A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [338]
“But then that big black dude ran me off twice, when I tried to get in before. Guess I didn’t meet the dress code.” His face flickered, not quite managing a smile.
“I been sneaking around for the last three days, trying to catch a glimpse of her, find her alone outside. But I saw her talking to you, out on the terrace, and heard you call her Mama. Seeing how big you are, I figured you must be . . . well, I figured if you didn’t pick up on the song, no harm done, huh?”
“So ye want to go back where ye came from, do ye?” Ian asked. Plainly he thought this was an excellent idea.
“Oh, yeah,” Donner said fervently. “Oh, yeah!”
“Where did you come through?” Brianna asked. The shock of his appearance was fading, subsumed by curiosity. “In Scotland?”
“No, is that where you did it?” he asked eagerly. Scarcely waiting for her nod, he went on. “Your mother said she came and then went back and came again. Can you-all go back and forth, like, you know, a revolving door?”
Brianna shook her head violently, shuddering in recollection.
“God, no. It’s horrible, and it’s so dangerous, even with a gemstone.”
“Gemstone?” He pounced on that. “You gotta have a gemstone to do it?”
“Not absolutely, but it seems to be some protection. And it may be that there’s some way to use gemstones to—to steer, sort of, but we don’t really know about that.” She hesitated, wanting to ask more questions, but wanting still more to fetch Claire. “Ian—could you go get Mama? I think she’s in the kitchen garden with Phaedre.”
Her cousin gave the visitor a flat, narrow look, and shook his head.
“I’ll not leave ye alone wi’ this fellow. You go; I’ll watch him.”
She would have argued, but long experience with Scottish males had taught her to recognize intractable stubbornness when she saw it. Besides, Donner’s eyes were fixed on her in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable—he was looking at her hand, she realized, at the cabochon ruby in her ring. She was reasonably sure she could fight him off, if necessary, but still . . .
“I’ll be right back,” she said, hastily stabbing a neglected brush into the pot of turps. “Don’t go anywhere!”
I WAS SHOCKED, but less so than I might have been. I had felt that Donner was alive. Hoped he was, in spite of everything. Still, seeing him face to face, sitting in Jocasta’s morning room, struck me dumb. He was talking when I came in, but stopped when he saw me. He didn’t stand up, naturally, nor yet offer any observations on my survival; just nodded at me, and resumed what he’d been saying.
“To stop whitey. Save our lands, save our people.”
“But you came to the wrong time,” Brianna pointed out. “You were too late.”
Donner gave her a blank look.
“No, I didn’t—1766, that’s when I was supposed to come, and that’s when I came.” He pounded the heel of his hand violently against the side of his head. “Crap! What was wrong with me?”
“Congenital stupidity?” I suggested politely, having regained my voice. “That, or hallucinogenic drugs.”
The blank look flickered a little, and Donner’s mouth twitched.
“Oh. Yeah, man. There was some of that.”
“But if you came to 1766—and meant to”—Bree objected—“what about Robert Springer—Otter-Tooth? According to the story Mama heard about him, he meant to warn the native tribes against white men and prevent them colonizing the place. Only he arrived too late to do that—and even so, he must have arrived forty or fifty years before you did!”
“That wasn’t the plan, man!” Donner burst out. He stood up, rubbing both hands violently through his hair in agitation, making it stand out like a bramble bush. “Jeez, no!”
“Oh, it wasn’t? What the bloody hell was the plan, then?” I demanded. “You did have one.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we did.” He dropped his hands, glancing round as though fearing to be overheard. He licked his lips.
“Bob did want to do what you said—only the rest said, nah, that wouldn’t work. Too many different groups, too much pressure to trade with the whiteys . . . just no way it would fly,