hands round a mug of pungent liquid, looking like a steppedon flower newly watered.

Talk, and people coming, and more talk, with only the occasional phrase penetrating through her growing fog.

“…Farquard Campbell has more sense…”

“Fergus, Da, did ye see him? Is he all right?”

Da?
she thought, half puzzled, faintly indignant that someone else should call him that, because…because…

Her aunt’s voice, coming from a great distance, saying, “The poor child is asleep where she sits; I can hear her snoring. Ulysses, take her up to bed.”

And then strong arms that lifted her with no sense of strain, but not the candlewax smell of the black butler; the sawdust and linen scent of her father. She gave up the struggle and fell asleep, her head on his chest.

Fergus Fraser might sound like a Scottish clansman; he looked like a French noble. A French noble on his way to the guillotine, Brianna silently amended her first impression.

Handsomely dark, slightly built, and not very tall, he sauntered into the dock, and turned to face the room, long nose lifted an inch above the usual. The shabby clothes, the unshaven jaw, and the large purple bruise over one eye subtracted nothing from his air of aristocratic disdain. Even the curved metal hook that he wore in replacement of a missing hand only added to his impression of disreputable glamour.

Marsali gave a small sigh at sight of him, and her lips grew tight. She leaned across to Brianna to whisper to Jamie.

“What have they done to him, the bastards?”

“Nothing that matters.” He made a small motion, gesturing her back, and she subsided into her seat, glowering at bailiff and sheriff in turn.

They had been lucky to procure seats; every space in the small building was filled, and people were jostling and muttering at the back of the room, kept in order only by the presence of the red-coated soldiers who guarded the doors. Two more soldiers stood to attention at the front of the room, beside the Justice’s bench, an officer of some sort lurking in the corner behind them.

Brianna saw the officer catch Jamie Fraser’s eye, and a look of malign satisfaction crept over the man’s broad features, a look almost of gloating. It made the small hairs rise on the back of her neck, but her father met the man’s gaze squarely, then turned away, indifferent.

The Justice arrived and took his place, and the ceremonies of justice being duly performed, the trial began. Evidently, it was not intended to be a trial by jury, since no such body was present; only the Justice and his minions.

Brianna had made out little from the conversation the evening before, though over breakfast she had managed to disentangle the confusion of persons. The young black woman’s name was Phaedre, one of Jocasta’s slaves, and the tall homely boy with the charming smile was Jamie’s nephew, Ian—her cousin, she thought, with the same small thrill of discovered kinship she had felt at Lallybroch. The lovely blond Marsali was Fergus’s wife, and Fergus, of course, was the French orphan whom Jamie had informally adopted in Paris, before the Stuart Rising.

Mr. Justice Conant, a tidy gentleman of middle age, settled his wig, arranged his coat, and called for the charges to be read. These were, to wit, that one Fergus Claudel Fraser, resident of Rowan County, had on August 4 of this year of our Lord 1769, feloniously assaulted the person of one Hugh Berowne, a deputy sheriff of said county, and stolen from him Crown property, then lawfully in the deputy’s custody.

The said Hugh, being called to the stand, proved to be a gangling fellow of some thirty years and a nervous disposition. He twitched and stammered through his testimony, averring that he had encountered the defendant on the Buffalo Trail Road, while he, Berowne, was in pursuit of his lawful duties. He had been roughly abused by the defendant in the French tongue, and upon his endeavoring to leave, had been pursued by the defendant, who had apprehended him, struck him in the face, and taken away the property of the Crown in Berowne’s custody, to wit, one horse, with bridle and saddle.