An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (читать книги TXT) 📗

He swallowed, dry-mouthed, and with some effort shoved those pusillanimous images firmly back into the locked mental closet in which he normally kept them confined.

He took a long breath.

“Dorothea,” he said firmly. “I will discover what you’re up to.”

She looked at him for a long, thoughtful moment, as though estimating the chances. The corner of her mouth rose insensibly as her eyes narrowed, and he saw the response on her face, as clearly as if she’d said it aloud.

No. I don’t think so.

The expression was no more than a flicker, though, and her face resumed its air of indignation mingled with pleading.

“Uncle John! How dare you accuse me and William—your own son!—of, of … what are you accusing us of?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Well, then! Will you speak to Papa for us? For me? Please? Today?”

Dottie was a born flirt; as she spoke, she leaned toward him, so that he could smell the fragrance of violets in her hair, and twined her fingers charmingly in the lapels of his coat.

“I can’t,” he said, striving to extricate himself. “Not just now. I’ve already given him one bad shock today; another might finish him off.”

“Tomorrow, then,” she coaxed.

“Dottie.” He took her hands in his, and was rather touched to find them cold and trembling. She did mean it—or mean something, at least.

“Dottie,” he repeated, more gently. “Even if your father were disposed to send you to America to be married—and I cannot think that anything less exigent than your being with child would compel it—there is no possibility of sailing before April. There is therefore no need to harry Hal into an early grave by telling him any of this, at least not until he has recovered from his current indisposition.”

She wasn’t pleased, but was obliged to admit the force of his reasoning.

“Besides,” he added, letting go of her hands, “campaigning ceases in winter; you know that. The fighting will stop soon, and William will be relatively safe. You need have no fears for him.” Other than accident, flux, ague, blood poisoning, griping belly, tavern brawls, and ten or fifteen other life-threatening possibilities, he added privately to himself.

“But—” she began, but stopped, and sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But … you will speak to Papa soon, won’t you, Uncle John?”

He sighed in turn, but smiled at her nonetheless.

“I will, if that is what you truly desire.” A gust of wind hit the oratory and the stained-glass image of St. Barbara shivered in its leaded frame. A rush of sudden rain rattled across the roof slates, and he drew his cloak around him.

“Stay here,” he advised his niece. “I’ll fetch the coach round to the road.”

As he made his way against the wind, one hand on his hat to prevent it taking flight, he recalled with some unease his own words to her: I cannot think that anything less exigent than your being with child would compel it.

She wouldn’t. Would she? No, he assured himself. Become pregnant by someone in order to convince her father to allow her to marry someone else? Fat chance; Hal would have her married to the guilty party before she could say “cat.” Unless, of course, she chose someone impossible to do the deed: a married man, say, or—But this was nonsense! What would William say, were she to arrive in America, pregnant by another man?

No. Not even Brianna Fraser MacKenzie—the most hair-raisingly pragmatic woman he had ever known—would have done something like that. He smiled a little to himself at thought of the formidable Mrs. MacKenzie, recalling her attempt at blackmailing him into marriage—while pregnant by someone who was definitely not him. He’d always wondered if the child was in fact her husband’s. Perhaps she would. But not Dottie.

Surely not.

UNARMED CONFLICT

Inverness, Scotland

October 1980

THE OLD HIGH CHURCH of St. Stephen’s stood serene on the bank of the Ness, the weathered stones in its kirkyard a testament to righteous peace. Roger was aware of the serenity—but none of it was for him.

His blood was still throbbing in his temples, and the collar of his shirt was damp from exertion, chilly though the day was. He’d walked from the High Street car park, at a ferocious pace that seemed to eat the distance in seconds.

She’d called him a coward, by God. She’d called him a lot of other things, too, but that was the one that stung—and she knew it.

The fight had started after supper the day before, when she’d put a crusted pot into the old stone sink, turned to him, drawn a deep breath, and informed him that she had an interview for a job at the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board.

“Job?” he’d said stupidly.

“Job,” she’d repeated, narrowing her eyes at him.

He had been swift enough to suppress the automatic “But you’ve got a job” that had sprung to his lips, substituting a rather mild—he thought—“Why?”

Never one for quiet diplomacy, she’d fixed him with a stare and said, “Because one of us needs to work, and if isn’t going to be you, it’ll have to be me.”

“What do you mean, ‘needs to work’?” he’d asked—damn it, she was right, he was a coward, because he knew goddamned well what she meant by it. “We’ve money enough for a time.”

“For a time,” she agreed. “A year or two—maybe more, if we’re careful. And you think we should just sit on our asses until the money runs out, and then what? Then you start thinking about what you ought to be doing?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said through his teeth. True, that; he’d been doing little else for months. There was the book, of course; he was writing down all the songs he’d committed to memory in the eighteenth century with commentary—but that was hardly a job in itself, nor would it earn much money. Mostly thinking.

“Yeah? So have I.” She turned her back on him, turning on the tap, either to drown out whatever he might say next, or just in order to get a grip on herself. The water ceased, and she turned round again.

“Look,” she said, trying to sound reasonable. “I can’t wait much longer. I can’t stay out of the field for years and years and just walk back into it anytime. It’s been nearly a year since the last consulting job I did—I can’t wait any longer.”

“You never said you meant to go back to work full-time.” She’d done a couple of small jobs in Boston—brief consulting projects, once Mandy was out of the hospital and all right. Joe Abernathy had got them for her.

“Look, man,” Joe had said confidentially to Roger, “she’s antsy. I know that girl; she needs to move. She’s been focused on the baby day and night, probably since she was born, been cooped up with doctors, hospitals, clingy kids for weeks now. She’s gotta get out of her own head.”

And I don’t? Roger had thought—but couldn’t say so.

An elderly man in a flat cap was weeding round one of the gravestones, a limp mass of uprooted greenery lying on the ground beside him. He’d been watching Roger as he hesitated near the wall, and nodded to him in a friendly way, but didn’t speak.

She was a mother, he’d wanted to say. Wanted to say something about the closeness between her and the kids, the way they needed her, like they needed air and food and water. He was now and then jealous over not being needed in the same primal way; how could she deny that gift?

Well, he’d tried to say something of the kind. The result had been what might be expected by lighting a match in a mine filled with gas.

He turned abruptly and walked out of the kirkyard. He couldn’t speak to the rector right this minute—couldn’t speak at all, come to that; he’d have to cool down first, get his voice back.

He turned left and went down along Huntly Street, seeing the facade of St. Mary’s across the river from the corner of his eye; the only Catholic church in Inverness.

During one of the earlier, more rational parts of the fight, she’d made an effort. Asked if it was her fault.