The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (560 page)

Silence fell among us, and I became aware that there had been rising noises downstairs for some minutes now; male voices and footsteps. The various search parties had returned, but it was apparent from the tired, disgruntled tones that no suspects had been apprehended.

The candle on the table had burned very low by now; the flame stretched high near my elbow as the wick reached its last inch. One of the candles on the mantelpiece guttered and went out in a fragrant wisp of beeswax smoke. Jamie glanced automatically at the window; it was still dark outside, but the character of the night had changed, as it does soon before dawn.

The curtains moved silently, a chilly, restless air breathing through the room. Another candle went out. A second sleepless night was telling on me; I felt cold all over, numb and disembodied, and the various horrors I had seen and heard had begun to fade into unreality in my mind, with nothing save a lingering strong scent of burning to bear witness to them.

There seemed no more to say or to do. Ulysses came back, sliding discreetly into the room with a fresh candlestick and a tray holding a bottle of brandy and several glasses. Major MacDonald reappeared briefly to report that indeed, they had found no sign of the miscreants. I checked both Duncan and Jocasta briefly, and then left Bree and Ulysses to put them to bed.

Jamie and I made our way downstairs in silence. At the bottom of the staircase, I turned to him. He was white with fatigue, his features drawn and set as though he had been carved of marble, his hair and beard stubble dark in the shadowed light.

“They’ll come back, won’t they?” I said quietly.

He nodded, and taking my elbow, led me toward the kitchen stair.

54

TÊTE-À-TÊTE, WITH CRUMBCAKE

So early in the year, the kitchen in the cellar of the house was still in use, with the summer cookhouse reserved for messier or malodorous preparations. Roused by the commotion, all the slaves were up and working, though a few looked as though they would collapse into the nearest corner and go back to sleep at the first opportunity. The chief cook, though, was wide-awake, and it was clear that no one was sleeping on
her
watch.

The kitchen was warm and welcoming, the windows still dark, walls red with hearth-glow, and the air suffused with the comforting scents of broth, hot bread, and coffee. I thought this would be an excellent place to sit down and recuperate for a bit before toddling off to bed, but evidently Jamie had other ideas.

He paused in conversation with the cook, just long enough for politeness, acquiring in the process not only an entire fresh crumb cake, dusted with cinnamon and soaked with melted butter, but a large jug of freshly brewed coffee. Then he made his farewells, scooped me up off the stool onto which I had thankfully subsided, and we were off again, into the cool wind of the dying night.

I had a very odd sense of déjà vu as he turned down the brick path toward the stables. The light was just the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, with the same pinprick stars just fading from the same blue-gray sky. The same faint breath of spring passed by, and my skin shivered in memory.

But we were walking sedately side by side, not flying—and overlaid on my memories of the day before were the unsettling odors of blood and burning. With each step I felt as though I were about to reach out to push through the swinging doors of a hospital; that the hum of fluorescent light and the subdued reek of medicines and floor polish were about to engulf me.

“Lack of sleep,” I murmured to myself.

“Time enough for sleep later, Sassenach,” Jamie replied. He shook himself briefly, throwing off tiredness as a dog shakes off water. “There’s a thing or two to be done, first.” He shifted the paper-wrapped cake, though, and took hold of my elbow with his free hand, in case I was about to fall facefirst into the cabbage bed from fatigue.

I wasn’t. I had meant only that it was the lack of sleep that was giving me the mildly hallucinatory feeling of being back in a hospital. For years, as an intern, resident, and mother, I had worked through long sleepless shifts, learning to function—and function well—despite complete exhaustion.

It was that same feeling that was stealing over me now, as I passed through simple sleepiness and out again, into a state of artificially heightened alertness.

I felt cold and shrunken, as though I inhabited only the innermost core of my body, insulated from the world around me by a thick layer of inert flesh. At the same time, every tiny detail of my surroundings seemed unnaturally vivid, from the delicious fragrance of the food Jamie carried and the rustle of his coat skirts, to the sound of someone singing in the distant slave quarters and the spikes of sprouting corn in the vegetable beds beside the path.

The sense of lucid detachment stayed with me, even as we followed the turn of the path toward the stables. A thing to be done, he’d said. I supposed that he did not mean he intended to repeat yesterday’s performance. If he proposed a more sedate form of orgy, though, involving cake and coffee, it seemed peculiar to hold it in the stable, rather than the parlor.

The side door was unbarred; he pushed it open, and the warm scents of hay and sleeping animals rushed out.

“Who is it?” said a soft, deep voice from the shadows inside. Roger. Of course; he hadn’t been among the mob in Jocasta’s room.

“Fraser,” Jamie replied, equally softly, and drew me inside, closing the door behind us.

Roger stood silhouetted against the dim glow of a lantern, near the end of the row of loose-boxes. He was wrapped in a cloak, and the light shone in a reddish nimbus round his dark hair as he turned toward us.

“How is it,
a Smeòraich
?” Jamie handed him the jug of coffee. Roger’s cloak fell back as he reached for it, and I saw him thrust a pistol into the waist of his breeches with his other hand. Without comment, he pulled the cork and lifted the jug to his mouth, lowering it several moments later with an expression of sheer bliss. He sighed, breath steaming.

“Oh, God,” he said fervently. “That’s the best thing I’ve tasted in months.”

“Not quite.” Sounding faintly amused, Jamie took the jug back and handed him the wrapped crumb cake. “How is he, then?”

“Noisy at first, but he’s been quiet for a bit. I think he may be asleep.”

Already tearing at the butter-soaked wrappings, Roger nodded toward the loose-box. Jamie took down the lantern from its hook and held it high over the barred gate. Peering under his arm, I could see a huddled shape, half-buried in the straw at the back of the box.

“Mr. Wylie?” Jamie called, still softly. “Are ye asleep, sir?”

The shape stirred, with a rustling of hay.

“I am not, sir,” came the reply, in tones of cold bitterness. The shape began slowly to unfold itself, and Phillip Wylie rose to his feet, shaking straw from his clothes.

I had certainly seen him appear to better advantage. Several buttons were missing from his coat, one shoulder seam was split, and both knees of his breeches hung loose, the buckles burst and his stockings drooping in unseemly fashion about his shins. Someone had evidently hit him in the nose; a trickle of blood had dried on his upper lip, and there was a splotch of crusty brown on the embroidered silk of his waistcoat.

Despite the deficiencies of his wardrobe, his manner was unimpaired, being one of icy outrage.

“You will answer for this, Fraser, by God you will!”

“Aye, I will,” Jamie said, unperturbed. “At your pleasure, sir. But not before I’ve had answers from yourself, Mr. Wylie.” He unlatched the gate of the loose-box and swung it open. “Come out.”

Wylie hesitated, unwilling either to remain in the box, or to come out of it at Jamie’s command. I saw his nostrils twitch, though; evidently he had caught scent of the coffee. That seemed to decide him, and he came out of the box, head held high. He brushed within a foot of me, but kept his eyes straight ahead, affecting not to see me.

Roger had collected two stools and an upturned bucket. I took the latter and shoved it modestly into the shadows, leaving Jamie and Wylie to seat themselves within easy strangling distance of each other. Roger himself retired discreetly into the shadows beside me with the crumb cake, looking interested.

Wylie accepted the jug of coffee stiffly, but a few deep swallows seemed to restore his composure to a noticeable degree. He lowered it at last and breathed audibly, his features a little more relaxed.

“I thank you, sir.” He handed the jug back to Jamie with a small bow and sat bolt upright on his stool, tenderly adjusting his wig, which had survived the evening’s adventures, but was much the worse for its experiences. “Now, then. May I inquire the reason for this … this … unspeakable behavior?”

“Ye may, sir,” Jamie replied, drawing himself up straight in turn. “I wish to discover the nature of your associations with a certain Stephen Bonnet, and your knowledge of his present whereabouts.”

Wylie’s face went almost comically blank.

“Who?”

“Stephen Bonnet.”

Wylie began to turn toward me, to ask for clarification, then recalled that he was not acknowledging my presence. He glowered at Jamie, dark brows drawn down.

“I have no acquaintance with any gentleman of that name, Mr. Fraser, and thus no knowledge of his movements—though if I did, I greatly doubt that I should feel myself obliged to inform you of them.”

“No?” Jamie took a thoughtful sip of coffee, then handed the jug to me. “What of the obligations of a guest toward his host, Mr. Wylie?”

The dark brows rose in astonishment.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I take it that you are not aware, sir, that Mrs. Innes and her husband were assaulted last evening, and an attempt at robbery made upon them?”

Wylie’s mouth fell open. Either he was a very good actor, or his surprise was genuine. Given my acquaintance with the young man to date, I thought he was no kind of actor.

“I was not. Who—” A thought struck him, and bewilderment vanished in renewed outrage. His eyes bulged slightly. “You think that I was concerned in this—this—”

“Dastardly enterprise?” Roger suggested. He seemed to be enjoying himself, relieved of the boredom of guard duty. “Aye, I expect we do. A bit of crumb cake with your coffee, sir?” He held out a chunk of cake; Wylie stared at it for a moment, then leaped to his feet, striking the cake out of Roger’s hand.

“You blackguard!” He rounded on Jamie, fists clenched. “You dare to imply that I am a thief?”

Jamie rocked back a little on his stool, chin lifted.

“Aye, I do,” he said coolly. “Ye tried to steal my wife from under my nose—why should ye scruple at my aunt’s goods?”

Wylie’s face flushed a deep and ugly crimson. Had it not been a wig, his hair would have stood on end.

“You … absolute … 
cunt
!” he breathed. Then he launched himself at Jamie. Both of them went over with a crash, in a flurry of arms and legs.

I leaped back, clasping the coffee jug to my bosom. Roger lunged toward the fray, but I snatched at him, catching his cloak to hold him back.

Jamie had the advantage of size and skill, but Wylie was by no means a novice in the art of fisticuffs, and was in addition propelled by a berserk rage. Given a few moments more, Jamie would have him hammered into submission, but I was not inclined to wait.

Monstrously irritated with the pair of them, I stepped forward and upended the coffee jug. It wasn’t boiling, but hot enough. There were simultaneous yelps of surprise, and the two men rolled apart, scrambling and shaking themselves. I thought I heard Roger laugh behind me, but when I whirled on him, he had assumed a look of straight-faced interest. He raised his eyebrows at me, and crammed another chunk of cake into his mouth.

I turned back to find Jamie already on his feet, and Wylie rising from his knees, both soaked with coffee, and both with expressions implying that they intended to resume proceedings at the point where I had interrupted them. I pushed my way between them and stamped my foot.

“I have bloody well had enough of this!”

“I haven’t!” Wylie said hotly. “He has impugned my honor, and I demand—”

“Oh, to hell with your beastly honor—and yours, too!” I snarled, glaring from him to Jamie. Jamie, who had evidently been going to say something equally inflammatory, contented himself instead with a resounding snort.

I kicked one of the fallen stools, and pointed at it, still glaring at Jamie.

“Sit!”

Plucking the soaked fabric of his shirt away from his chest, he righted the stool and sat on it, with immense dignity.

Wylie was less inclined to pay attention to me, and was carrying on with further remarks about his honor. I kicked him in the shin. This time, I was wearing stout boots. He yelped and hopped on one foot, holding his affronted leg. The horses, thoroughly roused by the commotion, were stamping and snorting in their boxes, and the air was full of floating chaff.

“Ye dinna want to trifle with her when she’s in a temper,” Jamie told Wylie, with a wary glance at me. “She’s dangerous, aye?”

Wylie glowered at me, but his scowl altered to a look of uncertainty—whether because of the empty coffee jug, which I was now holding by the neck like a club, or because of his memories of the night before, when he had discovered me in the midst of Betty’s autopsy. With an effort, he swallowed whatever he had been going to say, and sat slowly down upon the other stool. He pulled a kerchief from his stained waistcoat pocket, and blotted a trickle of blood that was running down the side of his face from a cut above the brow.

“I would like,” he said, with exquisite politeness, “to know what is going on here, please.”

He had lost his wig; it was lying on the floor in a puddle of coffee. Jamie bent and picked it up, holding it gingerly, like a dead animal. He wiped a smear of mud off the side of his jaw with his free hand, and held the wig out, dripping, to Wylie.

“We are in agreement, then, sir.”

Wylie took the wig with a stiff nod of acknowledgment and laid it on his knee, disregarding the coffee soaking into his breeches. Both men looked at me, with identical expressions of skeptical impatience. Evidently, I had been appointed mistress of ceremonies.

“Robbery, murder, and heaven knows what else,” I said firmly. “And we mean to get to the bottom of it.”

“Murder?” Roger and Wylie spoke together, both sounding startled.

“Who has been murdered?” Wylie asked, looking wildly back and forth between me and Jamie.

“A slave woman,” Jamie said, with a nod toward me. “My wife suspected ill doing in her death, and so we meant to discover the truth of the matter. Thus our presence in the shed when you came upon us last night.”

“Presence,” Wylie echoed. His face was already pale, but he looked slightly ill at the recollection of what he had seen me doing in the shed. “Yes. I … see.” He darted a look at me from the corner of his eye.