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

“Hoopla,” Henri-Christian remarked, impressed.

“Is she deid?” Felicite asked, more practically.

“If she was, Maman wouldna be asking me to watch her,” Joanie pointed out. “She’s no going to sick up in my bed, is she?”

“I’ll put a towel down,” Marsali promised, squatting to scoop the little girl up. Ian beat her to it, lifting the child gently.

“We’ll just charge ye tuppence, then,” he said to the mother. “But we’ll give ye all the teeth for free, aye?”

Looking stunned, she nodded, then followed the crowd into the back of the house. I heard the thunder of multiple feet going up the stairs, but didn’t follow; my own legs had gone to water, and I sat down quite suddenly.

“Are you all right, madame?” I looked up to find the elegant stranger inside the shop, looking curiously at me.

I picked up the half-empty bottle of whisky and took a substantial swallow. It burned like brimstone and tasted like charred bones. I made wheezing noises and my eyes watered, but I didn’t actually cough.

“Fine,” I said hoarsely. “Perfectly fine.” I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “Can I help you?”

A faint look of amusement crossed his features.

“I do not require to have a tooth drawn, which is probably good luck for both of us. However—may I?” He withdrew a slim silver flask from his pocket and handed it to me, then sat down. “I think it’s perhaps a little more fortifying than … that.” He nodded at the uncorked whisky bottle, his nose wrinkling a little.

I uncorked the flask, and the full-bodied scent of very good brandy floated out like a genie.

“Thank you,” I said briefly, and drank, closing my eyes. “Very much indeed,” I added a moment later, opening them. Fortifying, indeed. Warmth collected in my center and purled like smoke through my limbs.

“My pleasure, madame,” he said, and smiled. He was undeniably a dandy, and a rich one, too, with a good deal of lace about his person, gilt buttons on his waistcoat, a powdered wig, and two black silk beauty patches on his face—a star beside his left brow, and a rearing horse on his right cheek. Not a getup one saw often in North Carolina, especially not these days.

Despite the encrustations, he was a handsome man, I thought, perhaps forty or so, with soft dark eyes that glinted with humor, and a delicate, sensitive face. His English was very good, though it carried a distinct Parisian accent.

“Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Fraser?” he asked. I saw his eyes pass over my scandalously bare head, but he politely made no comment.

“Well, you have,” I said dubiously. “But I may not be the one you want. My daughter-in-law is Mrs. Fraser, too; she and her husband own this shop. So if you were wanting something printed—”

“Mrs. James Fraser?”

I paused instinctively, but there wasn’t much alternative to answering.

“I am, yes. Is it my husband you want?” I asked warily. People wanted Jamie for a lot of things, and it wasn’t always desirable that they find him.

He smiled, eyes crinkling pleasantly.

“It is indeed, Mrs. Fraser. The captain of my ship said that Mr. Fraser had come to speak with him this morning, seeking passage.”

My heart gave a sharp leap at this.

“Oh! You have a ship, Mr…. ?”

“Beauchamp,” he said, and, picking up my hand, kissed it gracefully. “Percival Beauchamp, at your service, madame. I do—she is called Huntress.”

I actually thought my heart had stopped for a moment, but it hadn’t, and resumed beating with a noticeable thump.

“Beauchamp,” I said. “Beechum?” He’d pronounced it in the French way, but at this, he nodded, smile growing wider.

“Yes, the English say it that way. You said your daughter-in-law … so the Mr. Fraser who owns this shop is your husband’s son?”

“Yes,” I said again, but automatically. Don’t be silly, I scolded myself. It isn’t an uncommon name. Likely he hasn’t anything at all to do with your family! And yet—a French-English connection. I knew my father’s family had come from France to England sometime in the eighteenth century—but that was all I knew about them. I stared at him in fascination. Was there anything familiar about his face, anything I could match with my faint recollections of my parents, the stronger ones of my uncle?

He had pale skin, like mine, but then, most upper-class people did, they taking great pains to shelter their faces from the sun. His eyes were much darker than mine, and beautiful, but shaped differently, rounder. The brows—had my uncle Lamb’s brows had that shape, heavy near the nose, trailing off in a graceful arch … ?

Absorbed in this tantalizing puzzle, I’d missed what he was saying.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The little boy,” he repeated, with a nod toward the door through which the children had disappeared. “He was shouting, ‘Hoopla!’ As French street performers do. Has the family a French connection of some kind?”

Belated alarms began to go off, and unease rippled the hairs on my forearms.

“No,” I said, trying to iron my face into a politely quizzical expression. “Likely he’s just heard it from someone. There was a small troupe of French acrobats who passed through the Carolinas last year.”

“Ah, doubtless that’s it.” He leaned forward a little, dark eyes intent. “Did you see them yourself?”

“No. My husband and I … don’t live here,” I ended hurriedly. I’d been about to tell him where we did live, but I didn’t know how much—if anything—he knew about Fergus’s circumstances. He sat back, pursing his lips a little in disappointment.

“Ah, too bad. I thought perhaps the gentleman I am in search of might have belonged to this troupe. Though I suppose you would not have known their names, even had you seen them,” he added as an afterthought.

“You’re looking for someone? A Frenchman?” I lifted the bowl of bloodstained teeth and began to pick through it, affecting nonchalance.

“A man named Claudel. He was born in Paris—in a brothel,” he added, with a faint air of apology for using such an indelicate term in my presence. “He would be in his early forties now—forty-one or -two, perhaps.”

“Paris,” I repeated, listening for Marsali’s footfalls on the stair. “What leads you to suppose that he’s in North Carolina?”

He lifted one shoulder in a graceful shrug.

“He may well not be. I do know that roughly thirty years ago, he was taken from the brothel by a Scotsman, and that this man was described as of striking appearance, very tall, with brilliant red hair. Beyond that, I encountered a morass of possibilities …” He smiled wryly. “Fraser was described to me variously as a wine merchant, a Jacobite, a Loyalist, a traitor, a spy, an aristocrat, a farmer, an importer—or a smuggler; the terms are interchangeable—with connections reaching from a convent to the Royal court.”

Which was, I thought, an extremely accurate portrait of Jamie. Though I could see why it hadn’t been much help in finding him. On the other hand … here Beauchamp was.

“I did discover a wine merchant named Michael Murray, who, upon hearing this description, told me that it resembled his uncle, one James Fraser, who had emigrated to America more than ten years ago.” The dark eyes were less humorous now, fixed intently upon me.

“When I inquired about the child Claudel, though, Monsieur Murray professed complete ignorance of such a person. In rather vehement terms.”

“Oh?” I said, and picked up a large molar with serious caries, squinting at it. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. I knew Michael only by name; one of Young Ian’s elder brothers, he had been born after my departure and had already gone to France by the time I returned to Lallybroch—there to be educated and taken into the wine business with Jared Fraser, an elderly and childless cousin of Jamie’s. Michael had, of course, grown up with Fergus at Lallybroch and knew bloody well what his original name was. And apparently had detected or suspected something in this stranger’s demeanor that had alarmed him.