A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [350]
I sympathized very much, having done it myself. Doing it with three children, two of them boys under five . . . the imagination boggled.
I wanted to ask her what had caused them to make such a drastic decision, but couldn’t think how to broach the matter in front of Miranda. Something had happened; that was clear. Melanie was jumpy as a rabbit, and somewhat more harried than even packing up a household containing three children might account for. She kept darting glances over her shoulder, as though fearing something sneaking up on her.
“Is Mr. Bogues—” I began, but was interrupted by a shadow falling across the stoop. Melanie started, hand to her chest, and I whirled round to see who had come.
The doorway was filled by a short, stocky woman, dressed in a very odd combination of garments. For an instant, I thought she was an Indian, for she wore no cap, and her dark hair was braided—but then she came into the shop, and I saw that she was white. Or rather, pink; her heavy face was flushed with sunburn and the tip of her pug nose was bright red.
“Which one of you is Claire Fraser?” she demanded, looking from me to Melanie Bogues.
“I am,” I said, repressing an instinctive urge to take a step backward. Her manner wasn’t threatening, but she radiated such an air of physical power that I found her rather intimidating. “Who are you?” I spoke from astonishment, rather than rudeness, and she did not seem offended.
“Jezebel Hatfield Morton,” she said, squinting intently at me. “Some geezer at the docks tellt me that you was headin’ here.” In marked contrast to Melanie Bogue’s soft English accent, she had the rough speech I associated with people who had been in the backcountry for three or four generations, speaking to no one in the meantime save raccoons, possums, and one another.
“Er . . . yes,” I said, seeing no point in denying it. “Did you need help of some kind?”
She didn’t look it; had she been any healthier, she would have burst the seams of the man’s shirt she was wearing. Melanie and Miranda were staring at her, wide-eyed. Whatever danger Melanie had been afraid of, it wasn’t Miss Morton.
“Not to say help,” she said, moving further into the shop. She tilted her head to one side, examining me with what looked like fascination. “I was thinkin’ you might know where’bouts that skunk Isaiah Morton be, though.”
My mouth dropped open, and I shut it quickly. Not Miss Morton, then—Mrs. Morton. The first Mrs. Isaiah Morton, that is. Isaiah Morton had fought with Jamie’s militia company in the War of the Regulation, and he had mentioned his first wife—breaking out in a cold sweat as he did so.
“I . . . ah . . . believe he’s working somewhere upcountry,” I said. “Guilford? Or was it Paleyville?”
Actually, it was Hillsboro, but that scarcely mattered, since at the moment, he wasn’t in Hillsboro. He was, in fact, in Cross Creek, come to take delivery of a shipment of barrels for his employer, a brewster. I’d seen him at the cooper’s shop barely an hour earlier, in company with the second Mrs. Morton and their infant daughter. Jezebel Hatfield Morton did not look like the sort of person to be civilized about such things.
She made a low noise in her throat, indicative of disgust.
“He’s a dang slippery little weasel. But I’ll kotch up to him yet, don’t you trouble none about that.” She spoke with a casual assurance that boded ill for Isaiah.
I thought silence was the wiser course, but couldn’t stop myself asking, “Why do you want him?” Isaiah possessed a certain uncouth amiability, but viewed objectively, he scarcely seemed the sort to inflame one woman, let alone two.
“Want him?” She looked amused at the thought, and rubbed a solid fist under her reddened nose. “I don’t want him. But ain’t no man runs out on me for some whey-faced trollop. Once I kotch up to him, I mean to stave his head in and nail his fly-bit