A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [555]
With the broad-brimmed hat slanting forward to hide my face, and my hair twisted up and firmly pinned under a cap beneath it, I was probably a reasonable approximation, at least to people who did not know Mrs. Martin well. The Governor frowned when he saw me, and walked slowly round me, tugging here and there to adjust the fit, but then nodded, and with a small bow, offered me his arm.
“Your servant, mum,” he said politely. And with me slumping slightly to disguise my height, we went out the front door, to find the Governor’s carriage waiting in the drive.
94
ABSQUATULATION
JAMIE FRASER observed the quantity and quality of books in the window of the printshop—F. Fraser, Proprietor—and allowed himself a momentary sense of pride in Fergus; the establishment, though small, was apparently thriving. Time, however, was pressing, and he pushed through the door without stopping to read the titles.
A small bell over the door rang at his entrance, and Germain popped up behind the counter like an ink-smeared jack-in-the-box, emitting a whoop of joy at sight of his grandfather and his uncle Ian.
“Grandpère, Grandpère!” he shouted, then dived under the flap in the counter, clutching Jamie about the hips in ecstasy. He’d grown; the top of his head now reached Jamie’s lower ribs. Jamie ruffled the shiny blond hair gently, then detached Germain and told him to fetch his father.
No need; aroused by the shouting, the whole family came boiling out from the living quarters behind the shop, exclaiming, yelling, squealing, and generally carrying on like a pack of wolves, as Ian pointed out to them, Henri-Christian riding on his shoulders in red-faced triumph, clinging to his hair.
“What has happened, milord? Why are you here?” Fergus disengaged Jamie easily from the riot and drew him aside, into the alcove where the more expensive books were kept—and those not suitable for public display.
He could see from the look on Fergus’s face that some news had come down from the mountains; while surprised to see him, Fergus was not astonished, and his pleasure covered a worried mind. He explained the matter as quickly as he could, stumbling now and then over his words from haste and weariness; one of the horses had broken down some forty miles from town, and unable to find another, they had walked for two nights and a day, taking it in turns to ride, the other trotting alongside, clinging to the stirrup leathers.
Fergus listened with attention, wiping his mouth with the handkerchief he had taken from his collar; they had arrived in the middle of dinner.
“The sheriff—that would be Mr. Tolliver,” he said. “I know him. Shall we—”
Jamie made an abrupt gesture, cutting him short.
“We went there to begin with,” he said. They had found the sheriff gone, and no one in the house save a very drunken woman with a face like a discontented bird, collapsed and snoring on the settle with a small Negro baby clutched in her arms.
He had taken the baby and thrust it into Ian’s arms, bidding him grimly to mind it while he sobered the woman enough to talk. He had then dragged her out into the yard and poured buckets of well water over her until she gasped and blinked, then dragged her dripping and stumbling back into the house, where he obliged her to drink water poured over the black, burned dregs of chicory coffee he had found in the pot. She had vomited profusely and disgustingly, but regained some vague sense of language.
“At first, all she could say was that all of the female prisoners were gone—run off or hanged.” He said nothing of the fright that had lanced through his belly at that last. He had shaken the woman thoroughly, though, demanding particulars, and eventually, after further applications of water and vile coffee, got them.
“A man came, the day before yesterday, and took her away. That